Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jane Williams, Researcher at the Centre for Values, Ethics and the Law in Medicine (VELiM), University of Sydney

Last week, outgoing chief medical officer Brendan Murphy announced all returned travellers would be tested for COVID-19 before and after quarantine.

Some were surprised testing was not already required. Others were outraged some 30% of returned travellers in hotel quarantine in Victoria had declined to be tested.

This week, Victorian premier Daniel Andrews said more than 900 people in two Melbourne “hotspots” had declined door-to-door testing.

Again, there was outrage. People refusing COVID-19 tests were labelled selfish and rude.

A positive test result, together with contact tracing, gives public health authorities important information about the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, in a community.

So why might people at higher risk of a positive result be reluctant testers? And what can we do to improve testing rates?

The many reasons why

Reluctance to be tested for COVID-19 is not unique to returned travellers in hotel quarantine or people living in “hotspot” suburbs.

In the week ending June 28, FluTracking, a voluntary online surveillance system, reported only 46% of people with a fever and cough had gone for a COVID-19 test.

That can be for a variety of reasons.

A medical test result is not a neutral piece of information. People may refuse medical testing (if they have symptoms) or screening (if no symptoms) of any type because they want to avoid the consequences of a positive result.

Alternatively, they might want to avoid the perceived burden of the test procedure itself.

Reasons may relate to potentially losing money or work

Many reasons for avoiding testing are likely to be structural: a casualised workforce means fewer workers with sick leave and a higher burden associated with having to isolate while waiting for test results. After a COVID-19 test in NSW, for instance, this can take 24-72 hours.

Then there’s the issue of precarious work. If people can’t attend work, either waiting at home for test results or recovering from sickness, they may lose their job altogether.

Read more: If we want workers to stay home when sick, we need paid leave for casuals

In the case of hotel quarantine, a positive result on day ten will mean a longer stay in isolation. Hotel quarantine is not an easy experience for many, particularly if quarantining alone.

An extension of time at a point where the end is in sight may be a very difficult proposition to stomach, such that avoiding testing is a preferable option.

Another structural issue is whether governments have done enough to reach linguistically diverse communities with public health advice, which Victoria’s chief health officer Brett Sutton recently admitted may be an issue.

Through no fault of their own, may people who don’t speak English as a first language, in Victoria or elsewhere, may not be getting COVID-19 health advice about symptoms, isolation or testing many of us take for granted.

Read more: Multilingual Australia is missing out on vital COVID-19 information. No wonder local councils and businesses are stepping in

People might fear the procedure or live with past traumas

Reasons may be personal and include fear of the test procedure itself (or fear it will hurt their children), distrust in government or public health systems, and worry about the extent of public health department scrutiny a positive result will bring.

People may also feel unprepared and cautious in the case of door-knocking testing campaigns.

We can’t dismiss these concerns as paranoid. Fears of invasive procedures are associated with past trauma, such as sexual abuse.

People who have experienced discrimination and marginalisation may also be less likely to trust governments and health systems.

COVID-19 can also lead to social stigma, including blame and ostracism, even after recovery.

As with any health-related decision, people usually consider, consciously or not, whether benefits outweigh harms. If the benefit of a test is assumed to be low, particularly if symptoms are light or absent, the balance may tip to harms related to discomfort, lost income or diminished freedoms.

Should we force people to get tested?

Although federal and state laws can compel certain people to undergo testing under limited circumstances, acting chief medical officer Paul Kelly said it was “a last resort”.

Forcing a person to undergo a test contravenes that person’s right to bodily integrity. This is the right to make decisions about what happens to your own body, without outside coercion.

It also involves medical personnel having to override their professional responsibility to obtain voluntary and informed consent.

Some states have indicated they will introduce punishments for refusing testing. They include an extension of hotel quarantine and the potential for fines for people not willing to participate in community testing.

Read more: Lockdown returns: how far can coronavirus measures go before they infringe on human rights?

Forced testing will backfire

We don’t think forced testing is the way to go. A heavy-handed approach can create an antagonistic and mistrustful relationship with public health institutions.

The current situation is not the only infectious disease emergency we will face. Removing barriers to participating in public health activities, in the immediate and long term, will enable people to comply with and help build trusted institutions. This is likely to create an enduring public good.

Victoria is trying to make testing easier. It is offering a test that takes a saliva sample rather than a nasal swab, which is widely perceived to be unpleasant.

Read more: Explainer: what’s the new coronavirus saliva test, and how does it work?

This may encourage parents to have their children tested. The test is less sensitive, however, so the gains in increased uptake may be lost in a larger number of false negatives (people who have the virus but test negative).

Ultimately, we need to understand why people refuse testing, and to refine public health approaches to testing that support individuals to make decisions in the public interest.

– ref. Why some people don’t want to take a COVID-19 test – https://theconversation.com/why-some-people-dont-want-to-take-a-covid-19-test-141794

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Clift, Teaching Fellow and PhD candidate, University of Melbourne

In recent days, the prime ministers of the UK and Australia each declared they are working toward providing safe haven visas for Hong Kong residents. In the US, lawmakers passed a bill that would impose sanctions on businesses and individuals that support China’s efforts to restrict Hong Kong’s autonomy.

The prospect of a shift from rhetoric to action reveals just how dire the situation in China’s world city has become.

July 1 is usually associated with Hong Kong’s annual pro-democracy march. This year, it saw around 370 arrests as protesters clashed with police under the shadow of a brand new national security law.

Read more: ‘We fear Hong Kong will become just another Chinese city’: an interview with Martin Lee, grandfather of democracy

Hong Kong police have been cracking down hard on demonstrators for over a year – with Beijing’s blessing – and most of this week’s arrests were possible simply because police had banned the gathering.

But ten arrests were made under the national security law for conduct including the possession of banners advocating Hong Kong independence.

Already, a pro-democracy political party has disbanded and activists are fleeing the city.

What’s in the national security law and how it could be applied

The national security law had been unveiled just hours earlier, its details kept secret until this week. It was imposed on Hong Kong in unprecedented circumstances when Chief Executive Carrie Lam, Beijing’s appointed leader in the city, bypassed the local legislature and promulgated it directly.

The law creates four main offences: secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces to endanger national security.

Hong Kong law already contains some offences of this sort, including treason, a disused colonial relic, and terrorism, tightly defined by statute. The new national security offences are different beasts – procedurally unique and alarmingly broad.

Secession, for example, includes the acts of inciting, assisting, supporting, planning, organising or participating in the separation or change of status of any part of China, not necessarily by force. This is calculated to prevent even the discussion of independence or self-determination for Hong Kong.

Collusion includes making requests of or receiving instructions from foreign countries, institutions or organisations to disrupt laws or policies in or impose sanctions against Hong Kong or China.

This is aimed at barring Hong Kongers from lobbying foreign governments or making representations at the United Nations, which many protesters have done in the past year.

The law contains severe penalties: for serious cases, between ten years and life imprisonment. It also overrides other Hong Kong laws. The presumption in favour of bail, for instance, will not apply in national security cases, facilitating indefinite detention of accused persons.

Defendants can be tried in Hong Kong courts, but in a major departure from the city’s long-cherished judicial independence, the chief executive will personally appoint the judges for national security cases.

The chief executive also decides if a trial involves state secrets – a concept defined very broadly in China. In these cases, open justice is abandoned and trials will take place behind closed doors with no jury.

While Hong Kong courts can apply the new national security law, the power to interpret it lies with Beijing alone. And in the most serious cases, mainland Chinese courts can assume jurisdiction.

This raises the prospect of political prisoners being swallowed up by China’s legal system, which features no presumption of innocence and nominal human rights guarantees. China also leads the world in executions.

Much of the national security law’s content contradicts fundamental principles of Hong Kong’s common law legal system and the terms of its mini-constitution, the Basic Law.

Even the territory’s justice minister – another unelected political appointee – has admitted the systems are incompatible.

Read more: Hong Kong: does British offer of citizenship to Hongkongers violate Thatcher’s deal with China?

Why it is deliberately vague

In the typical style of mainland Chinese laws, the national security law is drafted in vague and general terms. This is designed to give maximum flexibility to law enforcement and prosecutors, while provoking maximum fear and compliance among the population.

The government has said calls for independence for Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjiang and even Taiwan are now illegal, as is the popular protest slogan “liberate Hong Kong; revolution of our times”.

A Beijing spokesman has said the charge of collusion to “provoke hatred” against the Hong Kong government could be used against people who spread rumours that police beat protesters to death in a notorious subway station clash last year, echoing the infamous mainland Chinese law against “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”.

The law does not appear to be retroactive, but fears that it could be interpreted that way have caused a flurry of online activity as people have deleted social media accounts and posts associating them with past protests.

This is unsurprising given the Hong Kong government’s record of trawling through old social media posts for reasons to bar non-establishment candidates from standing at elections.

Dissent in any form becomes extremely hazardous

Despite the promise of autonomy for Hong Kong, enshrined in a pre-handover treaty with the UK that China claims is now irrelevant, the national security law has escalated the project to “harmonise” the upstart region by coercive means, rather than addressing the root causes of dissatisfaction.

Under the auspices of the new law, the Chinese government will openly establish a security agency, with agents unaccountable under local law, in Hong Kong for the first time. It has also authorised itself in the new law to extend its tendrils further into civil society, with mandates to manage the media, the internet, NGOs and school curricula.

Under the weight of this authoritarian agenda, dissent in any form becomes an extremely hazardous prospect. It is no doubt Beijing’s intention that it will one day be impossible – or better yet, something Hong Kongers would not even contemplate.

Read more: China is taking a risk by getting tough on Hong Kong. Now, the US must decide how to respond

The aim of silencing all opposing voices – including those overseas – is clear from the purported extraterritorial operation of the law.

The international community has condemned Beijing’s actions, but its members have a responsibility to follow words with actions. The least that democratic countries like the US, UK, Australia and others can do is offer a realistic path to safety for the civic-minded Hong Kongers who have stood up to the world’s premier authoritarian power at grave personal risk.

Some 23 years after China achieved its long-held ambition of regaining Hong Kong, it has failed to win hearts and minds and has brought out the big stick. Its promises may have been hollow, but its threats are not.

– ref. Hong Kong activists now face a choice: stay silent, or flee the city. The world must give them a path to safety – https://theconversation.com/hong-kong-activists-now-face-a-choice-stay-silent-or-flee-the-city-the-world-must-give-them-a-path-to-safety-141880

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

The emergence of significant community transmission of COVID-19 in Melbourne over the past week is greatly concerning to the whole of Australia.

Earlier this week, Victoria’s chief health officer Brett Sutton said the state was struggling to cope with the volume of contact tracing required for more than 2,500 people in self-isolation, who must have all their close contacts traced and contacted:

[…] we’re at the limits of managing that number.

Since then, the number of cases in Victoria has risen further still.

What options are available for increasing the pool of contact tracers in Victoria, or any other state that finds itself handling significant rises in COVID-19 cases?

Read more: Victoria is on the precipice of an uncontrolled coronavirus outbreak. Will the new measures work?

Remind me, what are contact tracers?

The key strategy to preventing further community transmission is to identify all cases through extensive testing, isolate people who test positive, and then trace their close contacts.

These contacts require initial testing to see if they are also potential spreaders, but more importantly they need to be isolated and closely monitored. Should they develop symptoms, they also need to be tested.

The process of identification of cases, ensuring isolation and monitoring, identifying contacts and following up each of those requires extensive effort.

Read more: Explainer: what is contact tracing and how does it help limit the coronavirus spread?

Every patient who tests positive needs to be interviewed to identify where they have been during the potentially infective stage of the disease, and who they may have come into contact with.

In some circumstances, this may be limited to family members, while in others it may involve following up others who may have been in the same locations, such as workplaces, restaurants, shops or public transport.

All these people need to be made aware of the risk and followed up. This is challenging in a free society. It requires cooperation from the community. It also requires understanding that some who may be spreading the disease are not aware they are doing so.

Read more: Lockdown returns: how far can coronavirus measures go before they infringe on human rights?

This task is traditionally the role of public health workers — including doctors, nurses and those with specific public health qualifications — called contact tracers.

They are the real heroes of this effort, doing mundane work below the radar to keep the community protected.

In normal circumstances, these staff monitor diseases that are present in the community and identify and follow up notifiable disease such as measles, HIV, hepatitis or tuberculosis.

These public health workers have been working desperately hard for months and now those in Victoria are being asked to step up to the mark again.

Read more: By persisting with COVIDSafe, Australia risks missing out on globally trusted contact tracing

How can we expand the pool of contact tracers?

The public health workforce needs to be expanded rapidly to handle the increased workload. There are several ways to do this, some of which have already been implemented in Victoria.

We could reallocate people from other public health functions, which could immediately provide a ready and well-trained workforce.

But this will impact other vital public health protections, including surveillance of other disease, health promotion, screening, early diagnosis and intervention. Diverting staff from these efforts may also have long-term health consequences.

Read more: Coronavirus: why did England ignore an army of existing contact tracers?

Staff could be deployed from other agencies, including the Australian Defence Force.

While readily available and well-disciplined for the task, only some of these people have the necessary expertise to identify cases and trace contacts. Others may need to serve in support roles.

Other states and territories could provide support. However, this may require people to relocate to Victoria with the personal disruption implied, as well as the enhanced risk to them and to their families and communities when they return.

This sharing of public health resources across state borders requires significant national cooperation, which has been evident in other parts of Australia’s COVID-19 response.

Finally, people may be recruited from the pool of partly trained people (public health students). While they may lack the practical skills, they will at least bring theoretical knowledge to perform some targeted tasks with specific training. For instance, they could work with experienced personnel to help maintain records or identify contacts.

We have a lot at stake

This new outbreak in Victoria threatens to overwhelm the system’s public health capacity. If that occurs, we can expect large numbers of deaths to follow. We are not there yet, but this outbreak in Victoria is placing the whole country at risk.

So public health workers need all the help and support the Australian community can provide.

– ref. Victoria’s coronavirus contact tracers are already under the pump. What happens next? – https://theconversation.com/victorias-coronavirus-contact-tracers-are-already-under-the-pump-what-happens-next-141792

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Kemish, Former Ambassador and Adjunct Professor, School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, The University of Queensland

Chinese activity in Papua New Guinea was not the only factor behind Australia’s Pacific “Step-Up”. As a former high commissioner to PNG, I know it followed serious deliberations about Australia’s overall strategic imperatives in the region.

But China’s engagement with our nearest neighbour was in the minds of many when Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the foreign policy initiative in November 2018, pledging to

take our engagement with the region to a new level.

Chinese President Xi Jinping was about to make a state visit to Port Moresby, before joining other world leaders at the APEC Summit there. China had been busy repairing roads and constructing an international conference centre in the PNG capital ahead of the meeting, along with a six-lane highway leading to the parliament.

A Chinese hospital ship had just conducted a well-publicised “humanitarian mission” to PNG. And Prime Minister Peter O’Neill had recently signed up to the Belt and Road Initiative, fuelling concern that PNG’s growing financial exposure to China might be converted to Beijing’s strategic advantage.

Xi then used the opportunity of his state visit to pledge an additional US$300 million in concessional loans to the country.

Several Papua New Guinean friends commented then that none of this activity would be of lasting benefit to the struggling developing country. But it certainly captured public attention, and suggested a renewed strategic intent on China’s behalf to boost its influence in the region.

Read more: Despite its Pacific ‘step-up’, Australia is still not listening to the region, new research shows

Recent setbacks in China’s outreach

Eighteen months later, China is still looking for ways to engage with PNG, motivated by interest in both its abundant natural resources and key strategic location. But these efforts sometimes seem uncoordinated, and Beijing has suffered some significant setbacks.

China has been surprisingly slow to respond at critical moments. For instance, PNG officials became frustrated with bureaucratic stalling in early 2019 as they sought to follow up on Xi’s promised loan, and Australia ultimately stepped in to supply the required A$440 million.

Canberra also outmanoeuvred Huawei’s bid to lay undersea high-speed internet cables to PNG and the neighbouring Solomon Islands.

And this year, China has not sent any meaningful signal of solidarity to PNG since the onset of COVID-19 – just proforma PPE donations. Western institutions like the IMF are instead stepping in with emergency financial assistance but, so far at least, China has been nowhere to be seen.

Anti-Chinese sentiment flares up

The recent experience of China’s Zijin Mining Group points to another constraint – the anti-Chinese sentiment that sometimes lurks below the surface in PNG.

The PNG cabinet decided in April not to renew the gold mining lease held jointly by Zijin and Canada’s Barrick Gold at Porgera in the Highlands region. Prime Minister James Marape announced Porgera would instead transition to national ownership.

A letter from Zijin Chairman Chen Jinghe to Marape was then leaked. Chen warned if Zijin’s investment was not “properly protected”, he was

afraid there will be significant negative impact on the bilateral relations between China and PNG.

This provoked visceral anti-Chinese sentiment and praise for Marape’s stance on social media in PNG. Speculation last week the government was looking to sell the mine to another Chinese group sparked a further wave of anti-Chinese feeling – this time critical of Marape.

The tone of some of these messages brought to mind the violent attacks against Chinese and other Asian small business owners at past moments of economic hardship and local tensions in PNG.

Zijin is not the first Chinese resource company to face difficulties in PNG. In 2004, China’s Metallurgical
Construction
Company (MCC) secured the agreement of then-Prime Minister Michael Somare to buy the Ramu nickel mine in Madang province.

The company learned quickly that an agreement with the head of government is not enough. MCC did not plan adequately for engagement with landowners, provincial authorities and environmentalists, and inflamed local tensions by using imported Chinese labour.

MCC spent almost two years in court pitted against these groups, to its substantial cost.

Read more: Everything but China is on the table during PNG prime minister’s visit

China is not giving up

PNG can be a hard place to operate. As the Australian government and many businesses and NGOs have found, success requires sustained effort with multiple stakeholders.

Chinese companies are not giving up. China Mobile reportedly looked at taking over domestic mobile carrier Digicel earlier this year, and Shenzhen Energy is persevering with its stalled US$2 billion “Ramu 2” hydro power project, given initial approval by the O’Neill government in 2015.

Industry sources report the current government, eager to announce employment-generating projects, is considering moving to implementation stage after some hesitation.

Read more: In the post-APEC scramble to lavish funds on PNG, here’s what the country really needs

A deal has also recently been signed allowing PNG seafood exports to China.

China has every right to pursue investments in the region, and PNG is entitled to diversify its external links. Beijing will likely make further advances, but on current form these will likely be more opportunistic than strategic.

Australia should engage China positively in PNG, consistent with its bilateral interests in both Port Moresby and Beijing. It should also build confidently on the advantages that flow from geographic proximity and a long, overall positive relationship with its friends across the Torres Strait.

– ref. China’s push into PNG has been surprisingly slow and ineffective. Why has Beijing found the going so tough? – https://theconversation.com/chinas-push-into-png-has-been-surprisingly-slow-and-ineffective-why-has-beijing-found-the-going-so-tough-140073

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sara Webb, PhD candidate in Astrophysics, Swinburne University of Technology

What does the Sun’s core look like? Sophie, aged 8, Perth

What does the Sun’s core look like? This is a fantastic question Sophie, and one we will need to go on an adventure to answer!

We are about to take a journey to the centre of the Sun. The action begins about 148 million kilometres from our planet when we arrive at the Sun’s surface in our space ship.

It’s hot here at the surface, about 5,700 degrees Celsius, and the light is brilliant and blinding. As we look closer, the surface appears to bubble, just like boiling water. Some of the bubbles look darker than the others. The darker bubbles are slightly cooler than the rest, but every inch of the surface is still blisteringly hot.

Read more: Curious Kids: how are stars made?

From zone to zone

We continue on our journey, diving through one of these giant bubbles on the surface, and head towards our first stop: the convective zone.

Surrounding us is a hot fluid called plasma, filled with bubbles by the constant movement of hot gases rising and cool gases falling. The bubbles are moving, growing and shrinking. Some are even popping as our space ship travels down further, rocking from side to side like a boat in a high sea.

After travelling down for 200,000 kilometres (that’s about 15 times the width of the whole Earth!) the rocking finally stops. We’ve made it to our second stop, the radiative zone.

This part of the Sun is very hot. It is now 2 million degrees outside our space ship. If we could see individual light particles, called photons, we’d see them bouncing between the tiny particles, called atoms, that make up the plasma.

These bounces forwards and backwards and from side to side make up a dance scientists call a “random walk”. It can take one photon hundreds of thousands of years to randomly walk its way out of this layer.

Our spaceship is going full speed ahead, so we move through it much more quickly.

The weight of all the plasma above us pressing down means the plasma around us is denser than gold, and the temperatures are soaring up towards 15 million degrees! We have almost reached the final stop on our tour, the Sun’s core.

Read more: Curious Kids: Why do stars twinkle?

Welcome to the core

Before we enter the core, we’re going to have to shrink down to the size of an atom. It is the only way we will get to see what is happening in here, because what we are trying to see in here is atoms, millions of times smaller than a grain of sand!

The core of the Sun is home to billions and billions of atoms of hydrogen, the lightest element in the universe. The immense pressure and heat pushes these atoms so close to one another that they squish together to create new, heavier atoms.

This is called nuclear fusion. The hydrogen atoms that get squished together form an entirely different substance called helium.

So now that we are in the core of the Sun, what does it actually look like? Not only is everything blindingly bright, but it just might have a pretty pink colour!

We can’t be entirely sure what the core would look like to human eyes, but we have seen in labs here on Earth that hydrogen plasma has a pink glow. So we can make an educated guess that hydrogen plasma in the core of the Sun would look about the same.

When atoms merge together, they release large amounts of energy in the form of light. The light works its way up through the core, into the radiative zone where it bounces around, until it finally makes it into the convective zone. Then the light travels up to the surface of the Sun through massive bubbles of plasma, and from the surface it is free to travel uninterrupted through the sky.

It’s time to leave the hottest place in our solar system and head back to Earth. Our journey has taken us 700,000 kilometres deep into the interior of the Sun, past the bubbles of the convective zone, through the billions of the light rays in the radiative zone and into the mysterious atom-fusing core.

As we land back on Earth and look towards the Sun in the sky, it’s almost like looking back in time. We know now the light we are seeing was created hundreds of thousands of years ago, in the hottest place in the Solar system!

– ref. Curious Kids: what does the Sun’s core look like? – https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-what-does-the-suns-core-look-like-141785

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Spencer Zifcak, Allan Myers Chair of Law/Professor of Law, Australian Catholic University

After a lengthy delay due to the coronavirus pandemic, the legal case that constitutes the most significant threat to freedom of expression in this country will soon play out in the ACT Supreme Court.

This is the prosecution of Bernard Collaery, the former ACT attorney-general and lawyer for Witness K, the former ASIS officer turned whistleblower.

Both are charged under section 39 of the Intelligence Services Act 2001, which deems it a criminal offence for a person to communicate any information that was prepared by the Australian Secret Intelligence Service in pursuit of its functions.

After an ACT Supreme Court ruling last week, significant parts of the trial against Collaery will now be held in secret, but the argument put forward by the attorney-general that certain information in the case must be kept classified is extraordinarily weak.

Collaery’s attorney protested the move, saying

Open justice is an essential part of our legal system, the rights of defendants and of our democracy.

Background of the case

The prosecutions arose from the disclosure of information related to a covert ASIS spying operation – the bugging of the cabinet offices of Timor-Leste. The operation was authorised by Alexander Downer, then-foreign minister, in 2004.

Its purpose was secretly to obtain information about Timor-Leste’s negotiating strategy before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in a case seeking to clarify the country’s maritime boundary with Australia. This was crucial to determining the countries’ competing claims to rich oil deposits in the Timor Sea. The case ended because Australia pre-emptively withdrew from the ICJ’s jurisdiction.

In 2013, Timor-Leste took its concerns about the Australian surveillance operation – and the legal and commercial disadvantage it had suffered – to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. It briefed Collaery to represent its interests. Witness K was invited to give evidence.

Read more: After a border dispute and spying scandal, can Australia and Timor-Leste be good neighbours?

Australian Attorney-General George Brandis, however, ordered the confiscation of Witness K’s passport to prevent him giving evidence to the court and ordered ASIO raids on the homes and offices of both K and Collaery.

The raid on Collaery’s premises yielded a copy of the full affidavit he had drafted summarising the case Timor-Leste was to present to the court. From a legal perspective, these raids were scandalous.

Witness K and Collaery were then notified they could be prosecuted for breaches of the Intelligence Services Act. But nothing happened until 2018, when Attorney-General Christian Porter decided the prosecutions should proceed.

Witness K gave notice last year that he would plead guilty, but Collaery decided to contest the charge.

There is a certain Alice in Wonderland quality about all this – everything has been turned upside down.

The two people who acted in the national interest by disclosing alleged unlawful activity by Australia’s intelligence service are the defendants in a criminal case. The government, which initiated the covert operation, has become the prosecutor. Something has gone very wrong.

Possible defences under the law

So, what are the legal issues that are likely to arise? The real problem for Witness K and Collaery is that section 39 of the Intelligence Services Act has no public interest defence, in other words, they can’t argue that disclosing the confidential information was done in the public interest, and hence, not against the law.

There are two other defences available, but neither fits easily with the facts of the case.

One allows information to be disclosed if it has already been communicated or made available to the public with the authority of the Commonwealth. The facts of this case are widely known in the public arena owing in part to interviews Collaery gave to journalists. The Commonwealth, however, did not provide permission for this disclosure.

The second defence allows the disclosure of information to the inspector-general of intelligence and security (IGIS), who monitors and oversees the activities of the intelligence agencies.

Read more: Australia’s quest for national security is undermining the courts and could lead to secretive trials

Witness K requested IGIS permission to disclose information about the ASIS bugging operation for the purpose of giving evidence to the Permanent Court of Arbitration. He received permission, but the government then withdrew his passport to prevent him from travelling to The Hague.

Witness K and Collaery might have argued the disclosures were made in accordance with the Commonwealth Public Interest Disclosure Act, otherwise known as the Whistleblower Act.

Section 41, however, exempts intelligence information from being disclosed under this act.

Has the government acted unlawfully?

At this stage, it is worth reflecting on the illegal activities in which the government may have engaged. It appears likely ASIS undertook an act of criminal trespass in Timor-Leste by planting surveillance devices in its cabinet room. As in every other democratic country, Timor-Leste’s cabinet deliberations are by law secret.

It is customary in international law – and spelled out explicitly in the UN Convention on the Jurisdictional Immunity of States – that nations and their property are immune from the domestic jurisdiction of other countries. So, Australia also transgressed international law by raiding the offices of Witness K and Collaery and confiscating documents that were clearly the property of the Timor-Leste government.

In addition, the law in Australia protects legal professional privilege, which guarantees that communications between a lawyer and client are confidential.

By, in effect, stealing Collaery’s extensive legal advice to the Timor-Leste government, ASIO violated this principle. Brandis, however, has said

No lawyer can invoke the principles of lawyer–client privilege to excuse participation, whether as principal or accessory, in offences against the Commonwealth.

How the High Court could view the case

It is clear nothing permits the government to take actions that are contrary to Australian law or the law of another country.

The defendants could argue, then, that disclosing information for the sole purpose of exposing government illegality should not be prohibited by Section 39 of the Intelligence Services Act.

A conviction in these circumstances would be a travesty, particularly as it carries with it a maximum sentence of two years imprisonment. This is the penalty Collaery and K are facing.

Read more: The shaky case for prosecuting Witness K and his lawyer in the Timor-Leste spying scandal

Next, it ought to be remembered the High Court has read into the constitution an implied right to freedom of political communication.

It is quite likely the High Court will find the relevant provisions of the Intelligence Services Act are cast so broadly as to transgress this constitutionally guaranteed freedom. If so, the government’s case will fall apart.

Should these arguments be successful, Witness K and Collaery will emerge as the free speech heroes they are.

Even more importantly, the profoundly chilling effect the imprisonment of individuals of conscience would have on political and journalistic freedom in this country will have been avoided. Australian democracy will have repelled a grievous attack.

– ref. Why Bernard Collaery’s case is one of the gravest threats to freedom of expression – https://theconversation.com/why-bernard-collaerys-case-is-one-of-the-gravest-threats-to-freedom-of-expression-122463

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deborah Williamson, Professor of Microbiology, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity

A cornerstone of containing the COVID-19 pandemic is widespread testing to identify cases and prevent new outbreaks emerging. This strategy is known as “test, trace and isolate”.

The standard test so far has been the swab test, in which a swab goes up your nose and to the back of your throat.

But an alternative method of specimen collection, using saliva, is being evaluated in Victoria and other parts of the world. It may have some benefits, even though it’s not as accurate.

Read more: Victoria is on the precipice of an uncontrolled coronavirus outbreak. Will the new measures work?

Saliva testing can reduce risks for health workers

The gold standard for detecting SARS-CoV-2 (the coronavirus that causes COVID-19) is a polymerase chain reaction (PCR). This tests for the genetic material of the virus, and is performed most commonly on a swab taken from the nose and throat, or from sputum (mucus from the lungs) in unwell patients.

In Australia, more than 2.5 million of these tests have been carried out since the start of the pandemic, contributing significantly to the control of the virus.

Although a nasal and throat swab is the preferred specimen for detecting the virus, PCR testing on saliva has recently been suggested as an alternative method. Several studies demonstrate the feasibility of this approach, including one conducted at the Doherty Institute (where the lead author of this article works). It used the existing PCR test, but examined saliva instead of nasal samples.

Read more: Keep your nose out of it: why saliva tests could offer a better alternative to nasal COVID-19 swabs

The use of saliva has several advantages:

• it is easier and less uncomfortable to take saliva than a swab

• it may reduce the risk to health-care workers if they do not need to collect the sample

• it reduces the consumption of personal protective equipment (PPE) and swabs. This is particularly important in settings where these might be in short supply.

But it’s not as sensitive

However, a recent meta-analysis (not yet peer-reviewed) has shown detection from saliva is less sensitive than a nasal swab, with a lower concentration of virus in saliva compared to swabs. It’s important to remember, though, this data is preliminary and must be treated with caution.

Nonetheless, this means saliva testing is likely to miss some cases of COVID-19. This was also shown in our recent study, which compared saliva and nasal swabs in more than 600 adults presenting to a COVID-19 screening clinic.

Of 39 people who tested positive via nasal swab, 87% were positive on saliva. The amount of virus was less in saliva than in the nasal swab. This most likely explains why testing saliva missed the virus in the other 13% of cases.

The laboratory test itself is the same as the PCR tests conducted on nasal swabs, just using saliva as an alternative specimen type. However, Australian laboratories operate under strict quality frameworks. To use saliva as a diagnostic specimen, each laboratory must verify saliva specimens are acceptably accurate when compared to swabs. This is done by testing a bank of known positive and negative saliva specimens and comparing the results with swabs taken from the same patients.

When could saliva testing be used?

In theory, there are several settings where saliva testing could play a role in the diagnosis of COVID-19. These may include:

• places with limited staff to collect swabs or where high numbers of tests are required

• settings where swabs and PPE may be in critically short supply

• some children and other people for whom a nasal swab is difficult.

The use of saliva testing at a population level has not been done anywhere in the world. However, a pilot study is under way in the United Kingdom to test 14,000 health workers. The US Food and Drug Administration recently issued an emergency approval for a diagnostic test that involves home-collected saliva samples.

In Australia, the Victorian government is also piloting the collection of saliva in limited circumstances, alongside traditional swabbing approaches. This is to evaluate whether saliva collection is a useful approach to further expanding the considerable swab-based community testing occurring in response to the current outbreaks in Melbourne.

Read more: These 10 postcodes are back in Stage 3 coronavirus lockdown. Here’s what that means

A saliva test may be better than no test at all

Undoubtedly, saliva testing is less sensitive than a nasal swab for COVID-19 detection. But in the midst of a public health crisis, there is a strong argument that, in some instances, a test with moderately reduced sensitivity is better than no test at all.

The use of laboratory testing in these huge volumes as a public health strategy has not been tried for previous infectious diseases outbreaks. This has required a scaling up of laboratory capacity far beyond its usual purpose of diagnosing infection for clinical care. In the current absence of a vaccine, widespread testing for COVID-19 is likely to occur for the foreseeable future, with periods of intense testing required to respond to local outbreaks that will inevitably arise.

In addition to swab-free specimens like saliva, testing innovations include self-collected swabs (which has also been tested in Australia), and the use of batch testing of specimens. These approaches could complement established testing methods and may provide additional back-up for population-level screening to ensure testing is readily available to all who need it.

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

– ref. Explainer: what’s the new coronavirus saliva test, and how does it work? – https://theconversation.com/explainer-whats-the-new-coronavirus-saliva-test-and-how-does-it-work-141877

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Jones, Research Fellow (Food Policy and Law), George Institute for Global Health

As you read this, health officials are busy finalising the government’s review of the health star rating system on packaged foods.

One of the issues the review is looking at is whether the system, which has been voluntary in Australia and New Zealand since its launch in 2014, should become mandatory.

This is something public health and consumer groups have called for, but the food industry has opposed.

Our new research, which looked at health star ratings of 20,000 packaged foods, shows why mandatory health stars on all packaged food is needed.

We found less than half of all eligible foods carried them, and those that did were skewed towards foods with higher ratings.

Read more: Why the Australasian Health Star Rating needs major changes to make it work

Remind me, what is the health star rating?

The health star system rates products from 0.5 to 5.0 stars to help guide consumers toward healthier choices when browsing the supermarket shelves. When comparing similar products, the general idea is the higher the star rating, the healthier the food.

However, the government’s review is meant to address criticism the food industry has “gamed” the system by exploiting loopholes in scoring criteria to allow some products high in sugar and salt to still score relatively highly.

While much attention has been directed towards closing these loopholes, public health and consumer groups would also like to see mandatory labelling.

Here’s what we did and what we found

We looked at health stars on packaged food in Australia between 2014 and 2019. We used the FoodSwitch database, which contains information about the labelling and nutrition of packaged food.

Every year, FoodSwitch is updated by photographing labels of all packaged foods and beverages in four large supermarkets in metropolitan Sydney. That’s a total of about 20,000 unique products.

For each year in this study, we recorded whether a product was displaying a health star rating and its value.

Read more: Essays on health: how food companies can sneak bias into scientific research

Where a product was not showing stars on the pack, we calculated how that product would rate using available nutrition information and applying the government’s calculator.

This gave us an idea of what information manufacturers were not yet providing consumers.

We also looked at the manufacturer of each product, and flagged whether they were represented on the committee overseeing implementation of the health stars system.

Voluntary use remains disappointing

We found uptake of food star ratings has increased steadily over the past five years. But only about 41% of eligible products carried one.

Retailers Coles, Woolworths and Aldi labelled their own private label brands, accounting for about 56% of all health star ratings. Despite this leadership, these retailers were not involved in the implementation committee.

However, members of the industry group the Australian Food and Grocery Council — involved in developing health stars and represented on the implementation committee — were responsible for only 29% of total uptake.

Read more: Fat nation: the rise and fall of obesity on the political agenda

Selective use, on healthier products

Perhaps unsurprisingly with voluntary labelling, health stars were more likely to appear on products with higher ratings. More than three-quarters of all stars were on products rated 3.0 or higher.

With a few exceptions, including McCain Foods, Coles and Woolworths, nearly all companies were more likely to show stars on their higher-scoring products.

We found significant differences between the average rating of products displaying the health star rating, and those made by the same manufacturer not showing a health star rating.

For example, Nestlé showed stars on its Uncle Toby’s breakfast cereals where they scored an average 3.9 stars. But the company did not provide the star logo on its confectionery range, which received an average 1.4 stars.

A voluntary system puts profits before health

Our results illustrate the limits of commercial goodwill in applying health stars voluntarily.

Selective use allows the food industry to market its products as healthy but denies consumers the chance to make meaningful comparisons between products.

In particular, the voluntary system limits consumers’ ability to identify and avoid less healthy foods.

With the government review set to be finalised in mid-July, our work supports arguments for an improved health star rating system to be made mandatory to ensure the system works for consumers, not just food companies.

Read more: Supermarkets put junk food on special twice as often as healthy food, and that’s a problem

Here’s what needs to happen next

Making health stars mandatory will take time. However, health officials must commit now to a concrete and public plan to proceed down this path by a specific date in the likely event that uptake remains patchy.

Over the same period the health stars system has been operating, Australian manufacturers have implemented new requirements for mandatory country of origin labelling.

If we’re willing to use regulation to provide consumers more information about where their food comes from, we should be doing the same to provide more information about how healthy their food is too.

– ref. We looked at the health star rating of 20,000 foods and this is what we found – https://theconversation.com/we-looked-at-the-health-star-rating-of-20-000-foods-and-this-is-what-we-found-141453

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Briggs, Research Principal, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney

As the global renewables transition accelerates, the future for coal regions has become a big worry. This raises an important question: can renewables create the right jobs in the right places to employ former coal workers?

According to our new research, the answer in many cases is “yes”. Renewable energy jobs provide a good match for existing coal jobs across a range of blue and white-collar occupations, including construction and project managers, engineers, electricians, site administrators and mechanical technicians.

But about one-third of coal workers, such as drillers and machine operators, cannot simply switch over to renewables jobs. So as our economy pivots to renewables, planning and investment is needed to help coal regions survive.

Renewables jobs: a snapshot

Our research, commissioned by the Clean Energy Council, is the first large-scale survey of renewable energy employment in Australia.

We surveyed more than 450 Australian renewable energy businesses, covering large scale wind, solar and hydro, rooftop solar and batteries. We wanted to find out how many people were employed, and in what jobs.

Read more: Australia’s devotion to coal has come at a huge cost. We need the government to change course, urgently

We then projected employment until 2035 using three scenarios for the future of the electricity market, developed by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO).

Our results suggest renewable energy can be a major source of jobs in the next 15 years. But the trajectories are very different depending on government COVID-19 stimulus measures and wider energy policy.

Policy crossroads

We found the renewable energy sector currently employs about 26,000 people. Temporary construction and installation jobs now comprise 75% of the renewable energy labour market, but as the sector grows, this will change (more on that later).

Australia’s renewable energy target was reached last year, and has not been replaced. According to the Reserve Bank of Australia this caused renewables investment to fall by 50% last year compared to 2018. Under a “central” scenario where these policies continued, 11,000 renewable jobs would be lost by 2022.

We then examined a “step change” scenario where Australian policy settings were in line with meeting the Paris climate agreement. This would create a jobs boom: renewable energy employment would grow to 45,000 by 2025 and average around 35,000 jobs each year to 2035. Up to two-thirds are in regional areas.

Under all scenarios, job growth is strongest in rooftop solar and wind. Most are in the construction and installation phase, comprising both ongoing and project-based jobs in trades, as well as technicians and labourers. But by 2035, as many as half of renewable energy jobs could be ongoing jobs in operation and maintenance.

Read more: People need to see the benefits from local renewable energy projects, and that means jobs

Renewable energy jobs will be higher than our projections. We excluded employment areas such as building electricity transmission networks, bioenergy, professional services, renewable hydrogen, growth in minerals needed for renewable energy, and jobs in heavy industry such as “green” steel.

Renewables vs coal jobs

All up, coal mining in Australia employs about 40,000 people. As mentioned above, renewable energy jobs could grow to 45,000 by 2025 – and more once other sectors are included.

Australia’s renewable energy industry already employs considerably more people than the 10,500 working in the domestic coal sector – mostly thermal coal mining and power generation.

About 75% of coal mined in Australia is exported. About 24,000 people work in thermal coal mining for both domestic use and export – slightly fewer than the current renewable energy workforce.

New renewables jobs in coal regions

Around two-thirds of renewable energy jobs could be created in regional areas. These would be distributed more widely than coal sector jobs.

The leading coal mining states, NSW and Queensland, have the biggest share of renewable energy jobs under all scenarios.

AEMO has identified “renewable energy zones” where most large-scale renewable energy is expected to be located. In both NSW and Queensland, some of these zones overlap with the coal workforce. In NSW, the Central West zone could also create employment in the Hunter region. In general, though, many renewable energy jobs will be located in other regions and the capital cities.

Read more: Really Australia, it’s not that hard: 10 reasons why renewable energy is the future

In terms of occupations, there is overlap between coal and renewable energy. These include construction and project managers, engineers, electricians, mechanical trades, office managers and contract administrators and drivers.

The timing and location of these renewables jobs will influence whether they can be a source of alternative jobs for coal workers. Re-training of coal workers would also be required.

But there is no direct job overlap for the semi-skilled machine operators such as drillers, which account for more than one-third of the coal workforce.

Planning for the decline

Renewable energy can meaningfully help in the transition for coal regions. But it won’t replace all lost coal jobs, and planning and investment is needed to avoid social and economic harm.

Coal regions need industry development plans and investment to diversify their economies to other industries, including renewables. Almost half our coal workers are aged under 40, so Australia will not be able to follow Germany and Spain’s lead by relying on early retirement schemes.

At some point, demand for our coal exports will collapse – be it due to the falling cost of renewables, or policies to address climate change. If we don’t start preparing now, the consequences for coal communities will be dire.

– ref. 45,000 renewables jobs are Australia’s for the taking – but how many will go to coal workers? – https://theconversation.com/45-000-renewables-jobs-are-australias-for-the-taking-but-how-many-will-go-to-coal-workers-141531

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joel Barnes, Research Associate, Australian Centre for Public History, University of Technology Sydney

The government’s recently proposed restructure of university fees would see students pay 113% more for many humanities subjects.

The package is not a case of “humanities vs STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths)”, as some initially saw it. Some arts degrees, like English and languages, would see higher Commonwealth contributions.

But a disproportionate portion of the de-funding burden would still fall on the humanities if the package is approved by the Senate – to the extent many arts degrees would become almost full-fee paying courses.

So, those who care about the humanities have found themselves fighting yet another round of a decades-old culture war.

Since the 1980s, the humanities have been particularly vulnerable to funding cuts. This was driven by the hostility of conservative governments and critics who saw the humanities as generally antagonistic to their political interests.

Developments in this period set the parameters for much of the political discourse around the humanities since. And they made it possible for governments at various times to seek to defund or make funding for the humanities increasingly precarious.

From civilisation to diversity, and back again

Traditionally, the humanities were conservative in tone. There was an emphasis on the achievements of “civilisation”, a principally Western, masculine canon of literature, art, music and history.

At the opening of the Menzies Building for the humanities at Monash University in 1963, Sir Robert Menzies said:

[…] civilisation is in the heart and mind of people and the task of the humanist, the task of the people who teach and learn in a school of humanities is not to forget that history, for example, is no useless study, since a man who is ignorant of it will have no sense of proportion, no benefit of experience in dealing with new problems as they arise.

From about the mid-1960s, the humanities’ political centre of gravity began to shift gradually leftwards. Scholarship and teaching became more diverse, critical and feminist.

Eventually, a clear antagonism emerged between this new version of the humanities and the values of both older cultural conservatives and those pushing for deregulation and privatisation – “economic rationalists”, as they were then called – who had captured much of the public service in the 1980s.

At the same time, research policy circles became increasingly instrumentalist – believing research must be practically “useful”. This generated a growing demand for taxpayer-funded research to demonstrate its contribution to the “national interest”.

Initially this development concerned the relationship between basic science and more practical, applied science and had little to do with the humanities.

But the changes in overall research philosophies came to impinge on the humanities, especially in the new emphasis on “relevance” in teaching and research imposed on universities through the “Dawkins Reforms” of the late 1980s.

These reforms saw the large-scale restructuring of higher education through the introduction of more corporate forms of management, merging of universities and the more technical Colleges of Advanced Education, creation of the Australian Research Council (ARC), and reintroduction of student fees through the HECS system.

Populism versus the humanities

In March 1987, the new instrumentalism and growing conservative alienation from the humanities came together in their crudest, most populist form.

The Liberal-National opposition’s Waste Watch Committee, a group run by the NSW Senator Michael Baume, launched an attack on 60 Australian Research Grants Scheme (ARGS) grants it declared to be “waste”.

The committee borrowed the tactics of US Democratic Senator for Wisconsin, William Proxmire, who since 1975 had issued a monthly “Golden Fleece Award” to instances of supposed waste of public funds. The committee pioneered, in Australia, the strategy of holding up research grants to public ridicule on the basis of titles that sounded funny or indulgent to non-experts.

The grants the committee opposed were mostly in the humanities, with a few in the social sciences. Its leading example was a project on “Motherhood in Ancient Rome”. It was no accident that a project on women’s history was singled out.

The judgements of the projects’ unworthiness were superficial, and an enthusiastic tabloid media – especially radio personality John Laws – played a key role in whipping up populist indignation and ridicule.

Unused to such attacks, academics and university administrators offered a lacklustre response that underestimated the capacity of such populism to damage the humanities’ public standing and funding base.

In the May 1987 “mini-budget” the Hawke government bowed to public pressure and cut A$1 million from the ARGS budget for 1987–88.

The Waste Watch Committee’s intervention set the template for subsequent populist attacks on the humanities – now a regular sport of the tabloid press.

The effects on funding of such public disparagement were evident again in 2004–5, when then education minister Brendan Nelson vetoed at least nine grants recommended by the ARC. Various researchers, and Herald-Sun columnist Andrew Bolt himself, surmised this move was in response to Bolt’s criticism.

Bolt had written of the grants:

In cultural studies, seven of the eight grants were also for peek-in-your-pants researchers fixated on gender or race, and Marxists got all the grants you might expect of priests who worship state power.

In October 2018 it was revealed former education minister Simon Birmingham had quietly vetoed a further eleven major research grants for mostly humanities projects totalling almost A$4.2 million.

This time there was no direct line to draw between a particular episode of populist criticism and the cuts, but there need not be.

By 2018, the caricature of the humanities as “disfigured by cultural left theory hostile to mainstream Australia” (as an editorial in the The Australian called it) was commonplace in sections of press and in the regular interventions of the Institute of Public Affairs.

It is not difficult to see several decades of populist condemnation of the humanities playing a similar role in the recent announcement of arts teaching cuts.

The good news for the humanities?

If this story contains any good news, it is that humanities scholars are now much better prepared than they once were to make the public case for the social and economic value of their disciplines.

In 1987, the response to the Waste Watch Committee was tepid. In 2018, the response to the grant veto revelations was full-blooded and successful in forcing a reinstatement of a portion of the funds withheld and a ministerial commitment to future transparency.

It is time again to make the case for the humanities, and for proper public funding of higher education generally.

– ref. Defunding arts degrees is the latest battle in a 40-year culture war – https://theconversation.com/defunding-arts-degrees-is-the-latest-battle-in-a-40-year-culture-war-141689

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ross Guest, Professor of Economics and National Senior Teaching Fellow, Griffith University

The Australian government is planning to spend A$190 billion to support the economy in response to COVID-19, according to the latest Parliamentary Budget Office estimate.

The total impact of COVID-19 on the government’s net debt, including both revenue impacts (down, because of less activity) and spending impacts (up because of spending to support the economy) amounts to between 11% and 18% of gross domestic product, or A$500 billion to A$620 billion.

The estimates are based on the three possible scenarios developed by the Reserve Bank: “downside”, “baseline” and “upside”. Each differ in their assumed timing of the relaxation of social distancing and other restrictions, and for how long uncertainty and diminished confidence weigh on households and business activity.

With similar blow-outs around the world, a view gaining ascendancy, including amongst commentators such as Alan Kohler, is that government debt doesn’t matter – provided the government owes the money to its central bank (in Australia’s case, the Reserve Bank) or the bank is prepared to buy the debt from the party the government borrowed the money from.

The view is an application of so-called modern monetary theory and the argument goes like this:

1. when the government runs a budget deficit, it borrows from the private sector (mainly financial institutions) by selling government bonds which are effectively IOUs offering to repay in a certain number of years and offering interest at a low bond rate until then

2. the Reserve Bank (along with other central banks) has been buying bonds from the private sector with money it creates, and says it is prepared to buy as many as are needed to keep the bond yield low, so that if it looks as if the bond rate will rise, much of the debt will ultimately be owed to the bank

3. when the bonds expire and it is time to repay the debt, the government can simply issue more bonds which the bank will ultimately buy if it has to in order to keep the bond rate low

4. if down the track all of the extra money in the banking system causes inflation, the process would be thrown into reverse: the government can the deficit, repay the Reserve Bank and others when loans fall due and cut the supply of money, slowing down inflation.

It sounds too good to be true, because it is.

There are a number reasons why deficits and debt do matter, even if the debt is effectively owed to the central bank and even if it has been created in a recession, or in anticipation of one – as is the case for the COVID-19 response.

Creating money carries risks

We know that governments with high debt face interest rate premiums from lenders. A European Union study found that a 10 percentage point increase in the government debt to GDP ratio increased the sovereign bond rate by 0.47 percentage points.

These higher risk premia flow on to private sector borrowers whose interest rates are set in relation to sovereign interest rates, so all households and businesses face higher rates. The result will be less investment and household spending than there would otherwise be.

An attempt by the central bank to negate the risk premium by buying more bonds would allow the government to issue even more bonds, increasing the risk of inflation which would itself put upward pressure on interest rates.

Read more: Explainer: what is modern monetary theory?

The experience of Latin American countries that relied on their central banks to create money is frightening. Argentina and Venezuela in particular experienced inflation rates of up to 50% and plummeting exchange rates.

The idea that, if and when inflation arrives, the Australian government could easily throw its spending and tax engines into reverse is fanciful. It is politically difficult to wind back government spending and raise taxes. To do so on a large scale might be impossible.

Modern Monetary theorists respond by pointing out that we have not yet seen inflation in Western countries that have pumped up their money supplies.

That’s true, but while the government has been running up debt, we have seen inflation of a sort in big increases in asset prices in housing and stock markets.

It has made us more vulnerable to financial shocks and priced many first home buyers out of the market.

Markets aren’t forgiving

And what if the foreign exchange market does not buy the modern monetary theory story?

Even the expectation of future inflation by the market, before it arrives, could lead to a depreciation of the Australian dollar which could itself create inflation which would make Australians poorer.

A final point: the Reserve Bank of Australia is independent from the government.

If confidence in this independence was eroded, we could see an increase in perceived risk of holding Australian financial assets. This in turn would cause higher interest rates and a lower Australian dollar.

In any case, the Reserve Bank might decide at some point that the risk of inflation or asset price inflation is unacceptable and refuse to buy more government bonds, or sell back to the private sector the bonds it’s bought.

Read more: Vital Signs. Do deficits matter any more?

This would mean the government debt was owed to the private sector once again. Financial markets might view it as more risky than debt owed to the bank, with negative consequences for interest rates and the exchange rate.

I am inclined to agree with the International Monetary Fund’s chief economist who said in relation to modern monetary theory before the COVID crisis that there was “no free lunch”.

Martin Wolf of the Financial Times said during the crisis that modern monetary theory was both right and wrong.

It was right, because there is no simple budget constraint. It was wrong, because it would prove impossible to manage the economy sensibly once politicians believed there was no simple budget constraint.

– ref. The spending splurge matters, regardless of what modern monetary theory says – https://theconversation.com/the-spending-splurge-matters-regardless-of-what-modern-monetary-theory-says-137241

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

For all the things we don’t know about COVID-19 one thing is certain: our economic recovery will depend on boosting productivity. Everyone from the Reserve Bank of Australia governor Philip Lowe to Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese seem to agree on this.

The question, of course, is how to do it.

This could involve important but significant changes to our industrial relations system, company tax (reducing rates to be more internationally competitive) and the education system.

Important though such reforms are, they will be challenging politically.

One modest but easy-to-execute reform would be to finally get rid of one of the most inefficient and distorting taxes in our system: stamp duty, the tax state and territory governments charge on the sale of real estate, vehicles and a few other types of transactions. Stamp-duty on a A$750,000 owner-occupied property ranges from about A$22,000 in Queensland to about A$42,000 in Victoria.

This week, a year-long review of Australia’s taxation system commissioned by the New South Wales government recommended abolishing stamp duty.

The review, headed by CSIRO chairman and former Telstra chief executive David Thodey, joins a long line of reviews to observe that stamp duty discourages efficient property transactions.

People don’t move homes when it otherwise makes sense because of the massive tax cheque they have to pay to buy a new property. In particular it means older people hold on large family homes long after they need them.

Read more: Why older Australians don’t downsize and the limits to what the government can do about it

This leads to what is, for an economist, a nightmare: voluntary trades between willing parties that would make everyone better off do not occur.

The economic answer to this problem is simple. It has been known to every economist since Henry George proposed it in 1879: a land tax.

Rather than pay a large percentage when buying a property, owners should pay a smaller amount each year.

Avoiding double taxation

The problem is the politics of making the switch.

Those who have paid stamp duty would rightly complain they are being double-taxed if they also had to pay a new land tax.

Read more: Stamp duty fever: the bad economics behind swapping stamp duty for land tax

There is, however, a simple fix to this. Allow buyers to elect to pay stamp duty (at the current rate) or pay land tax each year (at a lower rate, perhaps 1% a year).

If they elect to pay land tax, that property forever becomes a “land tax property”. Any future buyers will pay land tax. Australia’s system of property title makes this easy to track and enforce.

This “opt-in” system is discussed in the Thodey review.

It would effectively “grandfather” the land tax scheme, ensuring those who have paid stamp duty are not double-taxed. Because new buyers can choose to pay stamp duty or land tax, they cannot be worse off than under the current system. It’s up to them.

We can’t do anything about the past inefficiencies of the system. We can only fix the transactions of the future, as this scheme does. We can have grandfathering with the fairness it entails, while getting all of the efficiency benefits of land tax.

Addressing concerns

State and territory governments might worry that moving from payments upfront to over time will hurt their revenue in the short term. They shouldn’t.

Ratings agencies like Standard and Poor’s or Moody’s understand a shift to land tax would be better for the economy. Whatever the short-run budgetary implications, government balance sheets won’t change in the longer run. Their credit ratings should be safe.

Also, they can always turn future land-tax revenue into more immediate revenue by “securitising” it, for example by selling government bonds it pays back with land tax revenue.

One legitimate concern is that a land tax might be more susceptible to politicians slowly increasing it over time, turning it into a kind of backdoor wealth tax. That would be a bold political move, but some might still be tempted given their politics and budgetary bottom line.

Read more: Australia’s housing system needs a big shake-up: here’s how we can crack this

Competitive federalism, however, should lessen any such temptation. Any state or territory too far out of step with the others is likely see its more mobile residents vote with their feet.

Perhaps better still would be for state and territory governments to make this reform part of a grand bargain on their fiscal relation with the federal government. This could help them effectively commit not to raise land tax in return for their guaranteed share of revenue from the goods and services tax, for instance.

Improving productivity post-COVID-19 will be challenging. We need to take the easy wins when we find them. Moving from stamp duty to land tax ought to be a no-brainer.

– ref. Vital Signs: Stamp duty is an economic drag. Here’s how to move to a better system – https://theconversation.com/vital-signs-stamp-duty-is-an-economic-drag-heres-how-to-move-to-a-better-system-141777

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rosslyn Almond, Literature Lecturer, Australian Catholic University

The Baby-Sitters Club, the popular series by Ann M. Martin, defined my childhood. I collected the books until I was 11. I played it in the school yard (I was Dawn because I had long hair, not because I was at all “chill”). I watched the 1990 TV series (terrible) and the 1995 movie (great). I own (present tense) the board game.

I’m not alone. Kristy’s Great Idea was first published by Scholastic in 1986 and the series has since sold more than 180 million books. The winning formula was a 15-chapter novel written from the perspective of one of the four/five/six/seven/nine club members (there were a lot of changes in line-up over the 15-or-so years of production) with the occasional interjection from another club member in the form of a baby-sitting journal entry, complete with distinctive handwriting.

Each character is distinct, almost archetypal; they’re flawed yet loveable. And the target audience of seven year olds probably didn’t realise 13 is entirely too young to care for a family of children.

Like many book franchises of its era, Martin started the series, writing the first 35 novels, before it was handed over to ghostwriters – one of the BSC writers, Peter Lerangis, also wrote for Sweet Valley High.

The franchise has continued to expand since 1986, including the recent graphic novel versions of the first seven books, drawn by Raina Telgemeier and Gale Galligan.

A new Netflix series brings the BSC into 2020 in a way that ensures these essentials are still part of the narrative.

The set-up is the same: Kristy (Sophie Grace) has a brilliant idea while her mum, Elizabeth (Alicia Silverstone – I laughed out loud when Kristy realises her mum isn’t “clueless”), is scrambling to find a baby-sitter to look after her younger brother. Elizabeth is frustrated because no one answers their mobile phone, and she would have to pay $80 to join a website listing sitters. And as Kristy’s friend Claudia (Momona Tamada) observes, they “will then sell her personal information to, like, the Russians.”

In Kristy’s club, the sitters will be in the same place at the same time and reachable on one phone number. They can’t pass out their own mobile numbers because, you know, they’re kids, so they decide to use an “olden times phone”. Luckily, Claudia has a private landline that came with her family’s high-speed internet package.

Flyers are essential because Facebook targeted advertising is far too expensive. Kristy and her best friend Mary Anne (Malia Baker) still need to communicate by flashing torches into each other’s windows when Mary Anne’s dad blocks outgoing calls from her mobile phone. Each episode’s title is even written in the distinctive typeface associated with each character.

For the seasoned fan/nostalgic millennial, it ticks a lot of boxes.

Girls to the front

Both the novels and the new series incorporate preoccupations stereotypically significant for pubescent girls: clothes and crushes and pizza, sure, but also interpersonal relationships, what it’s like to exist in the world in a female body, and balancing what others think of you with what you want to think of yourself.

What’s valuable about both series is these issues of girlhood aren’t relegated as insignificant but rather are validated by their inclusion.

The targeted marketing towards girls also brings up an important ambivalence in children’s literature, where books featuring boys are perceived as being for everyone but books featuring girls are for girls. Books like The Baby-Sitters Club are more likely to be considered light and insubstantial and less likely to be explored for their valuable contributions than books featuring tween boys.

It is important series featuring girls offer readers opportunities to see themselves reflected beyond restrictive stereotypes of femininity. By reflecting a range of characterisations and scenarios, assumptions girlhood is any less dynamic or complex than boyhood are undermined, showing readers female protagonists can be just as powerful as the boys. (Harriet Potter could have been great, just saying.)

The Netflix series captures Martin’s characterisation while incorporating contemporary concerns.

Kristy knows how to lean in. She is full of brilliant ideas. The kid is smart and knows how to get what she wants. Her 1980s characterisation as a bossy, loudmouth tomboy is, however, a bit jarring in light of contemporary expectations of gender performance. “Bossy” is a gendered pejorative thrown at assertive girls. Likewise, “tomboy” suggests a deviation from more stereotypical feminine traits – those associated with quiet and emotional Mary Anne, “boy crazy” Stacey, or fashionista Claudia.

Kristy likes sports and she wears a lot of turtlenecks (which faithfully appear in the Netflix series – “normcore”, as Mary Anne describes), but the characteristic that truly defines her is simply that she talks. She speaks up and she’s unwilling to accept the disempowerment that tends to come along with her youth and gender.

Read more: Normcore: when being ordinary becomes a fashion statement

In the first episode, Kristy is assigned an essay on “decorum” for speaking up in class, saying Thomas Jefferson should have said all people were created equal (instead of “all men”). She knows she’s expected to stay polite and quiet, but she’s unable to do so when she feels speaking out is necessary. Kristy’s agenda is explicitly feminist.

Kristy is, of course, white and middle class: these factors of identity were a given in the novels but are more politicised in the new series. The neoliberal feminism here is pretty patent. The series’ feminist concerns are about creating a kind of “empowered” girl with the right to do whatever she chooses, with a focus on economic equity. Think breaking glass ceilings, rather than overthrowing the patriarchy.

Socioeconomic status is an interesting element in both the books and television show, simultaneously important and disregarded. One reason Mary Anne, Claudia and Stacey join the club is to make money, but their need for money is relative. The club members are firmly positioned in a middle-class community. While there is the occasional mention of the Thomases finding things difficult because Elizabeth is a single mum with four kids, her marriage to the very wealthy Watson Brewer sorts things out.

The Netflix series does discuss the jarring nature of moving between tax brackets in such a sudden manoeuvre, but there’s little consequence – just the acknowledgement it will take some getting used to.

In the books, Kristy doesn’t “change” despite moving to the wealthy side of town – but continuing to wear a baseball cap doesn’t exactly mean having a millionaire as a parent has no effect. In Kristy and the Snobs, Kristy’s wealthy neighbours are initially portrayed as judgemental and nasty, suggesting whether or not you have money is linked to niceness, rather than privilege.

While Shannon ends up being a friend of Kristy (and a member of the BSC), her wealth is part of her characterisation – it contributes to how she sees the world. At first, she and her sisters suggest Kristy lives at “Mr Brewer’s house”, rather than acknowledging it is Kristy’s home. Shannon’s worst offence is being mean about Louie, Kristy’s elderly dog, because he looks a bit rough compared to her purebred Bernese mountain dog.

In the novels, when the characters who live in Kristy’s neighbourhood are described, their wealth is generally acknowledged, but some families are framed as “normal” and friendly (the Papadakises), while others are spoilt, rude and ostentatious (the Delaneys with their $400 cat and $2000 fountain in the front entrance).

Those who draw attention to their own wealth rather than downplaying it are presented in a mocking fashion. Ignoring your wealth is the expectation. The fact Kristy doesn’t change in response to her circumstances suggests class is static, and shows a lack of awareness of the effects of additional wealth on children’s experiences.

While novels for children don’t need to be explicitly political, the depoliticisation of factors like wealth (and race, as we’ll discuss) contributes to a kind of naïve and idealistic apathy.

We need diverse books

As children’s literature expert Rudine Sims Bishop says, representation of diverse characters in children’s literature is important to allow children to see themselves reflected in texts, as well as offer insights into points of similarity and difference between characters and themselves.

The books incorporate race in a culturally generic rather than specific way: characters aren’t necessarily white and different ethnicities are represented, but there’s no real consideration about what that might mean. Representation is superficial, or possibly tokenistic.

Read more: Bias starts early – most books in childcare centres have white, middle-class heroes

In the novels, Claudia is of Japanese descent and Jessi is Black, but their race is mostly a small detail of their characterisation, like how Dawn has two earrings in each ear or how Mallory hates boys (and gym). But as Jessi acknowledges in Jessi’s Secret Language, after describing herself as Black to the reader: “If we were white, I wouldn’t have to, because you would probably assume we were white. But when you’re a minority, things are different.”

There is an occasional focus on racism (in Hello, Mallory, Jessi moves to Stoneybrook and encounters explicitly racist reactions and comments from schoolmates and neighbours; in Keep Out, Claudia a family specifically requests the blonde, blue-eyed baby-sitters to care for the children) and it is clearly denounced, so the ethical stance of the novels is unambiguous. But apart from a handful of the novels, there is little acknowledgement of the ways being a person of colour in a small town in the pretty white state of Connecticut might be difficult.

Acknowledgement of experiences outside the default position of middle-class whiteness is beyond the scope of the books. Margaret Mackey, an expert on young readers, has written “shading, nuance, and ambiguity are not on the menu” in the series, and, despite ostensibly offering multiple narrative perspectives, each character’s voice is identical.

As such, while the inclusion of people of colour offers important representation, there’s a lack of discussion of the experience and complexities of being a person of colour. It’s the narrative equivalent of the comment “I don’t see race.”

A new complexity

Under showrunner Rachel Shukert (Glow) and executive producer and director Lucia Aniello (Broad City), the new TV series expands representation beyond the novels. Mary Anne is black and Dawn (Xochitl Gomez) is Latina. Dawn’s dad is gay. Mary Anne learns about gender identity and advocates for a young transgender girl she is baby-sitting.

Intersectionality of girlhood and race is a more obvious concern of the new series, although only Claudia’s experience of her heritage is discussed in any detail in the first series.

Episode six, Claudia and Mean Janine, offers an exploration of her liminal experience of her Japanese-ness and American-ness, and her subsequent sense of belonging in both her family and culture. She learns of her grandmother Mimi being forced to live in an internment camp during the second world war, despite being an American citizen – a historical event Claudia was aware of, but not one she felt was related to her.

The novel of the same title focuses more on Claudia’s feelings of insecurity, but the episode touches on the complex experiences of children who feel part of the dominant culture but whose family background carries the trauma of racism, marginalisation and injustice.

Watching now, as an adult and parent, I see how these intergenerational relationships show up in other ways. Mary Anne’s dad (Marc Evan Jackson) is overprotective and anxious, stemming from Mary Anne’s mother’s death – he wants to be the perfect parent and he’s also afraid of losing her. Mary Anne’s insecurity, sensitivity and shyness seem to mirror Richard; she tries to regulate her own behaviours so she doesn’t trigger his fear.

Stacey (Shay Rudolph) misleads her new friends because her mother (Shauna Johannesen) makes her feel she should be hiding her diabetes. Stacey feels her parents are ashamed of her, but her mother only wants to protect her.

The series demonstrates well the way parents’ “good intentions” can be completely misunderstood by their kids, and clear communication is necessary for the results of the misunderstanding not to be damaging.

As Dawn says, “Parents are just older weirdos doing the best they can.”

Now, these girls show engagement with major political concerns in a way that reflects the increasing politics of young people today.

In the two-part finale, Dawn, an unabashed social justice warrior, seeks to change the mindsets of her fellow campers with her unique perspective during the morning announcements.

She encourages the campers to try out for the musical Paris Magic (about “a young woman time-travelling her way through the French Revolution” – the knowing cheesiness is charming) to “save the arts – and the world, which is due for a dose of radical empathy that only the arts can provide”.

She ultimately organises a protest to try to make things more financially equitable for all the campers (considered a mild inconvenience by her friends because of the scheduled performance of the aforementioned play).

And, look, she’s also a hippie and her mum has witch friends and they participate in women’s circles and there’s a lot of finger-snapping as kudos, so there’s a kind of ironic stereotype happening here. But Dawn’s social awareness and empathy offer a contrast to some of the more individualistic storylines. With her focus on the relationship between her external and internal world, her character is the most happy in who she is.

Read more: Do art and literature cultivate empathy?

A story for the ages

The Baby-Sitters Club books are simultaneously wonderful and problematic. It was a group of girls helping women look after children. It shows girls they can run a successful business. The baby-sitters know they can charge less than their adult competitors – in a female-dominated and thus significantly underpaid industry – so why not undercut the competition and secure the market?!

“You wouldn’t believe what some of these adult sitters charge. We could ask for half, and we’d be rich,” says Kristy. Let a 13-year-old girl look after your three children, go on! What could go wrong? They’ll all be just fine!

And they were fine. They always worked it out. They were creative and industrious and great sitters. These books, while encompassing a particular flawed brand of white feminism, offer significant representations of strong girls both speaking up and achieving.

So maybe my condescending tone here stems from the continuing dominant position girls are lacking and inferior, and I should stay focused on those reasons I loved the BSC so much as a kid.

These characters made it seem like you could be shy as hell or really bad at spelling or as whingey as Mallory (sorry, Mallory) and still be completely fine. And, when you’re in primary school, the idea that when you’re 13 you’ll not only have some agency but also be respected and trusted by adults is pretty compelling.

So maybe I’m just resentful because as an adult I have enough trouble looking after my own baby.

Maybe I’m just tired.

Maybe I should call the Baby-Sitters Club.

– ref. Friday essay: need a sitter? Revisiting girlhood, feminism and diversity in The Baby-Sitters Club – https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-need-a-sitter-revisiting-girlhood-feminism-and-diversity-in-the-baby-sitters-club-139767

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katie Pickles, Professor of History at the University of Canterbury, University of Canterbury

The family of pioneering New Zealand suffragist Kate Sheppard kept an important secret – one that possibly explains a lot about her life, her beliefs and her motivation.

The secret involved her father, Andrew Wilson Malcolm, and what happened to him after Kate was born. An extensive and painstaking quest by her great great niece Tessa Malcolm has revealed the truth about his fate.

Sadly, Tessa died in 2013 before publishing her decades-long research. I am now completing her work and hope to publish a new biography of Sheppard in 2023, the 130th anniversary of New Zealand becoming the first place in the world to give women the vote.

Solving the mystery of Andrew’s death deepens our understanding of Kate and her extraordinary life.

What happened to Kate Sheppard’s father?

Following family leads and with detailed searches of official and military records, wills and graves, Tessa finally established the truth: Andrew Malcolm died aged 42 of the delirium tremens (DTs) in New Mexico on January 26, 1862.

The DTs are a severe form of alcohol withdrawal and a horrible way to die. Symptoms include fever, seizures and hallucinations.

It had already been a long and difficult slog for Andrew. He was one of thousands of Scotsmen who served in overseas armies throughout the 19th century, motivated by a lust for adventure, sympathy for a cause, financial reward, a desire to emigrate or just to escape their lives at home.

When he died he was months short of completing ten years service in the Union Army. His burial site at Fort Craig was recently looted, which led to the official exhumation and reburial of bodies, Andrew’s remains possibly among them.

So we now know the Scottish father of a leader in the New Zealand Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) died an alcoholic amid the horrors of the American Civil War. He had served and sacrificed his life on US soil, far from his wife and five children at home in the British Isles.

Read more: NZ was first to grant women the vote in 1893, but then took 26 years to let them stand for parliament

The personal becomes political

As is well known, after the family left Scotland and re-grouped in New Zealand, Kate went on to play a key role in the movement to grant women the vote.

The peaceful campaign was closely aligned with the temperance movement. It argued that moral, enfranchised women were needed to clean up society by voting against the “demon drink”.

A New Zealand tour in 1885 by Mary Leavitt of the American WCTU was a catalyst for local organising. Sheppard became the secretary of the WCTU franchise department.

With her own family experience and connection with America, we can certainly speculate that for Kate temperance was more than a platform from which women could gain the vote. It’s highly probable that her quests for a sober society and votes for women were personally entwined.

A missing page from history

So why did Andrew’s death remain a secret? Stigma, a sense of shame, or just the natural desire for privacy could all be explanations.

In her 1992 biography of Kate Sheppard, Judith Devaliant dedicated only two pages to Kate’s life prior to her 1869 migration to New Zealand around the age of 21. Of Andrew she wrote: “His death has not been traced with any accuracy, although it is known that he died at an early age leaving his widow to cope with five young children.”

Read more: Hundred years of votes for women: how far we’ve come and how far there’s still to go

The biography is also vague about the details of his life. He was born in Dunfermline, Fifeshire, in 1819 and married Jemima Crawford Souter on Islay in the Hebrides in 1842. Documents describe his occupation variously as lawyer, banker, brewer’s clerk and legal clerk.

There is no mention of Andrew in either the New Zealand History Net or Book of New Zealand Women entries on Kate Sheppard. Until now, the focus is on Kate’s adult life and work, with family taking a back seat.

Even in her own 1993 entry on Kate in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography Tessa simply wrote: “Her father died in 1862”. The implication was that Andrew had died in Scotland, although Dublin and Jamaica also appear in genealogical records.

The search goes on

But Tessa was already aware of Andrew’s New Mexico fate by 1990, two years before Devaliant’s book was published. After following dead ends and disproving family rumours she had solved the puzzle of what really happened to the ancestor she referred to as the “bete noire” of her research.

Can we conclusively say that Kate Sheppard’s temperance and suffragist work was directly linked to knowledge of her father’s death? Or are we dealing with an irony of history, albeit a sad one?

As yet we can’t be sure. But Kate’s mother definitely knew the cause of Andrew’s death and we know she greatly influenced Kate. I believe it was also likely known by other senior (and also influential) family members, but kept quiet.

The fact the truth was hidden so well suggests a degree of deliberate concealment. By building on Tessa’s groundbreaking research I hope to reveal more of a remarkable story that connects Scotland, America and New Zealand to a global first for women.

– ref. Did a tragic family secret influence Kate Sheppard’s mission to give New Zealand women the vote? – https://theconversation.com/did-a-tragic-family-secret-influence-kate-sheppards-mission-to-give-new-zealand-women-the-vote-141526

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

Just under two years ago, Anthony Albanese was expectantly awaiting the “Super Saturday” byelections. Of the five contests, the outcomes in two, Longman in Queensland and Braddon in Tasmania, would be critical for Bill Shorten’s future as opposition leader.

Albanese had been circling Shorten, whose unpopularity was seen as a potential drag on the ALP’s prospect of winning the 2019 election. Everyone knew what the game was. But Albanese could only have a chance of moving if Labor lost one or both seats.

It didn’t happen and Albanese’s ambition was thwarted. Shorten was a hero and his victory helped trigger Malcolm Turnbull’s downfall. But the following year Shorten lost the election.

Just maybe, Albanese would have won in 2019. It’s one of the “what ifs” of history.

Read more: Border closures, identity and political tensions: how Australia’s past pandemics shape our COVID-19 response

Now Albanese finds himself in Shorten’s nail-biting situation. Saturday’s Eden-Monaro byelection is vital for his leadership. Unlike 2018, there’s not a pretender seriously circling. But if Labor lost this seat it holds on a margin of just under 1%, there’d be muttering and likely destabilisation, which usually ends badly for the incumbent.

As the campaign neared its end, NSW Nationals leader and deputy premier John Barilaro, who flirted with running for the seat, was less than helpful to the Coalition when he said, “The loss actually in this byelection is … that we’ve lost [former ALP member] Mike Kelly”.

Amen to that, Albanese might say. Kelly’s resignation (on health grounds) threw the opposition leader into an unwelcome high stakes contest.

If Labor retains Eden-Monaro, that will be a boost for Albanese but say nothing about his prospects for the next election. Nor will it necessarily increase his ability to cut through, an enormous struggle during COVID. Even the development of policy is difficult for Labor in the new world.

This week underscored how volatile things are, when 36 Melbourne suburbs were locked down, and Victorians became the guests other states didn’t want to receive.

Victorian premier Daniel Andrews has a heap of trouble: high case numbers; a scandal around the quarantine security; the complications of a selective shutdown.

Locking down people once was hard enough – having to do it a second time becomes even more difficult, especially when those in one suburb see themselves being treated differently from people in another close by.

One Age reader wrote, “As a single person with no immediate family and already working from home, a month in effective solitary confinement is utterly devastating. … Literally all my friends live five minutes away, but all in non-lockdown suburbs. The sense of isolation is total and overwhelming. We are not ‘all in this together’.”

The question now is whether the new wave can be confined to Victoria. The (unknown) answer will be relevant to the federal government’s next round of economic decisions, which are being considered now.

If this Saturday looms large for Albanese, July 23 is more important for Scott Morrison. A Liberal win in Eden-Monaro would be a sugar hit for the PM but it would do nothing to solve the huge problems his government is grappling with.

July 23 is when the government brings down its economic statement.

The statement will update the economic and budgetary numbers. It will also indicate what changes the government will make to JobKeeper – based on a Treasury review – and outline plans for after the scheduled late-September end of the six-month emergency JobKeeper and JobSeeker payments.

JobKeeper, a boon for businesses and workers, had certain design flaws, due in part to its hasty construction. Notably, some people receive more than they were paid before the crisis.

By late July the program will be due to run only two more months. It has been argued that alterations wouldn’t be worth the administrative effort. But if the scheme is to be extended for some businesses, it would be sensible to get it right quickly.

The government finds itself in a bind as it contemplates what to do post September, and indeed how much to put in the July statement.

Morrison and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg acknowledge there will be industries needing continuing assistance, including aviation, tourism, hospitality and parts of the entertainment industry. They also recognise business generally wants early certainty about the months after September.

If the July statement fails to provide enough detail about the next phase, that could damage confidence.

On the other hand, it’s risky to lock in initiatives for a future that might change dramatically in a couple of months, including on the health front. The government has to leave itself flexibility to adjust settings if necessary.

The government knows if support is removed too early, more businesses will collapse and even more people will be unemployed. But if it props up enterprises that haven’t a long term future, it will hamper the structural adjustment that will be part of this recession.

Read more: Politics with Michelle Grattan: two leading economists on Australia’s post-COVID economy

The July statement is expected to indicate where the JobSeeker rate (currently around double the pre-COVID level) will go after September.

There will be a fall but how far? It’s generally agreed the rate can’t “snap back” to the old much-criticised amount. But Morrison won’t contemplate any level he thinks could be a disincentive to people seeking work. One option would be to phase the reduction.

Morrison stressed this week just how complex decisions now being considered are, with multiple “moving parts”.

Once it navigates the July statement, the government’s attention will turn to the October budget.

It has raised expectations this will contain significant reforms, always easier to pledge than deliver.

But one reform we won’t see any time in the foreseeable future is a change to the GST, despite the present buzz around that tax.

The NSW government elevated the GST debate again this week with the release of a tax reform review, chaired by business figure David Thodey.

Among other proposals, the report recommends state governments in consultation with the federal government look at options to lift the GST rate and/or expand its base over the medium to longer term. This would facilitate moving away from “harmful taxes including inefficient state taxes”.

Read more: Victoria is on the precipice of an uncontrolled coronavirus outbreak. Will the new measures work?

When treasurer in the Turnbull government, Morrison had ambitious plans to shake up the GST. After an analysis indicated it wasn’t worth doing, his aspiration came to nothing.

However rational GST reform might be, can anyone imagine the federal government having the stomach for a full-on debate about it as the country climbs out from under the virus? Or the public tolerating it? It would be a gift to Labor.

No wonder Frydenberg was quick to say the government has no plans to change it.

– ref. Saturday is crucial for Anthony Albanese but July 23 is more important for Scott Morrison – https://theconversation.com/saturday-is-crucial-for-anthony-albanese-but-july-23-is-more-important-for-scott-morrison-141885

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Victoria Carruthers, Senior lecturer, Australian Catholic University

I have been thinking a lot lately of how many worlds there are contained in very small spaces and how every person is really one world to himself unconnected by anyone or any thing.

– Joy Hester, 1947

So said artist Joy Hester, in words that were no doubt a response to dramatic life events that have overshadowed attempts at a sustained critical appreciation of her art.

In 1947, Hester famously left her husband and young son, Sweeney (who was later adopted by Sunday and John Reed) for artist and poet Gray Smith. She was also diagnosed with advanced Hodgkin’s Disease which was at that stage an incurable cancer.

Yet, her statement is striking for the fact that Hester’s entire body of work, her modus operandi, can be understood as an exploration of human relationships, connections, in all their complexity. A major survey exhibition at Heide now acknowledges this.

Defiant from the start

Born in 1920 to middle-class parents in Melbourne, Hester defied convention from the outset and found a creative and intellectual home in her association with the Victorians Arts Society and at the Contemporary Arts Society in 1938. She joined a group of artists such as Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan, John Percival, Danila Vassilieff and Albert Tucker, whom she married in 1941.

She also met the Reeds, patrons of the arts who opened their home “Heide” to their artistic circle. The couple would become her lifelong supporters, friends and benefactors.

Like most Australian artists of the 1940s and 1950s, Hester’s work was a reflection of the huge shifts in Australian culture as it emerged from the violence of war into a definite crisis of national identity.

Read more: Friday essay: the Melbourne bookshop that ignited Australian modernism

Influenced by European modernism, particularly the experiments in formalism by Picasso, the German expressionists and surrealism, Hester also uses the body, particularly the head and eyes, as a site for formal experimentation.

Yet unlike other artists of the day, male or female, Hester develops her own visual vocabulary to explore the intensity of feelings and relationships in an intimate, confronting way.

The simplicity of her mark-making in her predominantly pen and ink drawings, appears to be at odds with the often unflinching rawness of the images, leaving the viewer with a sense of uneasiness as to what they are actually witnessing in the work.

Rather than being autobiographical, the characters in her drawings are often amorphous, unidentifiable as her short career (a span of only 20 years) progresses. Hester sought to capture a moment in time that could be easily “felt” by the viewer.

The female body

The fact Hester’s work was focused on the topography of emotions, as well as female bodily experience, no doubt added to its lukewarm reception from male critics in her lifetime.

As Heide senior curator Kendrah Morgan points out in the exhibition catalogue, she was one of the very few Australian women artists to

explore female sexuality and do so in a way that neither celebrates the female nude nor eroticism per se, but rather interrogates the sensory and emotional conditions of deep connection and physical intimacy.

Hester often worked in series, creating different variations on the same theme.

Images from Nazi concentration camps, the writings of Jean Cocteau as he battled his history of addiction, a preoccupation with death, and the effects of her own radiation treatment all found their way into series of often harrowing works of suffering and loss.

The series Faces (1947-1948), was described by critic Barrett Reid in 1966 as revealing aspects of human identity at its “most masked and vulnerable, most exposed, when totally given to powerful emotion”.

Hester herself was disturbed by their intensity as she surveyed them on her wall referring to them as “frightening things” and almost immediately taking them down.

Searching for self

In the Love series (1947-49) we see the artist exploring the complexity of sexual relationships in terms of connection and separateness.

Much of Hester’s work concerns itself with the search for identity. This is unsurprising given the expectation of women at the time was in the roles of homemaker and mother.

The interconnectedness of being with another is presented in this series in the shared eyes or mouths or the blurred boundaries between heads. By the time Hester came to The Lovers series (1955-56) the blurred boundaries between couples has been replaced with a sense of separateness. The heightened emotions of the female figure are foregrounded and they seem to encompass both despair and euphoria.

Read more: Celebrating Melbourne bohemians at the State Library of Victoria

Words and pictures

A sense of intimacy is never far away from Hester’s unidealised images of children and maternity which appear throughout her work.

Some of her most stunning and poignant images are to be found in these works precisely because of the unvarnished way she presents the complexity of these fundamental relationships.

The same is true of her many poems, often exhibited in tandem with one of her drawings. Rather than presenting worlds full of conflict and heightened emotional states, her poems are delightfully sensual and capture the immediate joy of love and the beauty of nature.

The Heide retrospective of Hester’s work marks the centenary of her birth. It comes at a time when audiences have a much greater sensitivity to her important place in the canon of Australian modernism and as a deeply nuanced artist of the human condition.

The show groups the work together in ways that underline and highlight their emotional impact and provide an important opportunity to connect with the artist and her stunning imagination.

Joy Hester: Remember Me can be seen at Heide until October 4.

– ref. Joy Hester – a body of work, remembered at last – https://theconversation.com/joy-hester-a-body-of-work-remembered-at-last-141449

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Judith Ireland, Deputy Editor, Politics + Society, The Conversation, Australia

Sydney newspaper the Daily Telegraph has lost its appeal against a defamation decision that awarded actor Geoffrey Rush almost A$3 million.

Last year, Rush was awarded a record $2.9 million after he sued Nationwide News, the publisher of the Daily Telegraph.

This was over allegations the newspaper published regarding Rush’s inappropriate behaviour with an unnamed fellow actor. The actor was later identified as Eryn Jean Norvill, who gave evidence in the case. Rush denied the claims.

Read more: Geoffrey Rush’s victory in his defamation case could have a chilling effect on the #MeToo movement

In the original judgment, Justice Michael Wigney decided the defence of truth argued by Nationwide News had not been proven.

On Thursday, following an appeal from Nationwide News, the full court of the Federal Court once again found in favour of Rush.

Is this a surprise? What does this say about the way our legal system handles sexual harassment and defamation?

Two legal academics – UTS associate professor Karen O’Connell and Sydney University professor David Rolph – discuss the high-profile decision.

Karen O’Connell, specialist in sexual harassment and sex discrimination law

This outcome was not a surprise at all, it was exactly what was expected. There was no obvious reason to think there was a legal problem with Wigney’s decision last year.

Last year, there were issues raised by some of the comments made by Wigney, but these were not about the legal underpinnings of his judgement.

The criticism went much more to those subtle assessments of sexual harassment that pervade the law, as part of our culture of discounting or disbelieving what women say.

Read more: 72% of Australians have been sexually harassed. The system we have to fix this problem is set up to fail

When Wigney suggested Norvill was “prone to exaggeration and embellishment” and “not an entirely credible witness”, this is something a lot of women have experienced when talking about sexual harassment.

There’s a clash between how people experience harassment in their daily lives and the way the law talks about it

Ultimately, criticism of the case last year centred on a deeply gendered discomfort about the way Norvill was treated as a witness.

And the degree to which the judge harshly criticised her credibility in ways that seemed to lack awareness of the way women experience and respond to harassment – but weren’t outside the boundaries of a reasonable decision in the law.

What will be the impact going forward?

It is important to note the Rush case was not about sexual harassment, it was about defamation.

It was Rush versus Nationwide News and Norvill was dragged into it as a reluctant witness, noting she never wanted the issues to be “dealt with by a court”.

But today’s decision is a reminder we don’t have good systems for dealing with sexual harassment. And the public debate still turns very quickly to the salacious and scandalous elements of it, while alleged victims lose control of their stories.

I know inappropriate behaviour has not been proved here, but what I’m talking about is the way someone can raise concerns about another person’s behaviour in a professional context, and it then escalates out of their control.

This is a sorry case, everyone was harmed in this – there’s no good outcome.

On a more positive note, this has been handed down in the context of the allegations against former High Court judge Dyson Heydon – one of Austraia’s biggest sexual harassment stories. This is promising a fresh wave of action and culture change when it comes to our attitudes to these issues and is an encouraging development.

Read more: Dyson Heydon finding may spark a #MeToo moment for the legal profession

But what the Rush case shows going forward is we still don’t have appropriate responses to sexual harassment – either at the legal or social level.

David Rolph, specialist in media law

This was a comprehensive victory for Rush and a comprehensive defeat for Nationwide News, but I don’t think the judgment was entirely surprising.

The original case involved incredibly complex fact-finding, with multiple incidents, email exchanges and text messages. To interfere with the original findings of fact would have been difficult, as a lot of what was involved was very specific, involving decisions by the trial judge about the credibility of witnesses.

All the appeal court can do is review the transcript.

Read more: Defamation in the digital age has morphed into litigation between private individuals

Legally, the issues here are not as difficult. You’ve got the issue of whether it was defamatory, and the issue of whether it was true.

Does this set a precedent in terms of damages?

In terms of the damages awarded, this is not a typical case. Most defamation cases are awarded damages of between $50,000 and $100,000.

We have seen a recent string of high profile cases being awarded large amounts of money – such as the 2017 Rebel Wilson case (although Wilson was later ordered to pay most of the damages back).

Interestingly, in the Rush case, the large sum for damages survived the appeal. Unlike Wilson, Rush was able to prove that he suffered economic loss as a result of the publications. The largest component of the damages awarded here – $1.9 million – was for the economic consequences Rush would suffer as a result of the articles.

Since 2005, damages for non-economic loss in defamation case have been capped in Australia (currently at less than $400,000), so this has perhaps prompted more claims for economic loss, as was the case with Rush.

Legal experts are watching to see what happens to this issue when further changes to Australia’s defamation laws are brought to Parliament later this year.

Remember what this case was actually about

It’s worth stressing this was a case about an actor versus a newspaper. It was not a case about giving a remedy for sexual harassment.

The subject matter of the Daily Telegraph articles was sexual harassment, but the legal issue in the case was the damage to Rush’s reputation and whether newspaper could prove what it had published was true.

A court dealing with a defamation case is not the best place to address the complex issue of sexual harassment.

Lastly, this case again shows that given the nature of Australia’s defamation laws, it’s still better to be a plaintiff than a defendant.

– ref. The Daily Telegraph lost its Geoffrey Rush defamation appeal. What does this mean? – https://theconversation.com/the-daily-telegraph-lost-its-geoffrey-rush-defamation-appeal-what-does-this-mean-141875

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Moloney, Associate Professor, Paediatrics, Griffith University

Tensions over border closures are in the news again, now states are gradually lifting travel restrictions to all except Victorians.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison says singling out Victorians is an overreaction to Melbourne’s coronavirus spike, urging the states “to get some perspective”.

Federal-state tensions over border closures and other pandemic quarantine measures are not new, and not limited to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our new research shows such measures are entwined in our history and tied to Australia’s identity as a nation. We also show how our experiences during past pandemics guide the plans we now use, and alter, to control the coronavirus.

Read more: National and state leaders may not always agree, but this hasn’t hindered our coronavirus response

Bubonic plague, federation and national identity

In early 1900, bubonic plague broke out just months before federation, introduced by infected rats on ships.

When a new vaccine was available, the New South Wales government planned to inoculate just front-line workers.

Journalists called for a broader inoculation campaign and the government soon faced a “melee” in which:

…men fought, women fainted and the offices [of the Board of Health] were damaged.

Patients and contacts were quarantined at the North Head Quarantine Station. Affected suburbs were quarantined and sanitation commenced.

The health board openly criticised the government for its handling of the quarantine measures, laying the groundwork for quarantine policy in the newly independent Australia.

Quarantine then became essential to a vision of Australia as an island nation where “island” stood for immunity and where non-Australians were viewed as “diseased”.

Public health is mentioned twice in the Australian constitution. Section 51(ix) gives parliament the power to quarantine, and section 69 requires states and territories to transfer quarantine services to the Commonwealth.

The Quarantine Act was later merged to form the Immigration Restriction Act, with quarantine influencing immigration policy.

Ports then became centres of immigration, trade, biopolitics and biosecurity.

Spanish flu sparked border disputes too

In 1918, at the onset of the Spanish flu, quarantine policy included border closures, quarantine camps (for people stuck at borders) and school closures. These measures initially controlled widespread outbreaks in Australia.

However, Victoria quibbled over whether NSW had accurately diagnosed this as an influenza pandemic. Queensland closed its borders, despite only the Commonwealth having the legal powers to do so.

Read more: This isn’t the first global pandemic, and it won’t be the last. Here’s what we’ve learned from 4 others throughout history

When World War I ended, many returning soldiers broke quarantine. Quarantine measures were not coordinated at the Commonwealth level; states and territories each went their own way.

There were different policies about state border closures, quarantine camps, mask wearing, school closures and public gatherings. Infection spread and hospitals were overwhelmed.

The legacy? The states and territories ceded quarantine control to the Commonwealth. And in 1921, the Commonwealth created its own health department.

The 1990s brought new threats

Over the next seven decades, Australia linked quarantine surveillance to national survival. It shifted from prioritising human health to biosecurity and protection of Australia’s flora, fauna and agriculture.

In the 1990s, new human threats emerged. Avian influenza in 1997 led the federal government to recognise Australia may be ill-prepared to face a pandemic. By 1999 Australia had its first influenza pandemic plan.

Read more: Today’s disease names are less catchy, but also less likely to cause stigma

In 2003, severe acute respiratory syndrome (or SARS) emerged in China and Hong Kong. Australia responded by discouraging nonessential travel and started health screening incoming passengers.

The next threat, 2004 H5N1 Avian influenza, was a dry run for future responses. This resulted in the 2008 Australian Health Management Plan for Pandemic Influenza, which included border control and social isolation measures.

Which brings us to today

While lessons learned from past pandemics are with us today, we’ve seen changes to policy mid-pandemic. March saw the formation of the National Cabinet to endorse and coordinate actions across the nation.

Uncertainty over border control continues, especially surrounding the potential for cruise and live-export ships to import coronavirus infections.

Read more: Coronavirus has seriously tested our border security. Have we learned from our mistakes?

Then there are border closures between states and territories, creating tensions and a potential high court challenge.

Border quibbles between states and territories will likely continue in this and future pandemics due to geographical, epidemiological and political differences.

Australia’s success during COVID-19 as a nation, is in part due to Australian quarantine policy being so closely tied to its island nature and learnings from previous pandemics.

Lessons learnt from handling COVID-19 will also strengthen future pandemic responses and hopefully will make them more coordinated.

Read more: 4 ways Australia’s coronavirus response was a triumph, and 4 ways it fell short

– ref. Border closures, identity and political tensions: how Australia’s past pandemics shape our COVID-19 response – https://theconversation.com/border-closures-identity-and-political-tensions-how-australias-past-pandemics-shape-our-covid-19-response-140941

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christine Hosking, Conservation Planner/Researcher, The University of Queensland

On Tuesday, a year-long New South Wales parliamentary inquiry revealed the state’s koalas are on track for extinction in the wild by 2050, without urgent government intervention.

Habitat destruction and fragmentation for agriculture, urban development, mining and forestry has been the number one koala killer since European occupation of Australia. This is compounded by the unabated impacts of climate change, which leads to more extreme droughts, heatwaves and bushfires.

Read more: Scientists find burnt, starving koalas weeks after the bushfires

Koala populations in NSW were already declining before the 2019-2020 bushfires. The report doesn’t mince words, saying “huge swathes of koala habitat burned and at least 5,000 koalas perished”.

The report, ambitiously, makes 42 recommendations, and all have merit. The fate of NSW koalas now relies on a huge commitment from the Berejiklian government to act on them. But past failures by a federal government inquiry into koalas suggest there’s little cause for optimism.

First, let’s look at the report’s key recommendations and how they might ensure the species’ survival in NSW.

Leadership needed at the local level

Real, on-ground koala conservation actions take place at the local level. “Local” is where councils give development approvals, sometimes to clear koala habitat. And it’s where communities and volunteers work on the front line to save and protect the species.

Recommendation 10 in the report addresses this, suggesting the NSW government provide additional funding and support to community groups so they can plant trees and regenerate bushland along koala and wildlife corridors.

Read more: A report claims koalas are ‘functionally extinct’ – but what does that mean?

Another two recommendations build on this: encouraging increased funding from the NSW government to local councils to support local conservation initiatives, and suggesting increased resources to support councils to conduct mapping.

Mapping, such as where koalas have been recorded and their habitat, is a critical component for local councils to develop comprehensive koala management plans.

Stop offsetting koala habitat

One recommendation suggests a review of the “biodiversity offsets scheme”, where generally developers must compensate for habitat loss by improving or establishing it elsewhere. It is embedded in the NSW Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016, and other state and territory governments commonly use offsets in various conservation policies.

Read more: The Blinky Bill effect: when gum trees are cut down, where do the koalas go?

But the report recommends prohibiting offsets for high quality koala habitat. Prohibiting offsets is important because when a vital part of koala habitat is cleared, it can no longer support the local koalas. Replacing this habitat somewhere else won’t save that particular population.

Build the Great Koala National Park

It’s of paramount importance to increase the connected, healthy koala habitat in NSW, particularly after the bushfires.

One tool to achieve this is laid out in recommendation 41: to investigate establishing the Great Koala National Park. Spearheaded by the National Parks Association of NSW, this national park would see 175,000 hectares of publicly owned state forests added to existing protected areas.

It total, it would form a 315,000 hectare reserve in the Coffs Harbour hinterland dedicated to protecting koalas – an Australian first.

Read more: What does a koala’s nose know? A bit about food, and a lot about making friends

It would be a great day if such a park was established and replicated throughout the NSW and Queensland hinterlands. Research shows that in those regions, the future climate will remain suitable for koalas, and urbanisation, agriculture and mining are not currently present in these parks.

But it’s worth noting Australia’s national parks are under increasing pressure from “adventure tourism”. Human recreation activities can fragment habitat and disturb wildlife, for example by constructing tracks and access roads through natural areas.

Humans must not be allowed to compromise dedicated koala conservation areas. Intrusive recreational activity is detrimental to the species, and can also reduce the chance quiet park visitors might spy a koala sitting high in a tree, sleepily munching on gum leaves.

This rule should apply both to existing national parks, and a new Great Koala National Park.

Failures of past inquiries

The tragic fate predicted for koalas in NSW depends on the state government’s willingness to act on the recommendations. Developing wordy, well-intentioned documents is simply not enough.

We need look no further than Australia’s key environmental legislation, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act, to realise this.

After a 2012 Senate inquiry into the health and status of koalas, the species was officially listed as “vulnerable” under the EPBC Act. But since then, tree clearing and declines in koala numbers have continued at a furious pace across Queensland and NSW.

One of the shortcomings of the federal listing for the koala is in its Referral Guidelines, which recommends “proponents consider these guidelines when proposing actions within the modelled distribution of the koala”. In other words, informing the government about clearing koala habitat is only voluntary. And that’s not good enough.

Read more: Environment laws have failed to tackle the extinction emergency. Here’s the proof

The failure of the 2012 inquiry and the EPBC Act to protect koalas should serve as a wake-up call to the NSW government. It must start implementing the recommendations of the current inquiry without delay to ensure Australia’s internationally celebrated species doesn’t die out.

Koala conservation must take priority over land clearing, regardless of the demand for that land. That principle might seem simple, but so far it’s proved agonisingly difficult.

– ref. Stopping koala extinction is agonisingly simple. But here’s why I’m not optimistic – https://theconversation.com/stopping-koala-extinction-is-agonisingly-simple-but-heres-why-im-not-optimistic-141696

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

With three months before JobSeeker is due to end and calls for billions of dollars in extra spending, there is a growing debate about how Australia’s post-coronavirus economy will actually look.

While Scott Morrison has said Australia will need to lift economic growth by “more than one percentage point above trend” through to 2025, a 22-economist panel hosted by The Conversation forecast a bleaker result.

Read more: No big bounce: 2020-21 economic survey points to a weak recovery getting weaker, amid declining living standards

Growth one percentage point above trend would average almost 4% per year.

The Conversation’s economic panel forecast an annual growth averaging 2.4% over the next four years, much less than the long-term trend.

In this podcast, Michelle Grattan discusses the economic pathway ahead with two economists featured on the panel: Professor of Economics at the UNSW Business School Richard Holden, and Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Australian National University Warwick McKibbin.

McKibbin argues for a major change to the national cabinet. “I think it would be very useful if the leader of the opposition was on that cabinet, and perhaps even a couple of the key ministerial portfolios from the opposition side, so that you truly have… both sides of the political spectrum represented.”

Making the body more inclusive, McKibbin says, would assist a bipartisan approach. “If you are going to go for the big bipartisan approach, which I think is fundamental to most of the problems we face, you have to do something like the national cabinet,” he said.

“It worked very effectively during the worst parts of the virus, it is breaking down now it appears, because Australians seem to think things are okay now. But I think you’ll see it re-emerge very shortly.”

Richard Holden warns an increase in taxation should not be contemplated to pay for some of the large spend the COVID crisis is requiring.

“I don’t think there will be an increase in taxation under this government, and I definitely don’t think there should be under any government,” he says.

“The coalition has made the debt and deficits mantra part of their political brand, and I understand that from a political perspective. And there’s nothing wrong with aspiring to balancing the budget over the economic cycle.”

“But when you’re in one of the largest economic crises in a hundred years, it is not the time to be penny-pinching and focusing on economic management credentials as measured by the budget bottom line in the short term.”

Additional audio

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

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: two leading economists on Australia’s post-COVID economy – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-two-leading-economists-on-australias-post-covid-economy-141873

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stan Winford, Associate Director, Centre for Innovative Justice, RMIT University

As of this morning, ten “hot spot” postcodes in Melbourne’s suburbs have gone back into Stage 3 coronavirus lockdown.

In these suburbs, stay-at-home restrictions will be enforced by police patrols, “booze bus”-style barriers and random checks in transport corridors. In what Premier Daniel Andrews described as “extraordinary steps”, people moving in and out of these suburbs will be asked by police to identify themselves and provide one of four valid reasons for being out. Otherwise, they could face fines.

It seems likely that ever-more restrictive public health measures will be adopted should the coronavirus outbreak continue to worsen. With measures to protect public health competing with individual rights in what appears to be a zero-sum game, there are legitimate questions about how far the government can go before it reaches the outer limits of the law.

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

Compulsory testing

In two suburbs of Melbourne, over 900 people have refused to be tested for coronavirus. The reasons vary, but include people being concerned about having to self-isolate and not understanding the dangers of the virus, as well as privacy reasons.

These refusals aren’t explicitly linked to increased transmission rates, but some disgruntled residents in locked-down suburbs and others have called for compulsory testing.

Existing laws already enable compulsory testing, but they have not yet been used. The March declaration of a human biosecurity emergency under the Biosecurity Act empowers the health minister to issue directions considered necessary to prevent or control the spread of coronavirus.

Under the act, these powers must not be used in a manner that is more restrictive and intrusive than necessary. However, there are few other obvious limits on these powers.

The Victoria Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008 gives the chief health officer the power to compel a person to take a test. To use this power, the officer must believe the person either

is infected with the infectious disease or has been exposed to the infectious disease in circumstances where a person is likely to contract the infectious disease.

Unlike the Commonwealth Biosecurity Act, this power seems constrained to being used as a measure of last resort. The act refers to the consideration of alternatives and a preference for the

measure which is the least restrictive of the rights of the person.

Such orders could be reviewed or challenged in the courts, but more practical challenges, including the need to have police present when conducting compulsory testing, may explain why this measure has not yet been used.

Quarantine restrictions

In the state of emergency currently in force in Victoria, the chief health officer also has the power to detain or restrict the movement of any person for as long as necessary to eliminate or reduce a serious risk to public health.

The hotel quarantine program relies on this power. While the chief health officer must review the need for the continued detention of people at least once every 24 hours, there are no other obvious limits on this power.

In practice, international travellers entering Victoria receive notices imposing a 14-day quarantine with permission to leave their hotel rooms only for medical care, where it is reasonably necessary for physical or mental health, on compassionate grounds, or if there is an emergency.

Read more: Explainer: what are the Australian government’s powers to quarantine people in a coronavirus outbreak?

The quarantine program in Victoria has been a clear failure, due to the alleged breaches of public health protocols.

An independent inquiry into the program is being conducted by retired judge Jennifer Coate, and Corrections Victoria will take over supervision of the program from the private security contractors who had been running it.

It is possible the newly appointed authorities – with prior experience managing prisoners – may adopt a more restrictive approach.

People detained under the new regime may find it more difficult, for example, to get permission to leave their rooms for supervised outdoor exercise. If this approach is disproportionate to the health risk, and causes or contributes to a person’s ill health, court action may ensue.

Possible infringements on human rights

Public authorities responsible for the management of people in quarantine must balance their role mitigating public health risks with their duty to protect the human rights of those in their care and custody.

In a civil society, fundamental freedoms and individual liberties are highly valued, and intrusive powers should be used only where necessary. In a state of emergency, some limitations of rights may be necessary, but any such limitation must be necessary, justifiable, proportionate and time-bound.

Unless it is overridden by parliament, the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006 continues to apply during a state of emergency. Although no charter rights are absolute, this act has been used successfully by people challenging the conditions of their detention.

Governments across Australia have extraordinary emergency powers at their disposal, and have been prepared to use many of them in response to the pandemic. Although the courts have considered the impact of coronavirus on existing laws and procedures – such as the right to protest in the face of social-distancing measures and increased risks to the health of prisoners – they have yet to scrutinise some of the key public health measures adopted.

Despite the deference of courts to public health measures in the face of a deadly infectious disease, there are limits, and it seems inevitable that some limits will eventually be reached.

Questions over legitimacy

There are also limits to the effectiveness of these measures when people perceive them as unfair.

People obey laws and comply with rules when they see them as legitimate, not because they fear punishment. If the rules are unclear, or the process of developing them poorly explained, they may feel like postcode lottery to residents. This, in turn, could bring more dissatisfaction with lockdown measures and fail to effect behaviour change.

During times of emergency, it is critical powers with the potential to limit human rights and deprive people of liberty are properly communicated to the community and used with restraint.

This is not only important for the protection of individual rights, but also to prevent lasting damage to the rule of law. Ensuring that respect for human rights remains a central concern of government responses to the pandemic will build confidence and resilience in our communities and our institutions as we emerge from the crisis.

Read more: Coronavirus: drones used to enforce lockdown pose a real threat to our civil liberties

– ref. Lockdown returns: how far can coronavirus measures go before they infringe on human rights? – https://theconversation.com/lockdown-returns-how-far-can-coronavirus-measures-go-before-they-infringe-on-human-rights-141782

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian M. Mackay, Adjunct assistant professor, The University of Queensland

Researchers have found a new strain of flu virus with “pandemic potential” in China that can jump from pigs to humans, triggering a suite of worrying headlines.

It’s excellent this virus has been found early, and raising the alarm quickly allows virologists to swing into action developing new specific tests for this particular flu virus.

But it’s important to understand that, as yet, there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission of this particular virus. And while antibody tests found swine workers in China have had it in the past, there’s no evidence yet that it’s particularly deadly.

Read more: Victoria is on the precipice of an uncontrolled coronavirus outbreak. Will the new measures work?

What we know so far

China has a wonderful influenza surveillance system across all its provinces. They keep track of bird, human and swine flus because, as the researchers note in their paper, “systematic surveillance of influenza viruses in pigs is essential for early warning and preparedness for the next potential pandemic.”

In their influenza virus surveillance of pigs from 2011 to 2018, the researchers found what they called “a recently emerged genotype 4 (G4) reassortant Eurasian avian-like (EA) H1N1 virus.” In their paper, they call the virus G4 EA H1N1. It has been ticking over since 2013 and became the majority swine H1N1 virus in China in 2018.

In plain English, they discovered a new flu that’s a mix of our human H1N1 flu and an avian-based flu.

What’s interesting is antibody tests picked up that workers handling swine in these areas have been infected. Among those workers they tested, about 10% (35 people out of 338 tested) showed signs of having had the new G4 EA H1N1 virus in the past. People aged between 18 to 35 years old seemed more likely to have had it.

Of note, though, was that a small percentage of general household blood samples from people who were expected to have had little pig contact were also antibody positive (meaning they had the virus in the past).

Importantly, the researchers found no evidence yet of human-to-human transmission. They did find “efficient infectivity and aerosol transmission in ferrets” – meaning there’s evidence the new virus can spread by aerosol droplets from ferret to ferret (which we often use as surrogates for humans in flu studies). G4-infected ferrets became sick, lost weight and acquired lung damage, just like those infected with one of our seasonal human H1N1 flu strains.

They also found the virus can infect human airway cells. Most humans don’t already have antibodies to the G4 viruses meaning most people’s immune systems don’t have the necessary tools to prevent disease if they get infected by a G4 virus.

In summary, this virus has been around a few years, we know it can jump from pigs to humans and it ticks all the boxes to be what infectious disease scholars call a PPP — a potential pandemic pathogen.

If a human does get this new G4 EA H1N1 virus, how severe is it?

We don’t have much evidence to work with yet but it’s likely people who got these infections in the past didn’t find it too memorable. There’s not a huge amount of detail in the new paper but of the people the researchers sampled, none died from this virus.

There’s no sign this new virus has taken off or spread in the regions of China where it was found. China has excellent virus surveillance systems and right now we don’t need to panic.

The World Health Organisation has said it is keeping a close eye on these developments and “it also highlights that we cannot let down our guard on influenza”.

Read more: 4 unusual things we’ve learned about the coronavirus since the start of the pandemic

What’s next?

People in my field — infectious disease research — are alert but not alarmed. New strains of flu do pop up from time to time and we need to be ready to respond when they do, watching carefully for signs of human-to-human transmission.

As far as I can tell, the specific tests we use for influenza in humans won’t identify this new G4 EA H1N1 virus, so we should design new tests and have them ready. Our general flu A screening test should work though.

In other words, we can tell if someone has what’s called “Influenza A” (one kind of flu virus we usually see in flu season) but that’s a catch-all term, and there are many strains of flu within that category. We don’t yet have a customised test to detect this new particular strain of flu identified in China. But we can make one quickly.

Being prepared at the laboratory level if we see strange upticks in influenza is essential and underscores the importance of pandemic planning, ongoing virus surveillance and comprehensive public health policies.

And as with all flus, our best defences are meticulous hand washing and keeping physical distance from others if you, or they, are at all unwell.

– ref. Alert but not alarmed: what to make of new H1N1 swine flu with ‘pandemic potential’ found in China – https://theconversation.com/alert-but-not-alarmed-what-to-make-of-new-h1n1-swine-flu-with-pandemic-potential-found-in-china-141872

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Copland, PhD Student — Sociology, Australian National University

On Monday, online discussion platform Reddit permanently took down its largest community of Donald Trump supporters, r/The_Donald.

The community had more than 7,000 active users per day (although this has previously been much higher). The ban was on the grounds that some posts incited violence, and the community had engaged in harassment on other subreddits. It will have removed hundreds of thousands of posts, and millions of comments going back many years.

The “r/The_Donald” subreddit is a themed, online message board where users can submit, comment and vote on posts. The decision to ban it comes as several other platforms censure racist and violent material from Trump and his supporters.

Twitter recently fact-checked some of Trump’s posts, video live-streaming service Twitch has temporarily banned the president’s account, and Facebook is now losing advertisers over its unwillingness to moderate hateful material and disinformation, including from the president.

According to the New York Times, Reddit also banned another 2,000 communities across the political spectrum alongside the pro-Trump community, including left-leaning groups.

But while some may celebrate these actions, the moves should be understood within the context of a largely deregulated information economy, in which “doing good” is mostly about “doing well”. In other words: making money.

Upon a close look, the removal of r/The_Donald exposes the inadequacies of market-based information governance. Even in cases where individual governance decisions benefit society, the information economy remains primarily motivated by profit.

Read more: Facebook vs news: Australia wants to level the playing field, Facebook politely disagrees

Reddit’s changing approach

Started in 2015, r/The_Donald was the largest and most controversial subreddit dedicated to supporting Trump. Before the ban, it had more than 790,000 subscribers and was at times one of the most popular subreddits on the platform.

In June last year, Reddit “quarantined” the subreddit over posts inciting violence. Several months later it purged most of the community’s volunteer moderators, arguing they weren’t upholding the platform’s policies, particularly through allowing banned content to stay up.

These shifts mirror changes in Reddit’s overall governance approach.

Historically, the platform has sold itself as a democratic space for free speech, with administrators resisting censorship in favour of a hands-off philosophy. However, like other platforms, Reddit now faces pressure from advertisers that don’t want their brands associated with political extremism.

Advertising is a growing part of Reddit’s economic model. And with major partners such as L’Oréal and Audi, advertisers’ preferences undoubtedly hold sway in how the website is regulated.

But as digital marketing agency iCrossing’s chief media officer has previously argued:

What makes it (Reddit) attractive to consumers, which is the free and open ability to post, makes them scary to advertisers.

Walking a tightrope

For major social media platforms, content regulation is a delicate issue, teetering on a balance between value and liability.

Reddit’s laissez-faire approach and community-led model invites broad participation and has helped its user base grow. However, this also fosters content that’s distasteful, unseemly and potentially dangerous – creating brand associations many advertisers would rather avoid.

The r/The_Donald subreddit embodies this tension. Reddit’s gradual regulation of it, and eventual banning, indicates the value-liability balance has tipped towards the latter.

While there is reason to laud these regulatory shifts, they are products of political-economic realities, rather than social priorities. And they speak to a much broader issue of information policy in contemporary society.

Although social media platforms are central to civic discourse, they’re also products in a competitive market economy. As long as that market economy remains deregulated by governments, individual companies will have outsized power.

They may use their power for social good, but this decision will be market-based, and thus can change with the winds of financial promise.

Risks for Reddit, risks for the internet

Much of Reddit’s popularity has come from its status as the “wild west” of the internet.

The platform’s new approach may alienate its more dedicated user base. In trying to balance the ethos of free speech with increasing pressure to regulate, Reddit finds itself stuck between a rock and a hard place.

And as Reddit moves to moderate and ban hateful content, more extreme users are going elsewhere. Prior to the r/The_Donald subreddit’s banning, participants had already established their own external site and were encouraging others to move there.

Similarly, moderators on the quarantined r/MGTOW (an anti-feminist men’s rights subreddit) are now directing subscribers to a Discord channel – a community-based discussion app for private and public interaction.

Moderators of the quarantined r/TheRedPill (another anti-feminist men’s rights group) have been directing users to an external site for over a year.

Users leaving for external sites will reduce hateful content on Reddit, but will concentrate this hate elsewhere. And such sites are often far less regulated than larger platforms.

Conservatives increasingly complain digital platforms are anti-conservative. Reddit’s actions against r/The_Donald will likely increase calls for new, conservative-founded platforms.

Read more: Don’t (just) blame echo chambers. Conspiracy theorists actively seek out their online communities

How to prevent distilled anger

Reddit’s move highlights the influence of economics in platform governance – and the vulnerabilities that arise from this.

Rather than individual moderation decisions, what’s needed is a broad regulatory framework that holds corporate bodies to account. We need to reconsider “safe harbour” laws that protect social media companies from legal liability.

More broadly, we need to recognise social media are entangled with civic society, and enact social policies that coincide with the weight of that responsibility.

– ref. Reddit removes millions of pro-Trump posts. But advertisers, not values, rule the day – https://theconversation.com/reddit-removes-millions-of-pro-trump-posts-but-advertisers-not-values-rule-the-day-141703

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Benjamin, Associate Professor in Maritime Archaeology, Flinders University and ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Flinders University

For most of the human history of Australia, sea levels were much lower than they are today, and there was extra dry land where people lived.

Archaeologists could only speculate about how people used those now-submerged lands, and whether any traces remain today.

But in a study published today in PLOS ONE, we report the first submerged ancient Aboriginal archaeological sites found on the seabed, in waters off Western Australia.

The great flood

When people first arrived in Australia as early as 65,000 years ago, sea levels were around 80m lower than today.

Sea levels fluctuated but continued to fall as the global climate cooled. As the world plunged into the last ice age, which peaked around 20,000 years ago, sea levels dropped to 130m lower than they are now.

Read more: Australia’s coastal living is at risk from sea level rise, but it’s happened before

Between 18,000 and 8,000 years ago the world warmed up. Melting ice sheets caused sea levels to rise. Tasmania was cut off from the mainland around 11,000 years ago. New Guinea separated from Australia around 8,000 years ago.

The sea-level rise flooded 2.12 million square kilometres of land on the continental shelf surrounding Australia. Thousands of generations of people would have lived out their lives on these landscapes now under water.

Landscapes under water

For the past four years a team of archaeologists, rock art specialists, geomorphologists, geologists, specialist pilots and scientific divers on the Australian Research Council-funded Deep History of Sea Country Project have collaborated with the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation to find and record submerged archaeological sites off the Pilbara coast in WA.

We studied navigation charts, geological maps and archaeological sites located on the land to narrow down prospective areas before surveying the seabed using laser scanners mounted on small planes and high-resolution sonar towed behind boats.

In the final phase of the research, our team of scientific divers carried out underwater archaeological surveys to physically examine, record and sample the seabed.

We discovered two underwater archaeological sites in the Dampier Archipelago.

The first, at Cape Bruguieres, comprises hundreds of stone artefacts – including mullers and grinding stones – on the seabed at depths down to 2.4m.

At the second site, in Flying Foam Passage, we discovered traces of human activity associated with a submerged freshwater spring, 14m below sea level, including at least one confirmed stone cutting tool made out of locally sourced material.

Environmental data and radiocarbon dates show these sites must have been older than 7,000 years when they were submerged by rising seas.

Our study shows archaeological sites exist on the seabed in Australia with items belonging to ancient peoples undisturbed for thousands of years.

Read more: Explainer: why the rock art of Murujuga deserves World Heritage status

In Murujuga (also known as the Burrup Peninsula) this adds substantially to the evidence we already have of human activity and rock art production in this important National Heritage Listed place.

Underwater archaeology matters

The submerged stone tools discovered at Murujuga make us rethink what we know about the past.

Our knowledge of ancient times in Australia comes from archaeological sites on land and from Indigenous oral histories. But the first people to come to Australian shores were coastal people who voyaged in boats across the islands of eastern Indonesia.

The early peopling of Australia took place on land that is now under water. To fully understand key questions in human history, as ancient as they are, researchers must turn to both archaeology and marine science.

Protecting a priceless submerged heritage

Submerged archaeological sites are in danger of destruction by erosion and from development activities, such as oil and gas installations, pipelines, port developments, dredging, spoil dumping and industrialised fishing.

Protection of underwater cultural sites more than 100 years old is enshrined by the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage (2001), adopted as law by more than 60 countries but not ratified by Australia.

In Australia, the federal laws that protect underwater cultural heritage in Commonwealth waters have been modernised recently with the Historic Shipwrecks Act (1976) reviewed and re-badged as Australia’s Underwater Cultural Heritage Act (2018), which came into effect in July 2019.

This new Act fails to automatically protect all types of sites and it privileges protection of non-Indigenous submerged heritage. For example, all shipwrecks older than 75 years and sunken aircraft found in Australia’s Commonwealth waters are given automatic protection.

Read more: An incredible journey: the first people to arrive in Australia came in large numbers, and on purpose

Other types of site, regardless of age and including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander sites, can be protected but only with ministerial approval.

There is scope for states and territories to protect submerged Indigenous heritage based on existing laws, but regulators have conventionally only managed the underwater heritage of more recent historical periods.

With our find confirming ancient Indigenous sites can be preserved under water, we need policy makers to reconsider approaches to protecting underwater cultural heritage in Australia.

We are confident many other submerged sites will be found in the years to come. These will challenge our current understandings and lead to a more complete account of our human past, so they need our protection now.

– ref. In a first discovery of its kind, researchers have uncovered an ancient Aboriginal archaeological site preserved on the seabed – https://theconversation.com/in-a-first-discovery-of-its-kind-researchers-have-uncovered-an-ancient-aboriginal-archaeological-site-preserved-on-the-seabed-138108

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew S. Flies, Senior Research Fellow in Immunology, University of Tasmania

Emerging infectious diseases, including COVID-19, usually come from non-human animals. However our understanding of most animals’ immune systems is sadly lacking as there’s a shortfall in research tools for species other than humans and mice.

Our research published today in Science Advances details cutting edge immunology tools we developed to understand cancer in Tasmanian devils. Importantly, these tools can be rapidly modified for use on any animal species.

Our work will help future wildlife conservation efforts, as well as preparedness against potential new diseases in humans.

The fall of the devil

Tasmanian devil populations have undergone a steep decline in recent decades, due to a lethal cancer called devil facial tumour disease (DFTD) first detected in 1996.

A decade after it was discovered, genetic analysis revealed DFT cells are transmitted between devils, usually when they bite each other during mating. A second type of transmissible devil facial tumour (DFT2) was detected in 2014, suggesting devils are prone to developing contagious cancers.

In 2016, researchers reported some wild devils had natural immune responses against DFT1 cancers. A year later an experimental vaccine for the original devil facial tumour (DFT1) was tested in devils artificially inoculated with cancer cells.

While the vaccine didn’t protect them, in some cases subsequent treatments were able to induce tumour regression.

But despite the promising results, and other good news from the field, DFT1 continues to suppress devil populations across most of Tasmania. And DFT2 poses an additional threat.

Read more: Deadly disease can ‘hide’ from a Tasmanian devil’s immune system

Following a blueprint requires tools

In humans, there has been incredible progress in treatments targeting protein that regulate our immune system. These treatments work by stimulating the immune system to kill cancer cells.

Our team’s analyses of devil DNA showed these immune genes are also present in devils, meaning we may be able to develop similar treatments to stimulate the devil immune system.

But studying the DNA blueprint for devils takes us only so far. To build a strong house, you need to understand the blueprint and have the right tools. Proteins are the building blocks of life. So to build effective treatments and vaccines for devils we have to study the proteins in their immune system.

Until recently, there were few research tools available for this. And this problem was all too familiar to researchers studying immunology and disease in species other than humans, mice or rats.

Into the FAST lane

You could build a house with just a saw, hammer and nails – but a better and faster build requires a larger, more versatile toolbox.

In our new research, we’ve added more than a dozen tools to the toolbox for understanding tumours in Tasmanian devils. These are Fluorescent Adaptable Simple Theranostic proteins – or simply, FAST proteins.

The term “theranostic” merges therapeutic and diagnostic. FAST proteins can be used as a therapeutic drug to treat a disease, or as a diagnostic tool to determine its cause and better understand it.

A key feature of FAST proteins is they can be tagged with a fluorescent protein marker, and can be released from the cells that we engineered in the lab to make them.

This way, we can collect and observe how the proteins attach and interact with other proteins without needing to add a tag later in the process.

To understand this, imagine trying to use a tiny key in a tiny lock in the dark. It would be difficult, but much easier if both were tagged with a coloured light. In the context of the immune system, it’s easier to understand what we need to turn on or off if we can see where the proteins are.

By mapping how proteins within the devil’s immune system interact, we can find better ways to stimulate the immune system.

The FAST system is also adaptable, meaning new targets can be cut-and-pasted into the system as they’re identified, like changing the bits on a drill. Therefore, it’s useful for studying the immune systems of other animals too, including humans.

Also, the system is simple enough that most people with basic cell culture and molecular biology experience could use it.

Read more: A virus is attacking koalas’ genes. But their DNA is fighting back

Needle in a haystack

Cancer cells in humans and animals can travel via the bloodstream to spread, or “metastasise”, throughout the body. Identifying single tumour cells in blood can shed light on how cancer invades devils’ organs and kills them.

Using FAST tools, we discovered CD200 – a protein that inhibits anti-cancer responses in humans – is highly expressed in devils. With FAST tools, we were able to mix DFT2 cancer cells into devil blood and pick them out, despite there being about one cancer cell for every 1,000 blood cells.

CD200 is a powerful “off switch” for the immune system, so identifying this off switch allows us it can help us produce a vaccine that disables the switch.

By rapidly sifting out the best ways to stimulate the devil’s immune system, FAST tools are accelerating our research into developing a preventative vaccine to protect devils from DFT.

Why study animal immune systems?

COVID-19 has once again brought emerging infectious diseases onto the global stage. The ability to rapidly develop immunology tools for new species means we can jump into action when a new virus jumps into humans.

Additionally, species are going extinct at an alarming rate, and wildlife disease is increasingly threatening conservation efforts.

Understanding how the immune systems of other animals fight diseases could provide a blueprint for developing vaccines and therapeutics to help them.

– ref. We developed tools to study cancer in Tasmanian devils. They could help fight disease in humans – https://theconversation.com/we-developed-tools-to-study-cancer-in-tasmanian-devils-they-could-help-fight-disease-in-humans-137710

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dr Christine Hosking, Conservation Planner/Researcher, The University of Queensland

On Tuesday, a year-long New South Wales parliamentary inquiry revealed the state’s koalas are on track for extinction in the wild by 2050, without urgent government intervention.

Habitat destruction and fragmentation for agriculture, urban development, mining and forestry has been the number one koala killer since European occupation of Australia. This is compounded by the unabated impacts of climate change, which leads to more extreme droughts, heatwaves and bushfires.

Read more: Scientists find burnt, starving koalas weeks after the bushfires

Koala populations in NSW were already declining before the 2019-2020 bushfires. The report doesn’t mince words, saying “huge swathes of koala habitat burned and at least 5,000 koalas perished”.

The report, ambitiously, makes 42 recommendations, and all have merit. The fate of NSW koalas now relies on a huge commitment from the Berejiklian government to act on them. But past failures by a federal government inquiry into koalas suggest there’s little cause for optimism.

First, let’s look at the report’s key recommendations and how they might ensure the species’ survival in NSW.

Leadership needed at the local level

Real, on-ground koala conservation actions take place at the local level. “Local” is where councils give development approvals, sometimes to clear koala habitat. And it’s where communities and volunteers work on the front line to save and protect the species.

Recommendation 10 in the report addresses this, suggesting the NSW government provide additional funding and support to community groups so they can plant trees and regenerate bushland along koala and wildlife corridors.

Read more: A report claims koalas are ‘functionally extinct’ – but what does that mean?

Another two recommendations build on this: encouraging increased funding from the NSW government to local councils to support local conservation initiatives, and suggesting increased resources to support councils to conduct mapping.

Mapping, such as where koalas have been recorded and their habitat, is a critical component for local councils to develop comprehensive koala management plans.

Stop offsetting koala habitat

One recommendation suggests a review of the “biodiversity offsets scheme”, where generally developers must compensate for habitat loss by improving or establishing it elsewhere. It is embedded in the NSW Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016, and other state and territory governments commonly use offsets in various conservation policies.

Read more: The Blinky Bill effect: when gum trees are cut down, where do the koalas go?

But the report recommends prohibiting offsets for high quality koala habitat. Prohibiting offsets is important because when a vital part of koala habitat is cleared, it can no longer support the local koalas. Replacing this habitat somewhere else won’t save that particular population.

Build the Great Koala National Park

It’s of paramount importance to increase the connected, healthy koala habitat in NSW, particularly after the bushfires.

One tool to achieve this is laid out in recommendation 41: to investigate establishing the Great Koala National Park. Spearheaded by the National Parks Association of NSW, this national park would see 175,000 hectares of publicly owned state forests added to existing protected areas.

It total, it would form a 315,000 hectare reserve in the Coffs Harbour hinterland dedicated to protecting koalas – an Australian first.

Read more: What does a koala’s nose know? A bit about food, and a lot about making friends

It would be a great day if such a park was established and replicated throughout the NSW and Queensland hinterlands. Research shows that in those regions, the future climate will remain suitable for koalas, and urbanisation, agriculture and mining are not currently present in these parks.

But it’s worth noting Australia’s national parks are under increasing pressure from “adventure tourism”. Human recreation activities can fragment habitat and disturb wildlife, for example by constructing tracks and access roads through natural areas.

Humans must not be allowed to compromise dedicated koala conservation areas. Intrusive recreational activity is detrimental to the species, and can also reduce the chance quiet park visitors might spy a koala sitting high in a tree, sleepily munching on gum leaves.

This rule should apply both to existing national parks, and a new Great Koala National Park.

Failures of past inquiries

The tragic fate predicted for koalas in NSW depends on the state government’s willingness to act on the recommendations. Developing wordy, well-intentioned documents is simply not enough.

We need look no further than Australia’s key environmental legislation, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act, to realise this.

After a 2012 Senate inquiry into the health and status of koalas, the species was officially listed as “vulnerable” under the EPBC Act. But since then, tree clearing and declines in koala numbers have continued at a furious pace across Queensland and NSW.

One of the shortcomings of the federal listing for the koala is in its Referral Guidelines, which recommends “proponents consider these guidelines when proposing actions within the modelled distribution of the koala”. In other words, informing the government about clearing koala habitat is only voluntary. And that’s not good enough.

Read more: Environment laws have failed to tackle the extinction emergency. Here’s the proof

The failure of the 2012 inquiry and the EPBC Act to protect koalas should serve as a wake-up call to the NSW government. It must start implementing the recommendations of the current inquiry without delay to ensure Australia’s internationally celebrated species doesn’t die out.

Koala conservation must take priority over land clearing, regardless of the demand for that land. That principle might seem simple, but so far it’s proved agonisingly difficult.

– ref. We know how to save NSW’s koalas from extinction – but the government must commit – https://theconversation.com/we-know-how-to-save-nsws-koalas-from-extinction-but-the-government-must-commit-141696

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Barsky, Associate professor of Management, University of Melbourne

HESTA, the industry super fund for health and community workers, plans to dump its shares in thermal coal mining companies.

Beyond that, its Net Zero by 2050 program announced on Friday commits it to cutting the carbon emissions in its portfolio by one third by 2030, and to “net zero” by 2050.

UniSuper, the fund that controls most of the retirement savings in the higher education sector, is bigger, managing A$82.2 billion instead of $53.8 billion.

Like many superfunds, UniSuper does not fully disclose how it invests these funds. However, what it does report (and you can read its report on climate risk and its investments here) is troubling.

It invests 12% of its funds – one in every eight dollars – in companies involved in fossil fuels. Half of that, 6%, is invested “directly related to fossil fuel exploration and production business activities.”

6% of UniSuper funds in fossil fuels

UniSuper has responded to criticism of these investments of almost $10 billion and $5 billion by noting that three quarters of its investment portfolio has “set targets around emissions”.

It points to three investment options specifically designed for “members wanting to avoid fossil fuels”. They are Sustainable High Growth, Sustainable Balanced, and Global Environmental Opportunities.

Sustainable High Growth and Sustainable Balanced both include the mining company Rio Tinto in their top 12 shareholdings.

Global Environmental Opportunities excludes Rio but includes companies with no obvious link to environmental opportunities such as the Citrix Systems server and software corporation.

Read more: There’s more to super fund HESTA’s divestment than ethics

The second-largest holding in that fund (after SolarEdge Technologies Inc) is Digital Realty Trust Inc, a data centre provider that sourced 39% of its energy from renewable sources in 2016, but only 30% in 2018.

UniSuper defends these investments by saying it pushes for climate action by engaging with the companies in which it invests. However, its responsible investment reports suggest it voted in favour of few if any climate change-related shareholder resolutions at Australian company meetings.

University staff have fewer choices than most

It would be tempting to suggest that if UniSuper members don’t like UniSuper’s investment choices they can leave.

But UniSuper is unusual among super funds. Most members are tied to it. Enterprise bargains have made membership of UniSuper compulsory for employers of institutions such as the University of Western Australia.

Other universities effectively bar employees from choosing other super funds without formal restrictions. UniSuper is the default fund into which new employees are automatically funnelled.

It runs one of Australia’s last remaining defined benefit schemes, in which retirement benefits are related to years of service and salary rather than the accumulation of funds invested, and in which the investment of funds is particularly opaque with regard to climate change.

This is troubling because all new university staff members are defaulted into the defined benefit stream and are unable to switch to the accumulation stream for the first two years.

But they’re not powerless

Research suggests consumer action works best when consumers act collectively. UniSuper’s rules make this difficult, but not impossible.

The social media campaign for UniSuper to divest from fossil fuel companies organised by the environment activist group Market Forces has amassed almost 12,000 signatures.

The more that UniSuper members sign up to it, the less room there will be for UniSuper to claim it is serving members interests.

Read more: What limits shareholder activism as a force for good: the free-rider problem

University staff members can approach their UniSuper Consultative Committee about investments, and union members can lobby the National Tertiary Education Union to include more other super funds in enterprise agreements.

And many UniSuper members are actually able to transfer their funds to other super funds (or at partially – it’s harder than for most funds). UniSuper provides a fact sheet explaining how to do it.

Investment decisions matter

The threats posed by climate change to investment returns and standards of living in retirement are real.

The umbrella organisation for the world’s central banks says climate change is likely to cause the largest economic dislocations ever seen and could bring about dramatic drops in the value of portfolios, including a 25% reduction in global GDP growth.

In 2019 the investment advisor Mercer modelled three climate change scenarios; average warming of 2°C, 3°C and 4°C on preindustrial levels, over three time frames – to 2030, 2050, and 2100.

It concluded that 2°C would have the least damaging effect on portfolios, and that fund managers, motivated by the economic and social interest of their beneficiaries, had the opportunity, “arguably the obligation”, to use their investments to help bring about this more economically-secure outcome.

We agree, there is no retirement on a dead planet.

– ref. UniSuper take note: there’s no retirement on a dead planet – https://theconversation.com/unisuper-take-note-theres-no-retirement-on-a-dead-planet-132194

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Higham, Professor of Tourism, University of Otago

Unprecedented border closures and the domestic lockdown have paralysed New Zealand’s $40.9 billion a year tourism industry. In the process, the vulnerability of the sector to external shocks and the tenuous nature of tourism employment have been exposed.

While New Zealand’s handling of the pandemic has been hailed as a global masterclass, and the prospect of travel bubbles promoted as a way to restart the tourism economy and save jobs, it is clear there is no quick fix.

The inherent dangers of reinfection from travel to and from countries with uncontrolled community transition, and the challenge of protecting New Zealand’s borders, mean international tourism is grounded for the time being.

Nevertheless, planning for recovery is underway. The United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) wants to restore confidence and restart tourism without delay. The European Union recently opened its borders to travellers from certain countries, including New Zealand.

But the proposed trans-Tasman and Pacific bubbles will likely be among the first safe international travel zones in the world.

A Tasman-Pacific bubble is good for the planet

The economic benefits are obvious. A recent study using UNWTO data identified Australian tourists, who spend on average $7,490 on holidays, as the top spending tourists in the world. Of the 3.8 million international tourists who visited New Zealand in 2018, nearly 40% were from Australia.

By the end of 2019, Australian tourists had spent $NZ 2.5 billion in the New Zealand economy. Of course, that figure is offset by the $NZ 1.6 billion spent by Kiwis visiting Australia in 2019.

Read more: Sun, sand and uncertainty: the promise and peril of a Pacific tourism bubble

Simply wishing for a return to normal, however, is not enough. The tourism rebuild must negotiate a delicate balance between immediate recovery and long term sustainability. A new steady-state equilibrium that generates employment and income while driving down tourism carbon emissions is required.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic it was widely recognised that the global tourism system is economically and environmentally flawed. Our research has highlighted three main structural failures:

1. low value (caused by growth in arrivals combined with declining spending)

2. economic “leakage” (due to outbound tourism and the concentration of profit flowing to a few global players)

3. high carbon emissions (from high-carbon transport dependence, increasing distance of travel and falling average length of stay).

Reducing travel distances is key

In the case of a geographically distant destination like New Zealand, there is no ignoring the last of those problems, as a report by the New Zealand Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment highlighted in late 2019.

The fact is, high carbon emissions are embedded in New Zealand’s tourism GDP. In the rebuild we must commit to measuring the carbon footprint of tourism, and actively manage forms of tourism that come with a disproportionately high carbon cost.

Read more: Sun, sand and uncertainty: the promise and peril of a Pacific tourism bubble

In practice, this will mean more tourism from the regional medium-haul markets that fall within the proposed Australia-New Zealand-Pacific travel bubble. Increasing reliance on Australian states rather than long-haul markets will result in a dramatic reduction in carbon emissions per dollar of tourism GDP.

Research published in 2010 showed that while Australian tourists made up 37% of international visitors to New Zealand they were responsible for 13% of air travel emissions. By contrast, visitors from Europe made up 18% of total visitors but 43% of emissions.

Fewer long haul arrivals, more Australian tourists, more domestic tourism and less outbound travel will dramatically reduce tourism carbon emissions.

COVID-19 has already kickstarted the domestic part of this equation. New Zealand hasn’t targeted local tourists since 1984’s iconic “Don’t leave town till you’ve seen the country” campaign. But the regions are now competing for the roughly 60% of all tourist dollars that New Zealanders spend in their own country each year.

The closure of international borders has also, for now, stopped the significant economic drain caused by outbound travel. In 2019 Kiwis spent nearly $5 billion travelling overseas.

Time to stop marketing long-haul tourism

Most trade (including tourism exports) comes from markets closest to us. It is much cheaper to trade with neighbours, and it is far more sustainable to have tourists arrive from closer rather than distant countries.

Read more: The coronavirus survival challenge for NZ tourism: affordability and sustainability

New tourism models have to be found that can reduce the sector’s emissions while maintaining as much as possible its income and employment benefits.

Tourism carbon analysis is likely to point towards the growing importance of long-stay visitors, such as international students, who already provide 23% of total international tourist spending in New Zealand.

Equally it will be necessary to “de-market” and reduce long-haul, high-carbon, short-duration, and low economic yield tourist arrivals. Passengers who arrive on enormous carbon intensive cruise ships – 9% of visitors but only 3% of tourism earnings – fall firmly into the least desirable category.

An Australia-New Zealand-Pacific travel bubble clearly fits the new model. The tourism rebuild must involve all measures being taken to create a high-value, low-leakage and low-emissions tourism future.

– ref. The sun is setting on unsustainable long-haul, short-stay tourism — regional travel bubbles are the future – https://theconversation.com/the-sun-is-setting-on-unsustainable-long-haul-short-stay-tourism-regional-travel-bubbles-are-the-future-140926