Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Geelan, Deputy Head of School, Griffith University

A recent review of available pathways after secondary school into work, further education and training recommended all students leave school with a learner profile.

Recommendation four of the report, commissioned by the Education Council, said:

Students should leave school with a Learner Profile that incorporates not only their ATAR score (where relevant) together with their individual subject results, but that also captures the broader range of evidenced capabilities necessary for employment and active citizenship that they have acquired in senior secondary schooling.

This report echoed many of the themes raised in a September 2019 paper by the Australian Learning Lecturre: Beyond ATAR: A Proposal for Change. The paper proposed differences in the way we represent students’ knowledge, capabilities and activities, to describe secondary school graduates as whole human beings, and to ease transitions and pathways into further education and work.

The paper recommended completely replacing the ATAR (Australian tertiary admissions rank) with a learner profile, as opposed to having the ATAR be part of the profile.

But what is a learner profile, and do students really need it when they leave school?

More than a number

Is there a single number that can represent the totality of who you are? Your salary, height, weight, IQ? I think most of us would say “no”.

Yet a single number — the ATAR — is the main way secondary school students are represented, ranked and given access to tertiary education. The ATAR is the result of a scaling process that gives students a percentage rank in relation to others in their age group. If a student gets an ATAR of 80, it means they are 20% from the top of their age group.

Read more: What actually is an ATAR? First of all it’s a rank, not a score

A number of universities and degree programs complement ATAR scores with entry tests, interviews or other measures. But the ATAR remains dominant.

Australia is the only country that uses an almost universal student ranking system for tertiary entry. Beyond ATAR: A Proposal for Change, p. 11.

The dominance of ATAR has costs. It can shape senior secondary schooling, transforming it from a broad activity of learning to be an adult and citizen to the quest for a higher score. It can influence students’ and families’ subject choices, and their decisions about things like extracurricular activities.

Read more: The majority of music students drop out before the end of high school – is the ATAR to blame?

What is a learner profile?

The model of the learner profile in the 2019 Australian Learning Lecture paper proposed including information about the student’ extracurricular activities such as sport, part time work, music and theatre, hobbies and the other things they do to broaden their engagement with society and enhance interpersonal skills.

It is broader than the model prescribed in the recent Education Council report which recommended that the learner profile focus on students’ school-based activities.

Perspectives differ on whether a learning profile would complement and include an ATAR or similar score, or completely replace it.

A learner profile has been part of the International Baccalaureate for some time. Students complete the program with a document focused on their personal qualities such as communication, risk-taking and open-mindedness as well as on their knowledge and thinking skills.

Read more: How will the class of COVID-19 get into university? Using year 11 results is only part of the answer

Similar profiles are used for senior secondary students in Hong Kong, recording three years of academic results and learning experiences, including the attitudes and values students have developed. These profiles also list awards and achievements, inside and outside school, and an essay in which the students describe themselves.

While the Australian National University does consider the ATAR, applicants must also meet a co-curricular or service requirement. This is a measure of the breadth of a student’s engagement in the community.

School is about building citizens

Both the Education Council and Australian Learning Lecture reports argued that using a learning profile would better match graduates with the university courses that will best allow them to develop and fulfil their potential.

But school shouldn’t be just about getting into a university course, or getting the right job. It should also be about preparing students to be citizens actively engaged in society, who participate in the arts and community organisations, who have lives outside of work, who serve others and have a global vision.

Read more: What’s the point of education? It’s no longer just about getting a job

Broadening the ways we measure and represent the outcomes of the senior years of schooling has the potential to broaden our vision of school itself.

– ref. Students are more than a number: why a learner profile makes more sense than the ATAR – https://theconversation.com/students-are-more-than-a-number-why-a-learner-profile-makes-more-sense-than-the-atar-143539

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Janine Dixon, Economist at Centre of Policy Studies, Victoria University

They’re at it again, pushing lower company tax as a way to resuscitate the economy.

The arguments were well ventilated at the time the government pushed for company tax cuts, failed to get support in the Senate, and then abandoned them in favour of personal income tax cuts in the leadup to the last election, declaring “we’re not coming back to the company tax cuts”.

The new argument is that they’ll help get us out of recession, but in the same sense that Leo Tolstoy observed that while all happy families resemble each other, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, each recession is different.

This recession is the result of the forced hibernation of large parts of the economy in order to reduce the spread of COVID-19.

This recession is about households

When the time is right, it will be households that hold the key to reversing the effects of hibernation.

Australian households account for 60 cents in every dollar spent in the Australian economy, and they accounted for a disproportionate share of the fall in GDP in the first half of 2020.

With shops and cafes shut, the need for investment in new facilities is low.

The first step to recovery has to be reopening the businesses that exist and are closed or are operating well below capacity.

This means getting households spending, supported by stimulus.

Company tax cuts benefit foreigners

Our modelling in 2018 showed that while a company tax cut would stimulate investment and economic activity, in both the short run and the long run the benefits would accrue to foreign investors rather than to Australians.

In theory, all investors should respond positively to a lower company tax rate, but under Australia’s system of dividend imputation local investors are shielded from company tax, meaning the cuts matter most for those overseas.

Those overseas investors would be likely to invest more in Australia after a company tax cut, boosting Australia’s capital stock (buildings and equipment) making workers more valuable, pushing up wages.

Read more: Big business doesn’t want to talk about it, but SMEs lose from a company tax cut

While sold as a plus, higher wages would make it harder for locally-owned businesses. Our modelling found the biggest losers would be in the retail, health care and education industries.

With foreign investors paying less tax, the local population would bear the consequences of spending cuts or higher taxes, broadly negating the benefit of higher wage growth.

COVID makes the case weaker

As well, much of the company tax cut would be ‘wasted’ providing a windfall gain to foreign investors already in Australia.

The case for a company tax cut is now weaker, not stronger, than it was in 2018.

Budget deficits will reach new highs in 2019-20 and 2020-21. It is the right policy for the circumstances we are in, but it will leave future governments with difficult decisions about budget repair.

Read more: A temporary income tax hike is the bitter but equitable pill Australia should swallow

When the economy is strong enough, taxpayers could face deficit repair levies, bracket creep, new taxes, and the broader application of existing ones.

It is for this reason that the International Monetary Fund warned against knee-jerk tax changes during the crisis and said:

a premium should be placed on measures that move the tax system in desirable directions – specifically: refrain from tax holidays; keep environmental taxes; do not cut corporate income tax rates

If the company tax rate was to be cut now, it would be difficult later to restore it to where it was when it was needed.

The smaller tax contribution by foreign investors would mean more of the adjustment would fall on us.

And investors may well find us increasingly attractive

Another fresh reason to be cautious about a cut in company tax is that Australia’s relative attractiveness as an investment destination might well improve.

We have suffered, but most of the world has suffered the same or worse.

Deciding where to invest their next dollars, investors might well form the view that our response to the pandemic has been better than those of other destinations such as the United States, Britain and Brazil.

Read more: Morrison government toughens foreign investment scrutiny to protect ‘national security’

One of the benefits of being a peaceful, well-managed resource-rich Western democracy is that when things are bad elsewhere foreign investors look here.

We might continue to find (as we have in the past) that we get all the foreign investment we can handle with our company tax rate as it is.

– ref. Post-COVID, there’ll be less of a reason to cut company tax than before – https://theconversation.com/post-covid-therell-be-less-of-a-reason-to-cut-company-tax-than-before-143622

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Barrett, Lecturer, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

The world’s wealthiest people will transfer US$15.4 trillion in assets to their heirs in the next decade, according to a recent report.

Published by specialist data analysts Wealth-X, the report focused on the richest 0.1% (those with net assets worth over US$5 million), but it’s a similar story for the more modestly wealthy baby boomers.

With New Zealand’s average national house price now over $700,000, the heirs of home-owning boomers (as well as people born before 1945 whose significant wealth is often overlooked) will receive a currently untaxed bonanza.

Ignoring this unprecedented transfer of wealth from people who no longer need it to people who haven’t earned it would be absurd. But equitable tax policy must first overcome political timidity and rhetoric.

Read more: How rising inequality is stalling economies by crippling demand

As New Zealand’s election approaches, forward-thinking politicians should take heart from Sinn Féin winning a majority in the 2019 Irish election on the promise of making the country’s tax system radically more equitable.

While a capital gains tax (CGT) is off the table for now, tax arrangements are never set in stone and voters can be open to change.

Taxing inheritance is nothing new

New Zealand first taxed inter-generational capital transfers in 1866. However, the rate of estate duty was reduced to zero in 1993 and gift duty was scrapped in 2011. According to tax law specialist Michael Littlewood:

These taxes for many years enjoyed broad political support. Indeed, it was widely regarded as obvious that a significant part – perhaps as much as 50% or so – of every large estate ought to go to the state.

Taxing a person’s wealth when they no longer need it, provided a reasonable exemption is made to support dependants, has been usual since Roman times. In the modern era, inter-generational wealth was seen as eminently taxable, too. Indeed, progressive tax rates were applied to estate taxes before they were first used for income taxes.

In 1979 Australia became the first developed country to abolish estate duty (at both state and federal levels). As analysts Sam Reinhardt and Lee Steel pointed out, support for estate taxes had declined despite “various tax review committees recommending refinements to improve the equity, efficiency and simplicity of the tax”.

Politics gets in the way

In New Zealand, Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University’s 2010 tax working group didn’t consider reintroducing an estate tax or retaining the gift duty then in force. It argued that reforms in the late 1980s had “improved the efficiency and equity of the tax system”.

Certainly, stamp duty is an unlamented tax – although many jurisdictions try to use it to cool overheated housing markets. But it’s not clear why the working group considered estate taxes inefficient or inequitable.

Read more: New Zealand’s proposed capital gains tax could nudge taxpayers to invest in art instead of property

Unfortunately, the terms of reference of the next tax working group, established by the Labour-led government after the 2017 election, specifically excluded an inheritance tax. While there were good theoretical reasons for such a tax, group member Geof Nightingale said, it “breaks down at the politics”:

Inheritance taxes are intensely disliked, so if you haven’t got one it’s very hard to put one in.

The arguments against estate taxes are well rehearsed – usually accompanied by emotive references to “death taxes”. But, in the long term, the current ideological opposition to taxing inter-generational wealth transfers may prove to be an anomaly.

One simple reason for reviving the debate about such a tax is demographic: baby boomers, the wealthiest generation that has ever lived, will increasingly start dying during the 2020s.

Tax policymakers cannot ignore the opportunity – arguably the moral imperative – of taxing and redistributing those transfers.

Millennials and Gen X will be the winners

There remain three challenges to achieving a fairer tax based on inter-generational wealth.

First, the application of tax needs to shift from the deceased to the living. In other words, we need to focus on the recipient of the wealth transfer. Ireland’s capital acquisitions tax (CAT) applies a flat rate of 33% to accumulated gifts and inheritances over the relevant threshold.

Unlike a CGT, which can be perceived as penalising business owners, a CAT targets unearned windfalls from an accident of birth. This should make a CAT more politically acceptable than a CGT.

Read more: If you want a fair inheritance tax, make it a tax on income

Second, the younger generations most critical of baby boomers’ “unfair” acquisition of wealth (Gen X and millennials) must accept that taxing this unprecedented transfer of wealth will promote both inter- and intra-generational fairness.

If we don’t tax and redistribute these transfers, wealth inequalities will be exacerbated and entrenched among future generations.

And finally, arguments in favour of a more equitable system have to overcome the rhetoric of “death taxes”. As far back as the 1960s, Canada’s Royal Commission on Taxation did this by popularising the idea that “a buck is a buck”, no matter how it is earned.

In other words, if you have the money you can pay tax, whether that money comes from labour, investment or inheritance.

So far, only the Greens are proposing any tax on wealth as part of their election policy offering. But with the generational clock ticking, it’s maybe time for New Zealand to think about getting a CAT.

– ref. Forget a capital gains tax – what New Zealand needs is a tax on inherited wealth – https://theconversation.com/forget-a-capital-gains-tax-what-new-zealand-needs-is-a-tax-on-inherited-wealth-143604

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Harry Scheule, Professor, Finance, UTS Business School, University of Technology Sydney

In an apparent about face, the NSW government has halved land tax for developers of build-to-rent housing.

It came weeks after the the Treasurer Dominic Perrottet launched a report that called for a greater reliance on land tax as a replacement for stamp duty.

The greater reliance on land tax is a long-term goal. At the moment family homes are exempt, along with boarding houses, caravan parks, retirement villages and farms. Most other users pay land tax, including landlords and businesses.

The change will give developers who invest in build-to-rent schemes offering long tenancies a 50% discount on their land tax for 20 years.

Why build-to-rent?

Most Australian rental properties are owned by individuals, units in apartment blocks as well as free-standing houses. Half are owned by landlords with only one property; three quarters by landlords with only one or two properties.

If you want to rent from a corporation, or from someone with wide experience in owning and renting properties, you’ll find it hard.

It makes Australia unusual.

In other countries corporations rent out housing, big time. America’s five largest corporate landlords own 420,000 properties. Germany’s largest landlord, Vonovia, owns more than 330,000.

Overseas experience suggests corporations provide more affordable housing, and in many ways they make better landlords.

Individuals who own just one property have put most of their eggs in one basket.

Because they can’t afford for anything to go wrong they check the condition of the property regularly.

They prohibit nails in walls and pets, and typically offer only short-term leases.

Corporations can play the law of averages.

Because they know most properties will be well maintained they are satisfied with less-frequent inspections. They allow modifications, and typically offer long-term leases.

They offer an experience pretty close to ownership, in return for rent.

It’s this that the NSW government wants to encourage.

To ensure it happens and to ensure built-to-rents don’t revert to the Australian pattern of individual investors owning individual units, it will specify that the apartments have at least 50 units and are managed under unified ownership.

Tax makes it hard

At the moment such developments are discriminated against when it comes to land tax. No tax is due if the land value is below a threshold.

Individual landlords are usually below the threshold (some spreading their portfolio between multiple states to ensure they don’t trigger each state’s threshold).

Wholly-owned apartment blocks are above the threshold and can’t escape it. University of Technology Sydney calculations suggest land tax on build-to-rent developments can consume up to 27% of the annual rent collected.

Read more: ‘Build to rent’ could be the missing piece of the affordable housing puzzle

And they are subject to goods and services tax. They can reclaim some of it but not all.

The announcement comes at a time when the COVID crisis has cut stamp duty receipts and created an oversupply of vacant apartments, particularly around universities.

The initiative appears to have been crafted before the crisis and to be more forward looking. Many of the build-to-rent projects will take years to complete.

It’s about changing the mix

That said, any extra building activity will support the construction industry and extra stock will reduce home prices and rents.

The initiative doesn’t spell the end of mum and dad landlords. They will still predominate for a long time.

It’s about providing options and security for tenants that isn’t widely available and will become more important as a greater proportion of Australians rent.

Other states will be taking note.

Read more: What Australia can learn from overseas about the future of rental housing

For a government that wants to eventually make land tax universal, the 50% cut is a step in the wrong direction. It might have been better to remove the threshold for small landlords.

But there’s no sign the NSW government has given up on its longer term goal. It’s unlikely to be the last time land tax rules are changed.

– ref. Why NSW is skewing its tax system toward build-to-rent apartments and away from mum and pop landlords – https://theconversation.com/why-nsw-is-skewing-its-tax-system-toward-build-to-rent-apartments-and-away-from-mum-and-pop-landlords-143594

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

As Victoria struggles to get its hotel-quarantine-debacle-driven COVID-19 outbreak under control, there has been renewed focus on the plight of those in aged-care facilities.

The facts are these. Between March 26 and July 5, Victoria recorded 20 deaths. None of those were in aged-care facilities. Between July 6 and July 29 there were 47 deaths in such facilities, nearly double the number from all other areas. COVID-19 cases have now been recorded in 87 aged-care facilities, with 10 aged-care facilities currently linked to about 50 or more cases.

These facts are undisputed.

What is – just barely – still in dispute is whether Australia should be following some kind of augmented herd-immunity strategy where we “protect” older Australians and let COVID-19 rip throughout the rest of the community.

Based on the data, that idea makes no sense.

Sweden tried it, and it was a disaster. Sweden’s chief epidemiologist admitted more than eight weeks ago he was wrong. Sweden’s central bank has acknowledged it will experience worse economic outcomes than its neighbours, along with the dramatically worse health outcomes.

Read more: No, Australia should not follow Sweden’s approach to coronavirus

Can we ‘protect’ older Australians?

But the tragedy taking place in Victoria right now also demonstrates the impossibility of isolating and protecting older Australians in aged-care facilities.

The cases in Victorian facilities involve both residents and staff. Indeed, the number of staff infected is significant.

These grim facts represent public health and labour market truths.

First, a higher “viral load” tends to make someone more contagious. Any relatively large number of people in a confined space is a recipe for disaster.

Second, staff in aged-care facilities in Australia often work at multiple facilities and are employed as casual workers. They are lowly paid and their work is quite insecure.

Read more: ‘Far too many’ Victorians are going to work while sick. Far too many have no choice

Australia’s Fair Work Commission highlighted the problem of insecure work in its decision this week to provide “pandemic leave” to aged-care workers:

There is a real risk that employees who do not have access to leave entitlements might not report Covid-19 symptoms

Even if we sought to strictly quarantine the residents of those facilities, the staff can’t be locked down.

Imagine what that would look like. Have the workers spend, say, six weeks living in a facility and go into quarantine on the way in and out. Victoria hasn’t even been able to manage its existing hotel quarantine. And these workers typically have other care responsibilities in their own homes.

Thinking we can somehow cleanly segregate older and particularly vulnerable Australians from the rest of the community is a fantasy.

Elimination is the only option

The dreadful events playing out in these facilities also remind us why we need to functionally eliminate all local transmission in Australian states and territories.

If even a relatively small number of cases are in the community, this terribly infectious disease will spread unless the reproduction rate is kept below 1.

The inevitable result is that some of the most vulnerable Australians – people who have contributed to this country all their lives – will die in large numbers and in terrible conditions.

They will often die alone, with their loved ones and family members unable to touch them or even be with them as they pass.

This human tragedy ought to concern us all.

Read more: View from The Hill: Aged care crisis reflects poor preparation and a broken system

But even without considering that, any reasonable cost-benefit analysis using the “value of a statistical life” favours elimination over other strategies.

To protect older Australians we need to protect all Australians. That means a commitment to stamp out all community transmission, and understanding the evidence that close to 90% of the economic cost of this pandemic comes from the pandemic itself, not the wise lockdown measures that are an investment in our future economic health.

Read more: Vital Signs: the cost of lockdowns is nowhere near as big as we have been told

And as a polite reminder to the Australian press: what makes for a good “story” is not the same as what makes for a good public policy debate.

The evidence is in and the answer is clear. We must try and eliminate local transmission of COVID-19 in Australia for the health and economic benefit of Australians of all ages.

– ref. Vital Signs: the COVID-19 crisis in aged care shows elimination is the only effective strategy – https://theconversation.com/vital-signs-the-covid-19-crisis-in-aged-care-shows-elimination-is-the-only-effective-strategy-143621

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Normann Witzleb, Associate Professor in Law, Monash University

A big year for privacy just got bigger. On July 16, Europe’s top court ruled on the legality of two mechanisms for cross-border transfers of personal data.

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) struck down the “EU-US Privacy Shield”, an intergovernmental agreement on which thousands of US companies based their data processing with EU trading partners and consumers. At the same time, the CJEU generally upheld so-called “standard contractual clauses” (SCC) for data exports but imposed new requirements on their use.

The decision has an immediate impact on data flows between the USA and the EU. But it will also create new challenges for Australian companies that engage with Europe.

Read more: Tough new EU privacy regulations could lead to better protections in Australia

The global reach of European privacy laws

In 2018, the EU brought into force the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), one of the world’s strongest privacy protection frameworks. This latest decision provides further evidence that the GDPR has impact far beyond the EU. It allows data about European citizens to be exported outside the bloc only if an adequate level of data protection is guaranteed.

Adequacy can be demonstrated at country level, and some major trading partners of the EU (such as Japan, Canada and New Zealand) have been certified by the EU as having a comparable level of privacy protection. Until a fortnight ago, US companies could likewise rely on an adequacy decision for the EU-US Privacy Shield. The Privacy Shield allowed companies to self-certify their data practices against a set of minimum criteria and enhanced US regulatory oversight. The Court has now held that this is not enough.

What does this mean for Australia?

Australian companies and consumers need to be mindful of the new CJEU decision. Data exports are very common, particularly where companies operate multi-nationally, outsource some of their data processing or store data on overseas cloud servers.

Australia was not a party to the EU-US Privacy Shield. It also does not have EU adequacy status. This is because our Privacy Act does not apply to small businesses, employee data, and political parties, amongst others. An EU entity that seeks to export personal data to Australia therefore needs to use other safeguards to ensure that EU personal data remains protected.

This is commonly done in the form of standard contractual clauses, by which the sender and recipient of data agree that their data processing meets GDPR standards. The CJEU has now clarified that companies and regulators must verify in each case that the clauses stand up in light of the recipient country’s data laws.

Governmental surveillance programs and access to effective legal remedies are a particular concern. Privacy professionals around the world now have to work out what this new requirement means.

Read more: Here’s what a privacy policy that’s easy to understand could look like

Deepening global divisions and the trend to data localisation

To comply with the ruling, companies need to engage in a more detailed risk analysis than before. In some cases, data may no longer be transferred. This is likely to contribute to an international trend to house critical data locally. A recent example of this trend is the COVIDSafe app: the data it collects must remain in Australia.

The CJEU decision comes at a time of intense public debate of privacy in Australia and many other countries. The COVID-19 pandemic has turbo-charged the digitalisation of many aspects of daily life. Every digital transaction leaves traces in the form of personal information, which could be a target for data mining and surveillance by corporate and state actors.

It would be sensible to adopt internationally harmonised data protection standards to regulate global data streams. But the world appears currently headed in the opposite direction.

Despite both the EU and US sides emphasising the need for cooperation after the CJEU ruling, the major trading powers and blocs are increasingly pitted against each other.

Apart from the long-standing EU-US division over privacy, China, India and Russia have also begun to assert their own distinct data processing models. These powers generally give their citizens fewer privacy rights than the EU. They also make increasing use of data localisation requirements, which prohibit or impede data export, to enforce their own data protection protocols. The intensifying conflict between the US and China, most recently erupting over the new security laws for Hong Kong, also marks data governance and cybersecurity as significant battlegrounds.

Australia’s new challenges in data protection

Australia’s data regulation tends to be pragmatic and business-friendly. It steers a middle course between the conflicting privacy approaches of the US and the EU. However, in a world retreating from globalised regulation, it is becoming increasingly difficult not to take sides.

Privacy is looming larger than ever in public consciousness, and Australia’s Privacy Act is due for an overhaul. More than ever, Australia needs to determine its own course in safeguarding personal information against potential overreach by corporations and governments.

– ref. Data privacy: stricter European rules will have repercussions in Australia as global divisions grow – https://theconversation.com/data-privacy-stricter-european-rules-will-have-repercussions-in-australia-as-global-divisions-grow-142980

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

Scott Morrison says of the war against COVID-19: “On some days the virus wins. On other days we beat it”. This week, the virus was counting its victories most days.

In these bleak times, it’s well to remind ourselves that in broad national terms, as many countries struggle with second waves, Australia is still doing relatively well.

Nevertheless, we are seeing the virus wield its scythe against the frail elderly in Victorian nursing homes, and its axe against the national economy.

In the early stage of the COVID crisis, the community and the politicians were shaken by vision of snaking queues of the newly-unemployed outside Centrelink.

Now the shock is coming from the voices of traumatised, sometimes angry, Melbourne families whose relatives, residents in aged care, have died or are fighting for their lives.

Read more: 723 new COVID-19 cases in Victoria could reflect more testing – but behaviour probably has something to do with it too

They’ve testified to how unprepared some facilities were. This lack of foresight magnified the vulnerability of both residents and staff in what were always to be high risk situations.

These witnesses’ stories have forced greater accountability from the federal and Victorian governments. Multiple distressing first-hand reports from credible citizens are particularly confronting.

For the federal government, which regulates aged care, there has been nowhere to hide.

For instance, Scott Morrison on Thursday admitted there was “far too much anecdotal evidence that we’ve been receiving of PPE [personal protective equipment] – despite the training, despite the PPE being there – not being used the way it should.”

With teams now being sent into facilities to check PPE use, Morrison warned failure to comply with PPE requirements would “lead to marking down” of accreditation. A warning that should have been loudly delivered much earlier.

Victoria’s Thursday record figure of 723 new COVID cases – taking its total active cases to well over 5,000, and coming with further restrictions in regional areas – plunged that state into a new dark place. One federal official described it as a “hinge day”. Morrison flagged discussion of tougher measures for the state.

There is serious worry about COVID’s impact on the health work force in Victoria. Attention has been on the high number of nursing home staff who’ve contracted the virus, but its spread among hospital staff is also concerning. Many workers at major hospitals, including St. Vincent’s, The Alfred, and The Royal Melbourne, have reportedly fallen victim.

While workforce difficulties in nursing homes was predictable, the weakness in big hospitals is more surprising.

The Victorian government’s quarantine missteps and tracing inadequacies let the virus loose, and continuing failures in contact tracing are creating problems for its containment.

Other states have more robust protections but they’re all jumpy.

NSW, dealing with a limited but potentially explosive number of cases, remains on tenterhooks, despite Morrison’s confidence that state has the situation under control and Premier Berejiklian’s desire not to flatten economic activity. “Gladys is constantly anxious,” the PM noted, in a massive understatement.

Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, facing an election, is slamming shut her border to people from greater Sydney, on the grounds of “more cases of community transmission spreading across a wider area” of the NSW capital.

Political leaders’ nerves are stretched taut, arguably even more so than early on. They’re exhausted, and less patient with each other. Federal-Victorian angst broke out this week over aged care, as did sniping between Canberra and Perth about Western Australia’s refusal to open its border.

Morrison, who only recently declared everyone a Melburnian, now insists there’s not a national COVID “second wave”, just a “Victorian wave”.

But he acknowledges Victoria’s disaster not only directly drags down the national economy (of which the state is nearly a quarter), but also delivers a much wider hit by affecting behaviour elsewhere.

The Victorian wave was even showing up “on things like table bookings at restaurants and in states that aren’t affected by COVID in the same way that Victoria [is],” he said.

A friend just returned from Queensland backs up this point, having heard stories of how Victorian bad news is hurting trade in Brisbane shops.

Victoria has derailed Morrison’s hope, indeed expectation, that economic recovery would be centre stage by now. In his mind, we’d be going about our business with the virus contained, a few periodic outbreaks efficiently handled.

Instead we see how COVID, once it breaks out (in this case thanks to bad administration), can dash away.

Read more: 723 cases is a bad number for Victoria. But we can’t freak out over a single day’s figure

Already it has rendered last week’s revised budget numbers out of date. Treasury secretary Steven Kennedy told the Senate’s COVID committee on Thursday the Victorian situation had deteriorated since the Treasury did its figures (which took account of the six-week lockdown).

“Further constraints, be they through movement or through the extension of the six-week measures that the Victorian government announced, will mean growth will be lower and employment will be lower and unemployment will be higher,” Kennedy said.

“Beyond that, of course, people can lose a bit of confidence and have concerns about what they are seeing unfolding, even in other parts of the country.” The community’s confidence in how the virus was being managed would “matter enormously for economic activity”, Kennedy added.

Morrison’s mantra is of dual health and economic crisis, but in the public’s mind the health one will command priority.

This goes back to the sustainability of the Morrison “aggressive suppression” strategy. The PM continues to reject an elimination strategy although he does now talk about a goal of zero community transmission – which on the New Zealand interpretation is elimination. Six of the eight jurisdictions are at or close to this position.

Acting chief medical officer Paul Kelly points out the obvious – the virus “moves when people move”. Even if the situation in Victoria is brought under control – a considerable “if” – Morrison’s scenario of the community operating confidently with the virus just popping up here and there sounds more doable than it is likely to prove.

One of the weapons this virus deploys is its ability to spook people out.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Australia holds its breath as Victoria struggles with the virus – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-australia-holds-its-breath-as-victoria-struggles-with-the-virus-143693

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Francis Markham, Research Fellow, College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University

The Morrison government has finally unveiled the long-awaited new National Agreement on Closing the Gap.

After more than two years of consultation, and a year of negotiations, Prime Minister Scott Morrison was full of praise for the new agreement, saying it was “realistic” and would have “very meaningful impact”. Coalition of Peaks lead negotiator Aunty Pat Turner similarly described it as a “huge step forward”.

Read more: New ‘Closing the Gap’ targets will cover attachment to land and culture

The new agreement is an important achievement by the Coalition of Peaks. This is yet another example of Indigenous people exercising their agency and should be applauded.

Notwithstanding this, close examination of the new targets reveal both important gains and unanswered questions about power sharing.

While some of the targets are associated with clear, quantifiable measures for annual reporting, this is lacking for others. Meanwhile, the level of transparency around governments, when it comes to the critical work of transforming their own agencies, is much more limited.

A revamped Closing the Gap

The new agreement represents extensive community consultations and negotiations between Indigenous organisations and all levels of government.

In a fundamental change from the original Closing the Gap framework in 2008, the new agreement has been driven by Indigenous organisations, represented by the Coalition of Peaks.

At its heart, it involves four “priority reforms” to change the way governments do business with Indigenous peoples. These include:

1. establish further partnerships between governments and Indigenous peoples which respond to local priorities

2. build the Indigenous community-controlled sector to deliver services to support closing the gap

3. transform mainstream government agencies to better respond to Indigenous peoples’ needs, including a commitment to “eliminate racism”

4. improve and share access to data and information to enable Indigenous communities to make informed decisions

The agreement also sets 16 targets, with an emphasis on socio-economic outcomes for Indigenous peoples.

More targets, but the devil’s in the detail

The original Closing the Gap just focused on health, education and employment. The scope of what was announced on Thursday is much broader, taking in child development, youth education and employment, housing, the incarceration of adults and children, child removal, family violence, suicide, land and sea rights and language use.

Further targets are also promised on access to information, community infrastructure, and inland water rights.

In this sense, the new targets are a significant improvement, as the range of policy areas is better aligned with Indigenous demands of governments.

Read more: Reconciliation Week: a time to reflect on strong Indigenous leadership and resilience in the face of a pandemic

But there is also a great deal of devil in the detail. This can been seen in the target on Indigenous rights and interests in land.

The promised increase in the proportion of Australia subject to Indigenous legal rights or interests sounds positive (15% by 2030), but it will be limited in practice. It is likely to be met by weak “non-exclusive” native title rights, which give traditional owners little control over their Country. This target is also likely to be met anyway, without any government action.

A focus on socio-economic change, not self-determination

Other key outcomes, such as increasing the number of Indigenous languages spoken, have no quantified target set. This may be for technical reasons (the strength of Indigenous languages is difficult to measure). However, the vagueness of such targets can’t help but reduce accountability.

Other important targets — such as the headline promise to “close the gap in life expectancy within a generation, by 2031” — remains unlikely to be met in full. This was included in the original Closing the Gap agreement, yet Indigenous mortality rates have seen little improvement over the last decade. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to change dramatically by 2031, given the current burden of chronic diseases among Indigenous peoples.

It must also be noted that with the exception of the targets around language use and land and sea rights, the new targets remain focused on reducing Indigenous socio-economic difference. They do little to enable Indigenous peoples to exercise self-determination in political and economic domains. Or give Indigenous people real control over activities happening on their Country.

The paradox at the heart of the new agreement is that it recognises targets can only be met through power-sharing. But fundamental power imbalances are not addressed. Political self-determination and economic autonomy are the very things governments have refused to commit to in the targets themselves.

Will this agreement work?

The new agreement is precariously placed. A great deal hangs on the implementation plans governments must now produce to meet these commitments. These plans – and the willingness and ability of organisations to implement them – may ultimately be more important than the targets themselves.

The unwillingness of governments so far to raise the rate of criminal responsibility, which is something firmly within their control, does not auger well for their commitment.

Read more: Lidia Thorpe wants to shift course on Indigenous recognition. Here’s why we must respect the Uluru Statement

There is also a lack of specific and identified funding. While there is a recognition that “significant and effective use of resources” are needed, there are few promises to provide them.

Further, the newly found enthusiasm for “partnership” with Indigenous people carries significant risks. What is unclear in the new agreement is who is responsible for what and at what point.

The lack of clear and agreed ownership risks misunderstanding. Exactly what are the mechanisms to hold people and governments to account?

Ultimately and importantly, however, this new agreement has created an adjustment of attitudes. It sets a standard against which government actions can be measured, and provides a genuine chance to end the tyranny of low expectations when it comes to Indigenous affairs.

– ref. We have 16 new Closing the Gap targets. Will governments now do what’s needed to meet them? – https://theconversation.com/we-have-16-new-closing-the-gap-targets-will-governments-now-do-whats-needed-to-meet-them-143179

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

Those in aged care have been some of the hardest hit by the coronavirus second wave in Victoria. Even before the crisis, there were calls for reform of the sector, which is currently being examined by a royal commission.

Issues with staffing and delivery of care have only become worse as many workers are required to isolate, with mass transmission occurring in the homes.

Read more: View from The Hill: Aged care crisis reflects poor preparation and a broken system

Patricia Sparrow is CEO of Aged & Community Services Australia, a peak body which represents not-for-profit members providing residential care for some 450,000 people throughout the country.

One of the many issues with the aged care sector, Sparrow says, is a failure to define the role and purpose of aged care.

“They used to be called nursing homes and that’s what people thought they were. But in recent times … there’s been a move to them being more home-like and less emphasis on [the] clinical. So I think one of the critical things we need to do is actually to determine what is it that aged care is providing.”

“We need to decide then as a community how we fund it so that it can deliver the quality of care that the community expects and that we as providers want to provide.”

The royal commission produced a scathing interim report, and Sparrow is hopeful its final findings will bring about the real reform the industry needs.

“We do need a system that’s wellness-based. We need a system that supports people at home, that provides the very best in terms of health-care needs. And that does require us to look at the interface with the health system.

“There’s no doubt that we need a fundamental reform and there’s no doubt that providers are doing the very best they can now, with the resourcing and the restraints around what it is that we can do.”

Additional audio

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

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Patricia Sparrow on the need for aged care reform – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-patricia-sparrow-on-the-need-for-aged-care-reform-143694

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Janet Stephenson, Associate Professor and Director, Centre for Sustainability, University of Otago

A proposed multibillion-dollar project to build a pumped hydro storage plant could make New Zealand’s electricity grid 100% renewable, but expensive new infrastructure may not be the best way to achieve this.

New Zealand’s electricity generation is already around 80% renewable, with just over half of that provided by hydro power. The government is now putting NZ$30 million towards investigating pumped hydro storage, which uses cheap electricity to pump river or lake water into an artificial reservoir so that it can be released to generate electricity when needed, especially during dry years when hydro lakes are low.

The response to the announcement was mostly enthusiastic – not least because of the potential for local jobs. But whether it is the best solution needs careful evaluation.

There any many realisable changes to electricity demand, and New Zealand should consider the alternative of other, potentially cheaper options that deliver more efficient use of electricity.

Read more: Five gifs that explain how pumped hydro actually works

Promise of a purely renewable grid

Electricity is mooted to play a major role in achieving New Zealand’s target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050. To support the government’s plan to accelerate the electrification of the transport and industrial heating sectors, generation will need to grow by around 70% by 2050, all from renewable sources.

Worldwide, pumped hydro energy storage is seen as a promising option to support cheap and secure 100% renewable electricity grids.

New Zealand’s analysis will mainly focus on one particular lake, Lake Onslow. If it stacks up, it would be the biggest infrastructure project since the “think big” era of the 1980s. But at an estimated NZ$4 billion, the cost would also be massive and the project would likely face opposition on ecological grounds.

Such a scheme would be a step towards the government’s target of 100% renewable electricity generation by 2035 and fit with the overall goal of New Zealand achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050. It would also solve the problem conventional hydropower plants face during dry years, when water storage runs low and fossil-fuelled power stations have to kick in to fill the gap.

But the possible closure of the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter would free up around 13% of renewable electricity supply for flexible use. This alone raises the question whether a pumped storage development on this scale is necessary.

Read more: NSW has approved Snowy 2.0. Here are six reasons why that’s a bad move

Changing supply and demand

Getting to 100% renewables and achieving a 70% increase in supply in the next 30 years will mainly come from new wind and solar generation (both now the cheapest options for electricity generation) as well as some new geothermal. Major new hydro dams are unlikely because of their significant environmental impacts.

As a result, electricity supplies will become increasingly variable, dependent on the vagaries of sun, wind and river flows. This creates a growing challenge for matching supply with demand, especially if hydro lakes are low.

Last year, the Interim Climate Change Commission concluded New Zealand could get to 93% renewable generation by 2035 under current market conditions. But it warned the final few per cent would require significant overbuilding of renewable generation that would rarely be used.

It suggested the most cost-effective solution would be to retain some fossil-fuelled generation as a backup for the few occasions when demand overshoots supply. At the same time it recommended a detailed investigation into pumped storage as a potential solution for dry years.

Electricity demand — the collective consumption of all businesses, organisations and households — is also changing.

Households and businesses are switching to electric vehicles. Farm irrigation is becoming widespread and creates new demand peaks in rural areas. Heat pumps are increasingly used for both heating and cooling. These all create new patterns of demand.

And households aren’t just consuming power. More and more people are installing solar generation and feeding surplus back into the grid or storage batteries. Local community energy initiatives are starting to emerge.

New markets are developing where businesses can be paid to temporarily reduce their demand at times when supply is not keeping up. It is only a matter of time before such demand response mechanisms become commonplace for households, too. In the near future, housing collectives could become virtual power plants, and electric vehicles could feed into the grid when supply is stressed.

Cheaper options with added health benefits

So with more reliance on sun, wind and water, electricity supply will become more variable. At the same time, patterns of demand will become more complex, but will have more potential to be adjusted quickly to match supply, on time scales of minutes, hours or days.

The big problem lies with winter peaks when demand is at its highest, and dry years when supply is at its lowest – especially when these coincide. At these times the potential mismatch between demand and supply can last for weeks.

The current solutions being mooted are to increase the security of supply, either with fossil-powered generation or pumped hydro storage. But there are options on the demand side New Zealand should consider.

New Zealand houses are typically cold because they are poorly insulated and waste a lot of heat. Despite relatively new insulation standards for new houses and subsidies for retrofitting older houses, our standards fall well below most developed countries.

Read more: Labour’s low-carbon ‘warm homes for all’ could revolutionise social housing – experts

We can take inspiration from Europe where new buildings and retrofits are required to meet near-zero energy building standards. By investing in upgrading the national housing stock to something closer to European standards, we could achieve a significant drop in peak demand as well as additional benefits of lower household heating costs and better health.

Efficient lighting is another under-explored solution, with recent research suggesting a gradual uptake of energy-efficient lighting could reduce the winter evening peak demand (6pm to 8pm) by at least 9% by 2029, with the bonus of lower power bills for households.

Such solutions to the supply-demand mismatch could be much cheaper than a single think-big project, and they come with added benefits for health. Alongside the NZ$30 million being put into investigating pumped hydro storage, I suggest it is time to develop a business case for demand-side solutions.

– ref. New Zealand wants to build a 100% renewable electricity grid, but massive infrastructure is not the best option – https://theconversation.com/new-zealand-wants-to-build-a-100-renewable-electricity-grid-but-massive-infrastructure-is-not-the-best-option-143592

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Angela Pattison, Research scientist at Plant Breeding Institute, University of Sydney, University of Sydney

Most countries have a staple food: native, fast-growing and easy-to-store plants high in carbohydrates.

In Africa, it’s sorghum. In Asia, rice. In the Americas, corn and potato. Around the Mediterranean Sea, the Middle East and Europe, it’s wheat and barley.

Australia is an exception – we do not have a staple food. But native grasslands provide ample opportunity to produce grains. In fact, Aboriginal people once used native grasses to make bread, and there is evidence they were the world’s first bakers.

We argue it’s time to resurrect Australia’s ancient breadmaking tradition. Let’s take a closer look at the reasons why.

Australia’s ancient grain’s ancient grain

In an area known as the Panara, located in a ring around central Australia, Aboriginal people used sophisticated fire-based techniques to manage grasslands and harvest grain. They collected the grain in bulk several times a year, then stored it in the off-season.

The grains harvested were from native grasses – species well suited to growing in local conditions. They were ground, mixed with water then baked in hot coals, to produce a bread resembling damper.

So why doesn’t this collection and preparation of native grains still happen today? There’s no clear answer, however preparing seed for food was very time- and labour-intensive. Also, as Aboriginal groups were massacred or forcibly removed from Country, such practices, and associated knowledges, largely disappeared.

The benefits of staple food

A native, staple Australian crop would allow us to grow food suited to our environment.

The benefits of producing food from native grasslands are well known. Grasslands need limited, if any, fertiliser, no pesticides, and can tap into groundwater so they don’t need irrigation or land cultivation.

While native grasslands yield less seed than conventional cropping systems (more on this later), fewer resources are needed to produce it. What’s more, grasslands simultaneously provide essential environmental “services” including supporting plant and animal diversity, covering bare ground, and enabling water infiltration, recycling of nutrients and carbon sequestration.

Read more: Water in northern Australia: a history of Aboriginal exclusion

Australia’s total agricultural production is currently worth about A$60.8 billion a year, and we export about 65% of what we produce. A staple Australian food might not contribute directly to the value of our agricultural exports, at least in the short term, but it may reduce costs associated with pest control through increasing the habitat for beneficial predators, and provide a low-risk venture providing some returns to growers who want to increase the amount of native vegetation on their properties.

We are not advocating the wholesale adoption of native grasses as a staple food crop in Australia. But it would be prudent to investigate how native grasses grow and produce seed, to better understand how current farming practices might be improved.

Connection to Country

Returning to native grasslands would provide a way to understand Indigenous perspectives on looking after Country.

Indigenous land managers used burning techniques to grow and maintain local grass crops. Grasslands are culturally and spiritually significant to Indigenous Australians. Their protection and regeneration could create new business opportunities for Aboriginal people and promote reconciliation.

A number of grasses were used by Aboriginal people, all of which might be a good staple food for Australia. The best approach would be to grow a range of species matched with local customs, soil types, rainfall and season.

Bread re-imagined

Growing, processing, and making bread from native grass will involve new technologies and challenge current methods.

For example, native Mitchell grass, found across northern Australia, produces between a half and one tonne of grain per hectare – lesws than a quarter the yield of wheat.

This productivity can be increased by identifying and cultivating the plants producing more seed than their neighbours. These individuals have the best chance of producing the next generation of high-yield plants.

Read more: The world’s best fire management system is in northern Australia, and it’s led by Indigenous land managers

Processing of native grains presents another challenge. The current grain-processing system receives bulk deliveries of wheat with known milling requirements at a set time of year. The timing, size and milling requirements of native grain deliveries would be far less predictable.

To be efficient, modern machine-processing of grain requires that the seed is clean, uniform in size and is not mixed with other types of seeds.

While the commercial process of making flour is relatively inflexible, in contrast, an experienced baker can work with many types of flour and adjust the dough as they go. This is how Aboriginal people baked loaves from native seed for thousands of years. Creating unique products from native grain will require flexible baking methods, including making them by hand.

In recent years, “ancient grains” such as quinoa, chia and spelt have grown in popularity among food consumers. These crops grow on their own and have been genetically improved for quality, so are relatively consistent when sold as seed, flour or in a baked product.

But Australia’s native grain products may contain multiple species that are grown and harvested together. So at the point of sale, consumers would have to accept that every loaf or biscuit or cake may have a different taste, and contain several types of grain.

Who earns the dough?

When developing native grain as an Australian staple food, we must also be careful not to exploit the knowledge of native grain production at the expense of the traditional caretakers of the knowledge and species. This would be repeating the mistakes of the past.

Native grain production offers potential economic gains. These should go first to the traditional custodians, countering current trends where only 1% of Australia’s native food industry is generated by Indigenous people.

Read more: Cultivating a nation: why the mythos of the Australian farmer is problematic

– ref. America has corn and Asia has rice. It’s time Australia had a native staple food – https://theconversation.com/america-has-corn-and-asia-has-rice-its-time-australia-had-a-native-staple-food-108983

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Maguire, Lecturer in English and Creative Writing, James Cook University

Review: Kokomo, published by Hachette

You know, Kokomo’s not even a real place … Well, it is, but it’s an industrial city in Indiana, it’s a long way from the tropical paradise they’d have you believe.

Victoria Hannan’s Kokomo – which won last year’s Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript – is a novel about loss, exile, homecoming, family and, above all, love.

When Mina leaves her life in London and rushes home to Melbourne because her agoraphobic mother has finally left the house, she begins to realise that her idea of the past is based, like the Beach Boys’ imagining of Kokomo, on a profound misconception.

At first Mina finds herself suffocating in the house she grew up in, where her mother has spent more than a decade hiding since the sudden death of Mina’s father. Mina returns to a site of deep trauma and eventually reveals the mysteries beneath it: why did her mother become a recluse? And why did Mina abandon her mother and move to London?

Read more: Review: Kate Grenville’s A Room Made of Leaves fills the silence of the archives

Love … or something like it

Love, in Kokomo, is complex, fearsome, and elusive.

Paradoxically, the book begins with Mina declaring she has found love:

Love is being turned inside out together, all that pink splayed and splayed, everything on show for each other.

This epiphany comes as she gazes at her long-desired colleague Jack’s penis, falling into a rhapsody:

… so tall and pink, a soldier standing to attention, a ballerina in first position. It was tipping its hat to her, inviting her to dance. Mina saw herself as a sailor lost at sea and Jack’s penis as a lighthouse alerting her to the presence of land, to the presence of safety.

But Jack’s penis is not the beacon she hopes. Mina is such a stranger to love she has misidentified it – instead repeating patterns of passive longing inherited from her mother.

When two-thirds of the way through the book we switch from Mina’s perspective to that of her reclusive mother, Elaine, we discover her complicated attitude to love has been learned in turn from her mother – a woman quick to anger, who Elaine suspects hid an affair for many years.

Mina also engages in doomed romantic pursuits. But the most reciprocal and generous relationship she experiences is with influencer and pretty best friend Kira. It’s Kira who tells Mina her mother has been seen outside her house. As they revive their real-life friendship (as opposed to a social media one) Kira helps Mina confront the source of her pain: her mother’s abandonment.

Millennial writers and stories

There’s been controversial discussion about the gap where a great “millennial” novel should be. The generation, those born between 1981 and 1996 who came of age during the digital revolution, are often portrayed as lazy, unprofessional, narcissistic snowflakes obsessed with selfies and social media.

But this generation of fiction writers is telling complex and nuanced stories.

Take Britain’s Olivia Sudjic, herself a victim (or beneficiary – depending on your point of view) of the “millennial author” label. Sudjic defines a group of novels not by the age of the authors alone. She looks to their common interests in rootless or directionless characters, mental illness, dark humour, alienation, and the effects of late capitalism. She notes an ironic or suspicious attitude to self-identity.

Ireland has Sally Rooney, the US has Ottessa Moshfegh and Ocean Vuong. Victoria Hannan is among Australia’s new crop of young(ish) authors writing stories about contemporary young(ish) Australia.

Kokomo brims with references to popular culture and concerns. Mina tries and fails to self-medicate her anxiety and depression with alcohol. Her marketing job yields disappointment as it reveals its sexist foundations. She struggles with feelings of failure, and is alienated by life as a grown up. Millennial characters resonate with readers by examining the discomfort and disillusionment many of us feel when faced with the realities of life in late capitalism.

Read more: The Yield wins the Miles Franklin: a powerful story of violence and forms of resistance

(Anti-)social media

Hannan’s includes social media and mobile technology as part of the fabric of Mina’s life.

Mina nurtures a secret crush on her colleague, Jack, who appears to (maybe, sometimes) reciprocate her feelings. But when she leaves London for Australia after almost hooking up with Jack (the lighthouse penis episode) she has no way of knowing where their relationship stands. Instead of calling him to find out, she obsessively stalks him on Instagram, allowing his likes and new friendships to fuel her anxiety and create a highly speculative narrative about his emotional state and feelings for her.

Any time Mina has a free moment she turns to her phone, scrolls Instagram and allows herself to be drawn into the idealised versions of life she sees there.

Mina acknowledges not only the deficit of social media as an interface for human connection, but the deterioration it has facilitated in her own friendships.

Kokomo is a book in which many young(ish) readers will see their own lives and interior landscapes mirrored, but it’s so much more than that. It’s about those things that bust generational boundaries: love, family, friendship, home.

– ref. Kokomo by Victoria Hannan, a millennial fiction that spans generations – https://theconversation.com/kokomo-by-victoria-hannan-a-millennial-fiction-that-spans-generations-142043

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jamie Ranse, Senior Research Fellow; Emergency Care, Griffith University

The emergency response to Victoria’s COVID-19 crisis has been ramped up today with AUSMAT teams now working alongside defence force and hospital nurses in aged care homes.

This comes as the total number of active COVID-19 cases linked to aged care in Victoria is now at 913.

Federal health minister Greg Hunt recently said AUSMAT, or Australian medical assistance teams, are:

[…] the best of the best. They are the SAS of the medical world.

But what is an AUSMAT? What can they do? And what do we need to think about when deploying them?

Read more: View from The Hill: Aged care crisis reflects poor preparation and a broken system

What is a medical assistance team?

A medical assistance team is a group of doctors, nurses and/or paramedics who provide clinical care and health support during a health crisis, as part of a recognised organisation.

Logistics, environmental health and other personnel often support these clinical teams.

Medical assistance teams contribute to a coordinated health response in an attempt to restore and/or maintain the health capacity of a community affected by disaster or public health emergency.

In Australia, a medical assistance team may be a civilian government team (such as AUSMAT), non-government organisations (such as Disaster Relief Australia or St John Ambulance Australia), the Australian Defence Force, or a combination of these.

While an AUSMAT is usually deployed internationally, teams were deployed in Australia during last summer’s bushfires, to help with evacuations from China to Christmas Island at the start of the pandemic, and in April to support COVID-19 efforts in northwest Tasmania.

Who’s in an AUSMAT?

Health-care professionals in an AUSMAT usually work at hospitals, health services or ambulance services in states and territories across Australia.

When required, they are released from their local duties to be deployed as part of an AUSMAT response.

They are often highly experienced and leaders in their disciplines. Members undertake additional education and training to work in disaster environments and to manage the health response.

They are also highly regarded. AUSMAT was one of the first medical assistance teams worldwide to be endorsed by the World Health Organisation.

How have they been deployed internationally?

AUSMATs were set up after the 2002 Bali bombings, then used after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

Since then, AUSMATs have been used during crises, mainly in South Asia, Southeast Asia and Oceania, including the 2010 Pakistan floods, 2011 Christchurch earthquake and Typhoon Haiyan which hit the Philippines in 2014.

AUSMAT also assisted during last year’s Samoan measles outbreak.

Read more: Measles in Samoa: how a small island nation found itself in the grips of an outbreak disaster

What are the issues when deploying them during COVID-19?

The role of an AUSMAT team will change over the duration of their deployment. Based on previous experience, AUSMAT members may provide direct patient care, coordination of care, or leadership roles.

There is the risk that temporarily sending health workers to work in Victoria as part of an AUSMAT will leave their existing hospitals and health services short-staffed.

At this stage, this is not thought to be a great concern as areas outside Victoria are not yet so significantly impacted by COVID-19, making it easier that their home states will manage without them.

However, if the situation worsens in other states, it may become harder to convince these states to release staff to support interstate efforts.

We also need to look after the physical and psychological well-being of AUSMAT health-care professionals.

We prepare them to assist with emergency health efforts but we don’t always prepare them to return to their normal roles afterwards. Some find it difficult to adjust.

Read more: 4 steps to avert a full-blown coronavirus disaster in Victoria’s aged care homes

What are the benefits to other states?

As well as directly helping the health response where they are sent, there are other benefits to an AUSMAT deployment.

When health workers from other states, such as South Australia and Queensland, work alongside AUSMAT and defence force teams, they can take that experience back to their home states to better prepare for a local COIVD-19 outbreak.

Read more: Coronavirus pandemic shows it’s time for an Australian Centre for Disease Control – in Darwin

– ref. AUSMAT teams start work in aged care homes today. But what does this ‘SAS of the medical world’ actually do? – https://theconversation.com/ausmat-teams-start-work-in-aged-care-homes-today-but-what-does-this-sas-of-the-medical-world-actually-do-143605

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philip Russo, Associate Professor, Director Cabrini Monash University Department of Nursing Research, Monash University

Victoria has today achieved another grim record, with 723 new cases of COVID-19 and 13 deaths.

This is more than double the 295 cases recorded yesterday, and flies in the face of suggestions earlier this week that Victoria may have reached the peak of its second wave.

With this spike comes the announcement that from 11.59pm on Sunday, masks will be mandatory across all of Victoria — not just in metropolitan Melbourne and Mitchell Shire — as well as new restrictions on gatherings at home in Geelong, the Surf Coast and surrounds.

But what could explain this big jump in new cases?

Read more: Two weeks into Melbourne’s lockdown, why aren’t COVID-19 case numbers going down?

More testing

First, it’s important to note almost 43,000 tests were conducted in Victoria on Sunday. This is roughly double the number of tests on most other days.

Given it can take a few days for test results to come through, today’s high figure could at least partly reflect the extra testing done at the weekend.

Worryingly, several infection clusters have come to light during the past week, both in aged care and in the community, such as workplaces.

A portion of the positive results could be related to extensive contact tracing which has occurred to track these clusters, and targeted testing resulting in further cases being identified.

Read more: Got a COVID-19 test in Victoria and still haven’t got your results? Here’s what may be happening — and what to do

Family, friends, home and work

Speaking this morning, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews again indicated COVID-19 transmission is occurring in intimate settings, such as people’s homes.

Restrictions on visitors in the home were among the first measures to be reimposed in Melbourne last month. From 11.59pm tonight, no visitors will be allowed in homes in Geelong, the Surf Coast and surrounding areas where COVID-19 transmission has increased.

But hospitality businesses will keep operating, which Andrews says reflects data showing the spread is happening in home environments.

Importantly, Andrews reiterated today that people are not isolating when they’ve been asked to; instead leaving the house for work and other activities.

These include people waiting for their test results, and in one instance a person who had tested positive for COVID-19.

People continuing to move about in the community when they have symptoms or when they’ve been diagnosed with COVID-19 means new cases are likely to keep coming. We desperately need this message to cut through.

Read more: How to clean your house to prevent the spread of coronavirus and other infections

Masks are not a licence to leave home

We’ve now had a week of mandatory masks in Melbourne and Mitchell Shire. We hope these high numbers are not because masks are creating a false sense of security, in which people feel that because they’re wearing a mask they can go out and do what they want.

But we can’t ignore the fact this possibly has something to do with it. If you’re unwell and think you can move freely because you’re wearing a mask, you can’t. You must stay at home. And crucially, if you’ve been told you have COVID-19, you must remain at home — wearing mask doesn’t change this.

Read more: Which face mask should I wear?

Even if you’re well, it’s important to remember masks are an additional measure. They’re not a substitute for physical distancing or hand hygiene, which remain vitally important.

Similarly, there’s a chance many people in the community aren’t wearing masks properly, and continue to handle them inappropriately, risking cross-contamination.

Every day is important

The past week has brought large variations in the daily numbers of new cases. Today’s number is significantly high, and if we see similar increases over the next few days, it’s clear the current level 3 restrictions — and maybe even tighter restrictions — will need to be in place for some time.

In the meantime, it’s vital people stay at home if they’re unwell. For everyone else in Melbourne and Mitchell Shire, if you must leave home for one of the four reasons, please observe physical distancing, practise hand hygiene, and wear a mask.

– ref. 723 new COVID-19 cases in Victoria could reflect more testing – but behaviour probably has something to do with it too – https://theconversation.com/723-new-covid-19-cases-in-victoria-could-reflect-more-testing-but-behaviour-probably-has-something-to-do-with-it-too-143677

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Louise Richardson-Self, Lecturer in Philosophy & Gender Studies, University of Tasmania

Another day, another woman being called a “whore” — and worse — on Twitter.

In the wake of her recent interview with Prime Minister Scott Morrison, ABC 730 host Leigh Sales posted some of the sexualised abuse she gets on Twitter just for doing her job.

This isn’t the first time Sales has faced an onslaught of misogynistic abuse. She says the “@ column” in her Twitter feed (where any Twitter account holders can send her messages) is “virtually unusable because of the constant stream of abuse”.

As a researcher of online gendered hate speech, I know all too well that Sales is not the only woman — high-profile or otherwise — experiencing abuse online.

One in five women experience online abuse

A 2017 study found almost one in five Australian women have experienced offensive and degrading messages online, targeting their gender.

Online misogyny is hurled at acquaintances on Facebook and proliferates in news comments sections. It’s sent to women’s direct messages and their email inboxes.

It’s all over Instagram, where accounts have been created to send misogynistic messages. It also happens in private men’s only groups (and, yes, it still harms women even if they aren’t around to see it).

There’s nothing novel about the content, either. It’s so predictable that University of New South Wales feminist scholar Emma Jane built a digital “rapeglish” generator to prove it.

Existing prevention measures are not working

This has got to stop. But the current systems we have for reporting and penalising online misogyny are woefully inadequate.

Legislators may be trying, but they are failing to keep pace with evolving forms of online abuse.

Existing laws used to penalise online misogyny — such as the prohibition on using a carriage service to menace, harass, or cause offence — imply the “wrong” in question is the means of abuse rather than the abuse itself.

Read more: Reports of ‘revenge porn’ skyrocketed during lockdown, we must stop blaming victims for it

While social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter give users the option to report harmful content, these systems are skewed by what researchers call the “White Male Effect”. This effect happens because:

White males perceive the risks of health and technology hazards as low compared to white females and people of colour … White males’ low risk perceptions are associated with individualist and hierarchist worldviews as opposed to an egalitarian worldview.

Director of the Women’s Media Centre Speech Project Soraya Chemaly explains further how white male reporting systems operate.

[They are] built to accommodate harassment in the way a young man is most likely to experience it: as a one-off episode of name-calling.

However, for women and other marginalised groups, abuse is often systemic, extensive, and patterned.

Ultimately, this burdens women with the laborious task of persistently reporting abuse and blocking users, hoping some moderator will agree the content violates the platform’s community standards.

Online abuse is not ‘harmless’

Women have been driven offline as a consequence of their abuse. For many others, misogyny creates a “chilling effect” — women stay quiet to keep the target off their own backs.

A 2017 Amnesty International poll of women in the United Kingdom, United States, Spain, Denmark, Italy, Sweden, Poland and New Zealand found 23% had experienced online abuse (in a finding similar to Australia’s figures). More than three quarters of this group then made changes to the way they used social media.

Some people may think this is relatively harmless. But online misogyny denies women equal access to public spaces and goods and inhibits their right to free speech.

Online misogyny creates a hostile environment for women. And it’s not like women can just quit the internet. As Australian researchers Anastasia Powell and Nicola Henry point out,

in this digital age, our social interactions are not just mediated by technology but are increasingly dependent on it.

Everyone should be able to enter online spaces with the assurance that they will not become the targets of digital violence simply because of their gender.

Cyberspace, just like physical spaces, are supposed to be enjoyed by men and women equally. The creation of a hostile environment is just another form of sex discrimination. The fact that this discrimination is achieved through words and images makes no difference in terms of the harms it enacts.

Online abuse is not ‘normal’

As a culture, we cannot come to accept this abuse as normal, inevitable, or the price women must pay to enjoy what digital technologies have to offer. We have to address this problem.

The question is, how?

It’s all well and good to implore your mates to call out online misogyny when they see it. It’s all well and good for platforms to provide a system for flagging individual instances of harmful content. But piecemeal approaches will not see the fundamental cultural and behavioural shifts we desperately need.

As a start, we need more diversity in the tech industry and in government so policies and legislation do not fall afoul of the White Male Effect.

We also need better gender education, which means educating young people about the harms of misogyny. Social media platforms of course also need to do more when it comes to dealing with online misogyny (and other forms of hate).

But most importantly, we need to challenge our cultural tolerance for the sexist degradation of women.

The solutions start offline

Ultimately, the solution to the problem of online misogyny starts in the material world. The hate speech women cop online is no different to what they cop offline.

Read more: ‘Expect sexism’: a gender politics expert reads Julia Gillard’s Women and Leadership

There’s nothing you can say to us in digital spaces that we haven’t already encountered — either directly or indirectly — in physical spaces.

To address the problem of online misogyny, we should not start by asking, “how can women experience cyberspace safely?”

Instead, we need to start by interrogating why men keep creating hostile environments for women, whether digital or physical.

– ref. Leigh Sales showed us the abuse women cop online. When are we going to stop tolerating misogyny? – https://theconversation.com/leigh-sales-showed-us-the-abuse-women-cop-online-when-are-we-going-to-stop-tolerating-misogyny-143543

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

Victorian premier Daniel Andrews said on Thursday the state had recorded 723 new COVID-19 cases, a huge jump from the 295 new daily cases announced the day before.

There’s no denying 723 is a shocking number. It’s the biggest single number we have seen in this pandemic from a single Australian jurisdiction — in fact, we haven’t seen a single day in the pandemic with this many cases, even if you were to add up all the states in Australia.

But it’s too early to freak out. You’re right to be concerned but we can’t draw too many conclusions from just one or two data points.

Instead, we need to look at averages over multiple days.

Read more: New South Wales on a knife edge as cumulative coronavirus case numbers spiral into the ‘red zone’

Carefully watch and wait

I’d be looking at five-day rolling averages because we know that is the median incubation time for this coronavirus. We should start to see impacts from the most recent round of interventions within five days.

It’s too early to call for much tougher restrictions based on Thursday’s bad number alone. It’s good the Victorian government is now making it mandatory for people anywhere in the state to wear a mask or face-covering when outside the home, and we need to wait and see what the impacts of those measures might be.

And from midnight tonight, people in the local government areas of Greater Geelong, Surf Coast, Moorabool, Golden Plains, Colac Otway, and Queenscliff will not be able to host visitors at home.

We need to keep some powder dry and allow time for measures to work before enforcing much stricter measures across the state or worrying further.

Stay home if you’re sick or awaiting test results

The government’s messaging recently has been much more strongly focused on not going to work while sick or waiting at home for test results, which is important given the role workplaces and social gatherings play in spreading COVID-19.

People need to have it sink into their consciousness that they must not work and mix while sick or awaiting a test result. As Andrews said on Thursday:

There were also a number of other people who, when there was a discussion, the person that the ADF and the health department, as a joint team, were looking for, the person who has a confirmed diagnosis having coronavirus, they’ve got a positive test, they weren’t home. But a family member was, and the family member helpfully pointed out that that person, a positive coronavirus case, was in fact at work.

Beyond that, there were some instances where people were not perhaps clear on what they needed to do. The important thing is that they got that information because they were door-knocked.

Andrews reiterated on Thursday there is a A$300 payment for people who can’t work while awaiting test results (you can apply here), or a $1500 payment for people who test positive (eligible applicants will be contacted by the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services).

Read more: ‘Far too many’ Victorians are going to work while sick. Far too many have no choice

There’s a lot we don’t know

When asked about the 723 cases, Andrews said

there are a number of positive cases in aged care, and therefore they are being reflected in these numbers. That’s one point […] The other issue around targeted testing, where there’s been significant outbreaks, the more outbreaks you have, the more testing you do, and you will find cases.

The fact is there’s a lot we don’t know about Thursday’s number. There could be delays in testing, we don’t know if that figure includes a bunch of backdated results or some other element driving it. We know cases reported today were infected up to two weeks ago but we can’t see illness onset dates among these numbers. We may see a different curve emerge in coming days and weeks — better or worse. We just don’t know.

We shouldn’t get too carried away without more of the context — but that said, I do understand why people see a bad number and think, “Oh my god.” I have done that myself sometimes.

We all feel pain for Victoria and we know restriction fatigue is real. Victoria isn’t an isolated place and it’s clear borders can leak. Any cases anywhere in the country represent a risk to all of us in Australia.

The real trend behind today’s numbers will emerge in coming days and weeks.

– ref. 723 cases is a bad number for Victoria. But we can’t freak out over a single day’s figure – https://theconversation.com/723-cases-is-a-bad-number-for-victoria-but-we-cant-freak-out-over-a-single-days-figure-143686

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Meg Elkins, Senior Lecturer with School of Economics, Finance and Marketing, RMIT University

What’s driving “Bunnings Karen” and others to film themselves arguing with shop assistants about face masks and human rights? And how should we respond?

Victorian premier Daniel Andrews has called their behaviour “appalling” and advised us to ignore them, because “the more you engage in an argument with them, the more oxygen you are giving them”.

Others are taking a more confrontational approach.

On Australia’s morning television Today show, presenter Karl Stefanovic cut off an interview with an anti-masker after telling her she had “weird, wacko beliefs” and “I can’t listen to you anymore”. And that’s relatively tame, compared with what’s being said about the “covidiots” on social media.

Our desire to condemn and punish non-cooperative behaviour is strong. One of the key insights from behavioural econonomics over the past few decades is that people are willing to punish others at a cost to themselves, and this helps increase cooperation – to an extent.

Read more: Can Australian businesses force customers to wear a mask? Here’s what the law says

But condemnation and punishment can also reinforce resistance among the uncooperative. We must also try to understand the complex emotional motivations of those refusing to wear masks.

Anti-masker motivations

It’s hard to say how many people are opposed to mandatory mask wearing. But the evidence suggests social media channels such as YouTube and Facebook have increased the popularity of conspiratorial theories that governments want people to wear masks as some form of mind control.

The COVID conspiracy movement is a broad church, but there appear to be two fundamental traits among its adherents.

First, a belief in their own intuitive ability to know the truth.

Second, a deep and cultivated distrust of government and other institutions. They do not believe the mainstream media, and there is no shortage of alternative media narratives to sustain them.

Trust or distrust in authority, and whether one is more obedient or rebellious, has been shown to be an innate tendency, shaped by experience and culture. It is very difficult to shift. As social psychologist Jonathan Haidt notes in his 2012 book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, our minds were designed for “groupish righteousness”:

“We are deeply intuitive creatures whose gut feelings drive our strategic reasoning. This makes it difficult – but not impossible – to connect with those who live in other matrices”

Distrust in authority is easily reinforced by any perceived mixed messages from official souces. In the case of masks, health officials initially advised against wearing them. We know the main purpose of this message was to safeguard limited supplies for health workers, but the change in tune has helped entrench anti-masker beliefs the government isn’t truthful.

Cooperation and punishment

So what to do?

The important issue is not whether we can change anti-masker beliefs but whether we can change their behaviour.

Traditional economic theory, which assumes people are rational and follow their self interest, would emphasise carrots and sticks.

Behavioural economics, which understands that decisions are emotional, would also recognise that people are quite ready to take a hit just to express their disgust about being treated unfairly.

This has been repeatedly demonstrated by a staple experiment of behavioural research – the “ultimatum game”. It involves two players and a pot of money. One person (the proposer) gets to nominate how to split that money. The other (the responder) can accept or reject the offer. If it’s a rejection, neither gets any money.

A “rational” responder would accept any offer over nothing. But studies have consistently shown a large percentage opt for nothing when they consider the money split unfair.

This sense of fairness is a deep evolutionary trait shared with other primates. Experiments with capuchin monkeys, for example, have shown that two monkeys offered the same food (cucumber) will eat it. But if one monkey is given a sweeter treat (a grape) the other will reject the cucumber.

Other types of games show this innate sense of fairness leads to a desire to penalise “selfish” people in some way. Most of us are “conditional cooperators”, and punishment of non-cooperative behaviour is important to maintain than cooperation.

Read more: Coronavirus contact-tracing apps: most of us won’t cooperate unless everyone does

But punitive measures may paradoxically reduce compliant behaviour.

Economists Uri Gneezy and Aldo Rustichini, for example, conducted an experiment in Israel to discourage parents picking up their children from day care late by introducing fines. The result: lateness actually increased. Fines became a price, used by parents as a way to buy time.

Read more: To change coronavirus behaviours, think like a marketer

Need to express dissent

If a rule jars with one’s beliefs, following it can cause huge emotional turmoil. Particularly if disobedience is the only way to express disagreement.

Could anti-maskers express their feelings in another way?

Economists Erte Xiao and Daniel Houser demonstrated this possibility in a variation of the standard ultimatum game.

Normally the game only allows responders to express their feelings through accepting or rejecting a proposer’s offer. Xiao and Houser allowed responders to express their feelings about an unfair offer by sending a simple message. The result: they became much more likely to accept an unfair offer.

Some enterprising types seem to have cottoned on to this idea by selling face masks enabling wearers to signal their conspiracy convictions.

So if we want to anti-maskers to cooperate, we will need to tolerate them expressing their dissent in other ways.

Ostracism and ridicule will just increase their resistance and resentment, and reinforce the “us versus them” mentality.

– ref. What to do with anti-maskers? Punishment has its place, but can also entrench resistance – https://theconversation.com/what-to-do-with-anti-maskers-punishment-has-its-place-but-can-also-entrench-resistance-143456

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Chin, Professor of Asian Studies, University of Tasmania

Malaysians are rejoicing the news this week that former Prime Minister Najib Razak has been found guilty on seven charges related to corruption and abuse of power, and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Many people want to see him (and his wife) jailed for the 1MDB financial scam, in which billions of dollars went missing from a government investment fund. Whether Najib will eventually end up in jail, though, is unclear. He will next file an appeal and the process could take more than a year to play out.

But there is a bigger question not being addressed in Malaysia. Does this verdict represents a watershed moment in Malaysian politics? Will Malaysian politics, or more precisely Malay politics, fundamentally change as a result of this monumental victory against corruption?

I would argue no.

A system built on Malay supremacy and discrimination

Malay politics is founded on a simple proposition — Ketuanan Melayu, or Malay supremacy. In recent decades, it has metamorphosed into Ketuanan Melayu Islam (Malay Islamic supremacy).

At its core is the belief Malaysia is Tanah Melayu (Land of the Malays) and ethnic Malays are the true indigenous people. As such, even though at least one-third of Malaysia’s population are non-Malays, Malays must be first in every facet of Malaysian life — from politics to government to religion to culture.

This philosophy has been institutionalised since 1971 under the government’s New Economic Policy (NEP). The NEP dictates that bumiputera (the official term for indigenous Malays) are given preference in all socio-economic spheres, including entry to the civil service, quotas in university intake, mandatory shareholdings in listed companies and exclusive business licences.

You can even get a 7-15% discount for buying a new house under the “bumi discount”, in addition to the government’s bumi quota for new properties.

In the religious sphere, Islam is widely considered the official religion of Malaysia, even though it accounts for just 61% of the population. In practice, this means people of other faiths are faced with discrimination and stringent restrictions.

Read more: Malaysia takes a turn to the right, and many of its people are worried

For example, it is a legal offence for anyone to proselytise Muslims, but not the other way around. In fact, there is no legal mechanism for a Muslim to leave Islam. If one is born an ethnic Malay, the constitution defines that person as Muslim. As a result, many Muslims, especially the younger ones, believe Islam is superior to all other religions.

In February, the Pakatan Harapan (Alliance of Hope) government fell, just two years after wresting control of the country from the Barisan Nasional, which had ruled Malaysia since independence.

The new Perikatan Nasional (PN) government that came into power in March was unashamedly “Malay First”, with Ketuanan Melayu Islam at its core.

So, what’s this got to do with the Najib verdict?

The short answer is the Najib verdict will not be allowed by the PN government to be a catalyst for real reforms or a reset of the Malaysian political system.

As long as the governing system is built on the notion of racial and religious superiority and discrimination, Najib’s verdict will be seen by the Malay elite as a story of personal greed rather than a failure of the system that allowed Najib to carry out the 1MDB scam.

The Malay elite wants to keep the current system because it allows them to wield power in the name of Ketuanan Melayu Islam and reap the economic benefits.

More importantly, it allows the Malay elite to stay in power by divide-and-rule over Malaysia’s plural population. The divide-and-rule policy (or divide and conquer) was set up by the British colonial rulers to maintain their control. The policy ensured each ethnic and political group did not cooperate with other groups to challenge the British authorities.

Is it any wonder the Malay elites are still using the same methods today?

Another important point to remember is the current system ignores the basic rules of economics. By setting up a system based on racial preferences, market forces are often ignored in economic policies in the name of “Malay share”.

Thus, anyone questioning shady deals involving the government are told to shut up as the normal rules do not apply to what is often referred to as the “Malay agenda”.

Najib was able to hide the 1MDB scandal for so many years precisely because nobody dared to question him. He claimed 1MDB was a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund and everyone in government understood it to mean a way of supporting the “Malay agenda”.

Khazanah Nasional, the real sovereign wealth fund, is tasked with ensuring the Malay stake in the economy, so it is not unreasonable for people to assume 1MDB was doing the same.

Najib’s guilty verdict will not bring even an iota of change to the country’s political and economic system. What is needed in Malaysia is the abandonment of the racist Ketuanan Melayu Islam ideology.

Read more: Najib Razak: how Malaysia’s disgraced former leader is using supermarkets, mopeds and selfies to rebrand himself

– ref. Will the Najib Razak verdict be a watershed moment for Malaysia? Not in a system built on racial superiority – https://theconversation.com/will-the-najib-razak-verdict-be-a-watershed-moment-for-malaysia-not-in-a-system-built-on-racial-superiority-143617

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lauren Kearney, Senior Lecturer, Nursing and Midwifery, University of the Sunshine Coast

Amid the horrific stories of coronavirus deaths and disease around the world, researchers have reported a ray of light.

Almost simultaneously, two independent groups in Europe noticed their neonatal intensive care units seemed quieter during the pandemic.

Was this a coincidence? Or were there actually fewer babies born prematurely who needed intensive care? And if fewer premature babies were being born, why?

So, the researchers studied what was going on to try to get a fuller picture of how COVID-19 affects pregnant women and their newborns.

Here’s what they found

In Denmark, there was a significant drop (around 90%) in the rate of babies born extremely premature (under 28 weeks gestation) during the nationwide lockdown, compared with a stable rate in the previous five years.

However, the researchers did not see a drop in the rate of other preterm babies born (at greater than 28 weeks but under 37 weeks).

Read more: Coronavirus while pregnant or giving birth: here’s what you need to know

Irish researchers thought lockdown was an opportunity to measure whether non-medical, community-based, social factors were associated with a reduction in preterm birth. When they ran a similar study to the Danish team, they found similar results.

Over the past two decades, women were on average 3.77 times more likely to have a very low-birthweight baby (under 1,500g) than during the recent lockdown, in the study region of the Irish study. This was about a 73% reduction in very preterm births.

What could explain this?

There is a certain irony about these findings.

Pregnant women are sharing stories of increased stress, fear and anxiety during the pandemic. And there’s strong evidence stress, fear and anxiety during pregnancy is associated with preterm birth.

So we’d potentially see an overall increase in preterm birth, which we’ve yet to measure or see.

Read more: Pregnant in a pandemic? If you’re stressed, there’s help

Yet, pregnant women’s response to lockdown measures may indeed reduce other stressors. They may be spending less time commuting to work and facing stressful workplace dynamics. This may allow them to get more rest and increased access to family support.

Physically demanding work or demanding shiftwork, known to increase risk of preterm birth, may also have been eliminated or reduced.

Another theory relates to the removal of pregnant women from busy workplaces and community activities, reducing their exposure to pathogens generally.

Inflammation and other immune-related responses are thought to contribute to the risk of preterm birth. And we know rates of some infectious diseases, including influenza, have reduced during the pandemic, as we physically isolate, wash hands and wear masks.

Lockdown has also caused a reduction in air pollution said to act together with other biological factors to induce inflammation and influence the duration of pregnancy.

Read more: During COVID-19, women are opting for ‘freebirthing’ if homebirths aren’t available. And that’s a worry

Hang on a minute

Authors from both studies attributed this significant decrease in extreme preterm birth to the sum total of social and environmental changes during lockdown. They did not pinpoint one specific factor.

In fact, their studies were not designed to demonstrate which specific factor caused what, so we need to interpret their findings with caution.

And their studies are “pre-prints”, meaning they have not been formally peer- reviewed.

Read more: Researchers use ‘pre-prints’ to share coronavirus results quickly. But that can backfire

While these studies offer some interesting discussion points, we have some reservations about how they should inform future work.

Ideally, other researchers would want to replicate a given exposure or intervention to see if they come up with similar results. But how do we ethically replicate the drastic social-environmental change pregnant women have had to face once the pandemic is over?

Can we really expect future pregnant women to stay home, not work so hard on their feet, and limit social interaction so we can see what happens? It may have the exact opposite effect on their well-being.

Some neonatal intensive care units may have seen an increase in preterm births during the pandemic. But this may not have been studied formally, published or reported as news.

We have also peer-reviewed published studies showing an increased risk of preterm birth if women are diagnosed with a coronavirus related illness. That’s SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), MERS (Middle-East respiratory syndrome) or COVID-19.

Once the full impact of this pandemic is revealed, we may well see an overall increase in preterm births related to coronaviruses.

Perhaps we are clasping at straws, trying to visualise some possible benefit to the most significant disruption the world has undergone in recent years. But we are cautious to say we have found it here.

Read more: Coronavirus with a baby: what you need to know to prepare and respond

– ref. It’s tempting to believe good news. But are there really fewer premature babies in lockdown? We’re likely clutching at straws – https://theconversation.com/its-tempting-to-believe-good-news-but-are-there-really-fewer-premature-babies-in-lockdown-were-likely-clutching-at-straws-143353

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Flannery, Planetary Scientist, Queensland University of Technology

Every two years or so, when Mars passes close to Earth in its orbit around the Sun, conditions are right to launch a spacecraft to the red planet. Launches during this period can complete the seven-month voyage using a minimum of energy.

We are in the middle of one such period right now, and three separate missions are taking advantage of it. The United Arab Emirates’ Hope mission and China’s Tianwen-1 have already launched. NASA’s Perseverance mission is set to take flight tonight (on July 30, at 9:50pm AEST).

Between them, the missions will study the atmosphere and surface of Mars in unprecedented detail, collect samples that may one day come back to Earth, and tell scientists more about whether our neighbouring planet ever held life.

Read more: Our long fascination with the journey to Mars

What do the Mars missions aim to achieve?

The UAE’s Hope orbiter will study the atmosphere of Mars using infrared and ultraviolet light.

In a truly international effort, Hope’s instruments were developed by scientists at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre in Dubai, working with the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Arizona State University in the United States. Hope was carried from Dubai to Japan by a Russian-operated Antonov aircraft, and launched from Tanegashima Island on July 19.

Hope has no doubt already achieved its primary goal of inspiring the youth of the Arab world. Like most deep space missions, Hope’s goals are a combination of cutting-edge science, technology demonstration, and stimulating the local knowledge economy.

Although accompanied by less fanfare, China’s Tianwen-1 mission is also an extraordinarily ambitious effort driven by clear scientific goals. Building on the success of China’s lunar exploration program, Tianwen is the country’s first attempt at a Mars rover. If Tianwen succeeds, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) will become the second space agency after NASA to operate a rover on Mars.

Both the rover and accompanying orbiter will bring instruments that address key questions of the global scientific community.

Tianwen will carry a ground-penetrating radar that will let geologists peer beneath the dusty surface to examine the rock beneath the landing site. It will also carry the first mobile instrument that can sense variations in the magnetic field, which may tell scientists a lot about how fit for life Mars was in the past.

Tianwen-1 launched on July 23 from Hainan Island. Unfortunately, mission scientists were forbidden from talking to media beforehand, and live videos of the launch were banned (though some snuck out online).

China has now demonstrated a super heavy launch system to deep space, and if it succeeds with a soft landing on Mars and deep space operations, it will be close on NASA’s heels in Mars sample return. The idea of a Chinese Mars mission getting the first answers to big questions in planetary science, which would have seemed unlikely only a few years ago, may well become reality in the coming months. Both the Chinese and American programs have plans to return Martian samples to Earth in the 2030s.

Perseverance and the search for ancient life

For now, NASA is still the player with the most experience and the best resources. The Perseverance rover, scheduled for launch from Florida on July 30 at 9:50pm AEST, will be the most complex object ever sent to Mars. The new rover will search for evidence of ancient microbial life in Jezero Crater.

Read more: Ancient life in Greenland and the search for life on Mars

Perseverance is the first in a series of missions that NASA hopes will culminate in bringing samples of the Martian surface back to Earth. A novel system will collect samples selected by a globally distributed team of experts and cache them for future collection. These rocks will likely be studied for decades, like the samples of Moon rock brought home by the Apollo missions.

Italy, Norway and Denmark are among the smaller nations contributing hardware to Perseverance. The scientists and engineers who participate gain experience with deep space systems, share in discoveries and increase the overall scientific gains of the project.

How Australians are involved

Several Australians are also involved in the Perseverance mission.

Brisbane-born geologist Abigail Allwood, based at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, leads the team who developed an instrument on the rover’s arm capable of detecting signs of past life. Australian planetary scientist Adrian Brown is also working on the mission, bringing his experience using remote sensing to study Australian rocks that resemble those on Mars.

I worked on this mission at NASA JPL for several years and, although I have returned to Australia, I continue to serve as a long-term planner leading the mission’s science team and as an instrument co-investigator. The Queensland University of Technology is contributing software that will analyse data returned from the rover, with opportunities for Australian students and academics to contribute to the science investigation.

The future

Australia is well placed to make important contributions to the future of Mars exploration. But to do so we must collaborate across national borders and find our place in the international scientific framework.

The planning of the nascent Australian Space Agency has largely focused on creating jobs and nurturing industry, but it needs a list of scientific priorities to guide investment in space missions. Otherwise, we risk building a car that is missing the driver’s seat.

At successful space agencies overseas, engineers and private industry work with scientists who conceive and operate spacecraft in pursuit of truth. Employment and innovation come from scientific projects, not the other way around. By following this model, Australia too may join the exploration of the universe, spurring technological innovation and inspiring the next generation of humans in the process.

Read more: Why isn’t Australia in deep space?

– ref. Perseverance: the Mars rover searching for ancient life, and the Aussie scientists who helped build it – https://theconversation.com/perseverance-the-mars-rover-searching-for-ancient-life-and-the-aussie-scientists-who-helped-build-it-141590

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Giovanni Di Virgilio, Research associate, UNSW

At the height of last summer’s fires, some commentators claimed “greenies” were preventing hazard reduction burns – also known as prescribed burns – in cooler months. They argued that such burns would have reduced the bushfire intensity.

Fire experts repeatedly dismissed these claims. As then NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons noted in January this year, the number of available days to carry out prescribed burns had reduced because climate change was altering the weather and causing longer fire seasons.

Read more: How does bushfire smoke affect our health? 6 things you need to know

This public conversation led our research team to ask: if climate change continues at its current rate, how will this change the days suitable for prescribed burning?

Our results, published today, were unexpected. Climate change may actually increase the number of burn days in some places, but the windows of opportunity will shift towards winter months. The bad news is that burning during these months potentially increases the public health impacts of smoke.

A hot debate

Hazard reduction involves removing vegetation that could otherwise fuel a fire, including burning under controlled conditions. But its effectiveness to subdue or prevent fires is often debated in the scientific community.

Those with experience on fire grounds, including Fitzsimmons, say it’s an important factor in fire management, but “not a pancea”.

Despite the debate, it’s clear hazard reduction burning will continue to be an important part of bushfire risk management in coming decades.

Read more: The burn legacy: why the science on hazard reduction is contested

Modelling future weather

Before conducting prescribed burns, firefighting agencies consider factors such as vegetation type, proximity to property, desired rate of spread and possible smoke dispersal over populated areas. But we wanted to distil our investigation down to daily weather factors.

We reduced those factors to five key components. These were maximum temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, fuel moisture and the McArthur forest fire danger index (the index used to forecast fire danger in southeast Australia).

We looked at these elements on prescribed burning days between 2004-2015. We then used climate models to simulate how the conditions would change with global warming over southeast Australia, relative to a baseline historical 20-year period for 1990-2009.

To make a valid 20-year comparison, we compared the historical period to a modelled period from 2060-2079, assuming emissions continue to rise at their current pace.

Surprisingly, we found, with one regional exception, the number of days suitable for prescribed burning did not change. And in many places, the number increased.

As the fire season lengthened under a warming climate, the number of days suitable for burning just shifted from autumn to winter.

Shifting seasons

Our research indicated that by 2060 there’ll be fewer prescribed burning days during March, April and May. These are the months when most burning happens now.

But there will be significantly more opportunities for burning days from June to October. This is because the conditions that make for a good day for prescribed burning – such as mild and still days – start to shift to winter. Today, weather in these months is unsuitable for conducting burns.

Interestingly, these results aren’t uniform across southeast Australia. For example, much of the Australian east coast and South Australia would see seasonal shifts in burning windows, with around 50% fewer burning days in March to May.

Much of Victoria and in particular the southern regions saw an increase in burning windows during April to May and, in some parts of the state, through September and October as well.

Only the east Queensland coast would see a total reduction in prescribed burn days from April to October.

The smoke trap

This may be good news for firefighters and those agencies who depend on prescribed burning as a key tool in bushfire prevention. But, as so often is the case with climate change, it’s not that simple.

A byproduct of prescribed burning is smoke, and it’s a very significant health issue.

Last year, research showed global warming will strengthen an atmospheric layer that traps pollution close to the land surface, known as the “inversion layer”. This will happen in the years 2060-79, relative to 1990-2009 – especially during winter.

Read more: The smoke from autumn burn-offs could make coronavirus symptoms worse. It’s not worth the risk

Unfortunately, the conditions that create inversion layers – including cool, still air – correspond with conditions suitable for prescribed burning.

For asthmatics and those sensitive to air pollution, smokier burn days could make winter months more difficult and add further stress to the health system.

It also creates an additional challenge for firefighting agencies, which must already consider whether smoke will linger close to the surface and potentially drift into populated regions during prescribed burns.

This is just one factor our firefighting agencies will need to face in the future as bushfire risk management becomes more complex and challenging under climate change.

Read more: How does bushfire smoke affect our health? 6 things you need to know

– ref. Under climate change, winter will be the best time for bush burn-offs – and that could be bad news for public health – https://theconversation.com/under-climate-change-winter-will-be-the-best-time-for-bush-burn-offs-and-that-could-be-bad-news-for-public-health-143546

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ly Tran, Professor and ARC Future Fellow, Deakin University

The Australian government recently announced it will resume granting visas to international students in a move to push forward with international education. This means when borders reopen, many students will already have visas to come to Australia.

Current and new students, studying online with an Australian university, while overseas due to COVID-19, will also be able to count that study towards their graduate working visa in Australia.

The temporary graduate visa (subclass 485) allows international students to stay in Australia after they graduate for two to four years to gain work experience.

This aligns post study work rights policies in Australia on par with those of Canada (in place in March) and the United Kingdom (in place in June).

Australia’s reputation may have been tarnished by the federal government’s exclusion of international students and graduates from its JobKeeper subsidy scheme. The visa changes now attempt to signal to prospective students Australia is an open and welcoming destination.

Read more: Coronavirus: how likely are international university students to choose Australia over the UK, US and Canada?

But the global headwinds facing the international education sector underline that any policy shifts in Australia need to go beyond simply matching what is already on offer in leading study destinations.

Deferring students

Australia must not only attract new students but also convince deferring students to come back.

New data show a substantial increase in the number of students deferring their studies to a later date, but a minor increase in enrolment cancellations.

There were 60,870 deferments for the year to May 2020, 45,597 more than in the same period in 2019 (15,273). Deferments were in the form of either a delayed commencement or a temporary suspension of an existing enrolment.

By May 31 2020, 20% (121,472) of all primary student visa holders (606,485) were outside Australia.

Post-study work is a major incentive …

We conducted a survey in 2018-19 involving 1,156 international graduates. Most of them (76%) said Australia’s temporary graduate visa played a role in their decision to study in Australia.

But the sustainability of Australia’s international education will need to address issues relating to both post-study work visa arrangements and employment outcomes for international students after graduating.

Many employers lack understanding of the visa, prefer applicants with permanent residency or hold misconceptions of complex paperwork or sponsorship involved. The chance to gain work experience in their field during their study and after they graduate is limited for many international students.

Read more: Australia’s temporary graduate visa attracts international students, but many find it hard to get work in their field

The UK, in its immigration point system, set a lower salary threshold requirement for international students coming off a post-study visa and aiming for a skilled visa. This was to address the high salary threshold many employers were unable to afford, which was one of the impediments for international graduates in securing employment in the UK.

Addressing existing barriers will enhance Australia’s reputation as a destination for quality education and a positive post study work experience.

The government and universities must also offer extended support to alumni stranded onshore, who may have been working here on their graduate visa but lost their job.

…especially for students from India

Indian students are most affected by the access to a post-study work visa. In our above-mentioned survey, 82% of Indian students considered the visa an important factor in their decision to choose Australia, compared to the average rate of 74% for non-Indian international students.

In September 2019, the United Kingdom announced a reintroduction of their two year post-study work visa in response to the decline in international enrolments.

In the third quarter of 2019, the UK and Australia were equally searched as study destinations from India — at 16.2% and 16.8% respectively. But the UK’s September announcement had an immediate effect. According to IDP Connect data search results increased by 47% to the UK, and decreased by 15% to Australia.

According to internal university data, some universities in the UK reached their 2020 international enrolment caps as early as November 2019. Meanwhile, Indian offshore visa lodgements for Australia dropped by 13.5% this fiscal year.

In July, the Australian government announced it will offer current and future Hong Kong international students an additional five-year post-study work visa with a pathway to permanent residency. Only two weeks after that, there was a massive increase in interest from Hong Kong students wanting to study in Australia.

What else matters to international students?

In addition to tensions between China and Australia, the health and economic impact of COVID-19 will affect the financial capability of future international students to study overseas — as well as whether borders continue to be closed to countries.

Read more: 90,000 foreign graduates are stuck in Australia without financial support: it’s a humanitarian and economic crisis in the making

Other factors determining how international education recovers will include how host countries support international students (on and offshore) during and in the aftermath of COVID-19.

A holistic, well-coordinated and flexible approach is crucial in determining both immediate international student recovery and long-lasting destination attraction.

– ref. Australia’s graduate work visa scheme attracts international students to our universities. Is it enough? – https://theconversation.com/australias-graduate-work-visa-scheme-attracts-international-students-to-our-universities-is-it-enough-143534

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melanie Davern, Senior Research Fellow, Director Australian Urban Observatory, Co-Director Healthy Liveable Cities Group, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University

COVID-19 provides a stark reminder of inequity and the spread of disease. These aren’t new ideas and can be traced back to John Snow’s cholera maps and Charles Booth and his colour-coded maps of occupation types and poverty in the 19th century. Today, as case numbers soar in Melbourne, large clusters of COVID-19 cases have been identified across the northern and western suburbs, raising questions about occupation types and socio-economic differences across the city.

One of the most important messages from government during the pandemic has been to work from home if you can. Though what happens if your work isn’t suited to this?

Read more: Two weeks into Melbourne’s lockdown, why aren’t COVID-19 case numbers going down?

Snow and Booth were forefathers of modern geographical information systems (GIS) analysis. It’s a powerful tool for mapping and visualising differences or inequities across cities and the spread of disease. We mapped the connection between occupation types, indicating the ability to work from home, and the locations of COVID-19 cases across Melbourne in the recent second wave.

Why is equity a health issue?

Hotspot suburbs were first identified and ring-fenced in early July. A hard lockdown was applied to the 3,000 residents of nine high-density public housing estates in inner Melbourne.

Ring fencing is a powerful method of containing a disease. It’s most appropriate where a specific location has a distinctive pattern of risk. It should also be applied without bias.

As the public housing towers lockdown reminded us, there is an inequity in health.

Read more: Our lives matter – Melbourne public housing residents talk about why COVID-19 hits them hard

Many people associate equality with treating everyone the same regardless of their needs. This is very different to equity, which is about treating people according to their needs. Unlike equality, equity is providing people with extra help when it is needed.

The picture below makes the concept of equity easier to understand.

In the context of this pandemic, a recent discussion of housing affordability raised the issue of equality versus equity.

Read more: Overcrowding and affordability stress: Melbourne’s COVID-19 hotspots are also housing crisis hotspots

We see a stark difference between the initial transmission of COVID-19 and the second wave. The earliest cases were concentrated in Melbourne’s wealthier areas and associated with international travel. In the second wave we have seen a different pattern of spread across disadvantaged areas of Melbourne.

This pattern is possibly linked to inequity associated with living and work conditions. People with higher education tend to work in occupations that often enable them to work from home, making it easier to self-isolate.

Outer areas of Melbourne have had more cases of COVID-19 cases in the second wave and this might be associated with job types and education levels. Residents living in inner areas of Melbourne are more likely to hold tertiary qualifications needed for occupations more suited to working from home.

What does mapping reveal?

We analysed Australian Bureau of Statistics Census data on employment types from the Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations. We identified 93 major occupation types suitable for working from home.

We linked and mapped these occupation data along with COVID-19 incidence according to local government areas. The map below shows data from July 16.

The map reveals lower proportions (shown by lighter-coloured areas) of people employed in occupations suitable for working from home in many outer northern and western areas of Melbourne. In particular, the proportion is low in Hume, one of the local government areas where COVID-19 cases have been concentrated.

In the inner and outer eastern areas of Melbourne, residents are more likely to be able to work from home. Nillumbik in the outer north-east has the highest proportion of people able to work remotely. It has very few cases of COVID-19.

Greater Dandenong is an exception to this pattern. As a manufacturing hub for Melbourne, it has a low proportion of people in occupations suitable from working from home, but has few cases.

COVID-19 is spread through community transmission or close contact with others who are infected, as happened in meatworks factory clusters in northern and western Melbourne. Greater Dandenong may have been protected by the small number of cases across south-eastern Melbourne where more residents have occupations suitable for working from home.

The Victorian Department of Health and Human Services updates COVID-19 incidence data hourly. We first sourced data on July 16, a week after the Melbourne-wide lockdown began, to understand the patterns of occupation types and COVID-19 clusters as they evolved. To continue monitoring, we have developed a data dashboard, which is shown below.

We hope this data dashboard will be released in coming days with updated data.

Using inclusive data to protect everyone

The related patterns of occupations and COVID-19 incidence remind us of the importance of the well-known relationships between health and place.

Read more: Your local train station can predict health and death

This pandemic takes advantage of inequity and our most vulnerable communities. It shows us why we must include the full spectrum of society (not only those we know best) when we make decisions, communicate and ask people to work from home.

Many workers are engaged in casual and insecure employment and work is a critical determinant of health. Our mapping provides evidence that can help authorities decide where and how to focus preventive measures when planning public health interventions.

These methods of GIS analysis and easily understood maps should be freely available. The community will then be able to interrogate the data so they can realise in close to real time the rationale for public health directives.

These same principles have been used to understand health and liveability in cities though the Australian Urban Observatory to inform city planning.

We thank Weijia Liu of UNSW for assisting with data collection in this study.

– ref. Mapping COVID-19 spread in Melbourne shows link to job types and ability to stay home – https://theconversation.com/mapping-covid-19-spread-in-melbourne-shows-link-to-job-types-and-ability-to-stay-home-143610

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

There are the Boxing Day sales, and there was this week’s rush of extremely cashed-up investors desperate to get a slice of this week’s rare 31-year government bond auction.

What’s a bond? What’s a bond auction? We’ll get to those shortly.

First, just know that the government received A$36.8 billion of bids, $20 billion of them within hours of opening the two-day auction on Monday.

It had been wanting to move $15 billion, and could have moved that much again.

$15 billion makes it the third biggest bond sale in Australian history. The two bigger were recent – a $19 billion ten-year bond sale in May and a $17 billion five-year bond sale in July.

Each sale nets the government money it won’t have to pay back for five, ten or 31 years at rates of interest that until recently would have been unthinkably low.

Read more: More than a rate cut: behind the Reserve Bank’s three point plan

The 31-year bond went for 1.94%. That means the foreign and Australian investors who bought them (including Australian super funds) were prepared to accept less than the usual rate of inflation right through until 2051 in return for regular government-guaranteed interest cheques.

Investors who bought ten year bonds were prepared to accept only 0.92% per year, investors who bought five year bonds, only 0.40%.

What’s a bond?

Even bond traders find it hard to get a handle on what bonds are. In his novel Bombardiers, author Po Bronson writes a scene where a bond trader refuses to work any more and demands to see an actual bond, “any kind of bond”.

He tells his boss he can’t sell bonds “if he’s never seen one”.

Like many things that used to exist physically, they’re now mainly numbers on screens, but it helps to get a picture.

This one is a US 27-year bond from 1945.

The biggest part of the paper is a promise to repay the US$1000 it cost, in 27 years time.

The smaller rectangles are called coupons, and each year the owner can tear one off and take it in to get 2.5%.

If the owner wants to sell the bond to someone else (and bonds are traded all the time) it’ll be sold with one coupon missing after one year, two coupons missing after two years, and so on.

When rates fall, prices rise

The price of a bond will vary with what’s happening to interest rates. If they are falling, an existing bond, offering returns at old rates, will become more expensive and can be sold at a profit. If they go up, an existing bond will become worth less and have to be sold at a loss.

It leads to confusion. When bond rates fall, bond prices rise, and visa versa.

Read more: ‘Yield curve control’: the Reserve Bank’s plan for when cash rate cuts no longer work

For half a decade now bond rates have been falling. They’ve fallen further during the COVID crisis, making bonds a doubly good investment. They offer superannuation funds and others certainty at a time when everything seems uncertain, and if rates continue to fall they increase in value.

It is an indictment of our times that so many investors want them. The government’s office of financial management is going to need to sell an extra $167 billion over the coming year. The rush to buy suggests it could sell more.

– ref. The government has just sold $15 billion of 31-year bonds. But what actually is a bond? – https://theconversation.com/the-government-has-just-sold-15-billion-of-31-year-bonds-but-what-actually-is-a-bond-143598

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jeff Borland, Professor of Economics, University of Melbourne

That COVID is hurting young workers more than older ones is widely recognised.

What’s less well known is that even before COVID-19, in the decade leading up to it, incomes for young people (aged 15 to 34) were falling in real terms while incomes for others continued to climb.

A graph that was created by the Productivity Commission for this morning’s report, Why did young people’s incomes decline? tells the story.

The report follows Monday’s report on declining job mobility for young people.

Disposable incomes are incomes after tax. The graph shows that in the years immediately after the Melbourne Institute’s HILDA Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey began asking the question, the real incomes of young Australians climbed in line with those of older Australians.

In the decade since 2008 they’ve gone backwards. Jennifer Rayner’s book Generation Less noted that the living standards of young and old were beginning to pull apart in ways that would strain common bonds.

Last year’s Grattan Institute report said today’s young were in danger of being the first generation in memory to have lower living standards than their parents.

Where the Productivity Commission study substantially advances our understanding is by presenting a detailed analysis of why incomes of the young have declined.

Read more: It really is different for young people: it’s harder to climb the jobs ladder

It finds that young people’s real incomes have fallen since the global financial crisis mainly because they have fared worse in the job market.

Income can come from three sources – labour income, transfer income (government payments), and other income (which includes payments from non-resident parents and investment and business income).

The report finds that about three-quarters of the fall in real incomes of the young has been due to a decrease in their labour incomes (with the rest being due to a fall in other incomes).

Lower wage jobs, lower hours

The decline in labour income for the young is a result of both slower growth in hourly wages and of them working fewer hours. Hours of work have decreased as the young have shifted away from full-time towards part-time work.

With this shift has been a move to working for smaller firms, where wages are typically lower.

The next big question is what has caused the decline in labour incomes for the young.

Here, the Productivity Commission comes to the conclusion that it’s all about demand and supply.

Earlier work by Reserve Bank economists Natasha Cassidy and Zhoya Dhillion and my own work with Michael Coelli arrived at the same conclusion.

Since the early 1990s the proportion of the population wanting to work (the so-called participation rate) has been climbing.

Before 2008 and the global financial crisis that increase was outpaced by growth in the number of available jobs. Following the crisis the pattern reversed.

That has been bad news for the young. With the number of people wanting to work increasing faster than the number of available jobs, something had to give. It happened to be young people starting out in the labour market.

They found themselves crowded out from work and from the type of jobs they wanted (including full-time jobs) and having to accept lower-paid ones, with what turned out to be a a lower likelihood of later moving to a better job.

And less success at business

If all you knew was that young people’s income from paid work had declined, you might not be too worried. With all the high-tech start-ups involving young people, they must surely be able to make up those losses by striking out on their own and earning profits and business income.

The quashing of that idea is to my way of thinking one of the important findings of the Productivity Commission report.

It shows shows a large decrease rather than an increase in business income for the young, at a time when the business income of older Australians continued to climb.

The decrease happened both because after the global financial crisis young people were less likely to earn business income and because when they did it was more likely to come from low-paying industries.

Its a concerning finding for a nation pinning hopes on entrepreneurship, and an instance of where the report repays careful reading.

Lessons for COVID

It might seem as if analysing events in the decade after the global financial crisis is akin to studying ancient history, with the new COVID-19 labour market telling us more about what’s happening.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Because it is about what happens to young people in a weakened labour market, the Commission’s report is replete with lessons for today.

It provides new perspectives on how the young are adversely affected, it tells us about how income support can help, and offers insights into how to make entrepreneurship better.

And it establishes unambiguously the case for worrying about the young in the time of COVID-19, all the more so because of what has happened in the leadup to it.

– ref. Why young people are earning less – https://theconversation.com/why-young-people-are-earning-less-143549

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Worrad, PhD candidate in History, University of Newcastle

Last month, Eoin Higgins, senior editor for progressive news website CommonDreams, tweeted a screenshot of a Facebook post by “verbal, conscious channel” Carol Collins. The post, originally made on June 7, claims Collins had the previous day psychically channelled the spirit of George Floyd, who was killed by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on May 25.

The message she brought through was one of “love and forgiveness”. Floyd was apparently upset that his name had become “associated with hate”, and offered some political advice: “[…] civil liberties are not what we need to be fighting for, be the one who says I love you to all.”

Higgins’s tweet caused a considerable backlash on Twitter. (“Please tell me this is not real,” was one response.) Collins’s social media and website appear to have been removed as a result.

Collins is not the only spirit medium who has claimed contact with Floyd’s spirit, and used his voice to shamelessly endorse reactionary politics. YouTube user Channeling Erik uploaded a similar video on June 23, in which medium Denise Ramon channels George Floyd on camera during an interview.

The interview takes a number of bizarre twists, with “Floyd” revealing that his death was the result of karmic debt accrued in previous lives, and therefore inevitable. Ramon says: “[…] I just feel like, he would have got hit by a truck or got some kind of illness or something, he wasn’t gonna live a long life anyway, so […]”

When asked about the public reaction to his death, including calls to defund the police, Ramon claims Floyd said: “Not all police are bad.”

Read more: Smartphone witnessing becomes synonymous with Black patriotism after George Floyd’s death

Numerous other mediums have claimed contact with Floyd and uploaded their (often contradictory) messages to YouTube.

Political ventriloquising

The political ventriloquising of deceased members of minority racial groups by white spirit mediums is a practice that stretches back to the second half of the 19th century in the United States.

This period was the heyday of modern spiritualism, which began in 1848 in Hydesville, New York, when two young girls, Kate and Margaret Fox, claimed they could communicate with the spirits of the dead by means of audible raps and knocks.

Spiritualism attracted at least hundreds of thousands of followers, including many prominent scientists, writers and politicians. Its period of greatest popularity coincided with the height of US colonial expansion across the north American continent, as well as with the American Civil War.

Shortly before the war broke out, one medium, Francis H. Smith, channelled the following message from “Rike”, a slave who had died from poisoning in Accomack County, Virginia:

I am right smart happier here dan dar. De blessed Lord looks on de cullared folks as well as de dear masters.

Rike’s spirit refers to the “dear masters” (that is, the white slave-owners), revealing his acceptance of the racial hierarchy from beyond the grave.

A similar message published in spiritualist periodical Banner of Light in 1857 quotes “Sam”, a recently deceased slave. Sam describes wanting freedom, but also fondly remembers his plantation life, and still politely addresses his “massa” (master). He confesses: “Yes, I’d like to go on the old plantation, massa”. Sam is very much an expression of the “happy slave” trope.

According to medical doctor and spiritualist Eugene Crowell, deceased Native Americans were often bitter at the injustice they had suffered at the hands of white colonists. But as a spirit “progressed” in the afterlife, he or she would invariably turn towards forgiveness and love.

In 1874, Crowell described contacting the spirit of a chief named Big Bear, who became enraged when he remembered the atrocities committed against his people. Crowell calmed Big Bear by reminding him “many white persons had received even worse from other white persons, and from Indians” (indeed, that “ALL lives matter”), and that holding onto feelings of hatred and rage was “wicked” and would only stunt his spiritual progress.

‘Whitewashing’

This kind of posthumous “communication” meant that Native Americans, many of whom were killed in battle or executed for resisting colonisation, became “whitewashed” and recast as benevolent figures of forgiveness in service to the colonial project, even as frontier massacres were still being carried out.

How George Floyd would have reacted to the violent scenes following his death we do not know, because he is no longer here to tell us. While spiritualism has provided comfort and solace to many who are grieving the loss of their loved ones, it has also been used, and continues to be used, to ventriloquise victims of racial violence, advance reactionary political messages, and undermine calls for institutional change.

So long as living black voices continue to be ignored and marginalised, we ought to strongly condemn the behaviour of spirit mediums who assure us that “civil liberties are not what we need to be fighting for”.

– ref. The ‘channelling’ of George Floyd and spiritualism’s racist history – https://theconversation.com/the-channelling-of-george-floyd-and-spiritualisms-racist-history-143270

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

The government will unveil 16 targets for Indigenous advancement, including ensuring the maintenance of strong relationships with land and culture, when Scott Morrison announces on Thursday a new national agreement on “Closing the Gap”.

Negotiated with Indigenous representatives as a partnership, the agreement sets out four priority reforms aimed at changing how governments work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

The reforms would:

• build and strengthen structures to empower Indigenous people to share decision-making with governments

• build Indigenous community-controlled sectors to deliver services to support closing the gap

• transform mainstream government organisations to improve accountability and better respond to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s needs

• improve and share access to data and information to enable Indigenous communities to make informed decisions.

The agreement has been signed by all states and territories and the Indigenous Coalition of Peaks. The Morrison government believes it will lead to more success in closing the gap because of the shared drafting and the commitment by Indigenous representatives.

The 16 targets cover improving health, education, housing, employment and economic participation, lowering incarceration rates, ensuring the safety of families and households, and promoting social and emotional wellbeing.

They also include ensuring Indigenous people “maintain distinctive relationships with lands and waters” and that cultures and languages are strong.

The specifics of the targets will be spelt out on Thursday.

Four other targets – on family violence, access to information, community infrastructure and inland waters – are to be developed over the next year.

The old “Closing the Gap” plan, initiated by the Rudd government, had only mixed results, with progress on many of its targets falling short.

Morrison said the agreement was “a new chapter” in efforts to close the gap – “one built on mutual trust, shared responsibility, dignity and respect.

“The gaps we are now seeking to close are the gaps that have now been defined by the representatives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. This is as it should be. This creates a shared commitment and a shared responsibility,” Morrison said.

“This is the first time a national agreement designed to improve the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people has been negotiated directly with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representatives.

“By focusing our efforts on these more specific, practical and shared objectives we can expect to make much greater progress,” he said.

The Minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt, said the best outcomes were achieved when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians were equal partners with governments.

Pat Turner, lead negotiator for the Coalition of Peaks said: “For the first time, First Nations people will share decision-making with governments on Closing the Gap.

“Our country has unforgivable gaps in the life outcomes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and other Australians in all aspects of life including mortality, chronic disease, disability rates, housing security, education, employment and wealth.

“The National Agreement represents a turning point in our country’s efforts to close these gaps.

“The Coalition of Peaks have always said that targets alone do not drive change. We have seen this from the past 10 years. It is the full implementation of the Priority Reforms by governments and a commitment to additional resources our communities need that will make the difference,” Turner said.

The agreement promises an increase in the level of reporting to improve transparency and accountability. The Productivity Commission will do an assessment of progress every three years and there will be an Indigenous-led review of change on the ground. There will also be annual reports tabled in federal, state and territory parliaments.

– ref. New ‘Closing the Gap’ targets will cover attachment to land and culture – https://theconversation.com/new-closing-the-gap-targets-will-cover-attachment-to-land-and-culture-143636

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

As the Morrison government on Wednesday stepped up its attack on Western Australia over its refusal to open its borders, it faced a couple of awkward political questions.

The Prime Minister was quizzed at a news conference in Canberra on why his government was supporting Clive Palmer in his High Court challenge to the closure.

And on Perth radio, Attorney-General Christian Porter was asked whether the federal government would be thanked or blamed if Palmer won the case.

The Palmer challenge is in the federal court, which is dealing with matters of fact before the High Court hears it.

Well before the High Court decision, the federal government is calling the result, predicting the McGowan government is headed for a legal bruising.

“It is highly likely that the constitutional position that is being reviewed in this case will not fall in the Western Australian government’s favour,” Morrison said. Porter put the same view.

Whatever the ultimate court outcome, there is little doubt McGowan’s tough line has gone down a treat with his constituency. It has not just helped keep the state COVID-safe but fits nicely with those latent WA secessionist instincts.

The federal government is dealing with the bad look of being aligned with the discredited Palmer by simply denying the reality.

“Let me be clear, we are not supporting Clive Palmer,” Morrison declared, a proposition that was anything but clear.

“An action has been brought in relation to the WA border. It goes to quite serious constitutional issues which the Commonwealth could not be silent about,” Morrison said.

Porter’s take is that the Commonwealth isn’t arguing for either side in the case but is “a middle man…there to provide expert evidence”.

That evidence, however, backs up Palmer.

As a general rule Morrison, with economic considerations in mind, has never favoured closed state borders, though he had to give pragmatic support to the present NSW-Victorian closure. The states went their own ways regardless of Canberra’s view.

With no persuasive argument easily mounted at the moment to open any border to Victorians, the federal government wants WA to compromise by opening to low risk states.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, in an opinion piece this week, urged a “balance” between protecting the health of West Australians and “protecting current jobs and not standing in the way of the strongest possible jobs recovery”.

Porter warned WA’s all-or-nothing approach risked “an adverse finding in the High Court which requires you to do everything at once.” Both Porter and Cormann are West Australians.

As relations between the Morrison and McGowan governments became even more fractious over the border issue, Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced on Wednesday she will close her border to Sydneysiders from 1am Saturday.

This followed two 19-year-old women who flew from Melbourne to Brisbane via Sydney and did not isolate (there is an investigation as to whether they gave false information). A third woman, a close contact, has also tested positive.

NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian wasn’t warned and, it can be assumed, wasn’t pleased. Earlier, she had been vociferous about the need for Queensland to open its border.

Asked about the Queensland’s action, Morrison said “I think it’s important to sort of put borders aside when it comes to those things”, preferring to focus on limiting movement of people from outbreak zones.

The PM wants targeted responses to outbreaks, not nuclear options.

His approach rests on an optimistic assumption – that limited outbreaks are capable of containment without a massive reaction, such as border closures or major lockdowns. For this to be correct, everything needs to go right.

The Morrison prescription also depends on other political leaders being willing to take some risks – and Palaszczuk and Mark McGowan are not.

Palaszczuk’s decision will bring economic costs for Queensland. Businesses expecting Sydney visitors will have cancellations, and future uncertainty will be created.

There will be some blowback for the premier, as she approaches the state election in October. But she calculates, probably correctly, the negatives will be a lot less politically dangerous than if she were seen to fail to do everything possible to protect Queenslanders’ health.

And the sudden high alert in Queensland is likely to just reinforce McGowan’s resistance to the federal government’s pressure to compromise.

– ref. View from The Hill: With an abundance of caution, Palaszczuk puts out the unwelcome mat to Sydneysiders – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-with-an-abundance-of-caution-palaszczuk-puts-out-the-unwelcome-mat-to-sydneysiders-143633

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Hickie, Professor of Psychiatry, University of Sydney

American rapper Kanye West has been making headlines recently as he mounts a campaign to be elected president of the United States.

We’ve seen a series of chaotic and emotional public outbursts, including during his first presidential campaign appearance, as well as a string of incoherent tweets which he subsequently retracted.

Although the journey from celebrity to high public office is no longer implausible, it is tempting simply to dismiss West’s outbursts as yet another display of 21st-century narcissism.

But he suffers from bipolar disorder, so it’s important we understand his behaviour in the context of his mental illness.

Read more: Mood and personality disorders are often misconceived: here’s what you need to know

What is bipolar disorder?

Bipolar disorder, previously known as manic-depressive illness, involves alternating periods of intense mania (high energy and activity) and severe depression (low energy and mood).

Manic periods, which can last days to weeks, are associated with:

• an intense internal drive to be active and inability to sit still

• grandiose ideas and motivation to achieve big things

• fast speech that’s difficult to interrupt

• poor sleep

• a strong sense of oneness with the world

• irritable or elated moods.

When these periods are less severe or shorter, it’s typically referred to as hypomania.

West’s recent public behaviour indicates he may have been experiencing a hypomanic period.

Depressed periods, which often last weeks to months, are associated with:

• overwhelming fatigue

• low moods

• suicidal thoughts and behaviours.

We also see mixed states, where the person is very active or agitated but simultaneously very distressed.

And as the illness is characteristically episodic rather than persistent, many people with bipolar disorder have long periods of being well and productively engaged with their families, work and wider society.

Who does bipolar disorder affect, and what causes it?

The illness typically has its onset during adolescence, and goes on to affect about 1% of the adult population. It runs strongly in families and occurs equally in men and women.

Less severe forms of the illness, often termed bipolar II or bipolar spectrum disorders, have less intense manic periods (hypomania) as well as unstable or depressed mood, and may affect a further 2-3% of adults.

While classified descriptively as “mood disorders”, it’s more likely these disorders represent a failure of the internal body (circadian) clock to stay in close synchronisation with our normal 24-hour light/dark and activity/sleep cycles.

Some researchers have proposed this failure of the internal circadian system to maintain strong rhythms is the true cause of bipolar disorder.

Read more: Gene-based tests may improve treatment for people with bipolar disorder

Indeed, switches from normal daily rhythms to manic periods commonly occur with seasonal changes in autumn and spring, when the day length (and period of light exposure) varies most rapidly.

This sits well with recent evidence showing regular exposure to daylight has profound effects on the motor behaviour and moods of diurnal (active during daylight) mammals.

Similarly, other factors that disrupt the normal sleep-wake cycle can precipitate episodes, such as international travel, rotating shift-work, stimulant drugs and childbirth.

But we still have a lot more to learn about what causes bipolar disorder and what sparks the manic episodes that come with it.

Can bipolar disorder be treated?

Untreated bipolar disorder can have adverse effects on a person’s life, including on their relationships and capacity to participate in society. But the condition can be treated.

In the late 1940s, Australian psychiatrist John Cade made one of the most remarkable therapeutic discoveries in modern medicine: lithium carbonate. Lithium continues to be used today as a “mood stabiliser” for people with bipolar disorder.

Lithium has been shown to induce a unique state of calming without sedation in hypomania or mania, prevent recurrence of further manic episodes and reduce suicidal behaviour.

But not everyone responds to lithium, and it does have side effects. In high doses, it’s toxic to the brain, while in therapeutic doses it may cause tremor, thirst, urination, diarrhoea, nausea, acne and reduced thyroid function.

Read more: Some people with bipolar struggle to communicate – and here’s why

One of lithium’s primary effects is stabilisation of the circadian (body) clock, probably via its direct biochemical impact on the molecular machinery in the brain. This has created interest in what other medical, psychological and behavioural therapies may achieve the same result — ideally with less risk.

Today, a range of other agents that stabilise brain function (most notably anti-epileptic compounds such as carbamazepine, sodium valproate and lamotrigine) or target the brain’s circadian clock (by mimicking the normal night-time release of the sleep hormone melatonin) are also used.

Often, providing effective treatment for the depressive phase is the most challenging. Many common antidepressant drugs are less effective for bipolar disorder, or may lead to further mood instability.

Importantly, all medicines should be combined with key behavioural features like regular work and social rhythms, daily exercise, morning light exposure and regular sleep patterns to have the greatest effects. Psychological therapies may also play a role.

Creative, perceptive, driven

People with bipolar disorder, often between episodes of illness or when receiving effective treatments, have been frequently observed to be highly creative, socially sensitive, exquisitely perceptive, remarkably lucid, and having strong drive to pursue collective social goals.

When we encounter public displays like West’s, before rushing to judgement, we need to take a little more time to consider the experience of the person at the centre of the media storm, and the effects on their family. His wife Kim Kardashian West has implored compassion.

We still have a long way to go before we can really appreciate the challenges of living with bipolar or any other major mental disorder.

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

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

– ref. What is bipolar disorder, the condition Kanye West lives with? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-bipolar-disorder-the-condition-kanye-west-lives-with-143198

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rowan Callick, Industry Fellow, Griffith University

This week’s annual Australia-US ministerial (AUSMIN) talks took place within the fraught context of a world growing in enmity and anxiety — but no longer economically.

The US ambassador to Australia, Arthur Culvahouse Jr, described it as

one of the most consequential AUSMIN meetings in decades.

Certainly, the Australian team went to unusual lengths to participate. Foreign Minister Marise Payne, Defence Minister Linda Reynolds, Defence Force Chief General Angus Campbell and their teams will all have to quarantine for 14 days on their return to Australia.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo noted the commitment to travel to the US during the coronavirus pandemic, saying

not many partners will do that for us.

That effort appears to have been acknowledged in the comparative weight of Australian concerns and priorities in the statement released today following the talks.

Euan Graham, a senior fellow for Asia-Pacific security at International Institute for Strategic Studies, told me this bears the stamp of “pretty proactive drafting from the Australian side”.

The statement reflects broader interests than in previous AUSMIN talks — including a strong section on COVID-19 — and omits any mention of the Middle East. Instead, it focuses heavily on the Indo-Pacific region — Australia’s region.

To satisfy the US side in return, China is named-and-shamed considerably more than what is usual for the Morrison government. Concerns about the fate of Hong Kong under its new National Security Law and of the Uyghurs in China’s western Xinjiang region are spelled out strongly in the statement.

Read more: Explainer: why is the South China Sea such a hotly contested region?

Australia and the US ‘don’t agree on everything’

Payne stressed after the talks that while Canberra and Washington share many values,

We don’t agree on everything. We are very different countries. We are very different systems, and it’s the points on which we disagree that we should be able to articulate in a mature and sensible way.

She also emphasised the importance of Australia’s relationship with China, saying

we have no intention of injuring it, but nor do we intend to do things that are contrary to our interests, and that is the premise from which we begin.

Of course, this comes days after Australia’s strongest statement yet on the legality of China’s effective annexation of the South China Sea — a declaration that drew a rebuke from China’s Foreign Ministry.

But the Washington talks did not see Australia take the further step the US has sought, to support its freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) by sailing within the 12 nautical miles of the artificial islands China claims in the sea.

This may have reflected a reluctance to embark on a striking new military direction with a US administration that may be replaced in January.

Australia will continue to sail naval vessels through the South China Sea, including in collaboration with the US Navy.

This move is supported by the Labor opposition, with defence spokesman Richard Marles saying it reflects “core national interests”. Some 60% of Australian seaborne trade passes through the area.

Graham, however, says he would be “super-surprised” if the Australians pursued a FONOP on their own, though less surprised, if they did with a flotilla of other countries’ navies.

Read more: Politics with Michelle Grattan: Clive Hamilton and Richard McGregor on Australia-China relations

Alliance shifts in focus to Australia’s concerns

The US team indicated its approval of the recently announced A$270 billion upgrade of Australia’s defence force – a shift in line with the Trump administration’s urging of US allies to become more self-reliant.

Morrison framed this upgrade within three aims: to more effectively shape the strategic environment, deter actions against Australian interests and respond with credible force when needed.

This also reflects, Graham says, a broader move to refocus Australian defence towards Southeast Asia, the Pacific and India.

The outstanding exception to this new focus, as reflected in the AUSMIN talks, is Taiwan.

The self-governing island is perceived to be coming under more imminent threat from Beijing, which claims it as its territory. The US and Australia affirmed Taiwan’s “important role in the Indo-Pacific region” and indicated their support for its membership in international organisations.

Rather than reflecting a hard defence and security focus, though, the AUSMIN statement prioritised the global response to COVID-19.

Graham believes this is “an Australian win” since the US has lagged in global leadership on the pandemic. The new funding pledged for post-COVID recovery in the Pacific is not massive — but the elevation of health concerns indicated this will now become more central to global security.

Read more: Payne and Reynolds need to tread carefully in Washington as US turns up the heat on China

Overall, the talks indicate that as American concerns about the China challenge rise — among Democrats as well as Republicans — the Indo-Pacific is becoming ever more important, with Australia providing a crucial southern anchor for potential US force deployment.

They also make clear that while the US-Australia alliance remains rock-solid, Canberra will continue to plot its own course. It will approach issues like China trade, relations with the World Health Organisation and other multilateral agencies, and climate change in a strikingly different manner from the US.

Beijing, for its part, will continue to portray Canberra as an American “lapdog”, while at the same time seeking to do what it can to prise the alliance apart.

But this rhetoric is failing to win any policy traction, despite the instability of the Trump White House. Nor is China’s “deep freeze” of Australia. As Morrison has said, he’s “not waiting by the phone” for an invitation to the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

This week, Chile reportedly chose Japan — not China — to build the first fibre-optic cable connecting South America with the Indo-Pacific, following the completion of a submarine cable between Japan and Australia this month.

All are members of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Trump quit soon after his inauguration.

Such moves underline — as does the AUSMIN statement — the growing complexity and challenges of the post-coronavirus world, not only for Washington but also for Beijing.

– ref. Payne and Reynolds leave Washington with key ‘wins’ — and room to disagree with US on China – https://theconversation.com/payne-and-reynolds-leave-washington-with-key-wins-and-room-to-disagree-with-us-on-china-143612

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Director, Health Program, Grattan Institute

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought once-in-a-generation destruction to the lives and livelihoods of people around the world.

The costs of preventing the spread of COVID-19 must always be compared to the health, social and economic costs of viable alternatives. Countries across the globe have dealt with this balancing act differently.

One country in particular that has attracted attention for its lighter approach to lockdown is Sweden. Some people have regarded Sweden as an example for Australia to follow.

But Sweden shouldn’t be seen as a model for Australia when it comes to COVID-19. The virus has spread rapidly, they’ve had more deaths, and the economy is suffering just as badly as their neighbours with heavier lockdowns.

Read more: 6 countries, 6 curves: how nations that moved fast against COVID-19 avoided disaster

Sweden’s approach was softer, but it wasn’t unrestricted

While some people called Sweden’s approach a “let it rip” policy, this was never the case. Swedes were not free to go about their lives as normal.

Sweden’s policymakers did introduce restrictions to limit the spread of COVID-19 infection, but they tried to do so in a way that minimised the effects on people and companies.

Bars and restaurants could remain open, but with capacity constraints and a requirement of table service. Schools were kept open to preschool and primary students, but were closed to senior students. Non-essential international arrivals were banned, but only from countries outside Europe.

There were social distancing requirements and protections for vulnerable populations. Visits to aged care facilities were prohibited. People over the age of 70, pregnant women, and those with pre-existing health conditions were encouraged to “avoid social contacts” and to ask others to do shopping and errands for them.

These restrictions and recommendations remain in place.

High case numbers and deaths

As in Denmark and Norway, the number of new COVID-19 cases rose rapidly in Sweden from the start of March. But Denmark and Norway both implemented tighter restrictions, and their case numbers fell away from April.

Sweden maintained its rate of roughly 600 new cases per day throughout April and May, and then the numbers started to rise again, reaching 1,300 per day at the start of July.

By the end of July, Sweden had the 7th highest per-capita death rate in the world, and about ten times larger than its Nordic neighbours. Outbreaks spread to aged care facilities and the vulnerable.

Sweden has to date had about 80,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 — though this is likely to be an underestimate — and about 5,700 people have died. This would equate to about 15,000 lives lost in Australia.

Read more: In many countries the coronavirus pandemic is accelerating, not slowing

Sweden’s economic situation is still very serious

Even with its lighter lockdowns, Sweden has suffered economic losses almost as severe as its Nordic counterparts.

The Swedish labour market has been hit hard. Unemployment is expected to peak at between 9-11%, cushioned by a fall in labour-force participation as Swedes leave the labour market entirely.

The country’s central bank estimates GDP will fall by 4-6%, depending on a second wave of infections.

In comparison, Australia’s treasury expects the unemployment rate here to peak at 9.25%, and for GDP to fall by 2.5%.

Like in Australia, the Swedish government has provided financial support to businesses to reduce the number of job losses, and given additional support to the “many people” who will lose their jobs.

Economists from the University of Copenhagen have compared Sweden and Denmark. Both countries had similar exposure to COVID-19 at the beginning of the pandemic, and similar economic conditions before the crisis.

Denmark imposed stricter restrictions from early March, closing the border to all foreign nationals, limiting social gatherings to ten, shutting schools, universities, and non-essential work, and encouraging the entire population to stay home and minimise social contact.

The economists examined the spending of 860,000 people in the two countries. They found consumer spending dropped by 29% in Denmark, but it also fell by 25% in Sweden. People in both countries had changed their behaviour to reduce their risk of infection, regardless of government-mandated restrictions.

Where Sweden stands now

Swedes’ confidence in the ability of their government and health authority to handle the crisis decreased between April and June.

Their neighbours seem to have limited confidence too. Norway, Denmark and Finland have created a “travel bubble”, but Sweden is excluded from it.

While new COVID-19 cases in Sweden have been decreasing from the peak at the beginning of July, they still sit at about 250 per day. Denmark and Norway have been below that level since mid-April.

Swedes have paid a heavy price to get to where they are — and they’re still quite some way from controlling the spread of COVID-19, as their neighbours have done.

We don’t have to lose the lives that Sweden has to learn from its experience. Loose restrictions make COVID-19 harder to control. When the virus is out of control it spreads rapidly, putting millions of vulnerable people at greater risk and reducing the economic activity of the population.

Read more: Social distancing may be worth it, but we need to talk about economic costs

– ref. No, Australia should not follow Sweden’s approach to coronavirus – https://theconversation.com/no-australia-should-not-follow-swedens-approach-to-coronavirus-143540

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mary-Louise McLaws, Professor of Epidemiology Healthcare Infection and Infectious Diseases Control, UNSW

New South Wales is on a knife edge after recording more than 150 COVID-19 cases over the last 14 days, a worrying sign the situation could spiral out of control.

The wide geographic spread is of particular concern, as it would rule out ring-fencing as a possible approach to containing the spread of the virus.

It comes as the Queensland government has closed its borders to arrivals from Greater Sydney after declaring the area a hotspot. People returning to Queensland from this area must quarantine in hotels for two weeks from 1am Saturday August 1.

NSW in the ‘red-zone’

The state recorded 19 new cases in the 24 hours to 8pm on Tuesday, but watching the fluctuations in daily numbers doesn’t necessarily paint an accurate picture of the spread of this virus.

It’s better to look at rolling 14-day cumulative cases, meaning the last 14 days of new cases added together, which represents roughly two incubation periods.

My analysis of the data suggests when cases reach 100 over 14 days – the “red zone” – then an outbreak becomes very difficult to control. This happened in Victoria on June 18, before cases skyrocketed and a second lockdown was called for on July 8.

Over the last fortnight, NSW has recorded at least 154 new cases (minus international arrives in quarantine), which is very concerning.

NSW had previously been tracking very well in managing the virus, before cases imported from Victoria started several chains of transmission, including the Crossroads Hotel cluster.

Read more: ‘Genomic fingerprinting’ helps us trace coronavirus outbreaks. What is it and how does it work?

The new cases are very spread out

Another concern is that many of the new cases are very spread out geographically. We’ve seen new cases in central Sydney, Casula and Bankstown in the city’s west, Harris Park in the north-west, and also several hundred kilometres south in Bateman’s Bay.

This spread rules out ring-fencing as a viable control method. Ring-fencing is a strategy to enforce stricter measures in a very defined location to prevent spread within the broader community. It has been used successfully in parts of Beijing, and in Melbourne’s north-west prior to the lockdown across metropolitan Melbourne.

What else can be done?

NSW authorities should consider strongly urging Sydneysiders to wear face coverings on public transport. Masks have been shown to offer protection against both getting and spreading the virus.

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

The state also needs additional infection control measures in aged care. We can see the devastating impact of COVID-19 spread currently occurring in some aged care homes in Victoria. All staff should be wearing face masks or shields, and should be tested regularly for COVID-19, both of which are cost effective control methods.

Effective messaging is also key, particularly when aimed at young people, given over 40% of cases in Victoria are in people aged 20-39 years.

The government needs to disseminate public health messages on platforms that younger people typically use, perhaps by reinforcing the notion we all share responsibility for ending this virus.

Another risk that must be managed is public health messaging fatigue. Authorities need to help the public become resilient to changes in rhetoric as scientific knowledge about the virus advances.

Read more: View from The Hill: Aged care crisis reflects poor preparation and a broken system

What to look out for

Over the coming days and weeks, NSW health authorities must keep an eye on the ages of people testing positive.

Younger people tend to have many more social connections, sometimes up to 20 close contacts in the infectious period. This means contact tracers need to work extra hard to locate and isolate all close contacts.

I would be very worried if cumulative cases over a two-week period continue trending upwards and if many of the new cases were young people.

If even a handful of close contacts are not identified, they could go on to infect others and start even larger chains of infection.

One cause for hope is that rates of community transmission where the source of infection is unknown appear to be relatively low, though some cases are still under investigation.

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

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

– ref. New South Wales on a knife edge as cumulative coronavirus case numbers spiral into the ‘red zone’ – https://theconversation.com/new-south-wales-on-a-knife-edge-as-cumulative-coronavirus-case-numbers-spiral-into-the-red-zone-143608

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessie Moritz, Lecturer in Middle East studies, Australian National University

Kylie Moore-Gilbert, a Middle East expert from the University of Melbourne, has now been held by the Iranian government for almost two years.

She was arrested in September 2018 and then convicted of spying and sentenced to ten years’ jail. She has denied all allegations against her, and the Australian government rejects the charges as baseless and politically motivated.

Until recently, Kylie has been in solitary confinement in Iran’s Evin prison, run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. But this week, she was transferred to Qarchak, which is notorious for its brutal treatment of prisoners.

Kylie is a colleague and a friend. For the past two years, I have been keeping silent in the hopes a quiet diplomatic approach would secure her freedom.

But it is hard to overstate how horrific this week’s development is. Australia needs to do more.

‘Entirely alone’

I am a Middle East analyst, who specialises in the Persian Gulf. In fact, Kylie and I first met because we both work on state-society relations in Bahrain. I can see, examining the treatment of other foreign political prisoners in Iran, that Kylie has been treated exceptionally poorly.

In letters smuggled out of Evin prison last year, Kylie wrote how she felt “entirely alone”. She has also written how her “physical and mental health continues to deteriorate”.

Media reports indicate Kylie was able to speak to her family about a month ago and Australian diplomatic staff have also been in contact.

However the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s statement this week – that they are “urgently seeking further consular access to her at this new location” and “hold Iran responsible for Dr Moore-Gilbert’s safety and well-being” – suggests Australia was not consulted before her transfer to Qarchak.

On Wednesday, The Guardian reported a recording of Kylie out of Qarchak. Speaking Persian, she says:

I can’t eat anything. I feel so very hopeless […] I am so depressed.

Is this all two years of diplomacy has bought us?

Australia must do more

I am not speaking out now to challenge this quiet diplomatic approach regarding Iran. I am speaking because I believe more public pressure must be placed on the Australian government to ensure it is living up to its own rhetoric.

DFAT claims Kylie’s case is “one of the Australian government’s highest priorities, including for our Embassy officials in Tehran”.

But the amount of secrecy involved in the process means we cannot know if this is true.

Read more: The Australian government needs to step up its fight to free Kylie Moore-Gilbert from prison in Iran

Even though the situation is sensitive, there are avenues Australia can pursue on behalf of Kylie.

Based on my analysis of publicly reported cases, around one in three foreign political prisoners in Iran over the past five years have been released via a prisoner swap. This reportedly includes Australian tourists Jolie King and Mark Firkin who were arrested in Iran last year.

Based on publicly available knowledge, Australia does not currently hold any Iranian prisoners. However our key ally, the United States, does.

The politics are not straightforward

It must be acknowledged that the politics around this case are very complicated. Relations between Iran and the US and far from friendly – especially after the assassination of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qassem Soleimani in January 2020.

There is another problem, too.

Despite Australia maintaining constructive relationships with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, they are not the key to securing Kylie’s freedom.

Read more: As pressure on Iran mounts, there is little room for quiet diplomacy to free detained Australians

The Iranian political system is fragmented and parts of the army, judiciary and intelligence agencies report to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Rouhani and Khamenei’s relationship is also poor and Khamenei’s influence has grown since Kylie was first incarcerated. Iran will hold presidential elections in 2021 and as Khamenei seeks to secure Iran’s future, he may attempt to empower a more hardline president.

This means Australia must think outside the box to secure Kylie’s release. The solution to this crisis is undoubtedly a diplomatic one – and we clearly need to spend more diplomatic capital than we’re already using to fix it.

But it will become more difficult if we do not put sufficient resources into her release before the next presidential election.

This case is relevant for all of us

COVID-19 also makes Kylie’s situation more urgent. My assessment is the Australian government must urgently push for Kylie’s immediate transfer out of Qarchak prison, to a safe location where her consular access and health can be protected.

There is precedent for foreign detainees to be transferred to house arrest in embassies while cases are resolved.

Beyond the harrowing personal situation, Kylie’s case is also relevant to all of us. It fits a wider pattern, where the space for academic research is being narrowed in authoritarian states. This is occurring not just in Iran but in countries such as China, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

If this research cannot be conducted, or if the Australian government fails to protect its researchers who need to do fieldwork in these countries, this allows authoritarian states to silence criticism.

And then set the narrative about their internal politics as they see fit.

Read more: Scholars’ growing insecurity puts academic freedom at risk

– ref. I kept silent to protect my colleague and friend, Kylie Moore-Gilbert. But Australia’s quiet diplomatic approach is not working – https://theconversation.com/i-kept-silent-to-protect-my-colleague-and-friend-kylie-moore-gilbert-but-australias-quiet-diplomatic-approach-is-not-working-143597