Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julie P. Smith, Honorary Associate Professor, Australian National University

Working from home during COVID-19 appeared to cost us little.

Yet employers effectively requisitioned part of those homes.

While necessary, it was far from costless to us, and our generosity shouldn’t be taken for granted.

Bureau of Statistics figures show that during April and May about half the workforce worked from home.

Working at home has been far from costless

Preliminary results from a survey of more than 2,000 households suggest paid workers put in about as many paid hours per day as before (half to one hour less) but that unpaid work skyrocketed, by an extra five hours per day for women, and an extra two and a half hours for men.

Much of the increase was in childcare. Three in four Australians who live with children kept them home.

Read more: Working from home: what are your employer’s responsibilities, and what are yours?

Some of it was in extra cleaning and washing, costs that for the moment (along with, for some workplaces, rent) many employers no longer needed to bear.

Few of us working from home will bother to bill our employers for the extra heating, office furniture, office consumables, home phone and internet use, toilet paper and coffee we’ve had to fork out for.

The Tax Office has indicated it will disallow deductions for tea, coffee and toilet paper saying, “just because you have to provide those things for yourself doesn’t make them deductible”.

Akin to the requisitioning of assets permitted by the state in emergencies, employers have in effect requisitioned parts of our homes – rent free and without paying utility costs.

Read more: Forget work-life balance – it’s all about integration in the age of COVID-19

With more people using each home, and more meals cooked and eaten at home, time in the kitchen has soared. As supermarket shopping has become less appealing, consumer durables such as bread-makers and freezers have been brought in. Backyard vegetable gardens and chicken runs have popped up.

Most of the extra work has fallen to women. Surveys often understate it by asking only about the “primary” activity in each quarter hour block rather than secondary activities (which often include childcare) undertaken at the same time. Multitasking intensifies work.

How do we make it count?

In an explosive book released more than 30 years ago entitled Counting for Nothing, New Zealand politician and economist Marilyn Waring described the dominant method of accounting for work as “applied patriarchy”.

The tool is gross domestic product (GDP), a measure that mostly only takes account of work that is paid.

The point was that unpaid household work and care counted for nothing.

Since then, time use surveys have found that non-market household production is very large – in Australia, equivalent to an extra half of GDP.

This matters, because its exclusion allows GDP to give us a distorted idea of progress.

In each normal year the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development forecasts growth in developed nations of between 2% and 4%.

That’s growth in gross domestic product. OECD calculations released in 2018 suggest that as much as a third of that growth – 0.84 to 1.79 percentage points – is an artefact, created by the shift from what had been unpaid household work and childcare into to paid household work and childcare.

That is, the official figures have presented a mirage. Parents have replaced unpaid childcare – which is not counted in GDP – with paid childcare, which is counted.

Read more: The National Breastfeeding Strategy is a start, but if we really valued breast milk we’d put it in the GDP

The switch has been recorded as “growth”, but it hasn’t been growth in work done or services provided. It is better described as accounting rather than economic growth.

If the accounting was done properly – if countries such Australia properly counted the value of unpaid household and services – it would show much lower growth and more frequent recessions.

And if our environment and resources (another omission except when they are exploited) had been properly accounted for, GDP growth would be lower again.

The household services artefact has been reversed during the COVID-19 lockdown. Many of us have been doing as much or more than we did, but less of it has been counted.

As it happens, the value of services provided by the home itself are included in GDP, through rent for renters and “imputed rent” for home owners. Home-grown produce is included as well, but unpaid human-provided services are not.

It’s as if it didn’t happen

The weak March quarter GDP result strengthened calls for extra spending on infrastructure – things such as mines, pipelines and fast trains to airports.

Days later the prime minister announced that childcare would no longer be free and JobKeeper for childcare workers would be replaced by a less generous subsidy.

It’s not what might have been expected after a historic opportunity to rethink productivity and wellbeing. Putting money into the care sector creates twice as many jobs per dollar as putting it into construction. A higher proportion of investment in the care sector also flows to women, whose paid work has been disproportionately hit by the shutdown.

Read more: She won’t be right, mate: how the government shaped a blokey lockdown followed by a blokey recovery

Things that would help include increased worker protection against white collar sweatshops), expanded and reconfigured tax deductions for working from home, a paid allowance for home schooling costs during the shutdown and a shorter working week to rebalance roles at home.

Behind everything should lie proper accounting for care work. Without it we are likely to continue to rely on the generosity of unpaid working women, acting as if it is free.

– ref. About that spare room: employers requisitioned our homes and our time – https://theconversation.com/about-that-spare-room-employers-requisitioned-our-homes-and-our-time-139854

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amanda Lotz, Professor of Media Studies, Queensland University of Technology

Australians have enjoyed watching Australian stories on the small screen for generations. From Number 96 to Offspring, House Husbands to Mystery Road, Australian television has reflected Australia back to Australian audiences.

As the government notes in its recent options paper, issued through the Australian Communications and Media Authority and Screen Australia: “Screen stories are uniquely powerful”.

But the future of these stories is in question.

Released at the end of March, the options paper aims to modernise how Australian content is supported. It suggests four options – no change, complete deregulation, minimal change or significant change – with responses due by June 12.

Three of these options would eliminate the local quotas that have underpinned Australian drama, documentary and children’s television production since the late 1960s.

Our research examines the role of television storytelling, especially the importance of local television. So it’s with great surprise we find ourselves advocating for the elimination of Australian content quotas on commercial free-to-air broadcasters.

Instead, we support the model that calls for the creation of a production fund – the “significant change” option – to address the challenges and opportunities currently facing Australian television.

We’re advocating for this change precisely because we think Australian television is so important. Australian drama, documentary and children’s programs, called “Australian story forms” here, deserve better support than currently offered by policies that have well and truly passed their use-by date.

How did we get here?

Much has changed over the past 20 years. Australia’s transition to digital broadcasting saw five existing free-to-air channels increase to at least 25, along with their correlated “catch-up” services such as Iview and 10Play.

Then, subscriber video-on-demand services (SVODs) like Stan and Netflix emerged.

The expansion of the Australian video ecosystem to include new digital channels, catch-up services and SVODs fragmented audiences, and caused advertiser funded Seven, Nine and Ten to come under significant financial pressure.

Read more: Save our screens: 3 things government must do now to keep Australian content alive

Local content quotas

When Australian content quotas were introduced in the late 1960s they applied to the three commercial channels.

These quotas dictated schedules must contain minimum levels of local content, such as documentary and drama, including children’s. At the time, the commercial networks relied on lower-cost imported programs, particularly for children, rather than homegrown drama.

When Foxtel launched in 1995, it too had local obligations, set at 10% of programming costs. SVODs do not broadcast on the public spectrum – the infrastructure that allows us to send wireless signals – and they are not subject to local content quotas. More than 14.5 million Australians pay to access these SVOD services.

Read more: Crunching the numbers on streaming services’ local content: static growth, but more original productions

The policy paradox

Commercial broadcasters now focus on programming that encourages live viewing – news, sport and reality competitions – because viewers reliably turn up when they air.

All broadcasters have slowed production of Australian story forms, while Seven announced in February it would stop production of children’s content entirely.

Seven’s actions would have put them in breach of local content rules, but the quotas were suspended completely in April in response to COVID-19.

Commercial broadcasters are poorly suited to provide Australian story forms because their business model requires attracting large audiences. But these broadcasters still use the public spectrum and remain protected from competition from additional broadcasters. These advantages must come with obligations.

Australian story forms work very well for television services with different business models, including SVODs and public service broadcasters. Their business models reward the creation of distinctive programs. Multinational SVODs – that serve subscribers in scores of countries – spend only small amounts on Australian content, however. Sustained budget cuts to the ABC and SBS mean they are also forced to commission fewer and shorter series.

Conditions have changed too much for local quotas to be effective. We believe the simplest and most equitable way of solving this paradox is through creating an Australian Production Fund and eliminating quotas.

Seven, Nine and Ten would have to contribute to this fund in return for the benefits they enjoy. Any television services commissioning Australian stories could apply for funding.

This system will simplify the safeguarding of Australian stories.

No clear sides

The commercial broadcasters’ future looks uncertain. Their failure to innovate and add value in the face of increasing audience choices has compounded the challenges of an evolving marketplace.

The requirement to contribute to an Australian Production Fund provides flexibility while maintaining commercial broadcasters’ local content obligations.

A carefully developed Australian Production Fund is our best means of safeguarding Australian stories, for audiences of all ages.

– ref. TV has changed, so must the way we support local content – https://theconversation.com/tv-has-changed-so-must-the-way-we-support-local-content-139674

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bronwyn Carlson, Professor, Indigenous Studies, Macquarie University

Three in every four Australians hold a negative view about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, according to stark new research this week.

As ANU researcher Siddharth Shirodkar explained, these views can lead to widespread racism.

This study presents stark evidence of the solid invisible barrier that Indigenous people face in society. But the data is actually not about Indigenous Australians, it’s about the rest of us.

Yet while many Australians hold such negative views, many know very little about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, histories and cultures.

Don’t speak over us, or for us

For a long time, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been calling for non-Indigenous people to listen to what we are saying and not speak over us, or for us. One great way to do that is via Twitter.

There are growing networks of Indigenous people online who are exerting significant influence on society here in Australia and worldwide.

This was made evident in the recent Black Lives Matter protests across Australia, where Indigenous people used social media to bypass traditional news organisations, demanding to be heard.

Read more: Despite 432 Indigenous deaths in custody since 1991, no one has ever been convicted. Racist silence and complicity are to blame

But more work must be done.

As activist Lynda-June Coe wrote this week

the energy and power of huge crowds marching the streets … must be maintained if we are to impact societal change through an attitudinal shift.

Support Indigenous people by retweeting, listening

Social media has the potential to amplify Indigenous voices and provide many sources of information for non-Indigenous people to learn more about Indigenous people, histories and cultures.

Part of this work is for non-Indigenous people to listen to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and support them by retweeting their posts and educating themselves on the issues.

Twitter in particular can be used as a forum for inquiry, curiosity, and political teaching and learning.

IndigenousX @IndigenousX

One example of this is IndigenousX, which provides a space to amplify diverse Indigenous voices. It was created in 2012 by Gamilaroi man, Luke Pearson, and features a rotating series of hosts.

Lynda-June Coe is the current host of IndigenousX. She is a Wiradjuri and Badu Island woman, PhD candidate, cultural educator and activist. She is one of the many young, powerful Aboriginal women activists demanding justice and rights for Aboriginal peoples.

She also has a personal handle at @LyndaJune1.

Below are other people and organisations worth following. Of course, there are many more you should follow than are listed in this article.

Read more: 12 deadly Indigenous Australian social media users to follow

Dr Debbie Bargallie @debbiebargallie

Griffith University senior research fellow Dr Debbie Bargallie is the 2019 recipient of the prestigious WEH Stanner Award. This is for the best academic thesis written by an Indigenous person.

Her research on racism in the Australian public service has just been published in a book. She is one of only a few Indigenous race scholars in Australia.

Nessa Turnbull-Roberts @TurnbullVanessa

Nessa is a Bundjalung writer and activist and winner of the Australian Human Rights Commission’s 2019 Young People’s Human Rights Medal. She is a law and social work student, who has dedicated her life to fighting against the injustices that disproportionately affect Indigenous peoples.

Hayden Moon @hayden_seek94

Hayden is a Wiradjuri Brotherboy and activist, who advocates for Indigenous LBGTQI+ peoples and those with disabilities. They promoted online access so people with disabilities could participate in last week’s rallies.

Aboriginal Health in Aboriginal Hands @NACCHOAustralia

The National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation is Australia’s peak body for Aboriginal health. They use social media to be in touch with Indigenous people across Australia and provide up-to-date health information and news of importance to us, including safe practices when joining protests marches during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care @SNAICC

The Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care (SNAICC) is the national peak body representing the interests of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families. SNAICC is a non‐government, not for profit organisation, governed by a national executive of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, drawn from members in the early childhood education and family support sectors.

Celeste Liddle @Utopiana

Celeste is a Arrernte woman, feminist, union organiser and writer. She has a column in Eureka Street.

Celeste has contributed to a number of anthologies of note, including Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia and Mothers and Others.

Amy McQuire @amymcquire

Amy is a Darumbal and South Sea Islander woman from Rockhampton. She is a PhD candidate at Queensland University and journalist. She has 13 years experience in the Indigenous media sector and was a reporter for Buzzfeed. She has also written for The Saturday Paper, The Guardian and The New York Times.

Amy is also the co-host of an investigative podcast called Curtain – centred around the wrongful conviction of an Aboriginal man.

Dr Sandy O’Sullivan @sandyosullivan

Dr Sandy O’Sullivan is a Wiradjuri academic. They are an associate professor in creative industries at the University of Southern Queensland. Sandy’s research focus is on empowering and engaging national and international First Nations’ Communities. And includes queer studies, art and music.

– ref. Ten Twitter accounts you should be following if you want to listen to Indigenous Australians and learn – https://theconversation.com/ten-twitter-accounts-you-should-be-following-if-you-want-to-listen-to-indigenous-australians-and-learn-140353

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Abdel K. Halabi, Senior Lecturer in Accounting , Federation University Australia

This week the deputy premier of New South Wales, home to most teams in Australia’s National Rugby League, suggested getting football fans back in the stands might be an issue of fundamental rights.

If 20,000 people could rally in support of Black Lives Matter in central Sydney, John Barilaro reportedly said, the NRL could handle similar in a stadium:

So as far as I’m concerned the evidence is clear that we can open up these restrictions.

This narrative should not obscure the more obvious story here: of elite sport as entertainment business.

The accounts of the National Rugby League and the bigger Australian Football League are representative of professional sports leagues around the world. Most of the riches now rest with on the audience watching at home. They don’t need fans in the stands for ticket sales. They do need them to make their sports great television.

In the case of the NRL, game receipts accounted for less than 10% of its revenue in 2019. The AFL, with crowd sizes slightly more than double the NRL, may make 15% – not much more in the greater scheme of things.

For both leagues more than 70% of revenue flows from broadcast rights and corporate sponsors.

The business model is simple: attract a broadcast audience, sell that audience to advertisers. So the critical metric is viewing numbers.

But what viewers want is excitement and a sense of occasion. These are hard to evoke without a crowd.

Read more: Why does crowd noise matter?

Empty experiences

The AFL and NRL both played rounds in front of empty stands prior to suspending their seasons in late March. The unaugmented viewing experience was deemed unsatisfactory, as Nine’s NRL head, Simon Fordham, explained:

The players are out there giving 110%. The commentators are reacting to what they are seeing and also delivering emotional, powerful calls. But the crowd is there just to mesh those two things together.

Both Nine and Fox Sport added canned crowd noises to NRL games when the season resumed a fortnight ago. Viewer reactions were mixed.

The first match of the round, a Thursday night clash between the Parramatta Eels and Brisbane Broncos, was the most watched regular season NRL game since 2014. Channel Nine scored more than 951,000 viewers, and Fox Sports 355,000.

A week later, however, Brisbane’s match against the Sydney Roosters scored Channel Nine just 619,000 viewers, and Fox Sports 216,000.

The AFL has agreed to its broadcast partners, Channel Seven and Foxtel, also using canned crowd noises. With the AFL season resuming tonight, we’ll get to judge its success.

Direct and indirect values

The NRL’s annual report shows game receipts were less than 10% of its 2019 revenue of almost A$556 million. Broadcast revenue – from Channel Nine and Fox Sports – was about A$324 million, more than 60%. “Sponsorships and wagering” (revenue from poker machines in league clubs) made another 16%.

The AFL’s annual report does not state game receipt revenue. This is rolled into a wider figure for “commercial operations”, which includes sponsorship and wagering.

But the AFL report does detail crowd numbers. We can use those to make a ballpark estimate of game revenue based on what we know about the NRL’s receipts and crowd sizes.

An average of 35,105 people attended the 198 games of the AFL’s 2019 premiership season. The NRL annual report does not specify attendance numbers, but most other sources suggest average match attendances of 15,000 to 16,000 at its 201 games in 2019.

This is an admittedly rough calculation because there are many possible variables. But assuming most things being equal, the AFL’s game receipts for more than double the NRL’s numbers would be worth about A$115 million – 14.5% of its total revenue of A$794 million.

Which is not insignificant. On the other hand, there’s more than A$500 million flowing from television audiences.

Broadcast pressure

So the number to focus on over the coming weeks to judge the health of both codes will be the average number TV viewers per game. For the NRL, that figure was 459,000 in 2019. For the AFL, it was a little more than 1 million.

Both leagues are already under pressure to renegotiate current deals with their broadcast partners, cancelling quarterly payments.

Read more: From spit to scrums. How can sports players minimise their coronavirus risk?

They’ll do what they can to make their product a ratings winner. Expect more experiments with crowd augmentation, and for a harder push to bring back real fans if those experiments fail to mesh.

– ref. Footy crowds: what the AFL and NRL need to turn sport into show business – https://theconversation.com/footy-crowds-what-the-afl-and-nrl-need-to-turn-sport-into-show-business-139471

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shamit Saggar, Professor of Public Policy and Director of the Public Policy Institute, University of Western Australia

Australia is routinely compared with other rich, developed nations. Its economy, schooling, health care, infrastructure and social values are regularly put up against those of Western Europe and North America, allowing intelligent comparisons to be drawn. Like is compared with like.

But when it comes to the ethnic composition of its population, these comparisons are distorted by history. The unspoken twist is that, until two generations ago, Australia practised a policy of racial exclusion.

The country’s nation-builders placed a straitjacket on the ethnic character of Australia’s future, reflecting the values of racial hierarchy of the post-Victorian age. This policy persisted into the 1970s and meant Australia remained, for a long time, in Asia but certainly not of Asia.

As a new publication, Re-Imagining Australia: Migration, Culture, Diversity from the UWA Public Policy Institute, argues, it is possible to see the results of this social experiment in 2020.

Very few older Australians beyond their 50s are of non-European descent, and this demographic feature is now hard-baked into politics and policy debates.

White Australians over 50 have also grown up as the first generation that has had to share legal rights and citizenship with Indigenous Australians. They have done so starting from a low base, but progress has been glacial.

Read more: Explainer: what is systemic racism and institutional racism?

Policies geared toward older, white Australians

These demographic changes also play a role in how evidence-based policies are formulated. For example, each new slew of proposals concerning health and social care, taxation and property ownership affects white Australians very differently from ethnic minorities.

This is because the former are generally older, better off and homeowners, so they are more reliant on (and exposed to changes in) these services and policies.

Equally, younger Australians are considerably more likely to be of Asian, African, Middle Eastern or Pacific Islander heritage, and are disproportionately affected by policy proposals in tertiary education, housing affordability and visa restrictions.

Read more: ‘Death by a thousand cuts’: women of colour in science face a subtly hostile work environment

By not taking these structural variances into account, there can be major gaps in policy-making.

For instance, during the COVID-19 crisis, the government’s JobKeeper wage-subsidy program specifically excluded temporary skilled visa holders – substantial numbers of whom are from Asia (India, in particular). The uneven effects of the policy are not hard to see.

Dealing with the past

For much of the post-war period, Australia’s leaders anguished over the need to populate or perish. But it remained a white past and a white future. Australia’s major institutions, including politics, higher education, media, the arts and the public service, still fail to reflect the massive demographic shift in recent years.

As Paul Maginn, a senior lecturer in urban planning at UWA, observes in our report:

Not all migrant/minority communities enjoy the same level of respect, equality, freedom and opportunity as the wider white Australian population. If this were the case, then a truly successful multicultural nation would look very different.

The hangover is reflected in many things, not least the majority white population’s sense of attachment to national cultural norms, symbols and practices.

As Farida Fozdar, associate sociology professor at UWA and another author of our report, argues, Australia’s sense of national community has been founded on a solidarity that shuns diversity. To be socially cohesive is to imply a degree of homogeneity, and that constrains the task of re-imagining Australia.

Read more: Yes, it is time to rethink our immigration intake – to put more focus on families

Dealing with the past often sparks controversy, from the removal of statues such as Cecil Rhodes in Oxford and Robert E. Lee in Virginia to the calls for state reparations for historic crimes, such as the slave trade.

It is nothing less than embarrassing that in modern-day Australia, almost all senior roles in government or business are held by middle-aged white men.

One way of viewing this is they have grown up and prospered at a time when Australia was ethnically homogeneous – they grew to trust and work collaboratively with those “just like us”. Rather like fish swimming in water, it is hard to notice that which is ubiquitous.

A less sympathetic view is they have never had to compete in a wider pool, and continue to behave rationally to restrict competition in order to maintain their privilege. Many mediocre, white men have been excused from competing as a result.

Diversity in leadership matters

Gross disparities in the complexion of those at the top matter for two reasons. One is the manifest unfairness in opportunities for ethnic minorities in education, employment, health care and housing.

The other reason is the creation of a reputational stain on those organisations that are slow to reform. Second-generation migrants may begin to question the “fair-go” mantra because they sense they are being overlooked, their patience stretched by standing politely behind those they can comfortably outperform.

The picture is stark in Australia’s politics. As Juliet Pietsch, political science professor at Griffith University, notes in our report, only nine of 227 (or 4%) of federal MPs have non-European heritage.

Under-representation extends to senior leadership levels. Not a single Australian federal minister is from an Asian-Australian background. The only bright spot to this lack of Asian-Australians in senior roles is Penny Wong, the shadow foreign minister.

As UWA political science professor Ben Reilly writes, Australia lags well behind comparable countries, such as Canada and the UK, on this measure.

In the UK, four Asians have senior Cabinet roles and a tenth of the lower house is made up of ethnic minorities, while in Canada, over 15% of MPs and six out of 37 Cabinet members are minorities.

Read more: Australia should look overseas for ideas to increase its number of women MPs

How should governments address these issues? The conventional view has erred toward caution, noting the majority white electorate is easily antagonised by policies and gestures that appear to favour ethnic minorities in areas such as education, jobs and housing.

This outlook has dominated Australian politics and underscores the recent warning from Sam Roggeveen of the Lowy Institute about the potential for immigration to polarise Australian public opinion and poison the country’s politics.

But on the other side, Australia’s reputation for fairness will be eroded in the eyes of its future generations. Young, educated, liberal, urban, white Australians may also object to discriminatory practices going unchecked and call for tougher actions by government.

The true extent of Australia’s “fair-go” mantra will not depend so much on the transmission of older values and symbols to newer, more diverse Australians.

Rather, it depends fundamentally on their experiences in education and employment being free of white privilege. This will determine whether they truly believe there is a level playing field.

– ref. Australia needs to confront its history of white privilege to provide a level playing field for all – https://theconversation.com/australia-needs-to-confront-its-history-of-white-privilege-to-provide-a-level-playing-field-for-all-139755

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Sly, Director, Children’s Health and Environment Program and World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Children’s Health and Environment, The University of Queensland

Scientists around the world are continuing to test countless vaccines and drugs in the hope of finding effective ways to prevent and treat COVID-19.

Among the trials happening in Australia is one my team is about to begin, looking at something called OM85.

OM85 is not a conventional drug, but a combination of molecules extracted from the walls of bacteria that commonly cause respiratory infections.

It’s not available in Australia, but has been used widely in Europe and South America for 40-50 years, commonly under the brand name Broncho-Vaxom.

We’re now looking at its potential to prevent respiratory infections, including COVID-19. But how does it work?

Read more: Where are we at with developing a vaccine for coronavirus?

First, a bit of background

Some of our organs, including the skin, airways and lungs, and gastrointestinal tract, are effectively “open” to the outside world. The cells that line these organs, called mucosal linings, host trillions of bacteria.

These bacteria, known as our “microbiota”, play essential roles in keeping us healthy. This is especially important in the gastrointestinal tract, where the microbiota “train” the immune system.

One of the ways they do this is by providing a continuous stream of signals that move through mucosal linings into the tissues below, where immune cells are found. Specialised immune cells responsible for detecting the invasion of infectious pathogens recognise and respond to these signals.

We now recognise these signals from the microbiota operate as “immune training” agents, helping to keep the front-line defences of the immune system in a state of high alert.

OM85 is an immune stimulant

OM85 appears to enhance some important aspects of this natural “immune training” process. One way it does this is by stimulating the maturation of regulatory T-cells (called Tregs) in the lymph glands in the upper intestine.

Once they have fully matured, these Tregs can migrate to other mucosal surfaces in the body to bolster local anti-inflammatory defences. This process is especially important in the lungs and airways to prevent respiratory infections.

Read more: Explainer: what is the gut microbiota and how does it affect mind and body?

OM85 signals also leak into our circulation. There they are recognised by cells in the bone marrow, which control the production of other immune cell types.

This results in increased immune cells – both in number and function – that travel to front-line mucosal surfaces, including the airways, to further bolster our immune defences.

We strongly suspect OM85 also influences the makeup of the gastrointestinal microbiome itself, although we know very little about how this happens. This in turn helps to promote the survival of bacterial strains that stimulate the immune system.

What the evidence tells us

OM85 is a preventative, given to those at risk of more severe consequences from respiratory infections, rather than as a treatment of current infections.

Studies have shown OM85 reduces the risk of wheeze linked to infection in infants and schoolchildren.

It also reduces the incidence of severe flare-ups of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in adults.

A review of 35 placebo-controlled studies involving 4,060 children concluded that immune stimulants, including OM85, reduced respiratory infections by an average of 40% in susceptible children.

Read more: A strong immune system helps ward off colds and flus, but it’s not the only factor

OM85 has a good safety profile. A small proportion of people may experience some gastro-intestinal upset, but in clinical trials, such as one we conducted in infants, side effects are rarely seen.

So why don’t we use it more widely?

No application has been made to bring OM85 to Australia. We are a small market not necessarily attractive to drug manufacturers.

In countries where OM85 is available, doctors can prescribe it but people can also buy it over the counter, in the same way they might a complementary medicine or health food supplement.

OM85 has attracted plenty of scepticism in its time, with some people regarding it as “snake oil”.

Scientists are sceptical when we don’t understand why something works, or at least where we don’t have a plausible explanation for how it works. The idea something swallowed but not absorbed could protect the lungs sounds fanciful, especially without solid explanations.

But as we start to understand more about the mechanisms that may explain how OM85 works in the body, and with the accumulating clinical evidence, we have good reason to be open to and further explore its potential.

What we’ll do in the trial

Health-care workers are susceptible to severe respiratory respiratory infections associated with other viruses, including influenza, that can cause them to miss work.

We plan to give 1,000 health-care workers OM85, half immediately and half delayed by three months.

To understand how OM85 works we will collect blood samples and test immune responses.

We will determine which virus caused the respiratory illnesses if illness occurs (COVID-19 or other), whether the immune response is different depending on the virus, and whether OM85 is equally effective against all respiratory viruses encountered.

The trial is due to start this month and first results should be available by November.

Read more: The fascinating history of clinical trials

– ref. OM85: could bacteria in a capsule protect us from coronavirus and other respiratory infections? – https://theconversation.com/om85-could-bacteria-in-a-capsule-protect-us-from-coronavirus-and-other-respiratory-infections-140064

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sharon Smart, Lecturer, Researcher & Course Coordinator (Master of Speech Pathology), School of Occupational Therapy, Social Work and Speech Pathology, Curtin University

Congratulations on your new bundle of joy! Is it joyful? What if your baby cries, fusses and isn’t feeding well? Perhaps you’ve tried breast and bottle-feeding without success.

After talking to family, friends and searching social media, someone mentions your baby may have a tongue-tie. Could this be the answer?

Read more: Essays on health: Australia is failing new parents with conflicting advice – it’s urgent we get it right

What is tongue-tie?

Tongue-tie (or ankyloglossia) is when the tissue under the tongue is short, thick or tight. This can restrict how the tongue moves.

Babies, children and adults can have tongue-tie, with 4-10% of the population affected. This means 12,000-32,000 Australian children are born with a tongue-tie each year.

We don’t know the precise cause of tongue-tie. But it can run in some families and occurs more in males than females.

How is it diagnosed?

The diagnosis includes a health professional looking at the tongue’s structure and appearance, and thoroughly testing how the tongue moves and works (known as a “functional assessment”).

Your child health nurse or lactation consultant may suspect your baby has tongue-tie. For older children or adults, a speech pathologist may notice tongue restriction affecting eating, drinking and speech.

Will it affect my baby’s feeding or speech?

Impact on breastfeeding

Tongue-tie can make it hard for babies to breastfeed. In some babies, it can cause problems latching to the breast, pain for the mother, and more frequent feeds due to inadequate intake.

The Australian Breastfeeding Association outlines the following signs that may relate to tongue-tie:

• baby is not gaining enough weight
• breastfeeding is painful
• the nipple is damaged or flattened after breastfeeding.

Tongue-tie in older children and adults can also restrict tongue movements, causing difficulties eating.

Impact on speech

Occasionally tongue-tie causes significant restriction where a child cannot produce sounds correctly. This is particularly the case with sounds that require the tongue to elevate, such as “t”, “s” and “r”.

Read more: Common myths about speech problems in children

How is it treated?

If a tongue-tie is not causing problems with breastfeeding, eating, drinking or speech production, then treatment is not recommended. But when treatment is warranted, there are non-surgical and surgical approaches.

Non-surgical approaches

Non-surgical management might include seeing a lactation consultant who can provide breastfeeding advice, preferably one certified as an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant.

A speech pathologist can assess and treat your baby or child’s feeding, eating, drinking and speech. If non-surgical methods don’t work or are not suitable, surgery may be warranted.

Surgery

Surgical options include snipping the tissue under the tongue with scissors or a scalpel, laser frenotomy (dividing the tissue under the tongue, called the frenum), frenuloplasty (dividing the frenum and using stitches), and frenectomy (removal of the frenum). A paediatrician, ear, nose and throat surgeon, dentist or surgeon can perform the surgery on infants, children or adults.

Some experts are concerned about the large increase in the number of children surgically treated for tongue-tie globally. In Australia, surgery rates for frenotomy increased by 420% from 2006 to 2016.

This prompted a group of health professionals from a number of disciplines to recently warn against unnecessary surgery for tongue-tie, before a comprehensive assessment of tongue structure and function.

Does surgery work? Are there risks?

A small study shows parents of preschool children reported improvements in their child’s speech after surgery.

A larger study of children aged two to four found no difference between the speech or tongue movement of tongue-tied children who had surgery as an infant and those who didn’t.

Therefore, surgery is not recommended for babies with tongue-tie during infancy, with the sole aim of improving speech later in life.

A large study of 215 babies under three months old reported improvements in breastfeeding following surgery. In a more recent review, mothers reported improvements in breastfeeding and nipple pain.

The Australian Breastfeeding Association recommends surgery to release a tight frenum for babies with a tongue-tie having difficulties breastfeeding.

Read more: Deep cuts under babies’ tongues are unlikely to solve breastfeeding problems

As with any surgical procedure, there are potential risks. Babies can experience pain, bleeding, breathing problems, weight loss and poor feeding after minor surgery for tongue-tie.

Your dentist or surgeon will be able to discuss these potential complications, as they apply to your particular situation.

Where to go for help?

It can be a challenging for parents to know which health professional to see with any concerns about your child’s breastfeeding, eating, drinking or speech. Different professions differ in how they assess and manage tongue-tie.

A lactation consultant, child health nurse, or speech pathologist are good places to start to assess how the tongue looks and works during feeding and talking.

The Australian Dental Association recommends a multidisciplinary approach, including lactation consultants, speech pathologists, paediatricians, speech pathologists, and dentists or surgeons.

Whichever health professional you see, they will still need to properly assess how the tongue works to guide any future treatment.

For more information about tongue-tie, see websites from the Australian Breastfeeding Association, Australian Dental Association and Speech Pathology Australia.

– ref. My baby has ‘tongue-tie’. Should I be worried? – https://theconversation.com/my-baby-has-tongue-tie-should-i-be-worried-139561

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Caroline Spry, Honorary Associate, PhD, La Trobe University

Trees marked by Aboriginal cultural practices are a distinctive part of the Australian landscape. A recent discovery on Wiradjuri country in New South Wales shows some of these “culturally modified trees” may be much younger than anybody thought.

What are culturally modified trees?

Aboriginal people have long used bark, wood and trees for practical and symbolic purposes. These include making canoes, containers, shields and wooden implements, accessing food resources, and marking ceremonial and burial locations.

Many of these trees contain scars and carvings from these activities, although over time the marks are often enveloped by new growth. Aboriginal culturally modified trees can be found across Australia – you may have walked past one on your way to the footy in Melbourne, on a stroll near Sydney, or somewhere else, without even realising it.

However, their numbers are dwindling as a result of development pressures, bushfires and natural decay.

An unprecedented discovery

One such tree with unique characteristics was recently found on Wiradjuri Country in NSW. The tree has a large scar, and an Aboriginal stone tool is still lodged in the scar regrowth.

Working with the Orange Local Aboriginal Land Council, we carried out an archaeological study of the tree. It represents an unprecedented find in Australia – and even worldwide.

We know that Aboriginal people used a range of stone tools to remove bark and wood from trees. However, no examples of these tools have ever been found lodged in a tree.

We used a range of scientific techniques, including 3D modelling, microscopic analysis and radiocarbon dating, to learn more about the origins of the scar and stone tool. We were particularly interested in how the scar was created, what the stone tool was used for, and when it became lodged in the tree.

Oral history is another key source of information about Australia’s Aboriginal past. However, in this instance, the Orange Aboriginal community does not have any recollections about the tree.

Read more: Ancient Aboriginal stories preserve history of a rise in sea level

Studying the scar

We created three separate 3D models of the tree, the scar and the stone tool, which show the features of this site.

The scar bears some resemblance to natural scars that can result from fire damage and tree stress. However, the size and location of the scar is also consistent with the way Aboriginal people removed bark slabs to construct shelters.

The stone tool itself provides more clues. The residues and wear patterns we identified on the edges of the stone tool indicate it was made using Aboriginal stone-knapping techniques, and then used in a scraping motion or hammered into the tree, perhaps with a wooden mallet.

Some of the damage we observed on the stone tool may also be from attempts to wedge out bark, or to remove the tool itself from the tree. It is also possible someone used the stone tool to make a visible mark or sign on the tree.

Younger than expected

We used radiocarbon dating to determine the age of the tree, and discovered it was relatively young. It began growing around the start of the 20th century and died about 100 years later, during the millennium drought.

The stone tool was embedded some time between 1950 and 1973 – an unexpected result for the Aboriginal community.

Some members of the Orange Aboriginal community consider the tree, and the placement of the stone tool, to be much older than the dating results indicate. For other members of the Aboriginal community, the dating results are particularly significant as they indicate Wiradjuri culture continued even during active discouragement and assimilation policies.

Historical and oral evidence suggests that Wiradjuri people were, at best, wary about open displays of culture at this time. This impacted the passing of information onto younger generations. The results of our study therefore provide a rare glimpse of cultural continuity at the time.

Although the tree is very large, and therefore appears to be very old, our results also show how rapidly eucalypts can grow. This suggests that many large eucalypts, previously estimated to be hundreds of years old, may in fact be much younger.

The mystery remains

A final mystery is why the stone tool was left in the tree. If it was used to remove bark from the tree, or to create a mark, why was it not removed?

It is unlikely such a stone tool would be left behind, as it appears relatively unused and stone sources are rare in the area. It may have been left accidentally, or because removal was not possible. Another possibility is the stone tool was deliberately embedded in the tree as a symbolic marker in the landscape.

While this aspect of the tree and stone tool may never be understood fully, the results of our study are a clear-cut reminder of the continuity and resilience of Aboriginal knowledge and culture through the 20th century and into the present.

This article was written with the help of the Orange Local Aboriginal Land Council.

– ref. How a stone wedged in a gum tree shows the resilience of Aboriginal culture in Australia – https://theconversation.com/how-a-stone-wedged-in-a-gum-tree-shows-the-resilience-of-aboriginal-culture-in-australia-139663

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Wallace, Associate Professor, 50/50 By 2030 Foundation, Faculty of Business Law & Government, University of Canberra

Prime Minister Scott Morrison earns a six-figure income and lives in high-end, non-means-tested public housing with a stay-at-home spouse who cares for the family’s two school-aged children. He will never have experienced the childcare-related anxiety most parents of school-aged children do.

Morrison’s extraordinary singling out of child care for a big punitive hit as he winds back the government’s coronavirus pandemic program suggests he wants more families to look like his. Except, that is, in relation to public housing – an area on which, along with higher education, the government pointedly refuses to spend any stimulus dollars.

If you want to understand what a government is about, look at where it puts its money rather than listening to what it says. The government’s pandemic spending decisions show it wants women back in the kitchen, weak universities and wondrous home renovations for the already well-off, rather than Australia’s threadbare public housing in better repair.

It is neither kind nor smart public policy, and may turn out to be dumb politics too. The Liberal and National parties will likely pay little political price for failing to support universities or improve social housing during the pandemic, but the government’s blunt child-care policy moves are another matter. Early polling for the July 4 Eden-Monaro byelection starts on Monday, giving these southern New South Wales voters a chance to express an early opinion of Morrison’s starkly masculinist, welfare-for-the-well-off turn this week.

Making child care free at the pandemic’s outset gave stretched and stressed families several weeks’ reprieve from that most elemental anxiety: being able to undertake paid work consistent with their children being secure.

Read more: Forget flowers and chocolates for Mother’s Day: keep free childcare going instead

The deep relief many parents experienced was a taste of a different possible world, one not saturated with the fear of being unable to properly fulfil either their responsibilities as workers or parents – and not driven by the finely balanced maths of whether their earnings would even cover the cost of child care necessary for them to work in the first place.

Given the gendered pattern of parenting in Australia, it is women who overwhelmingly pay the price. Women are less likely to be available for paid work, and less able to do paid work for as many hours as they would like, because of problems accessing and affording child care.

The consequences of the child-care trap compound over time into clear labour market disadvantage. Women have lower participation rates, lower earnings and a decreasing share of seats at the executive table the further up the ladder you go.

This is nowhere truer than at the top of the Morrison government. The 23-person Morrison cabinet includes six women (26%) – just enough for the prime minister to tick the “inclusion” box, but not enough for those women and their potential male allies to challenge the unrelentingly blokey agenda being rolled out.

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

Defence Minister Senator Linda Reynolds, for example, saw the light through participation in the Broderick Review into the Treatment of Women in the Australian Defence Forces. She said in February:

I saw that women could help Defence do things differently, and better. I started questioning my own leadership style. Along the way, I’d unknowingly adopted behaviours that didn’t really reflect who I was or who I wanted to be – and my voice had been stifled. Through this challenging process of self-assessment, I began to find my own voice and confidence as a female leader, which over time I found to be enormously liberating. I am a better senator and a better minister because of it.

Had someone like Reynolds wanted to lead a charge over the barricades against Morrison’s child-care hit this week, who could she have turned to in cabinet for help? Potential allies in making Morrison government policy less toxic for women are not obvious. There are so few women and they are massively outnumbered by ambitious men.

Morrison not only ending free child care but also singling out the overwhelmingly female child-care workforce for the early ending of JobKeeper payments – explicitly breaking a promise to continue JobKeeper across the workforce until September – should have women storming for preselection across Australia’s political spectrum.

This should be especially so in the Liberal and National parties where the low number of women preselected for winnable seats, even when multiple quality female candidates contest them, depresses the number of female coalition MPs. It makes bad policy like that announced by Morrison this week easier to get away with. The farcical 30-minute hairdresser carve-out at the beginning of the lockdown could only have come from a womanless kitchen cabinet. Morrison’s hit on child care and the child-care workforce escalates the dysfunction from farce to tragedy.

Read more: The Liberals have a serious women problem – and it’s time they took action to change it

Half of Australia’s voters are women. The government says it wants to encourage labour force participation in the interest of national productivity, but at every turn discourages women’s participation in the paid workforce. Child-care policy, the single biggest barrier to women’s full participation in the paid workforce, is a mess. When there’s a mess, it is usually the women who have to clean it up.

Liberal and National party women need to person up, get organised and get into parliament at the same rate as their male peers, ensure women’s proper representation in leadership positions, in cabinet, in the ministry and in the parliamentary committees where those aspiring to the ministry and cabinet build their policy and political skills.

They need to stop allowing themselves to be divided and ruled. They should speak up in unison, in public and in private, and get policies affecting women in the paid workforce back on track. Otherwise the Gilead-lite policies being propagated from that high-end, non-means-tested public housing known as The Lodge is going to go from bad to worse.

– ref. She won’t be right, mate: how the government shaped a blokey lockdown followed by a blokey recovery – https://theconversation.com/she-wont-be-right-mate-how-the-government-shaped-a-blokey-lockdown-followed-by-a-blokey-recovery-140336

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher Williams, Associate Professor, University of Newcastle and Program Manager, Hunter New England Local Health District, University of Newcastle

To the joy of many, indoor gyms are reopening across Australia as coronavirus restrictions continue to ease.

They officially reopen in New South Wales on June 13, in Tasmania two days later, and in Victoria on June 22. They are already open in the Northern Territory, Australian Capital Territory, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia.

However, before we pick up the dumbbells once again, we might need to be cautious. During the pandemic, many of us have been more sedentary and those of us working from home have missed out on incidental exercise such as walking to the train station.

When we exercise less, our physical condition declines, which may increase the risk of injury. So how can we return to the gym safely?

What is deconditioning?

Humans are bioplastic. That means we respond to what we do with our bodies. Usually, our body responds positively to exercise: we get fitter and stronger, and our mental and physical health improves. When we stop being active, our physical condition declines. This is known as “deconditioning”.

Deconditioning can happen quickly. Some studies show significant decline in muscle mass, physical function, strength, aerobic capacity and metabolic function in as little as 10 days of inactivity.

What are the risks?

While deconditioning can be rapid, reconditioning the body is slower. Upon returning to the gym we might feel like our muscles are “tighter” and we’re breathing more heavily. We may also feel that our joints are stiff, or that we reach our pain threshold well before we are used to. These are all normal signs that should improve after a few workouts or over several weeks.

Read more: Health Check: how to start exercising if you’re out of shape

But engaging in high-intensity movements or increasing loads too quickly can be a risk for injury. People might assume they can jump back into pre-pandemic exercise without considering the reduced capacity of their body.

Research has found novice exercisers and those with lower activity before starting gym-based exercise are more likely to experience injury on their return to the gym. The most common conditions reported by these people are back pain or knee pain.

Ease into it

To prevent this, the recommendation is to ease back into your exercise routine. Consider reducing your intensity or load to 70-80% of your pre-pandemic efforts for a few weeks. If you’re used to doing a 50kg bench press, consider starting at around 35kg and building gradually from there.

Make sure to use a specific warm-up for the exercise you do. For example, if you are doing calf raises, warm up by doing them without weights before progressing to using your desired load.

We also recommend you set realistic goals to allow your body to adjust and to focus on re-establishing healthy habits and routine.

As you ease back into exercise, it is wise to acknowledge everything happening in your life. Our physical responses to exercise are influenced by a range of factors. Poor sleep, stress, nutrition, alcohol intake, our history of exercise and many other factors can affect our body’s response and risk of injury.

For example, you could lower your expectations for a workout if you’ve had poor sleep recently. Fatigue can lead to poor focus and is linked with a higher risk of injury. Sleeping well is also important for recovery from fatigue caused by exercise.

Checking in with yourself, before and during your workout, allows you to recognise when you can go harder or back off. Professional athletes and coaches use this principle of “auto-regulation” by monitoring how they feel and perform on the day. They can then modify exercise loads, intensity, and the type of exercise to prevent overdoing it.

Why am I so sore?

Common aches and pains have many causes, and are not always the result of injury. Also, complete rest isn’t always the best way to manage them. This is particularly the case for common problems such as back pain.

Read more: Ouch! The drugs don’t work for back pain, but here’s what does

We often think we should lie on the couch if we have a sore back. But it is often safe and beneficial to continue some activity within your limits while your body heals. If you do feel pain throughout or after exercise, recognise in the majority of cases, your body will heal quickly with no lasting problems. It’s normal for back pain and muscle strains to take a few weeks to resolve.

However, if your pain gets increasingly worse over a few days it’s wise to get it checked out by a health professional.

Remember, the benefits of exercise far outweigh the potential risks when getting back into the gym. Your enthusiasm just needs to be tempered with a realistic view of your current condition, not the memory of your ability three months ago.

Read more: Coronavirus has boosted telehealth care in mental health, so let’s keep it up

If you are unsure how to approach returning to exercise, you can speak to your health provider. Most GPs, physiotherapists and exercise physiologists now offer telephone consultations. They can assess your individual risks and give you specific advice on the best way to get back into the gym safely and improve your fitness.

Lauren Devine contributed to this article.

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

– ref. Heading back to the gym? Here’s how to avoid injury after coronavirus isolation – https://theconversation.com/heading-back-to-the-gym-heres-how-to-avoid-injury-after-coronavirus-isolation-139975

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Abbas Mohajerani, Associate Professor, RMIT University

Every year, treated wastewater sludge called “biosolids” is recycled and spread over agricultural land. My recent research discovered this practice dumps thousands of tonnes of microplastics into farmlands around the world. In Australia, we estimate this amount as at least 1,241 tonnes per year.

Microplastics in soils can threaten land, freshwater and marine ecosystems by changing what they eat and their habitats. This causes some organisms to lose weight and have higher death rates.

But this is only the beginning of the problem. Microplastics are good at absorbing other pollutants – such as cadmium, lead and nickel – and can transfer these heavy metals to soils.

And while microplastics alone is an enormous issue, other contaminants have also been found in biosolids used for agriculture. This includes pharmaceutical chemicals, personal care products, pesticides and herbicides, surfactants (chemicals used in detergents) and flame retardants.

We must stop using biosolids for farmlands immediately, especially when alternative ways to recycle wastewater sludge already exist.

Where do the microplastics come from?

Biosolids are mainly a mix of water and organic materials.

But many household items that contain microplastics – such as lotions, soaps, facial and body washes, and toothpaste – end up in wastewater, too. Other major sources of microplastics in wastewater are synthetic fibres from clothing, plastics in the manufacturing and processing industries, and the breakdown of larger plastic debris.

Before they’re taken to farmlands, wastewater collection systems carry all, or most, of these microplastics and other chemicals from residential, commercial and industrial sources to wastewater treatment plants.

To determine the weight of microplastics in Australia and other countries, my data analysis used the average minimum and maximum numbers of microplastics particles, per kilogram of biosolids samples, found in Germany, Ireland and the USA.

Read more: We have no idea how much microplastic is in Australia’s soil (but it could be a lot)

Australia produced 371,000 tonnes of biosolids in 2019. And globally, we estimate between 50 to more than 100 million tonnes of biosolids are produced each year.

Why microplastics are harmful

Microplastics in soil can accumulate in the food web. This happens when organisms consume more microplastics than they lose. This means heavy metals attached to the microplastics in soil organisms can progress further up the food chain, increasing the risk of human exposure to toxic heavy metals.

When microplastics accumulate heavy metals, they transfer these contaminants to plants and crops, such as rice and grains, as biosolids are spread over farmland.

Read more: After a storm, microplastics in Sydney’s Cooks River increased 40 fold

Over time, microplastics break down and become even tinier, creating nanoplastics. Crops have also been shown to absorb nanoplastics and move them to different plant tissues.

Our research results also show that after the wastewater treatment process, the absorption potential of microplastics for metals increases.

The metal cadmium, for example, is particularly susceptible to microplastics in biosolids and can be transported to plant cells. Research from 2018 showed microplastics in biosolids can absorb cadmium ten times more than virgin microplastics (new microplastics that haven’t gone through wastewater treatment).

Biosolids have a cocktail of nasty chemicals

It’s not just plastic – many industrial additives and chemicals have been found in wastewater and biosolids.

This means they may accumulate in soils and affect the equilibrium of biological systems, with negative effects on plant growth. For example, researchers have found pharmaceutical chemicals in particular can reduce plant growth and inhibit root elongation.

Read more: Sustainable shopping: how to stop your bathers flooding the oceans with plastic

Other chemical contaminants – such as PFCs, PFAS and BPA – have likewise been detected in biosolids.

The effects these chemicals have on plants may lead to problems further down the food chain, such as humans and other animals inadvertently consuming pharmaceuticals and harmful chemicals.

What can we do about it?

Given the cocktail of toxic chemicals, heavy metals and microplastics, using biosolids in agricultural soils must be stopped without delay.

The good news is there’s another way we can recycle the world’s biosolids: turning them into sustainable fired-clay bricks, called “bio-bricks”.

My team’s research from last year found bio-bricks a sustainable solution for both the wastewater treatment and brick manufacturing industries.

If 7% of all fired-clay bricks were biosolids, it would redirect all biosolids produced and stockpiled worldwide annually, including the millions of tonnes that currently end up in farmland each year.

Read more: You’re eating microplastics in ways you don’t even realise

We also found they’d be more energy efficient. The properties of these bio-bricks are very similar to standard bricks, but generally requires 12.5% less energy to make.

And generally, comprehensive life-cycle assessment has shown biosolid bricks are more environmentally friendly than conventional bricks. These bricks will reduce or eliminate a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions from biosolids stockpiles and will save some virgin resources, such as clay soil and water, for the brick industry.

Now, it’s up to the agriculture, wastewater and brick industries, and governments to make this important transition.

– ref. At least 1,241 tonnes of microplastics are dumped into Aussie farmland every year from wastewater sludge – https://theconversation.com/at-least-1-241-tonnes-of-microplastics-are-dumped-into-aussie-farmland-every-year-from-wastewater-sludge-137278

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leesa Wheelahan, Professor & William G. Davis Chair in Community College Leadership, University of Toronto

This essay is based on an episode of the University of Technology Sydney podcast series “The New Social Contract”. This audio series examines how the relationship between universities, the state and the public might be reshaped as we live through this global pandemic.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison recently announced a revamp of the vocational education and training (VET) sector to focus more on skills needed for work. Providing training for people “who need to upskill or reskill” was also a recommendation of an interim Productivity Commission report released last week.

The same emphasis on skills is evident when it comes to higher education. In explaining his government’s move to embed micro-credentials in the Australian Qualifications Framework, education minister Dan Tehan predicted future growth in the sector would be “in part employer-driven and in part driven by the individual knowing and understanding what set of skills will best suit their employment opportunities”.

Read more: There may not be enough skilled workers in Australia’s pipeline for a post-COVID-19 recovery

Australians are a highly educated people, with more than one third of the population educated to a degree level or above. Yet Australia’s youth unemployment doubled to 13.8% in April, after the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Something is going wrong in the relationship between education and employment. Trying to narrowly focus education and training on equipping young people with specific skills for work isn’t going to fix it. We need to fundamentally change our approach.

Education should equip people not just with specific skills, but also with the knowledge they need to be citizens, parents, community members, and for occupations in which they can grow and develop across the course of their lives.

What are skills?

When people talk about skills they might mean different things. “Skills” can refer to specific or technical skills needed to execute tasks in particular jobs. Or it can mean more generic skills such as communication or problem solving, which everyone needs for work.

The emphasis on skills in Australia began in the late 1980s and early 1990s with a series of key reports commissioned by the Hawke and Keating Labor governments. The aim was to increase capacity and participation in VET and higher education and ensure Australian workers had both a wider range and higher level of skills.

First the focus was on “generic” and “employability” skills in vocational education and, somewhat later, “graduate attributes” in higher education such as critical thinking, effective communication and problem solving skills. More recently we have begun to hear an emphasis on 21st century skills for everyone.

An influential report by the World Economic Forum and Boston Consulting Group defines 21st century skills in three broad categories:

• foundational literacies, which include literacy and numeracy

• competencies, which include critical thinking, problem solving and collaboration

• character qualities, which include curiosity, initiative and persistence.

But people are more than an assembly of skills, and skills mean different things in different contexts.

“Problem solving”, for example, means something completely different to the childcare worker trying to deal with a room of two-year-olds having meltdowns, than it does to the oil worker trying to put out a fire on an oil rig. Each requires distinctive knowledge and expertise to deal with the problem in their own occupation.

This is why it is not possible to teach problem solving or other skills independently of occupations or the people who do them.

From employment to employability

Increasing the nation’s stock of skills, governments believe, will lead to economic efficiency and a more productive economy. If educational providers clearly specify the skill they are teaching, and if employers clearly identify which skills they want in their employees, students will be able to decide what they should learn (and pay for).

What this means is that the social contract between education and the world of work has shifted from one that emphasises employment (a pathway to a meaningful job), to one that emphasises employability (the attributes that might enable a person to find and keep a job).

The consequence is that it is now up to individuals to prepare themselves for something called “the job market”.

Read more: Universities have gone from being a place of privilege to a competitive market. What will they be after coronavirus?

Students entering university are encouraged to “invest” in themselves by first anticipating, and then acquiring, the skills and qualities future employers might want. They are encouraged to understand themselves in a culture of continual calculation and risk management.

As the economy changes and work becomes more uncertain, the risks of someone making a bad decision increase and employers’ demands for skills become more narrowly focused.

That’s why it is not surprising that, as the queues at CentreLink have grown longer, Dan Tehan has encouraged more Australians to invest in short courses to reskill themselves.

Occupations instead of skills

But skills are not the only way to think about the relationship between education and employment.

A whole set of preconditions enable a person to be a good worker. These extend beyond that person’s ability to execute a task and include the broad range of factors that make it possible for them to feel respected, connected and that the work they do is meaningful.

Subscribe to the New Social Contract podcast on your favourite podcast app: Apple Podcast, Spotify, Stitcher

People need to live in safe, inclusive communities and they need to be able to have a say in the kind of society we share. People, after all, are more than job seekers.

People study and go to work so they can sustain themselves and their families and because they find these activities meaningful. They do not study and go to work because it contributes to the creation of markets. This may be the outcome of their activity, but for most people it is not the purpose of their lives.

An education system focused on skills misses this bigger picture, in which the whole person is developed for an occupation, which is part of a broader network of occupations in society.

Occupations are composed of many specific jobs. They are underpinned by both theoretical and practical knowledge. Occupations have histories, face ethical dilemmas and are part of a complex web of other occupations that work with each other.

Read more: Students striking for climate action are showing the exact skills employers look for

Electricians, for example, frequently work with engineers. And social workers often work alongside health workers. Research shows people are more likely to move within occupations or to other occupations where they require similar knowledge, skills and attributes, than they are to move to entirely new fields of work.

We need to think more broadly about occupations, and what it means to prepare people to work in them. Rather than focusing on skills, government policies on education and training might focus on supporting occupational pathways (for example, from aged care worker to nurse).

They might ensure graduates can go to good quality jobs with employers who will support their continuing professional development.

Training for work that anchors communities in transition

Preparation for the workforce has long been crucial to the relationship universities have with governments on the one hand, and different elements of society on the other.

It will become all the more important as our economies and societies are transformed, not just by new technology, but also by the changes that will come under the pressures of climate change.

Read more: Climate change is the most important mission for universities of the 21st century

We now need an education system that will anchor communities in transition. Adaptable, qualified graduates who have deep knowledge of their field, who can see a pathway to their future and who feel connected to, and respected in, the society they inhabit, will be able to respond to these challenges more effectively than those forced to continually second guess an uncertain job market.

The next article linked to The New Social Contract podcast will look at universities and the communities they serve.

Universities and the nation’s workforce was made by Impact Studios at the University of Technology, Sydney – an audio production house combining academic research and audio storytelling.

– ref. University students aren’t cogs in a market. They need more than a narrow focus on ‘skills’ – https://theconversation.com/university-students-arent-cogs-in-a-market-they-need-more-than-a-narrow-focus-on-skills-140058

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Dawson, Professor and Chair of Anthropology, University of Melbourne

Motorists and cyclists are akin to ethnic groups, our research shows. This means we might want to look to multiculturalism in managing relations on the roads.

As we exit lockdown, car and bicycle use will increase greatly. Commuters may be swapping one risk for another – an increased risk of traffic accidents and congestion for the risk of coronavirus infection on public transport. Cities overseas are increasingly turning to segregated car and bicycle lanes as a solution.

Read more: Coronavirus recovery: public transport is key to avoid repeating old and unsustainable mistakes

Segregation isn’t a panacea

However, segregation can be difficult to implement. Its construction may be costly and increase traffic congestion.

In addition, when many motorists incorrectly view car licensing as the main means of financing roads, it can be a politically risky project. Simply, there are many more motorist than cyclist voters.

Claims that segregation is a panacea are debatable anyway. Vehicle segregation in Australia dates to the 19th century. Its purpose then was to designate roads as being mainly for “car-riages”, to the exclusion of activities such as walking and trading. In turn, cars came to be viewed as the “natural” vehicles of the road.

This engendered a sense of road entitlement and aggressive driving. So segregation, the very thing designed to protect cyclists from motorists, lies at the root of why some motorists are a danger in the first place.

Research also suggests motorists’ conduct towards cyclists becomes less responsible in mixed traffic settings as segregation increases elsewhere. Basically, danger is displaced to the suburbs.

Why is aggression on roads so common?

Given this, segregation must surely be complemented by promoting safety in mixed traffic settings too. This requires an understanding of behaviour on the roads and how to promote good behaviour.

It is not enough to put motorists’ aggression towards cyclists down to “road rage”. Aggression on the roads is more common in some places than others, in the Antipodes more than in the UK for example.

We would not conceive of aggression in other contexts, such as ethnic conflict, as being the result of a universally aberrant state of mind. We would take social and cultural circumstances into account. So why do otherwise in the case of roads?

Read more: Rising cyclist death toll is mainly due to drivers, so change the road laws and culture

What does this have to do with ethnic conflict?

The ethnic conflict analogy is not coincidental. Ethnicity is a useful point of reference for thinking about the identities and relations of drivers and cyclists.

Much like disability and LGBTQI activists, a growing body of cycling activists see cyclists as having characteristics like those of an ethnic minority. In these terms, one could argue segregated car and bicycle lanes perpetuate a form of historical domination: driving is the equivalent of “whiteness” and segregation a form of infrastructural “apartheid”.

However, we do not want to take the analogy that far. Cyclists do not meet cultural criteria of minority status. And so, in times when ethnic minority status is an increasingly influential advocacy discourse, the cyclist-equals-oppressed ethnic-group equation can be exposed as purely tactical.

What we do observe, however, is that identity formation among motorists and cyclists mirrors that of ethnic group formation. Our research analyses what several hundred respondents had to say in online public forums about motorist-cyclist relations in Melbourne.

Our analysis reveals motorists and cyclists have distinct identities, involving both their sense of themselves and of the other group of road users. There is also a widespread sense, even among cyclists, that cars are the “natural” vehicles of the road.

Our analysis also reveals an array of derogatory ethnic-like stereotypes that motorists and cyclists hold about one another. Interestingly, like some Bosnian former Yugoslavs who deny their ambiguous ethnic status by declaring militant Bosniac (Muslim), Croat or Serb patriotism and hatred of the ethnic other, cyclists who also drive often express the most extreme views.

Read more: Contested spaces: ‘virtuous drivers, malicious cyclists’ mindset gets us nowhere

Drawing on multicultural tolerance

If ethnicity is a useful point of comparison for thinking about the identities and relations of drivers and cyclists, then it makes sense to go a step further. It may also, à la multiculturalism, offer pointers to how to manage relations between drivers and cyclists.

At the heart of multiculturalism is a politics of “recognition”. We see it in a range of practices such as cross-cultural awareness training. Likewise, vehicle use education could pay more attention to increasing awareness of the capacities and limitations of other vehicles.

Read more: Cars, bicycles and the fatal myth of equal reciprocity

There is also recognition in the legal practice of “cultural defence”. Crime and punishment are not determined solely by a universal standard, but also with regard to a defendant’s cultural background.

Likewise, a shared code of conduct could govern conduct on the road, tempered sensitively to the unique capacities of particular vehicles. The “Idaho stop”, for example, permits cyclists in that state to treat stop signs as yield or give way signs if conditions are safe to do. Research has shown this increases safety on the roads. Versions of this law have been passed in Delaware, Colorodo, Arkansas and Oregon since 2017.

Practices such as these might lead to greater “tolerance” between different road users. Putting this another way, we argue for the road to be reconceived as a “multiautocultural” space.

Read more: Seeing red: why cyclists ride through traffic lights

– ref. Drivers v cyclists: it’s like an ethnic conflict, which offers clues to managing ‘road wars’ – https://theconversation.com/drivers-v-cyclists-its-like-an-ethnic-conflict-which-offers-clues-to-managing-road-wars-139107

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Danielle Wood, Program Director, Budget Policy and Institutional Reform, Grattan Institute

JobKeeper has been a lifeline for the economy.

Given the ferocity of the economic hit caused by COVID-19, the government was right to prioritise speed over perfection.

But the current review of the A$70 billion provides an opportunity to iron out some of its crinkles.

The biggest priorities should be moving to upfront payments, expanding the scheme to cover temporary workers and short-term casuals, and avoiding the looming government support cliff.

Read more: That estimate of 6.6 million Australians on JobKeeper, it tells us how it can be improved

The government should also introduce a separate part-time payment rate, to better target the scheme and provide greater bang for buck.

The biggest barrier to the effectiveness of JobKeeper is the fact that the employer gets it in arrears, weeks after she or he has paid it to employees.

Stop paying businesses late

Businesses without the necessary cashflow have been encouraged to take advantage of government-backed loans, but for many the process has been too slow or unacceptably risky.

It might help explain why the take-up of the JobKeeper has been lower than expected.

Those cash-flow-constrained businesses that have been able to access finance have been forced to borrow on an ongoing basis in order to pay their workers.

Read more: JobKeeper is quick, dirty and effective: there was no time to make it perfect

Given that the government now knows how much it needs to pay to businesses that are in the scheme, it would be very easy to switch to payment in advance by doubling up a payment – moving to being in step with, rather than behind, employers’ needs.

With government able to borrow so cheaply – at less than the rate of inflation – the fix would cost it little, and would add little to JobKeeper’s total cost.

The case for extending JobKeeper to temporary visa holders is clear cut.

Include more workers

Temporary visa holders can’t get safety net payments such as JobSeeker. And many of them are stuck here: there are no affordable options for them to return to their home country.

Leaving people without support does not do much for Australia’s reputation as a global citizen – many of the countries with which Australia normally compares itself have extended wage support to the wages of temporary residents.

It means JobKeeper is far less generous for businesses in sectors that rely on temporary visa holders, including the hard-hit sectors such as hospitality, retail, healthcare, and aged care.

Read more: Why temporary migrants need JobKeeper

If temporary visa holders sign up to the scheme at the same rate as other residents, including them for six months would cost about $10 billion.

Short-term casuals – those who’ve worked for their employers for less than a year – have also been excluded, which has also left big holes in support for some of the worst-hit sectors and some of the lowest-income Australians.

Including short-term casuals would cost an extra $6 billion.

Pay part-timers less

JobKeeper pays all eligible workers at the same flat rate, regardless of the hours they worked before coronavirus hit or afterwards. More than 80% of part-time workers are believed to have received a pay rise under JobKeeper.

This means the scheme costs more than it needs to. It also raises questions about fairness between employees within businesses, because a part-time worker gets as much as full-time worker.

No doubt the government chose a flat rate to make the program simple, but a simple way to adapt the scheme would be to follow New Zealand and introduce a lower rate for people working less than 20 hours a week.

Read more: JobKeeper payment: how will it work, who will miss out and how to get it?

It could mean that full-time employees on JobKeeper continued to receive $1,500 a fortnight, while employees working less than 20 hours a week got $800.

The saving, more than $2 billion per quarter, could be used to fund some of the extensions to the scheme we propose.

Extend it for businesses not recovered

The universal September 27 cut off date is blunt. It does not recognise that social distancing constraints will continue to affect some businesses for many months and that different sectors will bounce back at different rates.

Pulling back assistance on businesses that are still significantly revenue constrained risks undoing much of the good work JobKeeper has done to preserve jobs.

Read more: Australia’s first service sector recession will be unlike those that have gone before it

Businesses currently receiving the payment should be required to re-test against the turnover requirement at the end of July and September. Where a business’s turnover climbs to higher than 80% of pre-crisis levels, support could be withdrawn with notice.

Businesses that remain below the recovery threshold in September should receive JobKeeper for an additional three months.

While the incentives would not be perfect – some businesses close to the threshold would have a short-term incentive to limit their recovery – it would be better than withdrawing support prematurely for scores of businesses.

JobKeeper is good, we can make it better

As well as being more effective in maintaining productive capacity, the approach we advocate would help cushion the “fiscal cliff” due at the end of September when all major coronavirus supports are due to come off at once.

Three months into its short life, JobKeeper is performing well. Now is the time to get it right.

Overall the proposed changes would cost a little more but they would better target the scheme and ensure it delivers on its promise of keeping Australians in jobs.

– ref. How to improve JobKeeper (hint: it would help not to pay businesses late) – https://theconversation.com/how-to-improve-jobkeeper-hint-it-would-help-not-to-pay-businesses-late-140435

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

Pat Turner, for decades a strong Aboriginal voice, is the lead convenor of the Coalition of Peaks, which brings together about 50 indigenous community peak organisations. In this role she is part of the negotiations for a new agreement on Closing the Gap targets.

Unlike the original Rudd government targets, the refreshed Closing the Gap agreement, soon to be finalised, will set out targets for progress on justice and housing.

But the issue is, how much progress should be the aim?

“We want to push the percentages of achievement much higher, but we are in a consensus decision-making process with governments … what the targets will reflect is what the governments themselves are prepared to commit to,” Turner says.

The Australian Black Lives Matter marches have focused attention on the very high rates of incarceration of Aboriginal people, often for trivial matters. In this podcast Turner canvasses both causes and solutions, advocating major changes to the justice system.

She points to “huge issues with drug and alcohol abuse”, with inadequate resourcing to deal with these problems.

She urges reform for sentencing arrangements for those charged with minor offences, criticising a system which imprisons people who cannot pay fines, or post bail. “It would be less expensive overall for the jurisdictions, and it would more beneficial to the community [if those people weren’t in prison]”. And she identifies the “the over-incarceration of women [as] a major concern.”

Among the changes needed, she says, is better training of police.

“Now I’m not saying that all the police behave badly – we have got outstanding examples of how the police work with our communities.” But “we just can’t wait for ad hoc ‘good guys’ to come out of the system and engage properly – we need wholesale reform of the police departments.”

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Pat Turner on Closing the Justice Gap – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-pat-turner-on-closing-the-justice-gap-140451

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrea Carson, Associate Professor, Department of Politics, Media and Philosophy, La Trobe University

While Australians are singing the praises of the front-line workers during the COVID-19 crisis, there is a forgotten front line that has also made personal sacrifices to help us get through the pandemic: ABC journalists.

From radio producers to TV presenters to technicians who get up before dawn to bring us the news, ABC staff have been bringing us the facts about the global crisis at a time when misinformation and disinformation are rife and dangerous.

Norman Swan’s highly utilised podcast Coronacast is just one example of trusted ABC information during the pandemic.

Less visible is the emotional toll on ABC staff of the relentless work in bringing us our stories about job losses, health concerns, social isolation and fragile mental health during the coronavirus pandemic.

As one ABC producer told me:

Every day during the lockdowns were sad stories that wear you down and leave you feeling hopeless.

Read more: Why the ABC, and the public that trusts it, must stand firm against threats to its editorial independence

We forget many of these workers went into the pandemic already tired and emotionally drained after forgoing holidays to report on the summer’s catastrophic bushfires across multiple states. The fires killed 34 people, destroyed more than 3,500 homes and ruined the lives of many. Yet, rather than forget these victims, ABC reporters continue to provide updates on how communities are rebuilding after losing so much in the fires.

Despite all of this, the federal government has offered no reprieve to prevent the axing of about 250 ABC jobs to meet a A$41 million budget shortfall of the Coalition’s own making.

The ABC’s managing director, David Anderson, announced the job cuts, some voluntary and some not, this week. The cuts will affect news, entertainment and regional divisions of the national media organisation.

This should be of grave concern for all Australians, because research shows we have local news “deserts” emerging across the nation, just as in the United States. This means some towns and regions have no original sources of news other than the ABC. Without it, they lose their voice altogether.

These ABC cuts come on the back of News Corp closing many of its regional mastheads and converting others to online-only. These moves raise concerns about issues of access to local news for some citizens such as the elderly and those with poor digital access.

Read more: Without local papers, regional voices would struggle to be heard

But it is also a threat to our democracy. Free and diverse media are central to a healthy democracy by providing citizens with reliable information in order to make informed choices, including at the ballot box when voters decide who will represent them.

The refusal of the Coalition government to step in and reverse the A$84 million lost in the 2018 budget cuts to the broadcaster – when indexing of the triennial funding agreement was frozen – can only weaken its public service.

Some might argue this is exactly what the government wants. Since 2014, when Tony Abbott was prime minister, the ABC has lost A$783 million in funding, including the A$84 million cut in 2018.

Politicians and journalists are strange bedfellows, as the saying goes. They both have important roles in democracies, sometimes at the expense of one another. Apart from the media’s important functions such as emergency broadcasting and informing the public, a well-functioning democracy depends on the public being able to monitor its representatives and on the state accepting criticism of its own exercise of power. This is its watchdog function, and to be effective it requires a trusted and independent media.

Yet, while the ABC is still Australia’s most trusted media outlet, public trust has been steadily falling since the budget cuts this decade (see the graph below). In other words, if you keep cutting the fat and hit the bone, the public will start to notice and lose trust in its quality.

As this graph shows, the ABC’s most trusted programming, TV news and current affairs has been falling steadily from a high of 74% in 2012 to a low of 60% since the budget cuts. The other notable fall is trust in local newspapers, from 62% to below 50% since the “news desert” concerns have been realised with mass closures of local papers.

This is a problem for democracy, particularly when the rise of fake news in the digital age is causing concern for most Australians (65%) about what is fact and what is not.

Yet, when we need to know information because it is important to our health – such as during the COVID-19 pandemic or bushfires – quality outlets have been enjoying a spike in their audience numbers.

Our survey work has also shown Australians’ trust in professional journalists has been elevated during this period (68%). It’s notably higher than in the US (57%) where trust in professional journalists has been ebbed away by President Donald Trump’s weaponisation of the terms “fake news” and “lamestream media” against them.

As the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission heard again and again, if it were not for the ABC emergency broadcasting, many communities would have not been warned of approaching fires.

If the ABC is there to inform us to save lives, who will save the ABC?

– ref. Cutting the ABC cuts public trust, a cost no democracy can afford – https://theconversation.com/cutting-the-abc-cuts-public-trust-a-cost-no-democracy-can-afford-140438

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Cunneen, Professor of Criminology, University of Technology Sydney

Calls to “defund the police” in the wake of the death of George Floyd are leading to immediate proposals to either dismantle police departments or cut their funding in US cities like Minneapolis, New York and Los Angeles.

There has been similar anger over Indigenous deaths in custody in Australia, but the idea of defunding the police doesn’t translate so easily to this country.

Read more: Despite 432 Indigenous deaths in custody since 1991, no one has ever been convicted. Racist silence and complicity are to blame

For starters, police forces here are highly centralised. There is no Melbourne Police Department or Bega Valley Shire Police Service, similar to the thousands of city and county police forces in the US. Rather, police forces here are organised and run by the federal, state and territory governments.

Nor are city and shire councils in Australia required to make funding decisions on whether to employ more police and expand the local city jail. Funding allocations are made by federal, state and territory governments.

However, far from being an empty slogan in the Australian context, the call to defund the police raises fundamental questions of principles and policy.

It forces us to reconsider our priorities: do we want more police and prisons at the cost of social housing, mental health services, domestic violence and family support programs? And could this money be reinvested in other ways to reduce crime?

Why an alternative to policing is needed

Divestment from police and prisons must be in equal measure about investment in the community. Specifically, this means investing in the types of services that are likely to ameliorate the social issues that can compromise personal and/or community safety.

For example, when people suffer a mental health crisis, family members sometimes call 000 for help. In such situations, what is required is a team of emergency response mental health professionals – not the police, who may make the situation far worse.

This is what underpins the concept of justice reinvestment, a strategy to reduce the number of people in prisons through early intervention, prevention, diversionary and other community development programs. Proponents advocate diverting money from the justice system and reinvesting it into these initiatives.

Justice reinvestment is not a new concept in Australia. In fact, it has a special resonance in many Indigenous communities, which struggle with high levels of policing, low levels of infrastructure support and sporadic service delivery, particularly in rural and remote communities.

Justice reinvestment also prioritises community control over decision-making, which coalesces with Indigenous demands for self-determination.

How justice reinvestment programs work

There are currently community-based justice reinvestment projects in NSW, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory. A government-sponsored program is also operating in the ACT.

The best known of these is the Maranguka Justice Reinvestment Project in Bourke, NSW, where a broad sweep of initiatives has been introduced by the Bourke Tribal Council (comprised of 21 tribal groups living in the area).

Three justice “circuit breakers” were initially introduced to limit the amount of contact members of the community have with police and, hence, reduce the local incarceration rate. This included changing how breaches of bail and outstanding warrants were dealt with and the requirements for a learner driver program.

Other programs have since been developed by the community to address family strength, youth development and adult empowerment.

Read more: Australian governments should follow the ACT’s lead in building communities, not prisons

An independent evaluation conducted in 2018 by KPMG found dramatic reductions in reported incidences of domestic violence (and re-offending), juvenile offending, breaches of bail and the number of days spent in custody.

The positive outcomes also went beyond the criminal justice system. For example, the youth development programs in Bourke have coincided with a 31% increase in year 12 student retention rates.

Other justice reinvestment projects have set their own priorities based on community-defined needs.

The Tiraapendi Wodli Justice Reinvestment Project in Port Adelaide, for instance, focuses on ways to support families with school-aged children to improve well-being in the home. It also offers drug and alcohol programs and post-prison release support to help people reconnect with community and family.

The Olabud Doogethu Project in the Kimberleys focuses on programs for young people in Halls Creek and six remote Aboriginal communities in the shire, including suicide prevention, youth safety, alternative education and mentoring.

Lack of government funding

What these projects have in common is they allow the community to identify their own social and justice needs and how best to respond to them. In many cases, support from local police and other agencies has been critical in facilitating the development and implementation of these responses.

However, what has been dramatically lacking so far is the “reinvestment” element from government. The justice reinvestment programs in Australia mostly rely on various forms of philanthropic support for their survival. The Maranguka Project receives some state and federal funding, but overall this is rare.

Read more: ‘Tough on crime’ is creating a lost generation of Indigenous youth

This returns to the question of “defunding the police”. It is not difficult to see how we might respond more effectively to social issues without relying on the police. However, in order to do this, community responses need to be supported and funded.

Over the past 30 years, we have experienced the opposite in Australia – burgeoning criminal justice budgets, more people in prison (particularly Indigenous people) and constant complaints against the police of racial discrimination and violence.

In this context, the call to defund the police is appealing. But in order to help communities, it must be matched by government commitments for the types of programs that have been proven to work.

– ref. Defunding the police could bring positive change in Australia. These communities are showing the way – https://theconversation.com/defunding-the-police-could-bring-positive-change-in-australia-these-communities-are-showing-the-way-140333

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lesley Russell, Adjunct Associate Professor, Menzies Centre for Health Policy, University of Sydney

The national cabinet, which was quickly set up to tackle the nation’s threats from the coronavirus pandemic, will now replace the Council of Australian Governments (COAG).

For almost 30 years, COAG has been the way Australian governments have managed matters of national significance or those that need national coordination.

For health, that covers issues including hospital funding, adult public dental health programs, Closing the Gap Refresh, and regulations governing who can work as a health practitioner.

So, how will scrapping COAG in favour of the national cabinet affect state-federal relations and national decision-making when it comes to health?

Read more: Explainer: what is the national cabinet and is it democratic?

National cabinet has been successful

The national cabinet has been extraordinarily successful at addressing the immediate coronavirus health threat. It acted swiftly and decisively to address a common threat that did not respect state and territory borders. It was guided by expert advice and evidence. It did this without the usual blame games. Financial considerations played second fiddle to public health imperatives.

Even so, there have been fractures in the national approach. This was seen most obviously in fights over border closures and school reopenings, resulting in different states going their own way.

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

COAG, which was founded by the Keating government in 1992 has, over time, gained a less proactive reputation. When Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced it would be scrapped, he described it as a place where “good ideas went to die”.

Others have described it as moribund and cumbersome.

However, the issues COAG has dealt with are inherently more divisive than those the national cabinet has so far faced, not least because they have been around for longer and because finances are involved. Classic examples are the GST rate and allocation to the states, and hospital funding.

How the national cabinet, which has functioned to date rather like a subcommittee of the regular federal cabinet, will operate in the future to tackle such complex and long-standing issues is unclear. We currently only have an outline.

How will the national cabinet work?

There will be subcommittees in select key areas: rural and regional, skills, energy, housing, transport and infrastructure, population and migration, and health.

Closing the Gap of Indigenous disadvantage, and reducing violence against women will continue as priorities.

Already several concerns emerge. There is no reference to social welfare, urbanisation or climate change, all of which have substantial impacts on health.

However, Morrison recognises:

…the important role of health, in terms of having a healthy workforce and a healthy community to support a strong economy.

This could mean, finally, issues like preventive health and obesity will become national priorities.

Yet the promised prominent role of the Council on Federal Financial Relations (the federal and state treasurers) in the new structure means there is a risk that issues considered by national cabinet will be judged simply on the funding required, rather than on community needs and benefits delivered.

Read more: Scott Morrison strengthens his policy power, enshrining national cabinet and giving it ‘laser-like’ focus on jobs

There’s also the issue of bureaucracy. We don’t know whether COAG’s 20 or so ministerial councils and nine ministerial regulatory councils will be shoehorned into the national cabinet, or perhaps dropped completely to streamline proceedings.

But it’s easy to see how such subcommittees and expert advisory groups will quickly accumulate again. It’s also easy to see how they could become the “parking lot for tough decisions” once more.

Read more: COAG: How to turn a ‘parking lot for tough decisions’ into something really useful

Then there’s the issue of transparency around decision-making. There are concerns Morrison will seek to have the same rules about confidentiality apply to the workings and documents of national cabinet as apply to the federal cabinet.

What will be on the agenda?

While Morrison says the national cabinet’s “singular agenda” is to create jobs, it is not the only urgent issue.

A new approach and new momentum offer the exciting possibility of whole-of-government approaches to the “wicked problems” that beset Australia, such as socio-economic inequality, drought and bushfires, ageing and suicide.

Even on a smaller scale, there are benefits to a broader approach to problems. Examples include: boosting the aged care workforce as part of a job stimulus package that would particularly benefit women; tackling public dental health wait times to improve productivity; improved Indigenous housing to Close the Gap in education and health; and providing Indigenous employment.

Changes are already under way

The power base that underpins the national cabinet is about to shift, with consequences for its efficient operation.

In the battle against the coronavirus pandemic, the states and territories held most of the relevant constitutional powers. That will not be the case as the focus shifts to the needs of the nation in the years ahead.

And the commonwealth will always wield power in these settings because it controls the funding.

At a time when there is an urgent need to reform programs and funding to deliver better health and health-care outcomes, the national cabinet offers possibilities, challenges and risks.

In large part, the future and value of the national cabinet in post-pandemic times will depend on the level of commitment the prime minister and his cabinet are willing to make to this new structure and to working together in good faith with Australia’s governments.

– ref. The national cabinet’s in and COAG’s out. It’s a fresh chance to put health issues on the agenda, but there are risks – https://theconversation.com/the-national-cabinets-in-and-coags-out-its-a-fresh-chance-to-put-health-issues-on-the-agenda-but-there-are-risks-140165

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Renaud Joannes-Boyau, Senior research fellow, Southern Cross University

All humans alive today can claim a common ancestral link to some hominin. Hominins include modern humans, extinct human species, and all our immediate ancestors.

Recent discoveries of hominin remains, including the skull of a Homo erectus in South Africa, have generated high levels of interest from the public and scientific community alike.

Fossils hold invaluable information about human history. But digging deeper, there is much complexity around the question of what a “fossil” is, and who should be granted ownership of them. This is the topic of our latest research article published in the journal Heliyon.

Fossils fuel debate

The question of what qualifies as a “fossil” remains open. The Oxford dictionary defines fossils as:

the remains or impressions of a plant or animal embedded in rock and preserved in petrified form.

But this definition doesn’t encompass the broader use of the word. Eggshells or coprolites (fossilised excrement) are neither direct remains nor the impression of an animal or plant, but archaeologists often refer to them as “fossils”.

The process of fossilisation can start immediately after an organism’s death, and the term “fossil” isn’t attached to a specific time period or state of preservation.

The term also relates to the perceived value, uniqueness or rareness of remains (and what they may reveal). Given such a breadth of meanings, it’s unsurprising attempts to regulate the status of fossils are fraught.

Hands off my fossil!

There was lively debate surrounding the 2015 discovery of Homo naledi in the Rising Star cave near Johannesburg, South Africa. The public’s access to the site and its fossils drew heavy criticism from researchers. This raised the question: should fossil discoveries be freely available?

Generally, around the world a person who excavates a fossil is allowed to keep it. Not only that, they can conduct potentially destructive analyses on it, and grant scientific and public access to the information it reveals.

Such practices can generate “gentleman’s club” syndrome, wherein members of scientifically influential groups have a better chance of accessing important fossils. But despite being accepted practice in the field, the “finders keepers” approach is legally problematic.

Read more: Homo naledi may be two million years old (give or take)

Humans and human remains have a special status in most nations’ legal systems. While animals can be owned, humans can’t. Compounding this, the definition of “human” is itself contested, and this muddies the legal waters when it comes to discovering archaeological human remains.

For instance, recent DNA discoveries of interbreeding between Homo sapiens, Homo neanderthalensis and Denisovans – as well as the fact that Homo naledi and Homo floresensis existed at the same time as modern humans – indicates scientists struggle to reach a consensus on where the boundaries of “human” lie.

The definition of “human” can also be culturally ascribed. Many indigenous peoples including communities from Australasia and Africa recognise an ancestral connection to species not always classified as Homo sapiens.

So what should be done with the fossilised remains of extinct species that aren’t “human” in the sense of belonging to Homo sapiens, but are nevertheless our evolutionary ancestors?

Are human remains things to be owned?

In Australia, as in most common law systems, there can be no “property” in a human corpse. While both burial and exhumation are regulated, ownership of a corpse is not.

The export of “Class A” cultural heritage, which includes human remains, is prohibited under the Protection of Movable Cultural Heritage Act 1986. Also, Australian state legislation regulating the scientific use of human tissue (such as the NSW Human Tissue Act 1983) doesn’t require any consent for samples excavated before 2003.

On the other hand, Australia also has a national repatriation program for Indigenous cultural patrimony. This program seeks to restore stolen human remains and sacred objects to their original communities.

Cultural subjects

The tension between scientific interests and spiritual beliefs is apparent in the context of repatriating human remains to Indigenous communities.

While fossilised human remains hold significant scientific value, their symbolic and spiritual value can’t be ignored, particularly to communities that feel a connection to them. Human remains would be best described as both scientific objects and also cultural subjects.

Read more: Africa’s rich fossil finds should get the air time they deserve

Some scientists view repatriation and reburial of human remains as a deliberate destruction of a “source of information” that belongs to global humanity.

On the other hand, historical injustices and the imbalance of power between colonial entities and Indigenous people stand against such arguments. As a result, the repatriation and reburial of human remains becomes inseparable from broader legal arguments advanced by Indigenous peoples today.

Human, hominin and hominid fossils are far more than just objects to be owned. In fact, they reside at a contested and poorly regulated scientific, cultural and legal intersection.

We need common standards for ownership, protection and access controls. One solution would be to establish an international delegation with key stakeholders including scientists, lawyers, community representatives and policy makers.

Ideally, this could exist under the umbrella of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). Such a body could foster constructive dialogue on how we value human fossils, and how we assign them ownership.

– ref. Who owns the bones? Human fossils shouldn’t just belong to whoever digs them up – https://theconversation.com/who-owns-the-bones-human-fossils-shouldnt-just-belong-to-whoever-digs-them-up-140060

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lawrence English, Adjunct Lecturer, The University of Queensland

Protest has, by default, always been aligned with sound.

It is an action concerned with the amplification of a message – wanting to make sure it is heard.

Over the past 50 years, protesters’ voices have found power in unison. But activists and onlookers have increasingly been exposed to new sounds – many of which accompany “non-lethal” or “less lethal” weapons that aim to shatter rather than gather the crowd.

Read more: ‘I can’t breathe!’ Australia must look in the mirror to see our own deaths in custody

Raise your voice

Call and response chants, common to street activism, are thought to have their origins in work songs. The Occupy Movement makes use of a technique dubbed the human microphone – to keep the crowd on-message. In urban environments, chants become further amplified as they bounce off buildings and hard surfaces.

Today, thousands upon thousands of protestors worldwide are saying Black Lives Matter very loudly.

These chanted rhythms – Black Lives Matter; I can’t breathe; Whose streets? Our streets! No Justice! No Peace!; The People! United! Will never be divided! – quickly gain momentum.

Some phrases mesh into popular culture through songs. Some songs – like Give Peace a Chance – become iconic chant anthems.

Noise as weapon

Whizzing rubber bullets have been used since the 1970s, when they were deployed by the British in Northern Ireland during The Troubles. The hiss of tear gas, used for almost 100 years, is familiar to protesters and onlookers. But technologies introduced in the mid 1990s and developed since have radically reshaped the soundscape of protest.

The weaponisation of sounds is understandable. Our ears, unlike our eyes, have nothing stopping the entry of stimulus. As a sense, hearing is always available and thus vulnerable.

Read more: Friday essay: the sound of fear

In the natural world, this is of little consequence, as there are few sounds loud enough to cause lasting damage to our hearing. But with industrialisation has come the capacity to produce sounds that exceed a volume we can hear without causing ourselves damage.

The first non-kinetic weapon widely used against protesters was introduced in North America in 1995. The M-84 stun grenade has also been used with increasing frequency by police agencies in North and South America, Europe, the UK and here in Australia.

Colloquially know as a flash-bang, these devices are used to stun and temporarily disorient people in their blast radius. This disorientation is effected primarily by an enormous momentary output of sound and intense light. On detonation, the M-84 output a sound pressure level (SPL) of 170 decibels at two metres. That’s equivalent to a sound as loud as a space shuttle taking off.

The M-84 and other similar weapons, including the Stinger Grenade, which combines the sound and light blast with an explosion of over 100 hard plastic balls and CS gas, cause people to become temporarily deaf and may cause long term hearing impairment. Flash-bangs have also resulted in serious physical injuries and even deaths despite their “non-lethal” label.

The Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) and Medium Range Acoustic Device (MRAD) are even more intimidating. Described as “sound canons”, they are a hyperdirectional speaker, meaning they can direct a beam of sound between 30-60 degrees making it very focused and capable of targeting individuals or small groups of people with great accuracy.

Sound weapons have been widely used in the current wave of Black Lives Matter Protests in North America and during the Ferguson Black Lives Matters protests in 2014 over the shooting of Michael Brown.

Powerful beats

New sonic weapons are always emerging, but still the chants of protestors can soar above. The simple sounds – the sonic equivalent of a sound byte – have a power of their own.

Voices, hands and feet can unite in a pulsing wave of sound to create an infectious and repeatable rhythm. Coordinated with physical movement and dance, to create an even more intensely unified sense of communal will.

Over the past weekend, Australian protestors reportedly thumped their fists against their chests, creating a powerful collective heartbeat. The rhythm of the beat as it faded was a powerful wordless statement against the injustice of Indigenous deaths in custody. Silence, too, has an enduring protest legacy.

It’s not just bodies that are used to create sounds of protest. In 1971, Chilean protestors famously turned to their kitchens into sonic tools, transforming casserole pots and other utensils into a sound state known as Cacerolazo. The tradition continues to resonate this decade in countries like Columbia and even Canada, where student protesters raised a nightly cacophony with banging pans.

More conventional objects like musical instruments, especially drums, continue to hold a central place in protest too. In Sydney this past weekend, Thirumeni Balamurugan beat a Parai drum to guide the crowd. The instrument is made from the skin of a dead calf and was once associated only with funerals. Now the once-forbidden Tamil drum is common at political rallies.

Read more: Long before Trump rolled in the deep, music and politics were entwined

In North America, drums are playing a strong role in crowd unification, echoing the heavily rhythmic pulsations of the Arab Spring and many protests before it.

Though sound can be used as a weapon in modern protests, the sonic capacity of collected bodies on the street united in purpose and pulse remains powerful.

– ref. Voices, hearts and hands – how the powerful sounds of protest have changed over time – https://theconversation.com/voices-hearts-and-hands-how-the-powerful-sounds-of-protest-have-changed-over-time-140192

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kevin Tolhurst, Hon. Assoc. Prof., Fire Ecology and Management, University of Melbourne

Last season’s bushfires directly killed 34 people and devastated more than 8 million hectares of land along the south-eastern fringe of Australia.

A further 445 people are estimated to have died from smoke-induced respiratory problems.

The burned landscape may take decades to recover, if it recovers at all.

Read more: Australia, you have unfinished business. It’s time to let our ‘fire people’ care for this land

While it’s become known colloquially as the Black Summer, last year’s fire season actually began in winter in parts of Queensland. The first fires were in June.

So will the 2020 fire season kick off this month? And is last summer’s inferno what we should expect as a normal fire season? The answer to both questions is no. Let’s look at why.

Last fire season

First, let’s recap what led to last year’s early start to the fire season, and why the bushfires became so intense and extensive.

The fires were so severe because they incorporated five energy sources. The most obvious is fuel: live and dead plant material.

The other sources bushfires get their energy from include the terrain, weather, atmospheric instability and a lack of moisture in the environment such as in soil, timber in houses and large woody debris.

The June fires in Queensland resulted from a drought due to the lack of rain coming from the Indian Ocean. The drought combined with unusually hot dry winds from the north-west. By August the bushfires were burning all along the east coast of Australia and had become large and overwhelming.

Ahead of the fire season, environmental moisture was the lowest ever recorded in much of eastern Australia. This was due to the Indian Ocean Dipole – the difference in sea surface temperature on either side of the ocean – which affects rainfall in Australia. The dipole was in positive mode, which brought drought. This meant the fire used less of its own energy to spread.

Fire weather conditions in south-eastern Australia were severe from August 2019 until March 2020. Temperatures reached record highs in places, relative humidity was low and winds were strong due to high-pressure systems tracking further north than normal.

High atmospheric instability, often associated with thunderstorms, enabled large fire plumes to develop as fires grew to several thousand hectares in size. This increased winds and dryness at ground level, rapidly escalating the damaging power and size of the fires.

Read more: Firestorms and flaming tornadoes: how bushfires create their own ferocious weather systems

Fuel levels were high because of the drying trend associated with climate change and a lack of low-intensity fires over the past couple of decades, which allowed fuel levels to build up.

What’s different now

Currently, at least two bushfire energy sources – fuels and drought – are at low levels.

Fuels are low because last season’s fires burnt through large tracts of landscape and it will take five to ten years for them to redevelop. The build-up will start with leaf litter, twigs and bark.

In forested areas, the initial flush of regrowth in understorey and overstorey will be live and moist. Gradually, leaves will turn over and dead litter will start to build up.

But there is little chance of areas severely burnt in 2019-20 carrying an intense fire for at least five years.

What’s also different this year to last is the moist conditions. Drought leading up to last fire season was severe (see below).

Environmental moisture was the driest on record, or in the lowest 5% of records for much of south-east Australia.

But the current level of drought (see below) is much less pronounced.

A change in weather patterns brought good rains to eastern Australia from late February to April.

A turning point?

It’s too early to say conclusively how the fire season will pan out in 2020-21. But moister conditions due to a neutral Indian Ocean Dipole and Southern Oscillation Index (which indicates the strength of any El Niño and La Niña events), the lack of fuel, and more normal weather patterns (known as a positive Southern Annular Mode) mean there is little prospect of an early start to the season.

The likelihood of severe bushfires in south-east Australia later in the year and over summer is much reduced. This doesn’t mean there won’t be bushfires. But they’re not likely to be as extensive and severe as last fire season.

The reduced bushfire risk is likely to persist for the next three to five years.

Read more: After the bushfires, we helped choose the animals and plants in most need. Here’s how we did it

But, in the longer term, climate change means severe fire seasons are becoming more frequent. If we simply try to suppress these fires, we will fail. We need a concerted effort to manage the bushfire risk. This should involve carefully planned and implemented prescribed fires, as well as planning and preparing for bushfires.

Last bushfire season should be a turning point for land management in Australia. Five inquiries into the last bushfire season are under way, including a royal commission, a Senate inquiry and inquiries in South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales.

These inquiries must lead to change. We have a short window of opportunity to start managing fires in the landscape more sustainably. If we don’t, in a decade’s time we may see the Black Summer repeat itself.

– ref. It’s 12 months since the last bushfire season began, but don’t expect the same this year – https://theconversation.com/its-12-months-since-the-last-bushfire-season-began-but-dont-expect-the-same-this-year-139757

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Baker, Lecturer in Business Strategy, Auckland University of Technology

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, it is curious to see The Warehouse Group (TWG) not letting a good crisis go to waste.

Despite recently receiving NZ$68 million in government wage subsidies as a result of the COVID-19 lockdown, TWG has now proposed store closures and more than 1000 staff layoffs across its Warehouse, Noel Leeming and Warehouse Stationery brands.

The company joins the likes of Air New Zealand, Bunnings and Fletcher Building which have announced major cuts and closures.

While it is laudable to see TWG CEO Nick Grayston fronting as spokesperson for the move, it is disappointing to see management-speak alive and well in his explanations – “agile principles” and changes to their “footprint” to “improve productivity” in an “uncertain environment”.

While it lends a kind of credibility to strategic manoeuvring, this type of jargon is often used to detract from the negative impact of business restructuring on people and communities.

Following in the steps of Walmart

The Warehouse has an interesting history in New Zealand. Founded by Sir Stephen Tindall in 1982, it attempted to replicate the business model and operating style of the giant American retailer Walmart.

Much like Walmart’s original move into smaller towns in the USA, the arrival of The Warehouse and other big box stores demolished the economic viability of numerous family-owned enterprises in New Zealand. This was especially felt in the kinds of small towns where store closures are currently being proposed.

Read more: Kindness doesn’t begin at home: Jacinda Ardern’s support for beneficiaries lags well behind Australia’s

Nevertheless, like its founder, TWG has a long history of prioritising people, communities and the environment, reflected in the group’s motto of “helping Kiwis live better every day”.

Indeed, following the introduction of the living wage movement in 2013, then-TWG CEO Mark Powell announced his intention to introduce a “career retailer wage”. This aimed to both pay a living wage and lift the profile of working in retail as a long-term career option.

It wasn’t until late 2019, however, that current Chief Operating Officer Pejman Okhovat confirmed the company was acquiescing to union demands for wide-scale adoption of the living wage.

Okhovat said the move recognised the importance of the company’s employees to the success of the brand, and the well-being of communities in which the stores were located.

‘Helping Kiwis live better every day’

Unfortunately, these fundamental company priorities seem to have been undermined by the latest move by TWG to lay off staff and close some stores at an incredibly challenging time – particularly in centres where there are few other retail options or employment opportunities.

Such a move raises the wider question of the purpose of business and its responsibilities to wider stakeholder groups, not least in times of uncertainty. While CEO Grayston stresses a need for increased productivity and adaptability, in essence the proposed plan undermines the core brand promise of “helping Kiwis live better every day”.

Read more: A four-day working week could be the shot in the arm post-coronavirus tourism needs

As long ago as 2011, social impact consultant Mark Kramer and Harvard strategy professor Michael Porter described the need for business to adopt shared value creation as a key to success. Their proposal followed the fallout from the global financial crisis, and the reputational damage suffered by so many businesses at the time.

By creating shared value a business doesn’t just prioritise the financial outcomes of its operations, but also social outcomes as measures of performance. To do so, managers are required to recognise the broad array of stakeholders that enable their firm’s ongoing success.

What is the purpose of business anyway?

It is logical that a firm performs best when its workforce is highly skilled and happy, when the local community is not suffering economic distress, and natural resources are sustainably managed to guarantee reliable supply chains.

Walmart has been extremely successful in the past by adopting a shared value creation approach to its business operations. Initiatives have included modifying product ranges to deliberately include healthier foods in under-served communities; introducing in-store health clinics and low-cost pharmaceuticals; and promoting small businesses owned by women on their e-commerce platform.

None of this is news to TWG. In recent years, TWG’s annual reports have adopted integrated reporting that details numerous outcomes beyond the financial, including environmental capital, relationship capital with suppliers and manufacturers, and the human capital present in employees, their knowledge and expertise.

So it’s disconcerting to see TWG pushing ahead with major changes that conflict not only with their own values, but with the broader needs of New Zealand and its local communities at this time.

Shareholder value is obviously important for the ongoing viability of a business. But one has to ask whether retaining a broader focus on overall community well-being might pay better dividends in the long run for this important New Zealand brand.

– ref. By sacking staff and closing stores, big businesses like The Warehouse could hurt their own long-term interests – https://theconversation.com/by-sacking-staff-and-closing-stores-big-businesses-like-the-warehouse-could-hurt-their-own-long-term-interests-140420

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Divna Haslam, Senior Research Fellow (Faculty of Law/ Health) & Clinical Psychologist, Queensland University of Technology

Parents have many things to worry about. It’s easy to stick our heads in the sand and assume bad things – like sexual abuse – won’t happen to our kids.

But online sexual abuse is increasing at an exponential rate.

Last week, the Australian Federal Police announced it had busted an alleged child sex offender network, warning

child exploitation in Australia is becoming more prolific … this type of offending is becoming more violent and brazen. 

Read more: Dark web: Study reveals how new offenders get involved in online paedophile communities

The risks are especially high at the moment, as we spend more time on devices during the pandemic lockdown.

For example, recent media reports have warned about Zoom calls being hijacked by offenders showing child abuse material.

This article, based on our work as parenting and maltreatment experts, looks at how parents can protect their children from online sexual abuse.

In a separate piece, we also look at how to protect kids from in-person sexual abuse.

How common is online sexual abuse?

Online sexual abuse occurs across many platforms including social media, text messaging, websites, various apps, such as WhatsApp and Snapchat and the dark web.

Very broadly, it includes asking a child to send sexual content, a person sending your child sexual content, “sextortion” (coercing or manipulating children for sexual gain), and viewing, creating or sharing child exploitation/ abuse material (sometimes inappropriately referred to as “child pornography”).

Read more: Cyber threats at home: how to keep kids safe while they’re learning online

A 2018 survey of more than 2,000 children in the United Kingdom found one in seven children had been asked to send sexual information. And one in 25 primary school children (that’s roughly one in every class) had been sent or shown a naked or semi-naked picture or video by an adult. 

Who are the abusers?

Online abusers are most likely to be Caucasian males who are attracted to prepubescent children.

They differ from in-person abusers in that they are less likely to have easy physical access to children, have higher internet use, higher levels of education, and are less likely to have a criminal history. However, some people abuse children both online and in person.

Read more: ‘It’s real to them, so adults should listen’: what children want you to know to help them feel safe

Importantly, some online sexual abuse is also committed by other adolescents under the age of 18, creating and sharing sexual images.

Research estimates 16% of Australian children between 10 and 19 receive “sexts” – sexually explicit or sexually suggestive texts or images via phone or internet – and 10% send them.

Some image sharing occurs in genuinely consensual peer relationships, and this is generally not abusive. However, any coercion to share sexual content constitutes abuse.

Which children are most at risk?

Children with poor psychological health, poor relationships with their parents, low self-esteem, and those who have been exposed to other forms of abuse, are more at risk of online sexual abuse.

Age-wise, girls aged 11 to 15 are at the highest risk for child exploitation, although it also happens to very young children.

Tips for protecting your child

Here are some practical steps you can take to minimise the risks facing your child online and to help them safely navigate online challenges.

These are based on known patterns of online abuse and identified factors that place children at greater or lesser risk.

• Take care with photos. Consider who you allow to take photos of your children and where you share photos to ensure they don’t get misused.

• Talk openly to children and teens about sex so they don’t seek out advice or information online from individuals. Children who are knowledgeable may be less likely to be targeted. In particular, talk about consent, and what is consensual behaviour between kids, and what is not.

• Talk with teens about the safe sharing of images. This includes the risks associated with sharing photos of themselves in provocative poses or in revealing clothing. This conversation should start early and get more developed as your child grows up. A lot of child exploitation material is taken by teens or by people known to the children then shared more widely.

• Be interested in the online lives of your children and know their online friends. Do this routinely, just as you do with their real-life friends. Be attentive to changes or special friends. Keep these conversations going. Listen to their experiences.

• Encourage attendance at school-based prevention programs. And then talk with your kids about what they’ve learned to reinforce the messages or answer any questions.

• Talk with your kids about how to respond to sexual innuendo or unwanted advances and when to tell an adult. Start by asking kids for examples of sexual innuendo and the types of things people might say online. Then brainstorm ways the best ways to respond. For example, teens could withdraw from conversations or block acquaintances. Or say something like “I’m not into that kind of chat” or say “No thanks, not interested” to any invitations or requests.

• Talk with teens about online safety. This includes restricting who can view or reshare posts. You may need to upskill yourself first.

• Know what your child is doing online. Monitor their online behaviour, rather than relying only on software controls, which are less effective.

• Keep the computer in a communal area. Ensure their computer use occurs in communal areas of the home and restrict kids’ access to mobiles at night. If possible, do this from an early age and make it routine, so teens don’t get the message you don’t trust them.

• Build your child’s esteem and confidence. Children with low self-esteem are more susceptible to online grooming designed to make children feel special.

• Meet your own needs. Children are at greater risk of abuse when parents are struggling with their own mental health or substance issues. If you need help get support or talk to your doctor.

More resources for parents are available via Bravehearts and at esafety.gov.au.

If you believe your child is the victim of grooming or exploitation, or you come across exploitation material, you can report it via ThinkuKnow or contact your local police.

If you are a child, teen or young adult who needs help and support, call the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800.

If you are an adult who experienced abuse as a child, call the Blue Knot Helpline on 1300 657 380 or visit their website.

– ref. Be careful with photos, talk about sex: how to protect your kids from online sexual abuse – https://theconversation.com/be-careful-with-photos-talk-about-sex-how-to-protect-your-kids-from-online-sexual-abuse-139971

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Divna Haslam, Senior Research Fellow (Faculty of Law/ Health) & Clinical Psychologist, Queensland University of Technology

We know it can seem easier to bury your head in the sand, when it comes to the hideous issue of child sexual abuse.

But child sexual abuse is disturbingly common.

Last week, the Australian Federal Police announced it had busted an alleged child sex offender network, warning

child exploitation in Australia is becoming more prolific … this type of offending is becoming more violent and brazen. 

The good news is when parents are empowered with accurate information, we can better protect our children.

Read more: Why children need to be taught more about their human rights

We are researchers in the prevention of child abuse, working across psychology, education and law.

In a separate article, we have looked at how parents can protect their children from online sexual abuse.

This article looks at how to protect kids from in-person sexual abuse.

How common is in-person sexual abuse?

In-person, child sexual abuse is defined as any sexual act, done to a child (under 18 years old) where true consent is absent and where the act constitutes misuse or taking advantage of the child.

This includes with touch and without it (flashing, voyeurism, or masturbating in front of children).

It can occur anywhere a perpetrator has access to children and privacy, such as in homes, schools and sporting complexes.

But sexual abuse is often not reported, and measurement of it varies.

Read more: Child sexual abuse: hearing the cry for help is not always a simple task

No fully representative Australian study exist yet, so it is difficult to know just how many Australian children are abused. However, a 2010 Victorian study found 7% of boys and 17% of girls are victims of some type of sexual abuse.

Most abusers are not strangers. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 86% of victims knew their abuser.

Perpetrators can include family friends, teachers, coaches, neighbours, parents, step-parents, siblings or other family members. It can also involve other children.

Parents have a special role

Although society more broadly has a responsibility to protect children, parents have a special role in this regard.

Firstly, parents can provide barriers to abuse via monitoring, involvement and attention.

Secondly, they play a key role in developing children’s self-esteem, confidence and sexual knowledge, which makes young people less susceptible to abuse.

Finally, informed parents are better able to respond appropriately should abuse occur.

Read more: What schools can do to reduce the risk that teachers and other educators will sexually abuse children

Research suggests two-thirds of mothers talk to children about sexual abuse, which is reassuring. But many fail to cover critical prevention aspects, such what to do if someone touches your genitals.

Researchers don’t know exactly why this is, but it may be to do with lack of knowledge or confidence about exactly what to say.

Mothers and fathers should be involved, and conversations are needed with both girls and boys. The average age of first sexual abuse is somewhere between six and nine years old, so parents need to start thinking about protection early.

Tips for protecting your child

The following advice is based on research identifying known factors that reduce or increase a child’s risk of abuse and the best prevention research.

• Teach children their bodies belongs to them. Don’t force your child to hug and kiss others. Even if they are a close friend of family member. If they don’t want to hug Great Aunty Sue, offer alternatives such as as a high five or handshake. Let your child choose what they prefer and respect their choice.

• Teach children which touches are OK and which are not. Give specific examples like, “someone giving you a hug hello might be OK but if anyone tries to see, touch, or take photos of your penis, or wants you to see or touch theirs, it is not OK and you should tell someone.”

• Teach children to always tell you if anything ever happens that makes them feel uncomfortable or unsafe (they might say “weird” or “gross”). And then take children seriously. Children do not typically lie about abuse. This is a precious moment to believe and act.

• Don’t imply abuse is inflicted only by strangers. Tell them something like, “sometimes even adults we trust might not know what is OK about touching. So if you are ever in doubt just say no and come and tell me”. Also tell your children: “nothing is so bad or awful that you can’t tell me about it”.

• Don’t tell children to always do what adults tell them. Teach them about when they should do what adults say – for example, when teachers give instructions in class – and when they should not. For example, when an adult asks them to do or say something sexual or personal.

• Teach children how to respond to abuse attempts. This may vary with age. You can start with something simple, like, “say ‘that’s not OK’ or ‘not cool’. And then get away, and tell me what happened”.

• Teach children about secrets. Many abusers use threats or bribes to silence children. Teach children secrets are not OK and that nothing is ever so bad that they can’t tell you. Back this up by not asking children to keep everyday secrets (for example, “don’t tell Mum I gave you ice cream for dinner”).

• Encourage children’s attendance at school-based prevention programs. Have brief conversations about these frequently to reinforce key messages – such as a chat in the car. Add more detail as kids get older.

• Be careful about who you leave your children alone with and where they go for overnight stays. Abusers need privacy. It’s OK to say no if your children are young. With older children, make a plan together and be sure to ask them what happened when they get back.

• Teach your children how they should treat other children. All children should understand they have a right to their own body safety, and that other children have this same right. It’s important to talk about concepts like consent, respect and equality.

• Watch for warning signs. Is there an adult your child avoids? Does your child get an unusual amount of attention from an adult at school, sport, music or ballet? Has your child received gifts, money, or special privileges from anyone? Has your child become really upset by something that you can’t explain?

More resources for parents are available via Bravehearts and at esafety.gov.au.

If you believe your child is the victim of grooming or exploitation, or you come across exploitation material, you can report it via ThinkuKnow or contact your local police.

If you are a child, teen or young adult who needs help and support, call the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800.

If you are an adult who experienced abuse as a child, call Blue Knot Helpline on 1300 657 380 or visit their website.

– ref. Use proper names for body parts, don’t force hugs: how to protect your kids from in-person sexual abuse – https://theconversation.com/use-proper-names-for-body-parts-dont-force-hugs-how-to-protect-your-kids-from-in-person-sexual-abuse-139970

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vaughan J Carr, Professor of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales; Adjunct Professor, Monash University, UNSW

The COVID-19 pandemic has opened fault lines in social, economic and health-care policy in Australia. One area in which all three converge is homelessness.

It’s almost impossible to practise self-isolation and good hygiene if you’re living on the streets or moving from place to place. This puts homeless people at higher risk of both catching the disease and transmitting it to others.

At the beginning of the pandemic, governments recognised this problem and responded by housing homeless people in hotels.

But we need to act now to ensure these people aren’t forced back onto the streets as the pandemic recedes.

This is particularly important given we’re worried about the mental health fallout of the pandemic. Evidence shows homelessness and mental illness are inextricably linked.

Read more: Homelessness and overcrowding expose us all to coronavirus. Here’s what we can do to stop the spread

Homelessness in Australia

The initiative to house the homeless in hotels has been targeted mostly at “rough sleepers”, of whom there are more than 8,000 in Australia.

But people who sleep on the streets make up only a tiny proportion of the Australians we consider to be homeless. Homeless people also include those living in unstable or substandard accommodation, for example.

In 2018-19 more than 290,000 Australians – roughly 1.2% of the population – accessed specialist homelessness services.

So this is only a temporary solution to a national emergency, and addresses only the tip of the iceberg.

Mental illness and beyond

At least one in three homeless people have a mental illness.

Homelessness is often a consequence of mental illness, especially of the more severe kinds that involve hallucinations, confusion, mood swings, depression and intense anxiety.

It’s also a consequence of family violence, which itself increases the risk of poor mental health in children and adults.

But homelessness can also be a cause of mental illness, through its associations with poverty, unemployment, emotional stress, food insecurity, discrimination, exploitation, loneliness and exposure to violence, crime and drugs.

The pandemic has momentarily lifted the cover on homelessness as a widespread and, so far, intractable social, economic and health problem.

It’s not only a reservoir of private suffering for those driven to the social margins through unstable or inadequate accommodation.

Homelessness also has broad social impacts, including lost productivity, adverse effects on young people’s health, education and well-being, and increased consumption of mental health services and criminal justice resources, among others.

Read more: When it’s easier to get meds than therapy: how poverty makes it hard to escape mental illness

Next steps

What will happen to the homeless people currently housed in hotels as the pandemic subsides?

As catastrophic an event as COVID-19 has been, it has created a unique opportunity to improve the long-neglected and critically poor state of social housing in Australia.

The Community Housing Industry Association recently put forward a strong economic argument under the Social Housing Acceleration and Renovation Program (SHARP) proposal for national investment in building 30,000 social housing units and upgrading existing housing.

Meanwhile, the Productivity Commission draft report on mental illness and the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) have put forward robust recommendations concerning housing policy for people with mental illness.

The Productivity Commission and AHURI both advocate increased investment in low-cost, secure and good-quality accommodation, linked where necessary with suitable support services.

Many jurisdictions have excellent programs that help people with mental illness to live independently, such as the Housing and Accommodation Support Initiative in NSW. But these need to be scaled up dramatically.

Read more: The need to house everyone has never been clearer. Here’s a 2-step strategy to get it done

Affordable social housing combined with government transfer payments (such as pensions, Centrelink and disability payments) sufficient to meet basic living costs would be a major boon to mental health in this country.

Both the Productivity Commission and AHURI highlight bridging the gaps in social housing could promote recovery from mental illness, enabling greater social participation and enhancing well-being. It’s likely this approach would also prevent many cases of mental illness before they take hold.

In the long term this would far exceed the benefits flowing from piecemeal handouts for clinical services, which is the present norm in addressing the mental health fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Home improvements or reducing homelessness?

Last week the Australian government announced HomeBuilder grants of A$25,000 for owner-occupiers for certain works on their homes. This funding will be going to people who already have homes and can afford substantial renovations.

There is a strong case for making similar investments in housing the homeless, which would substantially benefit the mental health of our most disadvantaged citizens.

Now is the time for a nationally coordinated effort by federal and state governments to institute economic, social and health policies to address the nexus between homelessness and mental health, and the poverty that feeds into both.

Read more: Poor housing leaves its mark on our mental health for years to come

– ref. If Australia really wants to tackle mental health after coronavirus, we must take action on homelessness – https://theconversation.com/if-australia-really-wants-to-tackle-mental-health-after-coronavirus-we-must-take-action-on-homelessness-139840

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ralph Sims, Professor, School of Engineering and Advanced Technology, Massey University

Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.

If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nz

Does reducing speed reduce emissions from the average car?

Every car has an optimal speed range that results in minimum fuel consumption, but this range differs between vehicle types, design and age.

Typically it looks like this graph below: fuel consumption rises from about 80km/h, partly because air resistance increases.

But speed is only one factor. No matter what car you are driving, you can reduce fuel consumption (and therefore emissions) by driving more smoothly.

This includes anticipating corners and avoiding sudden braking, taking the foot off the accelerator just before reaching the peak of a hill and cruising over it, and removing roof racks or bull bars and heavier items from inside when they are not needed to make the car lighter and more streamlined.

Read more: Climate explained: the environmental footprint of electric versus fossil cars

Driving wisely

In New Zealand, EnergyWise rallies used to be run over a 1200km course around the North Island. They were designed to demonstrate how much fuel could be saved through good driving habits.

The competing drivers had to reach each destination within a certain time period. Cruising too slowly at 60-70km/h on straight roads in a 100km/h zone just to save fuel was not an option (also because driving too slowly on open roads can contribute to accidents).

The optimum average speed (for both professional and average drivers) was typically around 80km/h. The key to saving fuel was driving smoothly.

In the first rally in 2002, the Massey University entry was a brand new diesel-fuelled Volkswagen Golf (kindly loaned by VW NZ), running on 100% biodiesel made from waste animal fat (as Z Energy has been producing).

A car running on fossil diesel emits about 2.7kg of carbon dioxide per litre and a petrol car produces 2.3kg per litre. Using biofuels to displace diesel or petrol can reduce emissions by up to 90% per kilometre if the biofuel is made from animal fat from a meat works. The amount varies depending on the source of the biofuel (sugarcane, wheat, oilseed rape). And of course it would be unacceptable if biofuel crops were replacing food crops or forests.

Regardless of the car, drivers can reduce fuel consumption by 15-20% by improving driving habits alone – reducing emissions and saving money at the same time.

Read more: Climate explained: what each of us can do to reduce our carbon footprint

Fuel efficiency

When you are thinking of replacing your car, taking into account fuel efficiency is another important way to save on fuel costs and reduce emissions.

Many countries, including the US, Japan, China and nations within the European Union, have had fuel efficiency standards for more than a decade. This has driven car manufacturers to design ever more fuel-efficient vehicles.

Most light-duty vehicles sold globally are subject to these standards. But Australia and New Zealand have both dragged the chain in this regard, partly because most vehicles are imported.

Read more: Australians could have saved over $1 billion in fuel if car emissions standards were introduced 3 years ago

New Zealand also remains hesitant about introducing a “feebate” scheme, which proposes a fee on imported high-emission cars to make imported hybrids, electric cars and other efficient vehicles cheaper with a subsidy.

In New Zealand, driving an electric car results in low emissions because electricity generation is 85% renewable. In Australia, which still relies on coal-fired power, electric cars are responsible for higher emissions unless they are recharged through a local renewable electricity supply.

Fuel and electricity prices will inevitably rise. But whether we drive a petrol or electric car, we can all shield ourselves from some of those future price rises by driving more efficiently and less speedily.

Read more: Climate explained: why switching to electric transport makes sense even if electricity is not fully renewable

– ref. Climate explained: does your driving speed make any difference to your car’s emissions? – https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-does-your-driving-speed-make-any-difference-to-your-cars-emissions-140246