Until it was hunted to extinction, the thylacine – also known as the Tasmanian tiger or Tasmanian wolf – was the world’s largest marsupial predator. However, our new research shows it was in fact only about half as large as previously thought. So perhaps it wasn’t such a big bad wolf after all.
Although the thylacine is widely known as an example of human-caused extinction, there is a lot we still don’t know about this fascinating animal. This even includes one of the most basic details: how much did the thylacine weigh?
An animal’s body mass is one of the most fundamental aspects of its biology. It affects nearly every facet of the its biology, from biochemical and metabolic processes, reproduction, growth, and development, through to where the animal can live and how it moves.
For meat-eating predators, body mass also determines what the animal eats – or more specifically, how much it has to eat at each meal.
Catching and eating other animals is hard work, so a predator has to weigh the costs carefully against the benefits. Small predators have low hunting costs – moving around, hunting, and killing small prey doesn’t cost much energy, so they can afford to nibble on small animals here and there. But for bigger predators, the stakes are higher.
Almost all large predators – those weighing at least 21 kilograms – focus their efforts on prey at least half their own body size, getting more bang for the buck. In contrast, small predators below 14.5 kg almost always catch prey much smaller than half their own size. Those in between typically take prey less than half their size, but sometimes switch to a larger meal if some easy prey is there for the taking – or if the predator is getting desperate.
The mismeasure of the thylacine
The March 14, 1868 edition of the Launceston Examiner featured tales of a ‘hyena’ that managed to kill 25 sheep.trove.nla.gov.au
Few accurately recorded weights exist for thylacines – only four, in fact. This lack of information has made estimating their average size difficult. The most commonly used average body mass is 29.5kg, based on 19th-century newspaper accounts.
This suggests the thylacine would probably have taken relatively large prey such as wallabies, kangaroos and perhaps sheep. However, studies of thylacine skulls suggest they didn’t have strong enough skulls to capture and kill large prey, and that they would have hunted smaller animals instead.
This presented a problem: if the thylacine was as big as we thought, it shouldn’t be able to live solely on small prey. But what if we’ve had the weight wrong the whole time?
Ben Myers of Thinglab scans a Museums Victoria thylacine.CREDIT, Author provided
Our new research, published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, addresses this weighty issue. Our team travelled throughout the world to museums in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe, and 3D-scanned 93 thylacines, including whole mounted skeletons, taxidermy mounts, and the only whole-body ethanol-preserved thylacine in the world, in Sweden.
Based on these scans, we created new equations to estimate a thylacine’s mass, based on how thick their limbs were – because their legs would have had to support their entire weight.
We also compared the results of these equations with a new method of digitally weighing 3D specimens. Based on a 3D scan of a mounted skeleton, we digitally “filled in the spaces” to estimate how much soft tissue would have been present, and then used our new formula to calculate how much this would weigh. Taxidermy mounts were easier as there was no need to infer the amount of soft tissue. The most artistic member of our team digitally sculpted lifelike thylacines around the scanned skeletons, and we weighed them, too.
Building and weighing a thylacine. Scanned skeletons (lop left) were surrounded by digital ‘convex hulls’ (top right), which then had their volume and mass calculated. The skeletons were then used in digitally sculpting lifelife models (bottom left), each with their own unique stripes (bottom right).Rovinsky et al.
Our calculations unanimously told a very different story from the 19th-century periodicals, and from the commonly used estimate. The average thylacine weighed only about 16.7 kg – not 29.5 kg.
This means the previous estimate, based on taking 19th-century periodicals at face value, was nearly 80% too large. Looking back at those old newspaper reports, many of them in retrospect have the hallmarks of “tall tales”, told to make a captured thylacine seem bigger, more impressive and more dangerous.
It was based on this suspected danger that the thylacine was hunted and trapped to extinction, with private bounties already placed on them by 1840, and government-sponsored extermination by the 1880s.
Thylacines were much smaller in stature than humans or grey wolves.Rovinsky et al., Author provided
The thylacine was much smaller than previously thought, and this aligns with the smaller prey size suggested by the earlier studies. Predators below 21 kg – in which we should now include the thylacine – all tend to hunt prey smaller than half their size. The “Tasmanian wolf” probably wasn’t such a danger to Tasmanian farmers’ sheep after all.
By rewriting this fundamental aspect of their biology, we are closer to understanding the role of the thylacine in the ecosystem – and to seeing exactly what was lost when we deliberately hunted it to extinction.
New Zealand’s Attorney-General David Parker says there has been no decision yet on a possible appeal to the High Court ruling that some of the country’s alert level 4 covid-19 pandemic lockdown in late March and early April was unlawful.
Three judges heard the judicial review at the High Court in Wellington late last month and their written decision has been released this afternoon.
Borrowdale had sought the court rule that three actions by the government in the early stages of the lockdown were unlawful.
The first was public statements made by the prime minister and other officials during the first nine days of lockdown, the second was regarding three orders made under the Health Act, while the third was about the definition of essential services.
The judges have concluded that from March 26 to April 3, the requirement for people to stay at home and in their bubbles was justified, but unlawful.
“Those announcements had the effect of limiting certain rights and freedoms affirmed by the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 including, in particular, the rights to freedom of movement, peaceful assembly and association,” the judges said.
“While there is no question that the requirement was a necessary, reasonable and proportionate response to the Covid-19 crisis at the time, the requirement was not prescribed by law and was therefore contrary to s 5 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.”
A new order was introduced by the government on April 3 which corrected that.
The judges said Borrowdale’s other challenges to the lockdown and the early covid-19 response had failed.
Attorney-General responds to ruling In a conference this afternoon, Attorney-General David Parker said there had been no decision yet on a possible appeal to the High Court ruling.
Attorney-General David Parker … “In some way, the health act has been vindicated.” Image: Dom Thomas/RNZ
The current lockdown orders made under the Covid-19 Public Health Response Act 2020 are not affected by this judgment.
Parker says the government does not think there are any consequences and was happy the Crown had in its view won the major points.
“What we were trying to do during those early days was take people with us from … very few restrictions to … very broad restrictions,” he says.
“You can see that the court has gone to a lot of effort to record that this was an emergency… they just think things should have been written down a little bit more.
“In some way, the health act has been vindicated.”
But where it was out of date was in the way decisions were taken.
“I would expect that when all of this has passed … that we will have a look again as to whether the Health Act will use the format that is in the covid response.”
An important issue He was not critical of those who had brought the case against the Crown, saying it was an important issue and acknowledged the ability to hold the Crown to account was also important.
“We always thought we were acting legally all of the way through.
“The main point in this case has been that is was beyond the power of the government … that kept everyone in their bubbles and close businesses.”
That had been upheld by the court, Parker says.
He cautioned against over-reading the judgment.
He says the issue with the first nine days being an oral request – rather than a former order – was cured by April 3.
“We can be confident in the Orders made and enforced,” Parker says.
“However the court did find that there was a breach of the Bill of Rights Act in the first nine days of the alert level 4 lockdown, because the original oral request for people to stay home and in their bubbles was not put in a formal order until April 3.
“Importantly, though, the court found that the requirement to stay home and in their bubbles was a necessary, reasonable and proportionate response to the Covid-19 crisis at that time.”
Six new covid-19 cases Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield announced today six new covid-19 cases of infection – five are in the community and related to the Auckland cluster and one an imported case, reports RNZ News.
He said the imported case was a woman in her 50s who had arrived from Qatar via Sydney on August 14 and had been in the Sudima Hotel.
Police say there had been a large increase in the number of vehicles being turned around at the checkpoints on Auckland’s boundary, reports RNZ News.
As of yesterday afternoon, more than 86,000 vehicles had been stopped at the 13 different checkpoints.
Almost 4800 had been turned around.
This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.
If you havesymptomsof the coronavirus, call the NZ Covid-19 Healthline on 0800 358 5453 (+64 9 358 5453 for international SIMs) or call your GP – don’t show up at a medical centre.
We know Instagram is the most influential app when it comes to lifestyle and beauty trends.
But recent research shows increasing numbers of people are also going to Instagram for their news. A report by the Reuters Institute found the use of Instagram for news has doubled across all age groups since 2018.
It is now set to overtake Twitter as a news source in the coming year, with younger people in particular embracing Instagram for their news.
What is ‘Insta’?
Instagram is a social media platform where users post photos with captions, with an estimated one billion active users around the world.
The Reuters report found Instagram reaches 11% of people of all ages for news, based on survey results for 12 countries, including Australia.
But the embrace of the platform for news is particularly pronounced for young people. For example, in April, 24% of 18-24 year olds in the United Kingdom used Instagram to find out about COVID-19. This compares with 26% in the United States.
Australians were not polled for this particular question, but a 2020 Australian study of school students found 49% of teenagers surveyed got their news from Instagram.
Instagram users can receive news stories and updates by following another user and then seeing what they post by scrolling through their feed. Alternatively, users can search via a hashtag.
Why are young people choosing Instagram for news?
Those under about 35 have grown up with mobile and social media as the norm. So it follows they interact with news and current events in a radically different way from previous generations, or even news consumers a decade ago.
Recent research suggests young people think that rather than going to dedicated sources for their news – like a newspaper or TV bulletin – the news will come to them. So, important information “finds them” anyway, through their general media use, peers and social connections.
Another key difference with older news consumers is that younger people are “prosumers”. Not only do they read the news, they can actually produce it and join in what’s trending. Sometimes, this may be by simply sharing a post with extra commentary and opinion. At other times, users might take an image or video and edit it in order to make and share a meme that relates to the content.
Order in a chaotic world
Amid global chaos and uncertainty, Instagram offers up the world as a stable, structured, and highly stylised.
Instagram is less chaotic than other social media platforms because of the actual interface design. That is, the focus is almost purely on aesthetics – on the beauty and impact of the image using filters and tools. This type of media consumption soothes instead of provoking anxiety. In some senses, it simplifies and streamlines the chaos of the world.
Instagram has a simple interface, built for mobile use.www.shutterstock.com
Instagram’s ability to simplify and “organise” the world resonates with another finding of the Reuters report – Instagram has become even more important with younger groups for accessing news about COVID-19.
The power of influencers
Instagram is home to “influencers” – high-profile users who are considered to be style and opinion leaders. While they can influence the products we buy, or the places we travel to, they can also influence the information we consume.
This becomes even more important in times of crisis. It is comforting to seek out narratives or perspectives from people we know and trust.
In the case of news media, Instagram gives young people what feels like a direct and personal line to their role models. In this respect, so does Twitter, but again, the interface of Instagram is simpler. On Instagram, what might be complex and confusing issues are condensed down to images.
Recent research also suggests Instagram users prefer “lighter” and “less-demanding” types of interaction with online news.
What does this mean for news consumption?
The implications of the move towards “Insta-news” are complex. One concern is the way people can curate their own reality, because they can shape their feed so they only see what they want. They can unfollow or block what they do not like.
In some senses, this can sense of control is positive. However, this also means people are essentially constructing what they want the world to look like. This leads to “filter bubbles”, where people become “cut off” from other, perhaps more challenging, ideas.
Western culture is essentially “ocularcentric”. In other words, we are obsessed with images. And we are more likely to believe things we can see. As a result, news consumers may be less inclined to challenge or critique what they see on Instagram. Even though they need to be doing this online more than ever.
The dangers of fake followers, fake accounts and fake news are already well-known on social media. Last year, Institut Polytechnique de Paris researchers found 4,000 fake accounts in a targeted sample on Instagram.
Good-looking news in a hostile world
For young people seeking solace from the hostility and pressure of news events, Instagram provides a space filled with good-looking visual stimulation, often from people they like and trust.
And as the Reuters report noted – Instagram may not be everything. Social media are generally used “in combination” with other types of news information.
But as increasing numbers of people turn to Instagram for their news, the question remains: is this the news they need, or simply the news they want to see?
In our series Art for Trying Times, authors nominate a work they turn to for solace or perspective during this pandemic.
In her 2017 book Living a Feminist Life, Sara Ahmed advocates the necessity of a “feminist killjoy survival kit”, her name for the assemblage of books, things, tools, creatures and joys that enable feminists — and feminism — to survive.
When the world is exhausting, when life grinds you down, the Survival Kit is the place feminists turn for nourishment and solace. More than just an exercise in neoliberal selfcare, Survival Kits are about sustaining a community and a political project.
Needless to say, my Survival Kit has been getting a heavy workout in 2020. Coronavirus, climate collapse, economic downturn, the implosion of higher education, resurgent fascism, celebrity transphobia— not mention my own gender transition: it’s a lot.
What I’ve craved, to survive these times, is communion with like-minded souls, fellow queer bookworms who’ll share my horrified fascination with a world in flames. But in this age of social distancing and repeated lockdowns, communion is hard to find — especially for us more than two million Australians who live alone.
This is why a treasured item in my Killjoy Survival Kit is a podcast that beams whip-smart feminist conversation into my home, allowing me to eavesdrop on the latest musings of a fellow traveller each week.
Secret Feminist Agenda is the creation of Canadian academic Hannah McGregor, a literature scholar at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. As McGregor describes, it is a “podcast about the insidious, nefarious, insurgent, and mundane ways we enact our feminism in our daily lives”.
Now in its fourth season, the podcast alternates between interview episodes and shorter “minisodes”, in which the dauntingly articulate McGregor monologues on a topic front of mind.
With a city under lockdown, communion with like-minded souls can be hard to find.James Ross/AAP
Soundtrack to the Sisyphean
Every Saturday morning for the past two years, the latest episode has provided the soundtrack to the Sisyphean drudgery of laundry and housework. In the process, McGregor’s voice has become as familiar as my own. As podcasting critics have noted, you develop a special kind of intimacy with someone who whispers into your ear as you scrub the toilet each week.
What makes this podcast stand out in an increasingly rich podcasting landscape is its unique blend of brain and heart. McGregor is an intellectual greyhound, and she brings a fierce scholarly rigour to each episode.
But she has an equally fierce commitment to a “feminist politics of care”, showing that softness, humour, pleasure and even cosiness are values that must be central to a truly emancipatory feminist politics.
More than anyone, McGregor has made me realise the truth of Audre Lorde’s vision of selfcare as warfare. For oppressed groups like women, people of colour, and queer and trans people, using selfcare to ensure one’s own survival can itself constitute political resistance. As Lorde wrote, and both Ahmed and McGregor cite, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
By exploding the Cartesian mind-body divide, McGregor gives us an embodied, feminised model of intellectual excellence — one that provides a much needed alternative to the still ubiquitous vision of “the scholar” as a white male automaton with a wife looking after things at home.
In the process, McGregor helps us imagine a world where academia could discard its masculinist culture of hyper-competitiveness, punitive benchmarks and elitist gatekeeping. As embattled Australian universities discard their armies of casuals and push surviving staff towards ever greater “efficiency”, we need more than ever to envision and fight for a better university.
Secret Feminist Agenda also expands the boundaries of academic knowledge production. By having the project peer-reviewed via a university press, McGregor makes a case for the podcast as a legitimate form of scholarship.
In doing so, she shows that “scholarship” can be pleasurable, collaborative and —most importantly — accessible to a broader public. This example has been crucial to development of my own podcast Archive Fever, co-hosted with historian and author Clare Wright.
On a more personal level, Secret Feminist Agenda has given me specific tools to think with as I — like McGregor — navigate life as a queer, single, white, vegan, millennial feminist academic living on stolen Indigenous land.
Episode 2.3 helped me discover my inclinations towards asexuality and aromanticism (little or no romantic attraction towards others). Episode 3.17 spoke to my growing qualms about veganism, dissecting its links to white supremacy and disordered eating. Other episodes pushed me to confront how my workaholism reproduces the productivity fetish of late capitalism.
And many episodes have illuminated instructive parallels between Canada and Australia, twin settler colonial nations struggling to come to terms with entrenched racism and genocidal histories.
‘It’s okay not to be okay’
Finally, the podcast has been a treasure trove of reading recommendations. Both the interviewed guests, and each episode’s show notes, have led me to books that have transformed my world.
Best of all, McGregor is as delightful in real life as she appears on the podcast. We met once, back in 2018, when I visited Vancouver for a conference. We feasted on vegan ice cream and she introduced me to her beautiful and troubled city. Just like her podcast, it was the perfect blend of pleasure and politics, radical sweetness infused with a dash of bracing vinegar.
As I approach my five-month anniversary of lockdown, this memory has itself become part of my Survival Kit — a reminder life once contained sociability and travel, and will one day do so again. In the meantime, I have McGregor in my ear to remind me that “it’s okay not to be okay” when a pandemic upends life as we know it.
Indigenous people fought alongside youth movements in the creation of an Indonesian nation. But, in the historical writing of Indonesia’s struggle for independence from colonial powers, stories of Indigenous people’s role are nearly non-existent compared to that of the elite educated youth leaders.
This lack of representation reflects the marginalisation of Indigenous peoples, which continued throughout Indonesia’s 75 years of independence.
Indigenous people, whose traditional knowledge and way of life proved to be a force to be reckoned with during the current covid-19 pandemic and who for generations serve as guardians of forests and natural environments, continue to be stigmatised and experience oppression in their own country.
In addition, these communities suffered oppression from the government’s economic driven investment, evicting them from their customary lands to make way for large scale forestry, mining, and plantations.
Freedom fighters History books barely mention how Indigenous peoples took arms with the Youth movement during the struggle for independence and helped to finally established the Republic of Indonesia.
Rukka Sombolinggi, who comes from the Toraja tribe in South Sulawesi, recalled the experience of her own family. She said that her great grandfather and grandfather were freedom fighters who fought along with students.
“My grandfather died as a veteran. The history might not have recorded Indigenous Peoples’ roles for fighting the colonialism, but there were hundreds of thousands of them who died in the wars. Unfortunately, history recorded only the youths movements,” said Sombolinggi.
Sandra Moniaga, a Commissioner for Assessment and Research at the National Commission of Human Rights (Komnas HAM), said the majority of Indigenous Peoples, such as Sedulur Sikep in Java, were among the groups who rejected to collaborate with the Dutch colonialists.
Moniaga added that Indigenous peoples have a unique contribution to Indonesia’s struggle for independence. “They preserve Indonesia’s local cultures, protecting our identity as a nation known with hundreds of tribes and cultures,” she said.
Forest guardians Most of Indigenous peoples’ customary lands are within and near the country’s forests. They play a huge role in protecting the country’s forest and natural environment.
In her recent study about the Marind-Anim Indigenous Peoples in Merauke Regency, Papua Province, anthropologist Sophie Chao who has been living among them for more than a decade, mentioned how the tribe is “caring for the forest, respectable to plants and animals, and nourishing relationships with the natural world”.
Under the administration of Indonesia’s first president Sukarno, Indigenous peoples got their recognition through the State’ agrarian law in 1960.
The law was the first to mention Indigenous peoples. But it stipulates that customary law applies as long as it aligns with national and State interests.
After Soeharto took power in 1966, there was systematic destruction on customary rights during the New Order, according to Sandra.
She said that the government carried out land-grabbing by issuing forest permits on customary lands for forestry, mining and large scale plantations.
“Most of these customary lands were also claimed by the government to be handed over to migrants and TNI (the army) or the police,” she added.
Towards recognition of Indigenous rights Things started to change for Indigenous peoples in following the end of Soeharto’s rule in 1998.
The 4th Amendment of the 1945 Constitution enacted in 2000 acknowledged their “traditional existence” and “traditional way of life”.
This became the legal basis for the Constitutional Court to rule out customary lands (Hutan Adat) as State’s forests in 2012, or locally known as MK35.
Another progress, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo had revived the Indigenous Peoples Bill, which will strengthen Indigenous peoples’ existence in the Republic and to resolve ongoing conflicts related to customary lands.
“Still, it is difficult to realise these regulations. Instead of RUU MHA (Indigenous Peoples Bill), the government and lawmakers are more eager to pass the Omnibus Law on Job Creation,” slammed Rukka Sombolinggi.
She said currently, Indigenous peoples are facing another form of “colonialism”. Since decentralisation in 2001, the regents and governors were the ones issuing permits over Customary Forest without their consent.
“We are no longer fighting foreign companies, but locals, like the bupati (head of regent), the governor. Their own people,” she said citing Sukarno’s famous speech: “My struggle was easier because it was to expel the colonialists, but yours will be more difficult because it is against your own people.”
Moving forward During the pandemic, Indigenous peoples that are still practising their traditional knowledge are considered to be the most resilient groups because of their closeness to nature.
“Indigenous peoples who are guarding their areas and not massively exploited their resources and have the spirit of sharing, they have strong resilience against this pandemic. They can even provide their own food,” said Rukka Sombolinggi.
Meanwhile, those who are exposed to modernisation or in conflict with the industries suffer from unemployment, food security, and lacking in health, clean water and sanitation access.
“The claim and promises from big corporations to provide food, open access to education, or employment, they are now becoming helpless due to the characteristic of the virus,” Sombolinggi added.
Sophie Chao admired the courage, resilience, endurance, and creativity of Indigenous Peoples, in general, in the face of ongoing threats to their lands and ways of life.
“For me, my hope is that the cultures and values of Indigenous Peoples will be fully recognised, protected, and promoted by the Indonesian state and by the international community,” said Chao.
“This means making sure that their rights to land are guaranteed, that their full consent is sought where development projects are being planned, and their development takes place in a bottom-up way, based on Masyarakat Adat‘s own aspirations, dreams, and hopes.”
Rukka Sombolinggi, secretary-general of the Alliance of Indigenous Peoples of the Archipelago (AMAN), and Sandra Moniaga, a Commissioner for Assesment and Research at the National Commission of Human Rights (Komnas HAM) were interviewed for this article, part of a series to commemorate Indonesian Independence Day on August 17. Fidelis Eka Satriastanti is editor of Lingkungan Hidup, The Conversation. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luke Zaphir, Researcher for the University of Queensland Critical Thinking Project, The University of Queensland
It’s after work and you’ve gone to the supermarket to grab some ingredients for dinner. You’re tired, anxious and pretty hungry. Plus you have to put on a mask because a thousand other people are there, and social distancing is hard to enforce at this moment. Now you’re uncomfortable, on top of everything.
We all feel this way sometimes. But we tolerate it because there’s a pandemic and we all have to do our part to keep everyone safe.
Except that one person.
There’s that one person at the front of the line being asked to step out and put on a mask before coming into the shop. And they’re putting on a scene, yelling about their rights to go unmasked, to be able to breathe, to be free of oppression.
“Everyone else can wear a mask if they choose but not I,” says the person. “I have rights and I will be free.”
This is hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy is when we are inconsistent in our morality. We commonly refer to it as “saying one thing and doing another”.
Anti-maskers believe they have rights. But in refusing to wear a mask, they are denying other people the right to live in security. Article 3 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights says “everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person”. These rights are inextricably interwoven. Freedom without safety is arguably not freedom at all.
The primary way we become hypocrites, strangely enough, is being too flexible in our thinking — a cognitive flexibility called abstraction. Flexible thinking can be about keeping an open mind, but the capacity to warp one’s thinking processes can also make double standards acceptable.
We create loopholes in the application of the rules because we’ve created those rules much too theoretically, which doesn’t gel with real world settings.
Why is hypocrisy so bad?
When we are hypocritical, we create injustices. We may fail to do the right thing, which might hurt people or even make them sick. But the biggest problem with hypocrisy is that it causes a complete breakdown of our own personal truth.
If we believe in a principle, but don’t apply it ourselves, that principle is essentially meaningless.
Many dictatorships and fascists are fantastic hypocrites. They often say they are defending some theoretical value – like national security, cultural tradition or even freedom — but there’s no value or meaning in an abstract notion of security or freedom if you murder and oppress your people.
How can you trust someone who says one thing, but acts differently?Shutterstock
Not all hypocrisy ends with bloodshed but we can have some pretty poor outcomes regardless. One of the more fundamental hypocrisies comes from ignoring the responsibility that comes with every right.
You want the right to live? Then you have a responsibility to the rights of others to live.
You want to own stuff? You have a responsibility to respect the property rights of others.
You want to use a public space? You have a responsibility to share that space with others.
To believe you have a right without a corresponding responsibility is hypocritical — a double standard where you’ve likely considered the abstract principle but not the specific situation.
Why is it bad, particularly now?
Hypocrisy erodes the value behind rights and truth, so they’re essentially worthless. Democracy is fundamentally about consent of the governed — we give our informed consent through voting and political participation. Informed consent requires accurate information though. Without being able to know the truth, we have no ability to give consent.
Our democracy erodes away with every hypocrisy and lie told to undermine expertise. It’s a well-known arguing tactic to discredit opposition to win a debate but we simply don’t have the luxury of this kind of sophistry during a pandemic.
We may not agree on what we need to do but right now we can’t afford to ignore evidence and truth.
Take public goods. These are shared spaces and qualities we all benefit from: education, clean air and water, health and the environment.
Without the public good of health, we get sick, the economy shuts down, we lose loved ones to disease. Our quality of life drops dramatically without good public health.
A hypocritical viewpoint says: “I’m willing to benefit from good public health but I’m not willing to maintain it”.
Hypocrites never would directly think or say this. Instead, they would see the issue as a fulfilment of a different abstract right. This might look like “I have a right to be unmasked in public”.
This right may exist, or it may not. However, if you think public health is a good thing but you aren’t willing to take a basic measure of responsibility for it — like wearing a mask — that’s hypocrisy. It can make a disaster worse for everyone.
What can we do to check ourselves for hypocrisy?
One of the best ways to avoid hypocrisy is to make our own moral principles far more specific. Put that abstract principle into context.
Say your principle is
I have a right to live unmasked.
That’s not too contentious but it is vague enough to be abused.
Applying context to that principle could look like this:
I have a right to live unmasked even when I’m possibly an asymptomatic carrier of the worst disease to hit our country in a century.
It’s a lot harder to defend a belief like this one.
We don’t have to share common ethics from person to person, but we do have to be consistent with ourselves. If we’re charitable and authentic in how we interpret a situation, we gain the ability to construct much stronger, much more consistent moral beliefs.
South Auckland and its communities, specifically Pasifika, are at the centre of New Zealand’s current covid-19 cluster.
As a result, media coverage, health information and public reaction have taken a significantly different tone to what occurred during New Zealand’s first wave of cases.
Racism and misinformation continue to marginalise the “index” family, Pasifika communities and South Auckland. It is an ugliness that has fed debate around the merits of continually highlighting ethnicity and the region.
Questions include the need for the public to know cases are “Pasifika”, and whether they are being treated fairly by health authorities. That then links to the recent requirement for virus-positive households to go into managed facilities.
The answers to those do not come neatly packaged. However, they are important when trying to understand information, including ethnicity data, around the current outbreak. Part of that includes looking at the timing of information being released.
A ‘Pasifika’ family The current cluster, and subsequent restrictions, were announced a week ago by the Prime Minister and Director-General of Health. At the 9.15pm press conference, Dr Ashley Bloomfield identified the family as being from South Auckland with workplaces in other parts of the city.
According to his timeline, that was about six hours after health officials were alerted to the positive covid-19 tests. Dr Bloomfield and Jacinda Ardern declined to give further detail that night, citing privacy reasons and early stages of contact tracing.
However, less than 12 hours later, the family was identified in the media as Pasifika.
While that information was bound to become public anyway, Pasifika public health experts wanted more time, and evidence of spread via contact tracing before identifying the family as Pasifika.
That was supported by Dr Bloomfield. Dr Api Talemaitoga, a GP in South Auckland who is also part of the Health Ministry’s Pasifika Covid-19 response team, said at that early stage of contract tracing, there was no evidence to show identification of the family as “Pasifika” would be useful.
“It was a supposed outbreak, but nobody knew how large it was,” Dr Talemaitoga said about the first 24 hours.
“We wanted more time to get that information before talking about ethnicity because we were worried about how the family, and even the community at large would be stigmatised.”
And that’s exactly what happened, he added.
Slightly different take Dr Collin Tukuitonga, Associate Dean (Pacific) and Associate Professor of Public Health at the University of Auckland, had a slightly different take on it.
While “on balance”, more time should have been allowed for contact tracing before the family was identified as Pasifika, he stressed it was “not a clean event”.
“It’s hard to know because when you identify them as Pasifika, the usual nastiness comes out and… racism rears its ugly head,” he explained.
“But you have to balance that across the public’s need to know. If you were just simply contact tracing a small group of people within a limited area, then you could argue you don’t need to identify the ethnicity.
“The problem with this is we already knew the wife worked in Mt Eden, and the husband worked in Mt Wellington, and that company had three sites linked to the airport.
“The GP was also out in Glen Eden, and the child went to Mt Albert Primary.”
Positive families in managed facilities Dr Bloomfield’s decision to move covid-positive families into managed isolation facilities has been criticised as racist. It was not a policy during the last outbreak, when the majority of cases were Pālagi New Zealanders, aged 30 to 50, returning from overseas.
Notably, both Dr Talemaitoga and Dr Tukuitonga believe this is the best accommodation response. Their evidence: hard lessons from the Marist cluster during the last outbreak. A number of Pasifika families were part of that cluster.
Dr Talemaitoga: “There were families where somebody tested positive and then they isolated themselves. The others in the house were asymptomatic, but say seven days later, someone was found to be positive, and then two weeks later, another person got [a positive test].”
“Some families ended up being in isolation for up to four weeks or more… and that’s really disruptive,” he said.
Pertinent to this is the set-up of many Pasifika households. Families are more likely to live in overcrowded homes compared to Pālagi (about 40 percent of Pasifika households). That makes it more difficult to isolate covid-19 positive individuals effectively. The managed facilities provide a good alternative, he said.
Dr Tukuitonga added he believed the previous approach allowing positive cases to isolate at home was an unnecessary risk.
“From a public health point of view, I thought it was quite lax. That fact that we’re requiring everyone into quarantine is the right thing to do if we want to get on top of the current cases.”
Pasifika-specific stats On Sunday, Dr Bloomfield announced the number of Pasifika cases for the current cluster would be provided separately.
In the first wave, Pasifika accounted for about 5 percent of cases. In this current cluster, about 75 per cent of positive cases are Pasifika. This data is needed to accurately target resources, culturally specific information, and wider support services in communities.
It is not about assigning blame, Dr Talemaitoga said.
Dr Tukuitonga touched on testing rates as an example.
“One thing we’re struggling with at the moment is testing. If we get the picture that 70 percent of all cases in the new cluster is Pacific, and they say… the Pacific testing is only 10 percent of the total testing, then we can say ‘That’s not good enough’.
“From our point of view, at the very least, our testing rates should be at least 70 percent [so it’s comparable to case numbers],” he said.
“Instead of guessing, it means we have information to make our case more intelligently.”
So far, there’s been a torrent of misinformation and vitriol directed at victims of covid-19. It has been particularly tough for Pasifika.
As Dr Talemaitoga and Dr Tukuitonga have shown, one of the best ways to combat that is by understanding how decisions are made about our health and communities.
Teuila Fuataiis a freelance journalist specialising in social and cultural issues. This article was first published in The New Zealand Herald and is republished here with the author’s permission.
Covid-19 cases in New Zealand on 18 August 2020. Graphic: NZHCovid-19 daily cases in New Zealand. Graphic: NZH
Until it was hunted to extinction, the thylacine – also known as the Tasmanian tiger or Tasmanian wolf – was the world’s largest marsupial predator. However, our new research shows it was in fact only about half as large as previously thought. So perhaps it wasn’t such a big bad wolf after all.
Although the thylacine is widely known as an example of human-caused extinction, there is a lot we still don’t know about this fascinating animal. This even includes one of the most basic details: how much did the thylacine weigh?
An animal’s body mass is one of the most fundamental aspects of its biology. It affects nearly every facet of the its biology, from biochemical and metabolic processes, reproduction, growth, and development, through to where the animal can live and how it moves.
For meat-eating predators, body mass also determines what the animal eats – or more specifically, how much it has to eat at each meal.
Catching and eating other animals is hard work, so a predator has to weigh the costs carefully against the benefits. Small predators have low hunting costs – moving around, hunting, and killing small prey doesn’t cost much energy, so they can afford to nibble on small animals here and there. But for bigger predators, the stakes are higher.
Almost all large predators – those weighing at least 21 kilograms – focus their efforts on prey at least half their own body size, getting more bang for the buck. In contrast, small predators below 14.5 kg almost always catch prey much smaller than half their own size. Those in between typically take prey less than half their size, but sometimes switch to a larger meal if some easy prey is there for the taking – or if the predator is getting desperate.
The mismeasure of the thylacine
The March 14, 1868 edition of the Launceston Examiner featured tales of a ‘hyena’ that managed to kill 25 sheep.trove.nla.gov.au
Few accurately recorded weights exist for thylacines – only four, in fact. This lack of information has made estimating their average size difficult. The most commonly used average body mass is 29.5kg, based on 19th-century newspaper accounts.
This suggests the thylacine would probably have taken relatively large prey such as wallabies, kangaroos and perhaps sheep. However, studies of thylacine skulls suggest they didn’t have strong enough skulls to capture and kill large prey, and that they would have hunted smaller animals instead.
This presented a problem: if the thylacine was as big as we thought, it shouldn’t be able to live solely on small prey. But what if we’ve had the weight wrong the whole time?
Ben Myers of Thinglab scans a Museums Victoria thylacine.CREDIT, Author provided
Our new research, published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, addresses this weighty issue. Our team travelled throughout the world to museums in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe, and 3D-scanned 93 thylacines, including whole mounted skeletons, taxidermy mounts, and the only whole-body ethanol-preserved thylacine in the world, in Sweden.
Based on these scans, we created new equations to estimate a thylacine’s mass, based on how thick their limbs were – because their legs would have had to support their entire weight.
We also compared the results of these equations with a new method of digitally weighing 3D specimens. Based on a 3D scan of a mounted skeleton, we digitally “filled in the spaces” to estimate how much soft tissue would have been present, and then used our new formula to calculate how much this would weigh. Taxidermy mounts were easier as there was no need to infer the amount of soft tissue. The most artistic member of our team digitally sculpted lifelike thylacines around the scanned skeletons, and we weighed them, too.
Building and weighing a thylacine. Scanned skeletons (lop left) were surrounded by digital ‘convex hulls’ (top right), which then had their volume and mass calculated. The skeletons were then used in digitally sculpting lifelife models (bottom left), each with their own unique stripes (bottom right).Rovinsky et al.
Our calculations unanimously told a very different story from the 19th-century periodicals, and from the commonly used estimate. The average thylacine weighed only about 16.7 kg – not 29.5 kg.
This means the previous estimate, based on taking 19th-century periodicals at face value, was nearly 80% too large. Looking back at those old newspaper reports, many of them in retrospect have the hallmarks of “tall tales”, told to make a captured thylacine seem bigger, more impressive and more dangerous.
It was based on this suspected danger that the thylacine was hunted and trapped to extinction, with private bounties already placed on them by 1840, and government-sponsored extermination by the 1880s.
Thylacines were much smaller in stature than humans or grey wolves.Rovinsky et al., Author provided
The thylacine was much smaller than previously thought, and this aligns with the smaller prey size suggested by the earlier studies. Predators below 21 kg – in which we should now include the thylacine – all tend to hunt prey smaller than half their size. The “Tasmanian wolf” probably wasn’t such a danger to Tasmanian farmers’ sheep after all.
By rewriting this fundamental aspect of their biology, we are closer to understanding the role of the thylacine in the ecosystem – and to seeing exactly what was lost when we deliberately hunted it to extinction.
Papua New Guinean parents have been assured that everything is being done to ensure the health and safety of children in school, although the final decision to send them to class is entirely theirs.
National Capital District Education Services Secretary Sam Lora made these points when responding to concerns raised by parents about the safety of sending children to school in the middle of a covid-19 community transmission in the capital city, with nine new cases reported on Monday.
He assured parents that the schools were doing all they could to stop the spread of the covid-19.
“We respect parents if they do not feel safe for children to attend classes,” he said.
“We have a problem with social distancing, especially overcrowding. But it is compulsory now that every individual must wear a mask.”
The national total of the covid-19 cases reached 333 on Monday, with more than 200 alone in Port Moresby.
The oldest patient is 84 and the youngest two years old.
Worried about education Mother-of-four Sybil Suruba from Northern, whose young twins are in grade three at the Wardstrip Primary School in Waigani said she was worried about her children’s education.
Her eldest daughter is in grade 10 at Gordon Secondary and her son is in Grade Nine at Gerehu Secondary School.
“I am worried sick for my children because they have missed out on a lot of lessons during the last two lockdowns,” Suruba said.
“I hope teachers will make up for all those lessons they have missed.”
Suruba said it would be best to cancel the rest of the 2020 academic year “to save students from stress and pressure, especially those who have exams”.
Parent Dagu Hebore from Central, who has three children at school, said she did not feel safe allowing her children to go to school.
Her eldest son is in grade eight at the Bavaroko Primary School in East Boroko, while her daughter is doing grade three there too.
‘Crowded classrooms’ Her youngest son attends the Edai Early Learning at Boera outside Port Moresby.
“Schools should only reopen when it is safe for the children, especially when we have crowded classrooms,” Hebore said.
Hebore said the only way she would feel safe for her children was to be assured that schools were strictly following public health measures and hygiene practices to stop the Covid-19 transmission.
Some children in Port Moresby have to travel by public buses to school, travelling with adult passengers who still do not wear masks and in crowded buses with no hand sanitisers provided.
But NCD Governor Powes Parkop said the National Capital District Commission buses were on the road yesterday transporting students.
Aileen Kwagaru is a reporter for The National newspaper. The Pacific Media Centre republishes articles from The National with permission.
Plans for spending NZ$5.3 on construction of the Fiji Prime Minister’s new office should be diverted to people affected by the covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, civil society groups say.
The groups, which form the Civil Society Organisation Alliance for Covid-19 Humanitarian Response, said requests they had received for assistance from families prompted them to urge the government to reconsider the construction.
Director of the Social Empowerment and Education Programme (SEEP) Chantelle Khan said children needed to be cared for during the crisis.
“The F$7.4m (NZ$5.3m) that’s supposed to go to the PM’s Office – give all of it to the future generation of this country and to our elderly. Our Social Welfare recipients and our children who need to be fed,” she said.
Khan also called for the government to work with stakeholders for the betterment of the country. This would reflect a democratic government that cared for its people, she said.
“We need to work together, so please relocate this funding to children who are unable to be fed by their families because of the impact of this pandemic.”
The alliance includes the Women’s Rights Movement (FWRM), the Social Education Empowerment Programme (SEEP), the Foundation for Rural Integrated
Enterprises and Development (FRIEND), the Women’s Crisis Centre, FemLink Pacific and the Citizens Constitutional Forum (CCF).
Shamima Ali of the Women’s Crisis Centre said Fiji was not “out of the woods yet” and that there was a dire need in community for the money devoted to the office.
Humanitarian centre opens People in the Western Division whose lives have been affected by the pandemic can now access basic assistance from the Alliance’s Humanitarian Response Centre in Navakai, Nadi.
Opposition MP Lenora Qereqeretabua at the new centre in Nadi. Image: RNZ/NFP/Facebook
The centre opened last week and is the brainchild of Fiji’s largest NGO, Then India Sanmarga Ikya Sangam (TISI Sangam), to establish a one-stop shop in the west that provides school lunches for children.
TISI Sangam president Sadasivan Naicker said the centre was timely because it would assist Fijians who had lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic.
“We have branches all over Fiji and with the manpower we have, we can help in this programme to make it successful,” Naicker told TheFiji Times.
“We are in a better position and this is the first time we have forged such a partnership with the NGOs and we look forward to this.”
The Foundation for Rural Integrated Enterprises and Development (FRIEND) said there was a need to establish the centre because it would make work easier for people who needed assistance.
FRIEND director Sashi Kiran said in recent months, more than 40 percent of its food bank applicants were from Nadi.
Kiran said they were mostly people who had no employment as a result of the pandemic.
The centre will also distribute seedlings, facilitate training, and provide counselling and legal services.
This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.
Many attempts to develop artificial intelligence are powered by powerful systems of mathematical logic. They tend to produce results that make logical sense to a computer program — but the result is not very human.
In our work building therapy chatbots, we have found using a different kind of logic — one first formalised by the Greek philosopher Aristotle more than 2,000 years ago — can produce results that are more fallible, but also much more like real people.
The underpinning science of our chatbots is formal logic. Modern formal logic has its basis in mathematics — but that wasn’t always the case.
The discovery and formalisation of logic is attributed to Aristotle (384-322 BC) in his collected works, the Organon (or “instrument”).
Here he documented the first principle of reaching a conclusion from a set of premises. This would be later called inference, guided by rules known as syllogisms.
Since the 20th century, the field of logic has moved away from Aristotle’s approach towards systems that use predicate and propositional logic. These types of logic have been developed by mathematicians for mathematical applications; hence they are referred to as mathematical logics. Their reasoning is required to be infallible.
Human reasoning, on the other hand, is not always infallible. We mainly reason via deduction, induction and abduction.
You can think of deduction as using generalised rules to reason about a specific example, while induction and abduction involve looking at a collection of examples and trying to work out the rules that explain them.
While deduction tends to be most accurate, induction and abduction are less reliable. These are complex processes not easily programmed into machines.
Arguably, induction and abduction are what separate human intelligence, which is vast and general but often inaccurate, from the narrow yet increasingly accurate intelligence of machines.
Chat logic
We have found that using mathematical logic makes our chatbots less able to have meaningful interactions with humans.
For example, a single human utterance often makes little sense without a large context of what linguists call entailments, presuppositions and implicatures.
While our brains factor in this context automatically, machines must use some form of equivalent logic.
Artificial general intelligence
One school of thought suggests parts of Aristotle’s logic, nowadays referred to as term logic, and his rules of inference, could form core components of an artificial general intelligence (AGI).
The OpenCog and OpenNars are prominent AGI research platforms with term logic at the core. At present these platforms are capable of general-purpose reasoning for potential applications in health and robotics.
A robot using the OpenCog system in 2016.
Term logic
Term logic is composed of basic units of meaning, which are linked by what linguists call a “copula”. To write “a bird is an animal” in term logic, we could use the copula denoted “->” which intuitively means “is a special kind of”, like this:
Bird -> Animal
This is a very simple example, but more complex and expressive statements are also possible.
Term logic and syllogisms also avoid some of the logical paradoxes that often occur when fitting natural language into a logical framework.
For example, in most systems of formal logic, a nonsense statement like “if the moon is made of cheese, the world is coming to an end” counts as a valid argument. (This is called the paradox of material implication, and occurs because if often has very different meanings in natural language and in formal logic.)
Aristotle, however, stated syllogisms are what must follow from two independent premises that share one (and only one) term. This rule lets us dismiss the argument above, as the two pieces of the argument (“the moon is made of cheese” and “the world is coming to an end”) don’t share a term.
Fallible reasoning
AGI researchers have extended Aristotle’s syllogisms by allowing conclusions that may be true with a degree of uncertainty (fallible reasoning) as well as those that must be true (like those from deductive reasoning). Term logic readily supports these forms of reasoning.
Examples of different forms of reasoning that term logic aptly supports. Conclusions are given in red. Deduction is infallible while induction and abduction are fallible.
Beliefs and truths
Now that we can derive conclusions that may be true, we need to identify these as beliefs with a corresponding truth value.
How to determine the truth value of a belief is where some AGI researchers differ. The OpenNars project approach is most similar to the human belief system, where it counts the number of independent pieces of evidence for and against a belief to to determine how much confidence to place in it.
Virtual AI companions
So how can Aristotle’s voice be heard in our chatbot technology?
We have started to use AGI in our chatbot technology for those with communication challenges and who benefit from technology interactions. Our version is mostly inspired from the OpenNars platform but infused with other components we found useful.
Rather than just computing a response from a sequence of words, responses from the chatbot are derived from the relationships between billions of terms. Beliefs with low confidence can be sent back to the user (for example, a person asking a health chatbot about symptoms) as questions.
In the future we think this will allow for more engaging, deeper and natural interactions between humans and machine. The beliefs and “personality” of the chatbot will become tailored to the user.
Aristotle’s 2,000-year-old logic has had a profound influence on Western civilisation. A revamp of his ancient works could very well shift us into a new frontier of human-computer interaction.
There is no death penalty in New Zealand, unlike the United States. But Christchurch terrorist Brenton Tarrant, due for sentencing next week, will be going to jail for a very long time.
A minimum of 17 years is required for a murder committed as part of a terrorist act, and Tarrant has admitted to 51 such murders (among other crimes).
Also unlike the US, New Zealand does not allow cumulative sentences. But it does allow for the imposition of what could become an indeterminate sentence, with no minimum parole period.
To lock Tarrant up in perpetuity will be very expensive. He is currently costing just over NZ$4,930 a day due to the extra levels of security, considerably more than the average of about $338 for a standard prisoner.
The next two years alone will cost New Zealand taxpayers about $3.6 million. The final sum for the 28-year-old terrorist will depend on how long he lives and the ongoing level of security he requires. If he has a normal life span the cost may be in the tens of millions per decade.
Should he stay or go?
In the minds of many, the costs and hassle of incarcerating Tarrant will be an acceptable price to pay. Foreign citizen or not, there is a symbolic and ethical responsibility for us to keep the rat we caught.
New Zealanders old enough to remember are still jaundiced from the last time we caught terrorists, the French agents Dominque Prieur and Alain Mafart who were directly linked to the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in 1985.
The two were handed back to France as part of a reconciliation deal. But the French government quickly broke the terms of agreement, repatriating the prisoners from their detention on a South Pacific atoll to a normal life in France.
Another such act of bad faith is unlikely, as Tarrant has no government in his corner arguing for his repatriation. He does, however, have a government behind him that has implemented specific legislation to obtain the transfer of its own citizens when incarcerated in foreign countries, to serve their sentences on home soil.
Christchurch terrorist Brenton Tarrant appears in the District Court on March 16, 2019. He subsequently pleaded guilty to all charges.AAP
This is not unusual legislation. Although there is no overarching international law, regional and bilateral initiatives are common. Australia’s International Transfer of Prisoners Act, for example, aims to facilitate the transfer of prisoners between Australia and countries with which it has agreements.
Prisoners can serve their prison sentences in their country of nationality or in countries with which they have community ties. There are strong economic, social and humanitarian reasons for this approach.
The deportation of ex-prisoners will increase
Here is the catch. New Zealand has no such relationship with Australia. Unlike most comparable countries, we have little interest in the international transfer of prisoners, preferring to take a hard line when it comes to Kiwis in foreign jails.
Partly because of this, since 2014 Australia has allowed non-citizens to have their visas cancelled on character grounds, including having been sentenced to prison for more than 12 months.
So, although New Zealand prisoners in Australian jails may not be transferred to serve their sentences at home, they will be deported at the end of their sentences.
From early 2015 to mid-2018, about 1,300 New Zealander ex-prisoners had been deported from Australia. After a brief interlude due to COVID-19, the deportations resumed.
It is no exaggeration to say this policy (and the cruel standards by which it is applied) are a significant irritant between the two countries.
If it doesn’t change it’s likely to get worse, too. As of mid-2019, New Zealand prisoners made up 3% of the total Australian prisoner population (43,028) – about 1,100 people.
Conversely, there were only about 35 Australians in our jails, out of about 320 foreigners in New Zealand’s much smaller prison population (9,324 as of March, 2019).
Somewhere in the middle of this darkness there is a glimmer of hope – the chance of a deal and a better relationship between the two countries.
Sign a prisoner transfer agreement. Exchange Tarrant and make him serve out his sentence in Australia, as ruled by the New Zealand judicial system.
Revise the rules for the deportation of New Zealanders who have committed crimes in Australia but been resident for a long time. Move the threshold for deportation from one to three years in prison and make it reciprocal.
Thereafter, recent arrivals in either country who commit serious crimes (such as Brenton Tarrant) are transferred home to serve their time in accordance with their sentences.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cassandra Cross, Senior Research Fellow, Faculty of Law, Cybersecurity Cooperative Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology
Fraudsters are ruthless and will use any means necessary to gain financial advantage.
Earlier this year, as Australians were battling the devastating bushfires, fraudsters were tailoring their approaches to exploit the good intentions of citizens wanting to help victims.
And come March and the declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic, offenders have seamlessly shifted their approaches to take advantage of yet another crisis.
Online fraud on the rise during COVID-19
Given the known links between natural disasters and fraud, it is unsurprising offenders are using COVID-19 to target potential victims. While there are limited statistics on crime rates during this period, evidence suggests fraud and other online scams have spiked.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) issued an alert this week warning of a dramatic spike in identity theft, with some 24,000 reports of stolen personal information this year, a 55% increase over the same time last year.
Further, Scamwatch has received more than 3,600 reports specifically mentioning COVID-19, with victims so far claiming losses of about $2.3 million.
Fraud costs millions of dollars annually, as shown in the ACCC’s latest Targeting Scams report. It found that in 2019, Australians reported losing more than $634 million to fraud, a dramatic increase from $489 million in 2018.
Fraud is an underreported crime, so these figures are likely to be a fraction of the actual losses incurred by victims. In addition, there are many barriers to victims reporting scams. They might not realise they are a victim, for example, or might not know where to report such crimes. Some people also feel a strong sense of shame and embarrassment at having been deceived.
The government is putting more attention on the threat of fraud and other cybercrime with its newly released cybersecurity strategy, which will see a record $1.67 billion invested in cybersecurity and cybercrime prevention over the next decade.
There is nothing new in the ways offenders are targeting potential victims at the moment. Rather, we are seeing well-established schemes reappearing under the guise of COVID-19.
Online shopping fraud
With more people at home during the pandemic, there has been a substantial increase in online shopping. Consequently, there has also been an increase in online shopping fraud.
Fraudsters use phishing emails and text messages as a means of getting personal information from victims, like bank account details and passwords. Phishing attempts usually come from what appear to be legitimate sources, persuading recipients to click on a link or reply with required personal information.
In the context of COVID-19, phishing attempts are being launched under the guise of government departments. Some messages claiming to be from health authorities say the recipient has had contact with a known case of the virus, for instance, while others advertise the need for testing.
Others have pretended to be the Australian Taxation Office with offers of tax refunds or the availability of government benefits or support payments.
In addition, offenders have also used the pretext of legitimate businesses like Coles and Woolworths, appearing to offer services or discounts to those who are struggling. Other approaches are using the Australia Post logo to ask people to pay additional fees for delivery of purchased items.
Increased vulnerability to fraud
These examples highlight how offenders exploit anxiety to take advantage of people in uncertain times. They play on people’s fears and anxieties.
Everyone is vulnerable to fraud. Research suggests there is “no typical fraud victim”. However, COVID-19 has arguably made more people vulnerable to fraud across large sections of society.
Isolation and loneliness can increase vulnerability. Without the presence and accessibility of support networks (such as family and friends), individuals may be more responsive to fraudulent approaches.
Economic hardship could also make people more susceptible to fraud. Offenders do not need to offer outrageous returns for their approaches to be attractive to potential victims. People are more motivated than ever to improve their financial situations, which plays into the hands of fraudsters.
How you can protect yourself
It is important people understand how fraudsters work and are using the crisis to their advantage, so they can take the necessary steps to protect themselves. Here are a few tips to prevent becoming a victim.
Stay connected to family, friends and colleagues, even in a virtual environment. Offenders relish the isolation of victims to increase the success of their attempts.
Talk about what is happening. Ask someone directly if they have received any strange emails or phone calls. Offenders rely on secrecy and shame to keep people silent about their victimisation.
Be vigilant with emails, phone calls, texts and even those who knock on your door. Do not feel you have to respond to anything immediately and take the time to think about and seek advice. Offenders rely on immediate responses from people that overcome any rational thought.
Report any fraud attempts or losses you may have incurred to Scamwatch or ReportCyber. Also, contact your bank if you have lost money, or a service like IDcare if you have had your identity compromised. It is important for these organisations to be able to gain accurate figures on the prevalence of fraud during these times.
COVID-19 has thrown the world into uncertainty. But one thing that’s clear is fraudsters will remain active and continue to target victims. We need to recognise this changing environment, support each other and collectively do as much as possible to guard against fraud victimisation.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa Mitchell, Conjoint Clinical Senior Lecturer in the School of Medicine, Faculty of Health, Deakin University
Although most hospitals are coping right now, COVID-19 has brought up many questions about how health-care resources should be rationed during a pandemic.
Ideally, every unwell person should get anything they need to get better. But important resources like medications and hospital beds, including intensive care unit (ICU) beds, can become limited if demand outstrips supply.
We’ve had access to confidential documents outlining how various health services are to make decisions on who gets ICU resources in the event they become overwhelmed.
We found there’s significant variation between hospitals’ procedures on this front. And worryingly, the public doesn’t have access to this information.
Resource allocation in hospitals
Resource allocation procedures or triage plans help to work out who gets that bed, ventilator, or vaccine if and when the system comes under significant strain.
Ideally, these procedures should be created well ahead of when they might be needed, and be underpinned by three factors:
local context — what’s available/possible
medical evidence — what works, and for whom
ethical values — what we consider fair and the right thing to do.
The Victorian Pandemic Plan suggests health services should “adopt a systematic and transparent prioritisation of services as demand for treatment grows”.
It also says:
Triage will be enacted at the same level across the state, to promote equity of access of patients to intensive care.
Safer Care Victoria, the peak state body for quality and safety improvement in health care, had been preparing a document to guide hospitals on ethical resource allocation. But it only released this to the health services a few days ago, and the contents are considered sensitive and not for wider distribution within or outside the health services.
In contrast, Queensland Health released an ethical framework to guide clinical decision-making during COVID-19 in April, that’s available to the public.
If resources are stretched, the hospital you go to could determine whether or not you get an ICU bed.Shutterstock
Different hospitals, different procedures
In the absence of a statewide approach in Victoria, most health services have developed their own resource allocation documents and triage plans.
To our knowledge, none of these documents are publicly available. But we’ve been able to informally review COVID-19 resource allocation procedures from a number of Victorian hospitals.
We’ve found these procedures vary in how ICU resources would be allocated to sick people (with or without COVID-19) in the event resources were scarce.
Some health services would use a standardised scoring system that predicts short-term survival (that is, the person deemed most likely to live would get the bed). But when they use the scoring system, and what additional criteria they take into account, varies between hospitals.
Some hospitals would use exclusion criteria based on certain health conditions. The types of conditions vary between hospitals. For example, one hospital would use a body mass index (BMI) above 40 to exclude people who are obese, while another would exclude people with alcohol dependency.
In “tie-breaker” situations, when it’s not possible to make a decision based on the scoring system, health conditions, or the severity of illness alone, hospitals may use tie-breaker criteria.
Tie-breaker criteria were also different across different hospitals. Some hospitals would prioritise pregnant people, sole parents, health-care workers, and so on. Others would not.
Several of the hospitals plan to use a team of experienced clinicians not involved in the patient’s care as a triage team. Some hospitals have indicated a lottery is the fairest thing to do in tie-breaker situations.
Hospital x, y or z?
Most hospital patients won’t need ICU-level support. Some people, even if they’re very unwell, may choose not to receive treatment in the ICU. And some people will not benefit from ICU care. But for anyone who might benefit, the different plans could mean different access depending on which hospital they go to.
For example, if you’re pregnant, it would be better to go to hospital x. If you’re a widowed parent with young children, you should go to hospital y. If you’re obese, you should try your luck somewhere other than hospital z.
Again, these resource allocation procedures are not publicly available, so we can’t provide information here to guide you.
Medical staff would need to make resource allocation decisions using their hospital’s procedures.Shutterstock
Variation in procedures across different hospitals is understandable in the face of uncertain medical evidence, or when available resources differ in local contexts, or because local communities have specific health needs. For example, you could reasonably expect variation between a smaller regional hospital and a bigger city hospital.
But where resources are similar — for example in two Melbourne hospitals only a few kilometres from each other, with overlapping catchment areas — plans should essentially be the same. If they’re not the same they should at least be publicly available.
It appears they vary, and the current lack of transparency around these resource allocation procedures means patients have no way of knowing whether they would be better to present at one emergency department over another.
The pandemic has highlighted various health inequities. In Victoria, the highest case numbers have occurred in areas with the greatest socioeconomic disadvantage.
Resource allocation is considered fair when processes are accountable, transparent, justifiable, and revisable. Where they’re not, they can further disadvantage people and communities.
If Safer Care Victoria and the individual health services were to make their ethical framework document and resource allocation procedures available to the public, this would allow for discussion and engagement, and where possible, enable people to choose which health service will serve them best.
Croplands are a valuable, yet scarce natural resource. To guard against serious and potentially irreversible environmental harm, croplands should not extend beyond 15% of the earth’s ice-free surface.
Croplands are mainly used for food production. So it’s important to ask whether our diets are biting off more than our fair share.
In recent research, we looked at the cropland footprints of the diets of more than 9,000 Australian adults, involving more than 5,000 foods.
We found if everyone ate like the average Australian, the 15% limit on the area for global croplands would be exceeded, albeit modestly. Reducing our intake of discretionary foods such as cakes, biscuits, pizza and hot chips is the best way to make our diets more sustainable.
The average Australian diet
Ploughing new lands for crop production entails the loss of forest and grassland, which can threaten biodiversity through habitat loss, and disturb water and nutrient cycles through changes in drainage and fertiliser use.
Croplands are used to grow cereals such as wheat. They are also used to grow fruits and vegetables, nuts, oilseeds and legumes. Perhaps less obviously, crops are used to feed livestock and in aquaculture.
Australian dietary habits vary enormously.Unsplash, CC BY
In landmark research in 2009, leading scientists proposed the idea of “planetary boundaries” to mark the thresholds for our use of the environment, such as the area of croplands.
If global croplands are to occupy no more than 15% of the ice-free land surface, as they proposed, the total area cannot extend beyond about 2 billion hectares. It’s difficult to know for sure, but it’s likely the world is already approaching this boundary, or even marginally exceeding it.
With today’s global population of around 7.8 billion, this limit means the requirements of an individual’s daily diet should not exceed more than 7 square metres of cropland.
Our research found that on average, Australian adult diets slightly exceed this amount, requiring 7.1 square metres per day.
However, the world’s population is rapidly increasing and is expected to surpass 8.5 billion by 2030. At 9 billion, the global share of croplands shrinks to around 6.1 square metres per person per day.
Eating beyond the boundary
The good news is Australian dietary habits vary enormously. Already, many Australians are eating well and within the global cropland boundary. Australians with healthier diets and lower cropland footprints required only 4.2 square metres per day.
These lower footprint diets were distinguished by much lower consumption of discretionary foods. These are energy-dense and nutrient-poor foods high in saturated fat, added sugars, added salt, and alcohol — ingredients associated with foods with high-crop use.
For example, potato chips are made from potato and vegetable oil, both of which require cropland. Even beer depends on cropland, using barley and hops in its production.
Along with reducing food waste, reducing the intake of discretionary foods to sensible levels is the most important action Australians can take to make their diets healthier and more sustainable.
These discretionary foods also tend to lead to the over-consumption of energy due to their high energy density, which is not only a problem for the environment, but also our waistlines.
Processed foods often use a surprising amount of cropland. An apple might weigh 100 grams, but a small glass of apple juice might use 400 g of apples.
Stick to the five food groups, though it’s important to limit the consumption of poultry and pork to keep your cropland footprint down.eatforhealth.gov.au
According to the Australian Dietary Guidelines, most Australian’s consume too many discretionary foods instead of choosing foods from the five food groups: grains, vegetables and legumes, fruits, dairy products and meats.
Animal-sourced foods
Following discretionary foods, the second largest contribution to the cropland footprint is from the “fresh meat and alternatives” food group. This food group includes eggs, nuts and legumes and is an important source of protein and nutrients.
In this food group, wild-caught seafood and game meats had no associated cropland use. Also at the lower end of the scale were tofu and pulses like chickpeas (0.17 and 0.18 square metres per serving).
Sheep and cattle mostly graze on grasslands in Australia.AAP Image/Lukas Coch
Lamb and beef had moderate cropland footprints (0.64 and 0.82 square metres per serving). That’s because in Australia, sheep and cattle mostly graze on grasslands.
But livestock have higher cropland footprints when they’re fed with crop-based feed such as cereals, soybeans and oilseed meals.
This includes aquaculture salmon (0.70 square metres per serving), chicken (1.62 square metres per serving) and pork (2.21 square metres per serving). Eggs require 0.98 square metres of cropland per serving.
If Australians follow the Australian Dietary Guidelines, it is possible to eat within the global cropland boundary and there is flexibility to enjoy a variety of foods in the “fresh meats and alternatives” food group.
However, the guidelines don’t specify how much poultry or pork should be eaten, which becomes an issue if these meats make up a big part of a diet.
Diets compliant with the Australian Dietary Guidelines that were within the global cropland boundary contained more seafood, beef, lamb and vegetarian food.
Make chips a sometimes food to eat within the appropriate cropland boundary.Shutterstock
It’s also important to note croplands across Australia and the world are not equally productive. To provide a reliable measure of resource use, we calculated cropland footprints taking both the area occupied and productive potential into account.
In Australia, for example, average wheat yields are typically below 2 metric tons per hectare. Compare this to northern Europe, where wheat yields of between 6 and 10 metric tons per hectare are common.
In any case, sticking to a healthier diet as described in the dietary guidelines, with moderate intake of cropland-intensive poultry and pork, is the best way to ensure you’re eating within sustainable cropland boundaries. Otherwise there just won’t be enough food to go around.
The bushfire royal commission is examining ways Indigenous land and fire management could improve Australia’s resilience to national disasters. On the face of it, this offers an opportunity to embrace Indigenous ways of knowing.
But one traditional practice unlikely to be examined is the Indigenous concept of “deep time”. This concept offers all Australians a blueprint for understanding the land we live on.
In the words of University of Technology, Sydney, Visiting Research Fellow and Yuwaalaraay/Gamilaraay woman Frances Peters-Little:
All things will outlast us, the land will change, and survive … Yes, the land will be different. But new things will come of it.
For non-Indigenous Australians like myself, the past summer of bushfires seemed to mark the end times. Indigenous Australians also grieved the enormous losses wrought last fire season – but their long perspective on history offers hope.
The ‘deep time’ concept offers all Australians a blueprint for understanding the land.Dean Lewins/AAP
What is deep time?
Deep time asks us to rethink our narrow conceptions of time by looking back far into Earth’s history, and looking forward far into the future.
The Indigenous Australian sense of history spans the 65,000 or more years they have lived on this continent. This goes way beyond the Western concept of “ancient history”, set in the Northern Hemisphere and reaching little beyond 6,000 years.
Australia’s deep human history covers everything Aboriginal people achieved before 1770 – the year marking the arrival of British navigator Lieutenant James Cook on the Endeavour – and 1788 when convicts under the governance of Arthur Phillip arrived.
Different groups of Indigenous people witnessed these events. But they also witnessed the great climate dramas of the Pleistocene and the Holocene. They experienced the chilling cold and adapted to the drying up of key water sources such as Willandra Lakes in far west New South Wales.
Around Sydney, they witnessed river systems forming and changing course around Kamay or Botany Bay, and the lands of Port Phillip Bay rapidly filling with water. In Queensland, they witnessed their lands being submerged and islands such as Koba (Fitzroy Island) being created. Some are thought to have observed the Great Barrier Reef being formed and volcanoes erupting.
The Indigenous Australian sense of history spans the 65,000 or more years they’ve lived on this continent.Shutterstock
Beyond a Western sense of time
The story of deep history cannot be gleaned from the kinds of written evidence left by Cook and Phillip in their 18th-century journals. Rather, information about the deep past is held in features of the landscape itself.
As the Anangu people of Uluru explain, the land contains proof of a spoken narrative, like a photograph. The land’s markings are the archives, the inscriptions revealing and proving deep history stories.
Nature can expose some of these stories. In southwestern Victoria last summer, for example, the bushfires uncovered more sections of the ancient stone fish traps at Budj Bim.
Similarly, in the late 1960s, erosive winds took away sand deposited over tens of thousands of years, revealing the grave site of Lady Mungo in southwestern NSW. Here, her remains were ritually burnt 40,000 years ago.
For Aboriginal people, these events constitute their ancestors revealing themselves; people of the past speaking directly to those in the present. It is almost as if the ancestors are living today – in what anthropologist WEH Stanner translated as an “everywhen”.
The Budj Bim cultural landscape was heritage listed after fires exposed its intricate aquaculture system, built by Indigenous Australians.PR handout image
A blueprint for change
News in May that mining company Rio Tinto destroyed two rock shelters containing evidence of habitation dating back 46,000 years triggered public outrage. Perhaps this signals a burgeoning realisation that to understand our land, Australians need a history that stretches well beyond 1788.
To achieve this, Indigenous custodians, parks officers, historians and archaeologists might work together to develop a “deep time” research policy. This might include a national survey to assess the cultural heritage of Australia’s deep past.
Across Australia, many such sites – containing ancient rock art, engravings and the like – are little known and sometimes neglected. Surveying them will give all Australians insights into ecological change.
At Namadgi National Park near Canberra, rock art identifies animals of the region, such as dingoes, kangaroos and wallabies. Firefighters successfully saved the Yankee Hat rock art site, including ripping up its timber boardwalks to prevent it burning. Figures at the site were painted over hundreds, or possibly thousands of years.
Elsewhere, such as in the Kuringai National Park in NSW, rock engravings point to astronomical knowledge about the Milky Way. The appearance of an emu figure in the sky once signalled it was time to gather emu eggs.
Indigenous Australians use astronomy, such as this emu constellation, to identify ecological patterns.Dylan O’Donnell/Wikimedia
A deeper understanding
Embracing a deep, expansive understanding of non-linear time helps give context to disasters such as bushfires. On Australia Day this year as the fires raged around Canberra, Frances Peters-Little told me:
There’s a lot of talk of extinction. (But) Aboriginal people are focusing on rejuvenation. It is our responsibility to ensure the land is protected … As a culture that has lived here tens of thousands of years, we know this. We have been here too long to think it’s the end of things.
We must all think of ourselves not just in biographical time – inhabiting one lifespan – but rather, of the future generations to come and those long before us.
This article was reviewed by University of Technology, Sydney, Visiting Research Fellow and Yuwaalaraay/Gamilaraay woman Frances Peters-Little.
Questions about the purpose of universities have been highly topical lately. Federal Education Minister Dan Tehan has suggested the purpose of universities is to produce job-ready graduates – preferably in STEM (science, technology, engineering, maths) rather than HASS (humanities, arts, social sciences) areas.
This has spurred debate about the purpose of universities. Is it to “train young people for jobs” or to “nurture intellectual endeavour and the capacity for expansive conceptual thinking”? Put simply, is the primary focus of universities today meant to be education, or is it both education and research?
There appears to be no national consensus on these questions.
State laws on universities vary
One reason may be the lack of consistency in the objectives and functions set out in the different state laws that govern universities.
Former Chief Justice Robert French’s recent review of freedom of speech in higher education providers noted this inconsistency. Some university acts, he observed:
define the university’s functions by reference to the delivery of education, the provision of facilities for learning and research, and encouraging the advancement of knowledge.
The High Court of Australia alluded to the lack of clarity resulting from this inconsistency in a 1982 case, Queen v McMahon; ex parte Darvall. It considered the general functions of universities to include education, research and the maintenance of intellectual standards and integrity.
The case of Zhao v UTS
More attention needs to be paid to the legislation governing universities when considering their purpose. The recent case of Zhao v University of Technology Sydney (UTS) illustrates the consequences of failing to consider this legislation. The Fair Work Commission instead opined about the purpose of a university and the primary working focus of its staff.
Zhao v UTS related to the dismissal of a business academic in mid-2019. UTS dismissed her for alleged unsatisfactory performance because she had failed to meet its research publication requirements.
UTS Business School essentially dismissed the academic for failing to have at least one research article published in a high-ranked journal over a two-year period.Shahram Babakhanian/Shutterstock
She sued for unfair dismissal at the Fair Work Commission and won. In his March 2020 decision, the commission’s deputy president, Peter Sams, made some contentious observations on the purpose of universities.
[…] in my humble opinion, the teaching of future generations of tertiary qualified students of all ages is the primary purpose of a first-class university.
[…] achieving the top research rankings and reputation […] may tend to distract from the focus of providing a quality learning experience for students.
His reasoning appeared to be that the academic had performed satisfactorily in her teaching. There was no evidence she was failing in her administrative duties, which meant she was satisfactorily performing the majority of her job. This made it “difficult conceptually and rationally” to conclude that her performance was unsatisfactory overall, warranting dismissal.
The object of the University is the promotion, within the limits of the University’s resources, of scholarship, research, free inquiry, the interaction of research and teaching, and academic excellence.
Commissioners divided on appeal
UTS sought to appeal the decision. Ruling on the university’s application, three Fair Work commissioners were split 2:1 as to whether Sam’s observations on the purpose of universities were “merely general observations” or formed part of his reasoning.
In their joint decision, Vice President Joseph Catanzariti and Commissioner Leigh Johns labelled his observations three times as “unhelpful”. They found, however, that these were “inconsequential musings” and not the critical “driving part” of the reasoning for the decision. They refused permission to appeal.
As they formed the majority, the decision that UTS had unfairly dismissed the academic stands.
Deputy President Alan Colman strongly disagreed. He considered the observations on the purpose of universities to be “highly relevant […] expressions of opinion”. He would have granted permission to appeal on the basis that UTS had not been heard on the purpose of the university and thus had been denied procedural fairness.
The Fair Work Commission’s failure to consider the University of Technology Sydney Act 1989 (NSW) in its decision was a striking omission.Shuang Li/Shutterstock
Universities still waiting for clarity
The case has left universities uncertain about their ability to manage the performance of staff who are not meeting research expectations.
Can a university justifiably dismiss an academic whose teaching performance is satisfactory but whose research is non-existent or inadequate? Or is the university obliged to retain the academic, although it has the power to transfer them to a teaching-focused position?
If the primary focus of a university is said to be teaching, as Sams suggested, a decision to dismiss an incompetent teacher may be reasonable, irrespective of their research performance.
Universities are likely waiting with anticipation to see if UTS takes the case to the Federal Court. We can only hope that if the court considers the purpose of universities relevant to the case, it gives some regard to the University of Technology Sydney Act 1989 (NSW).
For most of us the experience of working from home this year has, on balance, been positive – enough that it may well become the norm after the COVID-19 crisis ends.
But modelling by Victoria University’s Centre of Policy Studies shows there will be costs alongside the personal benefits, with more urban sprawl, job flight to the biggest cities and greater economic disparities between regions.
More than 67% of 1,006 Australians polled in April for an NBN-commissioned survey said they expected to work from home more after the coronavirus crisis ends. Many businesses are sold on the concept too, with mounting evidence working from home can boost productivity.
Offices will not disappear – personal interactions still provide crucial benefits – but working two, three or four days a week from home could be well become the norm in many occupations.
Our modelling of the effects of this has identified two key results.
First, workers commuting less often will be prepared to commute further. This will change patterns of housing demand and labour supply. In particular it will drive more urban sprawl and boost populations of communities within acceptable commuting distances.
Second, while the population will spread out, many jobs are likely to go in the opposite direction, as more organisations set up shop in central business districts.
How we conducted our research
To predict the effect of working from home on housing and jobs, we considered what jobs could most easily be done remotely. Of 38 occupational groups classified by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, seven managerial, professional and clerical occupational groups stood out as having high work-from-home potential. These occupations accounted for 29% of the workforce at the last census (in 2016).
In our model, where workers choose where to live and work takes into account wages and housing costs in different locations, and the time it takes to travel to work. The modelling assumes that in the seven “WFH occupations” distance from the office will become less important.
Urban sprawl
Our modelling indicates people in WFH occupations will be more likely to live further from city centres if their weekly commuting costs are lower. Other workers and retirees move closer to city centres, but the net effect is still to shift housing demand outward. Nationally, residential areas expand 3.6%.
In Sydney, there is an overall shift in population out of inner suburbs (for example Glebe) and middle suburbs (for example Strathfield) into outer suburban areas (such as Penrith) and towns of the Blue Mountains, the Central Coast and the Southern Highlands. A similar outward shift of population is replicated on smaller scales in Newcastle and Wollongong.
Changes in residential population: Sydney.James Lennox, CC BY-ND
Similar results are obtained for Melbourne, Brisbane and other capital cities. In Melbourne, inner suburbs (for example Carlton) and middle suburbs (for example Glen Iris) lose population whereas populations rise in places like Werribee and Melton.
Changes in residential population: Melbourne.James Lennox, CC BY-ND
In Brisbane, fewer people live in inner suburbs like New Farm whereas more live in places like Greenbank or the Samford Valley.
The pattern is replicated in smaller cities, such as Geelong in Victoria and the Gold Coast in Queensland.
Changes in residential population: Brisbane.James Lennox, CC BY-ND
It is a good thing if people can spend less time and money commuting, access cheaper housing, or enjoy more pleasant lifestyles outside of big cities.
But urban sprawl has costs that are too often discounted.
Providing infrastructure for typical greenfield housing developments is relatively expensive. On the urban fringes of our cities, exposure of people and property to fire and other natural hazards has often been inadequately managed. In many coastal regions, urbanisation is driving loss, degradation and fragmentation of ecosystems and decline of native plants and wildlife species.
The second key finding of the study is that more working from home will boost the growth of some cities but depress that of others.
There are advantages to businesses clustering together in central business districts. Working from home will increase their incentives to join the largest clusters in the largest cities.
Willingness to commute further will make these clusters accessible to even larger workforces. Lower demand for housing in inner-city areas will make real estate more affordable for commercial tenants.
The result is that jobs shift to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra and away from other cities, towns and rural areas.
Resident populations will be boosted in smaller cities and towns around these growth centres, but in the rest of Australia, cities and towns will be smaller than they otherwise would be.
With there already being significant economic disparities between city and rural areas, and between different regions, these new trends pose a further challenge for policy makers.
To live through a pandemic, Albert Camus wrote, is to be made to live as an exile. Lovers are parted from lovers, (grand)parents from children, families from their dead. And we are exiled from many things we enjoy: freedom of movement, the ability to eat out or swim at public pools …
In such times, older wisdom traditions can be helpful. The ancient Stoics wrote extensively about facing death, grief, illness, exile and other adversities.
The Roman Stoic Seneca (4-65 CE), philosopher-counsellor to the emperor Nero, is the author of many letters and dialogues on subjects as diverse as the natural world and virtues like constancy and clemency.
When he was exiled by the Emperor Claudius in 41 CE, a fate he would share with several Stoics in this period, Seneca wrote a consolation to his mother to help her deal with his absence.
A basic idea Seneca shares with other Stoics like Musonius Rufus and Epictetus, is that it is not events in the world by themselves that make people suffer. The ideas we form about these events also matter. Our ideas filter what we experience. So, if through reflection, meditation, and reasoning we can change these filters, our experience of the world will alter.
Even the most fortunate people need to learn how to respond when things don’t go as they wish. Here are six counsels a Stoic like Seneca might offer those in lockdown or isolation today.
Work with what we can’t change
Lamenting what we can’t change is understandable, but not effective. We can’t change that COVID-19 exists. We can change how we respond to it. We can stay home, wear masks when we go out, practise social distancing and remind ourselves that these personal inconveniences are there to protect others as well as ourselves — using this as an opportunity to grow our sense of service and community.
Be sure
One way to minimise anger, Seneca argues, is to limit your concerns to what you know for sure. If someone tells you something nasty about a third party, you should check whether it is true before leaping to an emotional judgement. In the same way, if you read something on the internet alleging a conspiracy, before accepting it as true, ask yourself whether you know it for sure. If the answer is “no”, then don’t jump to conclusions.
The Stoics noticed that we make our hardships worse when we imagine that are exceptional. So, it puts things in perspective to remember other generations have suffered wars spanning decades, and worse plagues than we are experiencing. This is not, as Seneca writes:
to teach you that this often befalls people […] but to let you know that there have been many who have lightened their misfortunes by patient endurance of them.
Things could be worse. Other individuals, every day, face far greater hardships than we are facing.
A plaster sculpture of Seneca, on right, and the emperor Nero by Eduardo Barrón.Wikimedia Commons
Choose a model
Remember that the people we most admire didn’t always have it their own way. It is their proven willingness to do the hard things for causes greater than themselves that makes them inspiring.
“For we are naturally disposed to admire more than anything else the man who shows fortitude in adversity,” Seneca observes.
Think of people you look up to, whether athletes, philosophers, scientists, philanthropists, and ask: how would they have responded in our situation?
For this reason, they advise us to imaginatively rehearse how we will respond to the worst possible outcomes in advance (like, say, Melbourne’s hard lockdown lasting until December or January).
Forewarned is forearmed. The flipside is that when the worst (hopefully) doesn’t transpire, you can savour the fact that things are comparatively good.
Enjoy what is (still) in our power
Remember that if we can’t do many things right now, we can still do others. “I am as joyous and cheerful as in my best days,” Seneca reassures his mum from exile in Corsica:
indeed these days are my best, because my mind is relieved from all pressure of business and is at leisure to attend to its own affairs, and at one time amuses itself with lighter studies, at another eagerly presses its inquiries into its own nature and that of the universe […]
We can’t all be Senecas. But being stuck at home doesn’t stop us from loving, reading, studying, laughing (including at ourselves), listening to music, watching good TV, having great conversations, trying to be patient with our kids […]
“The good things which belong to prosperity are to be wished,” said Seneca, “but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired,” because they depend on us.
No one wishes for adversity, but Stoic philosophy can help us overcome it.
The federal government has signed a letter of intent with the United Kingdom-based drug company AstraZeneca to supply a University of Oxford COVID-19 vaccine to Australia, and entered a contract with the American company Becton Dickinson for the supply of needles and syringes.
If the current trials were successful, Australia would receive the Oxford vaccine as soon as it became available.
Scott Morrison said the vaccine would then be manufactured here and provided free of charge for all Australians.
“The Oxford vaccine is one of the most advanced and promising in the world and under this deal we have secured early access for every Australian,” he said.
But the Prime Minister cautioned there was “no guarantee that this, or any other, vaccine will be successful”.
The government was continuing discussions with many parties around the world, while also backing research efforts in Australia to develop a vaccine, Morrison said.
The initiatives with AstraZeneca and Becton Dickinson are the first announcements under the government’s national COVID-19 Vaccine and Treatment Strategy, released late Tuesday. It is estimated the cost of the entire strategy, including multiple vaccines, treatments and equipment, will eventually run into billions of dollars.
The action to ensure supplies of needles and syringes is partly informed by the lessons of the early days of the pandemic, when there was a scramble to get hold of enough personal protective equipment from overseas.
The government’s vaccine strategy covers research and development; purchase and manufacturing; international partnerships; and regulation and safety immunisation administration and monitoring.
A technical advisory group, including science and industry expertise, has been set up, chaired by the health department secretary Brendan Murphy. It met for the first time this week.
The Minister for Industry, Science and Technology, Karen Andrews, said Australia’s manufacturing capability was a “huge asset” .
“The Australian pharmaceutical industry and its ability to produce vaccines is already among the best in the world and that puts us in a strong position to be able to roll out a COVID-vaccine as quickly as possible,” she said.
The Oxford vaccine is currently in trials in the UK, Brazil and South Africa; trials are due to start in the United States. The trials are expected to run into next year.
Timing is uncertain but the project may deliver the first vaccines by the end of this year or early next year.
There are presently 167 vaccine candidates in pre-clinical and clinical trials including 29 in clinical trials in humans.
It is too early to put funding numbers on the AstraZeneca agreement. A final agreement would cover distribution, timing and price.
The $24.7 million deal with Becton Dickinson secures 100 million needles and syringes. The government says this means Australia would not be hit by any international shortages.
The government stresses it is not confining its search for a vaccine to one candidate.
Health Minister Greg Hunt said the government was confident its actions and targeted investments would put Australia in the best possible position to get early access to vaccines.
CSL, which has significant manufacturing capacity, said in a statement that while development of the UQ vaccine candidate remained its priority, “we are currently in discussions with AstraZeneca and the Australian Government to assess whether it is possible to provide local manufacturing support for the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine, should it prove successful, while protecting our commitment to the UQ vaccine.
“We are assessing the viability of options ranging from the fill and finish of bulk product imported to Australia through to manufacture of the vaccine candidate under licence. There are a number of technical issues to work through and discussions are ongoing.”
Morrison is also committed to working for early access to a vaccine for Pacific countries and Southeast Asian regional partners.
The “breach of community standards” warning I also received on my FB page was unacceptable, but surely a mistake?
However, with subsequent protests by the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) media freedom watchdog and the Sydney office of the Asia-Pacific branch of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the world’s largest journalist organisation with more than 600,000 members in 187 countries, falling on deaf ears, I started wondering about the political implications of this censorship.
The removed item was purportedly because of “nudity” in a photograph published by IFJ of a protest in the West Papuan capital Jayapura in August last year during the Papuan Uprising against Indonesian racism and oppression that began in Surabaya, Java.
The Facebook “warning” over the blocked West Papua news item.
Photo: PMC Screenshot
The two protesters in the front of the march were partially naked except for the Papuan koteka (penis gourds), as traditionally worn by males in the highlands.
As I wrote at the time when communicating with RSF:
“Anybody with common sense would see that the photograph in question was not ’nudity’ in the community standards sense of Facebook’s guidelines. This was a media freedom item and the news picture shows a student protest against racism in Jayapura on August 19, 2019.
“Two apparently naked men are wearing traditional koteka (penis gourds) as normally worn in the Papuan highlands. It is a strong cultural protest against Indonesian repression and crackdowns on media. Clearly the Facebook algorithms are arbitrary and lacking in cultural balance.
“Also, there is no proper process to challenge or appeal against such arbitrary rulings.”
Using the flawed FB online system to file a challenge in this arbitrary ruling three times on August 7, I ended up with a reply that said: ‘We have fewer reviewers [to consider the appeal] available right now because of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak’.”
The cover of the July edition of
Pacific Journalism Review.
Two letters unanswered
My two letters to Mia Garrick on August 10 and 11 went unanswered.
RSF’s Asia-Pacific director Daniel Bastard wrote to her on August 11, saying: “Since it is a press freedom issue, we plan to publish a short statement to ask for the end of this censorship. Beforehand, I’m enquiring about your view and take on this case.”
The IFJ followed up on August 14, two days after their original FB posting had also been removed, with a letter by their Asia-Pacific project manager Melanie Morrison, who described the FB the censorship as a “cruel irony”:
“As a press freedom organisation, the IFJ strongly condemns the removal of posts on spurious grounds. Such an action amounts to censorship.
“West Papua is subjected to a virtual media blackout. Access to the [Indonesian-ruled] restive province is restricted and one of the only ways to get information out is through social media.
“The photographer, Gusti Tanati, is based in West Papua and is no stranger to operating with harsh restrictions. To have his photos censored, along with an article that points to the increasingly hostile media environment in West Papua, is a cruel irony.”
Hinting at the political overtones, Morrison also noted that if Facebook was made aware of this photo by a complaint made by a Facebook user, “it is highly likely that the complainant objects to any coverage of West Papua that may be critical of the repressive situation in the province”.
She added that “understanding the background to this ongoing censorship is critical”.
Tracking truth and disinformation
Listening to journalist and forensic online researcher Benjamin Strick in an interview with RNZ’s Kim Hill last Saturday about “tracking truth” and exposing disinformation prompted me to revive this FB censorship issue.
In 2018, Strick was part of a Peabody Award-winning BBC investigative team that exposed the soldier-killers of two mothers and their children in Cameroon – The Anatomy of a Killing.
But I was alerted by his discussion of his investigation last year of the Indonesian crackdown and disinformation campaign coinciding with the Papuan Uprising.
Discussing “collaborative journalism” and the West Papuan conflict with Kim Hill, he said: “The war is really online.”
He became interested in the “resurgence” or pro-independence sentiment and racial tension after incidents when some Javanese students branded West Papuans as “monkeys” and with other extreme abuse, which sparked a series of protests from Jayapura to Jakarta.
“I was investigating this thinking that it was going to be another mass human rights crime committed in West Papua,” he recalls. “But instead, when the internet was off and I was searching online, I was seeing these tourism commercials about West Papua and I was also seeing these videos on Twitter and Facebook about the great work the Indonesian government was doing for the people of West Papua.
“And they were using these hashtags #westpapuagenocide and #freewestpapua. I thought to myself this has got nothing to do with genocide, providing tourism in this context.”
‘Hashtag hijacking’
This is a process known as “hashtag hijacking”.
Strick’s research exposed hundreds of bogus sites sending our masses of scheduled “bots” – automated accounts – and were traced back to a Indonesian public relations agency InsightID linked to the government.
Recently, I was engaged with a high ranking Indonesian Foreign Affairs official, Director of the European affairs Sade Bimantara, in a webinar hosted by Tabloid Jubi journalist Victor Mambor when we talked about web-based disinformation.
Papuan “bots” orchestrated from Jakarta. Image: PMC screenshot of BBC
However, my experience of this disinformation has been overwhelmingly linked to Indonesian trolls, and even our Pacific Media Centre Facebook page has been targeted by such attacks.
“The Twitter accounts were all using fake or stolen profile photos, including images of K-pop stars or random people, and were clearly not functioning as ‘real’ people do on social media.
“This led to the discovery of a network of automated fake accounts spread across at least four social media platforms and numerous websites.”
In February 2019, Reuters had earlier reported Facebook removing “hundreds of Indonesian accounts, pages and groups from its social network” after discovering they were linked to an online group called Saracen.
This syndicate had been identified in 2016 and police had arrested three of its members on suspicion of being being paid to “spread incendiary material online” through social media.
For the moment, we would be delighted if Facebook would remove the block on our shared items and not censor future dispatches or genuine human rights news items about West Papua.
The head lice drug ivermectin has yet again been touted in the media as a possible treatment for COVID-19. But despite the favourable headlines, huge uncertainty remains about whether this treatment can be safely and effectively repurposed to tackle the coronavirus.
In recent weeks the media has been awash with claims ivermectin, when given in combination with the common antibiotic doxycycline and zinc supplements, is effectively a “cure” for COVID-19.
The World Health Organisation’s database of clinical studies for COVID-19 shows there are currently 16 trials investigating ivermectin. Even these studies are unlikely to provide the high-quality data necessary to show ivermectin can actually provide its touted benefits.
Many of the current studies have low numbers of participants, weak study designs, and inconsistent (and relatively low) ivermectin dosing regimes, with ivermectin frequently given in combination with other drugs.
Laboratory studies using monkey cells in a test tube (as opposed to clinical studies in human patients) have shown ivermectin can shut down the replication of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, within 24-48 hours of exposure to the drug.
Ivermectin is thought to inhibit the virus by preventing viral proteins moving in and out of the host cell’s nucleus, which is essential for replication of the coronavirus.
The problem is this process requires very high concentrations of ivermectin – well above the recommended dose for humans. This means ivermectin’s virus-killing powers would be unlikely to be harnessed inside the human body.
A detailed analysis of the relationship between dose and concentration of ivermectin suggests none of the currently used ivermectin dosing regimens would deliver high enough concentrations of ivermectin inside the body to activate its virus-killing effects.
Another review backs this up, suggesting all of the ivermectin doses being investigated in current clinical trials would fall well short of achieving drug concentrations high enough to wipe out SARS-CoV-2.
Even a 120 mg dose of ivermectin, which would be regarded as excessive (compared with the recommended dose of 3-15mg for treating parasitic infections) resulted in blood concentrations several orders of magnitude times lower than those needed to inhibit the virus.
While ivermectin generally doesn’t cause problematic side effects at the currently used doses, there is limited information about whether much larger doses would also be safe.
Repurposing ivermectin as a “cure” for COVID-19 would require massive doses, which would substantially increase the risk of side effects such as nausea, rash, dizziness, immune suppression, abdominal pain, fever, raised heart rate and unstable blood pressure.
Ivermectin at usual doses does not enter the central nervous system, but after large doses of the drug it may enter the brain, potentially causing impaired vision, hampering the central nervous system (which could in turn affect breathing, heart rate and consciousness), and exaggerating the effects of other sedative medicines such as benzodiazepines.
Ivermectin is a hugely useful medicine in treating parasitic illnesses such as lice, worms and scabies, particularly in developing countries. But as we have already seen in the case of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, just because a medicine is useful for one purpose, it cannot automatically be considered a miracle cure for COVID-19.
Repurposing drugs as COVID-19 treatments
Repurposing existing drugs as possible COVID-19 treatments is a smart strategy, but requires several key principles to be addressed. The drug must have antiviral effects in cells and animals at doses relevant to humans. The drug must be able to get to the site of infection in the body (or reduce the inflammation associated with the infection). It is best if the antiviral mechanism is understood. And finally, well designed clinical trials are needed to be sure the drugs works in people with the infection and it is safe to use (especially in older, vulnerable unwell people).
Thankfully, Australia’s National COVID-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce continually assesses and updates the best evidence-based advice for treating COVID-19, which you can read here.
Many New Zealanders will be feeling anxious, disappointed and even angry about the return of COVID-19 in the community.
Many of us prefer to suppress these emotions because they are unpleasant or we may feel under-equipped to manage them. But if left unrecognised and unchecked, they will drive our behaviour.
We may act without thinking clearly and rush to the supermarket to stock up. We may lash out verbally or physically at those we see as threatening us. Or we may fall too easily for social media posts that give us a sense of relief, even if we’re not sure about their accuracy.
Times of heightened anxiety are fertile breeding grounds for conspiracy theories, especially among those with low levels of trust in the government.
Anxiety and anger are normal reactions during uncertain times. We experience these emotions when we feel under threat, but the simple act of acknowledging them can ease their intensity.
Recognising your emotional reaction
Research New Zealand has been conducting regular polls of New Zealanders since the first lockdown in March and April. Results show heightened levels of concern about health, losing a job and the economy in general. The most recent poll also shows New Zealanders were worried about a new outbreak.
A heightened level of worry keeps us in a state of “flight or fight” — the evolutionary system that drives our response to fear. But if we pause to notice what we’re feeling, even correctly labelling our emotional state can reduce the intensity of these feelings.
The regular practice of mindfulness, best described as deliberately paying attention to the present moment, has been shown to help reduce the reactivity of our flight or fight system. Physical activity helps to dampen our physiological symptoms of anxiety, and diaphragmatic or belly breathing is a simple but effective means of doing this.
Once we’ve gained some measure of regulation of our emotional state, we are better able to engage our prefrontal cortex in planning, reasoning and decision making. Noticing what we are thinking and saying to ourselves is a first step and a core part of cognitive-behavioural therapy, which has a strong evidence base in the treatment of stress and anxiety.
If we say to ourselves that this is “disastrous” or “unmanageable”, we may feel increasingly emotionally overwhelmed. If we think that “someone has exposed us to infection”, we may feel quite angry toward that person. In contrast, if we recognise that this style of thinking is not helpful, we may be able to adopt a more balanced view of the situation.
Managing your anxiety
Anxiety wakes you up in the middle of the night as your brain churns over and over. It’s important to recognise what our brains are doing in these instances. They are trying to remind us not to forget about something we perceive as a threat.
This makes sense from an adaptive point of view. Being alert to perceived danger can ultimately keep us alive. But it can also bring with it a sense of loss of control.
Having a “prescribed worry time” can be an antidote to this loss of control. Setting aside a set time of day to deliberately focus on your worries can both reduce our avoidance of unwelcome emotions and send our brains the message that we won’t forget about this “danger” – so our brains don’t need to keep reminding us of it so much.
Within this worry time, focusing our thinking on what is within our ability to control, rather than on what is outside our sphere of influence, can also reduce levels of anxiety and helplessness.
Ultimately, while our emotional reactions to the return of lockdown are normal and nothing to be afraid of, it can be comforting and motivating to remember that we’ve done this before and can do it again. And we may even learn some tips for coping under stress that are useful for the rest of our lives.
Less than three months out from the presidential election, the United States Postal Service (USPS) has become the centre of a political storm. So much so that Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, has recalled the house from its August recess to vote this week on legislation designed to support the service.
What is the issue, and why is it important?
In May, the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives passed a $3 trillion coronavirus relief package, which included relief funds for the USPS. It also included funding for expanded postal voting, which Republicans oppose because in many areas of the country, more registered Democrats have requested postal ballots than registered Republicans. The most powerful Republican in Congress, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, refused to allow a vote on the Bill.
The USPS has warned that without additional support, it may not be able to meet deadlines for delivering voting ballots. This could have a big impact for November’s election because voters are expected to vote by mail in unprecedented numbers. In many states, ballots must be received by an election office by election day in order to be counted.
President Donald Trump has a long history of attacking the USPS. In a July tweet, claimed postal voting “will lead to the most corrupt election in our nation’s history”, and that postal voting is a threat to democracy.
Trump said he opposed new postal funding because of his opposition to mail-in voting, which he maintains will benefit Democrats. He also claims, without evidence, that it is rife with fraud. He said:
they want $3.5 billion for something that will turn out to be fraudulent, that’s election money basically […]
A spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee responded that Trump admitted he was deliberately sabotaging the USPS to boost his reelection chances, and
is taking money the Post Office needs and holding up coronavirus relief for millions of struggling Americans and small businesses because he wants to try to stop more voters from voting safely in a pandemic.
Trump has repeatedly claimed, again without any evidence, that illegal voting prevented him from winning the popular vote in the 2016 election. Vice President Mike Pence initiated a voting integrity commission, and found no evidence of widespread voter fraud. The non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice found most allegations of fraud are baseless, with the rate of voting fraud in the US being between 0.00004% and 0.0009%.
Even Mitch McConnell stated he did not share the president’s concerns about voter fraud.
Despite his stated opposition, Trump does support postal voting in Florida, because the state has a good “Republican governor”.
At the same time, his election campaign is suing the state of Nevada (with a Democratic governor) to prevent sending absentee ballots to active voters.
The situation is entirely political
The president has acknowledged his opposition to USPS funding support is because he wants to restrict many Americans from voting by mail. He has taken additional steps to achieve his goal.
In June 2020, Trump installed Republican donor Louis DeJoy as US Postmaster General. DeJoy is the chair of the finance committee for the 2020 Republican National Convention, and his wife, Aldona Wos, has been nominated by Trump to be the next US Ambassador to Canada. In addition to donating more than $2 million to Trump since 2016, DeJoy and Wos own stock and assets worth up to $75.3 million with USPS competitors.
In less than two months as postmaster general, DeJoy has banned postal workers from working overtime or making extra trips to deliver mail on time, and removed or reassigned 23 executives in order to centralise power around himself.
Protestors outside the apartment of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy in Washington, DC.AAP/EPA/Jim Lo Scalzo
Several Democratic representatives have urged the FBI to investigate whether DeJoy’s actions are legal, given the “overwhelming evidence” he “hindered the passage of mail”.
The irony in all this is that after changing his official residence from New York to Florida, Trump inadvertently committed voter fraud by registering to vote under an out-of-state address (that is, the White House in Washington DC), which is not his legal residence. He corrected his registration one month later.
And just last week, Trump requested a postal ballot to vote in Florida’s primary election.
The president’s own actions suggests an opposition to voter fraud and postal voting unless it benefits him.
What happens from here? Probably nothing. If Trump wins re-election, the Democrats may impeach him again, but the Republicans in Congress have demonstrated no support for taking action against the president. There may well be court challenges but they could take time.
And with the election drawing closer, time is running out.
If you went to use Google yesterday, you may have been met with a pop-up warning that the tech giant’s functionality was “at risk” from new Australian government regulation.
Google Australia’s managing director, Mel Silva, wrote an open letter in response to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) News Media Bargaining Code, which would require Google (and Facebook) to negotiate “fair payment” for Australian news content published on their services.
The letter, pinned to the Google homepage, claims the code would force Google “to provide you with a dramatically worse Google Search and YouTube”. The ACCC has already labelled several of the letter’s statements as “misinformation”.
It seems Google isn’t keen to set a global precedent by paying Australian news outlets for their content. Google claims the ACCC’s proposed code is disastrous, for a variety of reasons.
Google’s letter is part of a campaign designed to scare Australian web users. Don’t fall for it.
Hordes of people took to social media to express dismay and confusion about the unexpected prompt.Screenshot
Google’s claims don’t stack up
First, Google is objecting to a specific part of the legislation designed to stop it downranking (or refusing to list) news content if Google has to pay for it.
This is precisely how Google responded when similar legislation was introduced in Spain. Google changed its search results and even shut some outlets out completely to avoid paying for news content.
The ACCC is heading that off at the pass. The legislation states if Google intends to change the search ranking of a news organisation, for example by downranking that outlet’s stories in Google’s search results, it must give the organisation 28 days’ notice of this change.
The open letter claims this is unfair and would help news outlets “artificially inflate their ranking over everyone else”.
When asked how this was this case, a Google spokesperson told The Conversation the code would require the company to “give all news media businesses advance notice of algorithm changes and explain how they can minimise the effects”.
They said this provision would “seriously damage” Google’s products and user experience and impact its ability to provide users the most relevant results.
However, this claim doesn’t bear logical scrutiny. Notifying a news company of its impending downranking would not give it an unfair advantage, as no other types of content providers would be targeted for demotion anyway.
It would simply warn the outlet if Google was about to drop them down in search results, or boot them off altogether. The 28 days’ notice requirement is an insurance policy in case Google retaliates by deciding to simply downrank media outlets demanding payment for their content. That’s why Google hates it.
It’s tempting to conclude that Google is simply trying to gaslight its users by sowing doubt about the wisdom of the new regulations – because it doesn’t want to pay.
Actively misleading users
Google’s open letter went on to claim Australians might experience data privacy violations if it’s forced to hand advertising data over to “big news businesses”.
Setting aside for a minute the fact that Google is trying to play the “little guy” here, which is laughable, let’s first look at why this is also a falsehood.
The proposed code states Google would have to share data collected about users’ engagement with news content with news media outlets. For example, this would include details about the specific articles a user has clicked on from that outlet, or how long they were reading it for.
This is exactly the kind of data media outlets (including The Conversation) already collect from readers on their own platforms. Yet Google’s letter claims “there’s no way of knowing if any data handed over would be protected, or how it might be used by news media businesses”.
This is pretty rich coming from one of the world’s most datahungry companies, and one of its most prolific privacyviolators.
In a further statement to The Conversation, Google’s spokesperson added:
The code requires Google to tell news media businesses what user data we collect, what data we supply to them and ‘how the registered news business corporation can gain access to’ that data which we don’t supply to them … This goes beyond the current level of data sharing between Google and news publishers.
But Google itself has oceans of information about its users’ searches, habits and preferences. In fact, the ACCC is currently pursuing Google over alleged privacy violations in a separate lawsuit.
Google is not the underdog here
Finally, Google’s open letter ends with the veiled threat its free services may be “at risk” if the proposed ACCC code becomes law.
Google’s spokesperson told The Conversation that Google “did not intend to charge users for [its] free services”.
“What we did say is that Search and YouTube, both of which are free services, are at risk in Australia,” they said.
Google is now a trillion-dollarcompany. Its parent company Alphabet earned US$46 billion in worldwide advertising revenue in the last quarter alone.
For Google to claim its free services for Australians are “at risk” if it has to return a tiny fraction to the companies that actually provide news content – well, I’m sceptical of all the claims in the letter, but this one takes the cake.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Aidan Coleman, Visiting Research Fellow, School of Humanities and Early Career Researcher at the JM Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice, University of Adelaide
His “poems are as urgent and accessible as headlines, though infinitely more beautiful”, the broadcaster Phillip Adams wrote of the Australian poet Philip Hodgins.
August 18th marks the 25th anniversary of Hodgins’ death, but the passage of time hasn’t blunted this urgency.
Many poets seem strangely fated to their early deaths, and for the short time they have, write with fervour. Keats, who died at 25, left a substantial body of work; the Australian poet Michael Dransfield was particularly prolific in his equally brief life. So too with Hodgins, who was diagnosed with leukaemia when he was 24 and given just three years to live.
Hodgins mastered his craft quickly. His first book Blood and Bone (1986) won the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, and he wrote as a man condemned, producing four more full-length collections and a verse novella over the next nine years.
Nearness of death
Mortality would remain Hodgins’ central theme, colouring his other writings with irony and pessimism. Fate is depicted as capricious. The Five Thousand Acre Paddock simply records:
There was only one
tree in all that space and he
drove straight into it.
The English poet Philip Larkin was undoubtedly an influence on Hodgins’ work. Imbued with a similar scepticism, Hodgins shares Larkin’s sense of craft and the knife-twist of his memorable endings.
He also has Larkin’s eye for a telling detail. By turns, objects are permeated by menace or a peculiar sadness. A kite, “haggles over length” and “pesters the sun like an insect / at a light”; The Scarifier – a machine used for breaking up the soil – is “a rigid grid of broken ribs”.
Philip Hodgins permiated objects in his poems with menace or sadness.Alec Bolton/National Library of Australia
The nearness of death haunts many of Hodgins’ poems. The Birds, a sonnet in tetrameters, sees the poem’s speaker lying awake at dawn after a sleepless night, listening to the birds “on the go”, compared to “the frequencies / of many twiddled radios”. It ends with the sobering couplet:
The sentiment is reminiscent of medieval double-decker transi tombs. Individuals, no matter their status, are equal in death.
The rhymes are understated, either partial (“suits / shorts”) or land on an unstressed syllable (“mortuary / identity”) and the sonnet’s loose rhythms create a conversational tone. So the sting of the ending catches a reader unawares as the poem both narrows to a point and turns on a paradox. What can be more intimate and yet, at the same time, more coldly clinical and impersonal than surgery?
The way things are
Rural life is the other major theme in Hodgins’ work. He grew up on a dairy farm near Shepparton, Victoria. After a decade in Melbourne, working in the publishing industry, he returned to the country with his wife, Janet Shaw, settling near Maryborough.
Violence is foregrounded in poems that question the pastoral mode. Even pets are expendable, their murder presented as an understandably harsh necessity.
Environmental crisis and economic pressures loom in the background but come sharply into focus on occasion. The plot of Dispossessed (1994), Hodgins’ verse novella, details the trials of a poor rural family who have over-borrowed and are facing eviction.
Today the work is even more topical given the exploitation of dairy farmers through the ruthless supermarket price wars.
In “Shooting the Dogs” the theme of mortality converges with the poet’s rural preoccupations. This dramatic monologue presents the dilemma of a rural family moving to the city. Unable to rehome their two dogs, they are forced to put them down.
The personalities of the dogs are portrayed unsentimentally through details and incidents. They were, the speaker concedes, “not without their faults”. In contrast to the stories he has heard of dogs knowing when their time has come, these dogs “didn’t have a clue”.
Hodgins eschews any greater meaning attaching itself to this event other than the stoic acceptance of the way things are.
The poem ends with the speaker stating matter-of-factly that he buried the dogs behind the tool shed, “one of the last things [he] did” before leaving.
But the final image lodges in the mind and, ultimately, expresses more about the lot of the new class of rural poor than it does about the fate of the dogs:
Each time the gravel slid off the shovel
it sounded like something
trying to hang on by its nails.
From the publication of his first poem, Hodgins had a mere 15 years to write. In that short time, he produced an oeuvre as profound as it is accessible.
A quarter of a century since his death, his work is as fresh and urgent as ever.
Feeling torn about wearing a mask? Me too. I don’t want to look like I’m virtue signalling or get funny looks. But I also want to be responsible about public health. I’ve ended up conflicted, wearing a mask one day but not the next.
The statistics suggest this isn’t my dilemma alone. While mask sales have skyrocketed in New Zealand since COVID-19 reemerged, public mask wearing (even in Auckland) is still the exception.
This is where understanding ethical decision making can be useful. Ethics breaks down values-based decisions, helping us see when our ego is ruling us, and when our rationality is in control.
Ethical analysis can’t make the decision for us, but it can make dealing with ethical decisions clearer and more conscious.
What kind of person do I want to be?
Scholars divide the study of ethics into three main branches: virtue, deontological and consequential. All three can us help think about wearing a mask.
Virtue ethics is about developing good character. Our virtues come from our upbringing, experiences and education. We can change them by redefining what sort of person we want to be.
The front page test – would you feel comfortable seeing your behaviour on the nightly news?
The significant other test – would the important people in your life be proud of you?
(There are several recently disgraced politicians who probably wish they’d run the front page and significant other checks before acting.)
However, virtue ethics are individualistic: values differ by gender, age, culture and other factors. Our ego can help us moderate our behaviour, but it can also convince us we are right just because we sincerely hold a strong moral belief.
The “no win” debates we see on social media often reach a stalemate because people are relying on personal values as their only moral compass.
Also, prioritising reasonableness can result in apathy. While Aristotle praised the “reasonable man” as virtuous, George Bernard Shaw pointed out that “all progress depends on the unreasonable man”.
Currently mask wearers are the exception rather than the rule, and some have even been mocked. Shaw’s approach would suggest the courage to show ethical leadership deserves praise rather than mockery. But we can only make a robust ethical judgement if duties and outcomes are also considered.
Deontologists try to identify rules for good behaviour that will hold true in every situation. They advise us to obey the law and any codes of conduct or standards that apply to our job or other group membership.
There is currently no law in New Zealand mandating mass masking, so that can’t guide us. But many workplaces have conduct or health and safety codes, which can simplify decision making, and there are clear public health recommendations.
Deontology gives clarity – rules define what can be done without penalty – and is less muddy or personal than virtue-based ethics. It can also provide accountability. If we breach the rules of a group, often we can be removed from that group.
On the other hand, deontological ethics is inflexible. Codes and rules can’t cover every situation, can date rapidly, and are usually made reactively. They mostly punish breaches rather than guiding good behaviour.
Nonetheless, considering laws and rules is an important ethical step, alongside thinking about our values and the impact of our actions.
What kind of world do I want to live in?
Consequentialists judge actions by their outcomes: who is affected and how. They aim to maximise benefit and minimise harm.
When weighing consequences, it is useful to ask:
Would you be happy for your action to affect you in the same way it does others (reversibility)?
Would the outcome be acceptable if everyone behaved this way (universalisability)?
What don’t we know today that might be true tomorrow (unknowability)?
Consequentialists try to act ethically towards all groups of people, not just the group they currently occupy, because they know circumstances can change. If a friend was diagnosed with an unexpected respiratory condition tomorrow, for example, would we be happy with how we behaved today?
But, on their own, consequentialist approaches can be vague and complex. Most usefully, consequentialism adds depth to other approaches.
Ask yourself these questions
So, I run all three ethics checks: what values are important to me, what are my duties, and what are the potential impacts of my choice? To help, I can ask other questions:
What would mum say? (Be compassionate.)
What does my workplace code of conduct say? (It prioritises manaakitanga or care for others.)
What does the reversability test imply? (That I can show solidarity with, and reduce anxiety for, people at risk, even if I am at less risk.)
If someone I’m in contact with got sick tomorrow, how would I feel about my behaviour today? (I’d rather not be sorry in hindsight.)
Asking a range of questions from all three ethical angles helps me arrive at an ethically measured decision: that I should be consistently wearing a mask when I go out. And a careful decision is much easier to stick to, even if it means I still get the odd funny look.
Former New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern.
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards
Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards.
Has the election been saved from becoming another victim of Covid-19? Quite possibly. The issue of when to hold the election had come under serious scrutiny due to the increased restrictions and changed focus necessitated by the outbreak of community transmission of Covid-19. There were major problems with how democratic and adequate the electoral process was shaping up to be, with voting day scheduled for a month’s time, on 19 September.
By pushing the election out by a month to 17 October, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has ensured there is a greater chance of the election process being more democratic. At the same time, she has further enhanced her leadership reputation by avoiding what would have looked like a self-serving attempt to keep to a date that advantaged her own party.
This is what I’ve argued in a column yesterday for the Guardian, saying public participation and engagement was in serious question, even if electoral authorities had been able to make the mechanics of voting possible in just a few weeks. Without a proper campaign, full debate and consideration of the big political questions might not occur, and voter turnout might even drop below the 69.6% recorded a few elections ago – see: By delaying the New Zealand election Jacinda Ardern appears magnanimous and conciliatory.
By choosing the “Goldilocks option” of October instead of Labour’s own preference (September) or her opponents’ (November), Ardern has “blunted all criticisms, while yielding the least possible ground to opponents.”
Reaction from the political editors
Journalists and other political commentators have pointed out that Ardern had little choice to delay the election, but has nonetheless handled the issue with aplomb.
Newsroom political editor Sam Sachdeva says her decision is unsurprising and pragmatic – “the Prime Minister’s innate conservatism and instinct for compromise was always likely to win out” – and it would have been a bad look for her to try to continue with a September election given the virus outbreak – see: Pragmatism wins out with election delay.
Sachdeva also stresses how smart her choice of date is: “It is also shrewd in that it is not quite what New Zealand First wanted (a November 21 election), nor National (some time early next year), nor in all likelihood Ardern herself, taking some of the politics out of it.”
Herald political editor Audrey Young also argues Ardern’s decision is both smart and correct, saying it “would have looked self-serving” not to delay the election, as well as going against her general use of “a precautionary approach” in dealing with the pandemic – see: Full marks to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern for the way she delayed the election (paywalled).
Stuff political editor Luke Malpass also endorses the decision: “Ardern has reached a sensible compromise that takes into account both the practical undertaking of an election and, even more importantly, the appearance and reality of fairness. The exercise of democracy has to be fair, and has to be seen to be fair” – see: Election delay was the call Jacinda Ardern had to make. He points out that every political party appeared to be driven by self-interest with regard to choosing the date, and it “is worth noting that Labour was just as self-interested in initially wanting the date to stay the same, as the other parties were to move it.”
Newstalk ZB’s political editor Barry Soper fully endorses the PM’s decision, declaring that “The winner was democracy, the right of parties to get out and campaign” – see: Election date change was better than uglier alternative.
But he’s clear Ardern had no choice but to delay, despite her own preference: “There was no appetite on the ninth floor of the Beehive to delay this year’s election by a month but the alternative was too ugly for Jacinda Ardern to contemplate and even worse for the Governor-General Patsy Reedy to have to cope with. The latter could have been forced to answer a knock at the door up at Government House, opening it to Judith Collins and Winston Peters telling her Ardern didn’t have the confidence of the House to dissolve Parliament and they were forming a Government.”
Soper believes Ardern is being “either optimistic or naive when she adamantly declared she wouldn’t be changing the election date again”, and he says it’s out of sync with “these unpredictable and dramatically changing times”.
The Spinoff political editor Justin Giovannetti reported on the decision, emphasising the pressure that had been building on Ardern to go with a delay, and concludes she “has forestalled a brewing political crisis” – see: Jacinda Ardern delays New Zealand ‘Covid election’ by four weeks. He points out that New Zealand “is now one of the few countries to delay its national election due to the coronavirus”, and outlines that it “is only the fourth postponement of a general election in New Zealand’s history” (with the others occurring in 1917, 1934, and 1941).
BusinessDesk’s Pattrick Smellie says “Ardern has taken the conservative option” in delaying the election for a month, and believes: “The most important part of her statement today is her emphatic statement that she will not move the date again herself” – see: PM hands election date baton to Electoral Commission (paywalled).
Reaction from newspaper editorials
Newspaper editorials have endorsed the PM’s decision. The New Zealand Herald suggests that, given current circumstances, New Zealanders aren’t fully informed of the political options for the election, nor the referendums. It says the campaign has been “severely impacted” by “the ghastly return of the Covid-19 coronavirus”, necessitating a delay to voting – see: Editorial: October 17 election fair to all parties.
The most important impact of the delay, the newspaper says, is that “the extra 28 days offers voters ample time to hear, see and consider the overtures from our political applicants.” And although Ardern might have been tempted to stick with an earlier election date, this “may have jarred with the mantra from this Government to be kind.” But there is now less chance that voting activity will contribute to “further outbreaks stemming from queues at polling stations or contamination at booths.”
Today’s editorial in Stuff newspapers says Labour’s opponents made a good case to delay the election, and the PM “showed the right combination of flexibility and backbone by moving the election date a month back” regardless of whether this was out of genuine “social responsibility” or “shrewdness” – see: Election postponed: delaying tactics a sensible, savvy move.
Opponents might still complain that the date hasn’t shifted far enough, but they risk looking “nakedly opportunistic” or “petulant” (especially, National, which has refused to do anything more than “acknowledge” the new date).
The newspaper argues that without a delay the “Government would surely have faced three years of carping about its legitimacy”, and that it’s a good thing for their Covid-19 response to be “put to the test for longer than initially planned”.
According to the ODT, there were good reasons for the Government to continue with the September date, but the decision to delay is wise because it lances the possibility of the election’s legitimacy being challenged – see: Tough call, right call. The newspaper says the PM now rightly wants the focus to remain on combating the virus rather than the election, and yet all the political parties will also have a better opportunity to get their policy positions across without compromising the public’s health.
Reaction from political commentators
All political commentators appear to endorse the election date decision, or at least the cleverness of Ardern for making it. Writing in the Herald, National Party-aligned PR professional Matthew Hooton says the announcement “was politically masterful. It is enough of an extension to avoid accusations of unfairness against parties other than Labour, which risked the election looking illegitimate. But it was not Winston Peters and Judith Collins’ preferred date of November 21, which would have made Jacinda Ardern look controlled by her Deputy Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition” – see: October 17 choice masterful by Jacinda Ardern (paywalled).
Newstalk ZB broadcaster Mike Hosking endorses the change of date, and strongly criticises various academics who argued in favour of sticking with a 19 September election, saying “to seriously contemplate, as our political wonks at universities were, simply to carry on as though nothing had happened is to undermine the entire political process, not to mention tradition and simple fairness” – see: Election delay the right call but will hurt Jacinda Ardern’s chances.
Hosking says going with a September election would make NZ look terribly undemocratic: “What do you think the world would make of a country where the Government’s major party launched their campaign, then locked a solid chunk of the country down, made freedom of movement tricky for the rest of it, and had the official Opposition with no launch at all?”
Also endorsing Ardern’s choice, Kate Hawkesby likewise suggests an earlier election wouldn’t be very be democratic: “it would be simply undemocratic to have rushed through what’s arguably the most important election of our lifetime. The focus right now, especially for those in Auckland and for business and tourist operators, is not an election, but how to survive. On top of that we are voting on two very important referendums and we need to be able to do that fully informed, with time to make considered decisions. And that’s before we even get to policy, which has been put on ice announcement wise. How do we vote when we don’t even know what the policies are yet?” – see: Election delayed in the hope we’ll forget lockdown debacle.
Will the delay change the outcome?
In my Guardian column, I suggest that the delay is unlikely to have any significant impact on the fortunes of Labour and National, but is instead more likely to affect the minor parties fluctuating around the 5% MMP threshold, and that “a shift of a few percentage points is highly possible and could still make a huge difference”, especially in terms of coalition partners for Labour.
Luke Malpass argues in his column that the extension of the campaign won’t make much difference: “It is hard to see that this month’s delay will materially change the polling, unless new and significant mistakes and bungles are revealed. The New Zealand electorate tends not to be capricious. If voters trusted Government’s handling of the issues last week, there is no obvious reason why anyone will have changed their minds.”
Matthew Hooton argues it’s unclear whether National will benefit from the extended campaign: “Ardern has given National just enough time to show they have something exciting to offer – and, equally, just enough time to prove they don’t.”
Similarly, Sam Sachdeva says: “Candidates and parties now have more time to win over the electorate – but they also have time to make mistakes as well, and there is no guarantee of which way they will go.” Yet, it could still have a major impact: “Ardern and her ministers will face pointed questions about the border management regime and the oversight of managed isolation and quarantine facilities, given the likelihood the latest outbreak originated from there and the admission that testing had not met Cabinet’s expectations. But Collins too will be under pressure: can she find the right note in responding to this crisis, or will she tilt too far towards negativity or the outright conspiracising that her deputy leader Gerry Brownlee displayed last week?”
According to Pattrick Smellie, Labour is at risk given the extra four weeks: “That is plenty of time for Labour’s stratospheric polling numbers to take a knock, particularly as the expected fourth quarter economic downturn is exacerbated by the knock to confidence and activity caused by the latest lockdown. Firms are already considering fresh redundancies because of the impact of the Auckland lockdown. Extending the wage subsidy should soften the impact, but this second round outbreak has been sobering for the whole country and hits firms already eating deeply into reserves after the first extended lockdown. It is clearer than it was that we will be dealing with this virus for a long time yet, and the consensus on how to deal with it has been shaken. Any further delay to polling represents a huge risk for Labour that its previously unassailable political position will prove difficult to maintain.”
Mike Hosking is also of the belief that the delay is good for Labour’s opponents: “It’s good for National, which gets a launch, and a platform to argue alternatives. And it’s good for New Zealand First, which gets time to save itself. It was always going to be closer than many of the Labour acolytes thought. But now with another month, and yet more bungles to spin, the tide on a government that’s messed it up and failed to deliver is going out.”
On Labour’s situation, Hosking says: “Every day beyond September 19 is a day the Government has to explain this current mess. The border breach, the lack of testing, the very reason we are here is because it has failed to deliver what it said it had.”
In contrast, Kate Hawkesby argues that Labour will benefit from the public voting once the country is out of the current crisis: “I actually think it’s in her best interests not to rush the election. The further away it is, the further we are from the horror memory of lockdown, the more freedoms we’re enjoying, the happier we are. That all reflects better on the Government. If we went to the polls off the back of another lockdown – still grumpy about our lack of freedoms and worried sick about our businesses and bottom lines – we may punish the Government for it.”
Increasingly, people are turning to dating sites and apps to find love. And while the pool may seem larger, and access is at our fingertips, using them doesn’t necessarily improve our chances of finding a mate.
How do people find love?
In a Relationships Australia Survey, approximately 60% of people surveyed used dating apps and online sites, and of these people, about 25% found a long-term partner.
In an ABC survey, 35% of people found their current partner online.Candice Picard/Unsplash, CC BY
However, the limited research out there suggests the probability of a match using dating apps such as Tinder is low, with some studies reporting women find a match about 10% of the time, and men around 0.6% of the time on Tinder. The suggested difference is that women are more selective than men in the potential suitors they pursue. But either way, the success rates are low.
These statistics tell us people need to try many times to initiate a connection before they make a match, and that many connections are unlikely to become long-term (or at the very least, “steady dating”) relationships. Yet, it’s estimated that more than 50 million people use an app such as Tinder, with US millennials averaging approximately 1.5 hours a day, according to market research.
Despite these trends, more than 60% of married couples report their relationship was initiated by a friend.
What does online dating provide?
Online dating sites and apps provide users with a large pool of prospective suitors, and some of them use algorithms to provide you with mate suggestions that more closely match what you are looking for.
For people who are shy or introverted, these online means of selecting and interacting with a potential date can provide a less confronting way to initiate a connection. Messaging, video calls and phone chats can help someone get a better sense of a person before committing to an actual face-to-face meeting.
With the potential opportunities afforded by online dating sites come some cautions people need to be aware of. When it comes to the size of the dating pool, the statistics noted earlier suggest that despite the number of possible matches, the success of finding someone is quite low.
So people need to be prepared they will either initiate or receive requests for connections that are likely to go nowhere. This rejection can be challenging, especially for those who are sensitive to rejection.
Expect a lot of rejection before finding a partner if you’re looking online.Taylor Hernandez/Unsplash, CC BY
The large pool of potential matches brings with it more decision-making about who to choose – making trade-offs between which potential mates to pursue and which to avoid. The large pool could even undermine success because people overly objectify prospects or become overwhelmed by choice.
Because the first impression people have of a potential date are pictures and a description, it’s hard to form an accurate first impression. So much of our first impression of people is in how they speak and how they engage in an interaction – we rely on a lot of non-verbal behaviour when we assess people.
The online world also makes it easier for people to lie or give false impressions of themselves. Although this can occur when meeting people face-to-face too, these things can be harder to detect when evaluating a partner online.
What’s more, the algorithms used to predict likely matches are not always based on good premises. Those based on questionnaires can be problematic because people do not always have good insight into themselves and some intentionally mis-portray themselves.
It’s easier to detect honesty in real life.Unsplash, CC BY
Some are based on the similarity of people’s responses and profiles, but relationship science tells us similarities such as these are not as important as assumed. And some, such as Tinder, are based on swiping patterns. But this belies the fact users might have different motivations (some just use them for a confidence boost or amusement).
These algorithms also have no way of capturing and predicting how a couple may change or deal with challenges over time, and how their way of interacting may affect the development of a long-term relationship.
And while communicating via message can be good early on, if interactions are kept virtual for too long, a person can become unsure about the potential mate’s intentions or they could develop expectations about someone that become violated when meeting them.
As the numbers suggest, the rapid scanning of many profiles doesn’t appear to be resulting in good success. So it may be helpful to reduce the number of profiles you look at, and to spend more time looking at each one.
Taking a “quality over quantity” approach will likely allow for a more careful assessment of whether a potential date may be a good match. This might also help develop a more accurate sense of another’s dating intentions.
When a match is made, it may be best not to maintain a long period of communication through chat or text. Rather, if you wish to pursue a connection, initiate further communication over the phone or video chat to help get a better sense of the person and how well you interact, and to establish a more meaningful connection early.
Finally, the online dating world doesn’t rule out making connections using more traditional means. Before the online dating boom, people typically met their partners during a night out, at work, or through mutual connections such as family and friends. Unlike the virtual world, finding a match in the physical world doesn’t rely on algorithms, profiles, or sifting through a lineup of possible matches. So stay active in the real world too.
The former NSW education minister and now head of the UNSW Gonski Institute, Adrian Piccoli, suggested in recent days Australian governments should fully fund all non-government primary schools.
In an opinion piece published by the Sydney Morning Herald, Piccoli wrote this would fix inequality — as long as non-government schools also stopped charging fees and followed the same enrolment and accountability rules as public schools.
He wrote:
This idea is neither new nor radical. Canada has operated this way for decades and find themselves with an education system far more equitable and much higher performing than Australia.
As a researcher with expertise on the Canadian education system, I think there are several aspects of this claim worth clarifying and examining more closely.
Canada doesn’t fully fund private schools
It’s important to note there is no such thing as “Canadian” education. In Canada, under the terms of the constitution, each province holds the jurisdiction and autonomy to set their own educational policies. So, there is no overarching ministry or agency at the federal level, meaning education policy remains highly decentralised.
Canada remains an outlier, globally, as it does not grant any central body control over education across the country — which comes as a surprise to many.
Funding remains quite complex in all jurisdictions (try to understand how funding formulas work even in Australia!). But to the second point, in Canada, only some (five) of the ten provinces provide partial funding to private schools while in three of the provinces (Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan) Catholic schools are fully funded as part of a separate, but also public, school system.
In Ontario, where I teach, private schools receive no government funding. It should also be noted that, overall, well over 90% of all students across Canada attend public schools.
There’s no such thing as a ‘Canadian’ education.Shutterstock
In short then, Canada as a whole does not provide significant taxpayer dollars to support private schools.
In effect, the idea being put forward — that all primary private schools should be publicly funded and required to abide by certain policies, rules and accountability measures — is essentially the idea of enhancing school choice through something akin to charter schools, which have emerged in Canada and many other countries.
Charter schools in Canada
Charter schools can be best understood as a hybrid of public and private schools.
Though they vary by name and context, the idea of charter schools is to allow private educational providers the opportunity to secure public funding for their schools. In the United States, where charter schools have proliferated, charters can also be run as for-profit entities.
In Canada, only one province, Alberta, allows for charter schools to exist. These schools are fully funded by the government and as such, must abide by the rules and policies set out by the government.
While Canada has received its fair share of accolades in recent years — such as appearing in the top ten countries for reading, maths and science in recent PISA tests – such assertions are often based strictly on measures such as standardised testing. Nevertheless, these findings highlight strong outcomes in both educational quality and equity in a country which maintains a robust K-12 public education system.
While there are gaps and room for improvement across all levels and systems, public education remains a public good which is intended to serve the needs of all. Funding for private forms of education and the false promises of “school choices” are often misguided efforts which actually continue to drive educational inequalities and inequities.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to educational success and no silver bullet to enacting effective educational reform. But supporting local, universal and accessible public schools still provides the best opportunity to meet the needs of all students.
Schools in Papua New Guinea’s National Capital District resumed yesterday, with strict covid-19 protocols in place, and with several turning away those who came without masks.
This came in the wake of a new covid-19 spike with PNG reporting another 52 cases of covid-19 yesterday since Thursday, taking its total to 323.
Head teacher at Bavaroko Primary School, Catherine Moresi, said staff had communicated this message to parents several times and expected them to provide a face mask for their children, reports the PNG Post-Courier.
“As you can see, we have put a note which says ‘entry by masks’, so no masks, don’t come inside, even in the classroom … this morning, some had to turn back because they had no masks on,” she said.
Moresi said that since classrooms were hot and often crowded, they had advised kids to only remove masks once they were outside and away from friends.
“This is so that they can breathe properly because some classrooms have one fan and I don’t know how they are going to cope with the face masks till the end,” she said.
The Department of Education yesterday advised parents and guardians that children below the age of 12 years were not required to wear face masks.
Proper use of PPE The advice comes amid concerns on the proper use of the PPE by children and the risks associated with prolonged covering of the nose and mouth for those under the age of 12 years.
Moresi said they were not aware of the department’s recent statement and were communicating to parents based on the ongoing advice received earlier from the department and from the Pandemic Controller.
“We are advising all students to wear a face mask, especially for the 12-year-olds and above,” she said.
“They must wear a mask,” NCD School Inspector Elizabeth Kosi said, revealing that during yesterday’s school inspection, most elementary kids turned up with masks.
“We are thanking parents because we know that they are taking that ownership to protect their children.”
Gordons Secondary School principal, George Kenega, said the school promoted the covid-19 protocols and would make sure to send home students who arrived without masks, knowing that enough awareness had been made regarding the importance of face masks.
“We made it clear that if you don’t come with a mask, you won’t be allowed entry into the school,” he said.
All Coronation children sent home At Coronation primary, all its elementary and upper-primary were sent home yesterday and told to return today with face masks on, while the school took the day off to prepare schedules to minimise social distancing, which is a huge concern facing schools in NCD.
In the neighbouring Indonesian-ruled Papua province, almost 300 children aged below 19 have been infected with covid-19.
TheJakarta Post reports that the data from the Papua Covid-19 prevention task force is a cumulative number from late March to last week.
In French Polynesia, the covid-19 outbreak has prompted a week-long closure of several schools on Tahiti, reports RNZ Pacific.
Two schools have each reported a covid-19 case, including a school run by the Maohi Protestant Church which decided to shut its seven teaching establishments.
They all plan to reopen next week.
The last official tally showed 130 people had tested positive for the coronavirus in the second wave, which arrived after quarantine requirements for international arrivals were lifted last month when borders reopened to boost the tourism sector.
Guam has confirmed 42 new cases of covid-19 today bringing the territory’s total up to 558 with 5 deaths, reports RNZ Pacific.
Just days after the Northern Marianas recorded its 50th case of covid-19, the islands’ total has continued to rise with three more testing positive for the coronavirus on Sunday taking the total to 53.
Some South Auckland locals are hitting back at online hate directed at the area and its Pasifika community, after a local family was the first to test positive for covid-19 in the current New Zealand outbreak.
Four positive cases ballooned to a 58-case cluster after 102 days of no community transmission.
Auckland City’s Manukau Ward councillor Alf Filipaina was disgusted by the unfair vitriol directed towards South Auckland and it’s Pacific community.
“Everybody knows this virus doesn’t pick on colour. Because we’re in the lower socio-economic area and we have bigger families, it actually goes through the whole family very quickly,” he said.
Aside from the threat of the virus, Filipaina said job security was a concern for people in the area.
“Some have said, ‘look, we don’t know – even though [the level 3 lock down] is until [August] 26 – whether we’ll have a job to go back to,” he said.
“That’s not a very good feeling.”
Negativity not representative Otahuhu College principal Neil Watson did not think those spreading negativity online represented most people.
“The South Auckland and the Pasifika community here is a fantastically strong and powerful community with so much future,” he said.
“I think what you see on social media is always a small minority of people. What you see everyday in school and in our community is a fantastic community doing the very best to support and help each other.”
Bill Peace, operations manager for social service Strive Community Trust, said people now know what to expect from level 3.
A covid-19 testing centre in Ōtara. Image: RNZ
There was a rush to grocery stores when the latest lockdown was first announced.
But now, he said, people are feeling much calmer compared to the last lockdown.
“If there’s any long line its actually [for] the covid testing, that’s gone crazy.”
Peace called the online hate disappointing, but said he isn’t letting it get to him.
“We just think positive in that space. It’s our hood we’re talking about. We’re here from day one and we’ll continue to support our communities, regardless of what people are saying about them,” he said.
Testing centres in Ōtara and Mangere have been seeing a steady stream of visitors, with each centre handling around 500 to 600 tests a day each.
This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.
If you havesymptomsof the coronavirus, call the NZ Covid-19 Healthline on 0800 358 5453 (+64 9 358 5453 for international SIMs) or call your GP – don’t show up at a medical centre.
When most of us think of the prehistoric past, we envision a world of bizarre, often fearsome giants. From dinosaurs to mammoths and even penguins, life then seemed larger than life today.
Millions of years ago in Australia, giant goannas, kangaroos and diprotodontids (wombat relatives) roamed the landscape. The seas teemed with gargantuan predators such as the infamous “megalodon” shark and so-called giant killer sperm whales.
Fossils from this lost world can be found in sandstone rocks, between five million and six million years old, at Beaumaris – a bayside suburb in Melbourne and one of Australia’s most significant urban fossil sites. Here, fossils of ancient marine animals often wash ashore, eroded out of rocks by the tides.
However, some of these fossils are now revealing “jumbo” was not the only size for extinct animals. Our team’s research, published today in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, reports nine new seal fossils from Beaumaris, which we suspect came from nine different individuals.
The findings paint a picture of a relatively small animal, making its way through a world of giants.
Melburnians have been collecting fossils from Beaumaris for more than 100 years. Yet it continues to produce remarkable and scientifically important finds.
The fossils we studied were found on the foreshore of Beaumaris, Melbourne.Erich Fitzgerald, Author provided
This includes extremely rare fossils of animals such as seals. Previously, scientists had studied only one seal fossil from this site.
The nine new fossils detailed in our research were collected and donated to Museums Victoria by local scientists and citizen scientists over the past 88 years. They have more than doubled the known fossil record of seals in Australia.
These fossils represent the oldest evidence of seals in Australia and were identified as “true seals”, a group mostly known from the Arctic and Antarctic. True seals belong to a different group to Australia’s fur seals and sea lions (eared seals), which only arrived in the region about 500,000 years ago.
In total, we found nine seal fossil specimens from Beaumaris, from potentially nine different individuals.Erich Fitzgerald and James Rule, Author provided
In particular, one of the fossils we identified is a monachine (a southern true seal). Today, these are represented by animals such as leopard or elephant seals in the Southern Ocean surrounding the Antarctic, to which they are related.
Size estimates found the Beaumaris monachines to have been quite small, at only 1.7 metres long. This is similar to the size of today’s Northern Hemisphere seals such as the harbour seal.
However, the Beaumaris seal’s living relatives are much larger – usually 3m long or more. Modern leopard seals can grow to more than 3m long, while elephant seals can reach up to a gigantic 5m in length.
Most fossil whales found at Beaumaris are also smaller than their living counterparts.
This is the opposite trend to many other animal groups with fossils found there, including some sharks and seabirds, wherein the extinct animals were much larger than those alive today.
The extinct Beaumaris seal was much smaller than its living relatives today.Art by Peter Trusler, Author provided
An uncertain future for marine life
Why is finding small seals at Beaumaris important?
Five million years ago, before the ice ages, the average annual temperature in southeast Australia was about 2–4°C warmer than it is today, with sea levels up to 25m higher.
These warmer oceans supported a greater diversity of marine megafauna than today, with longer but less energy-efficient food chains. These chains only had room for a few large top predators, such as megalodon sharks. And this may have limited the size of other top predators, including seals.
This chart shows the history of seals’ size evolution in Australia, compared to large sharks.Peter Trusler and James Rule, Author provided
This is important. It suggests the large size of Antarctic seals living in the Southern Ocean today is due to colder oceans with more energy-efficient food chains, in which more food is available for marine animals.
If climate change continues to warm the oceans, food chains may once again start to become less energy efficient, resulting in a loss of the resources today’s large seals rely on for survival.
The discovery of seal fossils at Beaumaris has implications for not only unlocking the past, but also for contextualising the future.
It shows the biodiversity and ecology of marine megafauna off southern Australia originated during the long-term transition from a warmer to colder world – a process that only recently began changing trajectory.
To this day, the fossil site at Beaumaris continues to reveal scientifically important finds, thanks to members of the public working with scientists from Museums Victoria.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Fitz-Gibbon, Director, Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre; Associate Professor of Criminology, Faculty of Arts, Monash University
Victoria is in the grip of its most severe lockdown since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This means opportunities for victims of family violence to seek help are more limited than ever.
It is essential to closely monitor how the pandemic has exacerbated experiences of family violence and how the restrictions are affecting people’s ability to seek help.
Here we present trend data from three key frontline services to better understand how the current Victorian restrictions have impacted family violence help-seeking behaviours.
Reflecting the limited opportunities to seek help, more women are making use of online chat with 1800RESPECT, while more male perpetrators are seeking behaviour change support.
Risks have risen during the pandemic
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, significant concerns have emerged about the heightened risk of family and domestic violence for women and children.
In April, the United Nations declared this a “shadow pandemic”. The UN called for governments worldwide to commit more funding to ensure safety from violence during this period.
During the first period of restrictions, our research with practitioners in Victoria and Queensland identified an increase in the frequency and severity of family violence. Practitioners also reported an increase in first-time reports of intimate partner violence and the weaponising of children as part of shared care arrangements.
Practitioners told us perpetrators were using children and the threat of COVID-19 infection to gain access to women, to force them to share a house with their abuser when they previously lived separately, and to control access to children.
National research by the Australian Institute of Criminology found one in ten women in a relationship said they had experienced intimate partner violence during the pandemic. Half of those women said the abuse had increased in severity since the outbreak of the pandemic in Australia.
What has changed in lockdown 2.0 in Victoria?
Under stage 4 restrictions implemented across Melbourne on August 2, opportunities for women to help seek are significantly limited. There is a curfew, time outside the house has been limited to one hour of exercise a day within 5 kilometres of home, and only one member of the household is permitted to shop for essential food and household items each day.
While the Victorian government has stipulated seeking help for family violence is a permitted reason to leave the home, our research during the first period of restrictions showed perpetrators used lockdown to further control and isolate their victims.
Since the COVID-19 restrictions began earlier this year, 1800RESPECT, the national helpline, has had an increase in demand for its services nationally. There has also been a shift in how individuals are accessing the helpline.
In the second lockdown, calls to 1800RESPECT have peaked around midnight.Shutterstock
One of the notable changes compared with the pre-COVID period has been the increased use of the online chat function. Between May and July 2020, Victorians represented 31% of all 1800 webchat. This represents a 30% increase in use compared to the three months prior to May.
The other key change in help-seeking that the 1800RESEPCT data show is the increased volume of calls placed late at night, peaking around midnight.
This may reflect that women are waiting until their children and/or abusive partner are asleep before they seek help. Anecdotally, however, counsellors report that callers at these hours are seeking help to deal with trauma, including nightmares, flashbacks and/or sleep disturbances. It is believed the COVID-19 restrictions are exacerbating experiences of trauma as being confined to their homes triggers victim/survivors’ memories of being or feeling trapped.
The Victorian government has acknowledged the impact of the restrictions on the resurgence of trauma among victims/survivors of family violence. These victims/survivors can be exempt from wearing a mask, for example, where they have previously been choked, strangled or suffocated.
Reports to Victoria Police
Since stage 3 restrictions were reintroduced in Victoria in July, Victoria Police have reported a slight decrease in family violence reports around the state.
This may reflect that the restrictions make it more difficult for victims to report abuse. If living with their abuser, they likely have less time on their own and significantly less time out of the house. The fact that previously separated couples are once more having less in-person contact may also be a factor here.
A clear understanding of police reporting rates and actual experiences of violence will likely emerge over time and will be an important point of analysis.
The current rate of reporting contrasts with the increase in family violence reporting after the easing of the first wave of stage 3 restrictions in Victoria. As people had more in-person contact with family members, Victoria Police found reporting of family violence between separated couples increased to pre-COVID rates.
Engagement with men’s services and behaviour change programs
No to Violence, the peak body for men’s services, reported a spike in requests for services during the initial period of stage 3 restrictions in Victoria.
While calls to the Men’s Referral Service slightly increased as Victoria re-entered stage 3 restrictions, it has not been at the same level as earlier in the pandemic.
More men have been seeking help for abusive behaviour during lockdown.Shutterstock
Changes in men’s help-seeking have been observed in the Brief Intervention Service (BIS) delivered by No to Violence. The number of men eligible for and enrolling in the intervention has increased. BIS is used to “hold” men who are waiting to enter a program, or who are enrolled in a program that has been suspended during the COVID-19 restrictions.
Men are also eligible for this program when they have called the Men’s Referral Service (MRS) with concerns about their behaviour and how COVID is making it worse.
Sustaining engagement with men who have been identified as using violence is essential to ensure risk is visible and managed during this period of restrictions. The importance of ensuring men’s services can meet increased demand was reocgnised by the Victorian Government this week through the announcement of an additional $20 million in funding to keep perpetrators ‘in full sight’.
Ensuring women’s safety moving forward
The true extent of family violence in the Victorian community during the pandemic will only emerge in the months and years to come.
It is widely acknowledged that crises increase the prevalence and severity of violence against women, but the reporting of this victimisation can lag. The anecdotal trends presented here from frontline services indicate changing patterns in help-seeking behaviours during lockdown. They also point to encouraging signs of men engaging with behaviour change interventions.
We must act now to prevent further family violence and to provide adequate protection to women and children during this period.
Federal and state governments must provide additional resources to keep women and their children safe during home confinement and minimise the potential for escalating violence. This will require increased investment in safe housing and the specialist domestic violence sector, to allow for innovations in remote service delivery.
As we have noted previously, it has also never been more important to invest in the development of supports for the well-being of family violence practitioners. The safety of all families depends on the well-being and continued availability of the frontline practitioners who lead Victoria’s family violence response.
Neighbours, friends and family can also play a critical role in supporting victims and helping them access supports during periods of restrictions. Recognising this, we need to enhance the capacity of bystanders to know what to do and how to help in safe and effective ways.
Securing women and children’s safety during COVID-19 requires a whole-of-community response.
If your well-being is threatened by staying home, you can travel more than 5km and break curfew to find safety. Contact Safe Steps on 1800 015 188 or visit safesteps.org.au for specialist help._
If you believe a friend, family member, neighbour or work colleague is at risk of family violence or you have concerns for their safety contact 1800 RESPECT to speak to a counsellor, or if you believe you are in immediate danger call 000._
We know some influenzas are seasonal, and the common cold is more common in winter. But what about COVID-19? Many people have been wondering whether the weather plays a role in its spread.
At this stage we don’t really know if or how temperature affects COVID-19 transmission. But it looks like one aspect of the weather — humidity — does play a role.
In a new study published today, we found the number of locally acquired COVID-19 cases in the Sydney area increased as the air became drier.
This adds to a growing body of evidence that identifies a link between humidity and COVID-19.
What we did
We accessed the daily numbers of reported COVID-19 cases from NSW Health. Cases are reported by postcode, with information on the likely source of each case. These data allowed us to compile the daily numbers reported between February and May, and to match them to the nearest weather recording stations.
We downloaded the relevant meteorological data and then used a method called time-series analysis to predict cases based on weather recorded up to 14 days prior.
We found we needed only relative humidity to predict COVID-19 cases. Humidity is a measure of water vapour in the air. Lower relative humidity at a given temperature means the air is drier. For every 1% decrease in relative humidity, there was a corresponding 7-8% increase in cases.
We examined the COVID-19 cases in greater Sydney alongside weather data.Shutterstock
This relationship was consistent: we found it in both the exponential stage of the epidemic (when the numbers of cases were growing rapidly, in February and March) and when the epidemic was declining (in April and May). And the relationship was evident across different areas of greater Sydney.
We didn’t find a relationship between COVID-19 cases and temperature, rainfall or wind speed.
Our research originally began with a study in China, very early in the COVID-19 pandemic (December to February). In that study we found both drier air and lower temperatures were linked to more reported cases of COVID-19.
We then conducted a study in Sydney, published in May, also focusing on the early phase of the pandemic. In this study we didn’t analyse the findings by area like we have in our most recent study (we just looked at the dataset for Sydney as a whole).
The fact we were able to identify relative humidity as an important factor in both the Chinese winter and Australian summer, using the same research methods, gave us confidence this is a real phenomenon. Our latest study strengthens this hypothesis even further.
Of course, laboratory research on SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, is still in its infancy. But there has been research on closely related coronaviruses, including those that cause sudden acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS).
In twostudies on SARS in Hong Kong and China, and two on MERS in Saudi Arabia, researchers found the same inverse relationship between relative humidity and cases.
Why would there be a link between low humidity and COVID-19?
Coronaviruses can survive for a period of time on surfaces, and in the air. When an infected person coughs, sneezes or even talks, they can produce infectious droplets and aerosols.
By virtue of their larger size (and therefore weight), droplets land on surfaces relatively quickly.
However, aerosols are much smaller, so they persist in the air and they hang around for longer in drier air. So it follows transmission of COVID-19 is more likely when humidity is lower.
In one of the first studies on SARS-CoV-2, scientists detected infectious aerosolised virus for up to 16 hours. In another study, aerosolised virus remained viable for at least three hours.
Although we need much more research on this topic, airborne spread of COVID-19 is plausible. It might even be the primary way this disease spreads.
Humid conditions seem to be less conducive to the spread of COVID-19.Shutterstock
COVID-19 and the weather
US President Donald Trump famously suggested warmer weather would see COVID-19 “miraculously” go away. But we don’t have much information yet on the relationship between the weather and COVID-19.
Some studies have found lower temperature to be a factor in coronavirus diseases, while other studies have found the reverse.
We will need to examine at least a year of COVID-19 data to really know. But a growing number of studies, including our new paper, are pointing to humidity as a consistent a factor.
In Sydney, humidity is lowest in winter, particularly in August, and highest in summer. The same is true for most coastal areas in Australia — meaning people in these parts may now be in a period of heightened COVID-19 risk.
In inland areas we tend to see the opposite. So for example, in Canberra, the relative humidity is lowest in December and January.
But knowing what conditions can promote virus transmission allows us to better target the interventions we already have available — such as social distancing and wearing a mask — via public health messaging.
It also allows us to focus more on surveillance during anticipated periods of increased transmission risk.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deanna Kemp, Professor and Director, Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining, The University of Queensland
This month, the first global standard to prevent mining catastrophes was released, following the tragic collapse of a tailings dam in Brazil last year which killed 270 people.
People living near or downstream from a mine deserve to know they’ll be safe. While the standard requires mining operators to act transparently, it’s being rolled out without independent oversight. And it’s not clear how communities – many of them vulnerable – will be supported to understand mining projects and their implications.
The standard comes at a time when public visibility of the mining industry is at a low. The COVID-19 pandemic has restricted movement globally, making it harder for outside experts, journalists, investors and regulators to monitor what’s happening on the ground.
Tailings dams are among the largest human-made structures on the planet. Their collapse has become more frequent in recent years, and Australia is not immune. Independent oversight is necessary to hold mining companies to account.
Tailings dam failures, such as this in Brazil last year, are becoming more common.Antonio Lacurda/EPA
Towards safer tailings
Tailings are the residues left over from mining and minerals processing – a combination of finely ground rock, chemicals and water. They are commonly stored in the mining lease area, in huge engineered structures.
Tailings often contain tiny particles that can damage the environment by releasing toxic substances such as arsenic and mercury, contaminating soil and water.
The new global standard aims to guide the safe management of tailings facilities, with a goal of “zero harm” to people and the environment. It spans the earliest conception stages to planning, construction, operation, closure and post-closure activities such as rehabilitation.
The standard was developed through an independent process triggered by a devastating tailings dam collapse in Brazil in January 2019. Mud and mining waste from the Córrego do Feijão mine washed across the town of Brumadinho, killing 270 people.
That tragedy followed another tailings dam collapse in Brazil in 2015. The dam, part owned by Australia’s BHP, triggered a mud flow that killed 19 people and devastated the river system.
Tailings dam failures have also occurred in Australia. In 2018, a dam slumped at the Cadia gold mine in New South Wales, releasing more than a million tonnes of slurry elsewhere on the site.
This month, a report by Victoria’s Auditor-General revealed systemic regulatory failures in the management of former mines. It cited the Benambra copper and zinc mine, which ceased operations in 1996. A tailings dam containing 700,000 tonnes of sulphuric material was later found to be at risk of release due to erosion or embankment failure.
The Cadia gold mine in western suffered a partial tailings dam collapse in 2018.Newcrest
The right to know
The exact number of active tailings facilities globally is not known, but it’s thought to be in the tens of thousands. Thousands more are inactive or abandoned.
Local communities have a right to know about these structures and their risks, but sometimes struggle to access information.
The new standard includes unprecedented requirements for operators to publicly disclose information including:
the rationale for site selection and facility design
consequence classification (ranking the severity of a potential failure)
risk management and emergency preparedness plans
the outcomes of independent reviews
operator capacity to cover the costs of reclamation for closure.
Our research shows a high number of tailings facilities around the world are in areas with low levels of literacy and governance, and correspondingly high levels of inequality and corruption.
This means local communities should be given strong support to access and understand tailings information. An independent entity is also needed to oversee implementation of the standard, and help make mines publicly accountable.
Mining investor groups, with trillions of dollars under management, are also seeking this information to safeguard their investments.
Public accountability
Civil society groups have argued the standard does not go far enough to protect workers, communities and ecosystems.
Critics also highlight that, as yet, there is no independent mechanism for implementation or enforcement. On this, we agree. To date, an oversight body for the standard has not been established, and the standard has not been incorporated into national laws. That means the role of investors, shareholders and the general public is critical to holding companies to account.
A recent Australian example shows the pressure the public can bring to bear on mining companies. In May, it emerged Rio Tintodestroyed a 46,000-year heritage site on traditional lands in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. As information about the incident came to light, an outraged public demanded a federal inquiry, now underway.
The global transition towards low-emissions technology brings even sharper focus to this issue. Increased global demand is expected for metals including copper and gold, iron ore, lead, zinc, cobalt and lithium. Such mines tend to produce larger quantities of tailings than, say, coal mines.
Our research suggests this will lead to more mines – and more tailings facilities – in remote and fragile environments, and on the traditional lands of Indigenous peoples in Australia and elsewhere.
This means making mining companies accountable will become even more important in future, to keep people and the environment safe.
In a surprise move, the government has revealed several new policies to reduce rates of failure in university subjects. If the legislation passes, it will require universities to:
The problem with the new laws, which include withdrawal of funding for students who fail too many subjects, is they will push universities towards faster, and possibly premature, termination of student enrolments.
Failing is expensive
In 2018, nearly 17% of subjects taken by Commonwealth-supported students were not successfully completed. The students either failed or withdrew after the census date when they incur a HELP debt.
This lack of subject success is expensive. Exact costs are not published, but taken as a proportion of Commonwealth payments the fail-or-withdraw rate translates into nearly A$800 million in HELP debt and almost A$1.2 billion in subsidies to universities.
Some fails are avoidable
Some students fail subjects because, despite their best efforts and those of their teachers, their academic work is not satisfactory. We would worry about academic standards if the pass rate was 100%. But other failed subjects are potentially avoidable.
Sometimes students fail due to academic factors universities can do something about, such as by improving teaching or helping students who are falling behind.
Universities cannot control student life issues such as health, work and family matters. All of these are reasons students give for failing subjects. But universities can judge whether these issues are temporary or manageable. If so, they are not fundamental obstacles to future academic success.
Other students fail because they are not going to class, handing in essays or sitting tests. They have effectively dropped subjects or their course, but have not officially notified their university. The system then automatically registers HELP debts and fails.
When La Trobe University examined its records, it estimated a quarter of all fails were by “ghost students” who did not submit the work needed to pass. If these students can be encouraged to formally withdraw earlier, subject fails and HELP debts will decrease.
The legislation has several measures intended to limit ghost enrolments and failed subjects.
Students would not be allowed to enrol in more than double the subjects a full-time student normally takes in a year, unless they had a demonstrated capacity to do so. University policies already prevent major subject overloads, as taking on too much increases the risk of failure.
By law, universities must check before enrolment that each prospective student is academically suited to their course. The new law would extend this requirement to the subject level.
How this would work in practice is unclear. With more than eight million subject enrolments a year, checking every one would be a massive exercise.
Focusing on students with prior fails may be sufficient. It would be in line with existinguniversitypolicies on students who fail half or more of their subjects in a semester.
A 2018 Grattan Institute report I co-authored found that, of the 7% of commencing bachelor-degree students who failed all their first-semester subjects, a quarter continued and also failed all second-semester subjects. Future outcomes like that may signal non-compliance with the academic suitability law.
Finally, the legislation would give the government power to deprive universities of funding for students it deems not “genuine”. Genuineness indicators already used in private higher education institutions include whether students are reasonably engaged in the course, whether they have satisfied course requirements and, if the course is online, how many times they have logged on. These provisions target ghost students.
As general themes, the ideas in the legislation are not inherently bad. Many reflect standard or common practices in higher education.
The problem is that universities have to balance the risks of further fails and HELP debt against the benefits of giving students a second chance.
If the legislation passes, universities will be nervous about being fined for breaching the academic suitability rule and losing funding for non-genuine students. This creates an incentive to end enrolments, possibly prematurely, after one bad semester.
Students who fail more than half their subjects, after taking at least eight in a bachelor degree, already face exclusion from their course. But the legislation would limit which factors universities can consider in making this decision.
Universities could take into account failures due to reasons beyond a student’s control, such as their own or a family member’s illness. But universities could not consider general difficulties adapting to university life, or other reasons a student could plausibly have controlled.
The provisions of the current bill could lead to students who could succeed with proper support being denied a second chance.Adam Gregor/Shutterstock
A different approach
Patterns of subject failure are worth investigating, to protect students put at unacceptably high risk of further fails and debt. But this task should be handled not by the Department of Education, which would implement these laws, but the Tertiary Education Quality and Standard Agency. Many subject fails are linked to the course admission, teaching quality and course retention matters that TEQSA already regulates.
TEQSA operates under a “regulatory necessity, risk and proportionality” principle, which lets it take a nuanced approach. Universities that put failing students at high risk of continued poor performance would have to improve their practices. But universities would still be free to consider the complex trade-offs of each individual case, without inflexible rules driving them to one conclusion.
Students should also be made more aware of the census date’s importance. A small Grattan Institute survey showed many students did not know what the census date was, or thought they did but gave an incorrect answer. A name change that highlights its significance, such as “payment date”, would encourage students to drop subjects sooner to avoid HELP debt and fails.
Although the government has identified a real problem, its heavy-handed regulation would create unnecessary red tape for universities and exclude students who should get a second chance.
COVID-19 has raised many questions about how we plan our cities. The issues affect all of us, whether you are in Perth or 3,300 kilometres away in Sydney. Common issues suggest a common approach, but how might we achieve that?
Common approaches require a common understanding and by chance next year, 2021, is census year. The output from the census is one of the most important inputs to city and regional planning. It’s an opportunity for planners to directly reference the detailed data of the people and households of the communities that make up Australia.
The issues the COVID-19 pandemic has confronted us with raise the question of what other common-ground issues could be explored.
Interestingly, an “alignment of the stars” is occurring to some degree.
The Planning Institute of Australia (PIA) is calling for a national settlement strategy. Among other things the institute suggests a national settlement strategy should:
express long-term growth and liveability outcomes – nationally and for the states and regions
provide a context for a national population policy
set performance measures for liveability and productivity outcomes.
A core benefit would be better-targeted infrastructure funding.
But the states and territories have already signed off on 57 regional and capital city plans. We need to think a little about what these plans mean – we cannot just stick them together. We need to understand where the common connections and objectives are.
As planning is a state responsibility, the states must drive this process. However, the states have a poor record of collaboration on strategic planning matters. Yes, we see a few good connections from time to time, but not a deliberative collaboration on city and regional planning issues.
Our common understanding and approach must therefore start and finish with collaboration by the states, with Commonwealth support.
Common planning themes already exist
Most Australian capital cities have developed metropolitan plans. The current plans were generally developed in 2017-18. With plans often reviewed every five years, some deep-dive research aligned with the 2021 census would sit well with that timing.
My review of the main themes of each capital city plan reveals areas of commonality (very few across all), as well as some clear local considerations.
Author provided
Regional Australia accounts for most of the nation’s land area, and most regions have completed regional plans. It’s equally important, then, to identify and understand common issues and approaches outside the capital cities.
Gaining a common understanding of all issues and opportunities in the regions is a greater challenge than for the capital cities because of the diversity and scale of regional areas. But there are clearly many common issues, including water security, telecommunications coverage, growth and change, transport, access to services, and bushfires and floods, to name a few.
In addition, many papers and articles have been published on the performance of cities and what issues city plans need to respond to in a COVID-19 world. Key issues include:
The initial planning response has been to fast-track development proposals to maximise the opportunities for the market to respond.
Infrastructure investments have also included more projects supporting walking, cycling and public spaces in line with what we have learned from the impacts of COVID-19.
It’s increasingly clear economic recovery is going to take time. A common research agenda could be used to better inform a national infrastructure agenda directed to stimulating economic activity and thus jobs.
Ultimately, we need agreement on the understanding behind a set of common issues, and on how we respond. The key here is a common understanding. Differences in the planning systems across the states represent a technical, not substantive, issue which each state would deal with in an implementation phase.
To enhance the prospects of agreement between the states on settlement issues, a research agenda linked to the 2021 census date is a prime opportunity to start a dialogue. A collaborative approach to planning across the states can occur at any time, but the opportunity to align research with the census comes around only once every five years.
While the census is a year away, that doesn’t leave much time to establish a joint research agenda.
The first critical task is simply coming together and agreeing to work collaboratively. This requires commitment to understanding both the challenges and opportunities, as well as working jointly on responses. We need to learn to walk (understand) before we start to run (plan).
The emergence of a national cabinet suggests these unique times call for new ways of doing things. Now is the time for the planning profession to add its strategic insights into cities and regions to support Australia’s recovery.
.jpg?1597716638)
