Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kevin Davis, Professor of Finance, University of Melbourne

The exclusion of temporary visa workers from reimbursement under Australia’s Fair Entitlements Guarantee (FEG) scheme for lost wages and entitlements (annual leave etc) owed to them when their employer collapses is not just unfair.

It is inconsistent with other important government guarantee schemes, such as the Financial Claims Scheme (FCS) for bank deposits and insurance policies, where non-residents are eligible.

Read more: There’s serious talk about a “job guarantee”, but it’s not that straightforward

It is also inconsistent with the principle of non-discrimination expressed on the Fair Work Ombudsman website:

all people working in Australia, including foreign workers, are entitled to basic rights and protections in the workplace.

Lost jobs and hardship

During the current coronavirus crisis many workers have experienced the hardships of both losing their job and then discovering that unpaid wages and other entitlements have been lost due to insolvency of their employer.

Australian citizens, permanent (and some other) visa holders are entitled to claim for compensation under the FEG, albeit with limits on the amount claimed.

But temporary visa holders, such as international students working in shops or hospitality to earn enough for rent and living expenses, are not eligible to claim.

Is it right to exclude them from the Australian taxpayer support provided by the FEG? Yes, if the objective of the scheme is solely to provide compensation for Australians suffering loss.

But no if the objective is to provide compensation for failings by bosses of Australian businesses to adequately provide for the amounts owed to any employees.

All workers should be covered

There is, in my mind, a very strong case for the latter answer, and thus inclusion in the FEG of temporary visa holders.

The FEG is an alternative to other methods of making sure employers adequately provide for amounts owed to employees. These could include an explicit, premium based, insurance scheme, or requirements for employers to maintain amounts in a trust account adequate to meet unpaid entitlements.

In the absence of such direct disciplining measures on employers, which would protect all workers, the FEG is a substitute to provide such protection.

Any of these approaches work to improve the efficient operation of the labour market by removing the need for potential and current employees to assess (and worry) whether an employer will be able to meet unpaid entitlements.

Not only is that a virtual impossibility for them, but their ability to take actions to reduce exposure to potential losses is highly limited (short of quitting and demanding immediate payment).

Other protections from businesses collapsing

It is worth comparing the FEG with the Financial Claims Scheme (FCS), which protects bank depositors and insurance policy-holders (up to maximum amounts covered).

Yes, an important feature is that it provides ex-post compensation for losses from a failed institution.

But a critical feature is that it enhances the stability and efficiency of the financial sector by removing concerns of those covered about risk of failure of their financial institution.

The resulting peace of mind also reduces the risk of “[runs]” for example, where a large number of customers withdraw their deposits at the same time.

The FCS does not exclude non-residents with Australian dollar accounts, held in Australia, from its coverage. Just as Australian retail customers are generally unable to assess the financial health and risk of a bank or insurance company, so too are non-resident retail customers. Probably more so.

An important feature of the FCS is rapid access to amounts owed by a failed institution. This reduces the disruption to customers relying on access to those funds for daily living and other expenses.

Read more: Cutting taxes for the wealthy is the worst possible response to this economic crisis

The same arguments are relevant regarding coverage by the FEG. Covered workers need not worry about possible loss of unpaid entitlements if their employer fails.

Realistically, employees on temporary visas are even less likely than Australian employees to have the ability to assess risk of loss from employer insolvency. As casual or part-time employees they have less (if any) bargaining power.

The financial hardship resulting from loss of entitlements (on top of unemployment) of such relatively low-paid workers with limited access to other forms of financial support is undoubtedly severe.

Add to that the Fairwork principle of non-discrimination and the conclusion is obvious. The FEG should apply to such workers on temporary visas.

– ref. When companies go bust, temporary visa holders miss out and that’s wrong – https://theconversation.com/when-companies-go-bust-temporary-visa-holders-miss-out-and-thats-wrong-142281

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tracy Clelland, Lecturer in Health Education, University of Canterbury

The hugely successful “Keep It Real Online” video aimed at getting parents to talk to their children about pornography has gone viral and been praised around the world. But my 16-year-old son asked an interesting question when he looked at the campaign website:

Why does it say talk “to” your child? Shouldn’t it be “with”?

This is why I always ask his opinion about how he makes sense of the world. As a sexuality educator for over 30 years, a university lecturer and mother of two teenage sons, it has been my privilege to listen to people’s stories of sexuality and the impact on their lives.

Some have been uplifting and some are simply heartbreaking. Either way, young people and adults generally want to reflect on the complicated, messy and often irrational nature of sex and relationships. They also want to talk about joy, pleasure, intimacy and love.

Young people want better sex and relationship education

So any discussion of pornography inevitably leads to a broader conversation – much like the one we imagine is about to take place in that viral video.

In case you haven’t watched it, two naked porn actors arrive at an ordinary home to talk to a boy who has been watching them online. The mother who answers the door is understandably surprised and a little lost for words. But in the end she tells her son they need to talk about the difference between the online and real worlds.

The video provides an excellent starting point for parents and children to have conversations about our understanding of sex, relationships and gender.

As the research continues to show, young people want better sexuality education from the adults in their lives. But what does better sexuality education look, sound and feel like to young people?

Before parents can talk with their children, they first need to reflect on how ideas about pornography are in turn shaped by broader socio-cultural values and attitudes towards young people, sex, relationships and the digital world.

Read more: Small budgets, big ideas — what a viral porn awareness campaign tells us about New Zealand advertising

Too often, parents’ anxieties about the loss of childhood innocence make them feel they need to be the expert who talks to their child about the dangers of pornography.

You might define this as a fear-based approach, and it can lead to young people having feelings of shame and guilt for being curious about sex. Very often this can be the end of the conversation.

Listening rather than explaining

It’s not easy, but parents should try not to let their own worries about pornography override their capacity to talk with, rather than to, their children about all aspects of sexuality. By doing so they will also help young people explore and develop their own critical thinking and media literacy.

My current research explores how 56 New Zealand parents understand and experience sexuality education with their children. Embarrassment and feeling unprepared continue to make it difficult for parents and young people to talk about sex, let alone porn.

If they do talk about pornography, we’re finding it is challenging to shift from being the parent who knows and explains to the one who asks open questions, listens and invites their child to share their world view.

But the fact is, as extensive research from the New Zealand Classification Office has shown, many young people have already seen pornography. The top two reasons they give are curiosity and that they found it by accident.

As adults and parents we need to remember that young people are sexual beings who are curious about sex. They often report that parental messaging doesn’t match their own feelings and experiences.

Letting young people lead the conversation

For those reasons, a conversation about pornography as a social, cultural, personal and highly complex issue can be a way into a deeper discussion.

From there we can explore what it means to navigate the bumpy roads of sex and relationships. Sexuality education by parents sometimes tries to smooth out those bumps with information and advice rather than shared discussion. Yet it’s through the emotional wrestle with social and cultural expectations that our sexual selves develop.

Read more: Is that porn your child is watching online? How do you know?

We need to allow young people to narrate their own lived experiences. At the same time, we should foster their ability to critique the wider moral landscapes in which they live.

Embrace sexuality as messy, complex, irrational, emotional and part of being human. Don’t look for the “right” answers from young people. Allow them to explore the emotional complexity and joy of sexuality. In this way, online access to pornography becomes just another intersection on their sexuality journey.

That is the beauty of the “Keep It Real Online” video – it’s humour allows us to ask young people open-ended questions. What should adults really be saying to young people? What do they think about pornography? What do they think constitutes a healthy relationship? Who is advantaged and disadvantaged by the porn industry?

Most of all, pause, breathe, don’t judge. Young people are far more insightful than adults sometimes give them credit. They are constantly watching, learning and working out how society expects them to behave.

Sometimes parents need to be open – but keep their mouths shut!

– ref. The ‘Keep It Real Online’ campaign wants parents to talk to kids about porn — but where to start? – https://theconversation.com/the-keep-it-real-online-campaign-wants-parents-to-talk-to-kids-about-porn-but-where-to-start-142469

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Blair Williams, Associate Lecturer, School of Political Science and International Relations, Australian National University

Why are there so few women at the top levels of politics? This question is at the centre of the new book, Women and Leadership, co-authored by Australia’s first woman prime minister, Julia Gillard, and former Nigerian finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

Using their personal experiences and interviews with an impressive group of eight women leaders – including Theresa May, Hillary Clinton, Jacinda Ardern and Christine Lagarde – Gillard and Okonjo-Iweala test various academic studies to see if their findings are reflected in reality.

Theses studies include media coverage of women’s leadership, as well as perceptions of women’s “power-seeking” and gender norms around leadership.

What results is both a sobering reminder that sexism isn’t going away anytime soon and an empowering message about women’s strength and resilience.

As an academic researching women’s political leadership, this book acts as a crucial point between scholarly studies and public debate. It also offers a fresh perspective of the many issues women in leadership face.

Here are four key messages:

1. The fashion police are everywhere

Gillard and Okonjo-Iweala find women leaders are heavily judged for their appearance. This was a problem faced by all leaders interviewed, despite their diverse experiences and locations.

However, there were still differences across the world. Clinton, a former US presidential candidate and secretary of state, was known for her pant suits – which she said helped her feel professional and “fit in”. But former Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf noted how she “would have got some eyes as a woman wearing pant suits” and traditional dress worked best for her.

There can also be power in clothing. For example, New Zealand’s Ardern was seen to show compassion, empathy and solidarity when she wore a hijab after the Christchurch terrorist attack. As Gillard and Okonjo-Iweala write,

it became a symbol of love in the face of hate. There was a transcendent power in appearance.

2. Prepare to be judged for your reproductive choices

The book also explores how women leaders are judged for their reproductive choices. While fatherhood increases perceptions of male leaders as affable, relatable and conventional, public motherhood is a far more problematic experience.

Read more: How Julia Gillard forever changed Australian politics – especially for women

As the authors note, women leaders with young children are frequently asked, “who’s minding the kids?”

Seven hours after her election, Ardern was asked on national television about her plans for having children. When she had her daughter, there was intense media scrutiny about how she would juggle her leadership role and her baby. Yet male leaders, such as former UK prime minister Tony Blair, who welcome babies in office, are not questioned about who will be looking after them.

And what about women leaders who don’t have children? Gillard is intrigued by the respectful treatment of former British prime minister May’s childlessness, as she had a polar opposite experience in Australia (who could forget the frenzy sparked by her empty fruit bowl).

Gillard makes a thought-provoking point here about choice. May wanted, but was unable, to have children, while Gillard was deliberately child-free. Perhaps this was the cause of the criticism she faced. As Gillard writes,

in being seen to offend against female stereotypes, is there anything bigger than not becoming a mother by choice?

3. The situation is not getting better

The book makes the point that despite the focus on women in politics, the experience for those at the top is not necessarily improving.

As someone whose research found media reaction to May in 2016 was more gendered than for Margaret Thatcher in 1979, I wasn’t shocked to read this. However, it was still surprising to learn that Michelle Bachelet – Chile’s president from 2006-10 and 2014-18 – noticed things were worse in her second term.

Read more: Women leaders and coronavirus: look beyond stereotypes to find the secret to their success

Initially assuming the pressure of gendered expectations had improved the second time around, Bachelet realised,

it was the same or worse. I think politics is getting more complicated these days and more vicious. There is less respect. It’s more personalised now.

All leaders interviewed said they were conscious of the difficulties of finding a balance in leadership style. If they were too strong or assertive, they could be seen as “cold”, “robotic” or “bitchy”.

4. ‘Be aware, not beware’

The experiences and advice of these eight high-profile women leaders reveal how sexism is par for the course.

This message is hammered home in the final chapter, in which Gillard and Okonjo-Iweala note “Be aware, not beware”. They argue that they want to inspire women to pursue politics and leadership roles, but glossing over the challenges would be dishonest and insulting.

Summarising the insights gleaned from previous chapters, Gillard and Okonjo-Iweala offer some stand-out lessons that will aid aspiring women leaders. These include:

• expect sexism and sexist commentary relating to your appearance, family and leadership style and figure out early on how you will respond to this

• support other women, whether through network-building, mentoring, role-modelling or general solidarity

• persevere.

A reality check

Women and Leadership is, at times, a depressing reality check that feminism still has a long way to go. However, readers should not come away from this feeling hopeless or disheartened.

Rather, they can appreciate the respect the authors have given them by speaking plainly about the realities women leaders face.

Perhaps more consideration could have been given to the experiences of women in less senior positions. Do we need to hear from the success stories when we talk about the struggles of women in leadership, or could we perhaps also learn from those whose glass ceilings were just too thick?

Read more: Fiction, fact and Hillary Clinton: an American politics expert reads Rodham

While this book might be less useful for women – and men – without leadership aspirations, its general analysis of gender stereotypes and double standards still makes it a worthwhile read.

This is also problem that women cannot fix alone. Men need to do their bit, by calling out sexism and supporting women. The media must also be more active in combating sexism and misogyny.

One enduring message of this book is that progress and equality are not linear.

Sexism doesn’t just one day magically disappear. Rather, it can only be dismantled through constant pressure and the actions of those who persevere.

– ref. ‘Expect sexism’: a gender politics expert reads Julia Gillard’s Women and Leadership – https://theconversation.com/expect-sexism-a-gender-politics-expert-reads-julia-gillards-women-and-leadership-142725

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nick Haslam, Professor of Psychology, University of Melbourne

Psychiatric classifications catalogue the many forms of mental ill-health. They define what counts as a disorder and who counts as disordered, drawing the boundary between psychological normality and abnormality.

In the past century that boundary has shifted radically. Successive classifications have added new disorders and revised old ones. Diagnoses have increased rapidly as new forms of human misery have been identified.

The wider psychiatric classifications cast their net, the more people qualify for diagnoses and the more treatment is considered necessary.

These changes may have mixed blessings. Broadening definitions of mental illness allow us to address mental health problems that were previously neglected. Mental illness may come to seem more commonplace and thereby less stigmatised.

However, inflating definitions may also lead to over-diagnosis, over-medication, and bogus epidemics. Many writers worry broad definitions of mental illness lead ordinary problems of living to be pathologised and medicalised.

But is this “diagnostic inflation” actually occurring?

Read more: Explainer: what is the DSM and how are mental disorders diagnosed?

Diagnostic inflation

These concerns often target the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The “DSM” is the American Psychiatric Association’s influential classification manual of mental health problems. Since its revolutionary third edition in 1980, each major DSM revision has been challenged over diagnostic inflation.

Some writers argue the DSM over-diagnoses depression and anxiety disorders, misrepresenting many normal responses to adversity as mental illnesses. Others suggest it has diluted what counts as a traumatic event for the purpose of diagnosing PTSD. Eyebrows have been raised by some researchers over new diagnoses such as internet addiction and mathematics disorder.

These criticisms reached fever pitch when the latest version (DSM-5) was launched in 2013. Leading the charge was distinguished American psychiatrist Allen Frances who led the Task Force that developed the previous edition. Frances criticised the new edition for creating “diagnostic hyperinflation” that would make mental illness ubiquitous.

For example, the latest version removed the rule that a recently bereaved person could not be diagnosed with depression. It listed new disorders representing relatively mild cognitive declines and bodily complaints. It introduced a disorder of binge eating and another for frequent temper outbursts in children.

In response to shifts such as these, Frances led a campaign to “save normality” from psychiatry’s territorial expansion.

But is it a myth?

It seems obvious the DSM has steadily inflated psychiatric diagnoses. But we decided to test this assumption in our recently published research — with surprising results.

We scoured the research for studies in which consecutive editions of the manual were used to diagnose the same group of people on a single occasion. These were 1980’s DSM-III, 1987’s DSM-III-R, 1994’s DSM-IV, and 2013’s DSM-5. For instance, a study might use DSM-III and DSM-III-R criteria to diagnose schizophrenia in a sample of inpatients.

We found more than 100 studies comparing rates of diagnosis of at least one mental disorder across a pair of editions. In all, 123 disorders could be compared based on 476 study findings. For each comparison, we evaluated diagnostic inflation by dividing the rate of diagnosis in the later edition by the rate in the earlier one — the “relative rate”.

For example, if 15% of a group of people received a certain diagnosis by DSM-5’s criteria and only 10% received it by DSM-IV’s, the relative rate would be 1.5. This would indicate diagnostic inflation. If the percentages were reversed, the relative rate would be 0.67, indicating deflation. A relative rate of 1.0 would show stability.

We found no consistent evidence of diagnostic inflation. Relative rates for each new edition were 1.11 (DSM-III-R), 0.95 (DSM-IV) and 1.01 (DSM-5). None of these differed reliably from 1.0 or from one another. The average relative rate overall was exactly 1.0, indicating an absence of diagnostic inflation from DSM-III to DSM-5.

Although there was no pattern of inflation across the board, we found a few specific disorders have inflated. Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism both inflated significantly from DSM-III to DSM-III-R, as did several eating disorders and Generalised Anxiety Disorder from DSM-IV to DSM-5. However, a similar number of disorders significantly deflated so fewer people could be diagnosed with them, including autism from DSM-IV to DSM-5.

Normality may not need saving after all

These findings call into question the widespread view the DSM has created runaway diagnostic inflation. No consistent trend toward diagnostic expansion has occurred, nor has any DSM revision been singularly prone to bloat. Normality may not need saving after all.

Worries about growing over-diagnosis or over-medication should focus on particular disorders for which diagnostic inflation can be demonstrated, rather than seeing these as rampant and systemic.

Our findings restore some confidence that the DSM’s process of diagnostic revision does not necessarily make psychiatric diagnosis more expansive.

Also, they suggest supposed epidemics of depression, anxiety, ADHD or autism must be evaluated sceptically. If steep increases in diagnoses occur for disorders whose criteria have not inflated, there may be cause for alarm. If such increases occur for inflating disorders, they may simply be caused by lowered diagnostic thresholds that create a “new abnormal”.

Read more: Depression: it’s a word we use a lot, but what exactly is it?

Two kinds of diagnostic expansion

Our finding that rules for diagnosing mental disorders have not consistently become less stringent might seem to encourage complacency about diagnostic expansion. Not so fast! Diagnostic expansion can also occur through the addition of new disorders.

As we have written in relation to “concept creep”, ideas can broaden in two directions: downward to encompass milder phenomena than they did previously, and outward to encompass new kinds of phenomena.

Our study finds little evidence for the “vertical” sort of creep, but the “horizontal” sort has surely occurred. New DSM editions have always identified new ways of being mentally ill, and some of the rhetorical heat generated by DSM-5’s critics was directed at new diagnoses.

The fact that psychiatric classifications continue to evolve should not surprise us, and nor should the fact they sometimes expand. Such changes are not unique to the mental health field either. As Allen Frances has drily observed, “modern medicine is making such rapid advances, soon none of us will be well.”

Our findings suggest that although new ways of being mentally unwell may continue to be discovered, the old ways have tended to stay the same.

Read more: Is your mental health deteriorating during the coronavirus pandemic? Here’s what to look out for

– ref. Is psychiatry shrinking what’s considered normal? – https://theconversation.com/is-psychiatry-shrinking-whats-considered-normal-142477

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Pilcher, Policy Fellow, Mitchell Institute, Victoria University

In April, the federal government put in place an emergency relief package to support families and operators in the early childhood education and care sector, as many people pulled their children out of childcare.

The government provided centres with around 50% of their revenue based on enrolment numbers between February 17 and March 2, on the basis parents weren’t charged any fees. Services were also able to access JobKeeper for eligible employees.

This package came to an end on Monday. Parents will now resume paying fees and the government will resume paying the childcare subsidy.

There is additional flexibility for parents in metropolitan Melbourne and Mitchell shire – the Victorian areas under stage 3 restrictions – where services can temporarily waive fees for parents if children are not attending care.

There will also be a transition period across the country. JobKeeper payments will cease and be replaced by a transition payment for services — 25% of their February revenue.

But going back to pre-COVID-19 settings — even with modifications — is risky. Australia’s existing childcare subsidy system is not fit-for-purpose in the context of COVID-19.

Our analysis shows many families who have lost income or jobs will be worse off when the subsidy system restarts. Many parents have relied on fee-free childcare to keep children engaged in early learning and maintain stability throughout the crisis.

A survey conducted in May found 42% of families were experiencing income loss. Of these, nearly two-thirds would need to reduce childcare days or remove their child altogether from early learning once parent fees were reintroduced.

Our analysis shows the government should increase the childcare subsidy for families on low to medium incomes — either temporarily or permanently. This would involve increasing the highest subsidy rate from 85% to 95%.

Families on a combined income under $173,163 would benefit, with those on the lowest incomes benefiting most.

The high costs of childcare

Before COVID-19 hit, early childhood education and care in Australia was already bordering on unaffordable. Fees absorb nearly one-fifth of many families’ household incomes.

Even after government subsidies, many parents pay more to have a child in early learning than they would to send a child to a private primary school.

So far, the government has announced several small changes to the pre-COVID arrangements once fees resume.

There will be a temporary easing of the activity test for 12 weeks from July 13. This means families working and studying less can access more hours of subsidised childcare. But they’ll still need to pay at least 15% of childcare fees.

The additional childcare subsidy also provides temporary free childcare to families experiencing significant financial hardship. But it is unclear who will be eligible, and current data shows that processing times can be lengthy.

The additional childcare subsidy provides temporary free childcare and remains available for families experiencing temporary financial hardship.

While these measures will help some families, they are unlikely to be enough to counter the unprecedented economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis. Vast numbers will be faced with a decision on whether they can afford to keep their child engaged in early education and care.

And we know children removed from early learning, or with only intermittent access to it, face disruption to their routine, and possibly developmental and educational delays.

So, what are the options?

Some have argued for an overhaul of the childcare system to make childcare permanently free. One of the main barriers to this is cost. Estimates suggest this would cost in excess of A$24 billion per year, compared with the current cost of around $8 billion per year.

Others have pushed for a temporary extension of fee-free care, arguing it would support women and families financially and reduce risks for women in unsafe home situations.

Another option is a universal entitlement of up to 20 hours of free care per week, to ensure access for all children, while allowing parents to pay for additional hours above the entitlement. This policy recognises children’s right to early learning, and would be more straightforward than our current complex arrangements.

We argue an equitable and cost-effective option is to increase the subsidy for families on a combined income of A$68,163 from 85% to 95%, tapering to 50% for families with a combined income of $173,163.

The Grattan Institute estimates increasing the highest rate of the childcare subsidy to 95% would cost an additional A$5 billion per year.

Our analysis shows this could save low-income families close to half of their current childcare fees, making it easier for struggling families to keep their children engaged in early learning.

This would provide a triple dividend by supporting children’s access to early learning, putting more money back into family budgets and supporting economic recovery.

Beyond 2020, an ambitious and fair reform agenda aimed at improving educational outcomes and reducing inequality should consider a range of policy options.

But for now, increasing subsidy rates for low to medium income families is the best way to support access for children, parents’ workforce participation and economic recovery — as well as ensure the sector’s survival.

It’s a small investment to remove some of the pressure on Australian families, and our youngest children, at this very challenging time.

– ref. Increasing the childcare subsidy will help struggling families — and the economy – https://theconversation.com/increasing-the-childcare-subsidy-will-help-struggling-families-and-the-economy-142557

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Phoebe Macrossan, Associate Lecturer/Sessional Academic, Queensland University of Technology

While many teen films fade away never to be heard of again, Clueless, a loose adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma, has remained in the cultural consciousness since its 1995 release. Maybe it’s the catchy soundtrack, or familiar story about social comeuppance, or the endurance of the teen film as a genre. Most likely it’s a combination of many factors.

Austen’s Emma Woodhouse is transformed into Cher Horowitz (played by the then relatively unknown Alicia Silverstone), a Beverly Hills teenager, who — like her matchmaker predecessor — considers herself the centre of her social circle.

As in Emma, our clueless protagonist meddles in her friends’ lives, attempting to transform Tai (a modern day facsimile of orphaned and penniless Harriet Smith, played by Brittany Murphy) into a worldly and fashionable “catch” for the suitor of Cher’s choosing – the dashingly handsome Elton (in a rework of the original Mr Elton, played by Jeremy Sisto).

Read more: Friday essay: Jane Austen’s Emma at 200

Austen’s books have an enduring appeal for filmmakers – with varying levels of fidelity to their source material.

Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001) borrows from Pride and Prejudice (as does 2004’s Bride and Prejudice and 2016’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies); Whit Stilman’s Metropolitan (1990) adapts Mansfield Park; Ang Lee described Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) as “Sense and Sensibility with martial arts.” Austen’s life and books also inspired Becoming Jane (2007) and Austenland (2013).

Clueless has engendered a cult following since its release, leading to a number of spin-offs including books, comics, a television series (1996-1999) and even a 2018 jukebox musical written by the film’s writer-director Amy Heckerling.

Clueless was a labour of love for Heckerling. She worked on the script for years, as producers came and left and studios signed on and then abandoned the project. By the 1990s, Heckerling was an established director who had critical and commercial success with Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), National Lampoon’s European Vacation (1985) and Look Who’s Talking (1989).

One of only a few female directors working for major studios at the time, she had established herself as as strong voice in the teen film realm. As journalist Taffy Brodesser-Akner has written: “She was a woman who was somehow able to join a fraternity and thrive in it.” Eventually produced by Paramount, Clueless became the surprise sleeper hit of 1995.

Re-shaping the times

Clueless is a film out-of-time in many ways. Fashion, language, music and story are all taken from other eras and remixed to create a unique aesthetic.

In a nod to its literary roots, Clueless plays with language in interesting and memorable ways. The endlessly quotable movie had its teenage characters communicate with exaggerated affect.

At times, Cher seems to have her own language that requires translation. A “full on Monet” refers to someone who “from far away, it’s okay, but from up close, it’s a mess”.

A “Baldwin” is a cute guy, in reference to the famous and famously handsome Baldwin brothers.

Not only do the characters talk with an ironic knowingness, the characters comment knowingly on how they use language. Not long after we are introduced to Tai, she says to Cher, “You guys talk like grown ups”. Cher replies, “Oh this is a really good school.” One of the self-improvement tasks that Cher assigns Tai is to learn a new word every day. Her first word is “sporadically.”

The costumes are also aspirational. Clueless did not reflect the fashion of its time but re-shaped it. While we may think of Cher’s yellow plaid ensemble, organza shirt, white Calvin Klein mini and red Alaïa (“like a totally important designer”) dress as iconic 1990s fashion, in the early 90s high-school students were wearing grungey flannel and loose-fitting jeans, which did not fit Heckerling’s ideal aesthetic.

Costume designer Mona May brought together vintage styles, designer dresses and thrift shop finds to create Cher’s iconic style, which fused 1920s over-the-knee socks with 60s mod mini skirts and chic 90s figure-hugging designer dresses.

Cher’s iconic fashion still informs runways and street style, with today’s teens recreating these iconic looks.

Willow Smith paid homage to Cher in Cosmopolitan, Iggy Azalea casts herself as Cher in the music video for Fancy and Ariana Grande channelled her inner Cher for her 2019 world tour.

With its mansions, designer dresses and fancy cars, Cher’s world is a fantasy for most viewers. Heckerling said: “I wanted that feel of a fantasy that you would like to live in.”

Similarly, Austen’s Emma has been criticised for ignoring the political and economic realities of 1815, including widespread poverty and war. At the same time, economic survival is at the centre of Austen’s Emma: Harriet must marry or risk becoming a spinster like Miss Bates; Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax keep their engagement secret to avoid familial financial fallout; and Mr Elton improves his station by marrying the garish Miss Augusta Hawkins, just as Elton winds up with the irritating Amber (played by Elisa Donovan) in Clueless.

Read more: Friday essay: the revolutionary vision of Jane Austen

Nineties angst

Clueless’s soundtrack forms a key part of its success and popularity, but it also adds to the film’s sardonic humour, irony and character development.

An eclectic mix of 1990s American pop punk, hip hop and rock, along with covers of hits from the 1970s and 1980s, the music establishes the milieu and expresses characters’ internal emotions.

The film’s opening titles feature Californian punk rock band The Muffs’ cover of Kids in America over a montage of Cher and her friends driving through Beverly Hills in her jeep, shopping on Rodeo Drive, lounging by the pool, and talking and eating at the mall; all images of her extreme wealth, privilege and carefree teen life.

This is ironically undercut by Cher’s narration: “I actually have a way normal life for a teenage girl”.

David Bowie’s 1980 hit Fashion plays while she picks out an outfit on her computer and selects it from her motorised revolving wardrobe. The songs add to the ironic nature of the film’s commentary on Cher’s obliviousness to her own wealth and privilege.

Cher’s carefree feminised lifestyle is also mirrored in the lyrics of 1990s pop hits sung by women (I’m Just a Girl, Shoop, Supermodel), just as these pop hits are a reflection of her. Meanwhile her dopey love interest and ex-step-brother Josh (Paul Rudd) listens to — in Cher’s words — “the maudlin music of the university station” when he comes home from college.

Teen films often use the romantic comedy genre trope of two leads who start out either hating each other or from different worlds: different schools, friendship groups, sports teams, or social and class stratas. It’s jock vs. nerd, popular vs. unpopular, rich vs. poor.

The pleasure in watching their eventual romantic union comes from their compromise for each other, or their ability to break the strict social hierarchies of high-school and come together.

Of course, this trope far predates the teen film: it’s as much Shakespeare as it is Jane Austen.

In Clueless, musical taste forms a key part of distinguishing not just Cher from Josh, but the whole cast of girls from the boys. When the gang go to a party, they listen to Coolio’s Rollin’ with My Homies; Elton sings along to The Cranberries’ Away while driving Cher home; Tai and Cher watch Travis (Breckin Meyer) perform at a skating competition to The Beastie Boys’ Mullet Head.

Two songs bring the whole gang together: Where’d You Go? and Someday I Suppose, performed by ska punk band the Mighty Mighty Bosstones during a college party. Cher and Josh’s relationship begins to soften at this point, as everyone gets into the dancing — girls and boys together, at last.

The soundtrack also adds an ironic note to Cher’s eventual pivot towards Josh. To the sounds of 1990s pop singer Jewel singing a cover of All By Myself, Cher walks around Rodeo Drive feeling sorry for herself. When she realises she is in love with Josh, a fountain comically erupts behind her.

Tracking the teen girl film

The teen film has been around since the classical Hollywood era, largely defined by its youthful intended audience and subjects, rather than any consistent style or aesthetic. While Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney films of the 1930s may be considered forebearers of the teen film, the “teenager” is a relatively modern phenomenon, emerging post-World War II.

The post-war economic boom, the introduction of compulsory high school education in the US and the availability and affordability of cars lead to the increased visibility, mobility and financial independence of “teens” in the 1950s and 60s. The decline of the Hollywood studio system in the 1950s produced a spate of films where young people were central, catering for this newly identified “teenage” market.

These movies often incorporate elements of other genres. The “first” teen film, Rebel Without a Cause (1955), incorporates romance and drama tropes, telling the story of Jim Stark (James Dean) a rebellious teen who moves to a new town, starts at a new school, upsets the local gang and falls in love with Judy (Natalie Wood).

By the 1980s, teens had become a recognisable audience and were ripe for exploitation and capitalisation, particularly in the newly created multiplex cinemas. In the 1980s, middle-class US teens had disposable money and ample leisure time, which made them an ideal market segment.

The teen film – specifically the female-focused teen film – really came into prominence in with the John Hughes’ films starring Molly Ringwald: Sixteen Candles (1984), The Breakfast Club (1985) and Pretty in Pink (1986).

While these films had questionable sexual and gender politics reflective of their era (which Ringwald has addressed) they focused on teenage girls’ feelings with sincerity and humour in equal measure.

Clueless sits within this lineage but also starts a more ironic, knowing trend that lovingly pokes fun at both its characters and the genre conventions itself – much like Austen did.

This irony and knowingness are perhaps what makes Clueless so enduring. There is a depth to the writing that allows the viewer to laugh both with and at the characters. This can be attributed to Heckerling’s respect for them and their problems. As Paul Rudd said: “One of the things that I think is very clear in her work […] is just how much she loves young people and doesn’t talk down to them.”

Films like Legally Blonde (2001), Mean Girls (2004) and Easy A (2010) use irony and knowingness in their tone and humour and have become stand-out cult successes like Clueless.

These films stand in contrast to more sentimental and romantic teen girl films, such as The Spectacular Now (2013) and The Edge of Seventeen (2016), or the epic and earnest science fiction adaptations of young adult novels, such as Twilight (2008-2012) and The Hunger Games (2012-2015).

Read more: Serious themes for young adults sets The Hunger Games apart

Yet, the ironic teen rom-com hasn’t been lost. The teen-focused dramedy television series Sex Education (2019-2020) and indie film Booksmart (2019) have touched on the same sardonic humour.

But unlike Sex Education or Booksmart, Clueless was made by an established bankable director and supported by the marketing apparatus of a major US studio – Paramount.

In contrast, Booksmart was a much smaller film made by first-time director Olivia Wilde, produced by niche indie studio Annapurna Pictures and debuted at South by Southwest before its wider theatrical release.

25 years on, even as Heckerling was a “a pioneer as a female director”, her place as a woman working in the major studios is still an anomaly.

While Clueless’s winning combination of writing, cast, music and humour is yet to be matched, there is room for a Clueless of the 2020s.

But could Clueless ever be replaced in our hearts? As if!

– ref. Friday Essay: Clueless at 25 — like, a totally important teen film – https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-clueless-at-25-like-a-totally-important-teen-film-140749

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Teigan Cremona, Research Associate, Charles Darwin University

Most Australians are familiar with the cute, nectar-loving sugar glider (Petaurus breviceps), a marsupial denizen of forests in eastern and northern Australia.

However, our new study shows the sugar glider is actually three genetically and physically distinct species: Petaurus breviceps and two new species, Krefft’s glider (Petaurus notatus) and the savanna glider (Petaurus ariel).

This discovery has meant the distribution of the sugar glider has substantially reduced, and it’s now limited only to coastal regions in southeastern Australia. The devastating bushfires last summer hit this part of Australia hard.

Read more: Summer bushfires: how are the plant and animal survivors 6 months on? We mapped their recovery

Our new species from northern Australia, the savanna glider, is particularly at risk, living in a region that’s suffering ongoing small mammal declines. We must urgently assess the conservation status of both the sugar glider and savanna glider before they’re lost.

Nature’s BASE-jumpers

Our discovery of new Australian mammal species is rare and exciting. That’s because while Australia is filled with hidden and undiscovered animal and plant diversity, our mammal fauna is considered relatively well known, with more than 99% of all species scientifically described.

Perhaps Australia’s most graceful mammals, species of the genus Petaurus (meaning “rope-dancer”) have the unique ability to expand the skin between wrist and ankle to glide from tree to tree – they are nature’s BASE-jumpers. It’s believed these gliding capabilities evolved as a way to adapt to the open forests of Australia.

The palm-sized sugar glider, named after its insatiable appetite for all things sweet, is the most widely known member of the genus and is commonly kept and bred in captivity around the world.

From the Aussie outback to London’s Natural History Museum

An investigation into sugar glider genetics a decade ago highlighted two divergent groups within the species, suggesting sugar gliders may represent more than one species.

In that study, scientists also unexpectedly found that one glider from Melville Island in the Northern Territory was genetically distinct from sugar gliders. Instead, this Melville Island glider showed a close relationship with two larger existing species, the squirrel glider (Petaurus norfolcensis) and mahogany glider (Petaurus gracilis).

Prompted by this unusual finding, we investigated the mysterious glider’s identity.

From some of the most remote areas of outback Australia to our vast national museum collections, and ultimately the hallowed halls of London’s Natural History Museum, we captured, measured and compared every glider we could find to evaluate their relationships.

Indigenous knowledge of the savanna glider Petaurus ariel and the contributions of local Aboriginal people were also invaluable to our investigation.

The savanna glider is culturally significant and valued across multiple language groups in northern Australia and we are grateful to the Traditional Owners for sharing their knowledge of the species and its habitat.

In the end, we assessed more than 300 live and preserved specimens and established three species where once there was one.

Meet the new gliders

The savanna glider lives in the woodland savannas of northern Australia and looks a bit like a squirrel glider with a more pointed nose, but much smaller. The remaining two species look similar to each other and may overlap in some areas of southeastern Australia.

Krefft’s glider has a clearly defined dorsal stripe and fluffy tail. It is widespread in eastern Australia and has been introduced to Tasmania.

The sugar glider, with a less-defined dorsal stripe, is apparently restricted to forests east of the Great Dividing Range, extending from southeast Queensland to around the border of New South Wales and Victoria.

What does this mean for sugar gliders?

Despite ongoing debate about the role of taxonomy (the science of classifying species) in conservation, it is clear from our work that species definitions provide an essential foundation for effective conservation.

When considered as one species, sugar gliders were widespread, abundant and officially classified as “least concern”.

The distinction of these three species has resulted in a substantially smaller distribution for the sugar glider, making the species vulnerable to large scale habitat destruction, such as the recent bushfires.

And sadly, the bushfires have incinerated a large proportion of the sugar glider’s updated range. Given they are tree hollow users and require a diverse habitat with a variety of foods, the bushfires have most likely had a devastating effect on this much-loved species.

Read more: Click through the tragic stories of 119 species still struggling after Black Summer in this interactive (and how to help)

The savanna glider is disappearing

Our work has shown urgent intervention is needed to save this important plant pollinator and icon of the Australian bush.

The savanna glider in particular is facing its own conservation concerns in the ongoing northern Australian small mammal declines. Tree-dwelling mammals are among those worst affected there, and it appears the savanna glider is no exception.

An earlier study of ours showed the species has undergone a 35% range reduction over the last 30 years, and is slowly disappearing from the inland areas it once inhabited. It’s likely feral cats, changed fire regimes and feral herbivores have played a significant role in the savanna glider’s vanishing range.

It would be a tragedy if this species is lost to the world just as it was discovered, especially with Australia’s appalling track record of human-induced mammal extinctions.

Read more: Scientists and national park managers are failing northern Australia’s vanishing mammals

More scientific work is urgently needed. We must define the distinct ecology of each species and determine their distribution in more detail.

This will enable us to effectively assess the conservation status of each species and determine what management efforts are required to ensure their protection as they face an uncertain future.

– ref. A rare discovery: we found the sugar glider is actually three species, but one is disappearing fast – https://theconversation.com/a-rare-discovery-we-found-the-sugar-glider-is-actually-three-species-but-one-is-disappearing-fast-142807

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marcus Luigi Spiller, Associate Professor of Urban Planning (honorary), University of Melbourne

The Grattan Institute’s call to “abandon” plans for any high-speed rail network in Australia fails to look at the wider benefits such a project can bring by way of more productive economies and more sustainable towns and cities.

The study authors argue the development of any bullet train network linking Brisbane to Melbourne via Sydney and Canberra is “unsuitable for Australia”.

Read more: Look beyond a silver bullet train for stimulus

But what their argument neglects is that a project like high-speed rail has a unique capacity to reshape cities and population settlement patterns in positive ways.

A question of cost

The institute’s study says the idea of high-speed rail is an unwanted distraction in policy-making for the nation’s transport future. Its case relies on a review of the high-speed rail experience in Europe, Japan and China.

All of these nations, it says, have vastly different distributions of towns and major cities to that in Australia, which has extremely long distances between a few large cities.

The study also critiques a 2013 Commonwealth analysis that found a A$130 billion high-speed rail project linking Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne would generate a benefit-cost ratio of 2.3 to 1. So every A$1 invested in a high-speed rail network would generate A$2.30 in benefits such as travel time savings, avoided vehicle operating costs and reduced road congestion.

But the Grattan study authors say that figure is based on a “cherry-picked” discount rate of 4%. This is economics jargon for the minimum return that the community would expect from the investment of its collective resources in any project.

The Grattan study also says the 2013 cost-benefit analysis did not allow for cost over-runs. Nor did it consider the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the enormous quantities of concrete and steel needed to build the infrastructure.

Read more: High-speed rail on Australia’s east coast would increase emissions for up to 36 years

So why are some people, including the federal Labor Party, still so enamoured with the idea of high-speed rail when others would have it binned?

Some projects reshape cities

Not all transport infrastructure projects are equal when it comes to cost-benefit analysis. Some investments have a transformative effect on population settlement patterns – they shape cities and regions.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Melbourne Underground Rail Loop are classic examples of city-shaping projects. Each altered travel times between different parts of the metropolis, which then shifted the location preferences of households and businesses. This led to a substantially different city structure compared to what might otherwise have developed.

Other projects, the vast majority of government transport outlays, merely follow or service the pattern of settlement established by the city-shaping investments. These “follower” projects include the local arterial roads and tramways that circulate people and goods within cities.

The Commonwealth’s official guidelines for major project evaluation recognise this distinction.

New ways of living, learning, working and playing become possible with city-shaping projects. By comparison, the procession of follower projects simply perpetuates settlement patterns and economic structures.

This is the claim and appeal of high-speed rail. Advocates argue such an investment would divert a significant proportion of urban growth from the far-flung suburbs of metropolitan areas to new regional locations. That’s because these regions will then have similar travel times into core city labour markets.

In these regional locations, households would enjoy greater housing choice and affordability, more walkability and better access to open space. They could even have better access to a range of community facilities than their metro suburban counterparts.

Read more: We can halve train travel times between our cities by moving to faster rail

Advocates also argue businesses in the big cities and intervening regional areas will be able to connect with each other at lower cost and source the skills they need more efficiently. This would boost productivity.

Consider all the benefits

The 2013 analysis took into account issues such as congestion, emissions (from travel) and transport accidents. But it did not attempt to quantify and monetise the effects of high-speed rail shaping cities and regions.

Arguably, the most important set of benefits from this investment were left out of the economic evaluation, simply because they are difficult to measure.

Modelling how the supply chains of businesses might change under the influence of city-shaping projects, or how the housing preferences of people might shift, is undoubtedly challenging. But being difficult to measure makes these impacts no less real.

Despite this limitation on the scope of benefits, the 2013 study said the high-speed rail project would return a benefit-cost ratio of 1.1 at a 7% discount rate, which the Grattan study says is the usual test applied to transport projects.

Read more: Smart money: a better way for Australia to select big transport infrastructure projects

Grattan says the project barely scrapes in at this higher discount rate and implies many other projects would offer ratios greater than 1:1 and should be preferred. These would typically be smaller, follower projects that address local congestion problems.

But a project achieving a 1.1 benefit-cost ratio means Australia would still be better off undertaking the project compared to a business-as-usual case.

If the transformative effects of high-speed rail include more compact and walkable cities with less car dependency and greater productivity, then such a network has good reason to keep its grip on the Australian imagination.

– ref. Don’t abandon plans for high-speed rail in Australia – just look at all the benefits – https://theconversation.com/dont-abandon-plans-for-high-speed-rail-in-australia-just-look-at-all-the-benefits-139563

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW

As a second COVID-19 lockdown looms in New South Wales, there is much discussion about the economic costs of doing so.

But since the start of this pandemic there has been profound confusion in many quarters about the economic cost of the virus compared to the economic cost of lockdowns.

It should come as no surprise that having a highly contagious virus with a significant fatality rate running through the community is bad for the economy.

People are afraid to congregate in public or catch public transport or taxis. People don’t want to spend much money when they have debts to pay and their job might be at risk.

This leads to what I have called a “self-lockdown”. No matter what the government mandates, people cut back on economic activity.

Of course, government-coordinated lockdowns entail an extra short-term cost to the economy. Closing pubs and restaurants means those businesses, for a time, have zero revenue.

Read more: Vital Signs: The evidence that lockdowns work may not be gold standard, but it’s good

But how much of the reduction in economic activity is due to the virus, and how much to government lockdowns?

It is crucial to understand this. Because it is the incremental cost of the lockdowns that represents the investment we make in the economy of the future by getting the virus under control. If we think the cost of lockdowns is higher than it really is, we won’t enact them in cases where on balance we should.

Evidence from the United States

The best evidence to date on this matter comes from a remarkable paper circulated in June by University of Chicago economists Austan Goolsbee and Chad Syverson.

To analyse the causal effect of government policy on the US economy during the initial spread of COVID-19, they used mobile phone data to measure foot traffic at 2.25 million individual businesses across 110 industries in the US.

To estimate what proportion of lower foot traffic was due to self-lockdown rather than government-imposed lockdown, they looked at differences between businesses with customer “commuting zones” spanning state or county jurisdictions with different legal restrictions. As they put it:

This leverages two related types of variation: businesses in border-spanning commuting zones where jurisdictions impose shelter-in-place orders at different times (e.g., northern Illinois when Illinois placed a sheltering order on March 20th while Wisconsin waited until the following week), and businesses in commuting zones where a jurisdiction never imposed an order (e.g., the Quad Cities area, where the Illinois towns of Moline and Rock Island faced stay-at-home orders but bordering Davenport and Bettendorf, Iowa, did not).

Goolsbee and Syverson found total consumer traffic fell by 60 percentage points, but legal restrictions accounted for just 7 percentage points of this. That is, it caused less than 12% of the total effect.

Breaking down the data further, they show fear of infection largely drove individual decisions to reduce activity.

In fact, foot traffic “started dropping before the legal orders were in place; was highly influenced by the number of COVID deaths reported in the county; and showed a clear shift by consumers away from busier, more crowded stores toward smaller, less busy stores in the same industry”.

Strikingly, US states that decided to repeal shutdown orders witnessed recoveries of a similar, symmetric size. This is further evidence of the modest incremental impact of lockdowns relative to the larger impact of the virus itself.

Lessons for Australia

We need to stop thinking about lockdowns as representing the total economic hit we take from COVID-19. The virus itself is hugely damaging. Lockdowns add to that, but come with an important benefit – getting the virus under control.

Early in the pandemic, the Australian Treasury estimated Australia’s GDP would fall 10-12% in the June quarter.

Since Treasurer Josh Frydenberg cited this estimate in his National Press Club address on May 5, many have used it to calculate the the cost of a national lockdown at A$4 billion a week.

That is, Australia’s GDP is about A$2 trillion annually, so a 10% contraction is $200 billion a year, or about $4 billion a week.

But is this really the cost of the lockdown? How much of the estimated 10% drop in GDP for the June quarter is due to the virus and self-lockdown, not government lockdowns?

Read more: The costs of the shutdown are overestimated — they’re outweighed by its $1 trillion benefit

If the Goolsbee-Syverson numbers translate to Australia, then the lockdown cost is closer to A$450 million a week.

That’s still a lot, but a six-week nationwide investment of $2.7 billion to get the virus under control and boost consumer and business confidence was money well spent.

Berejiklian’s dilemma

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has said she doesn’t want to enact a second lockdown because of the hit to economy.

If the current outbreak can be dealt with through rapid contract tracing, testing and isolation, this may be wise.

Read more: Vital Signs: We’re testing 50,000 Australians a day for COVID-19. Should it be 6.5 million?

But if the number of daily cases gets beyond a manageable point, a lockdown might be the only way to stop the spread of the virus.

The best evidence to date shows we cannot have a well-functioning economy with COVID-19 running rampant. That leads to a very costly self-lockdown, regardless of what the government does.

– ref. Vital Signs: government lockdown costs may be exaggerated over COVID-19’s direct economic impact – https://theconversation.com/vital-signs-government-lockdown-costs-may-be-exaggerated-over-covid-19s-direct-economic-impact-142710

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

In the midst of our present crisis, this week’s release of the Palace letters has taken us back to the debate about another crisis, massive at the time and of lasting significance but rather put into perspective by COVID-19.

For many younger people, the extraordinary events of November 11 1975 would hold absolutely no interest. They might know who Gough Whitlam was, but John Kerr?

For a lot of those who remember that dramatic day, however, it was like no other in modern politics.

The Palace letters have reignited the argument about Kerr’s action in dismissing Whitlam, and what really happened behind the scenes.

The correspondence between the then governor-general and the Queen’s private secretary Martin Charteris gives an intimate running insight into the building drama, and Kerr’s thinking, including his desire to inundate the Palace with material amid his concern it might be too much. Charteris assures him: “The Queen is absorbing it with interest and is very grateful to you for taking so much trouble to keep her informed”.

In his letters Charteris steers between careful formality, reassurance to a man under pressure, and some chatty commentary. He tells Kerr he was relieved Whitlam had abandoned his idea of asking the governor-general to assent to the appropriation bills if they were rejected. “From your point of view this would have been a real bouncer and not at all easy to play!”

Read more: ‘Palace letters’ show the queen did not advise, or encourage, Kerr to sack Whitlam government

These fascinating documents have provided grist for protagonists on both sides of the dismissal debate.

Kerr’s defenders point to his November 11 letter reporting he hadn’t informed the Queen he was about to sack Whitlam. “I was of the opinion that it was better for Her Majesty not to know in advance.”

Those who argue the Palace interfered highlight the correspondence before the dismissal, in which Kerr and Charteris canvass options and the constitution.

Charteris told Kerr the governor-general’s reserve powers did exist, despite claims to the contrary, but “it is only at the very end when there is demonstrably no other course that they should be used.” After the dismissal, a major criticism of Kerr was that he acted too early.

The Palace, which resisted the letters being made public, entered the debate after their release, saying they confirmed neither the Queen nor the Royal Household “had any part to play in Kerr’s decision to dismiss Whitlam.”

The letters won’t close the old argument – the question is whether they’ll give any new life to the debate about an Australian republic. Anthony Albanese seized the occasion to say Kerr’s action “to put himself above the Australian people” reinforced “the need for us to have an Australian head of state … the need for us to stand on our own two feet”.

By now, Australia should have been a republic for two decades. We had the chance in the 1999 referendum, and we blew it. The yes vote was defeated by several factors – including divisions among pro-republic Liberals, the cunning of then prime minister John Howard, and the conservatism of Australians when asked to change the constitution.

Since them the difficulties have increased and may be insurmountable. There are multiple reasons why change could be even harder second time round (even after the Queen’s reign ends).

The issue probably resonates less than in the 1990s. It would be caught up in the culture wars, which have become deeper and more destructive in recent years.

Read more: The big reveal: Jenny Hocking on what the ‘palace letters’ may tell us, finally, about The Dismissal

Most important, it would be near impossible to get a model that was both safe and saleable.

The 1999 model was for a president appointed by a two-thirds majority of federal parliament. There was no attempt to codify the powers of the president, despite the governor-general’s “reserve powers” being at the core of the 1975 crisis.

These days, the public would almost certainly want the president directly elected. But that would carry risks. It could lead to competitive tension between a popular president and an unpopular prime minister.

The powers of a popularly-elected president would need to be clearly spelled out (codified). As Malcolm Turnbull writes in his book A Bigger Picture, “Nobody would seriously contemplate leaving the powers of a directly elected president in the undefined, and thus potentially uncertain, world of convention”.

One compromise some suggest would be to remove the circumstances that caused the 1975 crisis by taking away the Senate’s power to block supply. Good luck with that.

Many politicians and constitutional experts would be uncomfortable with a direct-elect model.

Controversy over the model would translate into a divided electorate. And when it comes to referendums, division is certainty deadly.

Look at what’s been happening with the attempt to put recognition of Indigenous people into the constitution. You’d think this should be relatively easy. It’s anything but.

Under cover of the pandemic, the government has abandoned minister Ken Wyatt’s ambition for a referendum this term. But there wasn’t enough agreement anyway.

The challenge of finding acceptable wording for recognition is formidable (just as devising an acceptable republican model is fraught). And a referendum for Indigenous recognition, like one for a republic, would bog down in the culture wars.

Despite the problems, the optimists would think we could achieve both changes. The pessimists would doubt either is attainable in the foreseeable future.

Read more: ‘Palace letters’ reveal the palace’s fingerprints on the dismissal of the Whitlam government

It’s an academic question admittedly, but it is worth asking ourselves which of these constitutional changes would be of more significance to our identity as a nation.

Those who’d nominate moving to a republic would start with the obvious – we should have an Australian head of state.

They’d also say becoming a republic would boost Australia’s image in our region, although one suspects this point is weaker than previously – we’re less defined in our neighbourhood by our British ties these days.

Those who’d prefer the limited political capital to be spent on Indigenous recognition would emphasise how overdue this is, and how symbolically important.

While the flow-on effects shouldn’t be over-estimated – the Apology didn’t work miracles – recognition could help generate goodwill and co-operation needed for tangible improvements in the lives of disadvantaged Indigenous people.

Recognition of First Australians would be a gesture of reconciliation as well as a statement of our values as a nation.

To my mind, it is a higher priority than the republic.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Palace letters make great reading but leave a republic as far away as ever – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-palace-letters-make-great-reading-but-leave-a-republic-as-far-away-as-ever-142837

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexis Vassiley, PhD candidate, School of Management, Curtin University

Monash University will reportedly cut 277 jobs by the end of the year, due to projecting a more than A$300 million financial shortfall caused by COVID-19. It comes after the vice chancellor of another Group of Eight university, UNSW, Ian Jacobs, announced on Wednesday the university would cut 493 jobs.

These announcements are the latest in a long line of cuts to university workers’ pay, conditions and job losses across the country in recent months. In May, Universities Australia projected 21,000 job losses in the next six months, with more to go after that. The group’s modelling shows Australia’s universities could lose $16 billion in revenue between now and 2023, largely due to the loss of international student enrolments.

University staff have borne the brunt of this funding crisis. The government has not increased funding for the higher education sector, and excluded public universities from the JobKeeper scheme.

University after university has sacked casual staff – which make up up to 70% of teaching staff at some universities — and declined to extend the contracts of fixed-term staff. While the cuts at UNSW include full time staff, in April, around one-third of casuals at the university had reported having lost work.

La Trobe and RMIT university had let go of hundreds of casual “non-essential” staff in the same month.

Casual jobs lost run into the thousands nationwide, but the full extent of losses is unknown. Casual staff are flexible labour, so reliable statistics are not kept. An idea of the scale can be garnered by La Trobe vice chancellor John Dewar’s statement A$7 million had been saved at his institution by cutting casual jobs.

Read more: Why is the Australian government letting universities suffer?

What about the union deal?

The context for industrial relations in universities is the National Tertiary Education Union’s (NTEU) National Jobs Protection Framework — an agreement negotiated between the NTEU national leadership and a representative group of four university vice chancellors in March this year.

The premise of the deal was ask some staff to take wage cuts and pay freezes in return for saving some jobs.

Category A universities could implement cuts of up to 10%. Category B universities – those most affected by revenue reduction – could cut some staff’s pay by up to 15%. Category C comprises the small number of universities hardly affected financially by COVID-19, who would not make changes. Clauses requiring consultation before major restructures in existing enterprise agreements would be severely weakened. Union officials estimated 90% of universities would fall into Category A or B.

This controversial plan sparked a civil war in the union, and was withdrawn on May 26, having been released less than two weeks earlier.

Staff meetings, including branch committees and members’ meetings, in around 15 universities voted against the concessions in the framework. In the end only four (Charles Sturt, Monash, UWA and La Trobe universities) — out of Australia’s 39 vice chancellors signed up to it.

Critics of this strategy argued offering reductions to hard-won pay and conditions showed weakness from the union and would only lead to further attacks on conditions by the universities. They said the wage cuts were unnecessary, and pointed to the vague nature of the job protections. Instead they advocated a political and industrial campaign by the union to defend members’ pay and conditions and demand the government fully fund the industry.

Read more: More than 70% of academics at some universities are casuals. They’re losing work and are cut out of JobKeeper

Since then, agreements based on, or similar to the union’s framework, have gone through on a number of campuses, supported by the NTEU leadership.

La Trobe University’s amended enterprise agreement allows for pay reductions of up 15%. This is $174 per fortnight for those on the median full-time wage of $65,000. Shortly after the all-staff vote and despite 239 voluntary redundancies, La Trobe announced it was looking at 215-415 forced redundancies later in the year.

This indicates there is no guarantee that voting to support cuts to wages and conditions will prevent job losses.

Staff don’t have to pay for crisis

At the University of Western Australia, a combination of compulsory taking of unpaid leave and pay cuts means staff will have almost 10% less in their pockets. Monash University, the Western Sydney University and the University of Tasmania have also seen union-management schemes which reduce staff pay. And, as we have seen, Monash will be slashing jobs anyway. Although vice chancellor Margaret Gardner says they have managed to save 190 of them.

Hundreds of job losses have also been announced at Central Queensland University, Southern Cross University and Deakin University. The picture is bleak. But it is by rejecting the notion only staff pay and conditions are the flexible factors in the equation —and being prepared to campaign against university administrations and governments on this basis — that the sector can be improved for staff, students and the public.

Read more: The government is making ‘job-ready’ degrees cheaper for students – but cutting funding to the same courses

Universities have financial resources — property, bequests and philanthropic funds and access to lines of credit — they can access rather than forcing staff to sacrifice pay and conditions, or lose their jobs. The notion of public education as a public good must be re-asserted, especially in the face of the government’s unfavourable stance towards universities.

By staff rejecting concessions on pay and conditions, fighting for every job, and organising towards industrial action in next year’s bargaining round, they can start to put pressure on universities to treat them better, and the government to increase funding.

Kaye Broadbent was a casual academic at Central Queensland University until she lost her job in a recent round of cuts. She co-authored this article.

– ref. Universities are cutting hundreds of jobs – they, and the government, can do better – https://theconversation.com/universities-are-cutting-hundreds-of-jobs-they-and-the-government-can-do-better-142824

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

Jane Halton, who formerly headed the federal health and finance departments, is chair of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness.

CEPI, founded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is at the forefront of the international search for a COVID-19 vaccine.

She is also a member of the Morrison government’s National COVID-19 Coordination Commission, which liaises with business and advises government on how to mitigate the economic and social impacts of the pandemic.

Currently she’s undertaking a nationwide review of the hotel quarantine system.

Halton, who when in the public service took part in a government pandemic rehearsal, says Australia was relatively ready. But she says that inevitably, when there’s a review in the wake of COVID-19, there’ll be a lot to learn from this experience. “Just like we’ve learnt from H1N1…just like we’ve learned from SARS.

“But in the short term, the systems stood up capacity really quickly, which is great.”

On the reality of vaccine being developed, while it might not be soon, Halton is relatively optimistic.

“Look, there are lots of experts who are both optimistic and pessimistic.”

“The experts that I work with, they are probably what I would describe as moderately optimistic. Now, they sort of have to be because they’re working on this and they are spending huge hours every day, every week in this race. And so they have to think that there’s the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But there’s a pretty significant number of scientists who do think it’s possible.”

Additional audio

A List of Ways to Die, Lee Rosevere, from Free Music Archive.

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Jane Halton on the risk of ‘vaccine nationalism’ – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-jane-halton-on-the-risk-of-vaccine-nationalism-142830

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nigel McMillan, Program Director, Infectious Diseases and Immunology, Menzies Health Institute, Griffith University

How is the world going to go back to the days when we could grab a coffee, see a movie, or attend a concert or footy game with anyone?

Opinion suggests there are two options: an effective vaccine, or herd immunity via at least 60-80% of people becoming infected. Either one of these options requires that people become immune to SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

An important new study released online this week could have a large bearing on how our future looks in 2021 and beyond.

It suggests our immunity to SARS-CoV-2 does not last very long at all — as little as two months for some people. If this is the case, it means a potential vaccine might require regular boosters, and herd immunity might not be viable at all.

Read more: Lockdown, relax, repeat: how cities across the globe are going back to coronavirus restrictions

Immunity dwindles quickly

Antibodies are an important part of our immune system that mainly work by physically binding to virus particles and stopping them infecting cells. They can attach to infected cells to induce cell death in some cases.

We also have T cells, another part of the immune system that is much better at recognising and killing virus-infected cells. But for COVID-19, antibodies are important in the lungs because T cells aren’t good at getting to airways where the virus first invades.

The newly released research, from Katie Doores and her team at Kings College London, looked at how long the antibody response lasted in people who had COVID-19. It has been submitted to a journal but hasn’t been peer-reviewed, so it must be treated with some caution.

Of the 65 patients studied, 63 produced antibody responses. The important measurements in the study relate to how good the response is. This is measured in the lab by putting patients’ blood serum together with infectious SARS-CoV-2 virus and seeing whether the virus can infect cells in a lab dish. This is called a “neutralisation assay”, and here the results were good.

Around 60% of people produced a very potent neutralisation response that stopped virus growing in the lab cells.

Finally, the researchers measured how long the antibody response lasted. This is the most important data. Unfortunately, antibodies levels began falling after day 20 and only 17% of patients retained a potent level at day 57. Some patients completely lost their antibodies after two months.

This suggests our immune response to SARS-CoV-2 may be lost much faster than we might have hoped, and people might thereafter be susceptible to reinfection with the virus.

Read more: Eradication, elimination, suppression: let’s understand what they mean before debating Australia’s course

One vaccine might not be enough

It therefore follows that COVID-19 vaccines may not be as effective as we hope. The fact antibody levels reduce over time is normal, but this typically happens much more slowly. Antibody responses against the mumps, measles and chickenpox viruses last for more than 50 years. A tetanus vaccination wanes more quickly but still lasts 5-10 years before a booster is needed.

So why is this happening? It comes down to the nature of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus itself. The four normal strains of coronaviruses that cause common colds in humans also fail to prompt a long-lasting immune response, with most people losing antibodies completely after 6-12 months. Coronaviruses in general seems to be particularly good at not being well recognised by our immune system. Indeed, a feature of common cold coronaviruses is that people get reinfected by them all the time.

SARS, another coronavirus which caused a pandemic in 2003, seems to produce a slightly longer antibody response, lasting up to three years. It’s still a long way short of a lifetime, but it perhaps helps explain why the virus disappeared in 2003.

Herd immunity might be in trouble

So herd immunity may not be the solution some think. This is because if immunity is short-lived, we will be in an ongoing cycle of endless reinfection. For herd immunity to be effective we need a high percentage (perhaps more than 60%) of people to be immune at any one time to disrupt chains of transmission. This can’t happen if a lot of reinfection is occurring.

The hope is vaccines will give much stronger and longer lasting immune responses to the virus than getting and recovering from COVID-19 itself. Indeed, the first vaccine candidates from Pfizer and Moderna, reported in early July, show very strong immune responses.

However, these studies only reported out to 14 and 57 days, respectively, after vaccinations were completed. They don’t tell us whether there is a long-lived response that we would need for a vaccine to be truly protective. Phase 3 trials designed to measure this are due to report in December 2020, so watch this space.

While we wait, we should reflect on the fact that although the results of the Kings College study are in one sense disappointing news, this knowledge adds to the truly remarkable scientific progress we have made in understanding a virus that only emerged in December 2019.

This article is supported by the Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas.

– ref. Immunity to COVID-19 may not last. This threatens a vaccine and herd immunity – https://theconversation.com/immunity-to-covid-19-may-not-last-this-threatens-a-vaccine-and-herd-immunity-142556

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kobi Leins, Senior Research Fellow in Digital Ethics, University of Melbourne

The list of US figures whose Twitter accounts were hijacked by scammers on Wednesday US time reads like a Who’s Who of the tech and celebrity worlds: Tesla boss Elon Musk, Amazon chief Jeff Bezos, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, former president Barack Obama, current Democratic nominee Joe Biden, celebrities Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, billionaires Warren Buffett and Mike Bloomberg, the corporate accounts of Apple and Uber, and more besides.

The point of the hack? To lure followers into sending US$1,000 in Bitcoin, with the classic scammer’s false promise of sending back twice as as much.

After a preliminary investigation, Twitter said it believed the incident was “a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools”.

The details are still far from clear, but it seems likely someone with administrative rights may have granted the hackers access, perhaps inadvertently, despite the presence of two-factor authentication on the accounts – widely considered the gold standard of online security. It appears insiders may have been involved, although the story is still unfolding.

The use of the niche currency Bitcoin limited the number of potential victims, but also makes the hackers’ loot impossible to trace. Ironically enough, Bitcoin is a currency designed for a post-trust world, and the anonymity of its transactions makes the hackers even harder to track down.

Whom do we trust?

This is not the first time we have seen the complex and profound impact social media can have. In 2013, hackers gained access to @AP, the official Twitter account of the respected Associated Press news agency, and tweeted:

Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is Injured.

The stock market dived by US$136.5 billion almost immediately but bounced back within six minutes, illustrating the interconnected systems that move so quickly a human cannot intervene – algorithms read the headlines and the stock market collapsed, albeit fleetingly.

By shorting stocks, whoever hacked AP’s Twitter account stood to make enormous profits from the temporary stock market tank. We do not know what the financial benefits, if any, to the hackers in 2013 were.

Read more: Why the AP hack is likely to happen again

This week’s Twitter hack definitely had financial motives. The Bitcoin scammers in this recent hack netted more than US$50,000.

More sinister still, however, are the implications for democracy if a similar hack were carried out with political motives.

What if a reliable source, such as a national newspaper’s official account, tweets that a presidential candidate has committed a crime, or is seriously ill, on the eve of an election? What if false information about international armed attacks is shared from a supposedly reliable source such as a government defence department? The impacts of such events would be profound, and go far beyond financial loss.

This is the inherent danger of our growing reliance on social media platforms as authoritative sources of information. As media institutions decline in size, funding and impact, the public increasingly relies on social media platforms for news.

The Bitcoin scam is a reminder that any social media platform can be hacked, tampered with, or used to spread false information. Even gold-standard technical systems can be outwitted, perhaps by exploiting human vulnerabilities. A disgruntled employee, a careless password selection, or even a device used in a public space can pose grave risks.

Who’s in charge?

The question of who polices the vast power accrued by social media platforms is a crucial one. Twitter’s reaction to the hack – temporarily shutting down all accounts verified with the “blue tick” that connotes public interest – raised the ire of high-profile users (and prompted mirth among those not bestowed with Twitter’s mark of legitimacy). But the underlying question is: who decides what is censored or shut down, and under what circumstances? And should companies do this themselves, or do they need a regulatory framework to ensure fairness and transparency?

Broader questions have already been raised about when Twitter, Facebook or other social media platforms should or should not censor content. Facebook was heavily criticised for not removing oppressive posts about Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, and what the United Nations referred to as a genocide ensued. Twitter much later suspended some accounts that had been inciting violence, with some criticism.

Read more: Instead of showing leadership, Twitter pays lip service to the dangers of deep fakes

What is the responsibility of such platforms, and who should govern them, as we become more heavily reliant on social media for our news? As the platforms’ power and influence continue to grow, we need rigorous frameworks to hold them accountable.

Last month, the Australian government pledged a A$1.3 billion funding increase and an extra 500 staff for the Australian Signals Directorate, to boost its ability to defend Australia from attacks. Australia’s forthcoming 2020 Cyber Security Strategy will hopefully also include strategies to proactively improve cyber security and digital literacy.

In an idea world, social media giants would regulate themselves. But here in the real world, the stakes are too high to let the platforms police themselves.

– ref. The Twitter hack targeted the rich and famous. But we all lose if trusted accounts can be hijacked – https://theconversation.com/the-twitter-hack-targeted-the-rich-and-famous-but-we-all-lose-if-trusted-accounts-can-be-hijacked-142819

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nic Geard, Senior Lecturer, School of Computing and Information Systems, University of Melbourne; Senior Research Fellow, Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, University of Melbourne

Throughout the second half of May and into June, almost all COVID-19 cases in New South Wales were arrivals from overseas. Only ten locally acquired cases were recorded in the seven weeks before July 6, when a case related to importation from Victoria was notified.

That changed in early July, with the emergence of a cluster of local transmission centred on the Crossroads Hotel in southwestern Sydney. Evidently seeded from Victoria, this cluster had grown to include at least 40 linked cases by July 16.

Can Sydney expect a second wave of infections similar to the one that drove Melburnians back into lockdown?

How similar is this outbreak to the situation in Melbourne?

Melbourne has been dealing with a series of localised outbreaks over the past three months. By mid-June there were several separate clusters with no obvious links to one another. But genomic analysis suggests many of these may be linked to quarantine breaches at the Stamford Plaza hotel.

The absence of clear links between these clusters suggests there may have already been considerable undetected community transmission. Despite increased testing in affected suburbs, the growth in cases with no identifiable source has posed challenges for contact tracers.

Read more: Victoria’s coronavirus contact tracers are already under the pump. What happens next?

By contrast, Sydney’s outbreak is currently focused around a single location, with most newly detected cases linked back to the Crossroads Hotel. This suggests there may still be an opportunity to contain this outbreak before it spreads further.

However, the possibility of further undetected outbreaks either having already been seeded from Victoria or occurring in the future can’t be ruled out. NSW must remain on high alert.

How can Sydney’s outbreak be contained?

Genomic evidence suggesting the Crossroads Hotel cluster is linked to Victorian cases is reassuring. The alternative – an unknown source – would imply there is undetected community transmission in Sydney.

However, the location of the outbreak at a hotel, and the large number of people potentially exposed, is concerning. Two of the latest infections were contracted at a nearby gym visited by an infectious person, highlighting that transmission from this cluster is ongoing.

After infection, it can take several days to develop symptoms of COVID-19, and some infected people show only mild or no symptoms. These people are at risk of seeding further outbreaks if they continue to move about and interact. Several other venues, including the Star Casino, have been identified as potential sites of transmission. The geographic dispersion of hotel patrons also makes contact tracing more difficult.

What can NSW learn from Victoria’s experience?

We know from earlier outbreaks, such as the Cedar Meats cluster in Melbourne, that COVID-19 can be brought under control. However, that outbreak happened when there were still significant restrictions on movement and gathering sizes.

The current outbreak in NSW is occurring after a period of relative complacency, and against a background of increased social interactions and relaxed restrictions.

In Victoria, restrictions were reintroduced in response to the current outbreak. Initially these “stay at home” directions applied to selected postcodes, but were subsequently extended to the whole of metropolitan Melbourne and Mitchell Shire.

As the cases detected now are a result of infections up to two weeks ago, it is still too early to see the full effect of these restrictions. The rate of new cases does appear to be plateauing amid ongoing high levels of testing. However, the government has not ruled out limiting movement even further.

Lockdown is hard, and can have adverse effects on mental and physical health, on people’s livelihoods, and on the prospects of businesses that have only recently reopened.

There is also the question of whether people will comply with prolonged or repeated restrictions.

Read more: Coronavirus spike: why getting people to follow restrictions is harder the second time around

Mobility data shows that levels of compliance with social distancing waned as the first wave was brought under control, even before restrictions were formally eased. It is hard to tell whether this was driven mainly by a reduced perception of risk by the public, or by a growing weariness of isolation and social distancing.

It has become apparent that some aspects of Victoria’s response could have been improved. Communication with culturally and linguistically diverse populations is important, to ensure everyone understands what they are being asked to do and why. It is vital people are supported to self-isolate, get tested, and stay away from work, and Victoria has recently introduced a Worker Support Payment for this purpose.

What’s next for NSW?

The main question facing Sydney is whether it will be necessary to return to lockdown as Melbourne has done, or whether a less disruptive solution will prove sufficient.

The success of many states and territories in maintaining very low case numbers has prompted suggestions Australia should pursue an elimination strategy. But this will almost certainly require more widespread lockdowns.

Read more: Eradication, elimination, suppression: let’s understand what they mean before debating Australia’s course

NSW has ruled out a return to lockdown but has left the door open for increasing restrictions to continue suppressing the virus.

Melbourne’s experience shows how quickly a handful of cases can turn into a challenging scenario, and highlights the importance of acting quickly and decisively. It also shows that despite the best intentions of less severe or wide-ranging lockdowns, they are not always enough.

– ref. Sydney’s second wave: can it avoid a Melbourne-style lockdown? – https://theconversation.com/sydneys-second-wave-can-it-avoid-a-melbourne-style-lockdown-142652

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jen Webb, Dean, Graduate Research, University of Canberra

This remarkable novel opens and closes in the voice of Albert Gondiwindi, the recently deceased grandfather of one of the main characters, August.

Albert was born, he says in the first sentence, on Country known as Ngurambang; and he explains how to pronounce the word. “Ngu-ram-bang. If you say it right it hits the back of your mouth and you should taste the blood in your words”.

Throughout the novel, his voice keeps re-emerging as he steadily builds a body of Wiradjuri words, and the memories that ground their definitions.

His is one of three main stories that weave their way through Tara June Winch’s The Yield, this year’s Miles Franklin winner. A second story is that of Albert’s granddaughter, August, who comes home for his funeral. August has been living in England for ten years with her “terrible inheritance” (the elements of which unpack across the novel); she provides a key point of focalisation.

Read more: Trauma, resilience, sex and art: your guide to the 2020 Miles Franklin shortlist

The third story comes out of history, and is presented in the form of notes, reports and letters written by the Reverend Ferdinand Greenleaf, who positions himself as the defender of what he terms “the decent Natives whom I have lived amongst”, residents of the Mission he established in 1880 “to ameliorate the condition of the Native tribes”.

While Greenleaf does take a stand against the brutality of the police and townspeople, his compassion is predicated on paternalism, rather than respect. Consequently, his “contributions” play a role in the colonisation of the region, and in Albert’s life.

Albert was born, as he says, on Ngurambang, but he started life in a temporary fringe area called Tent Town before he “and all the other kids were taken away”, stolen from family and culture.

The violent history of the region is salted throughout the novel: cloaked, in Rev Greenleaf’s writings; expressed vividly in Poppy Albert’s stories; painfully in August’s memories and contemporary experiences and shamefully in the names of local places.

There is the ironically named Prosperous Mission; it stands near the town of Massacre Plains, close to Poisoned Waterhole Creek. The town itself is reached by way of the Broken Highway; the sick and dying of the region find themselves in Broken Hospital and Broken Hospice.

The deployment of such names contains a bitter truth, because although these are fictional places, there are locations right across Australia that unblushingly retain the evidence of racism and genocide. It is writers like Winch, and artists like Julie Gough, who draw attention to this practice and to the history that lies behind it.

Read more: Julie Gough’s ‘Tense Past’ reminds us how the brutalities of colonial settlement are still felt today

History seldom remains tidily in the past, as so many writers have observed; and Poppy Albert too makes it clear: “there are a thousand battles being fought every day because people couldn’t forget something that happened before they were born”. And also, arguably, because what happened before we were born continues to have consequences.

The processes of colonisation that began in the 18th century; the impact of what led to the establishment (and naming) of Massacre Plains; the building of the mission and farm – all combine to shape and (attempt to) limit August’s life, and that of her family.

And these she must experience again when she returns to Australia, to the continuing absence of her disappeared sister Jedda, to Eddie – ex-schoolfriend and scion of Prosperous Farm – and to the testing family relationships she had left behind. Once back, she finds herself involved not just in piecing together her past, but also in a battle to protect her grandmother’s home, and the remnants of the beloved and deeply damaged river, from the depredations of Rinepalm mining company.

That battle itself highlights the very different communities cohabiting. For the urban protesters, it is about the broad problem of environmental destruction. For cousin Joey, it is about resistance to the original act of invasion. (“They want to take land that wasn’t theirs to take, land was given that wasn’t theirs to give!”)

And for August, it seems to offer a point of resolution: “As they walked August thought that grief’s stint was ending. She whispered to Jedda and to Poppy: I am here”.

I won’t say any more about the story; it is, after all, not mine to tell. But I will say that it is a powerful and a deeply moving book. While it is unstinting in its critical gaze at sociopolitical disasters, it also shows the forms resistance can take.

Albert’s dictionary is part of this resistance: it is in language that culture and memory and ways of seeing and thinking function, and survive. Albert’s work to recover language, to set out words and definitions, provides a memorial to those who were steamrollered by history, and a reminder that “we are here still”.

– ref. The Yield wins the Miles Franklin: a powerful story of violence and forms of resistance – https://theconversation.com/the-yield-wins-the-miles-franklin-a-powerful-story-of-violence-and-forms-of-resistance-142284

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hassan Vally, Associate Professor, La Trobe University

Stories are emerging of Victorians who have followed advice and sought a COVID-19 test, only to find they’re still waiting to hear results more than five days later.

The scale of testing underway in Victoria — and Australia’s testing rates are among the highest in the world — means it’s likely this will happen from time to time. It’s unclear if this is happening to many people or to just a handful.

Nevertheless, it’s evidently happening to some people and we can piece together some information about what may be contributing to this problem, and what you can do if it happens to you.

Read more: Eradication, elimination, suppression: let’s understand what they mean before debating Australia’s course

What to do if it happens to you in Victoria

Firstly, if you are showing symptoms and still waiting on results of a test, it’s important you do not go out. Of course, that will grow increasingly difficult the longer you wait for a test result but self-isolating while awaiting test results is a crucial part of the pandemic management strategy.

Victorian health minister Jenny Mikakos said on Twitter results are usually available within 1-3 days or “sometimes longer” and referred people to a health department fact sheet.

The factsheet says:

Victorian and interstate labs are working around the clock to process all the tests, but with so many coming in every day, sometimes it takes a little longer to confirm the results.

It lists phone numbers to try if you haven’t got your result within the expected time frame.

The factsheet doesn’t say what to do if you did the test using a home testing kit but the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services later tweeted to say:

Of course, if all else fails it might be simplest just to go and get another test.

Read more: Australia’s coronavirus testing rates are some of the best in the world – compare our stats using this interactive

Why might this be happening?

Again, we must acknowledge the enormous scale of the testing program underway in Victoria.

On Wednesday alone, 28,607 tests were undertaken in Victoria, and the total number of tests undertaken since January 1 is now at 1,225,999, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said in his Thursday press briefing.

Widespread testing is one of the best things we can do to control the spread of coronavirus, and these numbers are very impressive.

Many of these tests will be processed at laboratories in other states, as it is not possible for Victorian labs to test so many samples on their own.

A health department factsheet dated June 25, 2020 said:

Laboratories in Victoria, with surge staff capacity, can process 18,000 tests a day, noting that turn-around times are adversely affected when there is sustained testing above 14,000 tests per day.

New South Wales, South Australia, Queensland and Tasmania have agreed to provide surge lab capacity of over 4,000 tests a day. Private laboratories can also provide surge capacity of around 13,500 tests a day through their interstate operations. This will allow for at least 25,000 Victorian tests to be processed a day. There are currently sufficient test kits to meet this level of demand.

In addition, private pathology providers can draw on interstate supply chains. Safeguards, including repeat testing, will manage the risk of false positive tests.

So if you’ve got a test but haven’t heard back, it’s possible the delay is caused by test samples needing to be taken to interstate labs (which adds time) and the huge scale of testing underway.

It’s also possible there may have been some other problem with the test, so make sure you double check at the testing centre.

Who should get tested and why testing is important?

The Victorian health department says on its website:

Testing is currently available for people with the following symptoms, however mild: fever, chills or sweats, cough, sore throat, shortness of breath, runny nose, and loss of sense of smell or taste. The test takes around a minute and involves a swab from the back of your throat and nose.

The less invasive saliva test may also be available for some people in certain places and circumstances, the department has said.

Despite any difficulties you may be experiencing in getting tested or in getting your results, it’s vital to understand how critical getting tested is to protecting the community from this coronavirus. By being tested you are helping limit the spread of COVID-19. You are potentially helping save lives.

– ref. Got a COVID-19 test in Victoria and still haven’t got your results? Here’s what may be happening — and what to do – https://theconversation.com/got-a-covid-19-test-in-victoria-and-still-havent-got-your-results-heres-what-may-be-happening-and-what-to-do-142821

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Hurley, Policy Fellow, Mitchell Institute, Victoria University

The Australian government has announced a A$2 billion skills package it has dubbed JobTrainer.

It follows JobKeeper, the wage subsidy program (worth about A$70 billion); Jobseeker, which doubled the A$550-a-week unemployment benefit (as well as other government income payments, at a cost of A$14 billion); and JobMaker, providing A$250 million to stimulate work in the entertainment, arts and screen sectors.

Read more: Government announces $2.5 billion package to support training and apprenticeships

The JobTrainer package has two parts.

The first part, worth A$1.5 billion, is aimed at keeping those already in apprenticeships and traineeships employed.

The second part is aimed at school leavers and those looking for work. It provides A$500 million for vocational education and training courses. That funding is conditional on matching funds from state and territory governments.

Subsidising wages

The A$1.5 billion to subsidise the wages of currently employed apprentices and trainees extends a pre-existing program called Supporting Apprentices and Trainees.

It covers half the wage eligible employers pay apprentices and trainees, up to A$7,000 a quarter (A$28,000 a year). This compares to A$9,750 the Jobkeeper pays as a flat rate of A$750 a week.

But unlike JobKeeper, employers are not required to demonstrate reduced turnover to qualify.

There is a cut-off criteria according to organisation size, but it’s more generous than the scheme it extends. Previously the subsidy was only available to businesses with fewer than 20 employees. Now the limit is 200.

The federal government estimates about 90,000 businesses will use the scheme, supporting about 180,000 apprentices or trainees. The scheme is scheduled to run till March 31 2021.

Vocational education and training

The second part of the JobTrainer announcement is expected to support an extra 340,000 free or low-cost course places from September 2020 – dependent on the states and territories matching the federal goverment’s A$500 million.

Funding will prioritise courses in areas the National Skills Commission has identified to as likely to see job growth. Examples nominated include health care and social assistance, transport, warehousing, manufacturing, retail and wholesale trade.

Many of the 340,000 training places are likely to be shorter courses, known as skills sets, which are parts of full qualifications.

These skills sets can provide students entry into new industries and also pathways to full qualifications which Australians can access through existing funding and subsidy arrangements.

Public, not-for-profit and private training organisations will all be eligible to apply for funding to provide these courses.

The vocational education and training system has suffered many problems over the past decade – including policies that resulted in widespread rorts and funding cuts.

Even with an extra $1 billion in funding, total government support is still likely to be lower than its 2012 peak.

What’s missing from JobTrainer

JobTrainer doesn’t provide any new incentives or subsidies to encourage employers to take on new apprentices or trainees.

In April and May 2020 the number of new apprentices and trainees fell 33% on the same months in 2019.

The Mitchell Institute has previously highlighted how fewer apprenticeships and traineeships can have negative long term effects.

Read more: Trade apprentices will help our post COVID-19 recovery. We need to do more to keep them in work

This is especially true for school leavers. About 12% of all school leavers take an apprenticeship or traineeship as a pathway into the workforce.

Not making a successful transition from school to the workforce is associated with poor long-term outcomes. These include higher rates of long term unemployment, high incidences of health problems and a lifetime engagement with the workforce characterised by low pay and precarious work.

Fewer new apprenticeships also disrupts the pipeline of skilled workers. An apprenticeship usually takes four years. This means a reduction in new apprentices now will result in fewer people completing their apprenticeship in four years’ time.

The JobTrainer policy probably won’t be enough to keep all current apprentices and trainees in their jobs. Employers faced with reduced work and uncertain conditions may still make the difficult decision to suspend or cancel a training contract.

But it is certainly welcome assistance to keep those losses to a minimum.

– ref. JobTrainer explained: what is it, who qualifies, what does it pay? – https://theconversation.com/jobtrainer-explained-what-is-it-who-qualifies-what-does-it-pay-142818

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicole Lee, Professor at the National Drug Research Institute (Melbourne), Curtin University

The cancellation of events due to the COVID-19 pandemic has hit Australia’s music industry hard, with reports of losses up to A$200 million.

But music festivals have quickly adapted. First, they moved to live streaming. Now drive-in music festivals are popping up across the globe.

In response to the pandemic, the world’s first drive-in rave took place in Germany in May. Australia followed suit with Airwaves on the Sunshine Coast earlier this month. The Drive-in, a series of pop-up gigs in Melbourne, was also planned for this month but has now been cancelled.

While drive-in festivals allow physical distancing, they bring new challenges for promoters, police and health workers.

People will be driving to and from venues where alcohol is available, and in some cases where illicit drugs are used.

Read more: Australia’s drive-ins: where you can wear slippers, crack peanuts, and knit ‘to your heart’s content’

Risk of drink and drug driving

Normally, festival-goers can reduce risks of harms from alcohol or illicit drugs by not driving to and from the event. And some festivals are multi-day events where people stay overnight, so they can plan not to be intoxicated for the drive home.

But drive-in festivals require people to bring their own car. And they need to drive home immediately afterwards.

Read more: Young Australians are drinking less – but older people are still hitting the bottle hard

The Victorian code of practice for safer music festivals explicitly says alcohol- and drug-affected people should be strongly discouraged from driving.

Although legally you can have small amounts of alcohol in your blood while driving, the key message is not to drive if you have had any alcohol at all.

This is because most people cannot accurately estimate their blood alcohol concentration after drinking. And people who are riskier drivers tend to underestimate their blood alcohol levels.

Read more: Getting back on the beers after lockdown? Here’s what you should know

Alcohol and other drug testing

One option is to conduct roadside tests for alcohol and illicit drugs as people leave drive-in festivals. Police already do this routinely at festivals.

There is good evidence alcohol breath testing is effective in reducing road crashes and deaths. Breath testing could prevent road incidents after drive-in festivals in the same way it has reduced incidents among the general population.

Blood alcohol testing detects current levels of alcohol. The higher your blood alcohol concentration, the more impaired you are behind the wheel.

But illicit drug testing is not a direct measure of impairment at the time of testing. It only indicates whether you have used a drug within the window of the test. Some drugs can be detected in the system for several days after use. Drivers could test positive but not be affected by drugs at the time.

There are also questions about the reliability of the tests and very little evidence roadside drug testing is associated with fewer crashes.

What else can we do to reduce harms?

Peer organisations, like DanceWize, provide harm reduction information and outreach at music festivals. They provide a safe space for people to chill out, chat with peers or ask questions about drugs and mental health concerns.

But during a drive-in festival, people need to sit in their cars. So there is less opportunity for them to access outreach services in the usual way.

Event-based harm reduction services like DanceWize have already responded to COVID-19 by sharing harm reduction advice through Facebook Live events and Instagram.

Online harm reduction communities that have been operating for years, like Bluelight, and more recent digital communities, like Sesh Safety, could provide harm reduction information specifically aimed at drive-in festival goers, through their existing digital channels.

Usually at a music festival, attendees are standing, dancing or moving around the festival ground. So, security, outreach workers and other patrons can look out for people who may have been affected by alcohol or other drugs and take them for medical or first aid treatment.

But with drive-in festivals, there is less incidental opportunity to direct people to help.

So promoters could distribute information about where to access harm reduction information, and about available medical and first aid help, as people drive into the festival.

Drug checking

Drug checking allows people to anonymously submit drug samples for forensic analysis so they can make informed decisions about what they’re about to take. Counselling is also offered.

We know drug checking is effective in reducing harms at music festivals, but it is not available in Australia outside specific trials.

Read more: When the coroner looked at how to cut drug deaths at music festivals, the evidence won. But what happens next?

Running a drug checking service from a drive-in festival in COVID-19 times would be more challenging, but not impossible, by using technology to deliver feedback via text or app.

Festival-goers could chat by text with the drug checking team to discuss their specific drug-use history, circumstances, and the results of the analysis. But there would be less anonymity than a usual drug checking service.

Promoters, police, health workers and young people

Although smaller music venues are slowly reopening in some states, large music festivals are likely to remain closed for some time. So drive-in festivals might sound appealing.

But they throw up specific risks promoters need to address to ensure the safest possible environment for people eager to access COVID-safe live music venues.

So promoters need to work closely with police, health workers and young people themselves to effectively address some of these additional risks.

You can find harm reduction information at Bluelight, DanceWize Victoria and NSW and the Global Drug Survey. If you are worried about your drinking or drug use, or want support to make changes, you can call the National Alcohol and Other Drug Hotline on 1800 250 015; chat online with a counsellor at CounsellingOnline; talk to your GP about seeing a psychologist or counsellor; or try Hello Sunday Morning, an online community of people actively changing their alcohol consumption.

– ref. Drive-in music festivals allow you to social distance. But what happens when you add drugs and alcohol? – https://theconversation.com/drive-in-music-festivals-allow-you-to-social-distance-but-what-happens-when-you-add-drugs-and-alcohol-141797

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Natasha Reid, Research Fellow, The University of Queensland

State and federal minsters involved in the Forum on Food Regulation will tomorrow vote on whether or not to introduce mandatory alcohol pregnancy warning labels in Australia and New Zealand.

If approved, it will be an important step in reducing alcohol consumption during pregnancy.

At the same time, the public health response to this issue needs to go beyond warning labels.

Read more: Alcohol warning labels need to inform women of the true harms of drinking during pregnancy

Alcohol permeates Australian culture

Alcohol plays a key role in our social activities and celebrations. We also commonly drink alcohol to relax or cope with stress.

The Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE) found 20% of households reported buying more alcohol than usual during the COVID-19 pandemic. In these households, 70% of people reported drinking more than usual since COVID-19 began, and 32% were concerned about the amount of alcohol they or a loved one was drinking.

More broadly, new Australian Institute of Health and Welfare statistics show the number of people drinking at risky levels has remained stable since 2016, but is substantial.

In 2019, 3.5 million people (16.8%) consumed more than two drinks per day on average, and about 5.2 million people (one in four Australians) consumed more than four drinks in one occasion (defined as binge drinking) at least monthly.

Given the broad cultural acceptance of alcohol use in Australia, it’s hardly surprising alcohol is also consumed during pregnancy. What may surprise people, though, is Australia has some of the highest rates of alcohol use during pregnancy in the world: around 35.6%.

What’s the problem with drinking during pregnancy?

Alcohol use during pregnancy can have many unintended consequences, including miscarriage, stillbirth, preterm delivery, and foetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD). This disorder refers to a range of problems caused by foetal alcohol exposure, the effects of which can be lifelong.

Prenatal alcohol exposure has a dose-response effect, meaning higher rates of drinking increase the risk of these outcomes.

Read more: Health Check: what are the risks of drinking before you know you’re pregnant?

But alcohol use in pregnancy doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s interlinked with individual, family, societal and cultural determinants, which set the stage for and perpetuate alcohol use during pregnancy.

Any perception alcohol use during pregnancy is only a woman’s issue or only a woman’s fault is inconsistent with the context we live in, and ultimately unhelpful in preventing alcohol use during pregnancy.

Research shows a wide range of environmental factors increase the risk of alcohol use during pregnancy and as a result, FASD. These include living in a culture that accepts heavy drinking, coming from a family of heavy drinkers, having a partner who is a heavy and frequent drinker, recreation that is centred around alcohol use, and having little or no awareness of FASD.

What would the label look like?

In Australia, we’ve had a voluntary pregnancy warning label scheme since 2011. But there’s been low uptake. A 2017 evaluation found only 47.8% of alcohol products featured a pregnancy health warning label.

Read more: Revised DrinkWise posters use clumsy language to dampen alcohol warnings

Meanwhile, public health experts and FASD advocates have expressed concern over the size, colour and visibility of current warning labels.

As a result, Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) has recommended a mandatory, consistent and highly visible label for all alcoholic beverages.

This would bring Australia into line with many other countries, including the United States, France and Mexico. The US has had mandatory pregnancy health warning labels on alcohol products since 1989.

Evidence shows the proposed label will be more effective than other options. The design features key colours (black, white and red) that increase attention to the warning, and the statement — “HEALTH WARNING: Alcohol can cause lifelong harm to your baby” — combines the best performing elements from consumer testing.

If the ministers vote to endorse the warning label proposed by FSANZ, there will be a two-year transition period for implementation of the labels.

But there’s more we should be doing

Making warning labels mandatory is a vital component in a comprehensive prevention approach. But warning labels alone won’t be enough to prevent alcohol use during pregnancy and FASD.

An international leader in the FASD prevention space, Nancy Poole, has developed a four-part framework outlining the range of interventions required to enable effective FASD prevention. These include:

1. broad public awareness and health promotion

2. conversations about alcohol use and related risks with people of reproductive age

3. specialised holistic support for pregnant women experiencing alcohol problems

4. postpartum support for new mothers and support for child assessment and development.

Read more: Women are drinking more during the pandemic, and it’s probably got a lot to do with their mental health

Importantly, these components are underpinned by supportive alcohol policy (for example, alcohol taxes and prices, restricting the number of alcohol outlets in particular geographical areas, and restricting alcohol marketing).

This model shows us that no single approach will be effective in preventing alcohol use during pregnancy and FASD. We need action at each of these levels.

But visible and mandatory pregnancy warning labels are an important step forward in our national prevention journey.

– ref. Australia has some of the highest rates of drinking during pregnancy. It’s time to make labelling mandatory – https://theconversation.com/australia-has-some-of-the-highest-rates-of-drinking-during-pregnancy-its-time-to-make-labelling-mandatory-142645

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Capon, Director, Monash Sustainable Development Institute, Monash University

The health impacts of environmental change are now squarely on the radar. Australia’s recent intense wildfires is one glaring example. Spillover of the virus causing the COVID-19 pandemic from animals to humans is another.

But less is known about the reverse: environmental harms from health care. This is what our study, the first global assessment of the environmental footprint of health care, aimed to do.

Read more: We must rethink health care to include social and environmental costs of treatment

We quantified resource consumption and pollution by the health-care sector in 189 countries, from 2000 to 2015. We found health care is harming the environment in ways that, in turn, harm health, thereby counteracting the primary mission of health care.

For example, we found the health-care sector causes a substantial share of the world’s emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants: 4.4% of greenhouse gases, 2.8% of harmful particulate matter (air particles), 3.4% of nitrogen oxides and 3.6% of sulphur dioxide.

A vicious cycle

As part of broader economic systems, the health-care sector can inadvertently harm health through purchased resources, and the waste and pollution produced. In other words, it can unwittingly harm health in efforts to protect and improve it.

The aim of our study was not to assign blame to health care. Rather, as our dependence on health care increases, we need to support this sector to become more sustainable so we don’t enter a vicious cycle, where more health care means more environmental damage, and vice versa.

Read more: What happens to waste PPE during the coronavirus pandemic?

Using a global supply-chain database, we measured direct and indirect environmental damage driven by health-care demand.

We focused on environmental stressors the health-care sector contributes to with known adverse feedback cycles for health, such as greenhouse gas emissions, particulate matter (10 micrometers or less in diameter) and scarce water use.

We found health care causes environmental impacts that range between 1% and 5% of total global impacts, depending on the indicator. It contributes to more than 5% for some indicators at the individual country level.

For example, along with its contributions to greenhouse gases and air pollutants, health care uses 1.5% of scarce water in the world. Scarce water is measured as water consumption weighted by a “scarcity index”, which takes into account insufficient access to clean water in different countries.

Polluting economies lead to polluting health care systems

For all stressors, countries with large populations, economies and health budgets (the US and China, for instance) dominate the results in absolute terms.

The key message is that we need to understand how these stressors are trending over time, and what measures can be taken to improve health and protect the environment at the same time.

For example, in South Korea emissions of greenhouse gases, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter from health care decreased by between 27% and 60% during 2000 and 2015.

Whereas in China, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter from health care increased by between 91% and 173% in the same period.

For some indicators such as greenhouse gas emissions and particulate matter, a majority of impacts are hidden in upstream supply chains. Unravelling supply chain connections will help us understand the hotspots of environmental impacts, such as pharmaceuticals and medical supplies.

A matter of ethics

The environmental impact of health care is both a practical and ethical issue for health-care professionals.

In 2015, more than 460,000 premature deaths were related to coal combustion globally. Frankly, why should any hospital purchase coal-fired energy when it produces toxic air pollution that harms health?

Some health professionals may baulk at this additional responsibility because they’re busy providing life-saving treatments and don’t have time to worry about the pollution they cause.

And some might say a global pandemic is not the time to burden health-care professionals with another responsibility.

We argue there’s no better time to raise this issue than when the eyes of the world are on health care. The pandemic has shown us we can achieve change at pace and scale if the evidence is clear and the collective will is shared.

The pandemic has brought attention to waste from single-use personal protective equipment. However, we are yet to develop consistent systems for monitoring these environmental impacts, and to implement effective strategies to reduce these impacts across the world.

The way forward

Health-care organisations at every level (national, regional, hospital, primary care) should measure and track their environmental footprint over time, as they do for health outcomes and financial costs.

Read more: Avoiding single-use plastic was becoming normal, until coronavirus. Here’s how we can return to good habits

All health-care professionals – from doctors and nurses, to managers and members of hospital boards – should understand the environmental footprint of the health care they provide and take steps to reduce it.

The purchasing power of health care should be harnessed to drive sustainability transitions in other sectors. For example, health-care organisations purchase large amounts of food for patients. The managers responsible for this food procurement should ensure the food is healthy, value for money and produced in sustainable ways.

Some health-care organisations are already making progress. Civil society organisations like Global Green and Healthy Hospitals are spreading the word. But there is an urgent need for all health organisations to step up.

As health professionals around the world increasingly call for action on climate change, it’s important to ensure their own house is in order.

– ref. Health care has a huge environmental footprint, which then harms health. This is a matter of ethics – https://theconversation.com/health-care-has-a-huge-environmental-footprint-which-then-harms-health-this-is-a-matter-of-ethics-142651

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jarryd Bartle, Sessional Lecturer, RMIT University

A growing number of Australians support the legalisation of cannabis, while almost three in five back the idea of pill testing, according to a new national survey.

The 2019 National Drug Strategy Household Survey also shows Australians are drinking and smoking less, but some illicit drug use is on the rise.

Importantly, this national snapshot, released on Thursday, shows the Australian community is becoming more open to less punitive measures around drug use.

Changes to drug use

The National Drug Strategy Household Survey is conducted every three years. The 2019 results showed an increase in illicit drug use from 2016.

This includes the proportion of Australians who used cannabis (up from 10.4% to 11.6%), cocaine (2.5% to 4.2%), ecstasy (2.2% to 3.0%) and ketamine (0.4% to 0.9%).

Read more: History, not harm, dictates why some drugs are legal and others aren’t

The increase in cocaine use was notable, particularly among young men. The proportion of males in their 20s using cocaine in the 12 months before the survey almost doubled, from 7.3% to 14.4%.

There was also a drop in the non-medical use of painkillers and opioids (like codeine and morphine) from 3.6% to 2.7%. This coincided with codeine switching to a prescription-only drug in 2018.

Smoking and drinking

The 2019 survey recorded the lowest rate of daily smoking ever at 11% (down from 12.2% in 2016), mostly driven by young people not taking up the habit.

Risky drinking remained stable, but there was an increase in the number of people who don’t drink at all (8.9%, up from 7.6% in 2016).

The number of 14 to 17 year-olds who have never had a drink also increased to 66%, compared to only 28% in 2001.

The legalisation debate

For the first time in the survey’s history, more Australians support the legalisation of cannabis (41%) than oppose it (37%). This is almost double the level of support in 2007 (21%).

This is significant, because while there has been overwhelming community support for removing criminal penalties for cannabis possession (sometimes referred to as “decriminalisation”), this has not been the case with legalisation.

The ACT, Northern Territory and South Australia decriminalised cannabis for personal use three decades ago. Most other states and territories have some kind of de facto decriminalisation in place already through police diversion. This is where people arrested for possession of small amounts of cannabis can be diverted to education or treatment.

According to the 2019 survey, fewer people thought possession of cannabis should be a criminal offence, compared to previous years (down from 26% to 22%). And fewer people supported an increase in penalties for the sale or supply of cannabis (down from 50% to 44%). Most people (54%) thought it should only attract a caution, warning or no action.

Interestingly, if cannabis were legal, 78% of surveyed Australians said they would not use it. Only 3% said they would increase their use.

Multiple jurisdictions around the world, including Uruguay, Canada and a number of states in the United States, have already legalised the sale and possession of cannabis. New Zealand is set to hold a referendum on the issue this year.

Read more: Reforming cannabis laws is a complex challenge, but New Zealand’s history of drug reform holds important lessons

This year, the ACT allowed people to legally grow cannabis for personal use.

A number of government inquiries in Australia have recommended legalisation of cannabis and some other drugs, including a 2019 Queensland Productivity Commission’s report into imprisonment and recidivism.

After many decades of operation, illicit drugs policy has failed to curb supply or use. The policy costs around $500 million per year to administer and is a key contributor to rising imprisonment rates … Evidence suggests moving away from a criminal approach will reduce harm and is unlikely to increase drug use.

One of the most significant harms from cannabis is the risk of contact with the criminal justice system. More than 70,000 people are arrested for cannabis offences each year. More than 90% of those are for possession.

Safe injecting facilities

The survey asked about safe injecting rooms for the first time.

Just under half of Australians surveyed support “supervised drug consumption facilities”, with 47% in favour and 32% opposed. Support was strongest among people under 40.

Drug injecting rooms have been a controversial community issue, although a 2017 Victorian parliamentary inquiry saw 46 out of 49 submissions in support of a Melbourne facility.

Read more: Why Australia needs drug consumption rooms

These health services give people who inject illicit drugs access to clean equipment and a place off the street to use their drugs under the supervision of doctors and nurses. There are more than 100 of these services around the world. They reduce fatal overdose and improve access to treatment.

There are currently two supervised drug consumption facilities in Australia. One in Sydney’s Kings Cross has been operating for 20 years. Another in Melbourne’s North Richmond opened in 2018. A second Melbourne facility has been announced by the Andrews government.

Evaluations of safe injecting rooms around the world have shown these facilities can decrease criminal activity, such as robbery and property offences. They also reduce public injecting and discarded needles.

Pill testing

This was also the first time the survey asked about pill testing or drug checking.

More than half of the Australians (57%) surveyed supported drug checking, with only 27% opposed. The greatest support came from 14-39 year olds (61%), but there was still significant support from people over 40 (52%).

This is consistent with polls on the topic, with a 2018 Essential poll finding 59% of Australians suppport pill testing.

These facilities allow people who intend to use illicit drugs to get them tested by a chemist using special lab equipment. Usually, they also speak to a health worker. Testing can occur where people are likely to use the drugs (such as festivals) or separate from where people will use the drugs (for example, a health facility).

Read more: Testing festival goers’ pills isn’t the only way to reduce overdoses. Here’s what else works

Although this service is common in the United Kingdom and Europe, it is very contentious in Australia.

However, the recent inquest into the deaths of six young people at various NSW festival the coroner recommended the state government introduce drug checking.

Lessons for policy makers

The survey also asked people how they would allocate $100 between education, treatment or law enforcement to reduce illicit drug use. For the first time, respondents allocated more money to education than law enforcement ($36.00 compared with $34.80).

This is at odds with government spending on alcohol and other drugs. A 2013 reportfound the majority was spent on law enforcement (66%), with only 22% to treatment and the rest to prevention (10%) and harm reduction (2%).

The results of the survey suggest an important shift in the community’s thinking, particularly about illicit drugs. Australians have moved further away from viewing drugs as a law enforcement issue and are open to a less punitive approach to drug policy.

Policy-makers should know they have the support of the Australian community to bring us in line with best practice around the world.

– ref. More Australians back legalising cannabis and 57% support pill testing, national survey shows – https://theconversation.com/more-australians-back-legalising-cannabis-and-57-support-pill-testing-national-survey-shows-142720

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Plank, Professor in Mathematics, University of Canterbury

Stringent border controls and mandatory quarantine give New Zealand a good chance to remain free of COVID-19 for months to come, according to our latest modelling.

It’s been 76 days since New Zealand’s last reported case of community transmission, and our model shows the risk of an infectious person slipping through the border undetected remains very low. Provided the rules are followed, we would expect this to happen only once over the next 18 months — and even then, this person may not infect anyone else.

New Zealand’s borders remain closed to everyone except residents, citizens and a small number of foreigners with special exemptions.

Currently about 400 people fly into New Zealand each day. Since June 16, 46 people have tested positive for COVID-19 and of those, 27 remain active cases (at the time of writing). All of them are in quarantine facilities.

Each week, about 12 people have arrived carrying the virus. Provided people are well separated at quarantine facilities and have regular symptom checks, our modelling suggests the risk of an infectious person being released into the community is around 0.1% — which means for every 1000 infected people who arrive at the border, one person will be released from quarantine while still infectious.

Read more: Lockdown, relax, repeat: how cities across the globe are going back to coronavirus restrictions

Keeping COVID-19 out

New Zealand has had a total of 1,548 cases of COVID-19 and 22 people have died.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern yesterday announced plans for local or regional lockdowns should the virus reemerge in the community. She referred to the Australian state of Victoria, where the current outbreak appears to be linked to cases at a managed isolation facility, as a cautionary tale for New Zealand.

COVID-19 is exploding outside our borders and every country that we have sought to either replicate or draw experiences from in the fight against COVID-19 has now experienced further community outbreaks. We need only look to the experience of Victoria, Hong Kong, Singapore or Korea to see examples of other places that, like us, had the virus under control at a point in time only to see it emerge again.

Since New Zealand closed its borders on March 19, the rate of COVID-19 infections globally has increased 50-fold, to more than 13 million confirmed cases worldwide.

All new arrivals to New Zealand have to spend 14 days in quarantine at government-managed hotels. Each person has to have a COVID-19 swab test on the third and 12th day of their quarantine period and cannot leave without a negative test result.

A shorter quarantine period would significantly increase the risk of an infectious person being released. The swab tests for COVID-19 have quite high rates of false negative results, so even with multiple tests, a shorter quarantine period could miss too many cases.

Allowing mingling of people within quarantine, or contact between staff and recent arrivals, is also very risky. And our model doesn’t take into account people deliberately absconding from quarantine, which has happened four times. It is incumbent on everyone to do the right thing and follow the rules.

Read more: Melbourne’s second lockdown spells death for small businesses. Here are 3 things government can do to save them

Managing international travel

How many arrivals could New Zealand cope with? Pre-COVID-19, there were around 20,000 international arrivals on a typical day — 50 times the current number of arrivals. There’s obviously no way we could quarantine this number of people. On current trends, this would mean up to 600 infected people passing through at the border per week.

Reopening borders to return to business as usual is just not an option for the foreseeable future. Any plans to ease border restrictions need to be based on a careful risk assessment. For example, countries such as Taiwan, Vietnam and the Pacific Islands have very low levels of COVID-19. A travel bubble with countries that have eliminated community transmission would present a low risk.

Other groups such as international students or migrant workers who contribute to key parts of our economy should be considered. Anyone coming from countries where COVID-19 is widespread would need to be quarantined on arrival, but quarantine facilities are already stretched to the limit with returning New Zealanders. Implementing any plan to allow other groups into New Zealand safely will take time.

New Zealand is in a rare position of having eliminated community transmission of COVID-19. This means we currently enjoy more freedoms than people in most other countries.

But this elimination status poses its own challenges in returning to life as usual when the rest of the world is in an accelerating pandemic. Other countries that have followed a mitigation strategy are facing equally big social and economic challenges of their own. And this is on top of the devastating health impacts that New Zealand has so far managed to largely avoid.

Freedom within closed borders

The dilemma New Zealand now faces is whether to continue to enjoy Level 1 freedoms within closed borders or to open borders with more restrictions on what we can do. We could, for instance, allow quarantine-free travel from certain countries. But this might require us to implement Level 2 restrictions (including limits on the size of gatherings) to reduce the risk of superspreading events.

Read more: A few superspreaders transmit the majority of coronavirus cases

These are difficult choices, but they are choices and not foregone conclusions. We disagree with the recent claim by former chief science advisor Sir Peter Gluckman, former prime minister Helen Clark and ex-Air New Zealand chief executive Rob Fyfe that new cases of community transmission are “logically inevitable” and New Zealand should therefore reopen borders more quickly.

The recent surge in cases in Melbourne – where 5 million people are now in a six-week lockdown – shows that managing a community outbreak is almost impossible without resorting to strict lockdowns. They have also shown that the most socio-economically disadvantaged people often bear the brunt of lockdown measures, as well as suffering disproportionately from the health impacts of the virus.

These events should serve to remind us just how lucky we are in New Zealand. Let’s not let our guard down now.

– ref. How New Zealand could keep eliminating coronavirus at its border for months to come, even as the global pandemic worsens – https://theconversation.com/how-new-zealand-could-keep-eliminating-coronavirus-at-its-border-for-months-to-come-even-as-the-global-pandemic-worsens-142368

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rick Sarre, Adjunct Professor of Law and Criminal Justice, University of South Australia

Many Victorians are now being asked to wear a mask in public if they can’t socially distance.

It is possible this practice may be encouraged more widely across Australia, amid a push from health professionals to increase mask-wearing.

Read more: Victorians, and anyone else at risk, should now be wearing face masks. Here’s how to make one

People will of course still want to visit private spaces, including offices, GP clinics and churches. They will want to go shopping and visit cafes.

So, can businesses refuse entry to customers who are not wearing a mask? Similarly, can they refuse entry to anyone not sanitising their hands?

What are our rights and obligations when it comes to mask wearing?

Business owners can set the rules

Australian law, quite simply, says that private landowners or occupiers can take reasonable steps to protect themselves, their employees and people on their property.

So it would be legal for businesses – including cafes and supermarkets – to make it a condition of entry that customers wear a mask and sanitise their hands.

It makes little difference whether the business is a GP clinic rather than, say, a greengrocer, in establishing their right to exclude patrons. However, in practical terms, people should realise the increased potential for catching/transmitting COVID-19 in a healthcare facility makes it even more important for the business owner to exclude those failing to wear a mask.

Entry conditions are nothing new

Entry rules and safety requirements are concepts we are already very familiar with in Australia.

We know and accept that nightclubs and private bars can enforce dress codes without fear of running afoul of the law. Indeed, you cannot board a plane or enter big public arenas without a bag check.

Schools have been instructing students’ families to accept “no hat, no play” for years due to the dangers of children being sunburnt.

Read more: Which face mask should I wear?

Moreover, the law mandates seatbelts in cars and helmets for cyclists. These infringements on personal liberty are seen as acceptable – in both practice and law – because they protect both individuals and community safety.

It’s also about occupational health and safety

When it comes to businesses making customers wear a mask, there are important occupational health and safety considerations as well. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights notes employees have a right to “safe and healthy working conditions”.

The United Nation’s 2011 Protect Respect and Remedy Framework also emphasises the need for businesses to take adequate preventive measures to ensure the health and safety of workers.

Following a major 2002 report to the federal government on negligence law reform, civil liability amendments were enacted in all jurisdictions across Australia.

South Australia’s Civil Liability Act provides a useful example of the scope of the reforms. It says when examining “standard of care”, a court must take into account, among other matters,

the measures (if any) taken [by the building occupier] to eliminate, reduce or warn against the danger; and the extent (if at all) to which it would have been reasonable and practicable for the occupier to take measures to eliminate, reduce or warn against the danger.

We don’t need ‘mask rage’ here

In the United States – where the political and COVID-19 situations are admittedly quite different from Australia’s – there is a heated debate about mask wearing. This has involved multiple cases of “mask rage”, featuring full-on scuffles in shops over people’s refusal to wear a mask.

Read more: Mask resistance during a pandemic isn’t new – in 1918 many Americans were ‘slackers’

This ongoing mask conflict recently gave rise to a sign, reportedly put up by a Portland bar, that was then shared widely on social media. It captures the essence of the legal position here in Australia, too.

We can also use common sense

It is also important to note that that businesses, in setting their rules, cannot act in a discriminatory way. The law protects us against a range of discriminatory behaviours. The potential for, say, disability or religious discrimination might allow a person to legitimately refuse to wear a mask.

In that event, the shop would need to make alternative arrangements for that customer.

Ultimately, however, when it comes to taking protective action, as a community we need to rely as much on commonsense and common courtesies as anything else.

– ref. Can Australian businesses force customers to wear a mask? Here’s what the law says – https://theconversation.com/can-australian-businesses-force-customers-to-wear-a-mask-heres-what-the-law-says-142641

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anita Heywood, Associate Professor, UNSW

The current surge in community transmission of COVID-19 in Victoria has brought renewed discussion of whether Australia should maintain its current “suppression” strategy, or pursue an “elimination” strategy instead.

But what do these terms actually mean, and what are the differences between the two?

Read more: As restrictions ease, here are 5 crucial ways for Australia to stay safely on top of COVID-19

In theory

Disease eradication means a global absence of the pathogen (except in laboratories). We achieved this for smallpox in 1980. Diseases suitable for eradication are usually those where humans are the only host, and where there’s an effective vaccine or other prevention strategy.

Disease elimination relates to a country or a region, and is usually defined as the absence of ongoing community (endemic) transmission.

Elimination generally sits in the context of a global eradication goal. The World Health Organisation sets a goal for eradication, and countries play their part by first achieving country-wide elimination.

Cases and small outbreaks may still occur once a disease is eliminated — imported through travel — but these don’t lead to sustained community transmission.

Finally, disease control refers to deliberate efforts to reduce the number of cases to a locally acceptable level, but community transmission may still occur. Australia’s current suppression strategy, though seeking to quash community transmission, can be classified as disease control.

In practice

Elimination and suppression strategies employ the same control measures. For COVID-19, these include:

• rapid identification and isolation of cases

• timely and comprehensive contact tracing

• testing and quarantining of contacts

• varying degrees of social distancing (lockdown, banning mass gatherings, keeping 1.5m distance from others)

• border controls: restricting entry through travel bans, and quarantine of returning international travellers

• face masks to reduce transmission.

Read more: Grattan on Friday: Does Victoria’s second wave suggest we should debate an elimination strategy?

The differences between a suppression strategy and an elimination strategy are the strictness, timing, and duration with which these measures are applied, especially travel restrictions.

For example, under a suppression strategy, physical distancing requirements might be lifted while there’s still a low level of community transmission. But under an elimination strategy, these measures would remain in place until there’s no detectable community transmission.

What’s realistic for COVID-19?

First, the prospect of eradicating COVID-19 is likely no longer feasible, even with a vaccine.

People without symptoms may be able to spread COVID-19, which makes it difficult to identify every infectious case (SARS, for example, was only spread by people with symptoms). And if the virus has an animal host, animal reservoirs would also need to be eradicated.

So what about elimination?

For measles, elimination is defined as the absence of endemic measles transmission for more than 12 months. Countries must demonstrate low incidence, high quality surveillance and high population immunity.

Imported cases in unvaccinated returning travellers and occasional small outbreaks continue to occur, but a country will lose its elimination status if community spread lasts longer than one year.

The majority of the Australian population are immune to measles, which lowers the probability of sustained outbreaks. But most Australians remain susceptible to COVID-19.

So future sustained outbreaks, like the current Victorian outbreak, will remain possible until we can vaccinate the population — even under an elimination strategy.

Read more: Lockdown, relax, repeat: how cities across the globe are going back to coronavirus restrictions

Like we have with measles, for COVID-19, we need a definition of elimination with specific criteria that can be measured.

Declaring COVID-19 “eliminated” after the absence of community transmission for a few weeks means little during a pandemic, and may lead to complacency in the community. This period should be more like a few months.

Effective suppression can lead to elimination

While the federal government continues to advocate for its suppression strategy, some states have demonstrated absence of community transmission.

International arrivals to these states (and to New Zealand) are comparatively small, and the virus was always going to be more difficult to contain in cities with substantial international arrivals and high population densities, such as Sydney and Melbourne.

To achieve and sustain national elimination of any infectious disease during a pandemic is ambitious. It requires an epidemiologic definition with measurable criteria, significant resources and almost complete closure of international borders.

But maintaining the right for Australian citizens and residents to return to Australia means the borders are never fully closed, whether under a suppression strategy or elimination strategy.

So ultimately, both strategies are susceptible to outbreaks of COVID-19 in the community as long as the pandemic endures.

It will always ebb and flow

An elimination strategy would not necessarily have prevented the current outbreak in Victoria, particularly if social distancing restrictions had already been lifted.

Whether Australia continues with its suppression strategy or opts to switch to a defined elimination strategy, either approach will require continued vigilance. This could include intermittent reinstating of restrictions or targeted containment around hotspots as transmission ebbs and flows.

And whatever name we give to Australia’s approach, neither Victoria or New South Wales have accepted any level of community transmission. Both have gone hard to stop community outbreaks that have arisen, and that’s a good thing.

But long-term maintenance of periods of elimination are unlikely to be possible until we have a vaccine.

Read more: Which face mask should I wear?

– ref. Eradication, elimination, suppression: let’s understand what they mean before debating Australia’s course – https://theconversation.com/eradication-elimination-suppression-lets-understand-what-they-mean-before-debating-australias-course-142495

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachel Leihy, PhD candidate, Monash University

Since Western explorers discovered Antarctica 200 years ago, human activity has been increasing. Now, more than 30 countries operate scientific stations in Antarctica, more than 50,000 tourists visit each year, and new infrastructure continues to be developed to meet this rising demand.

Determining if our activities have compromised Antarctica’s wilderness has, however, remained difficult.

Our study, published today in Nature, seeks to change that. Using a new “ecological informatics” approach, we’ve drawn together every available recorded visit by humans to the continent, over its 200 year history.

We found human activity across Antarctica has been extensive, especially in the ice-free and coastal areas, but that’s where most biodiversity is found. This means wilderness areas – parts of the continent largely untouched by human activity – do not capture many of the continent’s important biodiversity sites.

One of the world’s largest intact wildernesses

So just how large is the Antarctic wilderness? For the first time, our study calculated this area and how much biodiversity it captures. And, like all good questions, the answer is “that depends”.

If we think of Antarctica in the same way as every other continent, then the whole of Antarctica is a wilderness. It has no farms, no cities, no suburbs, no malls, no factories. And for a continent so large, it has very few people.

But Antarctica is too different to compare to other continents – it should be held to a higher standard. And so we define “wilderness” as the areas that aren’t highly impacted by people. This would exclude, for example, tourist areas and scientific stations. And under this definition, the wilderness area is still large.

It’s about 13,598,148 square kilometres, or more than 99% of the continent. Only the wilderness in the vast forested areas of the far Northern Hemisphere is larger. Roughly, this area is nearly twice the size of Australia.

Read more: Marine life found in ancient Antarctica ice helps solve a carbon dioxide puzzle from the ice age

On the other hand, the inviolate areas (places free from human interference) that the Antarctic Treaty Parties are obliged to identify and protect are dwindling rapidly.

Our analyses suggest less than 32% of the continent includes large, unvisited areas. And even that’s an overestimate. Not all visits have been recorded, and several new traverses – crossing large tracts of unvisited areas – are being planned.

Wilderness areas have poor biodiversity value

If so much of the continent remains “wild”, how much of Antarctica’s biodiversity lives within these areas?

Surprisingly few sites considered really important for Antarctic biodiversity are represented in the “un-impacted” wilderness area.

For example, only 16% of the continent’s Important Bird Areas (areas identified internationally as critical for bird conservation) are located in wilderness areas. And only 25% of protected areas established for their species or ecosystem value, and less than 7% of sites with recorded species, are in wilderness areas.

This outcome is surprising because wilderness areas elsewhere, like the Amazon rainforest, are typically valued as crucial habitat for biodiversity.

Inviolate areas have seemingly even less biodiversity value. This is because people have mostly had to visit Antarctic sites to collect species data.

In the future, remote sensing technologies might allow us to investigate and monitor pristine areas without setting foot in them. But for now, most of our knowledge of Antarctic species comes from places that have been impacted to some extent by people.

How does human activity threaten Antarctic biodiversity?

Antarctica’s remaining wilderness areas need urgent protection from increasing human activity.

Even passing human disturbance can impact the biodiversity and wilderness value of sites. For example, sensitive vegetation and soil communities can take years to recover from trampling.

Increasing movement around the continent also increases the risk people will transfer species between isolated regions, or introduce new alien species to Antarctica.

So how can we protect it?

Protecting the Antarctic wilderness could be achieved by expanding the existing Antarctic Specially Protected Areas network to include more wilderness and inviolate areas where policymakers would limit human activity.

When planning how we’ll use Antarctica in the future, we could also consider the trade off between the benefits of science and tourism activities, and the value of retaining pristine wilderness and inviolate areas.

Read more: Microscopic animals are busy distributing microplastics throughout the world’s soil

This could be done explicitly through the environmental impact assessments required for activities in the region. Currently, impacts on the wilderness value of sites are rarely considered.

We have an opportunity in Antarctica to protect some of the world’s most intact and undisturbed environments, and prevent further erosion of Antarctica’s remarkable wilderness value.

– ref. Humans are encroaching on Antarctica’s last wild places, threatening its fragile biodiversity – https://theconversation.com/humans-are-encroaching-on-antarcticas-last-wild-places-threatening-its-fragile-biodiversity-142648

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gerard Fitzgerald, Emeritus Professor, School of Public Health, Queensland University of Technology

Victorian senior students returned to school this week, as did those in specialist schools. This follows substantial community transmission of COVID-19, and stage three restrictions, in metropolitan Melbourne and the Mitchell Shire.

Although senior and specialist school students in the restricted areas are going back to class, government school students in prep to Year 10 (except those doing VCE subjects) will learn remotely for term three.

Read more: Students in Melbourne will go back to remote schooling. Here’s what we learnt last time and how to make it better

Whether schools close or remain open has been one of the more contentious aspects of this pandemic.

The Australian government previously signalled a lack of sustained and widespread community transmission meant it was more important for children to attend school than stay at home. But the situation has now changed, in Victoria at least.

That state recorded 270 new cases of COVID-19 since yesterday, with 147 linked to an outbreak at Al-Taqwa College. Almost all the new cases come from community transmission.

For returning seniors and teachers, it’s important to remember no single measure in isolation prevents disease transmission. It is a matter of reducing the likelihood and enhancing the capacity of the system to deal with events that occur.

School closures have consequences

Most of our evidence on the effectiveness of school closures comes from influenza research. Closing schools has been shown to reduce the speed and extent of influenza spread. This measure won’t be effective in isolation, though, and must be complemented by social distancing and enhanced personal hygiene.

But SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) is different to influenza. Children are less likely to become infected and less likely to become seriously ill.

A recently reported German study suggests fewer than 1% of children and teachers had contracted the disease at school. Other analysis has not shown significant benefit from closing schools, even in communities with widespread community transmission.

Read more: Yes, we’ve seen schools close. But the evidence still shows kids are unlikely to catch or spread coronavirus

That doesn’t mean transmission cannot occur among teachers and students, as we have seen with several outbreaks in Australian schools.

It is just that schools are not the disease incubators they would be with influenza or rhinovirus (which causes the common cold). This means transmission is not as likely in schools as it appears to be among adults.

The Victorian government has indicated Year 11 and 12 students – and those in Year 10 studying for the VCE – should return to school, and special schools should remain open, even in areas under restrictions. But universities, TAFE and adult education must continue online.

Even though senior students may have a similar transmission as adults, the logic is that educational and social disadvantage faced by senior students outweighs the risk of disease transmission.

And older students should also be able to understand the importance of health protection strategies and cooperate more readily than younger children can.

They are at a critical stage of their education, where lost access to education for a prolonged period may have longer life implications.

The unique social and personal support offered by special schools may also outweigh the COVID-19 risks.

Meanwhile, adults in higher education institutions usually have alternatives to allow them to continue their education.

So, what should schools do?

Victorian schools need to adhere to enhanced public health protections — this is understandably challenging for principals and teachers.

Whatever the schools can do will help reduce risk — it is not necessary to do everything, if not possible.

Read more: 288 new coronavirus cases marks Victoria’s worst day. And it will probably get worse before it gets better

Managing fewer classes by only having senior students and children of essential workers on campus may help schools maximise screening, social distancing and enhanced personal hygiene measures.

Teachers and students who may be at greater risk if they contract this disease, including older teachers and those with chronic illness, should isolate themselves if possible.

The Victorian government has provided guidelines for schools but these contain quite a lot of varied information which could be confusing for staff and parents.

There are five key principles for risk mitigation in schools

1. Maintain a high level of awareness of COVID-19 transmission

This should be done through standard and consistent communication to staff, parents and students.

2. Stop infected people from attending school

Parents, students and staff should be required to stay away from the school if they are infected or have been exposed to someone with the disease.

Schools should screen people on arrival, including, if possible, temperature screening either on arrival or at first class, dependent on the circumstances of the school. Anyone with symptoms or a temperature should be removed immediately and quarantined.

The Victorian government has promised more than 14,000 non-contact thermometers for government, independent and Catholic schools in metropolitan Melbourne and Mitchell Shire, and to schools in neighbouring areas that need them.

3. Implement a practical level of social distancing

Mass gatherings, assemblies and functions should be avoided, arrival and departure times staggered. Break times should also be staggered and students spread out during them.

5. Maintain hygiene

Students and teachers should wash or sanitise their hands on arrival, before and after breaks and before departure.

Everyone should consider using face masks where social distancing is not possible, such as on public transport. Masks are not harmful, but they do not necessarily protect from COVID-19, so they can’t be completely relied on. They are just one measure of reducing risk.

High traffic areas must be subject to enhanced cleaning and environmental hygiene practices.

No single measure is critical and there are no guarantees, but together, reasonable approaches will reduce risk and offer increased protection.

– ref. School is important, and so is staying safe from coronavirus. Here are some tips for returning seniors – https://theconversation.com/school-is-important-and-so-is-staying-safe-from-coronavirus-here-are-some-tips-for-returning-seniors-142709

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicole Kalms, Director, XYX Lab, and Associate Professor, Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, Monash University

Women’s safety in public space is very complex. Women’s perception of safety – as opposed to their risk of experiencing gendered violence or crime – very much determines how they interact with public space. This issue of perception makes measuring and evaluating women’s experiences difficult.

The passing of the Gender Equality Act 2020 in February 2020 created a legal imperative in Victoria to shift urban politics, policies, design and research towards understanding how gender affects needs and experiences. This is generally poorly understood by those who determine how places are designed, developed, governed and maintained.

Tackling the inclusion of women in all aspects of public spaces will be paramount, but it cannot be a one-size-fits-all approach. Nuanced thinking and multiple gender-sensitive strategies are required.

Read more: Crowd-mapping gender equality – a powerful tool for shaping a better city launches in Melbourne

In local streets, parks, squares and walkways across Australia we saw a marked increase in the numbers of people walking and cycling under COVID-19 restrictions that allowed people to leave their homes for exercise. Coupled with the big drop in car traffic, these public spaces may have felt like they had never been safer.

But are these spaces safer for women? And how will we measure women’s perceptions of safety in a (post-)COVID world?

What makes women feel safe or unsafe?

For women, safety considerations not only involve the physical aspects of spaces, but also how memories and mental images are triggered. For instance, the many high-profile cases of women who have been viciously attacked, raped and murdered mean many women are on alert every time they leave home. Daily sexual harassment maintains those high levels of fear because it reminds women of their vulnerability to sexual violence.

Read more: Have you ever wondered how much energy you put in to avoid being assaulted? It may shock you

Research has shown experiences of public space are individual and unique. Women from different racial backgrounds and of different ages, sexuality, disabilities and socio-economic class have very different experiences. Indeed, one woman’s experience of a place as “bad” might be contradicted by another’s account of the same location.

This means we must also consider how women’s differing and intersecting identities shape their individual and collective experiences – and thus perceptions of safety in public space.

Understanding these complex experiences for women in greater depth means gathering more gender-specific data. Right now, we have far too little data about women’s experiences and knowledge. Or, rather, the information is in a format that is too general and too easily dismissed.

Every place is a little different. The women who use those spaces are different too. We need data that target precise areas.

Read more: Safe in the City? Girls tell it like it is

Women’s safety audits on the rise

One key method of gathering such data is women’s safety audits. The Metropolitan Toronto Action Committee on Violence Against Women and Children developed the first of these audits in the late 1980s. This approach has since been adopted and adapted to suit local conditions and changing technologies.

At the heart of these audits is users of a public space noting the factors that make them feel unsafe or safe, and identifying ways to make the space better and safer. It is a process of co-design – women are viewed as experts in their lived experience.

Typically, an audit will consider different kinds of spaces – such as streets, residential areas, parks, markets and public transport – and offer a checklist of matters to consider. Part of any audit are issues like lighting, surveillance and sightlines.

Read more: More lighting alone does not create safer cities. Look at what research with young women tells us

Women are also asked to consider matters such as how many women are in the space and what they are doing. Are they taking their time? Are there reasons and opportunities for women to gather in the space?

Simply, are women inhabiting the public space, not just quickly passing through it, keys in hand as a ready weapon? This makes a big difference to perceptions of safety and to the sense that women actually belong and are entitled to take up space in public.

What’s being done locally?

Audits now come in different forms. Digital crowdmapping platforms, such as Safetipin and Free to Be, allow women to use geolocation software to pinpoint precisely where they feel safe and unsafe, and why. Safetipin now generates safety scores for very localised parts of the cities where it is active.

Read more: To design safer parks for women, city planners must listen to their stories

Online survey audits and tailored checklists are also becoming increasingly useful for local governments as they tackle merging traditional crime prevention through environmental design strategies with a gender lens.

With the Gender Equality Act in place, many local governments are leading the way. As a part of its Family Violence Prevention Strategy, the City of Casey has been working with Monash University XYX Lab to develop the “Safe in Her City” gender audit tool. Another XYX Lab partnership with Moreland City Council is an online safety survey to shed light on women’s experiences of a short stretch of Merri Creek.

Both these initiatives build upon global good practice by applying a gender lens and incorporating the voices of women and girls into city design and evaluation. In this way, cities can promote safety and belonging in their public places and spaces.

Navigating the ‘new normal’

While instances of gender-based violence rose frighteningly in private and domestic realms during COVID-19 lockdowns, it is equally important to track what is happening now – in the “new normal” – when public space is changing and communities must navigate uncertainty.

Read more: ‘We are in a bubble that is set to burst’. Why urgent support must be given to domestic violence workers

Women’s safety audits in their various forms are a means to meet the objectives of the Gender Equality Act. But, more than that, they amplify women’s voices and help them claim their right to feel safe and actively occupy public space.

– ref. What does the ‘new normal’ look like for women’s safety in cities? – https://theconversation.com/what-does-the-new-normal-look-like-for-womens-safety-in-cities-140169

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Olivia Khoo, Associate Professor, Film & Screen Studies, Monash University

Eliza Scanlen’s film Mukbang (2020) has become a flashpoint in race relations in the Australian screen industry. Scanlen’s film is famous not for winning Best Director in the short film category at this year’s Sydney Film Festival, but for the controversy it has sparked.

The film features a white teenager who has a “sexual awakening” after discovering the Korean internet fad of Mukbang: a live broadcast of a host over eating.

Most controversially, the film featured a drawing of the lead character strangling a Black classmate – a scene edited out of the film after it won.

Filmmaker and writer Michelle Law labelled Mukbang an example of “how racist and broken the screen industry is in Australia”.

(To her credit, Scanlen has made a full apology, and Fat Salmon Productions has committed to a quota of 30% Black, Indigenous and people of colour in crews, heads of departments, and casts in all future productions”.)

I have not seen Mukbang, despite my best efforts to obtain a copy, but my comments are not about evaluating whether the film is indeed racist or a cultural appropriation. I am more interested in what this debate represents, and the lessons it can impart for the Australian screen industry.

I am thankful for the attention the film has brought to the topic of race on Australian screens (and behind them) but somewhat disturbed by an undercurrent of division between “free speech” and open debate.

Open letter, open debate

On July 8, the Sydney Morning Herald published an open letter signed by 27 prominent Australian filmmakers, including Tony Ayres, Rachel Perkins, Warwick Thornton, Ivan Sen and Joel and Nash Edgerton.

The letter defends the festival’s director, Nashen Moodley, against claims that the festival is “part of a white supremacist system”. It points out Moodley is a South African person of colour who has “long championed the works of filmmakers from Africa and Asia”.

The letter also looks outwards to the rest of the industry, noting an Indigenous woman, Sally Riley, is head of scripted production at the ABC, and Que Minh Luu has been appointed head of Australian programming at Netflix.

The letter (which came the day after the infamous Harper’s Magazine open letter for “justice and open debate”) expresses the view that those speaking out online are bullies, interested in “public shaming and ‘burning down’ the industry”.

In turn, this letter has been harshly criticised by some of those it seeks to champion. Author Michael Mohammed Ahmad called it a “distraction which derail[s] our attempts to hold white people and white institutions […] accountable for their role in systemic and structural racism”.

How can we move from this division to a more productive dialogue about who is being excluded, and why there might be a need to speak up?

Read more: Is cancel culture silencing open debate? There are risks to shutting down opinions we disagree with

There is a long history of excluding representations of Asians on Australian screens, with Asians more often spoken for than allowed to speak. I applaud Law and director Corrie Chen for speaking up, and for their unqualified apologies when subsequently called out for a blackface scene in their 2013 short film, Bloomers.

Like many other Asian Australians, I am thankful we have Asian Australian creatives such as Law, Chen and Tony Ayres to provide greater diversity to the stories we see on Australian screens, but also for the leadership they are providing in navigating both sides of the debate.

Cultural diversity in leadership

This conversation touches every part of Australia’s cultural industries.

In 2019, Diversity Arts Australia published a report finding 59% of Australia’s screen and radio organisations had no culturally and linguistically diverse representation at the leadership level.

Read more: Australia’s art institutions don’t reflect our diversity: it’s time to change that

On July 12, writer and editor Nick Bhasin published an opinion piece condemning the predominantly white leadership team of the SBS.

Bhasin’s article came after an interview with former SBS head Michael Ebeid in which he said white people were just as capable of telling culturally diverse stories (“a white man can do that”).

With full respect to Ebeid and the talent he has championed at SBS, this misses the point. Leadership needs to reflect the community it represents.

The debate we are being asked to participate in is based on a misleading distinction between two “opposing” viewpoints, both of which were, interestingly, expressed in the open letter: on the one hand it called for an “open and safe debate”, while also accusing those who engage in criticism as “bullying.”

The impulse to assume conversation on social media is bullying can subsume a discussion of broader issues being legitimately raised: power imbalances, a lack of diversity in leadership (on judging panels, production sets and in boardrooms) and empty gestures of activism without change — exactly what the filmmakers’ letter calls for.

We need to keep race at the foreground of debates in the Australian screen industry. We are at a turning point. Let’s not waste this moment either by burning everything down, or by smothering the discussion in censure and silence.

– ref. The Mukbang controversy is a chance to discuss race and Australian films. Let’s not squander it – https://theconversation.com/the-mukbang-controversy-is-a-chance-to-discuss-race-and-australian-films-lets-not-squander-it-142485

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

The Morrison government has announced $2 billion – to be augmented by another $500 million from the states – for a skills package to boost training and job creation.

A $1 billion JobTrainer program will provide training or re-skilling for up to 340,700 school leavers and job seekers. Places for courses will be available from September.

This is to be funded on a 50-50 basis with the states. The government says there has been early support from most states after Scott Morrison raised the plan at national cabinet last week.

To get the JobTrainer funding the states will need to sign up to an agreement to reform their vocational education and training systems. Scott Morrison has previously said the VET system needs to be simplified and better attuned to the skills employers are seeking.

The start of the courses would come just before with the scaling back of government COVID support measures. Not only are a huge number of unemployed in the job market but school leavers looking for jobs will find it extremely difficult.

The package also includes an extra $1.5 billion to expand and extend the wage subsidy for apprentices and trainees. This follows $1.3 billion announced in March.

The subsidy now supports 47,000 employers with 81,000 apprentices and trainees – the expansion will take this to nearly 90,000 businesses and 180,000 apprentices.

Eligibility will be widened from small businesses to medium-sized businesses with 199 or fewer employees. The subsidised apprentices will have had to be in place from July 1.

The program will also be extended by six months to the end of March.

The subsidy covers half the apprentice’s wages up to $7000 a quarter.

Already $365 million has been paid out under the program.

The JobTrainer courses will be free or low cost and aimed at areas of need. These areas will be identified by the Nationals Skills Commission in consultation with the states.

Morrison said: “COVID-19 is unprecedented but I want Australians to be ready for the sorts of jobs that will come as we build back and recover. The jobs and skills we’ll need as we come out of the crisis are not likely to be the same as those that were lost.”

Current sectors looking to expand their workforces include health care and social assistance; transport, postal and warehousing; manufacturing; and retail and wholesale trade.

The courses will be delivered by public, private and not-for-profit providers.

Speaking on Melbourne radio on Wednesday, Morrison again made it clear the government will avoid a hard cut off of assistance at the end of September. He said it would continue to provide income support to those who needed it.

“And obviously in Melbourne in particular, that demand is going to be very great now for some period of time.”

– ref. Government announces $2.5 billion package to support training and apprenticeships – https://theconversation.com/government-announces-2-5-billion-package-to-support-training-and-apprenticeships-142763

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

Scott Morrison on Wednesday once again ruled out any consideration of moving to an “elimination” strategy for dealing with COVID-19.

He told Triple M Melbourne: “You don’t just shut the whole country down because that is not sustainable.

“There’d be doubling unemployment, potentially, and even worse.

“The cure would be worse than what arguably wouldn’t be delivered anyway, because as we’ve seen with the outbreak in Victoria, it came from a breach of quarantine.

“So unless we’re going to, you know, not allow any freight or any medical supplies into Australia or not allow any exports or anything like this, there is always going to be a connection between Australia and the rest of the world.”

Morrison’s sentiments were backed by the business lobbies. Innes Willox, head of the Australian Industry Group, praised the prime minister for “calling out the prohibitive costs” of an elimination strategy.

Read more: Lockdown, relax, repeat: how cities across the globe are going back to coronavirus restrictions

This would mean closing ourselves off from the rest of the world “indefinitely” and require “draconian restrictions” on citizens and businesses, Willox said.

NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian, commenting on the NSW outbreak, also eschewed an elimination strategy.

Even if they are all correct in rejecting elimination, they haven’t properly addressed the arguments, or produced enough evidence to back their assertions.

Instead the government at least – excuse the pun – has sought to suppress the debate about elimination.

Morrison said there would be a “doubling” of unemployment, or worse. Could we have the figures underpinning this please?

At present, in all states and territories apart from Victoria and NSW the virus is effectively or nearly eliminated. So what would happen to unemployment in those states? Maybe a small tick up but you wouldn’t think a lot.

Victoria is once again shut down – triggering more unemployment under the current suppression strategy.

Presumably the treasury could produce some numbers to shed light on the prime minister’s claim.

Morrison’s statement that an elimination strategy would not allow any freight or medical supplies into Australia nor “allow any exports” smacks of exaggeration (at the least). Maximum care would be needed but border issues regarding crews are being managed now.

Willox says elimination would mean closing ourselves off to the rest of the world “indefinitely”.

The first point to be made is that, in terms of the movement of people, we are already closed internationally, apart from those coming home or foreigners leaving. This closure has no end date.

Secondly, after elimination presumably the border could eventually be open to a greater or lesser extent, with a very strict quarantine system.

Morrison’s claim that pursuing elimination would mean shutting down the whole country seems hyperbolic, when we already have extensive elimination. Apart from that, where shutdowns may be needed there can be a trade off – you can have a less severe shutdown but keep some restrictions for longer.

Admiitedly, if elimination were successful there would be the danger of complacancy, but we’ve seen this under suppression.

Elimination doesn’t mean there will never be cases. It means they are few enough for potential community transmission to be quickly dealt with.

Health experts are divided over whether elimination would be worth pursuing. Victoria’s chief health officer Brett Sutton said on Wednesday: “I’d love elimination. We’re not at a point where it’s the right time to make a detailed consideration of its feasibility, but … it’s worthy of consideration. There’s no question that it’s got its own challenges, but it’s got its benefits as well.”

Read more: More deaths in Victoria, as NSW COVID cluster triggers reactions in Queensland and South Australia

Nick Talley, editor-in-chief of the Medical Journal of Australia, a physician and an epidemiologist, believes elimination would be the best strategy for both the society and the economy.

“We eliminated the virus – almost by accident – in large parts of the country during the last lockdown. I suspect this was in part because most of the cases were from international travellers who could be traced and isolated – there was limited community transmission.

“This is very different from the current outbreak in Victoria, and possibly NSW, because there is extensive community transmission,” Talley says.

“I’m not convinced the suppression strategy is going to work. If we don’t eliminate the virus the economy won’t be able to fire up across the country.”

The multiple federal medical officers have backed suppression. Aware of the government’s firm view, they do not freelance.

Both Morrison and Berejiklian have condemned in principle having a stop-start situation. But neither is saying Victoria should have stayed open through its current second wave.

While Morrison and business point to the potential costs of elimination, are they talking short term or long term costs?

For example, New Zealand’s elimination policy is projected to impose a greater economic hit than expected in Australia. But the difference might be somewhat lessened by the second Victorian shutdown, and narrowed further if there are future stop-starts.

It may be that elimination is not the way to go. But why not, say, have a short sharp inquiry, to gather evidence on the health and economic implications, so we know more about the options?

Of course we know why not. The government does not want its course seriously contested.

– ref. View from The Hill: Why not have an inquiry to examine the pros and cons of suppression versus elimination? – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-why-not-have-an-inquiry-to-examine-the-pros-and-cons-of-suppression-versus-elimination-142730

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Buckland, Professor in Computer Security, Cybercrime, and Cyberwar, UNSW

The Australian Cyber Security Growth Network (AustCyber) on Monday released a report modelling the potential impact of cyberattacks and sustained digital outages on Australia.

The Digital Trust Report’s modelling suggests four weeks of partial “digital disruption” could displace up to 163,000 jobs and damage the economy to the tune of A$30 billion.

According to AustCyber’s report, that’s about 1.5% of our gross domestic product, or three-quarters of our annual defence budget.

The report also emphasises the devastating impacts digital disruption can have on public trust.

The monetary costs of cyber disruption

The report includes economic modelling by consultants Synergy Group which looked at the general public’s digital activity, as well as revenue from some indicative sectors including online retail, digital health, space, solar, and cybersecurity.

The modelling estimates a one-week disruption to digital activity would cost the economy A$1.2 billion directly, and A$5 billion including indirect impact. A four-week disruption could cost A$7.3 billion directly, and A$30 billion in total.

In this context, disruption means a significant drop in digital activity including any resulting loss of public confidence. This could be due to cyberattacks, a natural disaster or other large accident.

The report’s modelling is based on current levels of digital activity. As Australia continues to move online, risks and impacts will grow. For example, online sales currently account for 9.6% of Australian retail spending, but on current trends this is expected to grow to 25% within a decade.

The report also notes increasing digital dependency across Australia’s sectors. Some have travelled so far down the digital path, they wouldn’t be able to “step back” if faced with serious digital interruption.

This is especially true for the financial sector. Referring to the Reserve Bank of Australia, the report states digital transformation “is occurring to a point that commerce without digital technologies has become nearly impossible”.

An attack on trust

That said, it could be argued the risks of cyber failure are much more insidious and far-reaching than impact on revenue alone.

The recent wave of cyberattacks announced by the prime minister, like most cyberattacks, worked by abusing trust. They relied heavily on memory corruption attacks (where programmers trust users) and spear phishing attacks (where users trust other people).

By exploiting trust, attackers also undermine trust. The Australian Financial Review reported a survey of 1,600 digital service users and 20 government leaders across Australia and New Zealand. Two-thirds said a poor customer experience damaged their trust and confidence in government.

Trust is needed for societies to work. As social psychologist Robert Cialdini observes, the universal human drive to reciprocate allows us to do good now and trust that we will be repaid in the future.

Moreover, a lack of trust is what leads to banks runs (when large numbers of customers withdraw deposits due to solvency fears), hoarding toilet paper and conspiracy theories.

Read more: Four experts investigate how the 5G coronavirus conspiracy theory began

Foreign influence potential

Modern cyberwar involves information warfare and influence operations that have an effect beyond immediate financial impact. While not known, it’s possible the recent cyberattacks on Australia also had a non-financial purpose.

If Australians start believing the country’s digital infrastructure can’t be trusted, faith in wider institutions may be damaged, too. We could see the emergence of the “fake news” narrative against media and politicians. Or we could see electronic election outcomes come into question.

These are just some examples of how an attack on digital infrastructure can be an attack on society itself. And all this may be in the interests of a foreign nation state wanting to unravel Australian society from within.

The need to prepare and learn from the past

In 2001, US leaders and policy makers ran a simulation exercise called Dark Winter, modelling what might happen if the nation were to suffer a pandemic as an act of bio-terror. The timing was remarkable, coming shortly before 9/11 and the notorious anthrax attacks.

But despite the prophetic modelling, the US neglected to properly prepare for the COVID-19 crisis. In fact, in 2018 the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention’s Office of Preparedness and Response cancelled (with dreadful timing) a project that could have enabled the US to generate 1.5 million N95 masks per day.

Australia should learn from the US’s failures. AustCyber’s report says Australia’s “cyberattacks are increasing in number and severity over time”. Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to flatten this curve, so what matters is how we prepare and respond to future attacks.

Read more: Our cybersecurity isn’t just under attack from foreign states. There are holes in the government’s approach

We must continue to build our national cyber capability, increase cyber awareness and training at all levels of society, ensure we have sovereign capability (rather than depending on others for critical infrastructure) and have contingency plans for when things do go wrong.

Perhaps even if voting becomes fully electronic one day, just in case of lost WiFi (or a blackout), it would be prudent to keep some good old fashioned pencils and paper ballots in the cupboard.

– ref. We could lose $30 billion in weeks from cyberwar. But the real loss is the erosion of public trust – https://theconversation.com/we-could-lose-30-billion-in-weeks-from-cyberwar-but-the-real-loss-is-the-erosion-of-public-trust-142563

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Duffy, Senior Lecturer and Researcher, Monash Business School, Director Corporate Law, Organisation and Litigation Research Group (CLOL), Monash University

The revelations in the “palace letters” may well renew enthusiasm for an Australian republic, especially coming on top of recent controversies involving both older and younger members of the royal family.

A recent poll also suggests increasing popular support for a republic. According to the YouGov poll, 62% of Australians said they wanted the head of state to be an Australian.

The palace letters make clear the problem with our current set-up: we have a legal (what lawyers call de jure) head of state who is a resident and national of the UK (the queen), as well as an effective or de facto Australian head of state (the governor-general) who can operate as if that legal status was his/hers.

Read more: First reconciliation, then a republic – starting with changing the date of Australia Day

Aside from the symbolism of having a foreign head of state – a blow to nativist Australian pride – there is also the practical question of whether the legal status and system of appointment (and removal) of the Australian governor-general is the best we can do.

This challenge is highlighted by the palace letters. They illustrate quite clearly that in extreme situations, such as when Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was dismissed by the governor-general, Sir John Kerr, in 1975, this arrangement can invite what has been referred to as a game of “constitutional chicken”.

This occurs when a governor-general is in fear of being dismissed by the queen (on the advice of the Australian prime minister), while the prime minister can simultaneously be in fear of being dismissed by the governor-general. This situation gives each an incentive to act first to dismiss the other.

What happened in the 1999 referendum

The republican model put to voters in a referendum in 1999 didn’t really fix that problem, as it still gave the prime minister the direct power to remove the head of state.

The other problem with the 1999 “minimalist” republic model was that it was attacked by some republicans who wanted a popular vote to select the head of state.

There has been disagreement since then between minimalist republicans, who favour parliamentary appointment of a ceremonial head of state (such as in India and Israel), and “direct electionists”, who want a direct vote for the head of state by the people (like Ireland and Austria).

Read more: A model for an Australian republic that can unite republicans and win a referendum

In the 1999 referendum, some direct electionists opposed the minimalist republic model and effectively joined with monarchists in defeating the proposal.

The challenge for the republican cause now is that many minimalist republicans may well vote against a direct election model in another referendum.

For them, the fear is Australia would move away from the Westminster system towards a US-style presidential system. And Donald Trump’s rise to power in the US, in particular, has led some to question the potential for popular votes to produce demagogues.

How republic models could work

So, what would it take for another republican referendum to succeed in Australia?

For starters, there must be a model that somehow unites the republican cause by allowing for a popular election but retaining a ceremonial, non-executive head of state. This head of state, apart from reserve powers, essentially defers to the parliament and prime minister.

In other words, such a model must preserve responsible government – a government that comes from, and is responsible to, the parliament.

Some “hybrid” republic models have been proposed, and my colleagues and I added our own ideas to the debate in a paper published in the Public Law Review in 2018.

In 2001, the late constitutional law professor George Winterton proposed an alternative bipartisan choice idea. In this model, parliament would endorse one candidate for head of state who would then be voted on in a popular national election (in which limited other nominees were free to stand).

We endorse this, but suggest that for such a model to work, provisions may be needed to bind the major political parties to the candidate selected by parliament. This would prevent parties or factions from campaigning for their own rival candidates.

Read more: Cabinet papers 1994-95: How the republic was doomed without a directly elected president

Another proposal is the “50-50” model, which aggregates the results of a parliamentary and popular vote, giving equal weight to both. This concept seeks to unite minimalists and direct electionists by requiring some sensible compromise from each side.

To avoid a repeat of Kerr’s dismissal of Gough in 1975, Australia could choose a republic model that includes “concurrent expiration”.

In this model, if a head of state acted to dismiss a sitting prime minister, he or she would also face an early expiration of their own term. Voters would then decide the fates of both in the ensuing election.

Certainly, if there is to be change to a republic in Australia that maintains the Westminster system of responsible government, this will take time, considered thought and debate.

In the very long term, an Australian head of state may be inevitable, so it is important to get it right.

– ref. Is Australia ready for another republic referendum? These consensus models could work – https://theconversation.com/is-australia-ready-for-another-republic-referendum-these-consensus-models-could-work-142646

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Paton Gilmour, Research Scientist: Coral Ecology, Australian Institute of Marine Science

Significant coral bleaching at one of Western Australia’s healthiest coral reefs was found during a survey carried out in April and May.

The survey took a combined effort of several organisations, together with tour operators more used to taking tourists, but with time spare during the coronavirus lockdown.

WA’s arid and remote setting means many reefs there have escaped some of the pressures affecting parts of the east coast’s Great Barrier Reef), such as degraded water quality and outbreaks of crown of thorns starfish.

The lack of these local pressures reflects, in part, a sound investment by governments and communities into reef management. But climate change is now overwhelming these efforts on even our most remote coral reefs.

When the oceans warmed

This year, we’ve seen reefs impacted by the relentless spread of heat stress across the world’s oceans.

As the 2020 mass bleaching unfolded across the Great Barrier Reef, a vast area of the WA coastline was bathed in hot water through summer and autumn. Heat stress at many WA reefs hovered around bleaching thresholds for weeks, but those in the far northwest were worst affected.

The remoteness of the region and shutdowns due to COVID-19 made it difficult to confirm which reefs had bleached, and how badly. But through these extraordinary times, a regional network of collaborators managed to access even our most remote coral reefs to provide some answers.

Read more: We just spent two weeks surveying the Great Barrier Reef. What we saw was an utter tragedy

Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology provided regional estimates of heat stress, from which coral bleaching was predicted and surveys targeted.

At reefs along the Kimberley coastline, bleaching was confirmed by WA’s Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions (DBCA), Bardi Jawi Indigenous rangers, the Kimberley Marine Research Centre and tourist operators.

At remote oceanic reefs hundreds of kilometres from the coastline, bleaching was confirmed in aerial footage provided by Australian Border Force.

Subsequent surveys were conducted by local tourist operators, with no tourists through COVID-19 shutdown and eager to check the condition of reefs they’ve been visiting for many years.

The Rowley Shoals

Within just a few days, a tourist vessel chartered by the North West Shoals to Shore Research Program, with local operators and a DBCA officer, departed from Broome for the Rowley Shoals. These three reef atolls span 100km near the edge of the continental shelf, about 260km west-north-west offshore.

One of only two reef systems in WA with high and stable coral cover in the last decade, the Rowley Shoals is a reminder of beauty and value of healthy, well managed coral reefs.

But the in-water surveys and resulting footage confirmed the Rowley Shoals has experienced its worst bleaching event on record.

All parts of the reef and groups of corals were affected; most sites had between 10% and 30% of their corals bleached. Some sites had more than 60% bleaching and others less than 10%.

The heat stress also caused bleaching at Ashmore Reef, Scott Reef and some parts of the inshore Kimberley and Pilbara regions, all of which were badly affected during the 2016/17 global bleaching event.

This most recent event (2019/20) is significant because of the extent and duration of heat stress. It’s also notable because it occurred outside the extreme El Niño–Southern Oscillation phases – warming or cooling of the ocean’s surface that has damaged the northern and southern reefs in the past.

A reef crisis

The impacts from climate change are not restricted to WA or the Great Barrier Reef – a similar scenario is playing out on reefs around the world, including those already degraded by local pressures.

By global standards, WA still has healthy coral reefs. They provide a critical reminder of what reefs offer in terms of natural beauty, jobs and income from fisheries and tourism.

But we’ve spent two decades following the trajectories of some of WA’s most remote coral reefs. We’ve seen how climate change and coral bleaching can devastate entire reef systems, killing most corals and dramatically altering associated communities of plants and animals.

And we’ve seen the same reefs recover over just one or two decades, only to again be devastated by mass bleaching – this time with little chance of a full recovery in the future climate.

Ongoing climate change will bring more severe cyclones and mass bleaching, the two most significant disturbances to our coral reefs, plus additional pressures such as ocean acidification.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is the only way to alleviate these pressures. In the meantime, scientists will work to slow the rate of coral reef degradation though new collaborations, and innovative, rigorous approaches to reef management.

– ref. With no work in lockdown, tour operators helped find coral bleaching on Western Australia’s remote reefs – https://theconversation.com/with-no-work-in-lockdown-tour-operators-helped-find-coral-bleaching-on-western-australias-remote-reefs-142644