Last week the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, comprised of the world’s most esteemed climate experts, delivered its sixth report and “final warning” about the climate crisis. It outlined several mental health challenges associated with increasing temperatures, trauma from extreme events, and loss of livelihoods and culture.
The report followed news that the jail sentence for a climate protester who blocked the Sydney Harbour Bridge had been quashed by a judge, who noted she’d been diagnosed with climate anxiety.
But what is “climate anxiety”? Is it a normal emotional response to a real and imminent threat? Or is it a condition that could require clinical treatment?
As people become increasingly affected by climate-related events, many may find themselves feeling anxious, angry and sad about the state of the planet.
“Climate anxiety” describes a sense of panic, worry and fear towards the consequences and uncertainty brought by climate change. The term “climate anxiety” is sometimes used interchangeably with “eco-anxiety”, which some health professionals and researchers refer to as anxiety felt about wider ecological issues. Researchers suggest climate anxiety can be shaped by our environments. For example, the type of media we see about climate change, how the people around us feel, or how our communities and governments are responding.
Research shows climate anxiety is felt around the world, especially among young people.
However, climate anxiety is not officially recognised as a condition or a mental health disorder in the diagnostic manuals relied upon by psychologists, psychiatrists and other health professionals. In fact, many researchers and health professionals warn against medicalising this understandable and expected response.
We know anxiety is an in-built natural reaction when we feel in danger. Such feelings prompt us to prepare for and reduce threats to our wellbeing and safety.
For example, anxiety might help us when we encounter an animal in the wild, but it can also help us prepare for a difficult exam.
The findings of the latest climate report indicate humans have a lot to prepare for and act on, if we are to reduce the threats of climate change. To some extent, humans need to experience some levels of climate anxiety in order to prompt the changes that we need for a sustainable future.
But anxiety can become overwhelming and appropriately diagnosed as a clinical anxiety disorder. In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders (DSM-5), anxiety disorders are marked by anxiety that is persistent, excessive and usually out of proportion to the threat.
Research shows climate anxiety can affect people’s ability to go to work or study, concentrate, sleep, or even enjoy time with their friends and family.
The challenge for health professionals is whether climate anxiety can be deemed persistent or excessive, given the nature of climate change. Whether or not climate anxiety is currently seen as a clinical diagnosis, there is a clear need to support the people that experience it.
While climate anxiety can have a negative impact on mental wellbeing, research findings from 32 countries have shown that some people may be channelling their climate anxiety in ways to help the environment, such as through pro-environmental behaviours and environmental activism, such as climate protests.
Australian data shows experiencing “eco-anger” – which refers to anger or frustration about ecological issues – leads to better mental health outcomes and is a key adaptive emotional driver of engagement with the climate crisis.
But more intense experiences of frustration and anger in relation to climate change are associated with greater attempts to take personal actions to address the issue. This suggests getting angry may help prompt some people to do something about climate change.
Collective action may well channel worries in a positive direction. Shutterstock
In the absence of official diagnoses or recognised treatments, collective action against climate change may therefore be an effective solution to climate anxiety.
And there are other things people can do to manage climate anxiety. While further research is needed to find the most effective strategies for climate anxiety, health professionals suggest:
spending time in nature
learning ways to ground yourself during distressing emotions
seeking support
taking breaks to prevent burnout
taking small everyday actions for self-care.
Small actions to help the planet might also help foster feelings of agency and wellbeing.
When climate anxiety veers into overwhelming or unhelpful territory, seeking support from a “climate-aware” health professional can be an important step to take.
If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.
Fiona Charlson receives funding from the Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research, Queensland Health.
Tara Crandon receives funding from the Child and Youth Mental Health group at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute.
The recent ABC mini-series, In Our Blood, offers a fictionalised account of Australia’s response to AIDS, focusing on the development of a partnership between impacted communities, health professionals and government.
Lesbians are placed at the centre of this narrative, but more needs to be done to ensure these representations capture the complex histories of AIDS information activism in Australia.
The series features two lesbian characters: activist Deb (Jada Alberts) and high-school teacher Mish (Anna McGahan). Deb and Mish are shown attending activist rallies, speaking up in meetings with government representatives, transforming their home into an office for AIDS activists, and caring for people living with HIV.
Their inclusion serves to historicise lesbians’ immense contribution to Australian AIDS activist movements – but it perpetuates a well-established trope of the “altruistic” lesbian carer and advocate.
In this re-telling, we risk forgetting that lesbians also protested their own exclusion from epidemiological, medical and public health information about AIDS.
Are lesbians at risk of HIV?
The answer is complicated.
While sex between cisgender women is thought to be low risk, several studies suggest that transmission is possible.
It is, however, important to understand how HIV risk transmission hierarchies can render lesbian and queer women invisible in our surveillance data.
When a person is diagnosed with HIV, risk transmission hierarchies are used to record their most probable source of exposure to the virus. In Australia, these risk hierarchies have never recognised female-to-female sex as a potential route for HIV transmission.
This means, for example, that if a woman reports having sex with both men and women, her exposure to the virus is recorded as “heterosexual contact”. If she has never had sex with a man but uses injecting drugs, her exposure is recorded as “injecting drug use”. And if she has never had sex with a man or used injecting drugs, her exposure is recorded as “undetermined”.
Yet, even if we understand sex between cisgender women as low risk, lesbians are not a homogenous group. Some lesbians use injecting drugs, have sex with men or could become infected with HIV through another source of transmission.
But for these lesbians to be included in HIV surveillance data, their sexual identities must be obscured.
Because of this, we have no way of knowing how many lesbian and queer women are living with HIV or have died from AIDS-related illness in Australia. Although, anecdotally, we do know that four of the first seven women diagnosed with HIV were lesbians.
Part of the safe-sex campaign during the 1980s. ACON
Untold histories of lesbian AIDS activism
Since the 1980s, when In Our Blood takes place, lesbians have advocated for their inclusion in Australia’s public health, medical and epidemiological response to AIDS.
Much lesbian AIDS activism occurred from within Australian AIDS organisations, such as the AIDS Council of New South Wales (now known as ACON). In 1988, ACON’s Women and AIDS Working Group produced the organisation’s first lesbian information pack, entitled Sapph Sex – its title a pun on safe and sapphic sex.
ACON’s Women and AIDS Working Group produced the organisation’s first lesbian information pack. ACON
Outside the context of Australian AIDS organisations, activists used lesbian magazines to produce, debate and circulate lesbian-specific information about HIV. Lesbian magazines published articles contesting the dominant assumption that lesbians were “immune” to HIV, and provided a platform for HIV-positive lesbians to write on their experiences.
Readers of Australia’s largest lesbian magazine, Lesbians on the Loose, were also encouraged to write in to the magazine’s resident doctor, Doctor on the Loose, to request guidance on a range of health-related concerns.
During the height of the epidemic, Doctor on the Loose provided readers with advice on the risks associated with specific practices: sex, injecting drug use, sperm donation, and blood sharing rituals. In their responses, Doctor on the Loose worked to dispel common misunderstandings about HIV transmission:
you can’t catch it from toilet seats, sharing food, sharing joints, shaking hands or kissing (there is no evidence that tongue kissing passes on HIV).
HIV-positive lesbians were, of course, at the forefront of these activist endeavours. One such lesbian was Jennifer Websdale. As one of the first seven women diagnosed with HIV in Australia, she was committed to ensuring lesbians were visible as a distinct population in the global AIDS epidemic.
In 1991, Websdale received funding to attend the Ninth National AIDS/HIV Forum in New Orleans. When she returned to Australia, she coined the term “cuntaphobia” to describe the complex intersections of sexism and homophobia that work to silence HIV-positive lesbians in wider conversations about HIV.
AIDs campaigning in Australia 1985. ACON
Websdale died from AIDS-related illness in 1994 at the age of 33. Three decades on, her activism retains an enduring relevance.
As we move toward ending HIV in Australia, it is imperative for us to interrogate how our ingrained re-tellings of the Australian AIDS epidemic foreground some histories, and marginalise others.
After all, the project of ending HIV will require us to ensure that HIV prevention, testing and treatment information and services are available to all Australians – including lesbian and queer women.
Kate Manlik received funding from a Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship while undertaking this research.
You might have noticed many skin and haircare products are advertised as “paraben-free”, or come across online influencers warning parabens are terrible for your health.
But what is a paraben? And could a minor ingredient in products that many of us use daily really be that bad for us?
Chemically speaking, paraben is the collective name for a group of closely related compounds – the parahydroxybenzoates. The “para” refers to the positions of certain parts of the molecule (it’s also where the “para” in “paracetamol” comes from).
There are several different types of paraben, so you might see methylparaben, ethylparaben propylparaben, or butylparaben, in a product’s ingredient list. They may also be listed as a more formal chemical name. Methylparaben can be listed as 4-hydroxy methyl ester benzoic acid or methyl 4-hydroxybenzoate for example.
Methylparaben, commonly used as a preservative in skincare and cosmetics. Oliver Jones via the Molecular-Icons Generator app
The shorter version is that parabens are a group of related molecules added in small amounts (less than 1%, usually lower) to food, drugs and cosmetics as preservatives.
They work by preventing the growth of harmful bacteria and fungi to improve product shelf life and safety. More than one paraben may be used, and they may be combined with other preservatives to protect against a broad range of microorganisms.
Parabens can be absorbed through the skin or ingested but are generally excreted quickly, usually via urine. They have been in use for decades and no parabens have been banned in Australia.
Some studies on cell cultures or animals have suggested parabens can affect the endocrine system (which controls our hormones) but it’s not clear how or even if this is relevant to humans.
The amounts used in some of those animal studies are much, much higher than you would find in make-up, for example. A lot of these studies also involved feeding the chemicals to the animals or injecting them, rather than putting them on the skin (which results in much lower absorption into the body).
You might also have heard parabens are “oestrogenic” (meaning they can mimic or affect oestrogen in the body). In fact, parabens are far less oestrogenic than natural oestrogen (that both males and females produce). They are also less oestrogenic than phytoestrogens, compounds produced naturally by many plants.
So, even though there have been studies raising concern, the overall risk in humans using parabens in normal doses is low. As the Australian Industrial Chemicals Introduction Scheme puts it:
The available data do not indicate any risks associated with exposure to the chemicals in this group. The chemicals have been shown to have weak oestrogenic activity, but there are no established adverse outcome pathways for this effect.
The US Food and Drug Administration reached a similar conclusion, noting
Studies have shown, however, that parabens have significantly less oestrogenic activity than the body’s naturally occurring oestrogen. Parabens have not been shown to be harmful as used in cosmetics, where they are present only in very small amounts.
Isn’t natural better? Aren’t human-made chemicals bad for you?
Whether something is natural or not tells you nothing about its safety.
Snake venom is natural, as is uranium, lead and mercury. I wouldn’t buy personal care products with these “natural” ingredients in them.
Many things we use every day without a second thought – like aspirin, nylon, and silicone cookware – are synthetic.
The name of a chemical also tells you nothing about risk. If I told you a substance contained ethyl butanoate, pentyl acetate, ethene and capric acid, would you eat it? Well, you probably already have; these are all found in bananas and many other fruits.
Whether or not an ingredient is natural tells you nothing about its safety. Shutterstock
So why are people worried about parabens, then?
This goes back to an often misinterpreted 2004 study that found parabens in breast tissue and breast cancers. But this doesn’t mean much by itself and doesn’t justify claims parabens cause cancer.
Correlation is not causation. The presence of parabens in a tumour does not mean parabens caused the tumour.
In fact, the researchers in the 2004 study only looked at breast cancer tissue (and didn’t compare it with healthy tissue). They even found parabens in their blank samples (with no tissue in them at all). So, as others have noted, it’s hard to draw any real conclusion from it about the role parabens may or may not play in cancer risk.
A lot of the endocrine disruptor stuff you hear on social media about parabens is usually from someone trying to spruik a “natural” or “clean” alternative, so you might not be seeing the full picture.
And remember: the presence of something does not automatically mean it is harmful. Toxicology 101 is “the dose makes the poison”. Everything is toxic in the right amount, even water. We should not ask whether a chemical causes cancer or acts as an endocrine disruptor, but whether it does so at the levels to which we are exposed.
So why are so many products marketed as ‘paraben-free’?
Going “paraben-free” has become a very effective marketing tool. If people want paraben-free products and will pay more for them, why not give them paraben-free products?
But paraben-free does not mean preservative-free, nor does it mean the products are safer (even if that’s what is implied).
If you remove parabens from a product, you need to add other preservatives, which may be less effective. This increases the risk of the product going off (some users of “clean” make-up brands have reported finding mould in products) and could even cause harm.
So what’s the verdict?
Ultimately, the choice to use products containing parabens is a personal one.
As a chemist I think parabens are well-researched, safe and and necessary, but if you are worried, you can opt for paraben-free products. Just be aware they will probably have a shorter shelf life, contain other (less effective) preservatives, and could well have other problems. I’d take a small amount of a well studied, and well-regulated, chemical in my skincare products over mould any day.
Oliver A.H. Jones does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.
New Zealand Politics Daily is a collation of the most prominent issues being discussed in New Zealand. It is edited by Dr Bryce Edwards of The Democracy Project.
We have just published evidence in Nature Astronomy for what might be producing mysterious bursts of radio waves coming from distant galaxies, known as fast radio bursts or FRBs.
Two colliding neutron stars – each the super-dense core of an exploded star – produced a burst of gravitational waves when they merged into a “supramassive” neutron star. We found that two and a half hours later they produced an FRB when the neutron star collapsed into a black hole.
Or so we think. The key piece of evidence that would confirm or refute our theory – an optical or gamma-ray flash coming from the direction of the fast radio burst – vanished almost four years ago. In a few months, we might get another chance to find out if we are correct.
Brief and powerful
FRBs are incredibly powerful pulses of radio waves from space lasting about a thousandth of a second. Using data from a radio telescope in Australia, the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), astronomers have found that most FRBs come from galaxies so distant, light takes billions of years to reach us. But what produces these radio wave bursts has been puzzling astronomers since an initial detection in 2007.
The best clue comes from an object in our galaxy known as SGR 1935+2154. It’s a magnetar, which is a neutron star with magnetic fields about a trillion times stronger than a fridge magnet. On April 28 2020, it produced a violent burst of radio waves – similar to an FRB, although less powerful.
Astronomers have long predicted that two neutron stars – a binary – merging to produce a black hole should also produce a burst of radio waves. The two neutron stars will be highly magnetic, and black holes cannot have magnetic fields. The idea is the sudden vanishing of magnetic fields when the neutron stars merge and collapse to a black hole produces a fast radio burst. Changing magnetic fields produce electric fields – it’s how most power stations produce electricity. And the huge change in magnetic fields at the time of collapse could produce the intense electromagnetic fields of an FRB.
Artist’s impression of a fast radio burst traveling through space and reaching Earth. ESO/M. Kornmesser, CC BY
The search for the smoking gun
To test this idea, Alexandra Moroianu, a masters student at the University of Western Australia, looked for merging neutron stars detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in the US. The gravitational waves LIGO searches for are ripples in spacetime, produced by the collisions of two massive objects, such as neutron stars.
LIGO has found two binary neutron star mergers. Crucially, the second, known as GW190425, occurred when a new FRB-hunting telescope called CHIME was also operational. However, being new, it took CHIME two years to release its first batch of data. When it did so, Moroianu quickly identified a fast radio burst called FRB 20190425A which occurred only two and a half hours after GW190425.
Exciting as this was, there was a problem – only one of LIGO’s two detectors was working at the time, making it very uncertain where exactly GW190425 had come from. In fact, there was a 5% chance this could just be a coincidence.
Worse, the Fermi satellite, which could have detected gamma rays from the merger – the “smoking gun” confirming the origin of GW190425 – was blocked by Earth at the time.
CHIME, the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment, has turned out to be uniquely suited to detecting FRBs. Andre Renard/Dunlap Institute/CHIME Collaboration
Unlikely to be a coincidence
However, the critical clue was that FRBs trace the total amount of gas they have passed through. We know this because high-frequency radio waves travel faster through the gas than low-frequency waves, so the time difference between them tells us the amount of gas.
Because we know the average gas density of the universe, we can relate this gas content to distance, which is known as the Macquart relation. And the distance travelled by FRB 20190425A was a near-perfect match for the distance to GW190425. Bingo!
So have we discovered the source of all FRBs? No. There are not enough merging neutron stars in the Universe to explain the number of FRBs – some must still come from magnetars, like SGR 1935+2154 did.
And even with all the evidence, there’s still a one in 200 chance this could all be a giant coincidence. However, LIGO and two other gravitational wave detectors, Virgo and KAGRA, will turn back on in May this year, and be more sensitive than ever, while CHIME and other radio telescopes are ready to immediately detect any FRBs from neutron star mergers.
In a few months, we may find out if we’ve made a key breakthrough – or if it was just a flash in the pan.
Clancy W. James would like to acknowledge Alexandra Moroianu, the lead author of the study; his co-authors, Linqing Wen, Fiona Panther, Manoj Kovalem (University of Western Australia), Bing Zhang and Shunke Ai (University of Nevada); and his late mentor, Jean-Pierre Macquart, who experimentally verified the gas-distance relation, which is now named after him.
Clancy William James receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Early this month, the Daily Mail published a story online implying three Chinese men taking photos at the Avalon Airshow in Melbourne were spies. After complaints and an open letter condemning the paper for racially profiling the Chinese communities and throwing around baseless accusations, the story disappeared from the Mail’s site without explanation.
Then The Sydney Morning Herald’s Red Alert series hit people’s WeChat feeds, claiming a war with China could happen within three years.
The Daily Mail, like many other media outlets, possibly believed it could make insinuations of spying with impunity, since many of its intended readers would likely be sufficiently primed to accept such narratives as common sense.
In fact, a 2022 poll reveals: “Just over four in 10 Australians (42%) say ‘Australians of Chinese origin can be mobilised by the Chinese government to undermine Australia’s interests and social cohesion’.”
Commenting on the Mail’s “spy” story, La Trobe University’s Nick Bisley tweeted, “Yep, this is what happens when the red menace crap is thrown around carelessly”, apparently connecting it with the Red Alert series. Several foreign affairs specialists have called the series “pretentious”, “hyperbolic”, “irresponsible” and “implicitly racist” reporting.
Similarly, a survey I conducted recently on behalf of UTS’s Australia-China Relations Institute (ACRI) points to another kind of fear. The respondents were 500 migrants from mainland China. A key aim was to understand how their reading of Australian media stories about China and Chinese-Australian communities affected their sense of belonging.
A full analysis of the survey will be detailed in a forthcoming ACRI report. But one survey question was: “To what extent would you be concerned about your own wellbeing and that of the Chinese-Australian communities if Australia were at war with China?” More than half (54.68%) said they were “extremely concerned”. Another 36.10% said they were “quite concerned”. Only around 9% said they were not concerned.
When juxtaposed, these two sets of survey figures raise a “red alert” of another kind: regardless of whether a war with China will ever eventuate, Chinese Australians are rapidly becoming the first casualties of persistent war talk.
Yet, while there has been a highly polarised response to the Red Alert series, very few commentators on either side have thought much about how these publications affect Chinese Australians, especially first-generation migrants from mainland China. As Yun Jiang observes:
Among all talks about preparation for a war, preparing the population for a potentially divisive society is not part of it.
Mainstream media outlets and commentators seem to concern themselves even less with the emotional and psychological impact such media stories have almost daily on Australian citizens with Chinese ancestry.
Our recently published study, based on three years’ longitudinal research of Chinese-language digital and social media in Australia, has revealed many first-generation Mandarin speakers here experience a high level of internal conflict in relation to mainstream Australian media coverage of China. Funded by the Australian Research Council, the study found these migrants, who by 2021 numbered over half a million, were caught in an increasingly hostile relationship between the two countries.
The study also found most respondents did not identify with the propaganda of Chinese state media. However, they were increasingly disillusioned with the Australian English-language media’s interest in reporting on China with fairness and balance.
For many in the various Chinese-Australian communities, including mainland migrants, reading speculations about whether there will be a war with China within six months, two years or three years is not a matter of neutral speculation. It is a constant source of anxiety, fear and uncertainty.
The specific nature of their anxiety and fear became clearer after I conducted in-depth interviews with 20 individuals in the Mandarin-speaking community about their media consumption habits.
First, many of these interviewees wondered, with a growing sense of alarm, what would happen to them if war did happen. One middle-aged female accountant said:
During WW1, many German Australians were interned in Australia. During WW2, many Italian migrants were interned. Sure, ours is now a very multicultural society, but who can assure us that this won’t happen to us when war breaks out? When war happens, rationality may go out the window. Look at what happened to Jewish people. I’m really worried. My daughter recently came back from school and asked me if it’s true that China will invade Australia.
Second, many interviewees expressed the fear that this loose talk about war in the media could make war more likely. A male interviewee who works in a university said:
A few years ago, if someone mentioned a war between Australia and China over Taiwan, it would have sounded preposterous. But now, people no longer find such talk fanciful. I believe the media normalises war-mongering. It upsets me very much each time I read such predictions.
Third, my interviewees, like many other Chinese Australians – and Asian Australians generally – know too well they will be more vulnerable to random racist attacks in public, and treated as potential agents of a hostile country, as long as talk of war persists in the media.
It is for precisely this reason that the Daily Mail’s “spy” story sends a chill down the spine of many people and has aroused widespread condemnation from Chinese-Australian communities. As one interviewee said:
These days, it doesn’t take too much to provoke a racist. All it takes is seeing someone who looks Chinese.
Wanning Sun receives funding from Australian Research Council and Australian-China Relations Institute (ACRI) UTS.
We all get hiccups from time to time, and sometimes they just won’t seem to go away.
Hiccups are involuntary contractions of the diaphragm – the muscle separating your chest from your abdomen, which plays a key role in breathing – followed by a sudden closure of the vocal cords.
The medical term for hiccups is singultus. This derives from the Latin word singult which means “to catch ones breath while sobbing”.
For most of us, hiccups are annoying and don’t last that long. But for some people, they can be persistent, lasting more than two days.
The good news is, there are simple ways to alleviate regular hiccups – and treatments for when they persist.
What causes hiccups?
Hiccups are caused by a reflex arc: a neuromotor pathway that translates a sensation into a physical response. The sensations in this arc come from the brain, ear, nose and throat, diaphragm and organs in the chest and abdomen.
The sensation signals travel to a part of the brain which, along with the top of the spinal cord, is known as the “hiccup centre”.
From the hiccup centre, the signals travel back out to the diaphragm and the muscles that lay between your ribs (intercostal muscles), causing them to twitch.
The twitching of these muscles draws air into the lungs and this sudden inhalation makes the opening between the vocal cords, or glottis, close tightly shut. This rapid closure makes the “hic” sound.
Anything that affects the arc can lead to hiccups. The most common is stretching the stomach from eating a large meal or drinking soft drinks. This means sensation signals from the stomach can trigger off the reflex arc.
Consuming hot chilli pepper, alcohol, smoking, and over-excitement can also trigger the reflex arc, leading to hiccups.
Hiccups have even been observed in healthy fetuses during prenatal ultrasound checks. In fact, some researchers believe hiccups are a mechanism to help prepare the lungs for breathing shortly after birth.
How long will they last? And what can you do about them?
An attack of hiccups that lasts less than 48 hours is generally unconcerning. Such an attack usually ends by itself.
Where it doesn’t resolve by itself, there are ways to suppress the reflex arc. The Valsava manoeuvre, consuming ice-cold drinks and gentle eyeball pressure are thought to increase the activity of a long nerve (vagus) to the brain.
Manoeuvres such as rebreathing into a paper or plastic bag work by increasing the carbon dioxide concentration in the blood. This helps to suppress the movements of the muscles associated with hiccups. However, rebreathing carries a small but serious risk of heart attack so should only be performed under medical supervision.
However there is very limited evidence to show these manoeuvres and interventions work.
When should we get worried about hiccups?
If hiccups last longer than two days, they are called persistent hiccups. If they last beyond two months they are known as intractable hiccups.
Persistent and intractable hiccups, known collectively as chronic hiccups, can be quite distressing and may signify a serious underlying cause, so it’s important to see your doctor.
People with chronic hiccups will undergo a comprehensive investigation. Their medical history will often give valuable clues to triggers. Certain medications such as anti-epileptic drugs, alcohol, smoking and recreational drug use are all associated with hiccups.
As organs in the chest and abdomen are involved in the reflex arc, investigations of these organs such as lung imaging or upper endoscopy (where a tube with a tiny camera is inserted into the throat to view the upper digestive tract), may be required.
One study from France found 80% of patients with chronic hiccups had abnormalities in their oesophagus and stomach, with reflux disease being the most common finding.
Your clinician will also inspect your ear, nose and throat, as irritation of the ear by a foreign body or infection of the throat can be triggers for hiccups.
Imaging of the brain may be necessary, especially if there are concerning signs such as changes in speech and weakness of facial and limb muscles.
After a thorough investigation, the underlying cause should be treated, where possible.
People suffering from hiccups often have problems with gastric reflux, so treatment may include a short course anti-reflux medication.
Other medications with a strong evidence base that are used to treat hiccups include the anti-nausea drug metoclopramide and baclofen, which is used to treat muscle spasticity (excessive tightness or tone).
There is emerging evidence that gabapentin, used to treat seizures, may also be effective for hiccups.
What treatments might we see in future?
Researchers have recently developed a rigid drinking tube with an inlet valve that requires active suction effort to draw water from a cup into the mouth. This tube has been called forced inspiratory suction and swallow tool, or FISST.
FISST is thought to stop the hiccup reflex arc by stimulating the sensory nerves to cause contraction of the diaphragm and glottis.
In one study, of the 249 participants who trialled FISST, just over 90% reported results better than home remedies.
However, the FISST research so far hasn’t compared it to a control group who didn’t receive the treatment, so it’s unclear how much more effective it is than a placebo, or dummy version.
Vincent Ho does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Albert Van Dijk, Professor, Water and Landscape Dynamics, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University
Shutterstock
A new report card on Australia’s environment reveals 2022 was a bumper year for our rivers and vegetation – but it wasn’t enough to reverse the long-term decline in plant and animal species.
The analysis was drawn from many millions of measurements of weather, biodiversity, water availability, river flows and the condition of soil and vegetation. The data is gathered from satellites and field stations and processed by a supercomputer.
From the data, we calculate a score between 0 and 10 to determine the overall condition of Australia’s environment.
In 2022, a third and very wet La Niña year brought a strong improvement in several key indicators, leading to a national score of 8.7 out of 10. This is the best score since 2011. But unfortunately, three wicked problems remain.
A vast number of datasets are combined to generate the environmental scorecard. Shutterstock
First, the good news
By some measures, 2022 was the best year for water availability and plant growth since our national score system began 23 years ago.
New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT enjoyed the highest environmental scores since before 2000. South Australia and Queensland also improved.
Scores for rainfall, river flows and the extent of floodplain inundation were the highest since before 2000 in many parts of eastern Australia. The water supplies of all eastern capital cities all rose and several reached capacity.
Wetland area and waterbird breeding were well above the long-term average. Vegetation density, growth rates and tree cover in NSW and Queensland were the best since before 2000.
It was a bumper year for dryland farmers. Average national growth rates in dryland cropping were a massive 49% better than average conditions. The many full or filling reservoirs are also good news for irrigators.
What about the losers?
Some regions missed out on the rainfall bonanza, and many environmental indicators declined. They include the Top End in the Northern Territory, southern inland Western Australia and western Tasmania.
Across the NT, low rainfall and high temperatures meant environmental scores once more declined to the low values seen before 2021.
And in areas where rainfall was high, not everyone benefited. Many homes and businesses flooded, and some farmers lost crops or stock.
At the end of 2022, reports emerged that floodwaters were causing so-called “blackwater events” and fish kills in the Murray River. Murky floodwaters also ran into the ocean and smothered seagrass meadows, leading dugongs and sea turtles to starve.
The ocean around Australia was the warmest on record in 2022. The Great Barrier Reef suffered the fourth mass bleaching event in seven years – and alarmingly, the first to occur during a La Niña year, which is usually cooler.
Fortunately, conditions for the remainder of the year favoured coral recovery.
Floodwaters severely damaged homes and businesses last year. Darren England/AAP
Chronic ailments
Despite many positive indicators, three severe, chronic and untreated problems continue to weaken our environment: habitat destruction, invasive species and climate change.
The rate of habitat destruction shows little sign of improvement. Much vegetation continues to be removed for new housing, mining and agriculture. Fire activity in 2022 was low, but climate change means bushfires will be back soon, and become more frequent and severe over time.
La Niña is already on the way out, although it will probably take more than one hot and dry year before we experience megafires such as those in the Black Summer of 2019-20.
The scorecard also shows Australia is still struggling to combat pest species. They include fungi, invasive weeds, carp, cane toads, rats, rabbits, goats, pigs, foxes and cats. Every year, about eight million feral cats and foxes kill 1.5 billion native reptiles, birds and mammals.
Climate change remains a huge problem. La Niña normally brings cool conditions and the average temperature last year in Australia was the coolest since 2012. But it was still relatively warm, at 0.5℃ above the long-term average.
The combination of habitat destruction, invasive species and climate change has already decimated many Australian species. In 2022, 30 plants and animals were added to the official list of threatened species.
That’s a 43% increase since 2000, bringing the total number to 1,973. Most species added last year were affected by the Black Summer fires.
Our analysis drew on the Threatened Species Index, which reports with a three-year time lag. In 2019 the index showed a steady decline of about 3% in the abundance of threatened species each year. This is an overall decline of 62% since 2000.
Threatened plants showed the worst decline (72%), followed by birds (62%) and mammals (33%).
We can avoid the worst
Amid the gloom, there are glimmers of hope. Many species feared impacted by the fires proved resilient. Some large new national park areas have been added. Active management is recovering – or at least slowing – the decline of some threatened species, albeit sometimes within the narrow confines of reserves.
Also in 2022, humpback whales were one of the few species in Australian history to be taken off the threatened species list due to a population increase. The species has staged a remarkable recovery since the global moratorium on whaling.
Sadly, there is no fast solution to climate change. Greenhouse gases will linger in the atmosphere for decades to come and further warming is unavoidable. But we can still prevent worse outcomes, by dramatically curbing global emissions.
Australia’s emissions are not falling anywhere near fast enough. They were almost the same in 2022 as in the previous year. And our national emissions remain among the highest in the world per person.
Decisive action is needed. Slowing down habitat destruction, invasive species and climate change is key to preserving our natural resources and species for future generations.
Australia’s Environment is produced by the ANU Fenner School for Environment & Society and the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN), an NCRIS-enabled National Research Infrastructure. Albert Van Dijk receives or has previously received funding from several government-funded agencies, grant schemes and programmes.
Geoff Heard is a current employee of the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN), funded by the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy. Geoff has previously received funding from several government agencies in Australia for the study and monitoring of threatened species.
Mark Grant is a current employee of the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN).
Shoshana Rapley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Discoveries of albino animals have a unique ability to capture the public imagination, often leading to flurries of social media and news coverage. (Think Migaloo, the famous white humpback whale.)
It’s easy to see why albino animals are so fascinating. Their stark white appearance typically sets them apart from the world around them, providing a striking contrast against the green forest, red desert or blue ocean.
But while people are captivated by the likes of white whales, kangaroos and koalas, it’s a different story for poor old rats and mice.
Our new research is the first study of Australia’s native albino rodents. By raising the profile of these adorable little creatures, we hope more people will come to appreciate Australia’s rodents as remarkable animals worth protecting.
Rodents, especially rats, have long been viewed with disdain – often seen as filthy, disease-ridden pests. The terms “dirty rat” and “vermin” are used as insults in many cultures, and even Hollywood films.
A scene from the 1992 Disney film Aladdin, where the term “rat” is an insult.
Unfortunately, this negative perception of rodents often extends to our native species, dampening public enthusiasm for conservation.
Public perception plays a crucial role in wildlife conservation, and rodents are one of Australia’s most diverse and ecologically important groups of mammals, with a disproportionately high rate of extinction. So if people don’t care about them, or if they actively dislike them, there’ll be little effort to help them.
What is albinism, and how does it impact wildlife?
Albinism is a rare genetic condition that typically occurs once in every few thousand births. It affects an animal’s ability to produce melanin, the pigment that gives colour to the skin, hair and eyes. There are several types of albinism, which vary in their genetic cause and the degree of pigment loss. But animals with the condition typically have white or light-coloured skin, scales or fur, and pink or blue eyes.
While albinism is common in laboratory rats, these animals have been selectively bred for this trait. In wild rodent populations it has been very rarely observed.
The condition was previously reported in less than 2% of the world’s 2,683 rodent species (including the 48 extinct species). (It’s now 2.8%).
In the wild, albino animals struggle to survive. Albinism can result in poor eyesight, a heightened sensitivity to ultraviolet radiation, and an increased risk of being spotted by predators. Plus, albino animals may be targeted by trophy hunters and poachers.
Australia’s remarkable rodents
When most Australians think of rodents, they think of invasive species such as black rats or house mice (stinky pests sneaking around their homes). Many would be surprised to learn that more than 50 species of rodents are native to Australia. They’re wonderful, diverse, and rarely smelly.
Sadly, since Europeans arrived, at least 13 species have become extinct and 25 species are listed as threatened at state or federal levels.
Our native rodents help maintain healthy ecosystems. They contribute to soil turnover and disperse seeds and fungi. We have species adapted to every environment, from the alps to the deserts, forests, rivers and coastlines. Some dig complex burrow systems. Others nest in trees, or make houses out of sticks or pebbles. And some, like the rakali, meticulously dissect the invasive and toxic cane toads to eat their hearts and livers. We have a native rodent for every occasion.
In 2021, I was lucky to discover an albino bush rat in Victoria’s Otway Ranges. Gazing at this remarkable ginger fuzzball with soul-piercing red eyes, I realised I’d never heard or read about albino Australian rodents.
After that first encounter, I searched the academic literature, and found nothing. There were no published accounts of Australian rodents with albinism. However, given how many rodents there are in Australia, I knew I couldn’t be the first ecologist to see one.
The albino bush rat (Rattus fuscipes) I captured in the Otways. Photo: Darcy Watchorn.
So my colleagues and I conducted a survey of Australian ecologists, museums and historic newspaper articles to find albino rodent records. We found 23 records of albinos (representing eight species) from a sample of more than 50,000 individual rats and mice. While this is but a handful of species, it represents a 12% increase in the recorded number of rodent species with albinism worldwide.
Albino canefield rat specimen from 1939. Photo: Sandy Ingleby, Australian Museum.A female albino Rakali on Barrow Island, Western Australia. Photo: Keith Morris.
The frequency of albinism can also increase under certain conditions, such as among small, isolated populations or between closely related individuals. We found a population of rakali on Barrow Island (60km off the coast of Western Australia) had a much higher rate of albinism than mainland populations. About 2% of this population were albino at the time of our survey, potentially due to the population’s long isolation and low genetic diversity.
Albino rakali on Barrow Island. Photo: Pendoley Environmental.
Rare and precious
Australia has lost more than its fair share of native rodents since Europeans arrived. Now more than ever, it’s important to appreciate and protect all of Australia’s unique and fascinating wildlife.
So, regardless of whether they’re albino or not, let’s all make some room in our hearts for Australia’s fuzzy little rodents. Unless you’re a cane toad, of course, because our rakali are on their way to gobble your heart.
Darcy is grateful to Phoebe Burns, Native Rodent Biologist at Zoos Victoria, for her contribution to this article.
Darcy Watchorn receives funding from the Hermon Slade Foundation, Parks Victoria, the Conservation and Wildlife Research Trust, the Ecological Society of Australia, the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council, and the Geelong Naturalists Field Club. He is a member of the Ecological Society of Australia and the Society for Conservation Biology Oceania.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brian Moore, Lecturer, Educational Psychology & Child Development, School of Education, Charles Sturt University
However, the ratio of school counsellors and psychologists to students means they can be very difficult for students to access. For example, there is about one counsellor for every 750 students in NSW public schools.
There is little consistency in the types of mental health services provided by schools or who actually performs this role.
Many schools have counsellors or psychologists, while others may have access to Department of Health and non-government staff who might come into schools to deliver a specific program or provide targeted support to at-risk students. But availability is a huge issue.
Meanwhile, there is no consistent mental health training for new teachers.
Many teacher education programs do not explicitly address mental health. If it is included, it often occurs as a single day of training, or sometimes features as part of other subjects. The level of training a student receives is often up to a lecturer’s interest in mental health rather than identified needs.
There are professional development training and resources on mental health for existing teachers. But again, these are not consistently applied.
School counsellors and psychologists can help students but are in short supply. Shutterstock
Teachers are not confident
Given inconsistent and potentially inadequate training, it is unsurprising that while teachers take mental health seriously, many report low confidence about supporting their students’ mental health. In one 2017 study in the United States, almost 50% of teachers reported they had received inadequate mental health training, and 85% indicated they would like further training in mental health issues.
So, if qualified mental health practitioners feel this way, our expectations of teachers in the mental health space should be carefully considered.
What can teachers do?
Teachers do of course have a valuable role in supporting student mental health. But this needs to occur in the context of teaching.
They can do this by developing a positive, supportive learning environment that supports students’ individual needs and strengths. Teachers can provide opportunities to build positive student identity and self-esteem by providing genuine opportunities for students to succeed in the classroom. Teachers can have positive relationships with their students and foster healthy peer interactions.
It is important teachers know how to identify students with possible mental health problems as well as being aware of potential referral options (noting lack of availability is an issue). It is also important teachers develop and maintain open and honest communication with caregivers.
Clearly, much more needs to be done around mental health in schools. It makes sense to make greater provision for funding and training of school counsellors and psychologists. We should also examine ways of better integrating mental health services like the Department of Health and Headspace in schools.
However, with supply and recruitment difficulties these are not straight forward solutions.
A consistent national approach to the mental health curriculum in teacher training is urgently needed.
Critically, the role of teachers in school based mental health services needs to be clearly defined to manage expectations and support students more effectively.
Teachers belong to the helping category of professionals and are inclined to support their students in every way they can. They need to be equipped to provide assistance with learning that can take mental health into account.
However, policy makers and school communities need to remember, teachers are not trained as mental health practitioners.
If this article has raised issues for you or someone you know, you can call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800.
Sarah Redshaw is elected to the Blue Mountains City Council as a Greens councillor and is a member of the party.
Brian Moore does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
What distinguishes a company that makes “good” chocolate (chocolate untainted by child labour, modern slavery, deforestation and the overuse of agrichemicals) from one that merely makes chocolate?
Tony’s Chocolonely has as its mission making slave-free chocolate and turning all chocolate slave-free.
It says 60% of the world’s cocoa comes from 2.5 million farms in West Africa that are placed under the kind of pricing pressure that leads to child labour and modern slavery. The average cocoa farmer earns less than US$1.20 per day, and women cocoa farmers are thought to earn around 50 cents per day.
‘Broken eggs’ say little
At the other end of the scale, firms such as Unilever (which makes Magnum icecreams) and Mondēlez (which makes Cadbury) were awarded “broken eggs” for not engaging with the survey.
Mondēlez describes its mission as going “the extra mile to lead the future of snacking around the world”, rather than tackling environmental or social concerns.
In 2022, Britain’s Channel 4 broadcast undercover footage from Ghana purporting to show children as young as 10 barefoot, wearing shorts and T-shirts, using machetes to harvest cocoa pods and sharpened sticks to extract beans that were eventually used in Cadbury chocolate.
Mondelēz said it was deeply concerned. It explicitly prohibited child labour and had been making significant efforts to improve the protection of children in the communities where it sourced cocoa, including Ghana.
If such efforts are afoot, Chocolate Scorecard would like to hear about them.
‘Rotten eggs’ can improve
Among those companies that did respond, there are signs of improvement. In 2020, Godiva received a “rotten egg” award for “failing to take responsibility for the conditions with which its chocolates are made despite making huge profits off its chocolate”.
Godvia now says it is dedicated to “a sustainable and thriving cocoa industry where farmers prosper, communities are empowered, human rights are respected, and the environment is conserved”.
It has earned an “orange” rating, demonstrating that progress is achievable.
Similarly, Sücden – a previous red “rotten egg” – improved to yellow in this year’s scorecard.
Nestlé’s inclusion in this years top ten gives us hope.
It now says its purpose is to “unlock the power of food to enhance quality of life for everyone, today and for generations to come”.
Companies require profits to survive. But if profit and making chocolate are their only drivers, they are likely to hurt people and the environment while doing it.
This Easter it is possible to support firms that are making profits without hurting the planet or its inhabitants. Our scorecard finds there are more and more of them.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
British comedy Romantic Getaway recently dropped on streaming service Binge. The show stars Katherine Ryan and Romesh Ranganathan as Alison and Deacon, a couple desperate for a child.
Alison and Deacon have been unable to conceive naturally, and previous in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) attempts funded by the UK National Health Service have also failed. They decide their only hope of having a baby is to go to a private IVF clinic – the “posh clinic”, as they describe it. While no direct references are made to the couple’s age, there are references to time running out, suggesting that perhaps Alison is close to Ryan’s age, 39.
At the private clinic, the doctor advises Alison that her ovarian reserve is low and they would be lucky to get one or two eggs. Further, he notes that the eggs may be of questionable quality. Even in the face of high-cost treatment that has low prospects of success, the couple still undergo the procedure.
To fund their IVF, Alison and Deacon decide to steal £50,000 in bitcoin from their crooked boss Alfie, played by Johnny Vegas. However, unbeknown to Alison, Deacon steals half a million.
What extent will you go to start a family?
Most of the show’s six episodes are devoted to the chaos that ensues as a consequence of this theft, but the show’s premise raises important issues about the lengths to which prospective parents will go to start a family.
While Romantic Getaway represents an extreme scenario, it is not unheard of for people to remortgage their house or take money out of their superannuation to access assisted reproductive technology.
Romantic Getaway highlights the struggles that individuals and couples face on their journey to start a family. As well as the difficulties Alison and Deacon face in funding their treatment, we also see the emotional toll the hormone injections take on Alison.
After a negative pregnancy test, Alison tells Deacon she’s had enough of the hormones, the injections and “the crushing, gut-wrenching disappointment that my womb is a deformed fucking failure”.
The show also raises questions such as when faced with very low prospects of assisted reproductive technology being successful, should people be permitted to invest time, money and emotions in the process?
In Australia, most IVF clinics operate in the private sector and are run as profit-making companies. It has been predicted that by 2026 the assisted reproductive technology industry worldwide will be worth US$41 billion.
One of the problems with the commercialisation of assisted reproductive technology is that companies are primarily responsible to their investors. The effect on patients is that they may receive higher-cost treatments, even though cheaper ones are available, and may be offered treatment “add-ons” of unproven effectiveness (such as “embryo glue”), which do little more than increase the cost of IVF.
A further problem with the privatisation of this technology is that patients become clients – patients get what they need, clients get what they want. This may lead to a greater emphasis on patient preferences over clinical effectiveness. For example, a clinic may be willing to transfer two embryos to a woman, even though there are significant risks associated with multiple pregnancies.
Romesh Ranganathan and Katherine Ryan in Romantic Getaway. IMDB
How do we solve this issue?
What are the possible solutions to the affordability of IVF treatment? In New South Wales, women can access a $2,000 rebate if they underwent an assisted reproductive technology procedure at a registered clinic after October 1 2022.
While this one-off payment will be welcome news for women who become pregnant and have a child following their first IVF cycle, $2,000 is a drop in the ocean for the women who endure multiple treatment cycles.
In Victoria, the state government is rolling out more public services, thereby making IVF affordable for people who do not have the financial means to undergo treatment in the private sector. These services are aimed at a number of groups, including low income earners, the LGBTIQA+ community, single people, and those at risk of passing on a genetic condition who require preimplantation genetic testing.
An alternative solution may be better fertility education, to remind individuals that declining fertility is inevitable and while IVF exists, it comes with costs that extend beyond the financial. Fertility education does not mean “quick, go and freeze your eggs”, but ensuring an informed understanding about what waiting to conceive may entail. This needs to take place before individuals reach a point at which their fertility has already started to decline.
Public education campaigns exist, but websites such as Your Fertility, funded by the federal Department of Health and Aged Care and the Victorian government, require individuals to turn their mind to the issue of their own fertility and then search for information online.
Public education campaigns such as this need to be better funded and more proactive – perhaps visiting university campuses and speaking to students. Students in their late teens or early twenties might not seem that interested at the time, but even if it does nothing more than place the Your Fertility website on their radar, it will be a step in the right direction.
Ultimately, Romantic Getaway is a comic caper that scratches the surface of the trials and tribulations of the IVF journey. In the absence of public education, it may be up to pop culture shows like this to raise awareness of these issues.
Michelle de Souza does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
A joint force of Indonesian military and police are claiming to have shot dead a member of the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) in Central Papua Province on Wednesday last week.
Jubi TV Papua reports the joint force was conducting aerial surveillance after a motorcycle taxi driver had been shot dead by someone who police claim was a TPNB soldier disguised as a passenger in Puncak’s Ilaga on the same day.
A Papua Police spokesperson, Senior Commander Ignatius Benny Ady Prabowo, told Jubi TV the aerial surveillance team spotted a group of people carrying firearms who they suspected were TPNPB and a firefight erupted.
“When monitoring through aerial observation, about 20 people were seen carrying two firearms. They were crossing from Mundidok towards Kimak. Then a firefight occurred,” Commander Prabowo said in Jayapura City on Thursday.
According to the commander, the body of a suspected Liberation Army member was only found when the security forces swept the location of the firefight.
“The officers also found three units of 5.56 MM caliber, one 5.56 MM calibre ammunition casing, two noken (traditional woven bag), a motorcycle key, and two packs of cigarettes at the scene. There were no injuries or casualties from the security forces,” he said.
A video of Indonesian security forces with the body has been sighted by RNZ Pacific. It shows three unmasked members of the joint security operation in full tactical gear standing over what appears to be the bloodied body of the Papuan who was shot and killed.
RNZ Pacific has chosen not to release the video.
TPNPB denies involvement — says person killed was civilian A spokesperson for the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB), Sebby Sambom, has denied any involvement in the incident and said Indonesian military and police forces had killed an innocent civilian.
“A massive military operation is being carried out by the Indonesian military and police in Ilaga and other areas,” Sambom said.
“In this case the Indonesian military and police claim to have killed TPNPB members, but their claim is not true,” he said.
Sambom is calling on the UN and the international community not to remain silent.
“But [they] must take urgent humanitarian action to save indigenous Papuans from genocide that has been and is being carried out by the government of Indonesia,” he said.
The West Papua Liberation Army (TPNPB) is the group holding New Zealand pilot Phillip Mehrtens hostage in a separate ongoing kidnapping crisis which happened in Nduga Regency in the neighbouring Highland Papua Province on February 7.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The Fiji government is signalling that it will not completely tear down the country’s controversial media law which, according to local newsrooms and journalism commentators, has stunted press freedom and development for more than a decade.
Ahead of the 2022 general elections last December, all major opposition parties campaigned to get rid of the Media Industry Development Act (MIDA) 2010 — brought in by the Bainimarama administration — if they got into power.
The change in government after 16 years following the polls brought a renewed sense of hope for journalists and media outlets.
But now almost 100 days in charge it appears Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s coalition is backtracking on its promise to get rid of the punitive law, a move that has been condemned by the industry stakeholders.
“The government is totally committed to allowing people the freedom of the press that will include the review of the Media Act,” Rabuka said during a parliamentary session last month.
“I believe we cannot have a proper democracy without a free press which has been described as the oxygen of democracy,” he said.
Rabuka has denied that his government is backtracking on an election promise.
“Reviewing could mean eventually repealing it,” he told RNZ Pacific in February.
“We have to understand how it [media act] is faring in this modern day of media freedom. How have other administrations advance their own association with the media,” he said.
He said he intended to change it which means “review and make amendments to it”.
“The coalition has given an assurance that we will end that era of media oppression. We are discussing new legislation that reflects more democratic values.”
And last week, that discussion happened for the first time when consultations on a refreshed version of a draft regulation began in Suva as the government introduced the Media Ownership and Registration Bill 2023.
The bill is expected to “address issues that are undemocratic, threatens freedom of expression, and hinders the growth and development of a strong and independent news media in Fiji.”
The proposed law will amend the MIDA Act by removing the punitive clauses on content regulation that threatens journalists with heavy fines and jail terms.
“The bill is not intended as a complete reform of Fiji’s media law landscape,” according to the explanations provided by the government.
No need for government involvement But the six-page proposed regulation is not what the media industry needs, according to the University of the South Pacific’s head of journalism programme Associate Professor Shailendra Singh.
Associate Professor Shailendra Singh . . . “We have argued there is no need for legislation.” Image: RNZ Pacific
“We have argued there is no need for legislation,” he said during the public consultation on the bill last Thursday.
“The existing laws are sufficient but if there has to be a legislation there should be minimum or no government involvement at all,” he said.
The Fijian Media Association (FMA) has also expressed strong opposition against the bill and is calling for the MIDA Act to be repealed.
“If there is a need for another legislation, then government can convene fresh consultation with stakeholders if these issues are not adequately addressed in other current legislation,” the FMA, which represents almost 150 working journalists in Fiji, stated.
Speaking on behalf of his colleagues, FMA executive member and Communications Fiji Limited news director Vijay Narayan said “we want a total repeal” of the Media Act.
“We believe that it was brought about without consultation at all…it was shoved down our throats,” Narayan said.
“We have worked with it for 16 years. We have been staring at the pointy end of the spear and we continue to work hard to build our industry despite the challenges we face.”
‘Restrictions stunts growth’ He said the Fiji’s media industry “needs investment” to improve its standards.
Narayan said the FMA acknowledged that the issue of content regulation was addressed in the new law.
But “with the restrictions in investment that also stunts our growth as media workers,” he added.
“The fact that it will be controlled by politicians there is a real fear. What if we have reporting on something and the politician feels that the organisation that is registered should be reregistered.”
The FMA has also raised concerns about the provisions in relation to cross-media ownership and foreign ownership as key issues that impacts on media development and creates an unequal playing field.
Sections 38 and 39 of the Media Act impose restrictions on foreign ownership on local local media organisations and cross-media ownership.
According to a recent analysis of the Act co-authored by Dr Singh, they are a major impediment to media development and need to be re-examined.
“It would be prudent to review the media ownership situation and reforms periodically, every four-five years, to gauge the impact, and address any issues, that may have arisen,” the report recommends.
Fijian media stakeholders at the public consultation on the Media Ownership and Regulation Bill 2023 in Suva on 23 March 2023. Image: Fijian Media Association/RNZ Pacific
But Suva lawyer and coalition government adviser Richard Naidu is of the view that all issues in respect to the news media should be opened up.
Naidu, who has helped draft the proposed new legislation, said it “has preserved the status quo” and the rules of cross-ownership and foreign media ownership were left as they were in the Media Act.
“Is that right? That is a question of opinion…because before the [MIDA Act] there were no rules on cross-media ownership, there were no rules on foreign media ownership.”
Naidu said the MIDA Act was initially introduced as a bill and media had two hours to to offer its views on it before its implementation.
“So, which status quo ought to be preserved; the one before the [MIDA Act] was imposed or the one as it stands right now. Those are legitimate questions.”
“There is a whole range of things which need to be reviewed and which will probably take a bit of time.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The production and trafficking of methamphetamine (meth), cocaine and now heroin is on the rise with Pacific countries now becoming what many are calling the “Pacific drug highway”.
And Papua New Guinea has over three years seen a plane crash, a hotel laboratory, a shipment in postal services, arrival via a container ship, manufacturing in apartments and now a black flight — all to do with cocaine and meth.
Police have had Operation Weathers, Operation Saki Bomb — and now Operation Gepard.
From Operation Gepard, a pink duffle bank was stuffed into the nose of the flight from Bulolo filled with 17 packages of meth. These were transported across the border into Australia.
With the lack of border security, the country has fast become a transit point for the movement of illicit drugs into Australia.
Locals are becoming part of the movement of the drugs playing a key role in ensuring the drugs are hidden and then moved across the border.
Police Commissioner David Manning has on several occasions said “PNG is becoming a transit point for illicit and synthetic drugs”.
New law not implemented His Deputy Commissioner of Police-Special Operations and acting Director-General of the Narcotics Office, Donald Yamasombi, says the laws under the new Controlled Substance Act 2021 have yet to be implemented.
In total, 337kg of methamphetamine have been found in the country, conveyed, or in possession of people in PNG — worth K164 million (about NZ$75 million)
And the laws? They have been passed but yet no one has been sentenced under the new Controlled Substance Act 2021 and Dangerous Drug (Amended) Act 2021 pertaining to the illicit drugs.
Now another 52kg has been allowed to leave the country and travel into outback Australia where five men were arrested by the Australian Federal Police (AFP).
Commissioner Manning said the positive outcome was a result of close collaboration between the Royal PNG Constabulary (RPNGC) and Australian law enforcement partners and air traffic control agencies.
He said the RPNGC, since working with the Australian authorities, have enabled a wider net to be cast, resulting in the apprehension of transnational offenders in PNG and across the Pacific.
“With our partners we are committed to make our pacific region a hostile and disruptive environment for the transnational criminal element,” Commissioner Manning said.
Strengthening drug laws “We are also committed to strengthening our drug legislation to ensure that penalties reflect the severity of offending here in PNG.”
According to Minister for Transport and Civil Aviation, Walter Schnaubelt, the airplane was able to get into PNG airspace by flying low.
“When an aircraft is operated with a criminal intent, the pilots deliberately turn off the transponders to avoid detection by radar or ADS-B,” he said.
“If these surveillance tools are turned off, our systems cannot pick them up on the screen.
“Also they deliberately do not submit flight plans or talk to our controllers for the same reason (they don’t want us to see or know about their illegal operations).”
In PNG, after the arrest of the five in Australia, a 42-year-old male Chinese national was arrested at Lae airport last Wednesday.
In terms of investigations, the response has been swift. However, the investigations are prolonged and it becomes a forgotten topic.
Swept under the rug It remains swept under the rug until judgment is passed and the suspects are charged and sentenced.
So far, only David John Cutmore has been sentenced to 18 years for his part in the black flight that crashed with 644kg of cocaine on board and he was charged under the old laws.
Another seven locals and expatriates are facing court for conveying and being in possession of methamphetamine since 2022.
In total, 18 persons of interest have been arrested or apprehended over their involvement in the methamphetamine trade.
For cocaine, only one person has been sentenced with another four still facing court.
Miriam Zarriga is a PNG Post-Courier journalist. Republished with permission.
Labor and the Greens have reached a compromise on the safeguard mechanism after months of tense negotiations, giving the government the numbers it needs to pass the bill into law.
Greens leader Adam Bandt on Monday announced his party had secured a hard cap on emissions from polluters covered by the scheme. The cap will potentially affect new or expanding fossil fuel projects. But it falls short of the main concession the Greens originally demanded from Labor – an outright ban on new gas and coal projects.
The safeguard mechanism aims to curb emissions from about 215 of Australia’s biggest polluters. Labor’s tightening of the policy is crucial if Australia is to meet its emissions reduction target of 43% by 2030.
Building a hard emissions cap into the safeguard mechanism will go some way to giving this policy teeth. By limiting emissions to 140 million tonnes – the current emissions from industries covered by the scheme – it will make it harder for new fossil fuel projects to be viable.
How will the hard cap work?
Under the hard cap, the energy minister of the day will decide whether to permit a new fossil fuel project. The decision will be based on advice from the Climate Change Authority on projected gross emissions – meaning without carbon offsets being used.
The carbon budget for the sector will ensure Australia’s net emissions are in line with the central objective of the policy.
While the cap doesn’t prevent new projects, it does give us a level of confidence that any future projects can’t emit past a certain level.
Some 116 fossil fuel projects are being planned in Australia. Bandt says the cap means half of them will no longer proceed – and projects further along, such as fracking in the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo Basin, may no longer be feasible.
Bandt says Labor “still wants to open the rest” of the 116 projects in the pipeline, adding: “now there is going to be a fight for every new project that the government wants to open”. In reality, history suggests many of these projects would not have proceeded anyway, so we shouldn’t put too much weight on Labor’s concession.
From the outset of negotiations, Labor would not budge on the Greens’ demand to ban new coal and gas projects. On Monday, Bandt said trying to strike a deal with Labor was:
like negotiating with the political wing of the coal and gas corporations. Labor seems more afraid of the coal and gas corporations than climate collapse. Labor seems more afraid of Woodside than global warming.
But banning new coal and gas projects is a hard sell.
Fossil fuel projects in Australia have traditionally enjoyed bipartisan support. The Coalition likes them because they support corporations and exports. And many in Labor’s union base like the well-paid, reliable work the mines offer.
And then there’s the simple fact of supply and demand. Right now, the world is still 81% powered by fossil fuels. We have not yet built enough clean alternatives.
Right now, we ship large volumes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and coal to countries in our region such as China, Japan and South Korea. If Australia banned new gas projects, these exports would be at risk. Our Asian trading partners would probably have to find new suppliers once the long-term contracts ended.
For these reasons and more, the odds were stacked against the Greens and their demands.
Bandt has rightly pointed to the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which makes it clear the world must stop opening coal and gas mines if it wants to avert the worst damage from climate change.
But for the next few decades, the world is likely to keep using fossil fuels alongside renewables and other clean options. So what options does Australia have to make a significant dent in global emissions?
It should publicly plan to for a future without fossil fuel exports – and work with our fossil fuel customers in Asia to offer them green alternatives.
Australia is well placed to explore industries such as green cement, critical minerals such as cobalt, green iron ore and green hydrogen. If we can ramp these industries up as demand for legacy fossil fuels wanes, we could find a sweet spot.
We should take punts on technologies and products which may – or may not – become vitally important. Not every clean tech development will succeed. But some will.
We want companies such as Nippon Steel to invest in green steel in Australia. We need business leaders to invest in green hydrogen exports – even though there’s a chance of failure.
United States President Joe Biden has embraced this logic. Environmentalists have condemned his approval of new fossil fuel projects. But the Biden administration last year passed a A$530 billion bill to pump huge funds into heat pumps, solar, wind and other clean technologies. If we don’t tackle demand, there will be no way to stop supply.
And Australia must also reduce its own fossil fuel demand, by shifting to zero-emissions in power and transport sectors as quickly as possible.
Do we now have a legitimate emissions policy?
The policy outcome announced on Monday will make a major contribution to meeting Australia’s emissions reduction targets, and marks a major jump in climate ambition.
But as ever, the devil can be in the detail. We must wait to see how the reformed scheme, with its new conditions, will work.
Headline: The return to Big Wars. – 36th Parallel Assessments
After the Cold War the consensus among Western military strategists was that the era of Big Wars, defined as peer conflict between large states with full spectrum military technologies, was at an end, at least for the foreseeable future. The strategic emphasis shifted to so-called “small wars” and low-intensity conflicts where asymmetric warfare would be increasingly carried out by Western special forces against state and non-state actors who used irregular warfare tactics in order to compensate for and mask their comparative military weakness vis a vis large Western states. Think of the likes of Somalian militias, Indian Ocean pirates, narco-guerrillas like the Colombian FARC, ELN and Mexican cartels, al-Qaeda, ISIS/DAESH, Boko Haram, al-Shabbab, Abu Sayyaf and Hezbollah as the adversaries of that moment
Although individual Western states configured their specific interpretations of the broader strategic shift to their individual geopolitical circumstances, the broader rationale of SOLIC (Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict) made sense. The former Soviet Union was in disarray, with Russia militarily weakened, diplomatically shrunken, economically plundered and political crippled. Its former Republics were yet unable to independently exploit their material resources, and some of its former vassal states in the Warsaw Pact were seeking NATO membership. NATO itself had lost it main purpose for being, since the threat of major war with the USSR (the original rationale for its creation) no longer existed. The PRC had yet to enjoy the economic fruits of fully embracing capitalism in order to buy, borrow and steal its way to great power status and thereby shift away from its defensive land-based strategic posture. In a swathe of regions “failed states” awash in local armed disputes replaced proxy regimes and propped up despots. In other words, there were no “big” threats that required “big” wars because there were no “peers” to fight. The strategic emphasis shifted accordingly to countering these types of threats, often under the guise of “peace-keeping” and nation-building multinational missions such as the ill-fated ISAF mission in Afghanistan.
More broadly, the strategic shift seemed right because the world had moved from a tight bipolar system during the Cold War, where the US and USSR led military blocs armed with nuclear weapons, to a unipolar system in which the US was the military, economic and political “hegemon” dominating global affairs. At the time US strategists believed that they could single-handedly prevail in 2.5 major regional wars against any adversary or combination of adversaries.That turned out to be a pipe dream but it was the order of the day until the sequels to 9/11. Even then, the so-called “war against terrorism” was asymmetric and largely low-intensity in comparative terms. Other than the initial phases of the invasion of Iraq, all other conflicts of the early 2000s have been asymmetric, with coalitions of Western actors fighting much weaker assortments of irregulars who use guerrilla tactics on land and who did not contest the air and maritime spaces around them. As has happened in the past, the longer these conflicts went on the better the chances of an “insurgent” victory. Afghanistan is the best modern example of that truism but the persistence of al-Shabbab in Northern Africa or emergence of ISIS/DAESH from the Sunni Triangle in Iraq’s Anbar Province in the aftermath of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime demonstrates the validity of the notion that guerrilla wars are best fought by insurgents as protracted wars on home terrain. In other words, apply a death by a thousand cuts strategy to foreign invaders until their will to prolong the fight is sapped.
When I was in the Pentagon in the early 1990s the joke was that bomber pilots and tank operators would need to update the resumes in order to become commercial pilots and bus or truck drivers. Money moved away from big ticket items and into the SOLIC community, with a rapid expansion of SEAL, Green Beret, Ranger and Marine Recon units designed to operate in small group formations behind or within enemy lines for extended periods of time. If the Big War moment culminated in “Shock and Awe,” the SOLIC strategy was two pronged when it came to counter-insurgency (COIN) objectives: either decapitation strikes against “high value targets” or a hearts and minds campaign in which cultural operations (such as building schools, bridges and toilets) supplemented kinetic operations led by allied indigenous forces using the elements of military superiority provided by Western forces. This required familiarisation with local cultures and indigenous terrain, so investment in language training and anthropological and sociological studies of societies in which the SOLIC units operated was undertaken, something that was not a priority under Big War strategies because the objective there is to kill enemies and incapacitate their war effort as efficiently as possible, not to understand their culture or their motivations.
An Afghan National Army Special Forces soldier maintains security from a temporary patrol base in Herat province, Afghanistan, Feb. 17, 2013. Coalition force members and ANASF conducted satellite patrols from a temporary patrol base in order lure insurgents out of hiding. Afghan National Security Forces are taking the lead in security operations to bring security and stability to the people of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. (U.S. Marine Corps Photo by Sgt. Pete Thibodeau/Released)
SOLIC turned out to be a mixed bag. The US and its allies found out, yet again, that much as like in Viet Nam, indigenous guerrilla forces were often ingenious, inspired and persistent. They learned to get out of the way when Western forces were massed against them, and they knew how to utilise hit and run tactics to frustrate their enemies. It was only when they made mistakes, like ISIS/DAESH’s attempt to create a territorially based Caliphate in Northern Irag and Northern Syria, and then engaged in a protracted defence of its base city Mosul, that they were decisively defeated. Even then remnants of this group and others continue to regroup and return to the fight even after suffering tremendous setbacks on the battlefields. As the saying goes, it is not who suffers the least losses that wins the fight, but instead it is those who can sustain the most losses and keep on fighting that ultimately prevail in a protracted irregular warfare scenario. Again, the Taliban prove the point.
During the time that the West was engaged in its SOLIC adventures, the PRC, Russia and emerging powers like India invested heavily in military modernisation and expansion programs. While the US and its allies expended blood and treasure on futile efforts to bring democracy to deeply entrenched authoritarian societies from the barrel of a gun, emerging great powers concentrated their efforts on developing military power commensurate with their ambitions. Neither the PRC, Russia or India did anything to support the UN mandates authorising armed interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in fact Russia and the PRC funnelled small arms to the Taliban via Pakistan, another yet nuclear armed but unstable state whose utility lies in its strategic ambiguity when it comes to big power conflicts. That fence-straddling posture will eventually be called.
However the future specifics unfold, that move to new or renewed militarisation was an early sign that the unipolar moment was coming to an end and that a multipolar order was in the making. Meanwhile, politics in the West turned inwards and rightwards, the US withdrew from Iraq and ten years later from Afghanistan without making an appreciable difference on local culture and society, with the entire liberal democratic world responding weakly to the PRC’s neo-imperialist behaviour in its near abroad and increasing Russian bellicosity with regards to former Soviet states, Georgia and Ukraine in particular (to say nothing of their direct influence operations and political interference in places like the US, UK, Germany and Australia). The challenges to US “hegemony” were well underway long before Donald Trump dealt US prestige and power a terminal blow.
Things on the strategic front came to a head when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The West and NATO had responded weakly to the annexation of the Donbas region and Crimea by pro-Russian separatists and Russian “Green Men” ( professional soldiers in green informs without distinctive insignia) in 2014. The same had occurred in Georgia in 2008, when Russian forces successfully backed pro-Russian irredentist groups in the Georgian provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Vladimir Putin read the West’s response to these two incursions as a sign of weakness and division within NATO and the liberal democratic world in general. He figured that an invasion of Ukraine would be quick and relatively painless because many Ukrainians are of Russian descent and would welcome his troops and prefer to be part of Mother Russia rather than a Ukrainian government presided over by a comedian. NATO and the US would dither and divide over how to respond and Russia would prevail with its land grab. And then, of course, Russia has a legion of hackers dedicated to subverting Western democracy in cyberspace and on social media (including in NZ) and better yet, has acolytes and supporters in high places, particularly in the US Republican Party and conservative political movements the world over.
In spite of all of these points of leverage, none of the Kremlin’s assumptions about the invasion turned out to be true. Russian intelligence was faulty, framed to suit Putin’s vainglorious desires rather than objectively inform him of what was awaiting his forces. Instead of a walk-over, the invasion stiffened Ukrainian resolve, ethnic Russians in Ukraine did not overwhelmingly welcome his troops and instead of dividing, NATO reunified and even has begin to expand with the upcoming addition of Finland and Sweden now that the original threat of the Russian Bear (and the spectre of the USSR) is back as the unifying agent.
Meanwhile the PRC has increased its threats against Taiwan, completely militarised significant parts of the South China Sea, encroached on the territorial waters and some island possessions of neighbouring littoral states, engaged in stealthy territorial expansion in places like Bhutan, clashed with Indian forces in disputed Himalayan territory and cast a blind eye on the provocative antics of its client state, North Korea. It has used soft power and direct influence campaigns, including wide use of bribery, to accrue influence in Africa, Latin America and the South Pacific. It arms Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua in spite of their less than splendid regime characteristics. It violates international treaties and conventions such as the Law of the Sea, the sovereignty of airspace over other nation’s territories and various fishery protection compacts. It uses its state-backed companies for espionage purposes, engages in industrial espionage and intellectual property theft on grand scale and acts like an environmental vandal in its quest for raw material imports from other parts of the world (admittedly, it is not alone in this). It does not behave, in other words as a responsible, law-abiding international citizen. And it is now armed to the teeth, including a modernised missile fleet that is clearly designed to be used against US forces in the Western Pacific and beyond, including the US mainland if nuclear war becomes a possibility.
PLAN Marines practice joint amphibious assault exercises with Russian Marines in 2017. Photo: Xinghua.
All of this sabre rattling and actual war-mongering by the PRC, Russia and allies like Iran and North Korea were reason enough for Western strategists to reconsider the Big War thesis. But it is the actual fighting in Ukraine that has jolted analysts to re-valuing full spectrum warfare from the seabed to outer space.
Since 2016 the US Defense Department has begin to shift its strategic gaze towards fighting Big Wars. In its 2022 National Defense Strategy and related documents, this orientation is explicit, mentioning north the PRC and Russia as main threats.For its part, the PRC has responded in kind and warns that US “interventionism” will pay a heavy price should it interfere with China’s rightful claims on its near abroad (which on Chinese maps extend well into the Pacific). The DPRK is accelerating its ballistic missile tests and openly talking about resuming nuclear warhead testing. India is going full bore with aircraft carrier and submarine fleet expansion. Germany is re-arming as its supplies Ukraine with increasingly sophisticated battle systems while the UK and Australia are raising their defense spending above 2 percent of GDP (the much vaunted but until recently ignored NATO standard). France has withdrawn from its SOLIC operations in North and Central Africa in order to prepare for larger conflicts involving its core interests. Japan has revised its long-standing pacifist constitution and has begun to add offensive weapons into its inventory as well as more closely integrating with the 5 Eyes Anglophone signals intelligence network.
The arms race is on and the question now is whether a security dilemma is being created that will lead to a devastating miscalculation causing a major war (security dilemmas are a situation where one State, seeing that a rival State is arming itself seemingly out of proportion to its threat environment, begins to arm itself in response, thereby prompting the rival State to increase its military expenditures even more, leading to a spiralling escalation of armament purchases and deployments that at some point can lead to a misreading of a situation and an armed clash that in turn escalates into war).
The race to the Big War is also being fuelled by middle powers like those of the Middle East (Israel included) and even Southeast Asia, where States threatened by Chinese expansionism are doubling down on military modernisation programs. A number of new security agreements such as the Quad and AUKUS have been signed into force, exacerbating PRC concerns that its being ring-fenced by hostile Western adversaries and their Asian allies. As another saying goes, “perception is everything.”
None of this means that large States will abandon SOLIC anytime soon. Special forces will be used against armed irregular groups throughout the world as the occasion requires. But in terms of military strategic doctrines, all of the major powers are now preparing for the next Big War. That is precisely why alliances are being renewed or created, because allied firepower is a force multiplier that can prove decisive in the battle theater.
One thing needs to be understood about Big Wars. The objective is that they be short and to the point. That is, overwhelming force is applied in the most efficient way in order to break the enemy’s physical capabilities and will to fight in the shortest amount of time. Then a political outcome is imposed. What military leaders do not want is what is happening to the Russians in Ukraine: bogged down by a much smaller force fighting on home soil with the support of other large States that see the conflict as a proxy for the real thing. The idea is get the fight over with as soon as possible, which means bringing life back to the notion of “overwhelming force,” but this time against a peer competitor.
B-2 Stealth Bomber on training run. Photo: USAF.
The trickle down effects of this strategic shift are being felt in Australasia. Singapore has agreed to hosting forward basing facilities for a US littoral combat ship and its shore-based complement as well as regular port calls by US Navy capital ships such as aircraft carriers. The Philippines have renewed a bilateral defense pact with the US after years of estrangement. Australia has aligned its strategic policy with that of the US and with the signing of the AUKUS agreement on nuclear-powered submarines and adjacent military technologies has become a full fledged US military ally across the leading edges of military force (Australia will now become only the second nation that the US shares nuclear submarine technologies with, after the UK). Even New Zealand is making the shift, with recent Defense White Papers and other command announcements all framing the upcoming strategic environment as one involving great power competition (in which the PRC is seen as the regional disruptor) with the potential for conflict in the South and Western Pacific (with a little concern about the adverse impact of climate change of Pacific communities thrown in). In other words, the times they are a’changin’ in New Zealand’s strategic landscape. For NZ, comfort of being in a benign strategic environment no longer applies.
It remains to be seen how long New Zealand’s foreign policy elite fully comprehend what their military commanders are telling them about what is on the strategic horizon. They may well still cling to the idea that they can trade preferentially with the PRC, stay out of Russian inspired conflicts and yet receive full security guarantees from its Anglophone partners. But if they indeed think that way, they are in for an unpleasant surprise because one way or another NZ will be pulled into the next Big War whether it likes it or not.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine appears to be a defining moment in the evolution of the post-Cold War world. In particular, it is highlighting problems that do not respect borders, such as the environmental damage caused by war. These are raising important questions about international security.
Can a form of rules-based international co-operation – rather than great power aspirations – become the preferred diplomatic response?
Traditionally, a key driver of international relations has been the so-called Westphalian doctrine of absolute state sovereignty. This is based on the belief that there is no higher authority than the state for defining national economic, security and diplomatic interests in the international arena.
But the end of the Cold War and deepening globalisation have challenged that approach to global politics.
Today, there appears to be a significant divide. On one side, “realist” observers claim reinvigorated great power rivalry has ended the globalisation “project”. On the other, “liberals” argue globalisation is an irreversible structural change that encourages international co-operation to deal with “problems without passports”.
Clearly this disagreement has not been resolved. But the environmental impacts of Russia’s Ukraine invasion could tilt the debate in favour of those arguing for a more multilateral approach to security.
In his address to the New Zealand parliament in December 2022, Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky made a distinction between the impact of the Russian invasion on the country’s environment and its effects on the economy and infrastructure. The latter, he said, could be reconstructed with huge investment once the conflict was over.
The invasion, he observed, involved a policy of “ecocide”. That is, it has involved the destruction of Ukraine’s natural environment by deliberate or negligent Russian actions. These are widespread, long-term and severe in their effects.
To date, around 174,000 square kilometres of Ukrainian territory have been contaminated with mines and unexploded ordnance. Large areas of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azoz have been polluted due to military action. It is estimated hundreds of thousands of fish and other creatures in these waters have died as a result.
The invasion has degraded vast tracts of agricultural land and could jeopardise Ukraine’s position as one of the world’s major food producers. It has also destroyed large areas of forest, as well as many national parks.
Meanwhile, Russia’s campaign of intensive shelling has targeted Ukraine’s industrial facilities, a tactic that has caused significant air, water and soil contamination. It has also put the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, at risk of a major nuclear accident.
A Ukrainian technician works to remove land mines in the Kharkiv region, March 2023. Getty Images
Damage beyond borders
As Zelensky emphasised in his address to the New Zealand parliament, however, Russia’s ecocidal policy is not just a problem for Ukraine, but also for much of the world. The international environmental consequences of this conflict are becoming clearer.
For one thing, the contamination of Ukraine’s groundwater in the wake of the Russian invasion could severely affect the ecosystems of several neighbouring states.
In addition, the conflict is reshaping global food and fertiliser markets. A number of countries are planning to increase grain production and develop fertiliser production, a potential threat to ecosystems and biodiversity.
Furthermore, the war has potential climate-related impacts. While a number of states have reduced their reliance on Russian oil and gas imports, some are relaunching coal stations, extending the lifespan of nuclear power stations and investing in new fossil fuel projects.
Taken together, the national and international environmental repercussions of the invasion confirm what has been plain for much of the post-Cold War era: the widely held idea of national security based almost exclusively on the perception of military threat is both limited and dangerous.
In the 21st century, there are pressures to broaden the concept of security to recognise that threats to a state’s wellbeing can often emanate from environmental degradation. Progress towards acknowledging environmental security, however, depends on two conditions.
The first is that Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion and attempted annexation of Ukraine – a flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter – must be squarely defeated if a rules-based order, conducive to international co-operation, is to be sustained.
Second, the UN Security Council – a global body that has the primary responsibility for addressing threats to international security – must be reformed to ensure it is a more reliable barrier to war and its environmental impacts.
In an address to the Security Council in April 2022, Zelensky said Russia’s invasion was the latest example of how the right of veto enjoyed by the council’s five permanent members had undermined an effective system of international security – and had effectively failed Ukraine.
Zelensky was right. Until those member states lose the privilege of their right of veto, the path towards recognising the wider importance of environmental security in an increasingly interdependent world is likely to be more protracted than it should be.
In the meantime, the New Zealand government should publicly back Kyiv’s efforts to win international support for the notion of environmental security.
Robert G. Patman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Despite low numbers, our research has found three in four women in one state (Victoria) are interested in riding their bikes, which raises the question, what is stopping them?
Our new study, published over the weekend, found that women experience gendered barriers to riding a bike compared with men. This includes a lack of supportive infrastructure, such as bike paths or protected lanes, to make them feel safer in traffic.
We found involving women in decisions about implementing new bike infrastructure, as well as expanding the use of e-bikes through financial incentives, are key to getting more women on the road.
Our study involved a survey and in-depth interviews with over 700 people across Melbourne. Women in the study described a lack of confidence about bikes, from buying and maintaining them to riding them.
When trying to buy one, for instance, women described being treated as “just a girlie with a bike”, often leaving shops with a bike insufficient for their needs.
We found that inclusive community groups such as Wheel Women and Chicks Who Ride Bikes can play a key role in tackling this by empowering women to ride.
Many women in the study also expressed a desire to ride more, but said lighting on bike paths was non-existent, inadequate or turned off after hours, leading them to fear for their personal safety. This limited how much they were willing to ride their bikes in winter, or for other trips outside of daylight hours.
To compound this, women reported bike paths often detouring into dark underpasses. While underpasses protect bike riders and walkers from overhead traffic, they often feel hidden from public view and have inadequate lighting and limited escape routes.
And yet, when it comes to creating spaces for people to bikes in cities, women do not have a clear seat at the table.
In Australia, the majority of biking infrastructure is implemented by transport engineers, of which only 15% are women.
Our study highlights the critical importance of protected bike lanes to encourage more women to ride a bike. Protected bike lanes limit interactions between bikers and car drivers, minimising risk of injury and potential harassment from motorists. Despite these benefits, a 2018 study found that 99% of all bike lanes on Melbourne roads remain unprotected.
Women with children described wanting to make trips by bike in their local areas, but had concerns about “missing links” between bike paths, leaving them vulnerable to motor vehicle traffic.
Building protected bike lanes across cities is a difficult task, but there are other options. For instance, Australian cities could design networks of protected bike lanes that stitch together 30km/h speed zones and low-traffic neighbourhoods.
E-bikes are out of reach for many
Over half of the women in our study were concerned about collisions with motor vehicles. And significantly more women reported concerns about their physical ability to ride a bike. They described feeling like they could not “keep up” with traffic or worried about their physical fitness to escape tricky situations.
E-bike financial incentives, such as tax rebates and car trade-in schemes are common all over the world, but do not yet exist anywhere in Australia. Such incentives are critical to enabling a greater number and diversity of women to ride a bike.
As we move toward net-zero-emission cities, the shift to sustainable and active modes of transport is essential. Empowering women to drive the conversation about what they need to be able to ride a bike – and increasing the number of women designing and planning biking infrastructure – is crucial to ensure women aren’t left behind.
Lauren Pearson receives funding from the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control, Canada.
Ben Beck receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Federal Office of Road Safety, the Federal Department of Health, the Transport Accident Commission, the Victorian Department of Health, VicHealth, RACV, Transport for New South Wales, and the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control, Canada.
On Friday, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) updated its review of proposed reforms to the regulation of nicotine vaping products. It reported the federal government is now “actively considering” the TGA’s advice.
The TGA’s advice has not been released at this time, but a top-level summary of the review consultation submissions was. It restated the review’s scope, focused on changes to border controls for nicotine vaping products, minimum quality and safety standards – including the idea of categorising nicotine vaping products as therapeutic goods.
The update’s emphasis on enforcement and safety supports the goal to ensure nicotine vaping products are available only to people using them to try to quit smoking.
Nothing is off the table
Three weeks ago, all the Australian health ministers agreed to set up a working group to consider options to address the availability of all e-cigarettes, including nicotine and non-nicotine containing devices.
Since then, Federal Health Minister Mark Butler has been increasingly vocal about improving border controls to enforce Australian laws that say nicotine vapes should only be available via prescription.
Butler says “nothing is off the table” – except allowing the sale of nicotine e-cigarettes without a doctor’s prescription in retailers such as convenience stores. Currently, illicit sales of nicotine vaping products are occurring on a growing scale, with hundreds of retail outlets selling nicotine e-cigarettes in blatant breach of public health laws.
They came primarily from two viewpoints. On the one hand, the majority of public health stakeholders (including non-government organisations and state and territory government health and education agencies) who called for stronger border controls. On the other, those aligned with commercial interests calling for nicotine e-cigarettes to be sold legally over the counter.
The TGA noted a large number of submissions from “the general public” appeared to be “campaign responses” calling for vaporiser nicotine to be removed from the poisons standard so it can be sold by any retailer.
This is a well-worn tactic used by the tobacco industry and its retailer allies – orchestrate responses to public consultations purporting to be the voice of the community. In reality, these represent the interests of commercial entities. And anyway, repealing the scheduling of vaporiser nicotine as a prescription-only substance is not within the scope of the review.
Evidence shows few people are successfully using vapes to quit tobacco. Shutterstock
Although state and territory government health and education agencies called unanimously for tighter border controls, there were varied views on how this could be achieved.
Some proposed the introduction of an import permit. Others suggested amending customs regulations administered by the Department of Home Affairs, which would require Australian Border Force to seize nicotine vaping products imported without medical authority. Many submissions proposed extending this to non-nicotine vaping products as well.
Independent health groups – particularly the Cancer Council, the National Heart Foundation and the Australian Council on Smoking and Health, who were previously involved in landmark policy achievements such as plain packaging of tobacco – all supported customs seizures.
Based on all the evidence, including the harms of vaping, patterns of use and current policies, this option would turn the tap off at the border. State and territory governments must also end illegal retail sales in their respective jurisdictions. This would end current exemptions for non-nicotine vaping product sales, and ensure all vaping products, regardless of claimed nicotine content, are only accessed through the prescription pathway.
The proliferation of so-called non-nicotine vaping products, many of which contain nicotine when tested, is disrupting enforcement efforts to make nicotine vaping products prescription-only.
It’s time for greater enforcement and regulatory reform action – not just deferral to “working groups”, “consultations” and “inquiries”. Queensland’s parliament just moved to conduct another inquiry of e-cigarettes, at least the fourth in Australia since 2017.
Soon we’ll hear what the government plans to prioritise. If the federal response to the TGA review turns out to be an import permit instead of prohibiting imports, then it must be backed with effective enforcement. Retailers are already flouting federal laws (both the poisons standard and the Therapeutic Goods Order) and state/territory public health acts by importing and selling nicotine vaping products. Without enforcement, an import permit will be just another policy instrument to be ignored.
Nothing turns a profit like commercialised addiction. Vaping manufacturers and retailers know this and appear determined to addict as many users as possible through increasing lawbreaking, while Australian governments “consider their options”. Not since the debut of mass-marketing of cigarettes in the 19th century has a whole population been at such risk of nicotine addiction and health harms on an industrial scale.
Australian governments are clear about their shared commitment to restricting nicotine vaping products to a prescription pathway. Now they need to commit to action – by seizing all imported vaping products not destined for a pharmacy, and extending the current restrictions and enforcement to all vaping products.
Becky Freeman is an Expert Advisor to the Cancer Council Tobacco Issues Committee and a member of the Cancer Institute Vaping Communications Advisory Panel. These are unpaid roles. She has received relevant competitive grants that include a focus on e-cigarettes/vaping from the NHMRC, MRFF, NSW Health, the Ian Potter Foundation, VicHealth, and Healthway WA; relevant research contracts from the Cancer Institute NSW and the Cancer Council NSW; relevant personal/consulting fees from the World Health Organization, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Department of Health, BMJ Tobacco Control, the Heart Foundation NSW, the US FDA, the NHMRC e-cigarette working committee, NSW Health, and Cancer Council NSW; and relevant travel expenses from the Oceania Tobacco Control Conference and the Australia Public Health Association preventive health conference.
Paul Grogan is employed by the Daffodil Centre, a joint cancer research venture between Cancer Council NSW and the University of Sydney, which is a partner in the jointly funded GenVape research project, and which also provided modelling of smoking prevalence trends subcontracted to the Australian National University as part of its Australian Government funded e-cigarettes evidence review.
Since it was founded in 2016, Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface (BCI) company Neuralink has had its moments in biotech news.
Whether it was the time Musk promised his “link” would let people communicate telepathically, or when the whole company was under investigation for potentially violating the Animal Welfare Act, the hype around Neuralink means it’s often the first mental reference people have for BCI technology.
But BCIs have been kicking around for much longer than you’d expect. Musk’s is just one in a growing list of companies dedicated to advancing this technology. Let’s take a look back at some BCI milestones over the past decades, and forward to where they might lead us.
An expanding sector
Brain-computer interfaces are devices that connect the brain with a computer to allow the user to complete some kind of action using their brain signals.
Many high-profile companies entered the BCI field in the 2010s, backed by millions of dollars in investment. Founded in 2016, the American company Kernel began by researching implantable devices, before switching to focus on non-invasive techniques that don’t require surgery.
Even Facebook gave BCIs a go, with an ambitious plan to create a headset that would let users type 100 words per minute. But it stopped this research in 2021 to focus on other types of human-computer interfaces.
First contact
Developed in the 1970s, the earliest BCIs were relatively straightforward, used on cats and other animals to develop communication pathways. The first device implanted in a human was developed by Jonathan Wolpaw in 1991, and allowed its user to control a cursor with their brain signals.
Advances in machine learning through the years paved the way for more sophisticated BCIs. These could control complex devices, including robotic limbs, wheelchairs and exoskeletons. We’ve also seen devices get progressively smaller and easier to use thanks to wireless connectivity.
Like many newer BCI devices, Neuralink has yet to receive approval for clinical trials of its invasive implant. Its latest application to the US Food and Drug Administration was rejected.
There are, however, three notable groups conducting clinical trials that are worth keeping an eye on.
Founded in 1998 in Massachusetts, the BrainGate system has been around since the late 1990s. This makes it one of the oldest advanced BCI implant systems. Its device is placed in the brain using microneedles, similar to the technology Neuralink uses.
BrainGate’s devices are probably the most advanced when it comes to BCI functionality. One of its wired devices offers a typing speed of 90 characters per minute, or 1.5 characters per second. A study published in January released results from data collected over 17 years from 14 participants.
During this time there were 68 instances of “adverse events” including infection, seizures, surgical complications, irritation around the implant, and brain damage. However, the most common event was irritation. Only six of the 68 incidents were considered “serious”.
Apart from communication applications, BrainGate has also achieved robotic control for self-feeding.
2. UMC Utrecht
The University Medical Centre in Utrecht, Netherlands, was the first to achieve fully wireless implanted BCI technology that patients could take home.
Its device uses electrocorticography-based BCI (ECoG). Electrodes in the form of metal discs are placed directly on the surface of the brain to receive signals. They connect wirelessly to a receiver, which in turn connects to a computer.
Participants in a clinical trial that ran from 2020 to 2022 were able to take the device home and use it every day for about a year. It allowed them to control a computer screen and type at a speed of two characters per minute.
While this typing speed is slow, future versions with more electrodes are expected to perform better.
3. Synchron (originally SmartStent)
Synchron was founded in 2016 in Melbourne, Australia. In 2019, it became the first company to be approved for clinical trials in Australia. Then in 2020 it became the first company to receive FDA approval to run clinical trials using a permanently implanted BCI – and finally did this with a US patient this year.
Synchron’s approach is to bypass full brain surgery by using blood vessels to implant electrodes in the brain. This minimally invasive approach is similar to other stenting procedures routinely performed in clinics.
Synchron’s very small ‘stentrode’ can be implanted with a minimally invasive procedure. Synchron
Synchron’s device is placed in the brain near the area that controls movement, and a wireless transmitter is placed in the chest. This transmitter then conveys brain signals to a computer.
Initial clinical results have shown no adverse effects and a functionality of 14 characters per minute using both the BCI and eye tracking. Results were not reported for BCI use alone.
Although its device efficiency could be improved, Synchron’s approach means it leads the way in achieving a low barrier for entry. By avoiding the need for full brain surgery, it’s helping to bring BCI implantation closer to being a day procedure.
The history of BCIs reveals the immense challenges involved in developing this technology. These are compounded by the fact that experts still don’t fully understand the links between our neural circuitry and thoughts.
It’s also unclear which BCI features consumers will prioritise moving forward, or what they’d be willing to sign up for. Not everyone will happily opt for an invasive brain procedure – yet the systems that don’t require this collect “noisy” data that aren’t as efficient.
Electroencephalogram-based (EEG) BCIs don’t require surgery, but being less invasive means they’re also less effective. Shutterstock
Answers will emerge as more devices gain approval for clinical trials and research is published on the results.
Importantly, developers of these technologies must not rush through trials. They have a responsibility to be transparent about the safety and efficacy of their devices, and to report on them openly so consumers can make informed decisions.
Sam John receives funding from US Department of Defence, NHMRC, DJPR Vic Government.
Sam John is an inventor on patents relating the the Stentrode technology and brain machine interfaces, licenced to Synchron through the University of Melbourne.
The ‘Young Elderly’ are in essence the post-war baby-boomers. An average young elderly person in these charts was born around 1950 to 1952.
The charts look at ‘quarterly excess deaths’, so do not show week-by-week fluctuations in deaths. For example, data for the very end of 2022 covers the whole of the last three months of 2022.
As in my previous recent charts (see my Spiralling Deaths in Germany, Evening Report, 14 March 2023; and Examples of Germany and Denmark, Evening Report, 12 March 2023), I have emphasised Germany, because late-pandemic mortality has been so bad there. And because Germany’s differences with the rest of Europe create a very useful point for epidemiological analysis.
In the first chart (above), of the countries shown only Germany and New Zealand had excess deaths in this age group below ten percent in the first six months of Covid19. The United Kingdom was easily worst then.
The United States had a really bad pandemic, for two years from April 2020 to April 2022. But, subsequently, for nearly two years since April 2021 Germany has been for the most part easily the most deathly of these countries, for the young elderly, with only the USA contesting Germany for this dubious honour. For some of 2022, New Zealand was in second place out of these seven countries.
We note that Belgium, Netherlands and France all had high death rates early in the pandemic, but have subsequently had much lower death rates than Germany for this age group.
The two obvious avenues for investigation are diet (the French surely have a more healthy diet?) and differences in the policy responses to the Covid19 pandemic. My understanding is that, while all countries had similar public health restrictions during the peak weeks of Covid19, Germany was much the slowest of these countries to remove mandated public health measures. Germany’s abundance of caution may have backfired big-time. Yet the only reason given here (on Deutcshe Welle) is: “that diseases other than Covid19 are bouncing back because fewer people are wearing masks amid a general relaxation of pandemic rules in comparison with the past two years”. There is no hint of comparative analysis in this particular DW media report.
Chart by Keith Rankin.
The second chart compares Germany with its four nearest Eastern European countries, and with the two Mediterranean countries which were the first to experience substantially elevated pandemic death rates.
For the young elderly ‘boomers’, Spain and Italy show quite the opposite pattern to Germany; they started with high death rates and then moved to generally lower rates. Both had summer mortality peaks in 2022, to some extent due to the summer heat waves but mainly due to the rebounding of tourism with Covid19 still present. Covid19 flourishes in bars and restaurants, and in airport terminals.
The eastern countries had more deaths overall in the middle seasons of the pandemic, despite (or maybe because of) the success of the measures taken in the early months of the pandemic. Also, for these countries, with lower life expectancies than their western neighbours, the young elderly are on average closer to their eventual deathdays. It is important to note that these eastern countries had the fewest pandemic-related deaths after March 2022. Presumably their people most at risk of dying had already died, and the remainder had higher natural immunity to respiratory illnesses than did the older citizenry of Germany. (I am not aware that Polish, Bohemian or Hungarian cuisine is particularly noted for its health benefits, in contrast to the much-touted Mediterranean diets; so a better diet is probably not the reason.)
Chart by Keith Rankin.
There is one other country with a similar pandemic death-profile to Germany; its southern geographic and cultural neighbour, Austria. The final chart here shows the smaller countries of western and central Europe, plus New Zealand. (Australia and Sweden do not provide age-group data.)
First we note that Austria and its neighbours Slovenia and Switzerland start out closely synchronised. Switzerland drops off Austria’s high young-elderly mortality path from March 2021, and Slovenia drops off a year later (though has a high summer peak in line with its Italian neighbour). The Scandinavian countries had generally low death rates for the young-elderly age group. (They did however see rising deaths from mid-2021 for the older elderly.)
Any valid epidemiological analysis for Germany’s 2022 tragedy needs to take into account the similar experience of Austria, as well as the generally different experiences of the other European and neo-European countries.
The United States still has a worse overall pandemic record than Germany, for the young elderly. The worry for Germany, though, is that the reasons for its really bad 2022 have not necessarily been resolved; 2023 may be just as bad. Time will tell; so long as an asteroid strike or a nuclear war don’t displace infectious diseases as drivers of excess mortality in Europe.
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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
Does the discovery of a Ming Dynasty Buddha sculpture found near Shark Bay in remote Western Australia “rewrite history” and suggest the Chinese first visited Australia 600 years ago?
Shark Bay is 800km from Perth. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
But even without this evidence, there is a long history of Chinese people in WA that may explain the presence of the Buddha.
Ian MacLeod of the Western Australian Museum identified that the Buddha was buried between 100 and 150 years ago.
Indeed, there was a large Chinese community living in Shark Bay in the late 1800s.
Asians in Australia
Asian boats visited Australia’s north and northwest coasts long before the first European settlements popped up in WA in the late 1820s.
From as early as the 1500s to 1906, hundreds of fisherpeople from Makassar on Sulawesi and other islands in today’s Indonesia made annual voyages to northern Australia, especially the Kimberley region and Arnhem Land. Some Makassans married Aboriginal Australians.
Rock art depicting a Macassan perahu, or boat. Wikimedia Commons
Makassans bridged trade between Australia and China, and they may have brought Chinese traders – in Makassar at least since 1656 – to Australia in the 17th century or earlier.
However, no current archaeological evidence can support this.
The first documented Chinese Western Australian, Moon Chow (周满), arrived in 1830. A skilful carpenter in the newly established Swan River Colony, Moon Chow married, had kids and lived in Fremantle until he passed away in 1877.
Historian Anne Atkinson gathered the stories of some of these migrants in her book Asian Immigrants to Western Australia. We have recently digitised the Atkinson Collection and have analysed the information on people of Chinese heritage present in Shark Bay before 1900.
Most of these individuals were involved in the pearling industry, owning boats and gear or working for local pearlers. One local, Ah Wee, owned two pearling boats, pearling gear, two dinghies, two iron houses and livestock worth a total of £117 in 1886.
His family, and a number of others, were more than affluent enough to have owned the Buddha sculpture.
Pearling boats in Broome, 1910. State Library of Western Australia
Other members of the community were employed in diverse roles such as cooks, sandalwood workers, station hands and general servants. Many are recorded as owning houses made from canvas or hessian. A few who were more affluent owned corrugated iron houses.
Life in Shark Bay was challenging for many Chinese Western Australians in the 1800s. The Atkinson records reveal the prevalence of violence, including murders, suicides and suspicious deaths.
Chou Jum (Jim) Chu, Lo Yu Kwong and U.A. Tong were sandalwood workers employed by Leopold von Bibra at Wooramel, Shark Bay in the early 1880s. Jim Chu died in 1884 while working. His two Chinese friends testified he had been murdered by von Bibra.
The court case provides glimpses into the complexities of Chinese life in Shark Bay: unequal pay, difficult work conditions, systemic racism and regular disputes with employers over working conditions.
As with so many similar cases where abuse of Chinese labourers was alleged, von Bibra was found not guilty.
The Canton continued to be home to a large number of Chinese pearlers until the local European pearlers in Shark Bay established the “European Association” in 1886 and pressured the government to exclude Chinese and Malays from the local pearling industry.
E.A. Lums & Co Cash Grocers and Provision Merchants, Subiaco, 1916. State Library of Western Australia
Their lobbying paid off, leading to a violent and brutal closure of the Canton, home to 102 Chinese and 68 Malays at the time. Some left Australia; many moved down to Perth and became market gardeners; others went to work on cattle stations as labourers or cooks.
Hae Sam was a fisherman in Shark Bay from 1873 to 1876. He then became a market gardener in Cannington and then Maylands in the 1880s, before owning a fruit and vegetable shop in Fremantle in 1890.
His descendants still live in WA.
Continuing connections
The White Australia policy, enshrined in law shortly after the Commonwealth of Australia’s inauguration in 1901, overshadowed the diverse interactions between Australia and Asia in previous centuries.
At the time of federation, 1,459 male and 16 female WA residents were identified as born in China.
During the initial period of the White Australia policy, due to a desire to alleviate labour shortages, WA offered a relatively welcoming atmosphere for Chinese workers, compared with the eastern states.
As a result, the first commonwealth census in 1911 revealed a small but growing China-born population in the state, with 1,601 males and 20 females.
A Chinese fisherman in Broome in 1924. State Library of Western Australia
As the White Australia policy persisted, the China-born population in WA experienced a sharp decline from the 1920s onwards, dropping to just 227 males and 86 females in 1961, when the population reached its lowest point.
Although the White Australia policy ended in 1966, it was not until the 1991 census that the number of China-born WA residents surpassed the figure reported in the 1911 census.
In the 2021 census there were 28,415 China-born WA residents, among whom 36.7% were Australian citizens.
Regardless of when and how the Buddha sculpture arrived in Shark Bay, it reminds us of the long and changing history of Australia-Asia connections.
Benjamin Smith received funding for the Digitisation Centre of Western Australia as Lead CI on the ARC LIEF Grant LE200100123.
Yu Tao ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milton Speer, Visiting Fellow, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, University of Technology Sydney
Shutterstock
Global warming has led to higher summer temperatures across Sydney over the past 30 years. However, our data analysis shows very hot summer days are becoming much more common in Western Sydney than in coastal Sydney. These hotter summers are also getting longer.
Although January and February are usually the warmest months, Greater Sydney summers now extend from December to March. For example, the city’s record-setting March has been the hottest month this summer. Summers are expanding and winters shrinking across subtropical and temperate Australia.
Our newly published analysis of temperature data from 1962-2021 shows one in ten days in summer reached temperatures of 35.4℃ or more in Western Sydney. That’s a full 5℃ hotter than near the coast, where one in ten days exceeded 30.4℃. One in 20 days reached 37.8℃ or more in the west – the equivalent figure near the coast was 33.6℃.
Furthermore, very hot days have become more common over the past 30 years in Western Sydney, but not near the coast. The difference in maximum temperatures between the regions can be as much as 10℃.
So what explains the startling difference between two parts of the same city?
In our research, we show the influence of four climate drivers: El Niño-La Niña, Southern Annular Mode, global temperatures and local Tasman Sea temperatures.
In our study, we calculated the threshold values for the top 10% and top 5% of summer maximum temperatures (the 90th and 95th percentiles) recorded for coastal Sydney (at Observatory Hill) and Western Sydney (at Richmond, about 50km to the north-west) over the 60 years from 1962-2021.
Comparing the first 30-year period, 1962-1991, to the second 30-year period, 1992-2021, revealed a stark difference in maximum temperature trends in Sydney’s west and nearer the coast.
In Richmond, the number of days with temperatures above 35.4℃ and 37.8℃ increased by 120 days and 64 days, respectively. In contrast, Observatory Hill recorded decreases of 4 and 52 days in days above the 90th and 95th percentiles (over 30.4℃ and 33.6℃).
What explains these differences?
Poorly planned development in the west and its distance from coastal sea breezes explains part of the disparity between inland and coastal Sydney. But we also found the increase in extreme heat in Western Sydney is due to Australian climate drivers being amplified by increased global and Tasman Sea temperatures.
Using machine-learning techniques, we were able to attribute temperature differences to the influences of these climate drivers and their interactions with each other. The results show common, highly influential climate drivers for both regions:
the Niño3.4, (an indicator of sea-surface temperatures in the tropical central Pacific Ocean, which drive El Niño and La Niña events)
the Indian Ocean Dipole (the difference in ocean temperatures between the eastern and western sides of the Indian Ocean)
the combination of the Southern Annular Mode (the movement of winds and weather systems to Australia’s south) with the Southern Oscillation (large-scale changes in sea-level air pressure between Tahiti and Darwin)
the combination of global temperature with the Southern Annular Mode.
Tasman Sea and global sea surface temperatures have had far more influence on coastal Sydney than on inland Western Sydney.
An increase in extreme heat days is having wide-ranging impacts on Western Sydney.
Despite the importance of rising temperatures in Sydney and particularly in Western Sydney, there has been little focus on their links with large-scale climate drivers. Our findings underline the worsening situation in Western Sydney compared with coastal Sydney.
Studies that employ machine-learning techniques or comparative analyses are typically done in regions of smaller populations. Western Sydney is home to more than 2.5 million people.
Its economic development and fast-growing population have led to higher concentrations of buildings and man-made surfaces, which absorb and retain more heat. Known as the urban heat island effect, it compounds the impacts of climate change. Development on this scale also presents complex challenges for policy planning and resource management.
The growth of Western Sydney is driving an increase in built-up areas, like this housing estate, that absorb and retain more heat. Image: Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils (WSROC)
What does this mean for the people of Western Sydney?
Identifying the climate drivers that most influence maximum temperatures is crucial for Sydney’s planning. It matters for infrastructure development, health and socioeconomic wellbeing in Western Sydney in particular.
Two-thirds of Sydney’s population growth by 2036 is projected to be in Western Sydney. By then an estimated 3.5 million residents will be exposed to more extreme summer heat.
It’s imperative to understand how Western Sydney differs from near-coastal Sydney, and to plan accordingly. Some local councils in the west, such as Blacktown, are already trialling heat refuges to reduce the growing risks for residents.
Longer and more intense summers are driving longer heatwaves and droughts. It’s leading to more bushfires of greater intensity, such as the 2019-20 bushfires.
The economic burden of dealing with these disastrous events is increasing. According to the Climate Council, the costs associated with extreme weather events in Australia have more than doubled since the 1970s. Australians are now five times more likely to be displaced by such events than people living in Europe.
The urban heat island effect already permeates Western Sydney. Recent extreme temperatures have been close to the limits of human endurance. The human body’s ability to cool itself declines above 35℃, especially in humid conditions.
The impacts of more frequent extreme heat, compounded by heat island effects, are greatest for vulnerable populations such as children in classrooms without air conditioning or low-income family households. Their situation is in stark contrast to the experience of residents of cooler coastal areas.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards.
Political Roundup: The Ugly stoking of a culture war in election year
This weekend saw a showdown between two tribes of contemporary gender politics: those in favour of progressing transgender rights versus women wishing to defend their spaces. It’s a debate with huge passion, outrage and consequences.
The figure at the centre of the clash was the British “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” Posie Parker, aka Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, who attempted to hold a “Let Women Speak” rally at Albert Park in Auckland on Saturday. She was forced offstage by a counter-rally for trans rights and has fled back to the UK.
Saturday’s clash of cultures is a sign of where politics is heading in New Zealand – towards a fully-fledged culture war. This is something normally more associated with American politics – but also increasingly in places like the UK.
The Ugly opportunism of culture wars
There was an element of pantomime on both sides over the last week. Posie Parker thrives on controversy. She might be complaining now about her treatment in New Zealand, but by holding her rally in a public place like Albert Park she was provoking opposition and stoking tensions, hoping to become something of a martyr.
She won. She made global news, fuelling publicity in the UK and US markets where she carries out her main fundraising. She will now be even better equipped to push her particularly toxic form of gender politics.
Likewise, those opposing Parker were rather opportunistic in arguing that she is a fascist and that her beliefs were such a danger to the public that she had to be banned from the country.
They must have known they were giving the previously-unknown visitor huge amounts of free publicity and therefore helping get her views out to a wider audience. As broadcaster Heather du Plessis-Allan argued yesterday, “Parker’s opponents made sure that she was in the news most of the week”, and “They helped her spread her message. They played right into her hands.”
The Greens represent one side of the polarised divide. MP Golriz Ghahraman tweeted on her way to the rally: “So ready to fight N*zis”. Co-leader and Government Minister Marama Davidson put out a video to say that she was “so proud” of the protesters. And obviously wearing her hat of Minister for Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence she used the event to declare that only “white cis men” commit violence. Such messages will go down very well amongst the party’s support base, which is increasingly sensitive to the need to make progress on gender issues.
Will culture wars dominate the 2023 general election?
The New Zealand Herald’s Fran O’Sullivan wrote on Saturday that “The ‘culture wars’ are set to be a defining issue in the 2023 election.” And she bemoans the Posie Parker tour dominating politics in a week in which the Treasury and the Reserve Bank confirmed “that New Zealand will tip into a technical recession this year”.
According to O’Sullivan, the “rainbow community leaders went into overdrive” producing “an illustration of how quickly a cultural issue can consume public discourse.”
The implication is that the public is going into an election campaign in which there will be less debate and focus on addressing the cost of living crisis. And last week the Government released a major evaluation of their latest progress in eliminating child poverty – which tragically showed that real progress had been made. This vital issue was completely overshadowed by the Posie Parker visit, providing a warning of what type of issues might dominate the public sphere in the lead-up to the general election.
Who benefits from a heightened focus on cultural issues?
The two parliamentary parties stoking the culture wars are Act and the Greens. Those parties will gain a much higher profile if cultural issues keep rising to the fore. The Greens will pick up middle class supporters whose main focus is on social justice issues, while Act might be able to pick up more anti-woke working class supporters in provincial New Zealand.
Squeezed in the middle are the major parties of Labour and National, who are desperate to stay out of it all, aware that middle New Zealand is less enamoured by such debates and concerns. Labour, especially under new leader Chris Hipkins is trying to shuck off the woke association the party developed under Jacinda Ardern. Likewise, Christopher Luxon is trying to get rid of the reactionary image National sometimes had under Judith Collins.
On the outside is New Zealand First, with Winston Peters trying to get into the culture wars game. He’s positioned himself, along with Act, as being opposed to the woke elite’s focus on what he calls social engineering. Peters gave his State of the Nation speech on Friday in which he claimed: “There is a full-scale attack being waged on New Zealanders’ culture, identity and sense of belonging.” He complained that nowadays “there’s an awful tribalism in New Zealand politics”.
Peters pushed all the buttons on the culture war issues – claiming that the education system was the victim of “virtue signalling tinkerers”, and that government departments were more focused on relabelling themselves with Māori names than actually doing the mahi. Co-governance was also targeted as an elite agenda that would take away the “one person, one vote” Western tradition of democracy.
What are culture wars anyway?
There’s a whole new terminology that needs unpacking and defining in the new landscape of culture wars. We have been through versions associated with the “progressive” side of this debate such as political correctness, cancel culture, identity politics, and now “woke” politics. To what extent these terms are useful continues to be debated. Perhaps the better term for the milieu of more middle class progressive demands is “social justice politics”.
Much of it is associated with leftwing politics but, in reality, the left is divided over culture wars. The “cultural left” side tends to be connected with more elite, educated, and middle class activists. The more traditional, or working class orientated “old left”, is still focused on economic inequality and improving the lot of those economically disadvantaged as a whole, with a focus on universalism and civil rights.
Even the term “culture war” needs some unpacking. New Zealand lawyer Thomas Cranmer provides the following useful definition: “In essence, they are political conflicts that revolve around social and cultural issues, such as gender, race, sexuality, religion, and identity. The term was coined in the United States during the 1990s to describe the heated debates that were taking place between conservatives and progressives over issues like abortion, affirmative action, and gay rights. However, the scope of culture wars has since expanded to encompass a wide range of issues, from free speech and cancel culture to critical race theory and the role of the media in shaping public opinion.”
Problems of an escalating culture war
According to Act Party deputy leader Brooke Van Velden, New Zealand risks becoming “a divided society where cancel culture spirals out of control.” Similarly, in the weekend James Shaw pointed to the Posie Parker controversy, and said “Her arrival is the kind of risk that metastasises into broader political violence.” He told Newsroom that “There’s a real possibility we will see some form of political violence this year and someone will be injured, or worse.”
Democracy might also be harmed if the culture wars dominate this year’s election. An ugly fight over transgender politics, co-governance, or race relations would be one that alienates many voters, and reduces participation in politics. Some of the public will turn away in disgust, confusion, or fear about culture wars. The intolerance and outrage that often occurs in these debates can make ordinary voters feel unwelcome taking part in discussion and debate, or even in voting.
This doesn’t mean that the issues at the heart of culture wars are unimportant or should be suppressed. For example, there are vitally important issues and reforms that need to be progressed in terms of gender and transgender rights.
This is also a point made well by Thomas Cranmer: “it is important to note that culture wars are not inherently bad. They can provide an opportunity for different groups to engage in meaningful dialogue and debate over important issues. They can also bring attention to marginalised communities and push for greater social justice and equity.”
However, he points out that culture war debates often lack genuine, good-faith engagement: “The problem arises when culture wars become polarised and divisive, with each side demonising the other and refusing to engage in productive dialogue. This is where New Zealand currently finds itself.”
Solutions to culture wars: Critical thinking and open debate
The main problem in culture wars arise when there is no room for nuanced discussion, openness or a willingness to learn from others and opponents. Overall, there is a need for healthier debate and engagement in New Zealand politics.
This is something political columnist Janet Wilson wrote about in the weekend, arguing that we have a declining culture of critical thinking and open-mindedness: “That growing inability to think critically enables what Illinois University Ilana Redstone calls The Certainty Trap, that sense of self-righteousness that comes with having brutally judged, then condemned and dismissed, someone with whom we disagree. And when it comes to political debate, Redstone says The Certainty Trap holds us back and puts up walls.”
We need to develop our skills, Wilson says, “that includes being open-minded, having a respect for evidence and reason, being able to consider other viewpoints and perspectives, not being stuck in one position, as well as clarity and precision of thought.”
Similarly, Thomas Cranmer argues that we will deal better with culture war issues when we foster a culture of humility and tolerance: “all parties, regardless of their political affiliation, need to be willing to engage in constructive dialogue and debate over important issues. This also means that we need to be willing to listen to the perspectives and experiences of those who may hold different views from our own.”
Leftwing activist and blogger Martyn Bradbury attended Saturday’s rally and counter-rally and was appalled by both sides. He says: “Right now the entire community need to actually step back and consider how the militant cancel culture element of the debate has alienated everyone else and created the environment where Posie Parker can thrive.”
New Zealand is facing huge problems which require critical thinking and debate. We won’t be well served if such political debate and the upcoming election are highjacked by the hate and tribal opportunism we saw over the weekend.
Further reading on the Posie Parker rally and protest
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marie-Claire Seeley, PhD Candidate, Australian Dysautonomia and Arrhythmia Research Collaborative, University of Adelaide
Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome is a group of 13 hereditary connective tissue disorders. It was first described over a century ago when two physicians each noticed some of their patients shared common characteristics of stretchy skin, easy bruising and hypermobile joints.
The condition can cause extremely poor quality of life and is associated with a vast array of other chronic illnesses. Despite this, clinicians in Australia remain generally unaware of its existence. This can result in distressing interactions with health professionals and delayed diagnosis.
Gene variants have been discovered for 12 of the Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome subtypes. While some of these subtypes are known to cause life-threatening problems such as vascular aneurysms, they are generally also very rare.
However, the lack of a reliable biological marker for hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome has resulted in poor tracking and poor awareness. It also seems some physicians confuse hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome with “benign joint hypermobility syndrome” and dismiss some of the problems that accompany it.
Far from benign
Aside from the painful musculoskeletal conditions experienced (including joint dislocations, disc prolapses and malformations of the spine), those with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome are prone to gut, eye, nervous system, heart, kidney, skin, immune and reproductive conditions.
The British Medical Journal published 2020 guidelines reporting patients with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and another closely related condition (hypermobile spectrum disorder) represented one third of the presentations to hospital gut clinics in the United Kingdom. These patients tended to be young females with reduced quality of life and malnutrition.
There is also a high association between hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and neurodivergent conditions such as autism. Neurodivergent adults are statistically more likely to experience joint hypermobility and pain when compared to the general population.
There are several overlapping characteristics between hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and autism, including gross motor difficulties, sensory hypersensitivities and dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system. This part of the nervous system regulates involuntary bodily functions such as breathing, heartbeat and digestion.
The exact nature of how autism and hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome are linked is not yet clear.
So far, there is no treatment for the underlying condition of hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. Instead, treating clinicians prioritise supportive therapies.
This might involve strengthening exercises, pain management strategies or reducing the risks associated with surgery (which is sometimes required to stabilise joints). Doctors might treat autonomic dysfunction such as low blood pressure or fast heart rate. Dietitians focus on diet to improve appetite and help identify food intolerance, which can often occur.
In short, it takes a multidisicplinary team who understand the condition and work together with the patient to manage their complex condition.
The challenge for many patients is to get this kind of help in the first place, especially if they have a combination of hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, autism and/or POTS.
A patient might present to numerous doctors with vague but life-altering symptoms: chronic joint pain, dizziness, palpitations, excess sweating, insomnia, poor concentration, nausea, abdominal pain, vomiting, bladder problems and weight loss. They might be sensitive to light and noise and the chaos of noisy waiting rooms might make it difficult to think or articulate their concerns.
Standard tests may appear normal. Consequently, the patient might be misdiagnosed as anxious, depressed or suffering from an eating disorder. Subsequent medications may worsen the symptoms.
Muscle pain and fatigue are common symptoms. Shutterstock
Dozens of young men and women seen in our specialist clinic and echoed in academic literature report experiencing misdiagnosis. The cumulative effects of negative encounters with medical professionals can lead to worsening, but preventable, health outcomes and “clinician-associated traumatisation”.
Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos is an under-recognised – but likely common – condition that can result in poor quality of life and social exclusion. People with the condition deserve a concerted and collaborative effort to raise awareness and improve treatments for their complex physical, emotional and psychological needs.
Those seeking more information and support can visit:
Marie-Claire Seeley receives funding from Standing up to POTS, Australian Government Research Scholarship. She is affiliated with The Australian POTS Foundation and the University of Adelaide.
In 2008, I published my book Visible Learning, which aimed to explain what works best to help student learning. At the time, others claimed it was the world’s largest evidence-based study into the factors that improve learning.
The book was based on 800 meta-analyses (a statistical analysis that combines the results of multiple studies) of 50,000 smaller studies. It found that, among six groups of factors influencing successful learning in schools – the student, home, school, teacher, curricula and teaching – teachers seemed to have the strongest in-school effect.
Since 2008, our partners have implemented the “visible learning” approach in more than 10,000 schools, with the aim of making student learning as visible as possible.
This means enabling students to see how their efforts and learning strategies are contributing to their learning, and teachers to see the impact of their teaching through the eyes of their students. It turns the focus from teaching to learning, and from talking about teaching methods to the impact of these methods.
This is crucial to making classrooms and schools safe, fair and inviting places to fail, learn, collaborate, grow and flourish.
My new study
It’s been 15 years since the book was published, and much has changed. There have been more than 1,300 new meta-analyses, COVID has disrupted schools, and we have learned a lot from the more than 100,000 teachers who have been using visible learning.
Visible Learning: The Sequel is published this month. It is informed by more than 2,100 meta-analyses about achievement drawn from more than 130,000 studies and conducted with the participation of more than 400 million students aged three to 25, mainly from developed countries.
It confirms the finding that high-impact is still the most important factor when it comes to student learning. This describes teachers who focus on the impacts of their teaching and who work together with other educators to critique their ideas about impact – about what was taught well, who was taught well, and the size of the improvement.
But many other findings also came out of the analysis.
Teaching is still the most important factor when it looking at student achievement. Shutterstock
New findings
My analysis shows a student’s achievement levels are affected negatively by many new factors. These include boredom, teacher-student dependency (where a student is over-reliant on their teacher) and corporal punishment.
I also identified a range of factors that improve students’ performance, including:
computer tutoring that provides immediate feedback, particularly when using artificial intelligence
“flipped learning”, whereby students are given the content to learn before coming to class
teachers outlining and summarising learning materials
students being taught how to rehearse and memorise content
“phonological awareness” – teaching students to recognise and manipulate parts of sentences and words when learning to read
“cognitive task analysis,” which is about teaching students how to think about how to problem solve
the “Jigsaw method”, which involves both individual and group learning to solve a problem.
How teachers matter
The most important thing for teachers to do is to have high expectations for all students. This means not labelling students (as “bright”, “strugglers”, “ADHD” or “autistic”), as this can lead to lower expectations in both teachers and students but seeing all students as learners who can make leaps of growth in their learning.
Teachers need to be very clear with their students about the content and goals of their learning.
It is important teachers work with other teachers to see different sides of their impact on students and different ways for them to succeed in their teaching. What matters is the power of multiple interpretations about what is happening in classrooms, the results of assessments and examples of student work.
Why we need to be ‘greedy’
So many debates about curriculum and learning outcomes are phrased as either more “knowledge-rich” (teaching content) or more “problem-based discovery learning” (teaching how to discover ideas).
But it is not a question of either/or. We need to be greedy and want both. We need to harness the power of two: two success criteria (one about content, and one about deeper learning), two assessments, two activities – so it is clear we want both the knowledge and the relationships between ideas.
So, I advocate for a model of “intentional alignment”. That is, teachers need to consciously align their teaching methods, activities, assessments, feedback, with either the acquisition of knowledge or discovering of ideas.
The importance of parents
Parents are not “first teachers” but “first learners” – as the parents learn, so do their children. Parental expectation about learning is among the most powerful home influences, and the home needs to promote a “language and love of learning”.
This means parents talk to their children about their learning at school and home. This also means they enjoy the struggle, failures and successes when learning together, and set fair boundaries to take on increased challenges and learning safely.
This might mean being clear about what success looks like for a child cleaning their room. It might mean allowing multiple opportunities to succeed, and talking about errors and failure as opportunities to learn.
We have been told for 50 years the answer to our education problems is technology, but my analysis shows the overall effects remain low.
We have used technology as a substitute: video instead of paper mache, word processing programs instead of using pens, online activities instead of work sheets. So often the powers of technology are rarely exploited.
There are major messages from the huge body of studies about technology. My book highlights some of them, including: the importance of students learning from each other via technology and the value of technology in providing multiple opportunities to learn.
Social media is also an important way for teachers to hear students are thinking. Many students will talk about how they are thinking, where they are struggling, and ask questions about their work using social media that they will not do verbally even when their teacher or peers are standing beside them.
John Hattie’s analysis found there are opportunities for students to learn from each other, using technology. Shutterstock
What teachers think is important
One of the key things I have learned in the process of writing this second book is what teachers think is more important than what they they do.
It is not about using a particular teaching method but their skills in evaluating the impact on their students, modifying and adapting, and making the school or class an inviting place to come, learn, master, and enjoy learning.
Every child is a learner, is teachable, can grow, and can be taught to love learning. Students have expectations, and the educator’s role is to help students exceed what they think is their potential. Students need to be taught to take on challenges, with safety nets when they fail.
I remain amazed at the excellence in our schools and fascinated we are not as skilled and focused on scaling up success but instead love to focus on schools failures
John Hattie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
As New Zealand considers how to better prepare for a future affected by climate change, the insurance sector needs to be part the discussion on where and how we build our homes.
This involvement should include input into future building standards. Insurers should also play a key role in deciding which areas of New Zealand are removed from residential use – aka red-zoned – and when this red-zoning should occur.
If insurers are not involved in the discussions on how the country adapts to climate change, we risk whole sections of the country becoming uninsurable.
Frequent disasters make homes uninsurable
It is clear the risk of damage from climate change has increased in recent years. In late January and early February, large swathes of the North Island were hit by damaging weather systems that left 750 homes red stickered – meaning entry to the property was prohibited. Thousands more need significant repair.
Over the past few years, insurers have responded to the increasing risks by raising premiums in general or suggesting that clients at more risk increase their excesses. Insurers have also begun to charge premiums based on individual property risk.
As the threat of natural disaster increases, insurers will have no choice but to raise some clients’ premiums to unaffordable levels or withdrew the offer of insurance all together.
The general rule of thumb is that any event which occurs once every 30 years will make a property uninsurable. Some areas of New Zealand, like the East Coast or Edgecumbe, are well past that in terms of the frequency of natural disasters. Cover in these areas is only provided as a public relations gesture.
But as the risk of a significant event increases, the companies that guarantee retail insurers for the most extreme events – known in the business as reinsurers – could force the withdrawal of all cover in some areas. These reinsurers could decide that some parts of New Zealand are simply too risky.
A threat to home ownership
This decision to pull out of certain areas will have a negative effect on home ownership. Banks routinely require a house to be insurable before considering a mortgage. Banks also consider whether a house will be insured for the entire length of the home loan.
The difficulty here is that areas which are currently low risk could become high risk in the future thanks to climate change. This rising risk is likely to lead to a situation where insurers will be forced to withdraw cover from clients who still have decades left on their mortgages.
Alternatively, if a property is currently insured but is likely to become uninsurable during the lifetime of a mortgage, banks may become very conservative in issuing home loans to areas they consider risky.
Where and how we build has been put under the spotlight after recent extreme weather events. Chris Cameron/Getty Images
An additional problem is that council consents for housing have been based on statistics of past climate events – set at a one-in-a-hundred or one-in-two-hundred year level. As we have recently seen, climate change makes these statistics dubious.
Instead, consents need to be based on multiple scenarios, given the various potential climate futures. New Zealand needs to determine clearly which areas are likely to be affected and plan ahead.
A role for insurers
The best path forward would be to establish a multi-disciplinary expert group that includes members of the insurance industry and reinsurers, to create a set of criteria and scenarios for housing development.
This group could set the guidelines councils use to determine if a rural area should be opened to new housing development, for example, or if an existing housing area should be red-zoned, with houses removed at a definite future date.
By including insurers, new building standards could be set so that homes better withstand climate change, improving the likelihood of them being insured.
Insurers could then be required to use the mutually agreed criteria to set risk-based premiums. If all insurers use the same criteria, then competition would be based on price and service, and not hidden risk models.
The risk models which insurers create, based on those criteria and the climate scenarios, could be open to public debate. The pricing attached to the risk factors could be flexible as climate change makes some areas higher risk.
A dynamic understanding of risk
In the end, red-zoning needs to be seen as dynamic rather than static. There needs to be the option to withdraw insurance coverage in the future, based on evolving models of climate change risk. And all potential risks need to be clearly communicated to potential buyers though land information memorandum (LIM) reports.
Taking this collaborative and transparent approach would mean insurers could be required to guarantee an offer of insurance renewal for a fixed number of years, allowing buyers to match the length of their insurance to their mortgage term.
The role of EQC or the reinsurers would be to back these fixed-term insurance policies in the case of significant disasters.
Working with the insurance industry would offer a level of certainty as we face an uncertain future – helping New Zealanders protect their homes in the face of changing risks.
Michael Naylor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
With the cost of living and interest rates rising, a growing number of Australians are struggling to manage their finances. Many are experiencing real financial stress.
But even in the best of times, managing your finances is hard. Every day, you’re making complex financial decisions (some of which carry huge ramifications) and there are more financial products and services available than ever before. Navigating this minefield can be overwhelming and lead to financial anxiety.
Being financially literate helps. But what does “financial literacy” mean in practice?
Here are seven signs you’ve got the basics covered.
By tracking your cashflow on a regular basis, you’re ensuring your expenses don’t exceed your income. In other words, you make sure you’re earning more than you spend.
A good sign you’ve successfully managed your cashflow is that you have a surplus or a buffer.
These left-over funds can be used to boost savings, pay off debt or meet other financial commitments.
Cashflow management allows you to assess whether there are opportunities to increase your savings and/or reduce spending. Being able to manage your earnings and spending is a key financial skill.
Setting and following a budget requires financial discipline, which is a key part of financial literacy.
By following a budget, you’re putting a measure in place to live within your means and reduce the risk of overspending.
With all the competing demands that come with managing money, your budget can be a tool to keep you on track. And developing this habit over time can empower you to make wise financial decisions.
3. You understand the difference between good debt and bad debt
Love it or hate it, debt forms part of our financial portfolios and sustains the financial institutions we interact with. Knowing how to make debt work for you is a skill and a sign of good financial knowledge. It is crucial to understand the difference between good debt and bad debt.
Good debt is debt used to improve your long-term financial position or net worth, such as a home loan.
Bad debt tends to be consumption-driven and doesn’t have lasting value. Examples include payday loans or retail accounts.
One of the key concepts of financially literacy is understanding the importance of diversification.
By having your money spread across various places (such as a savings account, property, the share market, superannuation and so on), you’ve reduced the concentration of risk.
This helps protect your wealth in tough economic times.
5. You understand how financial assets work, along with their pros and cons
Financial assets refers to things like cash, shares and bonds. It’s important to understand how financial assets work and how they can either help or hurt your financial position.
For instance, savings accounts are a safe financial instrument that earn interest on the amount accumulated within the account. But the fact they’re so safe also means that they won’t outperform inflation.
This type of knowledge is an imperative part of financial literacy.
6. You’re aware of your financial strengths and weaknesses
Financially literate people reflect on their capabilities.
When you can appreciate where your financial strengths and weaknesses lie, you can make better financial decisions and prioritise your needs.
On the other hand, being oblivious to your strengths and weaknesses means you miss opportunities to improve your financial health.
For example, perhaps you buy unnecessary stuff when you feel sad. Or maybe you panic when faced with tough financial choices and make quick decisions just to make the problem go away.
Neglecting to reflect on patterns of behaviour can lead to serious and possibly irreversible financial mistakes.
7. You set financial goals and put measures in place to meet them
Financially literate people plan for their finances. This involves setting goals for either earnings, savings, investments, and debt management or putting measures in place to protect wealth (via, for example, insurance to protect your wealth against loss).
Setting goals is one thing, but it’s also important to have a system and habits in place to achieve them.
Make sure you understand what you’re trying to achieve with your goals, why the goals are important and how you’ll achieve them.
Boosting your financial literacy can feel tough at first. But tackling your finances head on, controlling spending, participating in financial markets, handling debt, being able to understand financial assets and working towards financial goals can help you feel in control of your financial situation.
Everyone’s financial situation is unique, so none of what I’ve said here should be taken as financial advice. You can find free financial counsellors via the government’s MoneySmart site and if you need help with debt, contact the National Debt Helpline on 1800 007 007.
Bomikazi Zeka does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
An increased appetite to learn te reo Māori among members and staff from different parts of the Parliamentary system means the work of Parliament’s Māori Language Service is in demand more than ever.
Compared to several years ago there’s now also significantly more acknowledgement of and referral to Māori customs and protocols at Parliament. This is part of the reason why Nga Ratonga Reo Māori recently changed its name to Nga Ratonga Ao Māori, opening up the service’s scope to more than just the language.
“We’re asked for advice on a lot of things — very often — a few a day, several a week, from all parts of the Parliamentary Service and the Office of the Clerk, and they could be reo related, marae related, tikanga related, etc,” says Maika Te Amo, the man who heads the five-person unit.
“I still see my main role as supporting the House with Māori language services, primarily simultaneous interpretation of all sittings of the House and also sittings of the Māori Affairs Select Committee, at every sitting, but also any other committee that requests simultaneous interpretation.
“The other thing is translation — and that can be anything from communications through the Parliamentary Engagement team that go out on the website or the social media channels. A heavy part of our load comes from the Māori Affairs Select Committee — all of their reports are bilingual, so we translate all of those as well.”
From 1868 until 1920 Parliament had interpreters in the House. Then, for most of last century, Parliament didn’t even employ an interpreter to support MPs who spoke in Māori.
It wasn’t until this century, with the reintroduction of interpreters and Māori language services, that te reo began to flow significantly in the chamber again.
People who follow the action in the debating chamber these days will be familiar with numerous MPs fluently using te reo in speeches. If you’re watching the debate on Parliament TV you may see other MPs listening-in via an earpiece.
That is made possible because of simultaneous interpretation by Te Amo and his colleagues.
It is not only Māori MPs who use te reo in the chamber. Many MPs regularly pepper their speeches with the language, or use Māori for all their formal phrasings (e.g. asking for a supplementary question during Question Time).
Furthermore, Te Amo says there is a lot of interest in using the language among staff of the Parliamentary Service and the Office of the Clerk.
Labour MP Kiritapu Allan debating in Māori in the chamber. Image: Phil Smith/VNP
There’s also ample evidence that Māori language and practices are being used throughout the Parliamentary system. In the annual reviews where government agencies front before various select committees to give a report on how their year has gone, their representatives often introduce themselves and give closing statements in te reo.
“There is an enormous hunger among our colleagues for the language and everything associated with the language, tikanga and traditional practices, traditional perspectives, metaphors, that kind of thing, and that is very encouraging,” says Te Amo.
“We’re a small team, so we will continue to do our best to support our colleagues with various different learning opportunities.”
Pacific challenge The struggle to preserve Indigenous language and promote its use in Parliament is an acute challenge in the Pacific Islands.
This much was clear when Maika Te Amo gave the keynote speech at the Australasian and Pacific Hansard Editors Association conference at New Zealand’s Parliament in January. His speech left an impression on other delegates such as Papaterai William, the subeditor of debates in the Cook Islands.
“One statement I enjoyed when Maika was talking says ‘if the language is no more, the Māori people are no more’. Now I can actually rephrase that our Cook Islands people ‘if the language is no more, the Cook Islands Māori are no more’,” he said.
“Nowadays people are speaking English, and not many people are speaking our language, which is the Cook Islands Māori. We’re talking about a language that will fade in the future.
“That is one thing that we are wanting to retain to make sure that it is maintained properly, that it is taught properly, because language revitalisation I believe is important going forward for our Hansard department.”
Papaterai William, the subeditor of debates in the Cook Islands during a pōwhiri at the Australasian and Pacific Hansard Editors Association conference hosted by New Zealand’s Parliament, January 2023. Image: Office of the Clerk
William tipped his hat to Tonga where in Parliament, unlike in the Cook Islands, proceedings are captured strictly in the Indigenous language, which he said helped keep the language alive for future generations.
Tonga’s Hansard editor, Susanna Heti Lui, was also at the conference, where she explained that the Kingdom’s Parliament felt the need to preserve and revive their Tongan language.
“Our language is the official language that is used in Parliament. That is compared to the government, it uses English as the official language used in the workplace,” she said.
Language must be active to stay alive Te Amo points out that informal settings at Parliament are also opportunities for growth in the use of te reo, “where people can just bring whatever reo they’ve got and just speak that”.
“What I also hear a lot from members is that they’d also like to increase their knowledge and fluency in the language, and it’s very difficult to find ways of doing that which fit with their schedules which are absolutely hectic of course.
“One thing I’d love to see is members in particular being more comfortable with using their reo in the cafeteria or when you’re breezing through the halls,” he said.
“The only other things really is I wish our team of five was a team of 50 so we could offer to our colleagues everything that they’re asking for, as opposed to having to prioritise.”
Rawiri Waititi, the MP for Waiariki, Te Paati Māori. Image: Johnny Blades/VNP
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Sometimes defeat can come with small victories. In his NSW election concession speech, defeated Liberal-National Coalition Premier Dominic Perrottet remarked the campaign had been a “race to the top”. Voters seemed to agree. Perrottet’s opponent, Labor’s Chris Minns, brought the conciliatory tone he maintained as opposition leader into the campaign.
Combative politics, in NSW at least, might be a thing of the past. Minns went further, noting this campaign had set a standard against which Australian federal and state politics could be judged. That will largely depend on his ability to maintain a constructive tenor, as premier, in a parliamentary arena dubbed the “bear pit”.
While calm prevailed between leaders, the flow of votes was volatile. As counting wound up on Saturday evening, Labor looked assured of the 47 Legislative Assembly seats required to form a majority government. Attracting around a 7% statewide swing, Labor’s performance in western Sydney was particularly strong.
There was almost a sense of inevitability about the loss of Parramatta when sitting Liberal Geoff Lee announced his retirement. A protracted preselection battle ensued, with Lee’s successor swept aside by a more than 20% swing to Labor’s well-known candidate, Parramatta Lord Mayor Donna Davis.
Donna Davis won the western Sydney seat of Parramatta with a swing of more than 20%. Dan Himbrechts/AAP
Further west, the seat of Riverstone, vacated by retiring Liberal Kevin Connolly, saw swings eclipsing those of the federal election, propelling Labor’s Warren Kirby into the lower house.
High profile retirements led to vulnerabilities for the Coalition in Sydney’s east as well. Wakehurst, which has been held by outgoing health Minister Brad Hazzard for over 30 years, fell to independent Michael Regan. It remains to be seen whether Ryde and Pittwater, the former stomping grounds of cabinet members Victor Dominello and Rob Stokes respectively, suffer the same fate.
One of the shocks of the night was the ousting of former deputy Liberal leader, Stuart Ayres. Mentioned as a potential leadership candidate post-election, party insiders were confident of overcoming the challenge from local Labor councillor, Karen McKeown, whom Ayres defeated in 2019. Enlisting former Premier Gladys Berejiklian on the campaign trail, Ayres was seeking to re-enter cabinet after his ousting in the fallout from the trade appointment inquiry.
Ayres’ exit will complicate the party’s efforts to rebuild in western Sydney, given his standing in the region, and his industry and community networks. The retirement of his colleague, David Elliott, the former member for Baulkham Hills and Ayres’ successor as Minister for Western Sydney, further depletes the Liberals’ base in the electorally critical region.
Stuart Ayres lost the seat of Penrith to Labor’s Karen McKeown. Bianca de Marchi/AAP
While privatisation fuelled the delivery of a substantial transport infrastructure pipeline for the Coalition over the past two terms, it struggled to balance service provision with population growth.
Lags and gaps in the construction of critical health, education and transport infrastructure proved a pivotal issue for voters in growth areas in Sydney’s outer south-west. Peter Sidgreaves gave up the one-time safe Liberal seat of Camden to Labor’s Sally Quinnell, while her colleague, Nathan Hagarty, secured the newly constituted seat of Leppington.
On the peri-urban edges of the city’s south west, Wollondilly is shaping as a very tight contest between sitting Liberal Nathaniel Smith and former Liberal Party member now independent challenger, Judy Hannan.
Labor’s broadly strong performance in Sydney’s west did not come without some contrasts. Party strategists will be hoping that swings towards the Liberals in Liverpool and Cabramatta are down to the retirement of long serving Labor members, rather than the beginnings of a deeper trend.
In rural and regional parts of the state, voter sentiment was more stable. The Nationals retained the seat of Tweed, with Labor and the Greens failing to attract new support. Labor’s hopes of turning Upper Hunter look thwarted with the Nationals set to retain the seat. However, nearby Terrigal remains in play with Labor edging ahead on the back of a more than 13% swing.
The nominally Shooters, Fishers and Farmers seats of Barwon and Murray now look firmly in the hands of former SFF members, now independents, Roy Butler and Helen Dalton.
Labor’s success overall speaks to the party’s ability to tap into voter concerns at the local level. This is unsurprising in areas like western Sydney, where pandemic lockdowns, followed by rising interest rates, housing unaffordability and wage stagnation focussed minds on “everyday” rather than “grand vision” politics.
To consolidate and build in its victory, Labor will need to translate its success at grassroots campaigning to the wider task of governing. Maintaining its commitment to a “dialogue” on priorities such public sector wages, infrastructure funding and affordable housing will be important.
Labor will be keen to point out that solutions to the challenges the state faces cannot come from government alone. Creating wider channels for community, industry and research-led policy development will mitigate Cabinet inexperience. This inclusive approach will also allow Labor to move on from the command-and-control tendencies the Coalition exhibited in the latter half of its incumbency, when it eschewed its traditional “small government” doctrine to create multiple agencies and statutory bodies to augment portfolio responsibilities.
For the NSW Coalition, the task of rebuilding will begin. With Perrottet relinquishing the leadership, and Liberal moderate, Matt Kean ruling himself out as a contender, the party may revert to a candidate from the right. This would certainly mark a departure from the policy convergence with Labor that characterised the campaign.
It might work. It might also signal an end to peace within the bear pit, and a return to more traditional party politics.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Byelections for leaders are rather like steeplechases for horses: there is always the risk of serious injury.
Ahead of the 2018 super-Saturday contests, Bill Shorten had an impatient Anthony Albanese shaping up for a tilt in the event of a tumble. Shorten triumphed.
In 2020, Albanese’s position could have become shaky if he had lost the Eden-Monaro byelection. He retained the seat by a whisker, but that was enough.
Peter Dutton on Saturday faces his first real-time electoral test in the Victorian Liberal seat of Aston, with conditions on the track heavy going.
The byelection follows the resignation of former minister Alan Tudge, who, after a scandal over an affair with a staffer, turned an electorate that was safe in 2019 into a marginal one in 2022. It’s now on 2.8%.
Situated in Melbourne’s outer east, Aston should be an opportunity for the Liberals to exploit the mounting cost of living pressures that are weighing people down.
But so far, on the national evidence the Albanese government has been escaping serious blame, with people accepting most of the drivers of rising interest rates and prices are outside its control.
For Dutton, Victoria (like NSW) is difficult territory on which to have to campaign. It’s a progressive state and he is far from a progressive.
The crushing taken by the NSW Liberals on Saturday (who did form a progressive government) is indirectly relevant to Aston.
While the “it’s time” factor, a batch of resignations of well-known Liberals, various scandals and a credible fresh-looking Labor alternative with a pitch that resonated account specifically for the loss, it has reinforced the broader impressing that the tide is out for the Liberal party generally. The NSW defeat has left Tasmania with the only non-Labor government in the country.
Closer to Aston, Victorian Liberal brawling over the move by opposition leader John Pesutto to expel Moira Deeming from the parliamentary party – for her role in an anti-trans rally at which a group of people gave Nazi salutes – has brought a spate of bad publicity.
The argument about whether Pesutto’s reaction went too far raged all last week and will probably continue this week, even in the wake of his expected win in Monday’s vote.
For the electors of Aston, it’s another cameo in the long story of the Liberals in shambles, just as they were at last year’s state election.
While Dutton could keep away from Victoria in the state poll, that’s not an option with Aston. So far, he’s made four visits, the same number as the prime minister.
A top-down preselection by the party’s administrative committee installed a strong candidate, barrister Roshena Campbell. Of Indian heritage, she’s well-qualified and a good media performer, with her main disadvantage being that she’s from distant (in these parochial times) Brunswick. (She’s rented a place in Aston.)
Labor’s Mary Doyle, who works in the superannuation industry, and ran in 2022, lives just outside the electoral but can be promoted as a “real local” on the ground she’s resided in the general area for more than three decades.
The Liberal campaign is based around sending a message to the Albanese government on cost of living, and also focuses on the cuts for local roads projects in the first Chalmers budget.
Labor, playing on Dutton’s unpopularity, is portraying him as someone out of step with the people of Aston. Labor also says its imminent child changes are popular – 5,700 families in Aston will be better off from July.
Unsurprisingly, the Indigenous Voice to parliament, the question for which was announced last week, isn’t getting much attention.
Of particular interest will be the Chinese vote. Aston has, on the 2021 census, about 14% of people of Chinese heritage, Albanese received a very positive reception when he did a Chinese function, even though that was immediately after the AUKUS announcement which sparked a lot of talk about the threat potentially posed by China.
Once, Chinese-Australians looked benignly on the Liberals. Saturday’s NSW result reinforced the message of the federal election – that these voters are now alienated from the Liberals.
How Chinese voters will respond to a candidate of Indian origin is unclear.
Some voters are said to be grouchy at being sent to the polls three times in a year. Quite a few others have not even been aware of the byelection. But with the stakes high and the seat marginal, both sides are fully focused. Liberal federal director Andrew Hirst and Labor’s Josh Lloyd, on leave from Albanese’s staff, have been fixtures in the electorate.
It’s a five-candidate field, but the battle is not troubled by serious alternatives to the two main contenders. There’s no teal running.
The average swing against a government at a federal byelection is 3.7% (since 1949 and where both major parties contested).
Both sides say it’s the Liberals to lose and so does history. It’s more than a century since a government won a federal byelection from an opposition and that was in special circumstances. Nevertheless both are also claiming things are tight.
A Liberal loss would be extraordinary and the fallout unpredictable. Dutton’s leadership would be in tatters but any move against him would struggle to find a credible candidate.
Liberals rail if you say they need more than a knife-edge win. A win is a win is a win, they counter. But a narrow win would be a holding position for Dutton (just as his leadership has been first and foremost about holding the party together).
A solid swing (5% or above) would be a morale booster for the opposition leader. Given the nature and history of the seat, and of byelections, and the national polls, the government would shrug it off although some inside Labor would see it as a warning sign.
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
British gender activist Posie Parker has left New Zealand, calling it the “worst place for women she has ever visited”.
Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, also known as Posie Parker, shared a photo on social media showing her being escorted by police through Auckland Airport.
She left her rally at Albert Park in Auckland yesterday without speaking, after being overwhelmed by thousands of heckling counter-protesters and pelted with tomato juice.
Controversial Harry Potter author JK Rowling took to Twitter to brand the protest scenes in Auckland yesterday “repellent”.
During a series of Tweets, she said a mob “had assaulted women standing up for their rights”.
Parker posted to Twitter and said she was leaving ‘the worst place for women she has ever visited’.
The activist also claimed she was a victim of a campaign to assassinate her character, boosted by a “corrupt media populated by vile dishonest cult members”.
No Wellington rally Her departure means her planned rally for Wellington today will not go ahead.
A local group supporting her visit Speak Up For Women NZ had already announced the scheduled rally today in Wellington had been cancelled due to security concerns.
Auckland Pride rejected the idea that the activist had abandoned her Wellington plans due to threats of violence.
There is a narrative quickly taking hold amongst anti-trans groups and individuals that Parker abandoned her event because of violence from our community.
The group Tweeted: “There is a narrative quickly taking hold amongst anti-trans groups and individuals that Parker abandoned her event because of violence from our community.
“We reject this narrative. We are of the firm belief that the demonstration of unity, celebration, and acceptance alongside joyous music, chanting, and noise of 5,000 supporters was too loud to overcome and the reason for her departure – and not the actions of any one individual.”
NZ First leader Winston Peters said violence and cancel culture did not represent “the majority of New Zealanders who want an open and free Western democracy that values freedom of speech”.
Irony of ‘disgrace’ He tweeted: “Whether you agree with her views or not, the irony of the disgraceful situation that occurred at the Posie Parker event, is that violence, hatred, and intimidation is coming from the very group who claim to be the ones standing up for inclusivity and freedoms.”
While Parker’s planned rally in Wellington today is off, groups opposing her views still plan to turn out, with the city’s annual CubaDupa festival also taking place today.
Police say they will be out in central Wellington to monitor and respond to any problems.
Parker arrived at the Albert Park event yesterday morning to speak with supporters at a rally.
Her presence and comments infuriated rights advocates, and the reception she received in Auckland yesterday left Parker visibly shaken.
Neo-Nazis in Australia The controversial British activist’s Melbourne rally days before was attended by neo-Nazis, a fact widely reported in New Zealand before she was allowed into the country by Immigration NZ and Immigration Minister Michael Wood.
Parker was critical of what she said was a lack of police presence at the Auckland event, with her security team struggling to separate her from hostile crowds of protesters.
After being escorted to a police car through the crowd, Parker requested to be driven to the police station, because she feared for her safety.
Media had reported she was seen checking in for an international flight out of Auckland last night.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University
Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff (right) is now the only non-Labor leader at federal or state level.Mick Tsikas/AAP
When Dominic Perrottet gave a gracious concession speech after his defeat in the New South Wales election on Saturday night, it was hard to avoid favourable comparison with the United States. There was no sign of rancour or hyper-partisanship. He praised Labor’s Chris Minns for a clean campaign. He predicted Minns would be a “fine” premier, urging people to “get behind him”.
But in one respect, our politics do look more American: Australia now has “red” and “blue” states, although we reverse their political colour scheme. The maps have already begun to appear on social media. The Australian mainland, with its five states and two territories, is now “red”. Only little Tasmania remains “blue”, looking like an antipodean Taiwan, with the sole surviving Liberal government in the country.
These look like good times for Labor. It is not quite there yet, but the last time – indeed, the only time – it has been in office in all nine of Australia’s jurisdictions was for a few months between late November 2007 and early September 2008, between Kevin Rudd’s federal victory and Alan Carpenter’s loss to Colin Barnett in Western Australia a little over nine months later.
The parties of the right have also only once, since 1910, held office everywhere: for just over a year, in 1969-70, between a win in Tasmania and a loss in South Australia. In those days, the bar was a little lower than today, for neither the Northern Territory nor Australian Capital Territory had gained self-government yet. Australia had six sub-national jurisdictions, not the eight of today.
An obvious question to ask of these circumstances is whether they matter for the governments involved. Is it, for example, easier for a federal government if the states and territories are ruled by the same party? Is it better for a state or territory government if the government on the federal scene has the same complexion?
Like so many historical questions, the answer isn’t simple.
If government by one party is rare in Australia, a situation where one party has become preponderant nationally is not. The 1980s, for instance, was a Labor decade in ways that extended well beyond the ascendancy of the Hawke government. Labor was also in power in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia for much of the decade.
In the 1990s, there was something of a reversal. Beginning in New South Wales in 1988, all four of those states became Coalition or Liberal by 1993. To balance things a little, Labor won power in Tasmania (in an Accord with Greens Independents) and Queensland in 1989. But when the John Howard government came to office in March 1996, there was just one Labor government left in Australia, that of Bob Carr in New South Wales, which had returned to office the previous year.
When John Howard came to office following the 1996 federal election, only NSW had a Labor state government. Mark Graham/AAP
These configurations very likely reverberated in federal electoral politics. In 1990, as Labor’s tide went out in Victoria, it was coming in for the party in Queensland. The early unpopularity of some hardline policies of the Kennett government in Victoria possibly helped Paul Keating in the 1993 election.
There was some irony here, since Keating’s relations with Kennett were healthy in a way they had not been with John Cain, Victorian Labor premier through much of the 1980s. Cain, who tried to steer his government on a Keynesian path in an era of economic rationalism, blamed Hawke government economic policy for many of the difficulties his state had faced during the decade.
Here is a reminder there is no guarantee of sweetness and light simply because the same party holds office in a state and in Canberra. The history of strong disagreement between federal and state governments of the same complexion is almost as long as the history of the two-party system itself.
When the Fisher Labor government sought additional powers via a constitutional referendum in 1911, it was stymied by opposition from the New South Wales Labor government, and especially the attorney-general, William Holman, who saw in the proposals a dangerous trend towards centralisation of power.
The most spectacular clashes between federal and state government have arguably occurred when they have represented different sides of politics. Those over censorship and conscription during the first world war in 1917 between T.J. Ryan, the Queensland Labor premier, and Billy Hughes, who had split the Labor Party and formed the Nationalists, were legendary.
Gough Whitlam’s exasperation with Joh Bjelke-Petersen led him to call the Queensland premier a “bible-bashing bastard”. The latter’s actions in filling a casual vacancy with a Senator hostile to the Whitlam government, and a similar action by a Liberal premier of New South Wales, damaged Whitlam. But it should be recalled that there were also strains, over money, between Whitlam’s government and that of his Labor counterpart in South Australia, Don Dunstan.
Conversely, there is little evidence until quite late in the day that the Howard Coalition government was greatly hampered by having to face a wall of Labor governments in the early 2000s.
There was a rather pointed walk-out from a Premiers’ Conference over health policy in 2003; one of the premiers involved was still chuckling about it years later when recounting the stunt to me. And the premiers, especially Victoria’s Steve Bracks, made difficulty over the Murray-Darling basin policy late in the life of Howard’s government.
Nonetheless, state and territory governments, whatever their stripe, have a strong incentive to cooperate, even if few are as simpatico as Labor prime minister Ben Chifley, and South Australian Liberal and Country League premier Tom Playford in the years following World War Two. Meanwhile, Scott Morrison’s relations with both Gladys Berejiklian and Dominic Perrottet disclose how unhappy political families can become.
Anthony Albanese will be taking nothing for granted in his relations with Labor state and territory governments. And the premiers and chief ministers will know better than to expect too many free kicks.
Frank Bongiorno does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne
Dean Lewins/AAP
This article was updated March 26.
With 36% of enrolled voters counted in today’s New South Wales state election, the Poll Bludger’s results currently have Labor leading in 53 of the 93 seats, the Coalition in 27, the Greens in three and independents in ten. Called seats are 43 Labor, 20 Coalition, two Greens and six independents.
If all current leads hold, Labor would have a 13-seat majority. They would need to lose seven seats they currently lead in to fall short of a majority.
The ABC’s two party estimate has Labor leading by 55.1-44.9, a 7.1% swing to Labor since the 2019 NSW election. If this holds, Labor would do better than in all pre-election polls. Newspoll’s 54.5-45.5 to Labor margin came closest, but it is likely there was late movement to Labor that the polls missed by not polling in the final days before the election.
Victory in NSW gives Labor control of all the mainland state and territory governments and the federal government. The only Australian jurisdiction remaining in Coalition control is Tasmania. The next state election is the October 2024 Queensland election.
Since Labor won the May 2022 federal election, they have performed impressively at both the Victorian and NSW state elections, defying expectations that the party in power federally should do badly in state elections. Federal Labor has consistently been polling honeymoon support levels since the election.
Perrottet had made a stand on reforming gambling, but voters were tired of the Coalition after three four-year terms of Coalition government. Cost of living was easily voters’ top concern, and Labor led by 35-29 on this issue in the last NSW Resolve poll.
I will have more analysis of the NSW results and the upper house tomorrow morning.
Updates
With 50.2% of enrolled voters counted, the Poll Bludger results continue to show Labor leading in 51 of the 93 seats, the Coalition in 30, the Greens in three and independents in nine. Called seats are 44 for Labor, 25 Coalition, two Greens and seven independents.
Newcastle can be added to called seats for Labor, as Labor is way ahead on primary votes and it doesn’t matter which of the Greens or Liberals is second.
So 14 seats remain in some doubt, and Labor needs two of the doubtful seats to win a majority. They would have to lose five seats they currently are projected to lead in to miss a majority.
The Poll Bludger’s results are using booth matched projections, where overall swings so far are applied to the outstanding votes. Unless there is a systematic bias against Labor in the remaining votes to be counted, Labor will win a majority.
Counting will not resume until Monday. There are many pre-poll votes still outstanding. Until we see these votes, it’s not certain that Labor has won a majority.
The ABC currently estimates a Labor two party margin of 54.3-45.7, a 6.3% swing to Labor since the 2019 election. Primary votes are 37.1% Labor (up 3.8%), 34.8% Coalition (down 6.8%), 10.1% Greens (up 0.6%), 1.8% One Nation (up 0.7%), 1.5% Shooters (down 2.0%) and 14.7% for all Others (up 3.7%). The Others category includes 8.8% for independents (up 4.0%).
Left a good chance to take control of upper house
In the upper house, 21 of the 42 seats were up for election by statewide proportional representation with preferences, and a quota was 1/22 of the vote or 4.5%.
With 33.2% of enrolled counted in the upper house, Labor has 8.15 quotas, the Coalition 6.43, the Greens 2.21, One Nation 1.23, Legalise Cannabis 0.87, the Liberal Democrats 0.73, the Shooters 0.67, Animal Justice 0.47 and Elizabeth Farrelly 0.27.
Current totals do not include below the line (BTL) votes, which will not start to be data entered until next week. The major parties do poorly on BTL votes and the Greens and minor parties well. BTL votes are included in the 5.6% for Other, but some of the Other votes will be informal.
On the current count, Labor would win eight of the 21 seats, the Coalition six, the Greens two, and one each for One Nation, Legalise Cannabis, the Liberal Democrats and the Shooters. The final seat would be a contest between Animal Justice and the Coalition.
While the BTL issue will hurt the Coalition, they will be assisted if the current results are skewed against them. This seat will decide whether left-wing parties (Labor, the Greens, Legalise Cannabis and Animal Justice) win the 21 seats up at this election by 11-10 or 12-9.
I said in my preview article last week that the left needed a 12-9 win to secure an overall upper house majority.
Labor has 39.3% of the vote in the upper house but just 37.1% in the lower house. I would normally expect Labor’s upper house vote to be weaker, but this may be explained by normal Labor voters tactically voting for independents in the lower house.
Federal Aston byelection and Resolve Voice poll
The federal byelection for the Victorian Liberal-held seat of Aston is next Saturday April 1. With Labor’s lead increasing in recent federal polls, they remain some chance to overturn the current 2.8% Liberal margin, but the Liberals are likely to hold.
In additional questions from the federal Resolve poll for Nine newspapers, support for an Indigenous Voice to parliament slid to 57-43 in a forced choice from 58-42 in February. There was no shift in initial preferences, with 46% in favour, 32% opposed and 22% undecided.
Comparing state results for February and March with those for December and January (two months of data mean larger samples), Voice support fell from 56-44 to 52-48 in Queensland, and from 61-39 to 52-48 in Western Australia. To pass a constitutional referendum, four of the six states must vote in favour as well as an overall majority.
This poll was conducted March 12-16, so it was taken before Anthony Albanese announced the question wording on Thursday.
Adrian Beaumont does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne
Dean Lewins/AAP
With 36% of enrolled voters counted in today’s New South Wales state election, the Poll Bludger’s results currently have Labor leading in 53 of the 93 seats, the Coalition in 27, the Greens in three and independents in ten. Called seats are 43 Labor, 20 Coalition, two Greens and six independents.
If all current leads hold, Labor would have a 13-seat majority. They would need to lose seven seats they currently lead in to fall short of a majority.
The ABC’s two party estimate has Labor leading by 55.1-44.9, a 7.1% swing to Labor since the 2019 NSW election. If this holds, Labor would do better than in all pre-election polls. Newspoll’s 54.5-45.5 to Labor margin came closest, but it is likely there was late movement to Labor that the polls missed by not polling in the final days before the election.
Victory in NSW gives Labor control of all the mainland state and territory governments and the federal government. The only Australian jurisdiction remaining in Coalition control is Tasmania. The next state election is the October 2024 Queensland election.
Since Labor won the May 2022 federal election, they have performed impressively at both the Victorian and NSW state elections, defying expectations that the party in power federally should do badly in state elections. Federal Labor has consistently been polling honeymoon support levels since the election.
Perrottet had made a stand on reforming gambling, but voters were tired of the Coalition after three four-year terms of Coalition government. Cost of living was easily voters’ top concern, and Labor led by 35-29 on this issue in the last NSW Resolve poll.
I will have more analysis of the NSW results and the upper house tomorrow morning.
Federal Aston byelection and Resolve Voice poll
The federal byelection for the Victorian Liberal-held seat of Aston is next Saturday April 1. With Labor’s lead increasing in recent federal polls, they remain some chance to overturn the current 2.8% Liberal margin, but the Liberals are likely to hold.
In additional questions from the federal Resolve poll for Nine newspapers, support for an Indigenous Voice to parliament slid to 57-43 in a forced choice from 58-42 in February. There was no shift in initial preferences, with 46% in favour, 32% opposed and 22% undecided.
Comparing state results for February and March with those for December and January (two months of data mean larger samples), Voice support fell from 56-44 to 52-48 in Queensland, and from 61-39 to 52-48 in Western Australia. To pass a constitutional referendum, four of the six states must vote in favour as well as an overall majority.
This poll was conducted March 12-16, so it was taken before Anthony Albanese announced the question wording on Thursday.
Adrian Beaumont does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
“The most important thing from my perspective is a strategic partnership — a partnership where the media should not be seen as the enemy or a nuisance.”
This was the view of the Communications Fiji Ltd news director and Fijian Media Association executive Vijay Narayan expressed at a media segment of the Police Consultative Session in Suva yesterday.
Narayan said the media and the police had the same goals and objectives “focusing on truth, integrity, accountability and transparency”.
He said the media was ready to have regular meetings with the senior command of Fiji’s Police Force, and also extended an invitation to the Acting Police Commissioner Juki Fong Chew and his senior officers to visit individual media outlets to understand their work.
Narayan said that at times there was a disconnect where the only time the media was called in was when police wanted to say something or maybe when there was a major issue at hand.
He said he remembered that the Crime Stoppers Board also included members of the media and media organisations.
He added that they “fought the fight together”.
Communications Fiji Ltd news director Vijay Narayan speaking at the police workshop. Video: Fijivillage
Police need ‘humanising’ Narayan encouraged police to engage more with the public through media conferences as the Police Force also needed to be “humanised”, and not just focus their message on posting to their social media page.
The CFL news director said that at times they might not be on the same page but the tough questions needed to be asked.
Fiji Sun’s investigative journalist Ivamere Nataro said some people she spoke to did not understand the work of the police and kept requesting frequent updates.
Nataro said that in this digital age, news spread faster on social media and if the police did not open up to the mainstream media, it was another thing that people looked at.
She said police needed to engage more with the community and show that they cared.
Commissioner agrees While responding to the media, Acting Commissioner Chew said he agreed with what had been said, and moving forward the police would try to improve.
But Chew also gave an example of when a story had been published alleging that someone had been tortured.
He said the story was published and they did not know whether it was true or false.
When the matter was investigated, the issue just died out.
He said that if they manage to find that person, he or she would be taken to task for giving false information.
Krishneel Nair is a Fijivillage reporter. Republished with permission.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne
Justin Lloyd/AAP
The New South Wales state election is today. Polls close at 6pm AEDT. Votes cast on election day should be counted quickly, but large pre-poll booths are likely to take until late at night or next week.
ABC elections analyst Antony Green said that as of Friday, 28% of enrolled voters had voted early in-person and a further 10% had applied for a postal vote. All election day votes, some postals and some early votes will be counted by the 10:30pm close of counting on Saturday night. Counting will not resume until Monday.
The final NSW Newspoll, conducted March 18-23 from a sample of 1,205, gave Labor a 54.5-45.5 lead, a 2.5-point gain for Labor since the late February NSW Newspoll. Primary votes were 38% Labor (up two), 35% Coalition (down two), 11% Greens (down one) and 16% for all Others (up one).
Liberal Premier Dominic Perrottet’s net approval slumped 12 points to -3, while Labor leader Chris Minns’ net approval improved six points to +14. Minns led Perrottet as better premier by 41-39, reversing a Perrottet lead of 43-33 in February. Newspoll figures are from The Poll Bludger.
In Monday’s Resolve poll and two polls from Freshwater and Morgan (below), Labor had between 52.5% and 53.5% on a two party count – this would probably not be enough for a Labor majority in the lower house. But analyst Kevin Bonham’s model gives Labor just enough for a one-seat majority (47 of the 93 seats) if Newspoll is right.
Cost of living has been rated the most important issue in polls, and The Poll Bludger reported that last Monday’s NSW Resolve poll gave Labor a 35-29 lead over the Coalition on this issue.
Under optional preferential voting that is used in NSW, a single “1” vote is formal. The Liberals are urging people to just vote 1 Liberal. I am sceptical of this strategy, because those who listen to this message are more likely to be voters for other right-wing minor parties than the Greens, and at the 2019 election the exhaust rate among right-wing minors was far higher than for the Greens.
NSW Freshwater poll: Labor retains 53-47 lead
The Poll Bludger reported that a NSW Freshwater poll for The Financial Review, conducted March 19-21 from a sample of 1,100, gave Labor a 53-47 lead, unchanged since late February. Primary votes were 37% Coalition (steady), 37% Labor (down two), 10% Greens (steady) and 16% for all Others (up two). Perrottet’s lead as preferred premier narrowed from 46-34 to 45-40.
NSW Morgan poll: Labor had 53.5-46.5 lead in mid-March
A NSW Morgan SMS poll, conducted March 10-14 from a sample of 1,013, gave Labor a 53.5-46.5 lead, a one-point gain for Labor since late February. Primary votes were 34% Coalition (up 1.5), 34% Labor (up 0.5), 13% Greens (up two), 2% One Nation (down 6.5) and 17% for all Others (up 2.5).
Previous Morgan NSW polls had assumed that One Nation would contest all 93 lower house seats, and so their slump in this poll is explained by them only contesting 17 seats.
In forced choice questions, Minns’ lead over Perrottet as better premier narrowed from 54-46 to 52-48, while Perrottet had a 51-49 disapproval rating, a reversal of a 53-47 approval in late February.
Federal Resolve poll: Labor increases massive lead
A federal Resolve poll for Nine newspapers, conducted March 12-16 from a sample of 1,600, gave Labor 39% of the primary vote (down one since February), the Coalition 30% (down one), the Greens 13% (up three), One Nation 5% (steady), the UAP 1% (steady), independents 9% (steady) and others 2% (steady).
No two party estimate was provided, but applying 2022 election preference flows to this poll gives Labor about a 59-41 lead, a one-point gain for Labor since February. Resolve has been the most pro-Labor pollster since the 2022 election.
By 55-31, voters gave Anthony Albanese a good rating (56-30 in February). Peter Dutton’s ratings were 43-32 poor (44-29 previously). Albanese led Dutton as preferred PM by 51-22 (55-23 previously).
In the wake of the AUKUS deal, Labor gained a 35-32 lead over the Liberals on national security, after the Liberals led by 35-32 in February. But Labor’s lead on economic management slid to 33-32 from 36-32, and their lead on keeping the cost of living low dropped to 29-22 from 33-24.
Asked about uses of super other than for retirement, 68% supported life-saving medical treatment, 67% palliative care and 58% serious financial distress, but only 37% a deposit for a first home. By 45-24, voters agreed with defining super as for retirement, although it could be accessed in extreme circumstances.
Labor also extends lead in federal Essential and Morgan polls
In Essential’s two party measure that includes undecided, Labor led by 52-43 in a poll conducted before March 21 from a sample of 1,124; they led by 49-44 two weeks ago. Primary votes were 34% Labor (up two), 31% Coalition (down one), 14% Greens (up two), 5% One Nation (down two), 2% UAP (steady), 9% for all Others (up one) and 5% undecided (down two).
Support for the Indigenous Voice to parliament dropped to 59-41 from 65-35 in February.
On the AUKUS deal, 40% said it would make Australia more secure (down four since November 2022), 39% no difference (steady) and 21% less secure (up five). When told the purchase cost of the nuclear submarines, 26% said they were worth it, 27% would like the subs but didn’t think they were worth the money, and 28% did not want the subs.
Morgan’s weekly federal poll gave Labor a 58-42 lead (56.5-43.5 last week, 54.5-45.5 two weeks ago). Primary votes were 37.5% Labor, 32% Coalition, 13% Greens and 17.5% for all Others. This poll was conducted March 13-19.
Adrian Beaumont does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land on the next tree. Many groups of mammals seem to have taken this evolutionary advice to heart. According to our newly published paper in Science Advances, unrelated animals may even have used the same blueprints for building their “wings”.
These evolutionary experiments happened in animals scattered all across the mammalian family tree – including flying squirrels, marsupial possums and the colugo (cousin of the primates). But they all have something in common. It’s a special skin structure between their limbs called a patagium, or flight membrane.
The fact these similar structures have arisen so many times (a process called convergent evolution) hints that the genetic underpinnings of patagia might predate flight. Indeed, they could be shared by all mammals, even those living on the ground.
If this is true, studying patagia can help us to better understand the incredible adaptability of mammals. We might also discover previously unknown aspects of human genetics.
Sugar gliders are one of several mammals that have independently evolved the ability to fly through the air. apiguide/Shutterstock
A deceptively simple membrane
Despite being seemingly simple skin structures, patagia contain several tissues, including hair, a rich array of touch-sensitive neurons, connective tissue and even thin sheets of muscle. But in the earliest stages of formation, these membranes are dominated by the two main layers of the skin: the inner dermis and outer epidermis.
The patagium in sugar gliders (red arrow) forms after birth when the newborn, or joey, is in its marsupial mother’s pouch. Charles Feigin, Author provided
At first, they hardly differ from neighbouring skin. But at some point, the skin on the animal’s sides starts to rapidly change, or differentiate. The dermis undergoes a process called condensation, where cells bunch up and the tissue becomes very dense. Meanwhile, the epidermis thickens in a process called hyperplasia.
In some mammals, this differentiation happens when they are still an embryo in the uterus. Incredibly though, in our main model species – the marsupial sugar glider (Petaurus breviceps) – this process begins after birth, while they are in the mother’s pouch. This provides us with an incredible window into patagium formation.
Starting with the sugar glider, we examined the behaviours of thousands of genes active during the early development of the patagium, to try and figure out how this chain of events is kicked off.
We discovered that levels of a gene called Wnt5a are strongly correlated with the onset of those early skin changes – condensation and hyperplasia. Through a series of experiments involving cultured skin tissues and genetically engineered laboratory mice, we showed that adding extra Wnt5a was all it took to drive both of these early hallmarks of patagium formation.
Interestingly, when we extended our work to bats, we found extremely similar patterns of Wnt5a activity in their developing lateral patagia to that in sugar gliders. This was surprising, since bats (placental mammals) last shared a common ancestor with the marsupial sugar glider around 160 million years ago.
Perhaps even more remarkably, we found a nearly identical pattern in the outer ear (or pinna) of lab mice. The pinna is a nearly universal trait among mammals, including innumerable species with no flying ancestry.
Seba’s short-tailed bat has a lateral patagium (connected to the flank of the body) activated by Wnt5a. Irineu Cunha/iNaturalist, CC BY-NC
A molecular toolkit
Together, these results suggest something profound. Wnt5a’s role in ushering in the skin changes needed for a patagium likely evolved long before the first mammal ever took to the air.
Originally, the gene had nothing to do with flight, instead contributing to the development of seemingly unrelated traits. But because of shared ancestry, most living mammals today inherited this Wnt5a-driven program. When species like gliders and bats started on their separate journeys into the air, they did so with a common “molecular toolkit”.
Not only that, but this same toolkit is likely present in humans and working in ways we don’t fully understand yet.
There are definite limits to our recent work. First, we haven’t made a flying mouse. This may sound like a joke, but demonstrates we still don’t fully understand how a region of dense, thick skin becomes a thin and wide flight membrane. Many more genes with unknown roles are bound to be involved.
Second, while we’ve shown a cause-and-effect relationship between Wnt5a and patagium skin differentiation, we don’t know precisely how Wnt5a does it. Moving forward, we hope to fill in these gaps by broadening the horizons of our cross-species comparisons and by conducting more in-depth molecular studies on patagium formation in sugar gliders.
For now though, our study presents an exciting new view of flight in mammals. We may not be the strongest fliers, but trying is in our DNA.
The Fijian Drua will need to start and finish well, while Moana Pasifika’s coach wants to see a full 80-minute performance this weekend as the two regional teams continue their Super Rugby Pacific campaigns.
The Drua tackle the Highlanders in Dunedin today and Pasifika face the Hurricanes at Mt Smart Stadium, Auckland, later on in the day.
Both teams are coming off defeats last weekend, albeit in very different ways.
Drua needs focus to win Keeping the focus and playing basics rugby right are keys to the Drua’s campaign if they want to contest the play-offs.
That plus discipline could be the difference of a win or loss against the Highlanders, who are also fighting to keep their hopes alive.
Head coach Mick Byrne lamented the lack of focus in the first half against the Reds in Brisbane last Sunday, where they lost 27-24.
“I am disappointed we did not play 80 minutes in that game,” he said.
“We got back to work in the second half. Would have been nice to have been like that for 80 minutes.”
He said the players needed to also learn when to keep the ball and set up play, instead of throwing it around too much.
“I think we probably threw the ball away in some close quarters, especially down the sidelines. We just need to carry into those areas, be strong at the ruck and carry hard again,” he said.
“We were a little bit loose at times.”
Captain Meli Derenalagi said they will need to focus from the start until the final whistle if they are to improve on their two wins from four games so far.
“We lacked focus in the first half and that let us down,” he said of last weekend’s close loss.
This week he and the players have been working on those areas and more, including first-up defence and making use of possessions that comes their way.
Moana Pasifika coach seeks ‘full performance’ Although not disappointed with last week’s showing against the Brumbies where Moana Pasifika lost 62-36, head coach Aaron Mauger, like his Drua counterpart, wants to see a full performance against the Hurricanes tomorrow.
“We played good for 60 minutes and obviously dropped away towards the end,” Mauger said.
“We highlighted what we are doing well, and we showed we can go toe-to-toe with any other team in the competition.
“We still have gaps around the 80-minute performance but there were lots of positives there.”
He doesn’t expect it to get any easier against the Hurricanes on their return to Mt Smart, the scene of last year’s 24-19 win for Moana Pasifika against the same opposition.
“The Hurricanes are playing good rugby, they are a very physical and abrasive team,” Mauger said.
“So that has been the focus this week especially looking at the collision and securing the ball.
“We expect Hurricanes to be good there — Ardie Savea, Du Plessis Kirifi and James Blackwell are all very good over the ball and so we going to have to be sharp.”
Mauger said it was nice to return to the scene of last year’s win, but they are totally focused on the task in hand.
“It’s always a pleasure to play at home especially in front of our home fans. Last year was pretty magical moment for us but they are a quality side and will have respect for us and we will respect them too,” he said.
Mauger said he was disappointed Moana Pasifika had not picked up a win in the four rounds to date.
“I have to say I’m concerned that we haven’t picked up a win because we had winnable games against the Force and the Drua, and they were two close losses,” Mauger lamented.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
