Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kim Toffoletti, Associate Professor of Sociology, Deakin University

Digital fitness is enjoying a COVID-19 boom. Online fitness technology provider Virtuagym reports a 400% increase in engagement and a 300% increase in the use of online workouts. Gyms, barre instructors, and yoga studios have been on a steep learning curve to become online businesses. And social media feeds have been flooded with home fitness options.

Women have long been the focus of home fitness programs – so it makes sense they are at the forefront of this shift, finding ways to connect and fit more fitness into their day.

Health clubs around Australia are set to reopen between now and mid-June. But the gains women have made online might make them less inclined to return to the gym once restrictions ease.

Livingroom fitness

While many people are using free content on YouTube during social isolation, others are sticking with fitness instructors who usually run classes in gyms, parks or studios.

By becoming digital providers, instructors can support their loyal clientele through difficult times while protecting their livelihoods during a massive industry downturn .

Big industry players are getting in on the action, with Nike’s Livingroom Cup and Strava’s range of stay active at home challenges aiming to provide motivation and connection with others.

Previous studies have shown people with gym memberships are more likely to meet weekly fitness benchmarks than those without, perhaps due to the financial commitment they’ve made. Older studies have looked at the tribal appeal of group fitness and the influence of others.

Global fitness celebrities like Les Mills, Kayla Itsines, Sam Wood and Chris Hemsworth are offering free program trials during lockdown. They hope mass uptake will convert to longer term paid subscriptions.

Fit women goals

Research shows women find it difficult to exercise for reasons including caring commitments, and feelings of intimidation and judgement in public leisure settings. Digital fitness offers privacy, safety and convenience.

There are also economic and time-saving benefits for women, who have less time for leisure than men and less money to spend on fitness.

Digital technologies and programs can also help women build supportive online social networks around their workouts. Facebook groups include Fitness First at Home with 10,000 members and the hashtag #GotAHomeGotAGym.

With 12.5 million followers, the dominant face of online fitness is Kayla Itsines. Her success can be attributed in part to her effective use of digital platforms to build a fitness community.

It’s not just about sweat

Though research has indicated Instagram use can contribute to poor self-esteem and negative self-perception, women also have the opportunity to take pride in their exercise achievements with hashtags like #fitnessgoals and #isolationfitness.

By analysing how active women interact with each other online, we have observed many benefits of digital networks for supporting women’s mental health, community building, and knowledge sharing.

In our study of Itsines’ fitness followers on Instagram, we found sharing photos, stories and advice was important for staying motivated.

Statements from followers such as “I want you to know that whatever you are going through – it’s OKAY!” and “You have to tell yourself each day ‘I got this, I’m gunna get those abs and lose this muffin top’”, show how women connect and relate to each other online by disclosing feelings of insecurity as well as hopes for overcoming them. These connections can feel especially meaningful for women at home or exercising alone.

As part of research soon to be published, we interviewed a dozen Melbourne women who are using Instagram for fitness. They repeatedly identified the value in the communities they found online. One interviewee said:

I feel that I, through Instagram, have got to know more people and I learn a lot of things from them and it’s a source of inspiration for me.

Another said:

I’d moved to a city where I didn’t really know anyone, so it was quite isolating for a period of time. I’ve always thrived on health and fitness so I still trained, but in the last two years with this [online] running community … I have my sense of belonging back, and I feel like I’ve got my people again.

During COVID-19 lockdowns, people are using digital technologies to connect with existing fitness communities. Others are discovering online communities for the first time. This is especially important amid concerns about the mental health impact of social isolation. Experts know that physical exercise can help.

Read more: 7 ways to manage your #coronaphobia

Bodies online

Of course, connection leaves room for comparison. While comparison can be motivating, digital exercise communities also fuel pressures on women to demonstrate feminine success through physical and psychological means.

Performing fit femininity online can impose new demands of self-love, body positivity and ongoing self-improvement. These values are captured in inspirational fitness quotes that encourage women to accept who they are while simultaneously aspiring to a better version of themselves.

In our research on the Itsine’s #BBG fitness community, we studied thousands of women from around the world – of all different body shapes and sizes – “brought together in a shared motivation for a changing body, the becomings of a ‘better’ body”.

The presentation of positive emotion through and about the body was prevalent in the images and text, with posts carrying affirming hashtags like #selflove #strongnotskinny #bodypositive #healthyandhappy”.

How women’s exercise efforts are responded to by others through comments and reactions, can shape women’s digital fitness participation.

Women’s fitness beyond COVID-19

With the gradual loosening of COVID-19 restrictions, gyms will reopen and many free programs will cease to be available.

Some people will return to leisure centres and fitness studios over the coming weeks, driven by the physical connections, infrastructure and the sense of familiarity these spaces provide. However, we anticipate that many women will maintain their home workout habits because of the value found in these online offerings.

– ref. Working out at home works for women – so well they might not go back to gyms – https://theconversation.com/working-out-at-home-works-for-women-so-well-they-might-not-go-back-to-gyms-138111

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

Scott Morrison has indeed taken to heart that adage about not wasting a crisis. He insists he is going to put to advantage the opportunity brought by these most unfortunate circumstances.

His plan for a government-employer-union-community effort to reform this country’s industrial relations will, if it comes off, be a substantial achievement (although the actual magnitude would depend on just how much was done).

Politically, success would give Morrison something positive for the next election, which will be fought in the testing circumstances of likely high unemployment and sectors of the economy still struggling.

Labor would be outflanked.

If Morrison’s effort ends as a busted flush, he’ll say he tried and move on to something else.

Despite his pragmatism, Morrison aspires to be remembered as a leader who delivered reform. Remember when as treasurer under Malcolm Turnbull, he pushed strongly to change the GST and talked up his mission?

In Tuesday’s address to the National Press Club, he was the ambitious consensus prime minister, declaring “we’ve booked the room, we’ve hired the hall”, to get everybody to the table in pursuit of better industrial relations arrangements.

The present system had “retreated to tribalism, conflict and ideological posturing,” he said. It had “settled into a complacency of unions seeking marginal benefits and employers closing down risks, often by simply not employing anyone”.

As a “good faith” gesture, the government won’t pursue another Senate vote on its controversial Ensuring Integrity bill which would give the Federal Court the power to cancel the registration of a union or an employer organisation and introduce a public interest test for the amalgamation of such organisations. The Senate rejected the legislation last year.

In his speech Morrison announced a structure for talking, and broad topics to talk about. Industrial relations minister Christian Porter will chair five groups – they will consider award simplification; enterprise agreements; casuals and fixed term employment; compliance and enforcement, and greenfield agreements for new enterprises.

“Membership of each group will include employer and union representatives, as well as individuals chosen based on their demonstrated experience and expertise and that will include especially small businesses, rural and regional backgrounds, multicultural communities, women and families,” Morrison said.

The process will run until September. “It will become apparent very quickly if progress is to be made,” he said.

Indeed, it is not as if Porter is starting from scratch. After being appointed industrial relations minister following the 2019 election, Porter set up a process of IR reform which has produced several discussion papers and consultations on a range of issues.

A frustrating feature of the Coalition government, if you take it as a whole from its election in 2013, is its failure to finish what it starts. Key reform processes have previously begun but run up dry gullies or been overtaken.

For instance Tony Abbott commissioned white papers on taxation and federalism. After overthrowing Abbott, Turnbull aborted the white papers. Turnbull in turn flirted with tax change, not just possible GST reform but even the states raising their own income tax. Tax reform as well as federalism are among the issues Morrison has in his sights.

As for Morrison’s declared determination to get a better system for training and skilling workers for the jobs of the present and the future – we have heard this from governments of both stripes for a very long time.

Of course, the past isn’t necessarily a guide to the future, and Morrison’s handling of the pandemic points to his adaptability as a leader.

His agenda appears broad and ambitious (although we can’t be definitive ahead of the detail). He has talked skills and industrial relations this week, but there’s also deregulation (another recurring Coalition theme) and energy as well as tax and the federation.

Admittedly it is not a matter of all-or-nothing. Worthwhile but limited changes would be better than not making the effort.

The extent to which Morrison succeeds will depend on a number of factors.

On industrial relations, it is whether employers and unions put the interests they share above those that divide them – whether each side will be willing to give ground for a larger common cause. The chance of agreement will differ according to the issue.

ACTU secretary Sally McManus responded on Tuesday: “The ACTU will measure any changes to industrial relations law on the benchmarks of: will it give working people better job security, and will it lead to working people receiving their fair share of the country’s wealth?”

They could be challenging benchmarks.

A co-operative discussion will go against the instincts of some of the Coalition’s anti-union hardliners, and be resisted by some in McManus’s constituency.

Asked his message to people in his own party who might see this as an opportunity to finally neuter the union movement, Morrison said: “I think everybody’s got to put their weapons down on this”.

On making progress with reforms involving federal-state relations, including the training system, the attitude of the states will be crucial.

Morrison lauds the national cabinet, and the government contrasts it with the more bureaucratic Council of Australian Governments processes.

But national cabinet and COAG are the same people. The difference is national cabinet is operating in a crisis and totally focussed on that, and on the moment.

COAG deals with everything, and is mostly putting in place measures for the longer term. Inevitably, interests will diverge and corners are harder to cut (which doesn’t mean COAG’s working can’t be usefully shaken up).

Even if national cabinet continued, on some of these reform measures the states would probably behave more like they were in COAG – that is, there’d be more “process”.

Finally, there’s whether a crisis really does produce a climate conducive to reform.

It certainly concentrates attention, turns the page, sweeps away most else. (Asked on Tuesday about the timetable for the religious freedom legislation and the proposed anti-corruption body, Morrison had no answers. It was almost as though they were from another era.)

The road out of this crisis will be very tough for many people. Extensive reform is often painful. Whether the Australian public will be in the mood for it as they cope with the aftermath of such a trauma is an open question.

– ref. View from The Hill: Can Scott Morrison achieve industrial relations disarmament? – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-can-scott-morrison-achieve-industrial-relations-disarmament-139408

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Krystian Seibert, Industry Fellow, Centre for Social Impact, Swinburne University of Technology

Comedian Celeste Barber’s whopping $51 million bushfire fundraiser showed us just how generous people can be in times of trouble.

But the need to seek the NSW Supreme Court’s advice about how to spend the funds also demonstrates how tricky things can become when large amounts of money are involved.

As someone who researches the regulation of philanthropy and the not-for-profit sector, the episode is both a lesson in reading the fine print and the need for simpler donations laws.

But it should not deter public-spirited celebrities from fundraising in the future.

Celeste Barber’s big fundraising win

The summer bushfires saw an outpouring of generosity, with Australians donating vast sums towards various charities and causes.

Barber has family on the NSW South Coast, which was badly hit by the fires. The well-known comedian responded by setting up a Facebook fundraiser.

The beneficiary was the Trustee for NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) and Brigades Donation Fund and the target was to raise $30,000.

The fundraiser went viral and saw millions of dollars pour in from around the world. As donations skyrocketed, Barber told her fans via Instagram she planned to spread the money raised around:

I’m going to make sure that Victoria gets some, that South Australia gets some, also families of people who have died in these fires, the wildlife.

Ultimately, Barber raised more than $51 million from about 1.3 million donors. Facebook’s fundraising partner, PayPal Giving Fund, then passed the money on to the NSW RFS donation fund.

The $51 million question

But spending the money was not straightforward.

The RFS donation fund is governed by a “trust deed,” which limits what it can use donations for. This means it can only spend funds received on equipment, training and resources or administrative costs for RFS brigades.

It does not allow donations to be passed on to fire services in other states or to other charities.

Given Barber’s comments about how the donations should be distributed and the intense attention on the issue, the RFS sought the advice of the NSW Supreme Court.

The NSW Supreme Court’s advice

On Monday, the court handed down its decision, and depending on your perspective, it’s a mix of good and bad news.

On the one hand, the court confirmed that donations can’t be passed on to fire services in other states or to other charities.

But it found funds can be spent to support rural firefighters injured while firefighting and the families of rural firefighters killed while firefighting. The funds can also be spent on physical and mental health training, as well as trauma counselling.

Where to from here?

The effect of the court’s decision is that the funds will stay with the RFS, where they will no doubt be used for important purposes.

But the decision may disappoint some donors, who thought the money would be able to be used to help the broader response to the bushfires. That includes supporting relief and rebuilding efforts in communities devastated by the fires, or helping injured wildlife.

Read more: Celebrity charities just compete with all other charities – so why start one?

The decision did flag that individual donors could bring their own court case if they believed the funds they donated where not being used for the purposes they were donated for. But this is unlikely – if you’ve donated $25, then you may not want to spend lots of time and expense pursuing a court case.

The NSW Parliament could pass legislation to broaden the purposes for which the donation fund can spend donations. And NSW Greens MP David Shoebridge has proposed a bill to do just that.

But NSW’s Coalition government is unlikely to back a Greens-sponsored bill.

What lessons can we lean?

The main lesson is that if you’re setting up a fundraiser, or looking to donate to a particular charity, do some due diligence first.

For example, the national charities regulator, the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission has a free public register where you can look up information about individual charities.

To be fair to Barber, she did only intend to raise $30,000 for the RFS, and only expressed a desire to broaden the beneficiaries of her fundraiser when it took off.

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

But it’s important to read the fine print and to understand what you can and can’t do as part of a fundraiser.

The episode also shows us that the laws governing charities and philanthropy in Australia are complex.

If the federal government introduced simpler laws to regulate “deductible gift recipients” (organisations that can receive tax deductible donations), then it’s likely the problem with Barber’s fundraising would have been easier to resolve.

This is because the activities of organisations wouldn’t need to as tightly confined as they are currently required to be.

We don’t need to leave fundraising to the professionals

In a short statement on Monday, Barber noted: “turns out that studying acting at university does not make me a lawmaker”.

Some people may think the court’s involvement means we should leave fundraising to the professionals, and that celebrity fundraisers do more harm than good. I disagree.

One of the powerful aspects of philanthropy is that anybody can see an area of need, donate money and rally others to do so.

Read more: As fires rage, we must use social media for long-term change, not just short-term fundraising

That is something we should encourage. Whilst it’s important to do due diligence, celebrities can play an important role by using their platform to promote giving.

Barber’s bushfire fundraiser was a powerful example of this, and we shouldn’t let the legal issues detract from it.

– ref. Celeste Barber’s story shows us the power of celebrity fundraising … and the importance of reading the fine print – https://theconversation.com/celeste-barbers-story-shows-us-the-power-of-celebrity-fundraising-and-the-importance-of-reading-the-fine-print-139379

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Adair, Principal Research Fellow, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne

People living in socially disadvantaged areas and outside major cities are much more likely to die prematurely, our new research shows. The study, published in the journal Australian Population Studies, reveals this gap has widened significantly in recent years, largely because rates of premature death among the least advantaged Australians have stopped improving.

These inequalities were already evident long before the enormous economic and social impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. While Australia (unlike the United States and some European nations) has so far avoided widespread deaths due directly to COVID-19, there may well be longer-term health impacts of the pandemic caused by widespread job losses and societal disruption, particularly among the most vulnerable.

This could well have a flow-on effect in terms of poorer health behaviours and access to health care, leading to adverse health outcomes, including a higher risk of death. Indeed, studies predict the pandemic will exacerbate these existing health inequalities.

Read more: Rich and poor don’t recover equally from epidemics. Rebuilding fairly will be a global challenge

While the longer-term impact of COVID-19 on Australia’s death rate will not be known for some time, we know there were already significant inequalities in our society regarding the risk of premature death.

Our research analysed trends in deaths between ages 35 and 74 years from 2006-16. We found people living in the 20% most socio-economically disadvantaged areas are twice as likely to die prematurely than those in the highest 20%.

More worryingly, this gap in death rates between the most and least well-off sectors of the Australian population grew wider between 2011 and 2016. It widened by 26% for females and 14% for males.

These figures would probably be higher still if we measured the socio-economic status of individuals, rather than the area they live in. People living in outer regional, remote and very remote areas have death rates about 40% higher than those in major cities. In 2006, this gap was smaller, at 30%.

What’s the cause?

These growing inequalities are the result of recent stagnation of premature death rates in the lowest socioeconomic areas and outside of major cities. In contrast, rates of premature death have continued to decline in the most affluent areas of major cities.

This is not a new trend. A similar pattern of rising inequality in death rates was observed from 1986 to 2002. But this time around there is much slower growth in overall average life expectancy, and a stagnation in mortality decline among the most disadvantaged population.

One particular concern is the rapid slowdown in improvements to death rates from cardiovascular conditions such as heart disease and stroke. These are Australia’s leading causes of death, and largely explain the significant gains in life expectancy in Australia and other high-income countries over the past few decades. Our results suggest these gains may now be drying up among Australia’s most disadvantaged people.

The socio-economic and regional inequalities in rates of early death are likely due to a wide range of factors. Smoking, poor diet and excessive alcohol consumption are more prevalent in lower socioeconomic groups and outside major cities, and are likely to be major contributors to the trend. People in the lowest 20% socio-economically are almost three times more likely to smoke than those in the highest 20%.

The higher rates of premature death outside major cities are also likely to be linked to differences in access to essential health care. People aged 45 years and over and living outside major cities are less likely to have a GP or specialist nearby.

Read more: Waiting for action on access to GPs in rural Australia

While Australia’s public health leaders are rightly focused on controlling the COVID-19 pandemic, they should not ignore the wide and growing health inequalities that were already entrenched in our society.

Reducing this widening gap in rates of premature death will require a major policy effort. We need to understand and improve the many factors involved – including smoking, diet and alcohol use, education, employment, housing, and access to health care.

We need to ensure policies and information campaigns are targeted to the population groups where death rates are highest and improvements have been slowest. Without a comprehensive approach, the COVID-19 pandemic will likely turn this widening gap into a chasm.

– ref. The poorest Australians are twice as likely to die before age 75 as the richest, and the gap is widening – https://theconversation.com/the-poorest-australians-are-twice-as-likely-to-die-before-age-75-as-the-richest-and-the-gap-is-widening-139201

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Guy Morrow, Lecturer in Arts & Cultural Management, University of Melbourne

This week, Australia’s finance minister Mathias Cormann told ABC radio he didn’t “accept [the] proposition” workers in the arts and entertainment industry were missing out on wage subsidies through the government’s Jobkeeper program.

If they’re not receiving JobKeeper, he said:

… that must mean they can’t demonstrate they’ve had relevant falls in their revenue. […] To the extent [artists are] sole traders […] if their revenue drops on the same basis as any other Australian in similar circumstances in another industry, of course they would be able to participate.

Prior to lockdown, the creative arts contributed an esitmated A$14.7 billion to Gross Domestic Product and employed 193,600 people. The arts also create work of immense value to society in and of itself.

But how exactly are artists employed, and are they eligible for JobKeeper and JobSeeker? The answer is complicated.

Eligibility dilemmas

Some artists and arts workers are eligible for JobKeeper and JobSeeker, while others are not.

Where these workers invoice for their work, they operate as sole traders, setting up an Australian Business Number (ABN) and running their business as an individual. In this, the finance minister is correct in lumping sole trading artists in with any other Australian sole traders.

However, many artists and arts workers do not operate as sole traders and do not issue invoices using an ABN. They are instead employed on contracts for periods under 12 months. This includes actors at major theatre companies, people in the film industry, and administrators moving from festival to festival. If these workers weren’t on contracts when JobKeeper began – or if companies weren’t able to forward JobKeeper payments and so let go of staff – they are ineligible.

Many Australian artists have portfolio careers. They do core creative work, arts related work and non-arts related work often on the same day and often on a casual basis. This is why many in the sector are hurting: they don’t qualify for JobSeeker because their work is a mix of short-term contracts across jobs and across sectors. While their overall income may have fallen by more than 30%, the income earned on their ABN may not have fallen enough to be eligible.

35% of Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance members surveyed were ineligible for JobKeeper. The union is requesting proof from the Morrison government that its JobKeeper and JobSeeker programs will boost the arts industries by $4-$10 billion, as claimed by arts minister Paul Fletcher.

Read more: Coronavirus: 3 in 4 Australians employed in the creative and performing arts could lose their jobs

Not only was the minister’s $4-10 billion estimate based on a working paper published two years ago, it has emerged in the past week that the Treasury’s forecast for JobKeeper spending was out by $60 billion. This estimate of boosting the arts was relative to JobKeeper pumping $130 billion into the economy, not $70 billion.

Realities of arts work

The word “gig” in the term “gig economy” originated in the arts. 81% of artists work as freelancers or are self-employed, with 43% relying on contracts and 35% of artists income from royalties and advances.

These royalties and advances are a form of capital, further complicating matters and differentiating some artists from other workers. While labour income may have been instantly cut off during the shutdown, capital income from royalties may complicate attempts to claim JobKeeper.

The current support packages (including $27 million targeted federal arts support and various state government programs do not go far enough.

The arts are a public good. Artistic creativity is beneficial in and of itself. While it is difficult to define how far is “enough” when it comes to something as open ended as artistic creativity, international comparisons can be used as reference points.

Germany’s federal government is providing sole traders, freelancers and firms with up to five employees a one-off payment of up to €9,000 (A$15,000). The German equivalent of JobKeeper (known as Kurzarbeitergeld) pays between 60%-80% of a worker’s pre-pandemic salary, with extra allowances for workers with children.

Access to basic income support for unemployed workers has also been simplified and they doubled the Neustart fund providing grants of between €10,000 and €50,000 (A$16,650 – A$83,250) for small-to-medium arts companies reopening after lockdown.

Read more: As we turn to creativity in isolation, the coronavirus is a calamity on top of an arts crisis

The UK’s Self-Employed Income Support Scheme makes grants of up to 80% of prior earnings, capped at £2,500 (A$4,650) a month. The UK government has also allocated £160 million (A$298 million) in emergency funding, and appointed a Commissioner for Cultural Recovery and Renewal.

A comprehensive listing of hundreds of different international measures is available here.

Arts hearts

International comparisons are not new and, as an advocacy approach, there is scant evidence Australian governments pay them much attention.

A better way forward during the current crisis could lie in touting Australians’ enduring desire to enjoy the arts.

As we dust ourselves off after lockdown, high on our lists will be (carefully) returning to pubs playing live music, to regional towns with proud local galleries, making the pilgrimage to green-field summer festivals, sipping bubbly at an edgy exhibition opening at – dare we hope – a resurrected Carriageworks.

The arts are – in their own right – essential threads in the fabric of Australian life. Australians want the arts to still be there on the other side of COVID-19. Let’s try putting this role at the heart of an arts advocacy in a time of crisis.

– ref. The government says artists should be able to access JobKeeper payments. It’s not that simple – https://theconversation.com/the-government-says-artists-should-be-able-to-access-jobkeeper-payments-its-not-that-simple-138530

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eryn Newman, Lecturer, Australian National University

As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the world, politicians, medical experts and epidemiologists have taught us about flattening curves, contact tracing, R₀ and growth factors. At the same time, we are facing an “infodemic” – an overload of information, in which fact is hard to separate from fiction.

Misinformation about coronavirus can have serious consequences. Widespread myths about “immune boosters”, supposed “cures”, and conspiracy theories linked to 5G radiation have already caused immediate harm. In the long term they make may people more complacent if they have false beliefs about what will protect them from coronavirus.

Social media companies are working to reduce the spread of myths. In contrast, mainstream media and other information channels have in many cases ramped up efforts to address misinformation.

But these efforts may backfire by unintentionally increasing public exposure to false claims.

Read more: We’re in danger of drowning in a coronavirus ‘infodemic’. Here’s how we can cut through the noise

The “myth vs fact” formula

News media outlets and health and well-being websites have published countless articles on the “myths vs facts” about coronavirus. Typically, articles share a myth in bold font and then address it with a detailed explanation of why it is false.

This communication strategy has been used previously in attempts to combat other health myths such as the ongoing anti-vaccine movement.

One reason for the prevalence of these articles is that readers actively seek them out. The Google search term “myths about coronavirus”, for example, saw a prominent global spike in March.

Debunking false information, or contrasting myths with facts, intuitively feels like it should effectively correct myths. But research shows that such correction strategies may actually backfire, by making misinformation seem more familiar and spreading it to new audiences.

Familiarity breeds belief

Cognitive science research shows people are biased to believe a claim if they have seen it before. Even seeing it once or twice may be enough to make the claim more credible.

This bias happens even when people originally think a claim is false, when the claim is not aligned with their own beliefs, and when it seems relatively implausible. What’s more, research shows thinking deeply or being smart does not make you immune to this cognitive bias.

The bias comes from the fact humans are very sensitive to familiarity but we are not very good at tracking where the familiarity comes from, especially over time.

One series of studies illustrates the point. People were shown a series of health and well-being claims one might typically encounter on social media or health blogs. The claims were explicitly tagged as true or false, just like in a “myth vs fact” article.

When participants were asked which claims were true and which were false immediately after seeing them, they usually got it right. But when they were were tested a few days later, they relied more on feelings of familiarity and tended to accept previously seen false claims as true.

Older adults were especially susceptible to this repetition. The more often they were initially told a claim was false, the more they believed it to be true a few days later.

For example, they may have learned that the claim “shark cartilage is good for your arthritis” is false. But by the time they saw it again a few days later, they had forgotten the details.

All that was left was the feeling they had heard something about shark cartilage and arthritis before, so there might be something to it. The warnings turned false claims into “facts”.

The lesson here is that bringing myths or misinformation into focus can make them more familiar and seem more valid. And worse: “myth vs fact” may end up spreading myths by showing them to new audiences.

Read more: Why is it so hard to stop COVID-19 misinformation spreading on social media?

What I tell you three times is true

Repeating a myth may also lead people to overestimate how widely it is accepted in the broader community. The more often we hear a myth, the more we will think it is widely believed. And again, we are bad at remembering where we heard it and under what circumstances.

For instance, hearing one person say the same thing three times is almost as effective in suggesting wide acceptance as hearing three different people each say it once.

The concern here is that repeated attempts at correcting a myth in media outlets might mistakenly lead people to believe it is widely accepted in the community.

Memorable myths

Myths can be sticky because they are often concrete, anecdotal and easy to imagine. This is a cognitive recipe for belief. The details required to unwind a myth are often complicated and difficult to remember. Moreover, people may not scroll all the way through the explanation of why a myth is incorrect.

Take for example this piece on coronavirus myths. Although we’d rather not expose you to the myths at all, what we want you to notice is that the fine details needed to debunk a myth are generally more complicated than the myth itself.

Complicated stories are hard to remember. The outcome of such articles may be a sticky myth and a slippery truth.

Making the truth stick

If debunking myths makes them more believable, how do we promote the truth?

When information is vivid and easy to understand, we are more likely to recall it. For instance, we know placing a photograph next to a claim increases the chances people will remember (and believe) the claim.

Making the truth concrete and accessible may help accurate claims dominate the public discourse (and our memories).

Other cognitive tools include using concrete language, repetition, and opportunities to connect information to personal experience, which all work to facilitate memory. Pairing those tools with a focus on truth can help to promote facts at a critical time in human history.

– ref. Seeing is believing: how media mythbusting can actually make false beliefs stronger – https://theconversation.com/seeing-is-believing-how-media-mythbusting-can-actually-make-false-beliefs-stronger-138515

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Keating, Visiting Fellow, College of Business & Economics, Australian National University

In the early 1970s, when rising inflation and unemployment tore through the economy, someone coined the aphorism “one man’s wage increase is another man’s job” (unfortunately, most of the talk was about men in those days).

It took off, in part because it appealed to common sense. If the price of something (workers) went up, employers would want would want less of them (workers).

Employers have used it to oppose every wage increase or improvement in working conditions in history, and still are.

Sometimes they are supported by widely respected economists, such as Ian Harper, who as head of the Fair Pay Commission in 2009 delivered Australia’s last freeze in minimum wages amid forecasts that unemployment was about to climb.

Now he and other economists are calling for another freeze, for the sake of jobs, in the downturn caused by the coronavirus.

Wages are more than prices

But the price of labour is different to other prices. While it represents the cost of buying a service, it also represents an income, one that bundled together with other incomes pays for the service.

When wages grow, spending grows (so-called “aggregate demand”), and so does the economy, as measured by gross domestic product.

Nevertheless, the standard neoclassical growth model used by the treasury and Reserve Bank doesn’t recognise this. Instead, it assumes that over the medium term economic growth is entirely determined by supply rather than demand, and that supply is a function of the three Ps: productivity, population and workforce participation.

Read more: Vital Signs: Amid talk of recessions, our progress on wages and unemployment is almost non-existent

Demand is said to merely cause short term fluctuations around the medium term growth path, and it is thought to be the job of monetary and fiscal policy to iron out the fluctuations to avoid unnecessary inflation or unemployment.

There are a number of other peculiar things about the model. It assumes that there are constant returns to scale, that technological progress favours neither labour nor capital, and there is perfect competition.

These assumptions effectively mean the distribution of income between wages and profits is constant and can be ignored.

The model that continually gets it wrong

Fluctuations in wages growth are presumed to be cyclical, amenable to correction by by monetary policy (interest rates), with fiscal policy (tax and government spending) held in reserve.

The model hasn’t performed well.

Over the past decade the treasury and Reserve Bank have persistently overestimated wage growth.

Wage growth has almost halved during the time it was overestimated, and it seems likely this is related to a similar decline in the growth of GDP.

Treasury and the Reserve Bank overestimated wage growth because, when combined, the three Ps of productivity, population and workforce participation were growing strongly.

Their thinking was that if wage growth wasn’t climbing as expected, that was mainly due to a cyclical downturn. All that was needed were some interest rate cuts.

We’ve had 17 interest rate cuts in the past decade the treasury and Reserve Bank have continued to forecast wage growth while taking the cash rate all the way down from 4.75% to close to zero.

There are better models

A better model, used by post-Keynesian economists, treats economic growth as being determined by aggregate demand, both in the short and longer terms. Aggregate demand can be either wage or profit-led.

Wage growth can lead to growth in consumer spending, profit growth can lead to growth in business investment.

Profit growth can be enhanced by changes in the profit share of income, which is the other side of the wage share of income. When the wage share of income goes up, the profit share goes down.

Read more: Budget explainer: why is Australia’s wage growth so sluggish?

But profit growth can also be affected by capacity utilisation, which is the extent to which factories and the like are operating at their full capacity. The more consumers spend, the greater the rate of capacity utilisation and the greater are profits.

Very large increases in real wages can most certainly dent economic growth.

They cut profits and business investment by more than they increase consumer demand and capacity utilisation, as happened in the early 1970s when between 1973 and 1975 nominal wages increased at an average annual pace of 23.2 per cent and real wages increased at an average pace of 8.9 per cent – way ahead of annual productivity growth of 1.3 per cent.

But mostly, wage rises boost consumer demand by more than they cut business investment.

Indeed, they can actually push business investment higher. This is because profits are often more responsive to the increase in capacity utilisation that results from increased consumer demand than to a lower profit share.

We’ll need to boost incomes, if not wages

This seems to explain the economic stagnation we have experienced since the global financial crisis. Low wage growth has held back consumer demand, which has also held back business investment.

There are three possible policy responses.

One is to boost household incomes in a way that doesn’t involve boosting wages, perhaps by government payments and/or tax relief. A downside is that they add to the budget deficit and public debt.

Another is to try and increase wages. Tools could include include government support for higher wages, starting with support for a modest increase in the minimum wage case now before the Fair Work Commission.

Read more: We should simplify our industrial relations system, but not in the way big business wants

Longer term, a more effective and lasting increase in wages could be achieved by better education and training to better skill workers. These proposed courses of action are not mutually exclusive. We will probably need to adopt all three.

But we will need to understand that improving our economic circumstances will require a combination of wage increases and increased government support.

The more the government opposes wage increases, the more pressure there will be for it to increase spending and/or offer more tax relief if we want the economy to grow at its potential and to lift that potential.

These thoughts are developed in Low Wage Growth: Why It Matters and How to Fix It, Stephen Bell and Michael Keating, Australian Economic Review, December 2019.

– ref. Why the coronavirus shouldn’t stand in the way of the next wage increase – https://theconversation.com/why-the-coronavirus-shouldnt-stand-in-the-way-of-the-next-wage-increase-139277

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bruce Wolpe, Non-resident Senior Fellow, United States Study Centre, University of Sydney

At age 77, in his twilight years, the third time was the charm for Joe Biden.

He prevailed over a field of 24 Democrats from across the political spectrum and has emerged as his party’s nominee for president in a manner unthinkable in January: a united party, from left to right, across race and creed, age and ideology. He is the victor despite mediocre fundraising, no digital media traction, no base of wild enthusiasts. Voters had to consider his appeals before coming to understand and then accept that it was indeed Joe Biden, who failed in his bids for the White House in 1988 and 2008, who was the strongest Democrat to go up against Donald Trump and take him out.

Read more: Biden easily wins Super Tuesday after strong comeback in past few days

Biden’s essence is unchanged from that first race more than three decades ago. As Richard Ben Cramer reported in his legendary account of the 1988 campaign, What It Takes, Biden realised:

What Americans wanted from their government [was] just a helping hand, to make the fight for a better life for their kids, just a platform to stand on, so they could reach higher … That was his life: he was just a middle-class kid who’d got a little help along the way … and that was all he had to show. But that’s what connected him to the great body of voters in the country. That’s all he needed!

Fast-forward to Biden as vice president in the Obama administration. I captured his addresses to the Democrats in the House of Representatives. This is how I recorded two journal entries for my book (with co-author Bryan Marshall) The Committee, on Obama’s historic legislative agenda in Congress.

In 2010:

We have to help the middle class and working Americans – the people who sent us here.

In 2012:

It is absolutely clear that the decisions we made are working. And the public understands they are working […] The American people understand that the Republicans have rejected the notion of compromise. That’s not the way the American people want us to do business […] We can’t straighten them out, but the American people will in November […]

We will win based purely on the merits of our position. America is going to get an absolutely clear comparison this year. It’s a stark, stark, stark, contrast […] Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive.

This has been Biden’s whole life – connecting with the gut of middle America. His 2020 message is the same as he ran on in 1988. And the task is the same as when he was on the ticket with Obama in 2008: to ensure America recovers from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Biden was responsible for ensuring the delivery of the American Recovery Act – the first piece of major legislation enacted after Obama and Biden took office. Ultimately, it spurred a decade of economic growth and full employment. So Biden has been there and will work to do it again.

A vice president to pick

We know only that it will be a woman. The oped pages and social media are on overdrive on who is best. Two things are paramount to Biden, because he knows the job and he knows what has to work.

Especially given his age, it is imperative the vice president be fully qualified and capable to step in to serve as president on her first heartbeat after his last – and is seen as such by the American people. This is where Sarah Palin was such a failure for John McCain in 2008.

Other mediocrities, both callow (Dan Quayle under George H.W. Bush) and criminal (Spiro Agnew with Richard Nixon) served but did not ascend to the presidency. Others, starting with Walter Mondale under Jimmy Carter, and then Al Gore under Bill Clinton, and Dick Cheney under George W. Bush, became true partners in governance, with real power and responsibility, and remade the office. That is the Biden template.

Biden insisted on – and received from Obama – a promise that he would be the last person in the room with the president before major decisions were taken, so he could give the full benefit of his judgment – whether the president took it or not. (Obama did not take Biden’s advice on the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.)

Biden wants a vice president who can do the same with him. The virtues she would bring to the ticket, such as Amy Klobuchar’s ability to drive votes for Biden in the Midwest, and Kamala Harris, who can bring a surge of African American voters to the polls, are but the icing on the judgment Biden will make.

The second factor is chemistry: Biden has to feel with his selection the same intensity that marked Obama’s bond with him over their eight years together. So a woman who is absolutely qualified and star-studded won’t get it if Biden feels they cannot do great things together through shared conviction and trust.

Given the strike rate of vice presidents who have become president – five of the past 11 since 1952 – Biden’s choice will likely affect the future of the Democratic Party and the country for perhaps the next 12 years.

An election to win

Ask anyone in America who is politically attuned and they will tell you this is the most important election of their lifetimes. President Donald Trump has the bully pulpit of the White House where, as we have seen during the pandemic crisis, he can command the airwaves for hours every day to pound home his message. He has a TV network that has effectively become a state media channel. He has a Republican senate that will provide no check on his misbehaviour and no effort to protect the election against Russian interference or voter suppression.

Trump has 90% loyalty in the Republican Party. He has the power to declare national emergencies and launch military action to defend the United States. His campaign has a viciously effective social media war machine. He will conservatively outspend Biden by well over US$100 million. His base has not cracked – it is solid at 46% – after the pummelling Trump triggers from what he calls “fake news” and “the enemy of the people”, and after the disgrace of impeachment.

Trump’s avalanche of lies will continue unabated. He is the most shameless and relentless campaigner in modern American history. And if gets enough votes in the key states he won in 2016, he can be re-elected.

Read more: Donald Trump blames everyone but himself for the coronavirus crisis. Will voters agree?

Biden’s task is clear: to take back those traditionally Democratic states – Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin – that Trump won in 2016’s outburst of populist anger at the political establishment, which included Hillary Clinton. And he must withstand and neuter the unprecedented charges of conspiracy and corruption that Trump is unleashing with “Obamagate”.

As of now, Biden leads Trump nationally by three to nine points in the polls. He is leading in three key battleground states, including Florida, and has a chance to capture Arizona and North Carolina. Trump is targeting Minnesota, New Hampshire and New Mexico. The consensus today is if the election was held now, Biden would win.

November is increasingly becoming a referendum on Trump and his management of the pandemic, and whether voters, facing disastrous hardship (over 16 million Americans lost their health insurance when they lost their jobs), trust Trump to restore the economy.

Biden’s message is already clear: Trump’s failures to appreciate the pandemic and act to protect the American people unnecessarily cost tens of thousands of lives. Biden helped bring the nation back from the Great Recession in 2009 – and knows how to do it again in 2021.

A country to heal

Biden’s campaign launch video in April 2019 could not have been clearer:

I wrote at the time [of Nazis marching in Charlottesville in 2017] that we’re in the battle for the soul of this nation. Well, that’s even more true today. I believe history will look back on four years of this president and all he embraces as an aberrant moment in time. But if we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation — who we are — and I cannot stand by and watch that happen […] The core values of this nation, our standing in the world, our very democracy, everything that has made America America, is at stake. … Even more important, we have to remember who we are. This is America.

In the late stages of the primaries, the overwhelming sentiment of most Democrats was simple: get rid of Trump. As voters could see limits to the appeal of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, as Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg simply could not reach critical mass, they decisively concluded it was Biden that everyone knew and trusted to do the job and free the country of Trump.

Because first they want America healed, too.

– ref. Third time’s the charm for Joe Biden: now he has an election to win and a country to save – https://theconversation.com/third-times-the-charm-for-joe-biden-now-he-has-an-election-to-win-and-a-country-to-save-138616

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrea Gaynor, Associate Professor of History, University of Western Australia

The COVID-19 pandemic produced a run on the things people need to produce their own food at home, including vegetable seedlings, seeds and chooks.

This turn to self-provisioning was prompted in part by the high price rises for produce – including A$10 cauliflowers and broccoli for A$13 a kilo – and empty veggie shelves in some supermarkets.

As well as hitting the garden centres people looked online for information on growing food. Google searches for “how to grow vegetables” hit an all-time worldwide high in April. Hobart outfit Good Life Permaculture’s video on Crisis Gardening – Fresh Food Fast racked up over 80,000 views in a month. Facebook kitchen garden groups, such as Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation, sought to share information and inspiration.

The good life

Given the many benefits of productive gardening, this interest in increased self-sufficiency was an intelligent response to the pandemic situation.

Experienced gardeners can produce enough fruit and vegetables year-round to supply two people from a small suburban backyard.

Productive gardening improves health by providing contact with nature, physical activity and a healthier diet. Contact with good soil bacteria also has positive health effects.

Read more: Great time to try: starting a vegetable garden

While Australians have traditionally valued the feeling of independence imparted by a degree of self-sufficiency, psychological benefits arise from the social connectedness encouraged by many forms of productive gardening.

Amid COVID-19, gardeners gathered online and community gardens around the world brought people together through gardening and food. In some areas, community gardens were declared essential because of their contribution to food security. Although Australian community gardens paused their public programs, most remained open for gardening adhering to social distancing regulations.

We always dig deep in a crisis

Vegetable gardening and poultry-keeping often surge in popularity during times of social or economic insecurity, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

These responses are built on an established Australian tradition of home food production, something I have researched in depth.

Yet history tells us it’s not easy to rapidly increase self-provisioning in times of crisis – especially for those in greatest need, such as unemployed people.

This is another reason why you should plant a vegetable garden (or keep your current one going) even after the lockdown ends, as part of a broader suite of reforms needed to make our food systems more fair and resilient.

Read more: Can’t go outside? Even seeing nature on a screen can improve your mood

In the second world war, for example, Australian food and agricultural supply chains were disrupted. In 1942-3, as the theatres of war expanded and shortages loomed, the YWCA organised women into “garden armies” to grow vegetables and the federal government launched campaigns encouraging home food production.

Community-based food production expanded, but it was not possible for everyone, and obstacles emerged. In Australia, there were disruptions in the supply of seeds, fertiliser and even rubber for garden hoses. In London, resourceful gardeners scraped pigeon droppings from buildings to feed their victory gardens.

Another problem was the lack of gardening and poultry-keeping skills and knowledge. The Australian government’s efforts to provide good gardening advice were thwarted by local shortages and weather conditions. Their advertisements encouraging experienced gardeners to help neighbours may have been more effective.

Home food production has also increased during times of economic distress. During the Great Depression in the 1920s and 1930s, a health inspector in the inner suburbs of Melbourne reported, with satisfaction, that horse manure was no longer accumulating:

… being very much in demand by the many unemployed who now grow their own vegetables.

The high inflation and unemployment of the 1970s – as well as the oil shocks that saw steep increases in fuel prices – saw more people take up productive gardening as a low-cost recreation and buffer against high food prices.

The urge to grow your own in a crisis is a strong one, but better preparation is needed for it to be an equitable and effective response.

Beyond the pandemic

The empty shelves at nurseries and seed suppliers seen earlier this year tell us we were again insufficiently prepared to rapidly scale up productive home gardening.

We need to develop more robust local food systems, including opportunities for people to develop and share food production skills.

These could build on established programs, such as western Melbourne’s My Smart Garden. Particularly in built-up urban areas, provision of safe, accessible, free or low-cost gardening spaces would enable everyone to participate.

More city farms with livestock, large-scale composting and seed saving, can increase local supplies of garden inputs and buffer against external disruption.

Like other crises before it, COVID-19 has exposed vulnerabilities in the systems that supply most Australians with our basic needs. While we can’t grow toilet paper or hand sanitiser, there is a role for productive gardens and small-scale animal-keeping in making food systems resilient, sustainable and equitable.

Self-provisioning doesn’t replace the need for social welfare and wider food system reform. But it can provide a bit of insurance against crises, as well as many everyday benefits.

Read more: Supermarket shelves stripped bare? History can teach us to ‘make do’ with food

– ref. If you took to growing veggies in the coronavirus pandemic, then keep it up when lockdown ends – https://theconversation.com/if-you-took-to-growing-veggies-in-the-coronavirus-pandemic-then-keep-it-up-when-lockdown-ends-135359

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hussein Dia, Professor of Future Urban Mobility, Swinburne University of Technology

The coronavirus pandemic has affected our cities in profound ways. People adapted by teleworking, shopping locally and making only necessary trips. One of the many challenges of recovery will be to build on the momentum of the shift to more sustainable practices – and transport will be a particular challenge.

Read more: Transport is letting Australia down in the race to cut emissions

While restrictions are being eased, many measures in place today, including physical distancing and limits on group numbers, will remain for some time. As people try to avoid crowded spaces, public transport patronage will suffer. Thousands of journeys a day will need to be completed by other means.

If people switch from public transport to cars, road congestion will be even worse than before, emissions will soar, air quality will be poor and road safety will suffer.

Re-imagining our cities

Cities are repurposing streets to meet higher demands for walking and cycling.

But not everyone can walk or ride a scooter or bike to their destination. Public transport must remain at the heart of urban mobility.

We will have to rethink public transport design to enable physical distancing, even though it reduces capacities.

Public transport drivers need protection. Some responses such as boarding from back doors and sanitising rolling stock are needed but don’t reduce crowding. Crowding at platforms, bus and tram stops also has to be avoided.

Read more: To limit coronavirus risks on public transport, here’s what we can learn from efforts overseas

Crowding on public transport puts lives at risk. A recent study that looked at smartcard data for the Metro in Washington DC showed that, with the same passenger demand as before the pandemic, only three initially infected passengers will lead to 55% of the passenger population being infected within 20 days. This would have alarming consequences.

More measures are needed. There are things we need to stop doing or start doing, and others that need to happen sooner.

Increasing capacities by running more services, where possible, will help. Staggering work hours will reduce peak demand. Transport demand management must also aim to reduce overall need for travel by having people continue to work from home if they can.

Read more: If more of us work from home after coronavirus we’ll need to rethink city planning

Managing passenger flow and decreasing waiting times will also help avoid crowding. Passenger-counting technologies can be used to monitor passenger load restrictions, control flow and stagger ridership.

We need to start trying new solutions using smart technologies. Passengers could use apps that let them find out how crowded a service is before boarding, or to book a seat in advance.

Other solutions to trial include thermal imaging at train stations and bus depots to identify passengers with fever. There will be many technical and deployment challenges, but trials can identify issues and ease the transition.

We need to accelerate digitalisation and automation of public transport. This includes solutions for contactless operations, automated train doors and passenger safety across the whole journey.

Public transport also has to be expanded and diversified to be effective in dense areas and deliver social value to residents. In some areas, it may function as a demand-responsive service and be more agile in its ability to transport people safely and quickly.

Read more: 1 million rides and counting: on-demand services bring public transport to the suburbs

Improving resilience

The lessons we have learnt about adapting how we live and work should guide recovery efforts. The recovery must improve the resilience of public transport.

Infrastructure investments, which are crucial for rebuilding the economy, must target projects that protect against future threats. Public transport will need reliable financial investment to provide quality of service and revive passenger confidence.

Read more: For public transport to keep running, operators must find ways to outlast coronavirus

Importantly, the harm this pandemic is causing has not been equitable. The most vulnerable and the most disadvantaged have been hit hardest by both its health and economic impacts.

While many people are able to work from home, staying at home remains a luxury many others cannot afford. People who need to return to work must be able to rely on safe public transport.

Read more: Who’s most affected on public transport in the time of coronavirus?

Building on momentum

By the time the lockdown is over, many of our old habits will have changed. The notion that we need to leave home to work every day has been challenged. The new habits emerging today, if sustained, could help us solve tricky problems like traffic congestion and accessibility, which have challenged our cities for a long time.

If there’s one principle that should underpin recovery efforts, it should be to make choices today that in future we’d want us to have made. If driving becomes an established new habit, congestion will spike and persist, as will greenhouse gas emissions. Faced with these kinds of challenges, rash “business as usual” measures and behaviours will not protect us from this emergency or future crises.

Cities that seize this moment and boost investment in social infrastructure will enter the post-coronavirus world stronger, more equitable and more resilient.

Let us commit to shaping a recovery that rebuilds lives and promotes equality and sustainability. By building on sustainable practices and a momentum of behavioural change, we can avoid repeating the unsustainable mistakes of the past.

– ref. Coronavirus recovery: public transport is key to avoid repeating old and unsustainable mistakes – https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-recovery-public-transport-is-key-to-avoid-repeating-old-and-unsustainable-mistakes-138415

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shih-Wen Sue Chen, Senior Lecturer in Writing and Literature, Deakin University

With remarkable speed, numerous children’s books have been published in response to the COVID-19 global health crisis, teaching children about coronavirus and encouraging them to protect themselves and others.

Children’s literature has a long history of exploring difficult topics, with original fairy tales often including gruesome imagery to teach children how to behave. Little Red Riding Hood was eaten by the wolf in a warning to young ladies to be careful of men. Cinderella’s stepsisters had their eyes pecked out by birds as punishment for wickedness.

More recently, picture books have dealt with issues including September 11, the Holocaust, environmental issues and death.

But this wave of coronavirus books is unique, being produced during a crisis rather than in its aftermath.

Many have been written and illustrated in collaboration between public health organisations, doctors and storytellers, including Hi. This is Coronavirus and The Magic Cure both produced in Australia.

These books explore practical ways young children can avoid infection and transmission, and provide strategies parents can use to help children cope with anxiety. Some books feature adult role models, but the majority feature children as heroes.

The best of these books address children not just as people who might fall ill, but as active agents in the fight against COVID-19.

Our top picks

Coronavirus: A Book for Children

Written in consultation with an infectious diseases specialist and illustrated by Axel Scheffler of The Gruffalo, this nonfiction picture book offers children information about transmission, symptoms and the possibility of a cure, reassuring readers that doctors and scientists are working on developing a vaccine.

The last few pages answer the question “what can I do to help?”

Coronavirus: A Book for Children shows a diversity of characters taking action to manage the effects of the virus. Children are told to practice good hygiene, not to disturb their parents while they are working from home and keep up with their schoolwork.

It is also hopeful: reinforcing the idea that the combination of scientific research and practical action will lead to a point when “this strange time will be over”.

My Hero is You! How kids can fight COVID-19

Written and illustrated by Helen Patuck, My Hero is You! is an initiative of a global reference group on mental health, and is a great book for parents to read with their children.

Sara, daughter of a scientist, and Ario, an orange dragon, fly around the world to teach children about the coronavirus.

Ario teaches the children when they feel afraid or unsafe, they can try to imagine a safe place in their minds.

Based on a global survey of children and adults about how they were coping with COVID-19, My Hero is You! translates the results of this comprehensive survey into a reassuring story for kids experiencing fear and anxiety. It also acknowledges the global nature of the health crisis, showing children they are not alone.

The Princess in Black and the Case of the Coronavirus

The Princess in Black is an existing series, with seven books published since 2014 and over one million copies sold. In the books, Princess Magnolia enlists children to help with a problem she cannot defeat alone: here, of course, that problem is coronavirus.

For fans of the series, Magnolia and her pals are familiar characters encouraging readers to solve the problem of coronavirus by washing their hands, staying at home, and keeping their distance.

The Princess in Black shows a deft use of humour to introduce children to complex ideas in a familiar and friendly manner.

Little heroes

Children’s books have often sought to entertain and educate children at the same time. The immediacy of these books, with their practical solutions and strategies for children to manage fears and anxieties about sickness and isolation, is a phenomenon we haven’t seen before.

With free online distribution and simple messages, these books present children with individual actions that have both personal and collective benefits.

Importantly, the heroes identified in these stories include children themselves. Their fears are acknowledged, but at the same time they are told they can fight the virus successfully.

A frequently updated list of children’s books on the pandemic is available from the New York School Library System’s COVID-19 page.

– ref. P is for Pandemic: kids’ books about coronavirus – https://theconversation.com/p-is-for-pandemic-kids-books-about-coronavirus-138299

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

Scott Morrison says it is vital to get the Australian economy “out of ICU” and “off the medication” of government support “before it becomes too accustomed to it”.

In speech on his government’s plans to reset economic growth over the next three to five years, Morrison says, “We must enable our businesses to earn our way out of this crisis.

“That means focusing on the things that can make our businesses go faster.”

Part of the address, to the National Press Club, has been released ahead of its Tuesday delivery.

Morrison’s strong emphasis on business leading the recovery further sets up the contrast with Anthony Albanese, who has outlined an agenda placing much more stress on the role of government.

The Prime Minister outlines principles that will guide the pursuit of a “JobMaker plan for a new generation of economic success”.

This speech deals with skills and training – flagging extra federal resources would be available for a better system – and with industrial relations (although the IR section hasn’t been released). Morrison has previously flagged he would like a compact involving employers and unions to promote change.

Areas including tax reform, deregulation, energy and federation will be addressed later.

Morrison says the reset’s overwhelming priority “will be to win the battle for jobs”, with the October budget important in this.

He paints a dark background against which the budget will be framed, including “an historic deficit”, debt above 30% of GDP, unemployment about 10% and global trade expected to fall by up to a third.

Five principles will guide the JobMaker plan.

First, Australia will “remain an outward-looking, open and sovereign trading economy”, that won’t “retreat into the downward spiral of protectionism” – but also won’t trade away its values for short term gain.

The second principle “is caring for country, a principle that indigenous Australians have practiced for tens of thousands of years”.

This involves “responsible management and stewardship of what has been left to us to sustainably manage for current and future generations. We must not borrow from future generations what we cannot return to them.

“This is as much true for our environmental, cultural and natural resources as it for our economic and financial ones. Governments must live with their means, to not impose impossible debt burdens on future generations.”

The third principle is leveraging and building on strengths.

These include “an educated and highly-skilled workforce that supports not just a thriving and innovative services sector, but a modern and competitive advanced manufacturing sector.

“Resources and agricultural sectors that can both fuel and feed large global populations, including our own and support vibrant rural and regional communities. A financial system that has proved to be one of the most stable and resilient in the world.

“World leading scientists, medical specialists, researchers and technologists. An emerging space sector.”

Fourthly, “ we must always ensure that there is the opportunity in Australia for those who have a go, to get a go”.

Under this falls “access to essential services, incentive for effort and respect for the principles of mutual obligation. All translated into policies that seek not to punish those who have success, but devise ways for others to achieve it.”

And fifthly is “doing what makes the boat go faster”.

“To strengthen and grow our economy, the boats we need to go faster are the hundreds of thousands of small, medium and large businesses that make up our economy and create the value upon which everything else depends.”

To go faster, businesses need skilled labour, affordable and reliable energy, research and technology they can use, investment capital and finance, markets, and economic infrastructure.

Also relevant are the amount of government regulation they must comply with, and the level and efficiency of the taxes they have to pay, in particular whether these encourage them to invest and employ people.

Morrison says changing the skills and training system will be a priority, to better prepare people for the jobs businesses will create.

Present arrangements are too clunky and unresponsive, he says. Clear information is lacking about the skills needed now and in the future, so the right training and funding can be provided. There are inconsistencies and incoherence in the funding arrangements, with little accountability back to outcomes.

Changes are required to:

• better link funding to forward looking skills businesses need

• simplify the system, with greater consistency between jurisdictions and between VET and higher education

• increase the transparency of funding and the monitoring of performance

• better coordinate the subsidies, loans and other funding sources, to make the most of the support provided.

“Our national hospital agreement provides a good model for the changes we need to make. Incorporating national efficient pricing for training and activity based funding models would be a real step forward,” Morrison says.

“That is a system my government would be prepared to invest more in.”

– ref. Australian economy must come ‘out of ICU’: Scott Morrison – https://theconversation.com/australian-economy-must-come-out-of-icu-scott-morrison-139347

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

Speaker Tony Smith has announced July 4 for the byelection in the Labor NSW seat of Eden-Monaro, which will be the first electoral test between Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese.

For health reasons this will coincide with the start of schools holidays, usually not thought ideal timing for elections or byelections.

Smith said in a Monday statement: “In normal circumstances, the Australian Electoral Commission advises it is preferable not to have elections during school holidays. With the current challenges created by the coronavirus pandemic, the advice is different on this occasion.”

Smith said the AEC had consulted extensively, including with the NSW education department, because of the number of polling places which were at schools.

“As a result, the AEC has advised me it is preferable to have a polling date where students and staff do not return to school on the very next Monday. This will then enable a thorough sanitising clean after the completion of voting and counting at polling booths in NSW schools”.

Smith also said he was delaying issuing the writ until Thursday to give the AEC extra time, which will enable it to consult stakeholders about the byelection’s conduct during this time.

Both the ALP and the Liberal party are fielding women candidates with strong roots in the electorate. The Liberals have just endorsed Fiona Kotvojs, a small businesswoman and farmer, who ran Labor’s Mike Kelly very close at the last election. The seat is now on a margin of just under 1%, and has become vacant with the resignation of Kelly on health grounds.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese has already been campaigning extensively with Labor’s candidate Kristy McBain, who has stepped aside as mayor of Bega to contest the seat.

Both sides are putting jobs at the centre of their campaigns.

Morrison, appearing with Kotvojs on Sunday, said “job-making is honestly what this byelection is going to be about”.

The revelation that a wrong treasury forecast means JobKeeper will cost $60 billion less than the original $130 billion estimate has given Labor greater opportunity to campaign in the seat on that program, which it says should be broadened to a range of people now excluded. The government has rejected this.

The plight of the local tourist industry will also be a squeaky wheel in the campaign, as will bushfire recovery, with complaints about aid flowing too slowly. The royal commission into the fires is currently underway.

Labor will home in on climate change, in the context of the devastating summer experience.

Kotvojs went out of her way on Sunday “to make clear my position on climate change”.

“I believe that the climate is changing. I believe that humans contribute to that changing climate and I believe that we need to have a reduction in emissions, that we need to look at approaches to be adaptive and to have our communities resilient. … We’re on target to reducing emissions”.

Last year Kotvojs, who is a development specialist with experience working across the Pacific, wrote an article disputing that climate change was a threat to these countries with rising sea levels.

“The main cause of erosion on these islands is not sea level rise. Instead it is the construction of poorly designed boat ramps and boat channels, seawalls and reclamation works,” she wrote.

“The population of Tuvalu will be destroyed by diabetes long before the island is drowned by a rising sea level”.

– ref. Eden-Monaro byelection to be on July 4 – https://theconversation.com/eden-monaro-byelection-to-be-on-july-4-139324

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amy Dawel, Lecturer, Australian National University

Many Australians have welcomed the gradual easing of coronavirus restrictions. We can now catch up with friends and family in small numbers, and get out and about a little more than we’ve been able to for a couple of months.

All being well, restrictions will continue to be lifted in the weeks and months to come, allowing us slowly to return to some kind of “normal”.

This is good news for the economy and employment, and will hopefully help ease the high levels of distress and mental health problems our community has been experiencing during the pandemic.

For some people, however, the idea of reconnecting with the outside world may provoke other anxieties.

Read more: 7 ways to manage your #coronaphobia

Social distancing and mental health

We surveyed a representative sample of Australian adults at the end of March, about a week after restaurants and cafes first closed, and with gatherings restricted to two people.

Even at this early stage, it was clear levels of depression and anxiety were much higher than usual in the community.

Surprisingly, exposure to the coronavirus itself had minimal impact on people’s mental health. We found the social and financial disruption caused by the restrictions had a much more marked effect.

Read more: Not all doom and gloom: even in a pandemic, mixed emotions are more common than negative ones

Many people in our survey reported the restrictions also benefited them in some way. Around two-thirds of people listed at least one positive impact coronavirus has had on them, such as spending more time with family.

Another positive thing we’ve seen is communities coming together in new ways. For instance, teddy bears have appeared in windows for neighbourhood children to find, with We’re Going On a Bear Hunt Australia connecting more than 20,000 followers on Facebook.

More than half of our survey respondents were hopeful “society will have improved in one or more ways” after the pandemic.

Adjusting to the ‘new normal’

Our findings show adverse events can affect mental health and well-being in unanticipated and mixed ways.

Because we haven’t experienced anything like the coronavirus pandemic in recent history, we simply don’t know how our community will readjust as restrictions ease.

Some people may feel particularly anxious about reconnecting. For example, people with social anxiety might experience heightened anxiety about the prospect of socialising again.

One of the main evidence-based treatments for social anxiety is exposure therapy. When social exposure is reduced, as has been the case over the last couple of months, social anxiety may flare up, making returning to social gatherings particularly daunting.

Read more: Coronavirus is stressful. Here are some ways to cope with the anxiety

Meanwhile, people who fear germs, such as some people with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), might worry about re-entering public spaces.

Even people who don’t normally have these tendencies might share similar worries. Our survey found around half of Australians were at least moderately concerned about becoming infected with COVID-19.

People who experienced psychological conditions before the pandemic may be able to draw on skills they’ve learned through therapy to help them re-engage. But people without any prior experience of anxiety or depression could struggle more because they have never had to manage these conditions before.

Tips for people who are feeling anxious

Whether you have previously experienced anxiety or not, there are several strategies you can use to manage your worries around re-engaging.

One effective psychological approach to managing anxiety is cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).

CBT involves learning about how your thoughts affect your mood, and developing strategies to manage problematic thinking patterns. Importantly, CBT can be effectively delivered online.

CBT might also include developing a social or germ “exposure hierarchy”. For instance, working up from seeing a few people briefly to longer interactions, with more people. There are some critical ingredients that make exposure therapy work though, so it’s important to get advice from a psychologist or follow an evidence-based online program.

Mindfulness, regular exercise and getting enough sleep can also help manage anxiety.

If you or someone you know is feeling distressed, it may also be helpful to contact relevant support services in your area – many of which now have telehealth options.

These may include your GP or a psychologist, or community services like Lifeline, SANE Australia, or Beyond Blue.

Things are likely to change over time

The public health measures implemented to mitigate coronavirus risk have worked to stop the spread of the virus, but they’ve also disrupted the way we live.

There’s much speculation on what the future will look like, resulting in the “new normal” terminology. A key concern as we continue to navigate this new normal is our collective mental health.

Japan experienced a 20% decrease in suicides in April 2020 relative to April 2019. Yet predictive modelling raises concerns about suicide rates potentially rising after the pandemic recedes.

Read more: Is isolation a feeling?

But it’s important to remember no model can perfectly predict the complex impacts of this unprecedented pandemic.

We’ll need ongoing data collection to assess how community mental health is faring over the coming months. And we’ll need to use this data to implement evidence-based mental health strategies and policies as and when they’re needed.

– ref. Coronavirus lockdown made many of us anxious. But for some people, returning to ‘normal’ might be scarier – https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-lockdown-made-many-of-us-anxious-but-for-some-people-returning-to-normal-might-be-scarier-138517

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hui Feng, ARC Future Fellow and Senior Research Fellow, Griffith University

Beijing’s recent announcement it would authorise the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress – China’s rubber-stamp parliament – to draft a national security law for Hong Kong caught most off guard.

The move sparked renewed protests over the weekend, caused a landslide on the local stock market and elicited the expected global outrage.

Beijing’s decision to bypass the Hong Kong’s legislature and directly impose a national security law is widely seen as a violation of the joint treaty signed between China and the UK when Hong Kong was handed over in 1997.

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

It could jeopardise the rule of law and civil liberties currently enjoyed in the city, and ultimately, be the death knell for the “one country, two systems” framework that Beijing has touted to integrate Hong Kong into the mainland and compel Taiwan to move towards unification.

Now that Beijing has made its play, it’s up to the US and its allies to decide how to respond. And the situation could have more serious geopolitical consequences if neither side backs down.

What would the draft national security law do?

The Basic Law, Hong Kong’s mini-constitution that came into effect in 1997, calls for the local government to enact a national security law. But legislation to do this has been suspended since 2003 when a half million people took to the streets in protest.

The law, if formally adopted this week, would prohibit treason, secession, sedition, subversion and the theft of state secrets. And it would legitimise the presence of China’s state security apparatus in the city.

The timing of the move by the Chinese government appears to be opportunistic. It comes as the year-long pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong have waned due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Western countries, the traditional supporters of Hong Kong’s push for freedom, have been distracted by their own responses to the pandemic.

For Beijing, the move kills two birds with one stone. In the short term, it should help quell – through intimidation – the civil unrest that has been raging in the city for over a year.

More profoundly, in the longer term, it could be the decisive blow for rule of law in Hong Kong – and the city’s autonomy.

The costs for China could be massive

What should be noted here is the significance of Beijing’s top-down, unilateral approach. This is, indeed, an audacious move considering the potential costs down the road.

The announcement will certainly fuel a new wave of protests in Hong Kong, this time with much higher stakes. Though some in the pro-democracy movement have expressed feelings of hopelessness recently, thousands still took to the streets on Sunday, leading to clashes with police.

China risks a severe backlash in the international arena. The UK, Canada and Australia have issued a joint statement saying they were “deeply concerned” about the proposed legislation.

The United States has reacted more forcefully by “condemning” the move and urging “Beijing to reconsider its disastrous proposal”. President Donald Trump has threatened to respond “very strongly” if Beijing follows through with the new law.

One option for the US is to invoke the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which was passed by Congress last year amid the continuing Hong Kong protests.

This, however, would represent the “nuclear option” for the US. Under the act, the US could revoke Hong Kong’s preferential trading status if the city’s autonomous status within China is compromised. This means the same tariffs and export controls the US now imposes on China would extend to Hong Kong, putting at risk some US$67 billion in annual trade.

There is growing support in the US to apply sanctions to mainland Chinese officials behind the proposed security law.

The aim of this kind of response would be to hurt China by hurting Hong Kong. This comes at a time when Beijing needs Hong Kong, an international finance hub, to attract foreign investment as it deals with the ongoing trade war with the US and its post-pandemic economic recovery.

Read more: Behind China’s newly aggressive diplomacy: ‘wolf warriors’ ready to fight back

Beijing’s credibility could be severely damaged if it fails to honour its treaty obligations with regards to Hong Kong. This runs contrary to the image Beijing has been painstakingly building in recent years of a responsible great power and an emerging leader of the world.

Given the potential costs, it is all the more extraordinary that Beijing is taking this approach. What, then, could have driven such a move?

Beijing signals readiness for new cold war

For Beijing, this is a public acknowledgement of its inability to resolve the political unrest in Hong Kong without resorting to violence, and that the ongoing protests could ultimately undermine its own national security.

It is a sign that Beijing has lost patience with the “one country, two systems” approach to slowly incorporate Hong Kong into the fold and provide a road map for Taiwan’s eventual unification with the mainland.

As Taiwan has drifted further away from Beijing’s overtures in recent years, the Chinese government has felt less obliged to keep up the “one-country, two systems” window dressing in Hong Kong.

The strategy is no longer to win hearts and minds, but to impose fear.

Beijing is counting on Washington and its allies to come to the realisation that hurting Hong Kong would not be in their own economic interests and eventually back away from their threats to take action.

If anything, this is a dual crisis in the making. It is a constitutional crisis for Hong Kong that could irrevocably redefine the nature of its autonomy and rule of law in the city moving forward.

Read more: US-China relations were already heated. Then coronavirus threw fuel on the flames

It also has the potential to become a diplomatic crisis. There’s a chance Beijing may have miscalculated the situation and the US and its allies will retaliate with economic or other punishments.

The Chinese leadership is unlikely to back down and be seen as giving in to external pressures.

This puts China even more firmly on a collision course with the US and suggests the Chinese leadership is as determined as ever to fight a new cold war with its western adversaries.

And Hong Kong is in the middle, poised to become, as pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong, put it, “the new Berlin”.

– ref. China is taking a risk by getting tough on Hong Kong. Now, the US must decide how to respond – https://theconversation.com/china-is-taking-a-risk-by-getting-tough-on-hong-kong-now-the-us-must-decide-how-to-respond-139294

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ann Kayis-Kumar, Senior Lecturer and Tax Clinic Director, School of Taxation & Business Law, UNSW

Performers and sole traders find it hard to get JobKeeper in part because they are behind on their paperwork

Are sole traders falling through the JobKeeper cracks?

JobKeeper is working out awfully for performers.

Although the arts industry has been hit harder than any other apart from tourism according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, performers are finding it hard to get JobKeeper.

Read more: Coronavirus: 3 in 4 Australians employed in the creative and performing arts could lose their jobs

Many are sole traders, providing services engagement-by-engagement.

Sole traders are meant to have access to the $1,500 per fortnight payment if their turnover has fallen or is likely to fall 30% or more, assuming their turnover is less than $1 billion.

That many haven’t got it, may be in part because they are behind in their paperwork.

Behind on paperwork

Sole traders behind on their quarterly Business Activity Statements who seek help from the University of NSW Tax Clinic are on average seven years behind.

We’ve seen some up to 20 years behind (that is, up to 80 statements behind).

If a business is cash-strapped and the owner is struggling financially and psychologically struggling, a visit to a tax accountant tends not to be high priority, if indeed the business has the cash to pay the agent.

In practice, our clinic supervisors are seeing many financially vulnerable sole traders opt instead for the lower-paying JobSeeker.

It means many of the most financially-vulnerable small businesses are slipping through the cracks because they can’t afford an accountant.

Being behind on tax returns can prevent access to other Centrelink benefits including child support.

Behind means further behind

It puts people who were already in financial hardship at a further disadvantage, one that is set to grow.

By the end of the year, deferred mortgages, loans and rent payments will recommence. This will happen at the same time as JobKeeper and the JobSeeker Coronavirus Supplement run out (both of which can incur tax).

Many financially vulnerable people will have used up their superannuation savings to pay off things like credit card bills when they could have been eligible for hardship variations or waivers on those debts.

Read more: What’ll happen when the money’s snatched back? Our looming coronavirus support cliff

It builds a powerful case for providing good quality independent tax advice to those who are most likely to need it and can least afford it.

Free advice is the best way out

To its credit, the Commonwealth government funds a relatively new National Tax Clinic Program launched in 2019 following the successful prototype set up by Curtin University in 2018.

Operating out of ten universities, students studying tax-related courses assist qualified professionals in providing tax advice.

These clinics help address the tax advice gap between free tax help offered by the Australian Tax Office and independent advice normally only available for a fee – a gap that is likely to grow in the downturn ahead.

Read more: Coronavirus: Australian arts need a stimulus package. Here is what it should look like

One of the hopes for the program is that it will act as a bellwether for issues affecting often-marginalised and silent Australians, bringing their problems into the open and fuelling research.

Many also need financial counselling, and so the program has partnered with Financial Counselling Australia and the state financial counselling associations in Victoria, NSW, Queensland, South Australia, the Northern Territory and Western Australia.

For further details please see: Kayis-Kumar, Noone, Martin and Walpole, “Pro Bono Tax Clinics: An international comparison and framework for evidence-based evaluation” (2020) Australian Tax Review (forthcoming).

If you are in genuine financial hardship and need tax advice but cannot afford it, please contact: UNSW Tax Clinic: (02) 9385 8041, taxclinic@unsw.edu.au

– ref. Performers and sole traders find it hard to get JobKeeper in part because they get behind on their paperwork – https://theconversation.com/performers-and-sole-traders-find-it-hard-to-get-jobkeeper-in-part-because-they-get-behind-on-their-paperwork-137997

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eduardo Gallo-Cajiao, PhD Candidate, The University of Queensland

It is low tide at the end of the wet season in Broome, Western Australia. Shorebirds feeding voraciously on worms and clams suddenly get restless.

Chattering loudly they take flight, circling up over Roebuck Bay then heading off for their northern breeding grounds more than 10,000 km away. I marvel at the epic journey ahead, and wonder how these birds will fare.

In my former role as an assistant warden at the Broome Bird Observatory, I had the privilege of watching shorebirds, such as the bar-tailed godwit, set off on their annual migration.

I’m now a conservation researcher at the University of Queensland, focusing on birds. Populations of migratory shorebirds are in sharp decline, and some are threatened with extinction.

We know the destruction of coastal habitats for infrastructure development has taken a big toll on these amazing birds. But a study I conducted with a large international team, which has just been published, suggests hunting is also a likely key threat.

What are migratory shorebirds?

Worldwide, there are 139 migratory shorebird species. About 75 species breed at high latitudes across Asia, Europe, and North America then migrate south in a yearly cycle.

Some 61 migratory shorebird species occur in the Asia-Pacific, within the so-called East Asian-Australasian Flyway. This corridor includes 22 countries – from breeding grounds as far north as Alaska and Siberia to non-breeding grounds as far south as Tasmania and New Zealand. In between are counties in Asia’s east and southeast, such as South Korea and Vietnam.

The bar-tailed godwits I used to observe at Roebuck Bay breed in Russia’s Arctic circle. They’re among about 36 migratory shorebird species to visit Australia each year, amounting to more than two million birds.

They primarily arrive towards the end of the year in all states and territories – visiting coastal areas such as Moreton Bay in Queensland, Eighty Mile Beach in Western Australia, and Corner Inlet in Victoria.

Numbers of migratory shorebirds have been falling for many species in the flyway. The trends have been detected since the 1970s using citizen science data sets.

Read more: How weather radar can keep tabs on the elusive magpie goose

Five of the 61 migratory shorebird species in this flyway are globally threatened. Two travel to Australia: the great knot and far eastern curlew.

Threats to these birds are many. They include the loss of their critical habitats along their migration path, off-leash dogs disturbing them on Australian beaches, and climate change likely contracting their breeding grounds.

And what about hunting?

During their migration, shorebirds stop to rest and feed along a network of wetlands and mudflats. They appear predictably and in large numbers at certain sites, making them relatively easy targets for hunters.

Estimating the extent to which birds are hunted over large areas was like completing a giant jigsaw puzzle. We spent many months scouring the literature, obtaining data and reports from colleagues then carefully assembling the pieces.

We discovered that since the 1970s, three-quarters of all migratory shorebird species in the flyway have been hunted at some point. This includes almost all those visiting Australia and four of the five globally threatened species.

Some records relate to historical hunting that has since been banned. For example the Latham’s snipe, a shorebird that breeds in Japan, was legally hunted in Australia until the 1980s. All migratory shorebirds are now legally protected from hunting in Australia.

Read more: Bird-brained and brilliant: Australia’s avians are smarter than you think

We found evidence that hunting of migratory shorebirds has occurred in 14 countries, including New Zealand and Japan, with most recent records concentrated in southeast Asia, such as Indonesia, and the northern breeding grounds, such as the US.

For a further eight, such as Mongolia and South Korea, we could not determine whether hunting has ever occurred.

Our research suggests hunting has likely exceeded sustainable limits in some instances. Hunting has also been pervasive – spanning vast areas over many years and involving many species.

Looking ahead

The motivations of hunters vary across the flyway, according to needs, norms, and cultural traditions. For instance, Native Americans in Alaska hunt shorebirds as a food source after winter, and low-income people in Southeast Asia hunt and sell them.

National governments, supported by NGOs and researchers, must find the right balance between conservation and other needs, such as food security.

Efforts to address hunting are already underway. This includes mechanisms such as the United Nations Convention on Migratory Species and the East Asian-Australasian Flyway Partnership. Other efforts involve helping hunters find alternative livelihoods.

Our understanding of hunting as a potential threat is hindered by a lack of coordinated monitoring across the Asia-Pacific.

Additional surveys by BirdLife International, as well as university researchers, is underway in southeast Asia, China, and Russia. Improving hunting assessments, and coordination between them, is essential. Without it, we are acting in the dark.

The author would like to acknowledge the contributions of Professor Richard A. Fuller (University of Queensland), Professor Tiffany H. Morrison (James Cook University), Dr Bradley Woodworth (University of Queensland), Dr Taej Mundkur (Wetlands International), Dr Ding Li Yong (BirdLife International-Asia), and Professor James E.M. Watson (University of Queensland).

– ref. Be still, my beating wings: hunters kill migrating birds on their 10,000km journey to Australia – https://theconversation.com/be-still-my-beating-wings-hunters-kill-migrating-birds-on-their-10-000km-journey-to-australia-138382

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian R. Camilleri, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, University of Technology Sydney

The demand for online shopping has obviously increased since COVID-19 restrictions were put in place.

But less obvious are the subtle psychological drivers behind our collective online shopping splurge. In fact, online shopping can relieve stress, provide entertainment and offers the reduced “pain” of paying online.

In the last week of April, more than two million parcels a day were delivered across the Australia Post network. This is 90% more than the same time last year.

More recently, data based on a weekly sample (from May 11-17) of transactions revealed food delivery increased by 230%, furniture and office goods purchases rose 140% and alcohol and tobacco sales rose 45%.

Meanwhile, we’ve seen thousands of retail job losses, with Wesfarmers announcing plans on Friday to close up to 75 Target stores around the country, and Myer finally reopening stores after nearly two months of closure.

Why the shopping frenzy?

Online sales of many product categories have increased, including for food, winter clothes and toys. This isn’t surprising given people still need to eat, winter is coming and we’re bored at home.

But beyond the fact most people are spending more time at home, there are a range of psychological factors behind the online shopping upheaval.

Recent months have been stressful due to financial uncertainty, the inability to visit loved ones and changes to our daily routines.

Read more: Coronavirus could spark a revolution in working from home. Are we ready?

Shopping can be a way to cope with stress. In fact, higher levels of distress have been linked with higher purchase intentions. And this compulsion to buy is often part of an effort to reduce negative emotions.

In other words, shopping is an escape.

A 2013 study compared people living close to the Gaza-Israel border during a period of conflict with those from a central Israeli town that wasn’t under duress. The researchers found those living in the high-stress environment reported a higher degree of “materialism” and a desire to shop to relieve stress.

When mall trips aren’t an option

Indeed, in a time when typical forms of entertainment such as restaurants and cinemas are inaccessible, shopping becomes a form of entertainment. The act of shopping alone produces increased arousal, heightened involvement, perceived freedom, and fantasy fulfillment.

It seems the stress and boredom brought on by this pandemic has intensified our will to spend.

What’s more, psychology research has demonstrated humans’ inability to delay gratification.

We want things now. Even with stay-at-home orders, we still want new makeup, clothes, shoes, electronics and housewares.

Another pleasant aspect of online shopping is it avoids the typical “pain of paying” experienced during in-person transactions.

Most people don’t enjoy parting with their money. But research has shown the psychological pain produced from spending money depends on the transaction type. The more tangible the transaction, the stronger the pain.

Simply, paying for a product by physically giving cash hurts more than clicking a “buy now” button.

Read more: 90% out of work with one week’s notice. These 8 charts show the unemployment impacts of coronavirus in Australia

Clear browsing history

Interestingly, online shopping also allows high levels of anonymity. While you may have to enter your name, address and card details – no one can see you.

It’s easier to buy “embarrassing” products when no one is looking. Apart from lockdown restrictions making it more difficult to date, this may also help explain why sex toy sales have surged during the pandemic.

Sales of lingerie and other intimate apparel have also reportedly jumped 400%.

How have businesses responded?

With advertising spend down, businesses have responded in different ways to recent changes in online shopping.

Many are offering discounts to encourage spending. Last week’s Click Frenzy became a central hub for thousands of deals across dozens of retailers such as Telstra, Target and Dell.

Others have moved operations online for the first time. If you scroll through any major food delivery app, you’ll see offers from restaurants that previously specialised in dine-in services.

Meanwhile, existing meal delivery services such as HelloFresh and Lite n’ Easy are updating their methods to guarantee hygienic packing and transport.

Several small Australian businesses have also pivoted. Clarke Murphy Print responded to slowing print jobs by starting Build-a-Desks.

Even established brands are getting creative. For example, Burger King outlets in the US are offering free burgers to customers who use one of their billboards as a virtual backdrop during conference calls.

Don’t buy better, be better

Unfortunately, with the ease of online purchasing, and our increased motivation to give in to improve our mood or seek entertainment, many people are now at risk of overspending and landing in financial stress.

It’s important to control spending during this fraught time. Simple ways to do this include creating a budget, avoiding “buy now, pay later” schemes, recognising your spending “triggers” and planning ahead.

As isolation increases materialism, it’s also important to keep in touch with family and friends, whether that’s in person (if allowed in your area), via video calls or phone.

So the next time you’re thinking of pulling out your credit card, why not get Skype up on the screen and play a virtual game of Pictionary instead?

– ref. Can’t resist splurging on online shopping? Here’s why – https://theconversation.com/cant-resist-splurging-on-online-shopping-heres-why-138938

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian R. Camilleri, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, University of Technology Sydney

The demand for online shopping has obviously increased since COVID-19 restrictions were put in place.

But less obvious are the subtle psychological drivers behind our collective online shopping splurge. In fact, online shopping can relieve stress, provide entertainment and offers the reduced “pain” of paying online.

In the last week of April, more than two million parcels a day were delivered across the Australia Post network. This is 90% more than the same time last year.

More recently, data based on a weekly sample (from May 11-17) of transactions revealed food delivery increased by 230%, furniture and office goods purchases rose 140% and alcohol and tobacco sales rose 45%.

Meanwhile, we’ve seen thousands of retail job losses, with Wesfarmers announcing plans on Friday to close up to 75 Target stores around the country, and Myer finally reopening stores after nearly two months of closure.

Why the shopping frenzy?

Online sales of many product categories have increased, including for food, winter clothes and toys. This isn’t surprising given people still need to eat, winter is coming and we’re bored at home.

But beyond the fact most people are spending more time at home, there are a range of psychological factors behind the online shopping upheaval.

Recent months have been stressful due to financial uncertainty, the inability to visit loved ones and changes to our daily routines.

Read more: Coronavirus could spark a revolution in working from home. Are we ready?

Shopping can be a way to cope with stress. In fact, higher levels of distress have been linked with higher purchase intentions. And this compulsion to buy is often part of an effort to reduce negative emotions.

In other words, shopping is an escape.

A 2013 study compared people living close to the Gaza-Israel border during a period of conflict with those from a central Israeli town that wasn’t under duress. The researchers found those living in the high-stress environment reported a higher degree of “materialism” and a desire to shop to relieve stress.

When mall trips aren’t an option

Indeed, in a time when typical forms of entertainment such as restaurants and cinemas are inaccessible, shopping becomes a form of entertainment. The act of shopping alone produces increased arousal, heightened involvement, perceived freedom, and fantasy fulfillment.

It seems the stress and boredom brought on by this pandemic has intensified our will to spend.

What’s more, psychology research has demonstrated humans’ inability to delay gratification.

We want things now. Even with stay-at-home orders, we still want new makeup, clothes, shoes, electronics and housewares.

Another pleasant aspect of online shopping is it avoids the typical “pain of paying” experienced during in-person transactions.

Most people don’t enjoy parting with their money. But research has shown the psychological pain produced from spending money depends on the transaction type. The more tangible the transaction, the stronger the pain.

Simply, paying for a product by physically giving cash hurts more than clicking a “buy now” button.

Read more: 90% out of work with one week’s notice. These 8 charts show the unemployment impacts of coronavirus in Australia

Clear browsing history

Interestingly, online shopping also allows high levels of anonymity. While you may have to enter your name, address and card details – no one can see you.

It’s easier to buy “embarrassing” products when no one is looking. Apart from lockdown restrictions making it more difficult to date, this may also help explain why sex toy sales have surged during the pandemic.

Sales of lingerie and other intimate apparel have also reportedly jumped 400%.

How have businesses responded?

With advertising spend down, businesses have responded in different ways to recent changes in online shopping.

Many are offering discounts to encourage spending. Last week’s Click Frenzy became a central hub for thousands of deals across dozens of retailers such as Telstra, Target and Dell.

Others have moved operations online for the first time. If you scroll through any major food delivery app, you’ll see offers from restaurants that previously specialised in dine-in services.

Meanwhile, existing meal delivery services such as HelloFresh and Lite n’ Easy are updating their methods to guarantee hygienic packing and transport.

Several small Australian businesses have also pivoted. Clarke Murphy Print responded to slowing print jobs by starting Build-a-Desks.

Even established brands are getting creative. For example, Burger King outlets in the US are offering free burgers to customers who use one of their billboards as a virtual backdrop during conference calls.

Don’t buy better, be better

Unfortunately, with the ease of online purchasing, and our increased motivation to give in to improve our mood or seek entertainment, many people are now at risk of overspending and landing in financial stress.

It’s important to control spending during this fraught time. Simple ways to do this include creating a budget, avoiding “buy now, pay later” schemes, recognising your spending “triggers” and planning ahead.

As isolation increases materialism, it’s also important to keep in touch with family and friends, whether that’s in person (if allowed in your area), via video calls or phone.

So the next time you’re thinking of pulling out your credit card, why not get Skype up on the screen and play a virtual game of Pictionary instead?

– ref. Can’t resist splurging in online shopping? Here’s why – https://theconversation.com/cant-resist-splurging-in-online-shopping-heres-why-138938

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stan Grant, Vice Chancellors Chair Australian/Indigenous Belonging, Charles Sturt University

The Uluru Statement from the Heart offered a new compact with all Australians that would reset our national identity and enhance our political legitimacy. But its poetic vision and pragmatism proved its death knell.

Trying to reconcile two historically divergent if not hostile ideas – Indigenous sovereignty and the sovereignty of the Commonwealth – asked the nation to embark on a project of rehabilitation: “Voice, Treaty, Truth”.

Read more: Listening with ‘our ears and our eyes’: Ken Wyatt’s big promises on Indigenous affairs

The proposed constitutionally enshrined Voice to Parliament was rejected; treaty remains a dream, and the Australian people appear generally indifferent to historical introspection.

The Uluru Statement offered nation-building for a nation that seems content with itself.

It was an easy target for conservative politicians.

The great lie of the Turnbull government – that the Voice would be a “third chamber” of parliament – prevailed over Indigenous truth because to enough ears it sounded right.

The appearance of Indigenous people enjoying rights not shared by other Australians was cast as offensive to liberal principles. Indigenous advocates had no simple answer to the bumper-sticker slogan that they were putting race in the constitution.

They were left to try to convince Australians with complicated, long-winded arguments about the scientific fiction of race. The Voice would not be a veto; the “truth” would set us free.

The Uluru Statement was junked and Australians, hitherto generous to the idea of constitutional recognition, barely raised a whimper.

What should have been a high watermark of Australian liberalism became instead a victim of Australian liberalism.

It poses an existential question: can liberal democracy meet the demands of First Nations people?

For classical liberals the answer is no, if it means privileging group rights over the individual.

Some Indigenous people reject liberalism itself as an inherently and irredeemably racist colonial project.

They adopt an ethical stance of “refusal”, citing Canadian First Nations scholar Glen Coulthard, who argues that the liberal form of political recognition reproduces:

the very configurations of colonialist, racist, patriarchal, state power that Indigenous people […] have historically sought to transcend.

Indigenous liberals are in a bind: caught between other Indigenous people who share their struggle and liberals with whom they seek to find common cause.

Can we untie this Gordian knot? Political philosopher Duncan Ivison believes so.

The Uluru Statement, he argues, presented an opportunity for “a refounding of Australia”.

It was an invitation to re-imagine Australian liberalism around what the profoundly influential American political thinker John Rawls called “reasonable pluralism”.

Can a liberal state negotiate unavoidable deep moral and political disagreements without fracturing civic unity?

Take the issues of rights and history: the Scylla and Charybdis of Australian politics.

Navigating the straits between them is treacherous, invariably triggering culture wars over who owns the truth.

Ivison says if Indigenous people are to accept the legitimacy of the state, then the most important shift liberalism can make is to “embrace a more historically informed approach to justice”.

Yet liberalism is a progressive idea that seeks to transcend history.

Political scientist Francis Fukuyama went as far as to declare the Cold War triumph of liberal democracy over Soviet communism the “end of history”.

There is a persuasive imperative of “forgetting”: to “move on” to build a peacefully reconciled nation, free of historical grudges.

Australians may be interested in learning more about our past, but that stops short of national catharsis.

Australians generally don’t think history is a debt to be repaid. Liberalism looks forward, not back.

Symbolic acts of reconciliation – the Stolen Generations apology – are okay, but separate rights not so much.

Read more: Constitutional recognition for Indigenous Australians must involve structural change, not mere symbolism

Any full consideration of rights is beyond this article, cutting across issues like recognition, identity and political power.

The pertinent tension here is between group rights or individual rights.

Ivison concedes it is a tight fit.

It is not beyond the scope of liberal democracies to embrace group rights.

Ivison’s native Canada incorporates what’s been called “a doctrine of Aboriginal rights”: not so Australia.

Even Native Title – a group right – was a legislative response to rein in the scope of the historic Mabo High Court decision amid concerns among pastoralists and miners, and a scare campaign that Australians could lose their backyards.

Indigenous rights challenge the Australian identity as egalitarian, multicultural, and tolerant: the fair go does not mean a better go.

Australians can support assimilationist projects of equality as they did overwhelmingly in the 1967 referendum when they were told Aborigines “want to be Australians too”.

However, mischievous politicians miscast the Indigenous Constitutional Voice as quasi-separatism. The inference was it was not just illiberal, but un-Australian.

To change Australia, Australians must want to change.

Consistent polling shows healthy support for the concept of constitutional recognition, but history reminds us how goodwill can dissolve against a fear campaign.

Ivison and other like-minded liberals make a heroic attempt to renovate Australian liberalism, but the people seem content with the liberalism they have.

To paraphrase Bertolt Brecht: what do you want to do, elect a new people?

Like Ivison, I believe liberalism is an idea worth preserving.

The Uluru Statement was a clarion call for all Australians to walk together for a better future.

To find our way, we may first have to lift some of the blindfolds of our liberalism.

– ref. Three years on from Uluru, we must lift the blindfolds of liberalism to make progress – https://theconversation.com/three-years-on-from-uluru-we-must-lift-the-blindfolds-of-liberalism-to-make-progress-138930

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Greg Moran, Senior Associate, Grattan Institute

Bullet trains are back on the political agenda. As the major parties look for ways to stimulate the economy after the COVID-19 crisis, Labor is again spruiking its vision of linking Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane with high-speed trains similar to the Eurostar, France’s TGV or Japan’s Shinkansen.

In 2013 when Labor was last in government, it released a detailed feasibility study of its plan. But a Grattan Institute report released today shows bullet trains are not a good idea for Australia. Among other shortcomings, we found an east coast bullet train would not be the climate saver many think it would be.

The logic seems simple enough

Building a bullet train to put a dent in our greenhouse gas emissions has been long touted. The logic seems simple – we can take a lot of planes and their carbon pollution out of the sky if we give people another way to get between our largest cities in just a few hours or less.

And this is all quite true, as the chart below shows. We estimate a bullet train’s emissions per passenger-kilometre on a trip from Melbourne to Sydney would be about one-third of those of a plane. We calculated this using average fuel consumption estimates from 2018 for various types of transport, as well as the average emissions intensity of electricity generated in Australia in 2018.

Read more: Coronavirus is a ‘sliding doors’ moment. What we do now could change Earth’s trajectory

If we use the projected emissions intensity of electricity in 2035 – the first year trains were expected to run under Labor’s original plan – the fraction drops to less than one-fifth of a plane’s emissions in 2018.

It should be remembered that while coaches might be the most climate-friendly way to travel long distances, they can’t compete with bullet trains or planes for speed.

There’s a catch

So, where’s the problem? It lies in construction. A bullet train along Australia’s east coast would take about 15 years of planning, then would be built in sections over about 30 years. This construction would generate huge emissions.

In particular, vast emissions would be released in the production of steel and concrete required to build a train line from Melbourne to Brisbane. These so-called “scope 3” emissions can account for 50-80% of total construction emissions.

Read more: Look beyond a silver bullet train for stimulus

Scope 3 emissions are sometimes not counted when assessing the emissions impact of a project, but they should be. There’s no guarantee the quantities of concrete and steel in question would have been produced and used elsewhere if not for the bullet train.

And the long construction time means it would be many years before the train actually starts to take planes out of the sky. This, combined with construction emissions, means a bullet train would be very slow to reduce emissions. In fact, we found it would first increase emissions for many years.

Slow emissions benefit

As the chart below shows, we estimate building the bullet train could lead to emissions being higher than they otherwise would’ve been for between 24 and 36 years.

This period would start at year 15 of the project, when planning ends and construction starts. At the earliest, it would end at year 39. This is the point at which some sections of the project would be complete, and at which enough trips have been taken (and enough plane or car trips foregone) that avoided emissions overtake emissions created.

This means the train might not actually create a net reduction in emissions until almost 40 years after the government commits to building it – and even this is under a generously low estimate of scope 3 emissions. If scope 3 emissions are on the high side, emission reductions may not start until just after the 50-year mark – 36 years after construction began.

The bullet train would create a net reduction in emissions from the 40- or 50-year mark onwards. But the initial timelines matter.

The world needs to achieve net zero emissions by about 2050 if we’re to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. All Australian states and territories have made this their goal. Unfortunately, a bullet train will not help us achieve it.

The way forward

Hitting the 2050 net-zero emissions target implicit in the Paris Agreement remains a daunting but achievable task. Decarbonising transport will play a big part, including the particularly tricky question of reducing aviation emissions.

But during the most crucial time for action on emissions reduction, a bullet train will not help. Our efforts and focus ought to be directed elsewhere.

Milan Marcus assisted in the preparation of this piece.

Read more: Delays at Canberra: why Australia should have built fast rail decades ago

– ref. High-speed rail on Australia’s east coast would increase emissions for up to 36 years – https://theconversation.com/high-speed-rail-on-australias-east-coast-would-increase-emissions-for-up-to-36-years-138655

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Karen Hands, Lecturer – Creative Industries, University of the Sunshine Coast

The arts and culture sector has had its share of trouncing in recent years: funding dropped 4.9% in the decade 2007-2008 to 2017-2018, promised arts policy was short-lived, or not realised at all, then the erasure of “arts” from the overseeing government department’s title was perceived as reducing the public status of the sector.

In March, 65 organisations lost their Australia Council funding and then COVID-19 and social isolation saw performing arts venues among the first businesses to close. They will likely be the last to open.

Yet funding shortfalls and lack of understanding about the role of the arts in public life are not new. These problems are embedded in the 66-year history of contemporary Australian arts funding. The current crisis provides an opportunity to examine the model.

Temporary support

To offset the devastating financial consequences of social restrictions, funds have been set aside by state and Northern Territory governments. Combined with $5 million of redirected funds from the Australia Council, this represents $45 million allocated to assist the arts sector through the pandemic shutdown. But these funds won’t remedy the financial woes of the sector.

Contemporary funding of the Australian arts sector began in 1954 through the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust (“the Trust”). The concept is founded on principles of Keynesian economics – conceived by British economist John Maynard Keynes – whereby market demand and stable employment is supported by a public agency at arm’s length to government.

The belief is that public goods make life better, and by doing so, contribute to the potential output of the economy. The Trust disbursed funds to the performing arts, which – by bringing audiences together for shared experiences – were well placed to achieve morale-boosting, character-forming productions after the second world war.

By 1955 the Trust had refurbished the old Majestic Theatre at Newtown and renamed it The Elizabethan. It opened with Terence Rattigan’s The Sleeping Prince and the Trust’s Australian Drama Company produced Medea in September. In 1956, Ray Lawler’s Summer of the Seventeenth Doll was the Trust’s first commercially successful Australian play. The Australian Ballet, Opera Australia, National Institute of Dramatic Arts, Performing Lines and The Bell Shakesepeare Company were all established with support from the Trust.

Keynesian economics, however, advocates for short-term support while the free market takes over. This temporary nature of the Trust’s support was made explicit in an article written by H.C. “Nugget” Coombs, founding chair of the Trust, which was published in a 1954 issue of Meanjin.

“The ultimate aim of the Trust must be to establish a native drama, opera and ballet which will give professional employment to Australian actors, singers and dancers and furnish opportunities for those such as writers, composers and artists whose creative work is related to the theatre,” Coombs wrote, hoping to help artists “come to flower, when many of them now are mute and inglorious from lack of opportunity”.

Coombs wrote it was “not the intention of the Trust to build theatres or provide permanent subsidies”. Companies supported by the Trust were selected on their capacity to be self-supporting in time.

The Trust was originally intended to establish the sector, not sustain it. So why has public funding continued?

A costly pursuit

Since the Trust, there have been several attempts to transition the arts sector to a more self-sustainable financial position. The creative industries, advocated in former prime minister Paul Keating’s 1994 Creative Nation policy, were one attempt that promoted commercialisation and exploitation of artistic product in exchange for income.

But the free market is a poor fit for a sector whose capacity for income is limited by a “cost disease” identified by economists William Baumol and William Bowen in 1965.

This theory recognises the cost of labour increases with time (thanks to technology and productivity gains), but this doesn’t necessarily correlate to an increase in income for live work such as concert performances, doctor examinations, university lectures, soccer matches and oil changes.

In other words, there is no economy of scale in producing the arts: the cost of presenting the arts to 10 paying audience members is typically the same as the cost of presenting the arts to 1000 paying audience members.

This sees pricing in the arts become a critical dilemma: ticket prices can’t increase to cover rising labour costs because audiences won’t buy them; nor can ticket prices be determined by the market (like petrol prices), as this would result in unsustainable losses.

Similarly, programming “popular” work in the hope that more people buy tickets ignores the social responsibility of the arts to challenge audiences, expand its form, and provide the public good.

So, the arts still need support

These complexities are restrictive and mean public funding will be an ongoing necessity. While the Trust was not successful in achieving a financially self-sustaining sector, it did establish the infrastructure and opportunities to foster a vibrant, productive arts community.

But there is room to review how the arts are funded and our expectations of them to thrive. The architecture of the sector was borne as the nation emerged from the global crises of WWII. As we emerge again from another crisis, it is an opportune time to rethink the value of the arts, and how we speak about their financial and artistic success.

In a post-pandemic world, we will need the promise of shared experiences more than ever.

– ref. The problem with arts funding in Australia goes right back to its inception – https://theconversation.com/the-problem-with-arts-funding-in-australia-goes-right-back-to-its-inception-138834

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Matthews, Senior Lecturer in Urban and Environmental Planning, Griffith University

Is it time to re-imagine our fundamental relationship with cities?

People bring cities to life. They interact, work, socialise and travel. Without this, cities are just collections of buildings and infrastructure.

This relationship is now on hiatus all over the world. The COVID-19 pandemic left thousands of cities empty, eerie and listless.

Read more: Public spaces bind cities together. What happens when coronavirus forces us apart?

We connect to cities by developing a “sense of place”. The concept describes how we perceive and attach to places through use. Our connection with cities changes over time but is always grounded in sense of place.

COVID-19 is fundamentally disrupting sense of place. It is causing transformative change in cities all over the world. Daily parts of city life, like shared seating, busy trains and eating out, have suddenly become threatening.

Many urban dwellers are redefining their sense of place in response. We may not view our cities the same way after this pandemic. Our perceptions and priorities may change, perhaps permanently.

As we start planning for cities after this pandemic, we should recognise this task is as much philosophical as practical.

Read more: Reconnecting after coronavirus – 4 key ways cities can counter anxiety and loneliness

Transforming the present

It is useful to consider what exactly the COVID-19 pandemic represents for cities and why it can change people’s sense of place so profoundly.

The pandemic impacts are so severe it can be classified as a “transformative stressor”. These rare events cause severe and intense social, environmental and economic impacts. They are felt at every level of society and throughout social institutions.

Profound shocks are felt all at once in economic activity, human health and social order. Impacts occur at all scales. Almost everybody endures multiple forms of disruption.

Transformative stressors can be unforgiving in exposing problems and weaknesses in systems. They can be catastrophic in cities because so many systems are integrated, creating multiple points of impact.

COVID-19 also fits the transformative stressor model because it might not be possible to fully manage it. Recovery planning needs to account for the possibility COVID-19 might never disappear. It could become an ongoing risk of city life.

What was a distant worry becomes an immediate threat when a transformative stressor hits a city. Things that were once reliable and comfortable no longer are. Our behaviour changes in response, causing us to reconsider our sense of place over time.

Read more: Cities will endure, but urban design must adapt to coronavirus risks and fears

Co-creating the future

The transformative impacts of this pandemic are upending established norms. But policy innovation can flourish at times like this. Transformative stressors give policymakers unique opportunities to work outside their normal methods.

People have stoically endured lockdowns in many countries. Working from home with limited mobility will further prompt many to re-evaluate their sense of place. Many people will want a big say in the fundamental decisions to be made on the future of their cities after this.

Read more: If more of us work from home after coronavirus we’ll need to rethink city planning

As they seek innovative ways to help cities recover, planners can learn important lessons by consulting urban residents. Online co-creation processes and workshops are excellent tools for gathering the people’s thoughts and aspirations at this unique time.

Participating in workshops can also help residents redefine their sense of place in cities disrupted by COVID-19. They can describe how the crisis changed their perceptions and use of space. This allows them to redefine their sense of place by considering the future with full acknowledgement of the past.

Residents are engaging more closely with their own neighbourhoods at the moment. This allows them to reconsider their local sense of place. New trends will be revealed through engagement with the public, reflecting changes in their sense of place.

At minimum, there is likely to be more community interest in improving active transport options. Many people have been reminded of the pleasures of walking and cycling. Other new priorities may be more green space and better social infrastructure.

Read more: Coronavirus reminds us how liveable neighbourhoods matter for our well-being

On the other hand, enthusiasm for public transport might fall and car ownership rates could rise.

The road ahead

The transformative impacts of this pandemic prompt fundamental questions. Do people have the same enthusiasm for city living? Is it time for new urban realities? What would new realities look like? How would they be achieved?

These are extraordinary times that call for extraordinary responses. It is not a time for planners and policymakers to plan for people; it is a time to plan with people.

Many innovations in urban planning are founded in efforts to improve human health. COVID-19 will undoubtedly prompt a new round of thinking about how cities can be re-imagined. It will be a big adjustment for urban planning, which has traditionally relied on the relative predictability of how people use space.

People’s perception and attachment to places is changing, perhaps forever. Decisions on where to go from here will be better made if planners understand how people are redefining their sense of place in this time of profound upheaval.

Read more: Reclaiming the streets? We all can have a say in the ‘new normal’ after coronavirus

– ref. Coronavirus has changed our sense of place, so together we must re-imagine our cities – https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-has-changed-our-sense-of-place-so-together-we-must-re-imagine-our-cities-137789

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Walker, Adjunct Professor, School of Communications, La Trobe University

In September 2005, before an audience of some of the most powerful business figures in the United States, then US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick unveiled his “responsible stakeholder” formula for China’s global engagement.

China is big and growing… For the United States and the world the essential question is how will China use its influence… We need to urge China to become a responsible stakeholder in that system.

This is how the China as a “responsible stakeholder” template for the West’s conduct of relations with an emerging power was born. It was not a superpower at that stage, but a rising one.

Later in that same speech, Zoellick added:

Many Americans worry that the Chinese dragon will prove to be a fire breather. There is a cauldron of anxiety about China.

If there was a “cauldron of anxiety” then, it is “cauldron of paranoia” now as the US slips towards a new Cold War.

It’s not there yet, but the possibility of a permafrost can’t be discounted. This would include a decoupling of the US and Chinese economies and a deepening technology war in which competing technologies would seek to get the upper hand inside and outside cyberspace. It would also include an all-out arms race.

Rising tensions

Washington’s campaign to deprive China’s telecommunications giant Huawei from access to US-designed microchips for its artificial intelligence processors, mobile phones and networking capabilities is aimed squarely at denying the Chinese company a technological edge.

The Huawei decision is one of several designed to squeeze Chinese access to US technology, and in the process disrupt global supply chains.

China regards the US campaign against Huawei as highly provocative, if not war by another means.

These are sobering moments as the world contemplates getting dragged into a “cauldron” of superpower tension not witnessed since the 1950s.

Read more: Australia has dug itself into a hole in its relationship with China. It’s time to find a way out

Middle-sized players like Australia risk getting trampled. Prime Minister Scott Morrison is discovering to the cost of his country’s agriculture and mining sectors that it is better to stay out of the way of bull elephants in a global jungle. His ill-advised solo intervention in calls for an independent inquiry into a pandemic has backfired as China picks off vulnerable Australian exports for reprisals.

An American “cauldron of anxiety” has spilled over.

The US problem

I was in that New York City hotel ballroom for the Zoellick speech as North American correspondent for The Australian Financial Review. I had no doubt it was a significant moment in America’s attempts to address an emerging challenge from an economically resurgent China, but this challenge needed to be kept in proportion.

Bear in mind China’s president at the time was the cautious bureaucrat, Hu Jintao. The country had not yet left behind paramount leader Deng Xiaoping’s advice to colleagues that when it came to demonstrating China’s newfound might, it was better to “hide your capabilities, bide your time”.

It was seven years before the “China first” Xi Jinping became China’s most powerful leader since Deng, and possibly since Mao Zedong himself.

Zoellick’s speech was delivered more than a decade before a New York property developer named Donald Trump became an “America first” president ill-equipped to deal with complexities involved in managing a relationship with a surging China.

Trump’s mixture of bombast, bellicosity, prejudice, impulsiveness, and apparent lack of a sense of history makes him particularly ill-suited to cope with the world’s biggest foreign policy challenge since the second world war.

That includes the Cold War with the former Soviet Union. That conflict could be managed by a policy of containment and mutually assured destruction.

At a time when the western alliance cries out for leadership, America is consumed, even torn apart, by internal divisions. Those divisions are likely to be rubbed raw in this year’s presidential election, in which China will be the focus of the sort of fearmongering that characterised American internal debates about the Soviet Union in the 1950s.

Trump’s contribution to that debate in the midst of a pandemic may not be surprising given his intemperate use of language generally, but in the circumstances it was shocking nevertheless.

This is what he tweeted on May 20:

Let that sink in. The latest occupant of the Oval Office, successor to some of the great figures of world history, has accused China of being responsible for “mass worldwide killing”.

China’s mishandling of the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic deserve investigation and censure, but Trump himself bears responsibility for his own “incompetence” and that of his administration in managing America’s response to the crisis.

In its early stages he declared the virus would simply vanish. He used the word “hoax”, allegedly cooked up by his political enemies, to dismiss the contagion. As a consequence valuable time was lost in responding.

America now has the worst record globally in dealing with the pandemic. Things being equal this will constitute a significant drag on Trump’s re-election prospects, hence his flailing about in search for scapegoats.

Leaving aside American domestic politics – the Democrats will not want to be accused of being soft on China in a presidential election cycle – the much bigger question is the extent to which the pandemic will disrupt, even overturn, a globalising world.

A new, shaky world order

The journal Foreign Policy has made a useful contribution to the debate in its latest issue – The Great Decoupling – in which it seeks to frame what is happening now historically. History is not kind to a process in which states decouple, pull up the drawbridges, roll back trade and investment ties and, in the United Kingdom’s case, depart a trading bloc that had served it well.

America is far from the only nation state succumbing to the forces of nationalism and populism. It is a worrying trend for open-market trading countries like Australia, dependent on increasing economic integration.

This is how Foreign Policy framed issues involved in what it perceives to be a disrupted moment in history in which a status quo power is being obliged to confront the reality of challenges to its brief moment as a hyperpower following the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The threat of the great decoupling is a potentially historic break, an interruption perhaps only comparable to the sundering of the first huge wave of globalization in 1914, when deeply intertwined economies such as Britain and Germany, and later the United States, threw themselves into a barrage of self-destruction and economic nationalism that didn’t stop for 30 years. This time, though, decoupling is driven not by war but peacetime populist urges, exacerbated by a global coronavirus pandemic that has shaken decades of faith in the wisdom of international supply chains and the virtues of the global economy.

Read more: US-China relations were already heated. Then coronavirus threw fuel on the flames

This scenario might be regarded as alarmist, even implausible, given difficulties that would arise in dismantling a highly integrated global economy. However, if a pandemic and response to it are a guide against the background of growing tensions between the US and China, the implausible becomes possible.

In the past week, Trump has opined about “cutting off the whole relationship” with China. He has also speculated about not repaying US$1 trillion in debt to China.

These are ridiculous statements, but the fact an American president in an election year could say such things is indicative of the sort of atmosphere that prevails in a country where a populist leader has been wounded by his own ineptitude.

However, if the 2016 US presidential election demonstrated anything, it was that a significant proportion of the American electorate will embrace an “America First” mindset that is antagonistic to the outside world.

Nationalistic Sinophobes on Trump’s immediate staff feed his populist impulses and his anti-China rhetoric at the risk of deepening a global recession or even depression.

If we have another pandemic, or environmental issues, or financial sector issues, or Iran, or North Korea, how effective are you going to be if you don’t have a working relationship with China?

It’s a good question.

– ref. Beware the ‘cauldron of paranoia’ as China and the US slide towards a new kind of cold war – https://theconversation.com/beware-the-cauldron-of-paranoia-as-china-and-the-us-slide-towards-a-new-kind-of-cold-war-139023