International students are a hugely important part of Australia’s university system and its economy. In 2019, before COVID, international education was worth about A$40.3 billion to the Australian economy.
As of 2022, international students are worth about $25.5 billion but this figure is expected to rise again. Not only has Australia reopened its borders, but it is trying to entice international students by increasing post-study working rights and working rights on student visas.
China is of huge importance to our international student intake, making up 25% of the group as of December 2022. However, students from South Asia – including India – are also important, making up more than 30% of those studying here.
We know South Asian students are extremely keen to work here. Indian graduates were granted the most post-work study visas in the two years leading up to the pandemic. But as of 2022, only 57% of undergraduate Indian students and less than 53% of postgraduates had full-time employment after they graduated.
Our new study talked to South Asian graduates about the support they got trying to find a job. It found they face two main challenges: both career fairs and careers support on Australian campuses are skewed towards domestic students.
Our research
As of December 2022, about 16% of international students in Australia come from India, with a further 9% coming from Nepal. More than 7% of students also come from a combination of Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Afghanistan and the Maldives.
We know that many of these students want to study in Australia so as to get a job here and then gain either permanent residency or citizenship. They are often referred to as “two-step” migrants.
Our study wanted to look at what kind of support this group was receiving around employability – the skills and opportunities needed to find a job. In 2020 we interviewed 20 South Asian graduates to understand their experiences at careers fairs and university career services, as these are the two major vehicles for supporting students to get into jobs.
The graduates were mainly in Melbourne and studied a range of degrees, including business, accounting, finance, engineering, education and public health.
Almost 20% of international students in Australia come from India. Shutterstock
Careers fairs are set up for domestic students
Australian universities invite companies to career fairs on campus to show students what job opportunities are out there and to connect them with prospective employers.
The South Asian graduates we interviewed were disappointed with the fairs. Most of the companies they met had internships, work placements or full-time graduate opportunities but they were largely for domestic students.
As one interviewee seeking a job in business told us:
We did have career fairs at university every semester. But most of the career fairs I attended just have jobs for PRs [permanent residents] or citizens. TR [temporary resident] jobs are very limited. Maybe just two or three companies only at the fair takes in international students or TRs.
Another interviewee, who studied telecommunications also talked of limited opportunities:
Very few companies are open for international students – probably less than ten. So, it is very hard. We don’t have much opportunities due the limited numbers of companies that take in international graduates.
Most Australian universities have a career office or career advice service. Careers office offers offer general services around resume checking and tips for interview skills.
The South Asian graduates went to careers offices for help but again, found the advice and resume assistance was geared at domestic students. As another interviewee seeking work in planning told us:
Career advice provided by the university careers office is very generic. It is not going to help or be relevant, as it is supposed to be different for international students who are finding employment in Australia. So, I did not take the advice that they gave me. I got better advice from industry professionals who were also academics at this university.
An engineering graduate who had only found work in a supermarket said he went to the career office several times to try and get his resume “sorted out”.
But they just enrol me for the resume sessions every time I ask for feedback on my resume. I waste my whole day for this. They gave the same tips every time to everyone. So not much help was provided to me. I am still [searching for] jobs in my field of studies, which is engineering.
What do we need to do instead?
Australian universities need to move away from a “once-size-fits-all” approach when it comes to employability support. Some key changes could include:
initiating partnerships with companies or industry representatives to provide specific job opportunities to international students via internships, work placements and volunteering roles
inviting more companies to career fairs that will be open to offering opportunities for international students or graduates on temporary visas
inviting international graduate alumni as guest speakers to career sessions, to mentor students, help modify their resumes and locate work or internship opportunities
providing careers offices with the capacity to provide practical career planning and development guidance for international students. This is so international students are able to visualise their careers in Australia, in their home country or a third country.
Australia’s economy and university system rely heavily on international graduates to come and study here. They do so on the premise it will help their career prospects, and Australian universities need to do more to live up to this.
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.
The Academy Awards in 2023 were a less scandalous affair than last year – although host Jimmy Kimmel never let us forget “the slap”, with so many jokes it was verging on a dead-horse-beating situation.
In fact it was a relatively wholesome ceremony, defined by great sweeps for films All Quiet On The Western Front and Everything Everywhere All At Once. Perhaps the only “shock” was Angela Bassett losing Best Supporting Actress to Jamie Lee Curtis, and thereby being denied the chance to “do the thing”.
Here, we summarise the most important moments from the 2023 Oscars.
All the looks of the champagne carpet
Deborah Fisher, Lecturer in Design and Fashion Studies, School of Business and Creative Industries, University of the Sunshine Coast
The Oscars 2023 red-carpet fashions will spur a rush of activity as the haute couture and designer looks are rapidly reproduced for the knockoff market.
The pillars of European Haute Couture were well represented. The major players such as Louis Vuitton (Cate Blanchett, Ana de Armas), Armani Privé (Nicole Kidman), Dior Haute Couture (Michelle Yeoh), Valentino (Florence Pugh), Prada (Catherine Martin), Atelier Versace (Lady Gaga), floated across the carpet with all the feel of Paris fashion week.
There was, however, an obvious absence of emerging or avant-garde designers or even American designers. Instead, it would be fair to say there was an abundance of understated looks, with shades of soft ecru and off-white dominating (Halle Berry, Michelle Williams, Emily Blunt, Tems). Where there was colour, it was delectable- mid-toned aqua (Halle Bailey in Dolce & Gabbana), citrusy orange (Sandra Oh in Giambattista Valli), chartreuse (Winnie Harlow in Atelier Versace), palpable purple (Angela Bassett in Moschino).
Red (note the carpet was renamed champagne) got a solid look in with Melissa McCarthy, Anni Strenisko, and Cara Delavinge, who stunned in Elie Saab. The men followed the mostly conservative mood, with Austin Butler and Lenny Kravitz in Saint Laurent, Keith Urban and Ke Huy Quan in Armani Privé, and Paul Mescal in Gucci. Questlove, last year’s Best Documentary winner, adorned his Crocs with sparkles and bling so he could “shine his light,” perhaps the most personalised of the men’s sartorial stories.
And of course, there are some looks that will, although they should not, be copied – Sigourney Weaver’s somewhat matronly Givenchy dress and Eva Longoria’s art deco-inspired, but far too ambitious gown by Zuhair Murad.
Keeping the score
Gregory Camp, Senior Lecturer, University of Auckland School of Music
There was a sore lack of good music throughout this year’s ceremony.
I miss the days of the orchestra pit. The orchestra this year was invisible, other than a few short shots of them leading into commercial breaks and during the Best Original Score announcement. They appeared to be in a conference room somewhere backstage; just because one can pipe in a remote orchestra fairly easily doesn’t mean one should. And despite the fact there was a live orchestra (somewhere), most of the music sounded prerecorded, as it was mixed in a flat, lossy way.
The music clips chosen to accompany the presenters’ and winners’ walks to and from the stage were not very exciting. We heard a lot of a very dull looping motive from Everything Everywhere All at Once as members of its team went to collect their well-deserved awards.
It is possible to write music that is immediately noticeable and interesting; just ask John Williams, who can fit more melodic material into two bars than this whole ceremony had in all its incidental music. All Quiet on the Western Front’s repeating minor triad is at least memorable, although I was surprised it beat Williams’ and Justin Hurwitz’s stronger work for The Fabelmans and Babylon, respectively, to win the Best Score award.
The Best Song nominees this year were uniformly poor, aside from Naatu Naatu, which did its job well and justifiably won the award. Applause from Tell It Like a Woman was really terrible, a surprisingly ineffective song from Oscar stronghold Diane Warren. This Is a Life from Everything Everywhere was also an awful song, but it added a much-needed touch of the bizarre to this slick ceremony.
Naatu Naatu was the only musical moment that brought back something of the Oscars’ glamour of yore. This is one of the first songs from song-rich Indian cinema to break through to the Oscars, but we can hope that it will pave the way for more.
Lady Gaga had a rough start with her Top Gun song Hold My Hand, suffering through some poor vocal intonation, but she warmed into it. Considering this is a film awards show, the poor cinematography for this performance was striking: Gaga was in an overly tight shot and the camera operator had a hard time keeping this very active performer in the frame. That said, I liked the simplicity of the setting for the song, the strong backlighting isolating her and her band in the space and making the large stage seem more intimate.
Rihanna gave a good performance of another lacklustre number, Wakanda Forever’s Lift Me Up. The downbeat, repetitive song didn’t allow her to show very much of her range. This all makes one desperate for a return of the likes of Henry Mancini and Randy Newman to this category.
Brendan Fraser and Best Actor
Ari Mattes, Lecturer in Communications and Media, University of Notre Dame Australia
With his Oscar win for Best Actor for The Whale, Brendan Fraser simply proves something most of us have known all along – he’s a great performer. If anyone had any doubts, they simply needed to watch performances across his career, from Encino Man to Gods and Monsters to his comical cameo as himself in Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star.
His performance in The Whale is fine, and good enough to win the Oscar, but again the win reflects popular sensibilities rather than being a measure of true artistic merit. It’s essentially an easy part in an easily digestible film from a director, Darren Aronofsky, who’s made a career of making genre films that seem more interesting and complex than they actually are.
He returns here, with Fraser, to similar terrain he covered with Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler – getting a performance out of a supposedly washed-up actor that, at least in part, reflects the courage of the actor in appearing warts and all – willingly vulnerable and hopeless.
Brendan Fraser, winner of the Best Actor in a Leading Role award for The Whale. Caroline Brehman/ EPA
I reiterate, Fraser is good (as he was in Airheads, although he wasn’t nominated for Best Actor for that performance), but so much of the pathos and energy of the film simply comes from his appearance – and our knowledge that Fraser used to be a Hollywood heartthrob.
And there’s something fundamentally lazy about that.
Michelle Yeoh and Best Actress in a Leading Role
Jindan Ni, Lecturer, Global and Language Studies, RMIT University
Everything Everywhere All at Once became the biggest winner at the 95th Academy Awards – surprising, but also not so surprising. Cast mainly by Asian actors and actresses, this strangely (sometimes even disturbingly) funny but also moving comedy won most of the major awards, including Best Leading Actress and Best Director.
Michelle Yeoh, who is now the first Asian actor to win Best Actress, addressed her acceptance speech directly to “the little boys and girls” who look like herself, and proudly claimed that her winning is “the beacon of hope and possibility” for all the Asians who pursue their dreams in Hollywood, or even more broadly, in Western societies with a long history of deeming Asians as inferior.
The sweeping wins of Everything Everywhere All At Once at the Oscars is a manifestation of reconciliation and inclusiveness that the Academy Awards are attempting to embrace and strive for.
Michelle Yeoh poses with the award for best performance by an actress in a leading role for Everything Everywhere All at Once at the Governors Ball after the Oscars. John Locher/ AP
Despite its historical winnings at the Academy Awards, it is hard to say that Everything Everywhere All At Once has successfully managed to make new representations of Asian in the big screen. Yeoh still needed to make good use of her Kung fu skills in the movie to appeal to the audience and the market.
The final thing I would like to add is although Cate Blanchett did not win Best Actress, her formidable and awe-inspiring acting in Tár is by no means inferior.
Cate Blanchett arrives for the 95th annual Academy Awards ceremony. Caroline Brehman/ EPA
Just like the nickname “da mowang”, literally meaning “the mighty devil”, the Chinese audience has given to Cate, her powerful and almost enigmatic performance in Tár also tells of the infinite possibilities for women who refuse to be defined by age, which largely resonate with Yeoh’s words: “Ladies, don’t ever let anyone tell you you are past your prime.”
Celebrity legacy at the Oscars
Robert Boucaut, PhD Candidate and Tutor, Media Department, University of Adelaide
The choice of winners for the acting categories at the 2023 Oscars speaks to a respect for building celebrity legacy – all are actors over 50 years of age and on their first-ever nominations.
Despite the backlash copped in the year of the nepo-baby, Jamie Lee Curtis used her speech to thank her dedicated fanbase who have championed her work in action and horror movies.
Fraser and Ke Huy Quan’s outpourings of emotion for their wins signified their deeply felt triumphs over years of uncertainty in filmmaking: an Oscar’s “comeback narrative” always highlights how an industrial status quo works against individuals who fall out of favour in a celebrity marketplace.
‘Nepo baby’ Jamie Lee Curtis at an Oscars afterparty, with her Oscar. John Locher/ AP
And the collectively held breath across film Twitter upon the announcement of Halle Berry presenting the Best Actress award was finally relaxed with Michelle Yeoh’s win – the first woman of colour to win the award presented it to the second, 21 years later.
Across the awards season both Yeoh and Quan demonstrated an acute awareness of the significance their wins would hold as Asian actors, and their speeches invited the audience to dream big. The genuine emotion offered and elicited across all four categories were a refreshing rebuttal for an Oscars cynic, that the symbolic power of these awards can be put in service of expanding notions of prestige acting and celebrity.
Ke Huy Quan with his Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for Everything Everywhere All at Once. Caroline Brehman/ EPA
The best picture? Or was it
Ari Mattes
The production companies behind Everything Everywhere All at Once must be frothing at the mouth – not only have they cleaned up at the box office, making (by conservative estimates) five times their budget, but their film has now won the Best Picture Oscar.
Does it deserve it? In much of the commentary around the film, moral and aesthetic categories are being confused. It is good that it has won, because it’s an independent production, and it’s nice that a film with Chinese actors in it has won. But this is a moral argument.
Although undeniably a crowd-pleaser, I found the film aesthetically drab. It was overlong, a mess of ideas derived from other (and often better) works, and the whole thing was overlaid with a kind of irritatingly cutesy schtick.
It works okay as a 1980s-style blockbuster, but as a piece of cinema it is doubtful it will have any bearing or longevity in the cultural archive.
Was it actually the best picture of 2022? No – there were six better films nominated for the award, with The Banshees of Inisherin a true cinematic masterpiece – not to mention all the excellent films that had no showing in the Oscars.
What its win does suggest (along with the success of Top Gun: Maverick), is that audiences are craving nostalgic cinema that plays well on the big screen. And this will excite the kinds of mega-corporations that produce indie cinema these days – they can simply recycle and combine material from their VHS collection.
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.
After posting a razor-thin profit of $23.6 million in the last six months of 2022, it anticipates a loss for the full 2022-23 financial year – only the second time since being corporatised in 1989.
The last loss was in 2014-15, following a $190 million investment in “transformational reform” of Australia Post’s letters business. At the time, it expressed confidence those efficiency improvements would allow it “to maintain a five-day-a-week delivery”. Now it is pessimistic. With the ongoing collapse in demand for letter delivery, it sees only more losses ahead.
That’s a huge problem, because Australia Post has two main obligations, enshrined in federal legislation. It is required to operate on commercial principles – that is, the federal government wants it to deliver a dividend – while also meeting strict community service obligations.
Those obligations – established in 1989 and last reviewed in 2019 – require delivering letters to 98% of all Australian addresses five days a week, and in more remote areas to 99.7% of addresses at least twice a week, generally within two days of posting.
The Morrison government temporarily relaxed those obligations between May 2020 and June 2021 so Australia Post could divert resources to its parcel delivery services as online shopping boomed during the pandemic. Now the organisation wants those community service obligations reduced permanently.
Meeting the obligations cost $348.5 million in 2021-22, says a federal government discussion paper on “postal services modernisation” published this month. It says they “are no longer financially sustainable and are not well targeted at the needs of Australians due to changes brought about by the digitisation of the economy”.
It’s hard to disagree. The numbers are incontrovertible. The hundreds of millions of dollars a year being lost on letter delivery will only get bigger. People just don’t need a daily postal service like they used to.
In the red, and dying
In the 2021-22 financial year, Australia Post made a slim profit of $55 million on revenues of $8.97 billion. That’s a 0.6% profit margin, far below the 8.5% average within the transport services sector.
The surplus was due only to its parcel-delivery business, which grew about 12% in 2021-22 after four years of growing at more than 20%. Letters now account for less than 20% of Australia Post’s revenue.
The discussion paper notes letter volumes in Australia is now less than half what they were in 2008. This is not as severe as countries such as New Zealand or Denmark, but worse than Germany, Japan, the United States and the United Kingdom.
Government agencies and businesses now account for 97% of mail sent. Overall volume will decline as they move to cheaper, more efficient online methods. Even major postal events like election campaigns are likely to disappear, with postal voting replaced by digital technology.
What can be done?
The discussion paper flags a range of possible responses.
One is to charge higher prices. Britain’s Royal Mail, for example, has raised postage prices by 64% over the past five years.
Australia Post increased the rate for standard letter delivery from A$1.10 to A$1.20 in January, which the discussion paper notes is significantly less than the average of $2.08 for OECD countries.
Higher prices may boost profit for a year or two, but in the longer term will just accelerate the transition to non-postal methods.
Another option is investing in more efficient sorting technology, particularly automation. The French and German postal services are doing this. But Australia Post has already made huge investments in efficiencies, and doing more will cost the federal government money – something it won’t want to do given the budget position.
What about local post offices?
Another option is to reduce Australia Post’s network of post offices, of which there are more than 4,300. This number is tied to another community service obligation: that no one live further than 2.5km from a post office in a metropolitan area, or 7.5km in a non-metropolitan area.
The discussion paper notes Australia has more post offices than supermarkets. They cost $1.3 billion to operate in 2021-22.
These provide posting, pickup, banking, transaction and retail services. But their need is diminishing as all things are progressively digitised. An argument could be made that some, at least in metropolitan areas, could be replaced with smart lockers for parcel pick-up.
But that’s likely to be politically contentious, with less financial gain, than the most obvious choice – to scrap the community service obligation to deliver post five days a week.
New Zealand’s postal service did this in 2013, moving to delivery every other day. Sweden did so in 2020 as a trial, with the intention of making it permanent.
Some will miss the daily service. But most of us won’t. As the relaxation to deliveries every second day showed during the COVID period, it is likely most people won’t even notice.
Paul Alexander does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Captive breeding of threatened species for release into the wild is an important conservation tool. But where threats to wild populations remain unresolved, this tool may not guarantee population recovery in the long term.
Our new research on one of the most endangered birds in the world shows we need to tackle underlying threats to survival if we are to save species from extinction in the wild.
Captive breeding and release is sustaining the population of orange-bellied parrots, holding extinction at bay. But most of the young born into the population each year die during their migration and winter.
Our modelling shows that if captive breeding and release stopped tomorrow, orange-bellied parrots would soon become extinct. The natural birth rate is too low to compensate for the high death rates of juveniles. So we’re locked into releasing captive-bred parrots until we can solve the underlying problems afflicting the wild population. Unfortunately, it’s not clear exactly what those problems are.
Globally, captive breeding has prevented the extinction of iconic species such as the California condor.
However, despite the benefits of captive breeding, success is not guaranteed. This is especially so when captive-bred animals are released into habitats where threats remain unresolved. In such cases, captive-bred animals will succumb to the same threats as their wild counterparts.
For some species, identifying and correcting threats is straightforward. For example, removing introduced predators from islands may be a way to eliminate a threat and optimise the benefit of releases from captivity.
But the exact nature of threats is often not clear-cut, especially for species that move over large areas. This can create uncertainty about what the threats are, where they occur, and how to resolve them.
Inability to mitigate threats may result in lost opportunities for released animals to learn crucial behaviours such as migration or song, and ultimately, the decline of wild populations.
Conservationists may sometimes need to “buy time” and prevent extinction in the wild by releasing animals to ensure the continuity of animal cultures in landscapes where threats persist.
Orange-bellied parrots are among the most endangered birds in the world, and they are dependent on intensive conservation efforts to prevent extinction. Dejan Stojanovic
Locked into a cycle of dependency
The orange-bellied parrot is one of the most endangered birds in the world. In 2016, just four females returned to Tasmania from migration, and only one of them produced a surviving descendant. (The species migrates from its summer breeding ground in southwestern Tasmania to the coasts of southeastern mainland Australia, but these movements take a toll on the population.)
Fortunately, despite ongoing uncertainty about reducing threats, intensive conservation efforts have grown the population. More than 30 females have returned from migration annually over the past two years. Despite this success, most juvenile parrots (both captive-bred and wild-born) that leave Tasmania on their northward migration die.
Overcoming the unresolved threats that drive this high mortality is crucial for making this population self-sustaining. Unfortunately due to the practical limitations of studying a small, scattered population across remote areas, it is unlikely that this knowledge gap can be addressed in the short term. In the meantime, there are several options available.
We used simulations to compare the benefits of different management scenarios on the orange-bellied parrot. We showed that of all the potential intervention options available to the recovery project, releasing captive juveniles in autumn – to learn from wild adults, and increase the size of migrating flocks – was the most beneficial.
However, none of the interventions available to managers can directly address the underlying problem of high juvenile mortality, so their benefits were temporary. When we simulated stopping captive releases, the populations rapidly went extinct. Without addressing the underlying threats faced by the species, we found the natural birth rate too low to compensate for high juvenile mortality rates.
Until a solution is found for high migration and winter mortality rates, orange-bellied parrots will remain dependent on captive breeding and release to prevent extinction and grow the population.
Orange-bellied parrot ‘red red D’ is a descendant of the last truly wild born lineage of mothers, and was one of the longest-lived mothers in the contemporary population. Dejan Stojanovic
Lulled into a false sense of security
Orange-bellied parrots provide a stark reminder that there is no “quick fix” for most threatened species. Although captive breeding for release can effectively prevent extinction in the short term, long-term self-sustaining populations in the wild depend on finding solutions for the threats that caused their decline in the first place. Until solutions can be found, management agencies may be locked into a cycle of conservation dependency aimed at preventing extinction, but struggle to address the threats that cause the underlying problems.
Given the global popularity and visibility of captive breeding programs, it is easy to be lulled into a false sense of security that they are a quick fix for the extinction crisis. However, identifying the threats to wild populations early is crucial because re-establishing “extinct in the wild” species from captivity is extremely difficult, albeit not impossible.
In the case of the orange-bellied parrot, we hope preventing extinction of the wild population through releases of captive-bred birds may buy enough time to identify and mitigate the causes of high juvenile migration/winter mortality. But we also hope our study is a reminder to policymakers that conservation of wild populations should focus on identifying and preventing threats, negating the need for captive breeding in the first place.
Dejan Stojanovic received funding for this project from the Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, via NRM South.
Carolyn Hogg receives funding from the Australian Research Council, and was a member of the Orange-bellied Parrot recovery team from 2011 to 2021.
Rob Heinsohn 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.
By the end of this month, speed limits on more than 2,000 roads across Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland will have been reduced by between 10 and 60 kilometres per hour (km/h). Part of the Auckland Transport (AT) safe speeds programme, the aim is to reduce serious injuries and fatalities.
According to AT, areas where speeds have already been reduced have seen a 30% reduction in road deaths, compared to a 9% increase in deaths where they have not.
But there is another benefit to reducing speeds on our roads – a reduction in carbon emissions. Cars and other passenger vehicles were responsible for 27% of New Zealand’s gross carbon dioxide emissions in 2018. At lower speeds, vehicles use less fuel and emit less carbon dioxide.
Ultimately, it’s about climate change. The recent extreme weather events that have wreaked havoc across many communities in Aotearoa are only an entrée. The main course is yet to come.
But to see a significant emissions reduction from the country’s motor vehicle fleet, local and central government agencies must go beyond lowering speeds on small sections of inner-city and rural roads. Motorway speeds should targeted, too.
Lower speeds, less fuel: dropping the maximum speed from 100 to 80 km/h reduces fuel use by approximately 15%. Getty Images
Less fuel, lower emissions
Driving slower on highways saves fuel. At higher speeds, engines must work harder to overcome drag, mainly from wind resistance. That drag increases exponentially the faster a vehicle goes. This is especially true for larger, less fuel-efficient vehicles.
A recent study found that reducing the maximum speed on New Zealand roads from 100 to 80 km/h reduced fuel use by approximately 15%.
The OECD has estimated that the fuel consumption of vehicles travelling at 90 km/h was 23% lower than at 110 km/h. In the Netherlands, increased enforcement of 100 km/h speed limits reduced average speeds by 7 km/h.
This resulted in savings of 40 million litres of petrol, 40 million litres of diesel, and 15 million litres of LPG. Conversely, an aggressive driving style involving rapid acceleration and hard braking can increase fuel consumption by up to 30%.
It’s difficult to see how New Zealand will meet CO₂ emission reduction targets by 2050. Government policies encouraging people to buy fuel-efficient cars are a start, but they fail to provide real incentives to change the behaviour of those with the most polluting vehicles.
People who can afford to drive large, luxury vehicles with poor carbon-emission ratings (such as a new Audi Q7 or Range Rover) are unlikely to be troubled by the cost of the carbon fuel tax or the high emissions fee on new vehicles. Also, these measures won’t make any difference to the emissions from existing vehicles on New Zealand roads.
Imposing a lower maximum speed limit on high-emission vehicles would have an impact, however. New Zealand currently has a different maximum speed limit of 90 km/h for cars towing trailers, and for heavy vehicles. Why not extend this to include targeted climate-polluting vehicles?
This would achieve two things: it would make people less keen to buy high-emission vehicles, and it would cut the emissions of high-polluting vehicles already on the road. Large fossil-fuel engines produce more emissions, and therefore have the most to offer by reducing their speed.
A 10 km/h maximum speed reduction will only add two to four minutes to a 100 kilometre trip. Those who need to drive large vehicles for commercial use will have marginally increased costs due to longer drive times, but they will save on fuel bills.
This policy option is also more equitable than fuel taxes. Emission reductions will be achieved without any added cost to low-income families with older, less-efficient vehicles (unless, of course, they choose to speed.) And it is feasible because number plate recognition technology allows vehicle type to be instantly identified by police or through camera images.
Some may wonder, when so few people seem to obey speed limits anyway, how this change might make any difference.
But those who exceed the speed limit by, say, 10 km/h usually do so regardless of the limit. So, if they drive 110 in 100 km/h zones, they will likely drive at 100 in 90 km/h zones: still a reduction of 10 km/h.
Of course, high-performance electric vehicles don’t produce higher emissions at higher speeds. If wealthy people and businesses want the higher speed limit to apply, they can buy electric vehicles.
Lower speeds on our roads and motorways would mean a reduction in both crashes and greenhouse gas emissions. The government should speed up and act.
Len Gillman 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.
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards.
Political Roundup: The Big “consultocrats” debate needs to carry on
Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards.
A parasitic blight on our democracy? Or a useful and necessary aid to our government departments? Those are two perspectives on the usefulness of the Wellington consultant class that contract to government agencies.
The role of business management consultants took centre stage last week when National’s Christopher Luxon called time on the over-use of “consultocrats” in his state of the nation speech. Luxon pledged to cut the use of contractors by 25 per cent off the $1.7bn that was spent last year by government departments and agencies such as Te Whatu Ora and Waka Kotahi.
Jackpot for National, disaster for Labour
The debate has proved to be a winner for National, as they have been able to dominate the last week in politics on an issue that very much has Labour on the backfoot. At the end of the week, the Herald’s Audrey Young pronounced that National “has finally hit the jackpot” on the issue.
She explained how bad it was for Labour and the Prime Minister: “it was the first time it had had Prime Minister Chris Hipkins squirming. No matter how much he said he wasn’t going to defend the rising costs of consultants, he had to explain why much of the expenditure was justified which, of course, was pretty much defending the rising costs of consultants. He was squarely in the frame as well because the ministry with the largest expenditure was Education when he was the minister.”
Hipkins appears to be snookered on the issue. Writing in the weekend, Janet Wilson says Hipkins “had two odious choices; either defend the use of consultants or accept National’s criticism. In the end, he did both”. One problem for Hipkins is that there are plenty of examples that National can bring up from the past in which he was very much in line with National’s campaign against the overuse of business consultants.
For example, RNZ’s Craig McCulloch published this 2012 statement from Hipkins about governments hiring consultants, suggesting it could just as easy have come from Luxon this week: “It’s a really bad look for them. I think they should be asking some very serious questions about why this increase in consultant fees has been necessary at a time when all New Zealanders are being asked to tighten their belts.”
McCulloch points out that Hipkins and Labour are highly vulnerable on the business consultant issue. This is especially because Hipkins looks rather hypocritical having campaigned against “consultocrats” and then becoming the Minister in charge of both the State Services in general, and the very ministry that has been the leading spender on contractors.
In opposition, Hipkins claimed that National’s use of contractors had increased eight-fold in the Ministry of Education, saying in 2016 that they were spending “a whopping $100,000 a day on consultants and contractors” in this area.
This raises the issue of whether all parties in opposition just use the consulting debate to score political points, but then get into power and become just as reliant on the consultants and contractors. Newsroom’s Sam Sachdeva pointed out on Friday that “spending on consultants and contractors almost doubled during the National government’s nine years in power, rising from $278 million in 2009 to $550m in 2017 according to figures compiled by Labour after it took office.”
Therefore, Sachdeva says that “Promises by opposition MPs to clamp down on such spending – and a subsequent failure to make that a reality in government – are far from unusual.”
When the political right favour consultants and the left oppose
Not all politicians are campaigning against the state’s use of the private sector. The Act Party is sticking up for business consultants, with leader David Seymour coming to their defence last week, telling the National Business Review, “I think we need to be a bit cautious of opposing the very idea of contracting the private sector to help develop public services”. He also was against the consultants themselves being targeted in the debate: “It is very unfair to blame them for taking work the Government is offering. They would be negligent if they did not”.
Many on the political left have given National’s campaign against the consulting class some sort of approval. Writing in the weekend, leftwing columnist Max Rashbrooke said that the Luxon-initiated debate has “has revealed how hopelessly, cravenly reliant modern government is on the Deloittes and Chapman Tripps of this world. The state has been hollowed out in recent decades, losing expertise, wisdom and savvy.”
Similarly, leftwing pundit Martyn Bradbury has come out colourfully against the use of the private sector in government agencies: “Labour’s reliance on consultants is part of their cultural Professional Managerial Class capture. The Wellington Bureaucracy isn’t left wing! It’s a self interested Professional Managerial Class who use identity politics to mask their neoliberal hands-off-do-nothing-but-build-glass-palaces fiefdoms.”
Chris Trotter also wrote on Friday for the Otago Daily Times on how business consultants have played a key role in keeping governments wedded to neoliberalism orthodoxy. Certainly, there is a strong argument that the use of business consultants has hollowed out the power of the state, and led to government departments that are incapable of playing a full role in governing society properly.
Relating to this, Massey University public management researcher Andrew Cardow has argued this week that government and business interests are getting too close under the contracting arrangement. Newsroom reported his view: “Cardow said claims that private firms brought a more objective eye to policy issues did not stand up to scrutiny, given much of their revenue came from securing state contracts, while an overreliance on the private sector resulted in a weak government.”
Some on the political left are therefore arguing that the response to the dominance of the consultocrats in government should focus on building up public service capacity instead of eroding it by the use of consultants.
Revelations about the extent of business consultants and contractors in government
Previously it’s been reported that in the last year the Labour Government has spent $1.2bn on consultants and contractors. This figure only includes the money spent by core public service departments. Once other government agencies such as Waka Kotahi and Te Whatu Ora are included in this spending, National has calculated that this figure is about $1.7bn.
Audrey Young has looked at the Public Service Commission figures, and created a “league table” of the biggest spenders for the last year: “Education spend $237 million on consultants and contracting in the 2021 – 22 year, Health spent $154 million and the Minister of Social Development spent $116 million”.
National has now drawn attention to the central role of the “Big Four” business consultancies of Deloitte, KPMG, Ernst and Young (EY) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in the spend-up. The calculations are that in the year that Labour took office, the Big Four were receiving contracts amounting to $57m, but that this figure had surged to $97m for 2022.
Deloitte was the biggest beneficiary according to National, earning $115.8m since Labour came into power. The next biggest beneficiaries since 2017 have been PwC ($93.6m), EY ($69.9m) and KPMG ($37.6m). In total, the Big Four have been paid $316.8m since Labour came to power.
The role of the consultocrats in the health system
The Big Four have been particularly busy in the health sector. BusinessDesk has discovered that during the pandemic, 40 per cent of the Ministry of Health’s Covid spend on consultants went to the Big Four. According to BusinessDesk’s Cécile Meier, “The Ministry of Health has spent nearly $200 million on consultants in the two years to July 2022, almost twice as much as it did in the four years prior.”
The use of consultants in health has become extremely unpopular amongst many health specialists and commentators. For example, BusinessDesk has reported the view of healthcare investor Michael Haskell that the use of consultants has become a “major problem”.
Here’s Haskell’s assessment of the situation: “Bureaucrats and external consultants tend to protect one another in a taxpayer-funded rort that goes a bit like this: the bureaucrat hires a high-priced team of consultants from PwC/Deloitte/KPMG/EY and pays them hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars and then the external consultant produces a report stating that the healthcare sector needs more funding for more bureaucrats, and then the cycle repeats itself.”
Haskell concludes: “Until this cycle stops, it will be very difficult to improve our healthcare sector to any material degree.”
He’s not the only one complaining. Health commentator Ian Powell has also been quoted saying “Relying on business consultants for health decisions is rather like asking Wayne Brown for advice on etiquette.”
But it’s outgoing Te Whatu Ora chair Rob Campbell’s analysis that needs the most attention. Prior to being fired last week, he announced that he was about to carry out a crackdown on the consultocrats in health, explaining “There has been a hollowing out of expertise in a number of areas in the health system in favour of consultancy companies”.
Campbell gave his own troubling assessment of the health consultocracy: “The more you hire consultants, the more the workforce gets weakened. Indeed, we have got people who are very good at their job being poached by consultancy companies so they can sell their services back to us… If we can’t cut the overall spend on external consultants, we won’t succeed in our aims. It’s as simple as that.”
As Anthony Albanese readies for the imminent unveiling of details of the nuclear-powered submarine acquisition program under AUKUS, one important question looms.
Can the prime minister juggle this closer Australian-American military embrace with a continuation of the improving Australian-Chinese relationship?
Albanese has been on the international stage for the best part of a year now, and he has been sure-footed.
The most notable development in that time has been China taking Australia out of the freezer, following the low of the Scott Morrison years.
The Australian government has been careful not to over-hype the progress, talking about “stabilising” the relationship, rather than using stronger language.
Nevertheless, the government is ambitious in terms of China. One hope is for an invitation for Albanese to visit Beijing as early as this year.
Will the hoopla in San Diego, where Albanese will be alongside US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, slow things down?
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s government is vocally critical of AUKUS, which the US, UK and Australia conceived, at its core, as part of a long-term policy of containment of China.
On the other hand, China sees the continuation of its recent, more outward-looking diplomacy, which in part has driven the improved relationship with Australia, to be in its national interest. And China will also note that the major delivery points in the submarine program (reportedly involving both US and British boats) are well into the future.
The Australian government will hope China lets this particular AUKUS moment pass with a few sharp words but without fallout for the bilateral progress.
If and when Albanese sets foot in Beijing in the relatively near term, it will probably be the greatest diplomatic challenge he’s faced up to that point.
Striking the right note when your host is the country you are overtly boosting your military capability against is an exacting test.
On another front, when you think of Labor history, it’s been remarkable how easily Albanese has been able to don Morrison’s AUKUS clothes.
The early fitting for these garments came when Morrison, with Biden and then-British PM Boris Johnson, announced the historic security agreement, which gives Australia access to key technology, in September 2021.
It had been a tightly-held secret, so there was little time for Albanese to prepare. But given his small target strategy, he knew there had to be a near-instant response and that it must be positive.
Labor signed up. There was no sign of revolt from the left in caucus, no agonised party debate.
Compare, for example, when then-Prime Minister Bob Hawke had to retreat under caucus pressure after agreeing American planes could use Australian facilities as part of monitoring MX missile tests in the Pacific.
Labor has strongly supported the US alliance over the decades. But within, Labor there have often been arguments over particulars. In 1963, during the Cold War, the stance Labor should adopt on the planned North West Cape Naval Communication Station caused a massive internal upheaval.
At that time, Labor’s extra-parliamentary organisation was a powerful and fierce beast, and then-opposition leader Arthur Calwell and his deputy Gough Whitlam had to wait outside a Canberra hotel while the party’s federal conference debated the issue (it gave approval in a knife-edge vote).
The power of the extra-parliamentary party has long been quashed. In the parliamentary caucus, the left (in which Albanese was once an outspoken member) has become the tamest of creatures. The factions these days are primarily groups for dividing up spoils rather than hotbeds for policy argument.
These days, the Greens are the party of choice for many hard-line left wingers.
On AUKUS, we’re not seeing a crack of light between Albanese and Peter Dutton, with the opposition leader last week affirming, ahead of the announcement, support for all the decisions to be taken under the pact.
Although its strategic implications and reach are enormous and the government will stress the jobs and other economic benefits involved, the submarine announcement won’t seem to have great immediate relevance for many voters.
But when we think about the services we want from government, there’s another story.
In the October budget, defence funding for 2022-23 was 1.96% of GDP. Albanese has flagged that it will rise in the May budget. Over the coming years, given a threatening strategic outlook and the huge cost of the submarines and other purchases, it is expected to increase substantially.
While the imposts will be tilted to future years (and future governments), the trajectory will nevertheless be clear.
This comes as other pressures on the budget – from the National Disability Insurance Scheme, the health system, interest on debt – are great. And that’s besides the pressure to boost the amount those on unemployment benefits receive, and other welfare demands.
The implications for the May budget are just the start. By the time it faces the people again, by May 2025, Labor will need to have a lot more to say about how it is going to raise enough money to pay for the calls on the budget – calls from programs it wants to fund and from others, like the submarines, that it knows it must.
In 2025, the Albanese government won’t be able to be a small target.
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The idea of the 15-minute city, according to its originator Carlos Moreno, is that people are no more than a 15-minute walk or bike ride away from all the services they need to live, learn and thrive.
The idea is appealing in its simplicity: it puts people and the environment at the centre of urban planning. It involves building new urban centres and restructuring existing ones to ensure the services people need for work, food, health, education, culture and leisure are all close by – a walk or bike ride from home. Key elements are: the proximity of necessities; local participation and decision-making; community solidarity and connection; and green and sustainable urban living.
This re-imagining of local living is quickly going global. Its proponents are many and growing, and the idea is being applied on big city stages. Most notably, the 15-minute city was a feature of Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s successful re-election campaign in 2020.
The United Nations has hailed the 15-minute city as a means by which cities can emerge from COVID, as well as reduce the damaging dependence on cars. The potential to promote mental health and wellbeing is significant.
In 2023, though, conspiracy theories and protests have threatened to drown out the discussion of such positives.
How did that happen? By finding itself sitting at the centre of debates about COVID living, climate change and car-centric societies, the 15-minute city has become a focal point of attention for those who imagine more sinister motives are at work. Conspiracists have spouted misdirected fears of the forced loss of cars, the creation of locked urban zones people cannot leave, and government surveillance and control.
These notions were even raised recently in the UK parliament. Conservative MP Nick Fletcher called the 15-minute city an “international socialist concept” that “will cost us our personal freedom”.
In fact, personal and community freedom, by way of giving people back meaningful time currently lost to commuting and other travel, is exactly what Moreno and proponents of 15-minute cities are focused on. In their drive to grow, cities tend to push people, the environment and their health to the periphery. Through their sprawl, Moreno argues, cities take away freedom by taking time and disconnecting their inhabitants from services and each other.
Importantly, these effects increase the risks to people’s mental health. Moreno wants us to move away from fracturing our living into “inhuman bigness”, and towards planning that focuses on what access to services, local connection and community means for the wellbeing of people and communities.
This is why the 15-minute city presents a great opportunity for better mental health. Long commuting times and the stressors of traffic congestion, road conditions and punctuality are linked to declines in subjective measures of mental health and wellbeing for workers. The benefits of reducing these stressors could be immediate.
Physical activities like walking and cycling are also widely understood to benefit mental health, as does exposure to natural, green spaces. Creating local spaces for leisure and play is vital for children and parents alike.
But, deeper than that, we need cities and urban spaces purposefully designed to promote mental health in ways that are globally recognised as impactful and essential. This process involves improving a range of social and environmental factors for individuals and community.
Easy access to a local park improves individuals’ health and community wellbeing. Shutterstock
Lessons learned from COVID lockdowns have sharpened global understanding of the mental health crises and harm done to people’s wellbeing by loneliness, social isolation and disconnectedness. These conditions damage the wellbeing of communities too, by fostering stigma and promoting exclusion.
We need to move quickly towards ways of living that promote connection, inclusion and healthy communities and environments. We can achieve these goals through participation, local decision-making and sustainable ecologies.
Imagine cities with accessible housing, work and education. Imagine cities with mental health service where the focus is on inclusion, participation, connection and equitable access. Where health workers and essential services are local and available, with minimal obstacles. Imagine mental health service that is threaded through the community in meaningful, impactful ways – where every square metre is considered for its potential to improve health and wellbeing.
Mental health, wellbeing and recovery require social connection, inclusion and accessible health services. These are, without doubt, key factors in achieving better mental health. And the 15-minute city could be the template for its delivery.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
From March 15, more than one million young Australians will sit the NAPLAN numeracy test. For most students, this will just be a routine part of the school day (albeit less fun than running around at recess or lunch).
But for others, the prospect of doing a maths test will be downright terrifying. These students may be suffering from maths anxiety.
We are academics in mathematics education. Here’s how to help your child if they are experiencing maths anxiety.
Maths anxiety is the feeling of tension and worry that interferes with a person’s ability to solve mathematical problems. Researchers consider maths anxiety to be distinct from general anxiety, or test anxiety, though there is some crossover.
Maths anxiety usually develops as a result of poor experiences with maths, which leads to negative thought patterns about your maths potential. These thoughts can manifest in an avoidance of maths and feelings of helplessness when confronted with tests.
Maths anxiety usually develops after a bad experience with maths. Greg Rosenke/Unsplash
Maths anxiety is a common issue for many young people and adults and can be seen in children as young as five.
According to Stanford University mathematics education professor Jo Boaler, as of 2012, up to 50% of adults had maths anxiety. The Victorian Department of Education suggests rates are lower, at between six and 17%. However, the average rate in academic studies tends to be approximately 20%.
That means there are thousands of children who will be dreading the upcoming NAPLAN numeracy test.
So, what can a parent do to help their anxious child achieve their best in the NAPLAN numeracy test and other maths exams? Here are three practical things you can do right away and into the future:
1. Focus on successes to build confidence
Most children want to be good at maths. If they are younger, they will likely understand this is something their teachers and parents think is important. If they are older, they will know it is important for future jobs and careers.
One of the key sources of maths anxiety is despite wanting to be good at maths, students have received consistently negative feedback about their ability. This may just be by comparing themselves to others or more formally through poor results.
Take out old worksheets or tests from previous grades to build confidence. Annie Spratt/Unsplash
To reduce anxiety, it is important to focus on the positive, showing your child times where they have had success in maths. Experiences of success are vital in paving the way to further success in maths.
A practical way to demonstrate success is by getting the child to do an old worksheet, even as far back as two years ago. Students in years 5 and above could do a previous NAPLAN test at a lower level. This shows them how they have progressed.
After completing the sheet, focus on areas of strength – such as “you got all the long divisions correct!” – to help build confidence. This experience of success can be used as a base to then tackle more complicated tasks.
2. Avoid ‘NAPLAN overload’
Anxiety about NAPLAN and any other assessments can be exacerbated by over-emphasising its importance in the build up. A more constructive approach is to reassure your child there is no judgement in how they perform.
Currently, most schools are working hard to prepare students for NAPLAN and discussions about the test are regularly taking place. Because of this, it can be easy for children with maths anxiety to get “NAPLAN overload”. At home, it is useful to limit your discussion of the upcoming tests to times where the child is doing work to prepare for it.
We recommend trying to make the day an exciting one, rather than a terrifying one. For example, you might have a special NAPLAN breakfast on the day of the test.
During COVID many families felt the strain taking a hands-on role with their children’s education (who did not take kindly to mum or dad suddenly becoming their “teacher”). So parents may be tempted to leave their children alone to study or do homework. But this won’t help relieve maths anxiety.
A more beneficial approach is for for parents to study alongside younger children, and show interest in the work older children are completing. Teenagers may not be open to help when you offer the first time but make it clear that you’re there if they need you and you aren’t seeking to judge them.
Show interest in what your teenagers are doing in maths. Shutterstock
This approach shows the child their parent is engaged with their work and positive about their ability to learn.
It cannot be underestimated how much a parents’ approach to learning maths influences their child’s approach. Try and have positive conversations with your child about maths and how we use it everyday. This can be help dispel negative attitudes, such as children thinking, “this is too hard and is just something I need to do at school”. You might want to use maths to work through a “best buy” at the supermarket or use length and area to determine how to arrange the furniture in a room.
As the test day nears, families should not have to stress out about NAPLAN. Preparation focused on celebrating successes and positive experiences can encourage students to simply do their best.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Comets are rarely as bright as this illustration.IgorZh/Shutterstock
Hot on the heels of the disappointing Green Comet, astronomers have just discovered a new comet with the potential to be next year’s big story – C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS).
Although it is still more than 18 months from its closest approach to Earth and the Sun, comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS already has social media buzzing, with optimistic articles being written about how it could be a spectacular sight. What’s the full story on this new icy wanderer?
Introducing comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS)
Every year, a few dozen new comets are discovered – dirty snowballs moving on highly elongated paths around the Sun. The vast majority are far too faint to see with the unaided eye. Perhaps one comet per year will approach the edge of naked-eye visibility.
Occasionally, however, a much brighter comet will come along. Because comets are things of ephemeral and transient beauty, the discovery of a comet with potential always leads to excitement.
Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) certainly fits the bill. Discovered independently by astronomers at Purple Mountain Observatory in China and the Asteroid Terrestrical-impact Last Alert System, ATLAS, the comet is currently between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn, a billion kilometres from Earth. It is falling inwards, moving on an orbit that will bring it to within 59 million kilometres of the Sun in September 2024.
The fact the comet was found while it’s so far away is part of the reason for astronomers’ excitement. Although currently some 60,000 times too faint to see with the naked eye, the comet is bright for something so far from the Sun. And observations suggest it’s following an orbit that could allow it to become truly spectacular.
The location of comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS plotted on March 10 2023. TheSkyLive.com
A recipe for comet greatness
It’s all down to a combination of the comet’s path through the Solar System, and the potential size of its nucleus – the solid centre.
As comets swing closer to the Sun, they heat up, and their surface ices sublime (turn from a solid to a gas). Erupting from the comet’s surface, this gas carries along dust, shrouding the nucleus in what’s called a coma – a giant cloud of gas and dust. The coma is then pushed away from the Sun by solar wind, resulting in a tail (or tails) pointing directly away from the Sun.
A schematic view of a comet, not to scale, showing the comet’s nucleus (a), coma (b), and gas and dust tails (c and d). Those tails always point away from the Sun (which lies in the direction of g) no matter how the comet is moving (direction f in the figure). Sanu N/Wkimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
The closer a comet gets to the Sun, the hotter its surface becomes, and the more active it will get. Historically, the vast majority of the brightest, most spectacular comets have followed orbits that brought them closer to the Sun than Earth’s orbit. The closer, the better, and Tsuchinshan-ATLAS certainly ticks that box.
In fact, this new comet seems to tick all the boxes. It appears to have a sizeable nucleus, making it brighter (bright enough to be discovered so far from the Sun). It is destined to have a very close encounter with our star. And, the kicker, it will then pass almost directly between Earth and the Sun, approaching within 70 million kilometres of us just two weeks after perihelion (the closest approach to the Sun). The closer a comet comes to Earth, the brighter it will appear to us.
Put that together, and you have a recipe for a comet that could shine as brightly as the brightest stars. Some forecasts are even more bullish, suggesting it could be up to a hundred times brighter still!
Comets are like cats: they have tails, and they do precisely what they want
– astronomer David H. Levy.
Predicting how newly discovered comets will behave is a dangerous game. Some may be spectacular, while others fizzle.
Take, for example, comet Kohoutek, in 1973. Like Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, Kohoutek was discovered unusually far from the Sun, moving on an orbit that swung close to our star. Cue the hype. Astronomers promised the public “the comet of the century”, predicting Kohoutek could become bright enough to see in broad daylight.
Photo of the comet Kohoutek (C/1973 E1) taken by members of the lunar and planetary laboratory photographic team from the University of Arizona, at the Catalina observatory with a 35mm camera on January 11 1974. NASA
But comets are like cats. Kohoutek brightened as it swung in towards the Sun, but more slowly than expected. Rather than being visible in broad daylight, it was only as bright as the brightest stars, and faded quickly after perihelion. It was still a good show, but far from the comet of the century. Because of the hype, many dubbed Kohoutek a spectacular disappointment.
It turns out Kohoutek was passing through the inner Solar System for the very first time. It had never come so close to the Sun, so its surface was rich in highly volatile ice which began to sublime when the comet was still far away. At that great distance, the comet was much brighter than other, more experienced comets – and that brightness suggested the comet would be truly spectacular.
As it came closer to the Sun, those volatiles were exhausted, and the comet’s final activity was less than initially predicted, making it fainter.
There is a very real chance Tsuchinshan-ATLAS might, like comet Kohoutek, be approaching the inner Solar System for the first time. We’re not yet sure – but if it is, it might also wind up being less spectacular than predicted.
Comet C/2020 F8 (SWAN), as photographed by Jonti in early May 2020. The bright near vertical streak is an Eta Aquariid – a fragment of comet 1P/Halley burning up harmlessly in the foreground. The coma of the comet lies at the bottom right, with the tail extending up to the top left corner of the frame. Jonti Horner
Where it all falls apart
But it could be even worse. Comets are prone to disaster. They fragment, fall apart, and disintegrate surprisingly often. Those coming into the inner Solar System for the first time are particularly fragile.
A recent example of such a fragmentation was comet C/2020 F8 (SWAN). When SWAN was discovered, it looked promising – likely to become a naked-eye object in May 2020. But as it approached the Sun, it suddenly brightened, then became fuzzy, and began to fade away. By the time it should have been brightest, it had all but disappeared, having fallen apart before our very eyes.
Comet West reached peak brightness in March 1976, as seen here. During its peak, observers reported that it was bright enough to study during full daylight. P. Stättmayer/ESO, CC BY
On the flip side, fragmentation events can sometimes turn a good comet into a great one. Three years after Kohoutek came comet C/1975 V1 (West), and it was truly spectacular.
It passed even closer to the Sun than Tsuchinshan-ATLAS will – and was already dazzling when, at perihelion, its nucleus broke into four pieces. That fragmentation event released a huge amount of gas and dust, and the comet brightened markedly, even becoming visible in broad daylight.
Will Tsuchinshan-ATLAS be worth the anticipation?
We won’t know for certain whether comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS will be a spectacle until it arrives. It could fall apart and become less bright, or it could surprise us.
It could brighten more than expected – which would make for an amazing sight in the morning sky in late September and early October 2024, and an even better one in the evening sky in mid-October 2024
We just don’t know. But we’ll get our first hints in the months to come. By tracking how the comet brightens as it glides sunwards, we will get our first indications as to its true fate – so keep your fingers crossed.
Jonti Horner 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.
It’s a question people ask often: does menopause cause weight gain?
Women commonly put on weight as they enter menopause. Research shows women aged 46-57 gain an average of 2.1kg over five years.
But like many things related to weight, all is not what it seems, and the relationship between menopause and weight gain is not straightforward.
Here’s everything you need to know about menopausal weight gain and what you can do about it.
What typically happens to women’s bodies during menopause?
Menopause marks the natural end of the reproductive stage of a woman’s life. It officially starts when a woman has not menstruated for 12 months, and most women reach menopause between the ages of 45 and 55, but it can happen much earlier or later.
The transition to menopause, however, typically starts four years prior, with perimenopause marking the time when a woman’s ovaries start slowing down, producing less oestrogen and progesterone. Eventually, these hormone levels fall to a point at which the ovaries stop releasing eggs and menstruation stops.
The symptoms associated with the menopausal transition are many and varied, and can include irregular periods, breast pain, vaginal dryness, hot flashes, night sweats, fatigue, difficulty sleeping, and changes in mood and libido.
When it comes to menopause and weight, it’s weight redistribution – not weight gain – that is actually a symptom. Research has confirmed menopause is linked to an increase in belly fat but not an increase in overall weight.
This is because the hormonal changes experienced during menopause only prompt a change in where the body stores fat, making women’s stomachs and waists more prone to weight gain. Research shows visceral fat (deep belly fat) increases by nearly 50% in postmenopausal women, compared with premenopausal women.
It’s also important to recognise some menopause symptoms may indirectly contribute to weight gain:
sleep issues can lead to sleep deprivation, disturbing the body’s appetite hormones, increasing feelings of hunger and triggering food cravings
some mood changes can activate the body’s stress responses, increasing the production of the hormone cortisol, promoting fat storage and triggering unhealthy food cravings. Mood can also impact the motivation to exercise
fatigue, breast pain and hot flushes can make physical activity challenging or uncomfortable, also impacting the ability to exercise.
A lack of sleep can disturb the body’s appetite hormones. Shutterstock
The truth? Ageing is the real cause of menopausal weight gain
You read that right – the weight gain often associated with menopause is a byproduct of ageing.
As the body ages, it stops working as efficiently. It experiences an involuntary loss of muscle mass – referred to as sarcopenia – and fat levels begin to increase.
Because muscle mass helps determine the body’s metabolic rate (how much energy the body burns at rest), when we lose muscle, the body starts to burn fewer calories at rest.
Ageing also means dealing with other health issues that can make weight management more complex. For example, medications can impact how the body functions, and arthritis and general aches and pains can impact mobility and the ability to exercise.
In short – the body’s ageing process and changing physicality is the real reason women experience menopause weight gain.
While menopause doesn’t make you put on weight, it can increase a woman’s risk of other serious health conditions.
The redistributed weight that leads to more fat being carried in the belly can have long-term effects. Belly fat that lies deep within the abdominal cavity (visceral fat) is an especially unhealthy fat because it’s stored close to the organs. People with a high amount of visceral fat have a higher risk of stroke, type 2 diabetes and heart disease than people who hold body fat around their hips.
The reduction in the amount of oestrogen produced by the ovaries during menopause also increases a woman’s risk of heart disease and stroke. This is because oestrogen helps keep blood vessels dilated – relaxed and open – to help keep cholesterol down. Without it, bad cholesterol can start to build up in the arteries.
Lower oestrogen can also result in a loss of bone mass, putting women at greater risk of osteoporosis and more prone to bone fractures and breaks.
Mood changes and fatigue can affect exercise motivation. Shutterstock
The bottom line: can we prevent weight gain during menopause?
Menopause itself does not cause weight gain; it unfortunately just occurs during a stage of life when other factors are likely to. The good news is weight gain associated with ageing is not inevitable, and there are many things women can do to avoid weight gain and health risks as they age and experience menopause.
Start with these six steps:
incorporate daily exercise into your routine, with a mixture of intensities and variety of exercises, including body-strengthening exercises twice a week
stop dieting. Dieting drives up the weight your body will strive to return to (your “set point”), so you’ll end up heavier than before you began. You’ll also slow down your metabolism with each diet you follow
curb your sugar cravings naturally. Every time you feel an urge to eat something sugary or fatty, reach for nature first – fruits, honey, nuts, seeds and avocado are a few suitable examples. These foods release the same feelgood chemicals in the brain as processed and fast food do, and leave us feeling full
create positive habits to minimise comfort-eating. Instead of unwinding in the afternoon or evening on the couch, go for a walk, work on a hobby or try something new
eat slowly and away from distractions to reduce the quantity of food consumed mindlessly. Use an oyster fork, a child’s fork or chopsticks to slow down your eating
switch off your technology for a minimum of one hour before bed to improve sleep quality.
Nick Fuller works for the University of Sydney and has received external funding for projects relating to the treatment of overweight and obesity. He is the author and founder of the Interval Weight Loss program.
In 1974, Woroni, the student magazine of the Australian National University, published an article looking at the lives of lesbians at the university.
One contributor, “Jody”, told of her experience with a doctor who pressured her for details on how she has sex, and who didn’t believe her reports of pain, suggesting it may be “in her head”.
Jody recounted asking the doctor:
‘Are you telling me that I didn’t get endometriosis from a rotten abortion six years ago, that it’s all in my head?’ He quickly retreated and admitted that he knew I had endometriosis and that wasn’t psychological.
But beliefs like this weren’t alone in the Australian press in the 1970s. It appears from both Jody’s story, and from another article published in the 1960s, it may have been public opinion abortions could result in endometriosis.
As an academic and sufferer of endometriosis, I wanted to know what the history was behind my own disease. How long ago did we start talking about endometriosis?
I went looking in the Trove archive to see how long endometriosis has been talked about in Australian newspapers and magazines, and how it was being written about. The earliest article I found was from 1949, but the 1970s was the first decade we saw endometriosis really being discussed by name in newspapers and magazines.
Despite these numbers, many people still don’t know about endometriosis.
Historical texts suggest endometriosis has been around for a very long time. Its most common symptoms of pelvic pain, adhesions and infertility were written about as far back as 1855 BCE.
Doctors were able to identify the disease microscopically in 1860, and it was named endometriosis in 1927 by gynaecologist John Sampson.
A ‘frequently occurring’ disease
I was able to find 12 articles mentioning endometriosis in the Australian popular press of the 1970s. Compared with earlier decades, the disease was now being talked about in personal stories alongside comments from experts.
Endometriosis was often talked about as a comorbidity to infertility, with other symptoms such as pain taking a backseat. Medical experts were the most common people quoted in articles.
Leading up to the 1970s, medical research into endometriosis had established it could grow on the lungs, lymph nodes and the bowels, among other organs. Treatment for the disease during this time was often hormonal therapies, excisions or hysterectomies.
During the 1970s in Australia, news was circulating about Danocrine (also known as Danazol) – a hormonal treatment to combat menstruation pain. Both The Canberra Times and the Australian Women’s Weekly wrote about this “capsule that could end menstrual pain”.
A 1975 feature story in Australian Women’s Weekly presented a couple who sought to have a baby under difficult medical circumstances, including endometriosis. The narrative used in the story is one of fertility “miracles” and impossible odds to clear to become a mother:
When a Sydney girl was told that, because of her medical history, it was unlikely she could ever have a child, she and her husband began talking of adopting – until the unbelievable happened. She became pregnant.
The relationship between pregnancy and endometriosis has a long history, and frequently appeared together in the articles I found. Pregnancy as a cure or symptom suppressor has been around since the Ancient Greeks. Indeed, the first mention I found of endometriosis in the Australian press, an article in Catholic Weekly in 1949, touted pregnancy as the only nonsurgical and “conservative” option for treatment.
(Despite medical research saying pregnancy is not a cure for endometriosis, patients are reporting GPs are still “prescribing” pregnancy in the incorrect belief it relieves symptoms or even cures the disease outright.)
The Australian Women’s Weekly appeared often in my data collection. The magazine did not shy away from talking about topics like the contraceptive pill, infertility and hysterectomies. The magazine published three separate articles on hysterectomies during the 1970s, reassuring readers they’d still be “all woman”.
What can we learn from historical news articles? In my opinion, a great deal.
Press coverage of diseases plays a huge role in the public’s understanding of a disease. By better understanding how endometriosis was perceived in previous decades, we can identify useful patterns of reporting and make sure the information presented on the disease today is accurate and helpful.
The chart above is quite alarming, and not only because of Germany’s high death toll. It’s the difference between reported Covid19 deaths and excess deaths, in the context where four waves of excess deaths in Germany in 2022 are clearly ‘epidemic’ in nature. And we see the same death waves in Germany’s northern neighbour, Denmark.
Both countries are assiduous in releasing their demographic data on deaths; most countries are not. And both countries had a reputation for having among the best sets of public health data re the Covid19 pandemic. Yet while public health data may be released with much media fanfare, demographic data usually is not. While certain public health data might be classed as ‘black verse’ poetry, and hence of interest to mainstream media, the more prosaic data sourced from ‘births, deaths and marriages’ tends to be overlooked.
In both countries, easily the worst month for epidemic deaths this decade has been December 2022. Yes, 2022, not 2020. In both countries, the people would seem to be largely unaware of this collective death experience. (Awareness would largely be confined to people’s own families.)
The widely endorsed supposition is that the pandemic is over; a concept that may mean different things to different people. To an epidemiologist, an ended pandemic may be followed by a new era with a new normal of permanently higher death rates. To the lay public, or to the pollyanna-ish finance industry which never stops telling us that we are all going to live longer, an ended pandemic means a return to something like pre-covid normality.
I watch DW (Deutsche Welle) world news semi-regularly, and I have heard nothing about the December death spike in Germany. The few stories on DW that I have found in a search today are these:
So, as in New Zealand, there’s acknowledgement of overstretched hospitals and seasonal illnesses. There’s little suggestion that the main culprit is another covid wave, and we certainly have no indication that Covid19 has recently become more virulent.
We should also note that excess deaths in Europe have looked quite dramatic, since 2020, each December. This is because ‘normal’ influenza outbreak deaths – in the 2010s at least – tended to peak in February, not December. The big falloff in excess deaths from January 2023 is to some extent due to death numbers needing to be higher to be classed as ‘excess’.
Both countries started to downplay their reporting of Covid19 deaths from mid-2021; with the exception of Denmark during the first ‘Omicron wave’ of early 2022. We can see that, in February and March 2022, many people in Denmark died of or with Covid19, while significantly fewer people died of other causes. (This substitution of death-causes was much less true for Germany.)
But the situation in Denmark reversed in December 2022, with many more excess deaths than reported Covid19 deaths. Indeed, in Denmark there were five death waves in 2022, and all (except perhaps the relatively small June death wave) correlating with reported Covid deaths (but see the Denmark chart below); expect that the peaks in reported deaths have been increasingly lagging the actual death peaks. The Denmark data in this chart definitely points to all of these death peaks as being associated with recurring waves of Covid19.
We certainly see the same lags in the German data, although the reported death waves are less pronounced. Generally the ‘peaky’ nature of the data suggests that these populations have been facing repeated outbreaks of respiratory viruses; outbreaks for which their immunity levels have been decreasingly able to cope. While waning immunity appears to be the main problem – a problem long known in relation to human coronaviruses – and that waning immunity here likely relates in particular to vaccination immunity, it is also possible that each wave of infection creates new morbidities in the most vulnerable people. So, a combination of waning immunity – covid immunity and general immunity – combined with new comorbidities is leading to progressively higher death tolls. We also note that December in particular is a month characterised by much social ‘mixing and mingling’; conditions ripe for coronaviruses transitioning from epidemic to endemic.
Chart by Keith Rankin.Chart by Keith Rankin.
These two charts, for each country separately, also include ‘case’ information. Again, while underreporting is also an increasing feature of case data, this is data that underpins the timing of Covid19 outbreaks (as distinct from non-covid respiratory viruses). Nevertheless, case data may also lag actual deaths, as people are slow to test for covid, and report, until they are fully aware that a new outbreak is taking place.
When we look at Germany, we can clearly see the correlation of case data (in blue) with excess deaths (in red). When there were new covid variants, as in March 2021, August 2021, and January 2022, we can see the uptick in reported cases leading the uptick in deaths. Otherwise, we tend to see the uptick in deaths coming first, with case reporting lagging ever-further behind. December 2022 was particularly striking, with an eventual upsurge in cases suggesting that a significant number of people who died in the death spike were indeed infected with the coronavirus. In Denmark the pattern of excess deaths correlating with reported cases of Covid19 is, if anything, even stronger.
If we think of Covid19 as a three-year pandemic, we can see that in both countries the second half of the pandemic was worse than the first half, regardless of the official cause of death attributed to each casualty.
A death is a death is a death. To dying persons, and their families, it matters little if a death is directly or indirectly caused by Covid19. An indirect death may be due to a loss of general immunity, or to any other factor linked either to the biology of the virus, to fear-induced behaviour changes arising from the attention given to the virus when it was a big story, or to the government mandates ‘to keep us safe’ but which may have (to some extent) substituted one risk for another.
*******
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.
In his recently published article “Sea of many flags”, the head of the ANU National Security College Rory Medcalf makes the case for why Pacific Island states should regard the deep regional involvement of a Western coalition of powers, “quietly” led by Australia, as an effective and attractive “Pacific way to dilute China’s influence”.
Although presented as a new proposal, the increased regional engagement of this Western coalition is already well advanced, in the form of proposed new military bases and joint-use facilities, new security treaties, increased aid programmes, new embassies, as well as a new regional institution, Partners in the Blue Pacific (PBP).
Medcalf’s main task is not to persuade Canberra of the merits of this approach, but rather to demonstrate to a sceptical Pacific audience that this Western coalition’s Indo-Pacific strategy is compatible with the Blue Pacific strategy of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF).
Medcalf argues that an Indo-Pacific strategy of containing China supports the broad concept of human security embraced by Pacific Island leaders in their 2018 Boe Declaration, which includes the key demand for climate change action.
He also argues that the strategy would support the Blue Pacific emphasis on Pacific Island sovereignty by countering Chinese attempts to dominate the region. Thus he moves beyond the argument (made for example by Sandra Tarte) that there are some meeting points between these two world views and posits their complete compatibility.
Medcalf proposes a model of security governance dominated by a Western coalition of interests operating through institutions like the Quad, AUKUS and PBP, where Pacific Islander influence is marginal or non-existent. Australia is seen as the “hub” for Western alliance management of the Pacific, acting as a “guide and informal coordinator”, ensuring that investments are organised efficiently and “in line with what Pacific communities want”.
PBP aid projects deployed PBP aid projects would be deployed in support of the objectives outlined in the Boe Declaration as well as PIF’s 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent.
The problem here is that, at best, this security model operates on behalf of Pacific interests, but not under the control of Pacific governments or regional institutions created for that purpose.
The argument for compatibility between the Indo-Pacific and Blue Pacific strategies does not consider key aspects of the Pacific vision for the future, such as urgent climate action, where there are clear discrepancies, especially regarding limiting emissions. Asking Island leaders to curtail China’s regional role requires them to compromise their long-standing foreign policy ethos of “friends to all and enemies to none”.
Nor is it clear that Medcalf’s approach would support Island sovereignty, when the major threats seem to come from Western actors, including increased military activity in Micronesia, the undermining of regional institutions by external initiatives such as PBP, continuing colonial rule in French Polynesia and New Caledonia, and ongoing American control (and deepening militarisation) of Guam.
[Pacific Media Watch adds that this includes continuing colonial rule by Indonesia in the expanded five provinces that make up the West Papua region].
Australian military plans to allow US stationing and storage of nuclear weapons in north Australia appear to violate the terms of the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty, and Japan’s proposal to release into the ocean nuclear waste from the Fukushima power plant meltdown is causing considerable consternation in the region.
Medcalf’s argument that adoption of the Indo-Pacific mental map could bring together Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean islands to discuss common challenges misses the 30-year history of such collaboration within the Alliance of Small Island States.
Unhelpful characterisation of China Another problem with this analysis is its frankly unhelpful characterisation of China’s Pacific engagement. According to Medcalf, China “has a rightful place in the Pacific, just not a right to dominate”.
However, he provides no evidence that China does in fact seek regional hegemony, and cites no examples where its behaviour in the Pacific Islands might be regarded as “bullying” or “coercive”.
The 10 island countries that recognise Beijing have signed up to participate in the much-maligned Belt and Road Initiative without any apparent coercion.
Nor does Medcalf provide Pacific examples of the debt-for-equity argument often levelled at China’s lending practices in the Global South. When Tonga had difficulty servicing Chinese loans, Beijing agreed to extend their terms. Even the claim that China seeks to establish a military base in the region, a central plank in Western narratives, remains unsubstantiated.
Recent studies by the RAND Corporation (funded by the US military) provide some useful perspective by ranking Fiji and Papua New Guinea of “medium desirability” but “low feasibility” for Chinese military initiatives. Other Pacific locations, including Solomon Islands and Kiribati, are not seen as feasible.
To describe Beijing’s engagement as “neocolonial” is to invite comparisons with the activities of the Western coalition, key members of which retain actual colonies in the region. Nor is Australia in a strong position to accuse others of manipulative behaviour.
For example, Canberra’s efforts to protect its coal industry by working to weaken PIF statements about climate change mitigation are well documented, date back to the beginning of the COP negotiations, and continue today.
Self-determination issue at heart Ultimately Medcalf’s central argument falls because it does not consider the issue of self-determination which is at the heart of the Blue Pacific strategy. Although Medcalf calls for “a premium on self-awareness, inclusion, and genuine diplomacy”, his proposal effectively devalues Pacific agency and marginalises Pacific decision makers.
“Sea of many flags” claims to promote strategic equilibrium in the Pacific, yet it really aims to create the conditions for continuing Western hegemony. It claims to counter geopolitical competition and militarisation while shoring up and expanding Western military domination.
It claims to act in the interests of Pacific peoples, yet seems designed to moderate opposition to recent anti-China initiatives established under the auspices of the Indo-Pacific strategy and without meaningful consultation.
By allowing some role for China, albeit a limited one, Medcalf is advocating a softer form of strategic denial than that imposed by Western powers during the Cold War. But his warnings to island states about the dangers of economic engagement with Beijing seem hollow indeed, given Australia’s massive trade dependence on China.
In advocating “a Pacific kind of leadership”, the author (perhaps inadvertently) evokes the principles guiding Pacific leaders in the early days of independence. But it is worth remembering that the essence of the Pacific Way advanced by Ratu Mara and others was Pacific control and regional self-determination.
In contrast, what Rory Medcalf is advocating would subsume all of this under the control of the Western alliance, led quietly (or not so quietly) by Australia.
Dr Greg Fry is honorary associate professor at the Department of Pacific Affairs, The Australian National University, and adjunct associate professor at the University of the South Pacific. Dr Terence Wesley-Smith is professor emeritus at the Center for Pacific Islands Studies, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, and a former director of the center. Republished under a Creative Commons licence.
Asia Pacific Media Network’s chair Dr Heather Devere, deputy chair Dr David Robie and Pacific Journalism Review editor Dr Philip Cass last month made a submission on Papua New Guinea’s draft national media development policy in response to PNG journalists’ requests for comment. Here is part of their February 19 submission before the stakeholders consultation earlier this month.
ANALYSIS:By Heather Devere, David Robie and Philip Cass
An urgent rethink is needed on several aspects of the Draft National Media Development Policy. In summary, we agree with the statement made by the Community Coalition Against Corruption (CCAC) on 16 February 2023 criticising the extraordinary “haste” of the Ministry’s timeframe for public consultation over such a critical and vitally important national policy.
However, while the ministry granted an extra week from 20 February 2023 for public submissions this was still manifestly inadequate and rather contemptuous of the public interest.
In our view, the ministry is misguided in seeking to legislate for a codified PNG Media Council which flies in the face of global norms for self-regulatory media councils and this development would have the potential to dangerously undermine media freedom in Papua New Guinea.
The draft policy appears to have confused the purpose of a “media council” representing the “public interest” with the objectives of a government department working in the “national interest”.
If the ministry pushes ahead with this policy without changes it risks Papua New Guinea sliding even further down the RSF World Press Freedom Index. Already it is a lowly 62nd out of 180 countries after falling 15 places in 2021.
Some key points:
• Article 42 of the Papua New Guinea Constitution states that “Every person has the right to freedom of expression and the right to receive and impart ideas and information without interference, including the freedom to seek, receive and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form.” (Our emphasis)
• Article 43 of the Constitution further states that “Every person has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, including the freedom to manifest and propagate their religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance.”
• These provisions in the Constitution reflect the importance of media freedom in Papua New Guinea and the commitment to a free, diverse, and independent media environment. There are existing laws in PNG that support these principles.
• In September 2005, Pacific Journalism Review published a complete edition devoted to “media ethics and accountability” which is available online here. In the Introduction, the late Professor Claude-Jean Bertrand, a global expert in M*A*S (Media Accountability Systems) and media councils and free press in democracies, wrote: “Accountability implies being accountable, accountable to whom? To the public, obviously. [i.e. Not to governments]. While regulation involves only political leaders and while self-regulation involves only the media industry, media accountability involves press, profession and public.” The PJR edition cited published templates and guidelines for public accountability systems.
• On World Press Freedom Day 2019, António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General, declared: “No democracy is complete without access to transparent and reliable information. It is the cornerstone for building fair and impartial institutions, holding leaders accountable and speaking truth to power.”
• On 12 November 2019, the Melanesia Media Freedom Forum (MMFF) was established and it declared: “A better understanding is needed of the role of journalism in Melanesian democracies. Awareness of the accountability role played by journalists and the need for them to be able to exercise their professional skills without fear is critical to the functioning of our democracies.”
• The Forum also noted: “The range of threats to media freedom is increasing. These include restrictive legislation, intimidation, political threats, legal threats and prosecutions, assaults and police and military brutality, illegal detention, online abuse, racism between ethnic groups and the ever-present threats facing particularly younger and female reporters who may face violence both on the job and within their own homes.” The full declaration is here.
• Media academics who were also present at this inaugural Forum made a declaration of their own in support of the journalists, saying that they “expressed strong concerns about issues of human rights, violence, and freedom of expression. They also expressed concerns about the effect of stifling legislation that had the power to impose heavy fines and prison sentences on journalists.” (Our emphasis). The full statement is here.
APMN proposals regarding PNG’s Draft Media Policy:
• That the Ministry immediately discard the proposed policy of legislating the PNG media Council and regulating journalists and media which would seriously undermine media freedom in Papua New Guinea;
• That the Ministry extend the public consultation timeframe with a realistic deadline to engage Papua New Guinean public interest and stakeholders in a meaningful dialogue;
• That the Ministry ensures a process of serious consultation with stakeholders such as the existing PNG Media Council, which do not appear to have had much opportunity to respond, journalists, media organisations and many other NGOs that need to be heard; and
• That the Ministry consult a wider range of media research and publications and take guidance from media freedom organisations, journalism schools at universities, and an existing body of knowledge about media councils and systems.
• Essentially journalism is not a crime, but a fundamental pillar of democracy as espoused through the notion of a Fourth Estate and media must be free to speak truth to power in the public interest not the politicians’ interest.
Dr Heather Devere, formerly Director of Practice for the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies; Dr David Robie, founding Professor of Pacific Journalism and director of the Pacific Media Centre, convenor of Pacific Media Watch and a former Head of Journalism at the University of Papua New Guinea; and Dr Philip Cass, a PNG-born researcher and journalist who was chief subeditor of the Times of Papua New Guinea and worked on Wantok, and who is currently editor of Pacific Journalism Review.
The President of the Federated States of Micronesia has made a series of disturbing claims against China, including alleging spying, threats to his personal safety and bribery.
President David Panuelo made the claims to his Congress, governors and the leadership of the country’s state legislatures in a letter which has been leaked to 1News.
Panuelo said the point of his letter was to warn of the threat of warfare.
The president, who has just two months left in office, has publicly attacked China in the past.
“We can play an essential role in preventing a war in our region; we can save the lives of our own Micronesian citizens; we can strengthen our sovereignty and independence,” he said in his latest letter.
President Panuelo said he believed that by informing the leaders of his views he was creating risks to his personal safety along with that of his family and staff.
Outlined in the letter are a series of startling allegations.
Chinese activity within EEZ The president said there had been activity by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) within his country’s Exclusive Economic Zone.
The “purpose includes communicating with other PRC assets so as to help ensure that, in the event a missile — or group of missiles — ever needed to land a strike on the US Territory of Guam that they would be successful in doing so”.
President Panuelo said he had stopped China research vessels in FSM waters after patrol boats were sent to check “but the PRC sent a warning for us to stay away”.
He also claimed that at the Pacific Islands Forum in Suva in July last year he was followed by two Chinese men, one of them an intelligence officer.
“To be clear: I have had direct threats against my personal safety from PRC officials acting in an official capacity,” he said.
In another claim, Panuelo said that after the first China-Pacific Island Countries Foreign Ministers Meeting, the joint communique was published with statements and references that had not been agreed to “which were false”.
He said he and other leaders such as Niue Premier Dalton Tagelagi and Fiji’s now former prime minister Voreqe Bainimarama had requested more time to review the joint communique before it went out but their requests were ignored.
Trying to strongarm officials President Panuelo also claimed China had been trying to strongarm officials when it came to bilateral agreements such as a proposed memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the “Deepening Blue Economy” which had “serious red flags”.
One of those was that the FSM “would open the door to the PRC to begin acquiring control over the island nation’s fibre optic cables and ports”.
President Panuelo said in his latest letter that while he advised cabinet to reject the MOU in June last year, in December he learned that it was back in “just mere hours from its signing”.
He said that when Foreign Minister Khandhi Elieisar raised this with Chinese Ambassador Huang Zheng, he suggested “that he ought to sign the MOU anyway and that my knowing about it — in my capacity as Head of State and Head of Government — was not necessary”.
President Panuelo said he found out Ambassador Huang’s replacement, Wu Wei, had been given a mission to shift the FSM away from its allies the US, Japan and Australia. He therefore denied the Ambassador designate his position.
“I know that one element of my duty as President is to protect our country, and so knowing that: our ultimate aim is, if possible, to prevent war; and, if impossible, to mitigate its impacts on our own country and on our own people.”
There are also allegations of bribery. President Panuelo claimed that shortly after Vice-President Aren Palik took office in his former capacity as a Senator, he was asked by a Chinese official to accept an envelope filled with money.
‘Never offer bribe again’ “Vice-President Pakik refused, telling the [official] to never offer him a bribe again,” President Panuelo said.
In October last year, Panuelo said that when Palik visited the island of Kosrae he was received by a Chinese company, which has a private plane.
“Our friends told the Vice-President that they can provide him private and personal transportation to anywhere he likes at any time, even Hawai’i, for example; he need only ask,” President Panuelo claimed.
He said senior officials and elected officials across the whole of the national and state governments had received offers of gifts as a means to curry favour.
The President concluded the letter by saying he wanted to inform his fellow leaders, regardless of the risk to himself, because the nation’s sovereignty, prosperity and peace and stability were more important.
The Chinese embassy in the Federated States of Micronesia and in Wellington have been asked to comment on the allegations by 1News.
Global squid fishing increased by 68% between 2017 and 2020, according to our international analysis, prompting concerns that much of the international fishing fleet is sidestepping necessary conservation and management.
Our study, carried out with colleagues in Australia, Japan, the United States, Chile and Canada, and published today in Science Advances, reveals that almost all of the increase in squid fishing has occurred in unregulated areas, with 86% of squid fishing now occurring in places with little or no scrutiny of catch sizes.
Unregulated fishing poses a significant challenge to fishery sustainability and raises substantial equity concerns. While attention has tended to focus on illegal fishing, the growth in legal but unregulated fishing may pose an even bigger threat, particularly to species such as squid, whose fisheries can cover entire oceans.
To estimate the scale of global squid fishing, we analysed satellite imagery and vessel tracking data to see how many vessels are fishing for squid, and where and how often they operate.
Squid fishing vessels are typically outfitted with powerful lamps to attract squid to the surface. These lamps are so powerful that they are visible from space. This means we can use satellite data to spot these lights at night, along with data from the ships’ Automatic Identification System (AIS), which allows authorities to monitor the location and course of registered vessels.
Many fishing vessels use powerful lamps to attract squid to the surface. Simon Ager, Author provided
Using this data, we estimate that the amount of light-luring vessel effort increased from an estimated 149,000 vessel days in 2017, to 251,000 vessel days in 2020. Of these, 61-63% were by vessels not broadcasting their AIS, and thus only visible by the loom from their lamps. This light-luring vessel effort represents an estimated total of 801,000 vessel days over the period 2017–20.
Finally, we correlated these data with national and regional management bodies, and determine how much of this activity is unregulated.
A complex problem
Regulation and management of globalised squid fisheries is complex, because this fishing takes place both in waters that are under national jurisdiction and on the high seas. Consequently, cooperation is fundamental to ensure fisheries are regulated at sustainable levels and avoid gaps or loopholes.
Regional fisheries management organisations have been established through international treaties to provide the framework for such cooperation, and to regulate so-called “transboundary” fisheries. However, out of 17 such organisations in existence, only two – the North Pacific Fisheries Commission and the South Pacific Fisheries Management Organisation – have dealt with squid fisheries. This means there are still large gaps in the Indian and Atlantic oceans.
Furthermore, it is not enough to create a regional fisheries management organisations; parties must also ensure the organisation actually adopts regulations. The United Nations’ International Plan of Action to Prevent, Deter and Eliminate Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing defines unregulated fishing (among other things) as that which occurs “in areas or for fish stocks in relation to which there are no applicable conservation or management measures”. Regional fisheries management organisations must do more than simply exist or adopt general measures if their fisheries are to be considered regulated.
What we found
Our analysis defines “regulated” fisheries as those within the exclusive economic zones of coastal countries, or within regional fisheries management organisations that have implemented specific conservation and management measures for squid stocks. In contrast, we define “unregulated” fisheries as those on the high seas where there is no such organisation in place, or where the relevant organisation has failed to adopt regulations pertaining specifically to squid stocks.
Using satellite imagery, vessel tracking, and data monitoring, our study found that globalised light-luring squid fishing fleets are truly global in scope, fishing across multiple oceans within a given year, moving freely between regulated and unregulated spaces, and catching vast amounts of squid with little or no oversight. Often, there is no requirement to report their catches to anyone other than their flag nation, with little or no independent verification.
Globalized squid fishing vessel connectivity. The number and size of circles corresponds to the vessels that fished in each ocean region (NW Pacific Ocean- purple; SE Pacific Ocean- teal; SW Atlantic Ocean- green; NW Indian Ocean- pink). The width of white connecting lines and numbers correspond to the vessels that were observed in both regions connected. Citation forthcoming
Unregulated spaces are often directly adjacent to regulated ones, and different fleets often target the same fisheries. This creates equity concerns for coastal communities that rely on species targeted by large industrial fleets, and for the governments of developing nations that depend on revenue from stocks that move between regulated and unregulated areas.
Furthermore, many of the fishing vessels carrying out unregulated fishing stay at sea for exceptionally long periods (months to years), often refuelling and offloading their catches to other vessels while still at sea, and thus avoiding the oversight that accompanies port calls.
Like all activities that draw on global resources, fishing on transboundary stocks should be fully regulated. Yet the regional bodies with the competence to adopt management measures are often restrained by distant water fishing nations that stall or oppose conservation and management measures.
The global squid fishery shows how important it is to strengthen regional management of high seas resources and to continue international calls for states and regional bodies to take this challenge seriously. These fisheries are ultimately shared by us all, yet few receive any benefit, and nearby countries’ own fish stocks are sometimes unfairly depleted.
Furthermore, the trans-oceanic nature of these fisheries highlights the crucial importance of comprehensive data-sharing agreements between regional fisheries management organisations for improving understanding of the movements of these vessels, and quantifying their impacts on squid stocks.
Quentin Hanich’s participation in this study was funded by Global Fishing Watch and Oceans 5.
Katherine Seto is a Global Fishing Watch research partner and an Honorary Fellow of the Australia National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security (ANCORS).
Adviser for the Chilean Government prior to 2022. Consultant for international and inter-governmental organisations.
Hundreds of experts from around the world gathered at the Francis Crick Institute in London this week for the Third International Summit on Human Genome Editing.
As at the first and second summits, held in Washington DC in 2015 and Hong Kong in 2018, leading experts in research shared their discoveries and discussed how they should be used.
The prospect of curing certain diseases by changing the parts of our DNA that cause them is becoming a reality. A somatic genome editing treatment for sickle cell disease is set to obtain regulatory approval in the US later this year.
“Delivery” was a recurring issue: the delivery of equitable access to genome editing therapies, ongoing research to optimise delivery systems for genome editing apparatus and delivery of measures to foster discussions regarding regulation, governance, public and patient engagement.
American Nobel laureate David Baltimore aptly noted in his opening remarks, “new technologies continue to challenge our society”. The advent of CRISPR gene-editing technology, short for “Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats”, has reaffirmed this proposition, igniting a global dialogue on its accompanying ethical and regulatory issues.
Five years after the last summit, CRISPR technology has continued to mature. It is an insurmountable task to capture all of the developments in both the science and ethics of CRISPR technology. These will be addressed with reference to the key themes raised during the summit – scientific developments, accessibility and the importance of public and patient engagement.
Scientific developments
Many new advances in genome editing techniques were presented.
American chemist and biologist David Liu reported on findings to use “prime editing” to treat genetic conditions such as Huntington’s disease and Friedreich’s ataxia. Unlike CRISPR, which makes a double stranded cut in the DNA, prime editing induces a single stranded cut. This makes it more versatile and precise for targeted deletion and insertion of genetic sequences.
The summit heard about Vertex Pharmaceutical’s CRISPR-based treatment for sickle cell disease. The treatment is expected to become the first approved CRISPR genome editing therapy later this year.
There were also reports of research using CRISPR technology to treat diseases including Duchenne muscular dystrophy, cancer, HIV/AIDS, heart and muscle disease and inborn errors of immunity. American molecular biologist Eric Olson reported success in using base editing to target CaMKIIδ, a central regulator of cardiac signalling, in restoring cardiac function, as a treatment for myocardial infarction.
Equitable access
As research proceeds and treatments become available, questions about equitable access to the technology arise.
Equity extends beyond considerations of cost, access and ownership, to research engagement and output. This refers to capacity for knowledge production, data sovereignty and collection, access to latest knowledge, opportunities for collaboration and infrastructure to facilitate recruitment and trialling of new therapies.
Access issues are particularly relevant to lower- and middle-income countries, which may be compromised by systemic and structural inequities. Policy and political landscapes, economic constraints and scientific racism further perpetuate this inequity.
Gautam Dongre, representing the National Alliance of Sickle Cell Organisations India, described the reality of those living with sickle cell disease in India, where access to treatment is dire:
“Our priority is to be alive, to receive gene therapy in the future.”
Patient perspectives and public engagement
The summit also gave a platform to the experiences and concerns of people with lived experience of genetic disease. This included insights into the role and utility of public engagement, such as patient advocacy groups, do-it-yourself community groups and citizens’ juries.
A memorable presentation from Victoria Gray – the first recipient of Vertex Pharmaceutical’s CRISPR therapy for sickle cell disease – highlighted its life-changing impact. Gray says her CRISPR-modified “super cells” have cured her, enabling her to lead a disease-free life. The great potential of CRISPR technology can be realised, but importantly, it must be accessible to all.
Concluding remarks
How should CRISPR technology be regulated? This is a critical question.
As the summit’s organisers noted, somatic genome editing has made “remarkable progress”, demonstrating its capability to “cure once-incurable diseases”. Further research is needed to target more diseases and enhance our understanding of risks and unintended consequences.
“Somatic” genome editing (which makes changes that are not heritable) is different to germline and heritable genome editing (which makes heritable changes).
Basic research for germline genome editing, which is not for reproduction purposes, is underway, for example, in gametes and embryos to explore aspects of early development. However, the organising committee concluded that heritable human genome editing for reproduction purposes “remains unacceptable at this time”. This is in light of the absence of preclinical evidence for safety and efficacy, legal authorisation and rigorous oversight and governance.
The concept of “safe enough” was interrogated – whose ethics should be applied to make this value judgment? Does the notion of safety traverse into areas beyond medically defined risks of physical harm?
It is notable that risk tolerance and perception of safety is dictated by an individual’s position in their country, culture, socio-economic status and lived experience.
In 2021, the World Health Organization published a framework for governing human genome editing. This retains its authority as an exemplar for a pathway toward an appropriate regulatory framework. While not overly prescriptive, it was designed to be adaptable for implementation in any jurisdiction. This year, Uganda plans to implement the framework as a pilot project.
The organising committee called for global action to explore measures for equitable and affordable pathways to access genome editing therapies. Ongoing global discussions are far from complete, and perhaps may never be complete, reinforcing the need for collective dialogue to proceed this summit. And on with research, innovation and collaboration.
Olga C. Pandos is a recipient of the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.
A small speeding vehicle allegedly driven by an off-duty soldier set off a chain reaction this week that saw two security guards taken to hospital and the burning of a vehicle belonging to the security company.
Guards from the Alpha Response Security firm and two PNG Defence Force sailors from Basilisk Naval base in downtown Port Moresby were recorded on video on Thursday morning in a heated argument that turned physical.
The reaction was instantaneous as more than 25 sailors arrived in a bus and destroyed two vehicles, burned a vehicle and put two guards in hospital.
In an all too familiar sight, the scene of soldiers ruling the roads of Boroko was again played out with the public staying far away and gunshots heard as businesses along the Hubert Murray Highway kept their doors locked.
Police stayed clear.
The fear was evident as chatter from the public was kept at a minimum.
Soldiers have once again taken over the streets of Boroko because of confrontations — like they did in 2016.
‘It will be dealt with’ The PNGDF hierarchy comes out with the same response of “it will be dealt with” and then no word, no report and no update to the questions raised by those concerned.
This time though, in 2023, two sailors are now held by military police after they were recorded throwing punches with security guards at the new Boroko Bank South Pacific ATM near the TST supermarket.
PNGDF deputy commander Commodore Philip Polewara said that the sailors’ involvement and the extent of their actions is now being investigated by the military police.
Questions asked of who was in control of such acts were not responded to with protocol of questioning to be followed.
“We are investigating and we will deal with the incident. For now the two sailors involved are in military police custody,” said Commodore Polewara.
Alpha Response Security firm owner Oscar Wei said in an interview he would allow investigations to take place.
In uncovering what occurred, the Post-Courier found that the fight started after the vehicle, a Toyota Mk 2, driven by an off-duty sailor, which nearly mowed down a guard.
Heated argument A confrontation occurred with the two men returning dressed in their PNGDF uniform and accompanied by another two sailors.
The four men got into a heated argument and fought with the guards before leaving.
As the guards were trying to take down statements of what happened at the Boroko police station, a bus load of sailors arrived and instantly removed the public and other vehicles.
Armed with kerosene, knives, spades and shovels, the windows of three vehicles were smashed with the vehicle parked in the middle of the road set alight by the soldiers.
As swift as their arrival, they departed just as quickly before the Fire Service arrived and stopped the fire.
Attempts to get comments from police about the incident were unsuccessful.
Questioned by pollce Bainimarama and Qiliho were questioned by the Fiji police investigations unit before being held in remand overnight at the Totogo Police Station in in the capital Suva.
Today’s Fiji Times front page. Image: FT screenshot APR
It was the first time for a former PM and a police chief to be kept in a police cell facing such allegations.
The two men were greeted by their family members and friends who gathered outside the courthouse.
The pair were photographed by local reporters smiling as they walked into the Magistrates Court Room 3.
‘I served as PM with integrity’ After being granted bail, Bainimarama told local journalists outside the court that he would defend the charges laid against him.
“Look, I want to tell you that I have served as Fiji’s PM with integrity and with the best interest of all Fijians at heart,” he said.
“I have been served this charge against my legacy so I am going to fight this charge. Not only for my reputation but for democracy, for all Fijians, and of course for the Constitution,” he added.
Bainimarama: “I am going to fight this charge. Not only for my reputation, for democracy, for all Fijians, and of course for the Constitution.” pic.twitter.com/5ExBntYTbL
Former Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama and suspended Police Commissioner Sitiveni Qiliho appeared before Suva Magistrates Court judge Justice Seini Puamau today and pleaded not guilty to abuse of office charges laid against them.
Justice Puamau stood down the case for 11am as she told the prosecution to provide “substantial evidence” to support the bail conditions it has made.
The conditions set by prosecution include a 8pm to 5am curfew as it has concerns of “high level of interference” with witnesses.
Bainimarama and Brigadier-General Qiliho were charged with one count each of abuse of office after being summoned to the Criminal Investigations Department yesterday afternoon and kept overnight at Totogo Police Station to appear in court today.
Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Christopher Pryde said the charges were for allegedly terminating an active police investigation in relation to the University of the South Pacific in July, 2019, were laid following a review of the police evidence docket which the DPP received on February 17, 2023.
“The former prime minister, Voreqe Bainimarama and the suspended police commissioner, Sitiveni Qiliho, are alleged to have arbitrarily and in abuse of the authority of their respective offices, terminated an active police investigation,” Pryde said.
“The charges relate to a complaint laid with the police by the University of the South Pacific in July, 2019 in relation to the activities of former staff members of the university.
“The police have also been requested to undertake further investigations into other matters arising from this case and more charges may be laid against other suspects in due course.”
Meri Radinibaravi is a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with permission.
The West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) has released a new video about New Zealand hostage pilot Philip Mehrtens and a Papuan news organisation, Jubi TV, has featured it on its website.
The Susi Air pilot was taken hostage on February 7 after landing in a remote region near Nduga in the Central Papuan highlands.
In the video, which was sent to RNZ Pacific, Mehrtens was instructed to read a statement saying “no foreign pilots are to work and fly” into the Papuan highlands until the West Papua is independent.
He made another demand for West Papua independence from Indonesia later in the statement.
Mehrtens was surrounded by more than a dozen people, some of them armed with weapons.
Previously, a West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) spokesperson said they were waiting for a response from the New Zealand government to negotiate the release of Mehrtens.
A Papua independence movement leader, Benny Wenda, and church and community leaders last month called for the rebels to release Mehrtens.
Wenda said he sympathised with the New Zealand people and Merhtens’ family but insisted the situation was a result of Indonesia’s refusal to allow the UN Human Rights Commissioner to visit Papua.
The latest video featuring NZ hostage pilot Philip Mehrtens. Video: Jubi TV
According to Jubi News, the head of Cartenz Peace Operation 2023, Senior Commander Faizal Ramadani, says negotiations to free Mehrtens, who is held hostage by a TPNPB faction led by Egianus Kogoya, has “not been fruitful”.
But Commander Ramadani said that the security forces would continue the negotiation process.
According to Commander Ramadani, efforts to negotiate the release of Mehrtens by the local government, religious leaders, and Nduga community leaders were rejected by the TPNPB.
“We haven’t received the news directly, but we received information that there was a rejection,” said Commander Ramadani in Jayapura on Tuesday.
“The whereabouts of Egianus’ group and Mehrtens are not yet known as the situation in the field is very dynamic,” he said.
“But we will keep looking.”
Republished with permission from RNZ Pacific and Jubi TV.
Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme, Darren England, Jono Searle/AAP
The robodebt royal commission hearings came to an end on Friday. Over the past four months, they have delivered a telling portrait of unaccountable government power.
As they look back on a mass of limited recollections, missing paper and inaction, what are key things Australians should take away?
‘I’m appalled’
The first phase of the inquiry was marked by bombshell revelations. Two iron curtains that protect government – legal professional privilege and cabinet confidentiality – were pulled back.
In the opening week, we learned:
In 2014, Department of Social Services’ legal advice on robodebt was a flat “no”. New legislation was needed to raise debts by averaging annual income. Robodebt went ahead without it.
In 2017, after enormous public outcry, external legal advice was not sought. Instead, a government lawyer reported feeling “pressure” to produce heavily qualified legal advice. This unpersuasive advice was then used to justify the scheme.
In 2018, the Department of Social Services, received advice dubbed “catastrophic” for the scheme. It stayed in draft, something lawyers admitted was a common practice.
Confronted by this, Commissioner Catherine Holmes had only two words: “I’m appalled”.
Without the commission, the standard rules on transparency would have applied. Australians would never have known any of it.
Ethically indefensible
Robodebt is about so much more than just the absence of law. After years of semantics and political rhetoric, the hearings confirmed robodebt as baseless, ethically indefensible policy.
Holmes rebuked the program as “amateurish, rushed and disastrous”.
The core concept at the heart of robodebt was the tactical imposition of administrative burden on vulnerable people. Instead of the previous system, where evidence would be gathered direct from employers, the onus of proof was reversed.
The hearings revealed the department’s own budget assumed most people would give up. Hundreds of thousands would effectively cop an averaged and inaccurate debt.
Robodebt should never again be framed as a technological glitch or a legal oversight. It was the active and direct exploitation of people’s vulnerability. The department’s own research into the letters sent confirmed they generated terror and confusion. We learnt it even held modelling that debts raised under the programme were inflated.
We have built a dense, highly conditional welfare system, which concentrates enormous, life-changing powers in the hands of government decision-makers. The hearings delivered a portrait of a system warped by imbalances of power and a lack of access to justice.
So what of the politicians? Their appearances had one clear theme: they positioned themselves as the victims of the Australian Public Service.
Scott Morrison indicated he was entitled to rely on a checklist that read “no legislation needed”. Christian Porter relied on the verbal assurance of a public servant that the system was above board.
For hours, we cycled through the same phrases: “I did not know”. “I was not told”. “I was entitled to rely on public servants”.
In our Westminster system, a minister is responsible for the actions of their department. The hearings have revealed that to be abstract fiction rather than functional reality. While a storm of suffering and advocacy raged, politicians and their offices didn’t ask even the simplest questions about the core issue.
What they focused on was seeking political benefit – right from the earliest press releases, trumpeting the arrival of a “strong welfare cop on the beat”. In the pursuit of this political brand, we saw egregious actions ranging from deliberately evading questions to approving the release of the personal information to “correct the record”.
Moving past individuals, our focus needs to be on tackling the broader ecosystem that produced “welfare cop”. The phrase speaks powerfully to how we have fallen into a social security system driven by shortcut cultural images, rather than on supporting work, families and care.
Taken advantage of
Most people will not have had time to follow the commission. Media coverage, predictably, surged for “politician days”. They missed the most powerful and important contributions.
Victims of the scheme spoke up for what should matter, what a social security system needs to protect and deliver. Sandra Bevan, a single mother of four boys, who works in disability support, told us about the experience of correctly reporting income and not being listened to.
It was so traumatic that she swore she would “never access Centrelink benefits ever again”. Bevan is a powerful reminder of where courage, strength and leadership are found in our society.
It seems to me that the powerful people are always able to take advantage of vulnerable people, as the gap between rich and poorer increases still. And no matter how many royal commissions we have, that always seems to be the case. And I hope this royal commission can change that.
Holmes could only give a simple human response. Somehow, all at once, it spoke to her commitment, the limits on her role, the history of royal commissions and the reality of the system as it currently is:
I’m afraid I can’t promise you that. But we’ll do what we can.
In a room in Brisbane, we have learnt of the scale of problems in front of us. Only a broader societal change, not just a royal commission, will ever deliver the change we need.
Darren O’Donovan 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.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has made a landmark visit to India this week in the hopes of boosting ties in trade, education and security.
Australia’s relationship with India has been marked by short bursts of enthusiasm, interspersed with long periods of disinterest.
For a long time, Australia and India shared only superficial similarities captured by the belaboured phrase “cricket, curry, Commonwealth”.
Though cricket remains a mainstay, in the past few years the relationship has deepened. In large part this is due to the flare-up of India’s border dispute with China, and the general deterioration of Australia’s relationship with China.
Australia is now looking to India as both a geopolitical and economic partner as it seeks to diversify its markets and shape regional order in the Indo-Pacific.
Meanwhile, India looks to Australia for resources, investments and support in its ongoing disputes with China.
So what are the two sides seeking from Albanese’s visit, and what does it mean for Australia-India relations?
What we know so far
Albanese’s first official visit to India comes with a packed itinerary and a diverse agenda. There are as many as 25 business leaders accompanying him in the hope of securing lucrative agreements on economic cooperation and making some headway in negotiations for a full free-trade agreement, building on the interim agreement signed last year.
A key area is education. India has been hoping to improve its performance on higher education by encouraging foreign universities to build campuses in India.
The two countries signed agreements this week for the mutual recognition of qualifications, and to establish a Deakin University campus in India. This would be the first foreign university with a campus in India.
The two sides are also keen to increase cooperation and investment in critical minerals such as lithium, which is used in batteries, as India seeks to lower emissions. This comes despite Albanese saying in February he wanted to keep more critical minerals onshore in response to questions about China seeking approval to invest in new mines in Australia.
Albanese this week also declared India a “top-tier security partner”. This comes ahead of Australia hosting the Malabar naval exercise in August, traditionally a joint exercise between India, Japan and the US, from which it had been excluded until a few years ago.
In turn, India will step up its participation in joint military exercises with Australia.
Differences endure
However, challenges and contradictions remain, most notably the two countries’ differences over Ukraine.
Australia has strongly condemned the Russian invasion, committing hundreds of millions of dollars in military support to Ukraine, and joining Western countries in sanctioning Russia.
But India maintains its traditionally strong military and economic links with Russia. India relies on Russia for advanced military equipment and has recently increased its oil imports from the latter.
A full free-trade agreement would involve reconciling different interests in key areas. Australia is focused on improving market access for agricultural and dairy products, while India’s focus is services and labour mobility. Both are sensitive political issues that will be difficult to overcome even with the large contingent of business leaders accompanying Albanese.
Shared values?
As he landed in India, Albanese declared that Australia and India had a rich friendship underpinned by “shared democratic values”. His trip began with a visit to Sabarmati Ashram, where Mahatma Gandhi once lived.
Yet, India is much further away from Gandhi today than it has ever been. In the past ten years, India has displayed increasing intolerance for dissent and has curtailed media freedom.
Minorities have been marginalised, discriminated against, and attacked, as the government and its affiliates assert Hindu nationalist politics.
Australian universities hoping to build campuses in India could face curbs on academic freedom. India’s draft guidelines for foreign universities prohibits activities that are “contrary to the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency, or morality”.
While Australia has expressed concerns about digital authoritarianism, India has used technology to curb dissent. It has also allegedly used technology to surveil opposition leaders, minorities and critics.
The frequently acrimonious responses of India’s leadership to any criticism of itself in the Western world is probably why Australia, which is anxious to cultivate India as a bulwark against China, has been loath to publicly criticise India.
The government may also be hoping that emphasising democratic values will put some pressure on India’s leadership to halt its further slide toward authoritarianism. But recent events suggests this is wishful thinking. Evidence for this includes government raids on BBC India offices after it aired a documentary critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Rather, Australia risks being seen as turning a blind eye to India’s model of electoral autocracy. This includes the persecution of academics, students, journalists, activists who languish in jail on dubious charges of sedition and terrorism.
It’s important Australia bases its relationship with India on a realistic estimation of the latter’s political and economic credentials, rather than being driven almost entirely by the strategic urgency to create a regional counterweight to China.
Priya Chacko receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Janhavi Rajiv Pande 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.
Seaweed is increasingly seen as a solution to many of the world’s most pressing problems. Interest in farming seaweed has exploded.
There’s such a wide range of applications, from fertilisers to foods, bioplastics, textiles, supplements and carbon sinks. It’s hard to think of another substance with so much potential.
Can seaweed save the world? It’s a question being posed this weekend at the WOMADelaide world music festival Planet Talks. I’m on the panel and the answer, I think, is a definite maybe!
I’ve studied seaweeds as ecosystem health indicators for years. I became interested in using seaweed to clean up nutrients in our coastal systems. Now at the Marine Bioproducts Cooperative Research Centre, my eyes have opened to the huge diversity of Australian seaweeds and their many amazing applications.
Seaweed is a catch-all term for marine plants. These are the primary producers in our marine and aquatic systems.
In many ways, they’re as diverse as the plants you see on land. Many are foundational species that act like forests underwater, but they come in many different types and forms. We group them into reds, greens and browns. And they have very different properties, just like terrestrial plants, depending on the species and where they live.
It’s true that seaweed has huge potential to address some of the most wicked problems facing the planet. If we were to think of seaweed as one of the tools in the toolbox, they’d be the multitool or Swiss army knife with a wide range of potential applications, including:
reducing methane production in cows and other ruminants such as goats and sheep
capturing and storing carbon dioxide
boosting protein and nutrients in food products
providing extra health benefits in new therapeutics
soaking up excess nutrients in wastewater
creating new materials such as bioplastics, packaging and textiles.
Another thing that blows me away with seaweed is that one plant can actually tap into several of these market opportunities. So you could be growing it as a nutraceutical supplement, a fibre for textiles and as a fertiliser, all at once. That’s really exciting because it’s not something many of our traditional farming approaches have been able to do.
Not without its challenges
Early studies suggested that scaling up seaweed aquaculture could make a big difference to climate change by capturing carbon dioxide emissions. But it turns out it’s not as simple as that.
Verifying whether the carbon dioxide fixed by seaweeds through photosynthesis can be locked up long-term is extremely complex. There are differences between species and ecosystems. And research has to factor in the interactions of the various organisms that live on and around seaweed communities, as well as the prevailing environmental conditions.
However, seaweeds may still have a contribution in this space through carbon offsets. As they can be used to make new products to replace other materials that have larger carbon footprints. This includes new foods, new materials such as fabrics, and new building supplies designed to store carbon in the long term.
Cutting methane emissions and other benefits
The native Australian red seaweed Asparagopsis has been shown to markedly reduce methane production in cattle, when added to their diet.
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. It accounts for 20-30% of all greenhouse gas emissions, much of it associated with livestock production.
Any significant reduction in methane production “would have a rapid and significant effect on atmospheric warming potential”, according to a report from the US Environmental Protection Agency.
At the most recent global climate meeting, COP26, it was clearly noted that current national climate commitments will not be enough to avoid exceeding 1.5℃ of warming. So we need new and radical solutions. If Asparagopsis farming lives up to its potential, it could make a truly meaningful difference.
Feeding cattle the red seaweed Asparagopsis taxiformis reduces their methane emissions. Russell Freeman/AAP
Seaweed can improve intensive agriculture too. As highly effective biostimulants, they provide viable alternatives to synthetic fertilisers.
Seaweed can also be used to recover and recycle excess nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphates from wastewater. So when you have large human populations, intensive land-based farming or aquaculture facilities releasing nutrients into our coastal systems, can be a very effective way to respond to that. Seaweed farms can do better when grown in areas with higher nutrient levels, such as alongside fed finfish production facilities.
Human health and medical benefits extend beyond commercially viable and tasty alternative protein sources. Some seaweeds can contain 10-30% protein, which is comparable with soy protein levels. But they also have the added natural advantage of relatively high levels of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids (brain food), which are not naturally found in terrestrial food sources.
Increasingly we are finding seaweeds with anticoagulant, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, anticarcinogenic and antiviral properties. Several types of kelp have been shown to promote a beneficialimmune response.
Seaweed supplements in animal feeds have also been shown to offer advantages such as improved gut health and digestive efficiency. This has the potential to markedly improve yield and other outcomes on farms.
Let’s get on with it
There are still challenges to overcome, and there may be more issues to contend with down the track. But if we support coordinated and appropriate research and development, focused on fast-tracking the benefits that seaweed has to offer, Australian seaweed really can play a big part in saving the world.
And it’s really encouraging to see broader community engagement in this conversation including the panel discussion at the WOMADelaide FestivalPlanet Talks series. It’s great to have a chance to talk openly about the challenges while showcasing the opportunities. It’s complicated, but it’s exciting. Let’s get on with it.
Catriona Macleod is a program leader in the Marine Bioproducts CRC (MBCRC) which actively supports research and development projects in the seaweed industry and is on the board of the Australian Sustainable Seaweed Alliance (ASSA). She has previously received funding from the Australian Co-operative Research Centres (CRC), Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (FRDC) and Agrifutures to support seaweed related research. She is affiliated with The Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania.
Some eight months out from this year’s election, the National Party has launched a new tax rebate policy to help reduce childcare costs. At the same time, Australia and Canada are abandoning their own rebate policies for failing to really address childcare affordability issues.
It might be a good idea for New Zealand to learn from their experiences.
Childcare in Aotearoa New Zealand is some of the most expensive in the world, despite the government spending about NZ$2.3 billion annually on childcare through subsidies and payments to the sector.
National’s Family Boost scheme would give a 25% tax rebate on childcare expenses up to $75 per week to families earning less than $180,000. This rebate is in addition to the extended childcare subsidy announced by Labour last year.
On the face of it, National’s approach will return much needed money to families and has the potential to increase workforce participation. But overseas experience shows there are some fundamental flaws with offering rebates for childcare.
Turning away from rebate schemes
The Australian Labor government has just launched a major childcare review, noting their rebate and subsidy schemes – which have been in place since the mid-1990s – have not achieved the hoped-for affordability outcomes.
Government spending on support to parents has reached almost AUS$9 billion, yet it is estimated childcare costs have risen by 41% for families since 2014.
Canada has also recently moved from tax rebates for childcare, instead embarking on an ambitious public funding commitment to offer C$10-a-day childcare by 2026. The government has committed $30 billion to develop 250,000 new affordable childcare places by expanding the not-for-profit sector.
So, what can we learn from tax rebate funding models overseas?
As seen in Australia, tax rebate schemes are administratively burdensome. Their childcare rebate schemes were added into an existing funding model developed by previous governments, ultimately making the system confusing and complicated for parents and providers to navigate.
Similarly, National’s proposed rebate scheme will add yet another layer to what is now an already complex funding model, including the 20 hour early childcare education payment and the recently extended childcare subsidy.
Rebates ineffective on their own
Moreover, international experience suggests rebate schemes do little on their own to reduce childcare costs in highly privatised childcare markets.
Although money goes directly to parents, evidence shows there are limited benefits to families if there is no cap on the costs that providers can charge.
Any money going to parents risks being absorbed by fee increases. This occurred in Australia under the childcare tax rebate scheme introduced in 2004, with the following decade seeing what sector advocates called a financial “bonanza for private providers”.
But in a sector that is now almost 65% for-profit in New Zealand, any governmental attempt to control price increases risks being seen as “market interference”.
Proponents of rebate schemes argue that fee increases should not happen in theory, because such schemes empower parents as consumers. They can regulate costs through choosing services that best meet their needs, and change services when they are not satisfied.
But research has long shown that viewing parents as consumers of childcare in this way is a political fiction. Childcare markets do not work under textbook supply and demand imperatives.
The commonly held notion that parents will “talk with their feet” by changing childcare providers is simply not the case. As any parent will attest, changing your child’s care environment once the child is settled is a move they are loathe to make, even if the service down the road is cheaper.
Furthermore, parental choice in many regions is constrained by the lack of childcare services and long waiting lists. As we see growing privatisation and corporatisation of the sector, the range of choice is further limited.
Time for an overhaul
It is certainly time to consider childcare costs as a crucial issue affecting New Zealand households. But this needs to be part of a much more ambitious funding review of the sector.
Overseas evidence has shown that the kind of intervention the National Party is proposing does little to improve affordability in the longer term, or address other thorny problems such as quality and access in childcare markets.
If we look at Australia and Canada, countries which have had extensive experience of these kinds of funding models, there is now a renewed incentive to explore more universal, publicly-funded childcare options.
This may involve stronger support for community, not-for-profit services, which are a shrinking part of the childcare landscape in Aoteoroa. At the very least, it would require a much stronger sense of market stewardship than is currently in place.
If political leaders are serious about making some real changes for parents, children and the wider sector, we should expect better than to repeat the same mistakes already made elsewhere.
Aisling Gallagher has recieved funding from the Royal Society of New Zealand, Marsden Fund.
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.
Multilevel societies are among the most complex societies known in nature. They are organised like Russian nesting dolls – individuals belong to family groups, which belong to clans, which belong to tribes.
At each level, the relationships between these social units (individuals, families, clans and tribes) are stable and predictable.
Even though multilevel societies are documented across the animal world, it’s not entirely clear what their benefits are.
One hypothesis, based on observations of two populations of contemporary hunter-gatherer people, is that living in a multilevel society allows people to simultaneously have different types (levels) of cooperative relationships.
In our research, published today in Current Biology, we tested this hypothesis in a wild population of superb fairy-wrens, a familiar little songbird across southeastern Australia’s parks and gardens.
Living together means helping each other out
Superb fairy-wrens live in multilevel societies in which breeding groups – between two and six birds – represent the lowest social level, with tight social bonds among individuals.
During the non-breeding season, neighbouring breeding groups associate closely with a few other breeding groups, and these “supergroups” then associate to form communities (the highest social level). As a result, these birds develop social relationships of varying levels of intensity.
Male and female superb fairy-wrens singing. Kaspar Delhey.
To make it possible to track those complex relationships, we attached different-coloured leg bands to superb fairy-wrens in our study population so we could recognise all individuals through binoculars. While we are attaching their bands, we recorded any birds that gave distress calls, distinctive calls that individuals use to seek help when they’re in imminent danger, for example from a predator.
Other wrens commonly respond to such calls and try to help, for example by approaching the predator and giving alarm calls. They may also use a distraction tactic called a “rodent-run”. To do this, birds approach the threat to within striking range, assume a hunched posture, and scurry back and forth like a mouse. This distracts the predator, and this “altruistic distraction display” places the bird that performs it at high risk.
Here we tested whether altruistic responses to calls for help vary across the distinct social levels of the society, akin to food sharing among hunter-gatherers, but with much higher stakes.
Male and female superb fairy-wrens performing rodent-run distraction displays, a striking transformation from a bird to a mouse (which isn’t easy if you are blue). Amber Hodgson, Eliza Campbell & Abigail Robinson.
To simulate a predator threatening a fellow wren, we presented a stuffed kookaburra – a fierce predator of small birds, including fairy-wrens – while playing back a distress call recorded from a local fairy-wren. We then recorded the responses of all wren-witnesses.
For each breeding group, we tested if social relatedness affected how willing birds were to help another in distress. We played back, on different occasions, a distress call from an individual within the same breeding group, one from the same community, or one from an unfamiliar individual outside the community.
We found that superb fairy-wrens were more likely to heed the calls for help from birds of the same breeding group. They responded less fervently, taking fewer risks and never performing rodent-runs, when a merely familiar wren – from the same community – called for help.
As for strangers? They ignored them completely. So being part of a complex society lets the birds carefully “dose” their cooperative assistance.
Like birds, like people
This pattern mirrors what was previously found in hunter-gatherers. Here, food is shared mostly by people from the same household, followed by members of the same cluster of households. The least sharing happens between members of the same camp – the highest social level of their multilevel society.
Similarly, living in a multilevel society helps the wrens to distinguish whom to cooperate with and how much. The cooperation at different social levels likely has different social functions, too.
For example, cooperative relationships between breeding group members might increase group cohesion, survival and reproduction. At the community level, alliances between neighbouring breeding groups are likely to help the birds defend against predators better, and to have less aggression between groups.
Humans and superb fairy-wrens belong to very distant branches within the tree of life (our common ancestor lived at least 200 million years ago. Nevertheless, the pattern of cooperative behaviour shown by these little songbirds is astonishingly similar to ours.
This suggests the complex cooperative patterns we see in our own society may have emerged independently many times in different species, and first appeared millions of years before we set the first foot on this planet.
Acknowledgements: we thank Holsworth Wildlife Research Endowment and the Ecological Society of Australia, the Australian Research Council, The Australian National University (ANU), the University of Zurich, the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and Monash University for support. We are grateful to our colleagues Robert Magrath, Sergio Nolazco and Damien Farine who co-authored this study, and thank Robert Magrath for co-authoring this article.
Anne Peters receives funding from Australian Research Council.
Ettore Camerlenghi 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 we progress through life, we learn many essential behaviours from more experienced people around us. For example, through observing adults, we go from being babbling babies, to using single words, to speaking in full sentences.
This is an example of social learning. And it turns out it isn’t unique to our species.
Honeybees also have a language, expressed through dance, which they use to communicate the location and quality of food sources to hive mates. This behaviour plays a crucial role in the functioning of a hive, which can sometimes have more than 60,000 bees.
Today, a new study published in Science reveals honeybees perfect this dance language by learning from more experienced bees.
What is the ‘waggle dance’?
In 1973, Professor Karl von Frisch won the Nobel Prize in Physiology for decoding the dance of the honeybee, termed the “waggle dance”. This dance consists of a series of movements forager honeybees perform to nest mates in a hive.
Successful forager bees perform the waggle dance for their nest mates. Heather Broccard Bell, CC BY-NC-SA
The dance communicates various information about a bee’s foraging trip, including the food source’s distance and direction from the hive, angle from the sun, and the quality of the resource. It’s performed in a repetitive figure eight movement.
The forager positions herself perpendicular to the Sun in the direction of the food source, thereby demonstrating its direction. She also performs a “vibration” through the centre of the figure eight, which demonstrates how far the source is.
The waggle dance is performed by worker bees, which are all female. Scarlett Howard
This behaviour is an interesting example of a complex, informative and co-operative communication style among insects. But, until now, experts didn’t know the extent to which it is learnt, as opposed to innate.
Nature vs nurture?
To find out, a team of researchers from China and the US put some bees to the test. They created hives containing young novice bees (one day old) that had never seen a waggle dance before, and hives containing both novice bees and experienced bees (20 days old).
They placed the hives 150 metres away from a feeder of sugar water: the food source. This placement was important, as it would allow the researchers to assess how accurately the forager bees were dancing to convey information to their hive mates.
The team observed the first dances of novice bees, in both the novice and mixed colonies. Then, after another 20 days, they observed them again.
They found the first dances of bees in the novice colonies overestimated the distance of the food source, were less accurate in communicating direction and were more disordered compared to the first dances of novice bees from the mixed colonies.
After 20 days, when the dancers from both types of colonies were more experienced, the bees in the novice hive had decreased their directional errors and their dances were less disordered. However, they still underperformed compared to their counterparts in the mixed colonies.
Source: J. Nieh, from video clips filmed by Dong Shihao.
Early experience sets a bee up for life
These findings show the waggle dance is indeed innate, since it was performed by novice honeybees that had never seen it before.
However, bees that had undergone social learning from more experienced foragers were more accurate and ordered dancers. Even after gaining foraging and dancing experience, the bees in the novice colonies could not dance as well as those that had undergone social learning.
Therefore, the opportunity to observe experienced bees dancing at a young age will determine a bee’s capability to perform accurate dances for the rest of its short life.
We know from past studies there are different dialects across honeybee species – and dialects indicate a language has been at least partially learned. This new research strengthens the evidence for social learning among honeybees, prompting interesting new questions about how nature and nurture overlap to form this social insect’s complexculture.
Scarlett Howard receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) and has previously received funding from Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship, RMIT University, Fyssen Foundation, L’Oreal-UNESCO for Women in Science Young Talents French Award, Deakin University, Monash University, Hermon Slade Foundation, and the Australian Academy of Sciences. She is affiliated with Pint of Science Australia.
There was a slow initial global response to what we now call SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID. This allowed the virus to get a foothold, contributing to unexpectedly rapid viral evolution.
Three years into the pandemic, with the removal of almost all mitigation measures in most countries, it’s clear the virus has hit the world very hard. So far, almost 681 million infections and more than 6.8 million deaths have been reported.
This is perhaps best visualised by its impact on life expectancy. There were sharp declines seen across the world in 2020 and 2021, reversing 70 years of largely uninterrupted progress.
The excess mortality driving this drop in life expectancy has continued. This includes in Australia, where over 20,000 more lives than the historical average are estimated to have been lost in 2022.
The indirect impacts on the health systems in rich and poor countries alike continue to be substantial. Disruptions to health services have led to increases in stillbirths, maternal mortality and postnatal depression.
Meanwhile, more evidence of long COVID has emerged around the world. At least 65 million people were estimated to be experiencing this debilitating syndrome by the end of 2022.
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare estimates 5-10% of people who are infected with SARS-CoV-2 will develop long COVID, with symptoms persisting more than three months. That’s between 550,000 and 1.1 million Australians, based on the more than 11 million cases reported so far.
The pandemic has also had a huge economic impact, both directly and indirectly.
The United States alone spent US$4 trillion on its response. Economists have estimated the pandemic will contribute an average 0.75% reduction in GDP in countries with high infection rates and high productivity in 2025.
Studies in the United Kingdom, US and Australia show COVID has had a disproportionate impact – including higher death rates – in disadvantaged communities and ethnic minorities.
The causes range from high exposure in low-paid jobs to inadequate access to health care. And poorer countries have fared terribly on all fronts from COVID, including inequitable access to vaccines.
We cannot assume there will be a natural exit to the pandemic, where the virus reaches some benign endemicity, a harmless presence in the background.
In fact, there is little indication anything like that is imminent.
In Australia, since the beginning of January, more than 235,000 COVID cases have been reported, almost as many as in 2020 and 2021 combined. Since the start of January, there have been 2,351 COVID-related deaths, more than twice as many as in the whole of 2020 and around the same as in the whole of 2021.
What needs to happen next?
The future response can be practically distilled into three overlapping actions.
1. Politicians need to be frank
Our political leaders need to communicate frankly with the public that the pandemic is not over. They need to stress we still have an exceptional problem on our hands with acute disease as well as worrying concerns about long COVID. It’s crucial politicians acknowledge sufferers and those who have died. They need to do this while delivering the good news that addressing COVID does not require lockdowns or mandates.
If our politicians did this, the public would be more likely to have their booster vaccines, get tested and treated, and adopt measures such as improving indoor ventilation and wearing high-quality masks.
The health system also needs to be greatly strengthened to deal with long COVID.
Suppressing the virus is still important. We still can and should reduce the burden of newly acquired COVID and, therefore, long COVID. We have the tools to do this.
We need full recognition that COVID is transmitted largely through the air. As this just-published article in the journal Nature discusses, there are things we can do right now to ensure we all breathe air that is safer, not just from SARS-CoV-2 but from other respiratory viruses.
We should be focusing on the science and be ready to adopt new knowledge and products rapidly.
Just a few days ago we had trials of a promising new approach to treat long COVID with the diabetes drug metformin.
There is also intriguing research that has identified persistent infection as a potential underlying cause of organ damage and disease after COVID and in long COVID. This suggests anti-viral drugs such as Paxlovid may have an important role to play in reducing the impact of chronic disease.
As we enter the fourth year of the pandemic, we must not leave it up to the virus to fix itself.
The biggest lesson of the past three years is there’s little chance that is going to work, at least without an intolerably high cost.
Rather, we can end the pandemic by choice. We know what to do. But we are simply not doing it.
Michael Toole receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council.
Brendan Crabb and the Institute he leads receives research grant funding from the National Health & Medical Research Council of Australia, the Medical Research Future Fund, DFAT’s Centre for Health Security and other Australian federal and Victorian State Government bodies. He is the Chair of The Australian Global Health Alliance and the Pacific Friends of Global Health, both in an honorary capacity. And he serves on the Board of the Telethon Kids Institute, on advisory committees of mRNA Victoria, the Sanger Institute (UK), the Institute for Health Transformation (at Deakin University), The Brain Cancer Centre (Australia), the WHO Malaria Vaccine Advisory Committee; MALVAC, and is a member of OzSAGE, all honorary positions.
This week, the Albanese government is attempting to reform the safeguard mechanism to try to make it actually cut emissions from our highest polluting industrial facilities.
Experts and commentators see Labor’s plan as a cautious, incremental change that doesn’t yet rise to the urgency of the intensifying climate crisis. But it could generate momentum after a wasted decade of climate denial and delay under the previous government. Done right, it could set our biggest industrial polluters on a pathway to cut their emissions and be a springboard for more ambitious changes.
But there’s one glaring problem. Under the government’s proposed rules, there is still no requirement for polluters to actually cut their emissions at the sites where they are released into the atmosphere. Instead, companies can choose to buy carbon credits or offsets to meet their obligations. Incredibly, there would be no limit on the number of offsets companies can use.
You’ve probably heard about Australia’s rubbery offset schemes and questions of integrity. But there’s an even more fundamental problem. One tonne of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels is not the same as one tonne of carbon stored in the tree trunks of a newly planted forest.
The carbon in coal, gas and oil has been safely stored underground for extraordinary lengths of time. But when trees take carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere, they may only store it for a short period.
There is simply no way around it. Avoiding the worst of climate change means stopping the extraction and burning of fossil fuels. Offsets will not save us. In fact, unlimited use of offsets could see even more emissions, if coal and gas companies “offset” emissions and ramp up exports.
It sounds simple: offset emissions by replanting forests. It’s not. Shutterstock
Why can’t we rely on nature to pull carbon dioxide from the air?
In 2023, many policymakers still believe we can adequately offset emissions. It would certainly be easier if we could keep burning fossil fuels and offsetting them by planting forests. But it doesn’t work. It’s simply not possible to fully “offset” billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions from burning of coal, oil and gas by regrowing forests, increasing the amount of carbon in soils or other measures.
That’s because the carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels is fundamentally different to the way carbon is stored above ground in trees, wetlands and in the soil.
The only long term storage solution for fossil fuels like coal is to leave them precisely where they are. Shutterstock
Carbon is everywhere on Earth — in the atmosphere, the ocean, in soils, in all living things, and in rocks and sediments. It is constantly being cycled through these different parts. Carbon is also being continually exchanged between the atmosphere and the ocean’s surface. Together these processes make up the earth’s “active” carbon cycle.
When we burn fossil fuels, we release carbon locked away for millions of years (hence “fossil” fuels), pumping vast new volumes of carbon into the active carbon cycle. This is very clearly altering the balance of carbon in the Earth system and faster than ever recorded in the Earth’s geological history. Planting trees does not lock carbon away again deep underground. Instead, the introduced fossil carbon remains part of the active carbon cycle.
To compound the problem, much of the carbon stored in land-based offsets does not stay stored. Forests can easily be destroyed by fire, disease, floods and droughts, all of which are increasing with climate change.
Carbon is continually exchanged between the land and the atmosphere on timescales of seconds, days, decades and centuries, whereas fossil carbon has been locked away from the atmosphere for millions of years. Climate Council, CC BY
Offsets are a last resort – nothing more
Despite these issues, offsets will still have a small role. Some emissions cannot be avoided or reduced at present, given low-emissions technologies for industries like steelmaking are still scaling up. But these offsets must be strictly limited and set to progressively decline over time, as opportunities for genuine emissions reductions – at the source – are developed and rapidly scaled.
Unfortunately, paying for offsets is the first and only thing many large companies are doing about their harmful emissions.
If we allow fossil fuel companies to offset their emissions without limit, they will keep along a business as usual track or even expand their operations. That, in turn, will mean significantly more emissions when Australian fossil fuels are burned overseas.
Our leaders must avoid the offset trap
It’s taken Australia decades too long, but we’re finally past climate denial, perhaps due to unprecedented fire and floods. Our leaders tell us it’s now about finding solutions. Well, offsets are not a solution. There is no substitute to actually ending the routine burning of fossil fuels.
We all want our comfortable lives to continue with a minimum of change. Offsets seem to deliver that. But all they really do is offset our guilt and responsibility. They cannot solve the central problem which is that every year, we add another 33 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels.
The atmosphere doesn’t respond to good intentions or clever schemes. All it responds to is the volume of greenhouse gases which trap ever more heat.
What Australia does matters a great deal to the world’s efforts to tackle the climate crisis. If Australia became the first major fossil fuel exporter to embrace a future as a clean energy superpower, it will demonstrate it is possible – and that it comes with benefits like new industries, cleaner air and energy security.
First, though, we have to give up on offset pipe dreams. The only thing that matters is cutting emissions.
Wesley Morgan is a senior researcher with the Climate Council. This article was drafted in collaboration with Climate Council senior researchers Simon Bradshaw and Ashleigh Croucher.
Aged care is being hit both ways by the ageing of Australia’s population. While population ageing is increasing the number of Australians in need of formal care, it’s also reducing the proportion of working age people able to provide formal care.
To help bridge the gap, we are going to need to make it easier for working age Australians to provide informal care for parents and partners living at home.
In February 2022 the government asked the Productivity Commission to conduct the examination. I was one of the two commissioners appointed to lead it, and last week we released our position paper.
Here’s what we found, and how you can have your say.
We discovered there’s a lot of informal care already. Most older Australians who require assistance get it through informal care – 62% according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
About half of this informal care is provided by partners, about 30% by daughters, and 24% by sons.
Calculations by Deloitte Access Economics suggest if this informal care was charged for, it would cost A$78 billion per year. But it is set to become more scarce.
As more people live longer, the needs of the oldest Australians will grow and become harder to manage without considerable support. And as families become smaller, there will be fewer family members to help.
Deloitte Access expects the need for informal care to grow by 23% to 2030, while the number of informal carers grows only 16%.
Examining extended unpaid carer’s leave
When my father was diagnosed with dementia, I was incredibly lucky to have ample leave balances, his wife as his primary carer, and the resources to privately pay for formal care while we waited for a government-provided home care package.
But many aren’t that lucky. Many carers state that they have unmet needs for leave, financial assistance, physical assistance and respite.
The National Employment Standards applying to workers covered by the Fair Work Act require employers to offer 10 days per year of paid carer leave, which is bundled with sick and personal leave and accumulates when not used, as well as “up to two days per episode” of unpaid leave.
In addition, workers can take up to two days of compassionate leave when an immediate member of the family or household dies or develops a life-threatening illness. This is paid for permanent employers and unpaid for casual workers.
Many employers offer more. But what’s missing from the legislative requirements is unpaid extended carers leave, available for months rather than days.
It is available for new parents. The legislative requirement is 12 months of unpaid leave, with the right to request an additional 12 months.
But after much investigation, we found that extending the option to the carers of older Australians would do little to close the care gap, little to help the majority of carers, and little to keep carers in the workforce.
Few people would use it
The model we developed based on parental and other leave standards (and the need to avoid undesirable consequences) provided three to 12 months of unpaid leave for carers of older people who have worked for at least 12 months for their current employer, after giving four weeks’ notice.
We found between 7,000 to 17,000 employees would use it each year, less than 0.1% of the workforce.
About half of those who used the entitlement would have provided care anyway, leaving their jobs if necessary.
We estimated it would produce only 4,000 to 8,000 extra informal carers.
And many don’t want unpaid extended leave. What they told us they want is workplace flexibility, with the income and relief from caring it offers.
That said, mandated extended unpaid leave would benefit the older people who would be cared for, and would benefit the carers who took it, reducing their costs of searching for a job after their extended absences.
But it would impose costs on employers: disrupting workplaces, requiring the recruitment of new temporary staff, and leaving employers uncertain about which of their workers would stay.
For businesses with high turnover of relatively unskilled labour, these costs would be low. In more specialised businesses, the limited evidence (mainly from parental leave) suggests these costs would be significant.
We need carers to know their new rights
The good news for carers is that changes to the Fair Work Act due to begin in June will strengthen employees’ rights to request flexible work.
Under the amendments, employers will only be permitted to refuse requests for flexible work if they have:
discussed the request with the employee
genuinely tried to reach an arrangement
not been able to come to an agreement
considered the consequence to the employee of refusing the request for flexible work, and
a reasonable business grounds for refusing the request.
The government should ensure that carers are aware of these and other rights through its Carer Gateway.
It should also ensure informal carers get support from the formal sector, with formal carers available to provide care at times and in ways informal carers cannot.
Informal care needs formal support
Waiting lists for formal home care packages at one stage climbed to 15 months in some categories and have come down considerably, but there is more to be done in reducing waiting lists.
Carers also need access to respite care for the older Australians they care for, to give them a break, especially respite care in the home.
And they need support for a wider range of relationships.
Carers can usually only access leave to care for immediate family members or members of their households. This excludes broader kinship networks for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, care relationships in “families of choice” for LGBTI seniors, and care for aunties and close friends.
We can do more to support carers. I was personally lucky to get a good deal of support. We ought to make sure we are all that lucky.
You can make a written submission on the carer’s leave paper until March 28. You can also register here to watch online or attend the March 20 and 21 public hearings.
Catherine de Fontenay is a Commissioner at the Productivity Commission.
Of the ten films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, six are really good. That’s a high percentage for a year – 2022 – in which most cinematic offerings seemed drab.
This year sees films that are less moralistic than usual and less pretentious. The worst thing you can say about the worst film is that it’s boring. In other words, there are no absolute duds, although there is only one true standout, with over-length continuing to hamstring otherwise excellent films.
It seems like producers, in their desire to differentiate their product from TikTok videos, turn everything into a Ben Hur-scale epic.
The standout: The Banshees of Inisherin
The Banshees of Inisherin is an absolute masterpiece, and my pick for Best Picture (and one of the best films of the year).
Writer-director Martin McDonagh has made a career out of Irish schtick, and his films (like those of his brother) sometimes feel like caricatures of themselves. But The Banshees of Inisherin takes a different turn, moving away from a narrow focus on the Irish character towards the form of drama itself.
The narrative begins from a simple premise: what if your best friend decided, one day, randomly, they never wanted to speak to you again? It opens with begrizzled old fiddler Colm (Brendan Gleeson) cutting off his relationship with the younger, painfully average, Pádraic (Colin Farrell). It’s 1923, near the end of the Irish Civil War, on the fictional isle of Inisherin, and Pádraic is at a loss regarding what he should do.
The whole thing begins firmly in the realm of the kind of hokey Irish-banter film that has made the McDonaghs global Irish exports. There are lots of absurd moments and jokes, Farrell in peak form – before slowly progressing into the kind of bloody, weird hallucinogenic fantasy that a Greek tragedian like Aeschylus might have come up with.
Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson in The Banshees of Inisherin (2022). IMDB
Some might decry its deviation from naturalism and realism, but it embodies its point. In the same way Colm decides life on an island in Ireland is boring, the film seems to decide, after the first third, that realism is boring, and livens things up with some garish self-mutilation, arson, a dead dog. The film seems to suggest that the bitterness and permanence of war, of the tragic and tragedic, endows mundane life with the energy to keep going, and forms the basis of all vital art. And, as Colm realises, life isn’t worth living without art, without an aesthetic vision overlaying everything. The dialogue is, like the work of the best playwrights, hyper-real, funny, tender and savage.
McDonagh’s film is remarkable for its grandness of vision, for its willingness to look at and interrogate its very form and medium in a commercial context that, nonetheless, never feels like an essay or treatise.
Other strong contenders
Women Talking is likewise a cinematic work. Faithful to the title, the narrative follows a group of women having a debate over the course of a day as they decide whether or not they should band together and leave their Mennonite-style community when they realise that the beings who are routinely raping and impregnating them are not, as they’ve been told by their religious leaders, demons, but the men of the community.
Buoyed along by the voice over of a young witness to the discussion, the tone oscillates effectively between melodrama and fable, and the film works well as an immersive piece of cinema, with points that are genuinely suspenseful – such as when they decide to leave the community and have to prepare before the men, who have gone to the city to post bail for the attackers, return.
There are also some strikingly eerie images, and the performers are excellent. It’s great seeing Judith Ivey on the big screen again, and Ben Whishaw is exceptional as the sensitive school-teacher scribe who is minuting their discussion. At the same time, it is a film that mainly involves people sitting around and talking, so there are sections that become tedious.
Women Talking is a strong film, and its ambience of fantasy and fable allow us to forgive its sentimentality as captured in the closing image of a baby with the voiceover sounding like a social media post: “Your story will be different from ours.”
Two-thirds of writer-director Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness is excellent – it’s the kind of misanthropic farce with which he is now associated, joyfully anarchic in its perpetual assault on bourgeois sensibilities.
The narrative follows a young couple, Carl (Harris Dickinson) and Yaya (Charlbi Dean), as they go on a luxury cruise. It’s the kind of cruise where Nutella is flown in by helicopter and dropped into the ocean in a Pelican case for retrieval.
Their occupations as models/influencers ensure that, unlike the rest of the supremely affluent people on the boat, they don’t have to pay for anything. Their already fragile relationship is further strained as the eccentric characters on board are carefully introduced. There’s Vera (Sunnyi Melles), the “egalitarian” passenger who insists the whole crew have a swim, and have fun while doing it, or Dimitry (Zlatko Buric), the obese and excessive Russian oligarch who made his fortune in fertiliser.
The whole thing descends into a vulgar mess during the captain’s dinner. The seas become moderately rough and the vomit starts to spray, counterpointed to the haute cuisine being served. Pirates then board the ship, it’s blown up and sinks, and the survivors are stranded on a deserted tropical island.
This final third on the island seems interminable. The film painfully overstates all the points already made in the first two-thirds. As with The Banshees of Inisherin, this is a grandly designed film, making no effort to please everyone. Woody Harrelson is sensational as the drunk Marxist captain, as is Zlatko Buric as his anti-communist drinking pal. The film is unwilling to rest on moral cliches or depend on moral pleasures, and this makes it worthwhile in today’s media ecology.
Netflix’s new production of Eric Maria Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, is a very good – if not particularly inspired – war film. The hypnotic music adds a surreal quality to the images of carnage. We see bodies under ash forming macabre shapes, gnarled figures tangled up in barbed wire illuminated by flare light filtered through smoke – and many other striking images.
The film adeptly captures the slaughter and misery of trench warfare in World War I from the perspective of enthusiastic, patriotic, impressionable German youth. It’s all very well done, but – given the pantheon of excellent “war is hell” films that have appeared over the past 100 years – seems strangely unnecessary, even anachronistic.
Unusually, two action films have been nominated for Best Picture this year: Top Gun: Maverick and Everything Everywhere All at Once. Both labour to be rousing crowd-pleasers, so their popularity is understandable, and both work as throwbacks to the high adventure films of the 1980s.
In the case of Top Gun this is self-evident – it’s a sequel to Tony Scott’s fabulously popular film of 1986. But where Scott’s film is superbly stylish, including all the signature tropes that made him one of the great action auteurs of the 1980s and ‘90s – backlit curtains blowing in the wind, an abundance of haze used in most shots, sparse but effective slow motion – Joseph Kosinski’s film feels derivative and pointless.
It’s thoroughly enjoyable, but also lacks the formal coherence and originality of Scott’s film. Its popularity – its nomination for Best Picture(!) – more than anything suggests that audiences are primed for well-made genre films that don’t try too hard to be clever.
Everything Everywhere All at Once, directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, similarly works well as a romp, a comedic action yarn. It’s funny but with some touching sequences, has charming cutesy characters, and is overlaid with an air of nostalgia (including featuring Jamie Lee Curtis in a role that fronts up to her younger self in True Lies). But it is similarly derivative as well as overlong and pretentious, with its protestations towards philosophy (like The Matrix) a touch silly (but unlike The Matrix, at least this has a sense of humour about itself).
Both Top Gun and Everything Everywhere All at Once play like full-bodied old-fashioned adventures – enjoyable but also completely unchallenging, lacking the formal inventiveness that made many of these kinds of films striking in the 1980s.
Dull, dull, dull
The narrative of the much-discussed Tàr is sufficiently interesting, but one wonders why so many of the formal choices by both director Todd Fields and Cate Blanchett in the lead are so dull?
Blanchett plays a kind of James Gatz/Jay Gastby-esque self-made woman, Lydia (but really Linda) Tàr, a conductor of international repute, world renowned for her interpretations of Mahler (wink wink, he was “cancelled” by the Nazis).
As the film unfolds, it becomes increasingly clear that, even though she (rightly) espouses a kind of ad hominem philosophy that demands that we void ourselves of ego in engaging with art and with masters of the past, she actually cares more about identity than many of those around her. She makes professional hiring decisions based solely on the person of the applicant (rather than on their artistry), to satisfy her sexual predilections. She can chastise a “bipoc” student for outrightly rejecting Bach because he thinks he was a bad guy (which is, of course, absurd), but then chooses musicians for her orchestra based on sexual appeal.
It becomes increasingly difficult to empathise with her when it’s revealed that she has gone so far as to blacklist ingenues who (perhaps) have refused to sleep with her, resulting in a suicide. But by the end of the film we cannot help feeling something for her nonetheless – she has lost her career, her child (with whom she has a wonderful relationship), and her sense of self.
Blanchett is fine in the lead, effectively capturing the character’s combination of arrogance and fragility of ego, but also everything about her performance is run of the mill. And this is generally the problem with the film: aside from its annoying topicality, there’s nothing formally interesting about it.
It is stylistically dull, and for a film about music there is nothing compelling about its soundtrack or score. It’s the kind of film that works almost wholly through exposition, involving discussions of Schopenhauer being a bad dude but his philosophy still being good, for example.
Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis has likewise enjoyed immense popularity. Like most of Luhrmann’s films, while it has a certain infectious energy in the performances and staging at the beginning, it quickly become tedious.
There’s a lot of visual noise in Elvis, and this is the point (showing the relationship between hype and human in the Elvis Presley mythography), but it doesn’t make for an engaging film. Tom Hanks’ irritating performance as the Colonel – knowing, cynical, wry, doing a hackneyed accent – makes parts of it almost unbearable.
Butler is fine as Elvis, as everyone keeps pointing out, but Elvis Presley was better as Elvis – more charismatic and compelling than Butler’s karaoke version. I would prefer Elvis’ performance in a bad movie (say, Easy Come Easy Go) over Butler in this movie every day of the week.
The Fabelmans was similarly enjoyable enough – it’s charming and sweet – but the whole thing is dependent on our knowledge that it’s director Steven Spielberg’s virtual autobiography. There’s not really any genuine drama (although it probably seems like it for Spielberg, because he lived through it) – the only thing that happens is a middle-class family breaks up because the wife-mother has an affair.
There’s just not enough drama to sustain the narrative on its own terms – thus, this depends upon our knowledge extraneous to the film, which seems ironic, given Spielberg’s penchant for arresting style and imagery throughout his career. In other words, the thing that has driven his career – his capacity to create immersive standalone worlds – is absent in his new acclaimed film.
Avatar: The Way of Water is similarly a dull and overlong entry in a dull series. Fans of Avatar may disagree, but this film is almost the inverse of The Fabelmans – this seems to depend too much on our investment in James Cameron as a director, and as a kind of cinematic wizard creating an original world, while the actual substance of the narrative is rudimentary.
Best Film of 2022?
My pick for best film of 2022 would be Kirill Serebrennikov’s Tchaikovsky’s Wife, a hilarious and deeply unnerving examination of the fraught life of the title character in her unreasonable obsession with the composer.
There are a handful of other excellent films that won’t see representation in the ceremony, as usual. For horror afficionados it would be hard to beat Parker Finn’s sadistic schlocker Smile, a kind of cruel meditation on the social media age.
Likewise, Luca Guadagnino’s teen vampire flick Bones and All is a smashing take on the genre, and The Passengers of the Night is a delightful French coming-of-age drama anchored by the unstoppable Charlotte Gainsbourgh.
Sara Dosa’s Fire of Love is one of the most striking documentaries in recent years, following the romance between Katia and Maurice Krafft as they travel around the world documenting volcanoes.
Dosa’s film has been nominated for Best Documentary but not Best Picture, although there’s no rule precluding non-fiction films from this award.
That being said, The Banshees of Inisherin is up there with these films, and most of the other nominees work well as pieces of cinema, which is seldom the case with films nominated for Best Picture these days.
Ari Mattes 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.
Fiji’s top prosecutor has sanctioned charges of abuse of office against former prime minister Voreqe Bainimarama and the suspended Police Commissioner Sitiveni Qiliho.
In a statement today, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions said the charges relate to a complaint filed by the University of the South Pacific in July 2019.
The complaint concerned the actions of former staff members of the regional university.
Former Fiji prime minister Voreqe Bainimarama today . . . charged. Image: Fijivillage News
Public Prosecutions director Christopher Pryde said both men were alleged to have arbitrarily abused their powers and stopped an active police investigation.
Police have been ordered to further investigate other issues as a result of Bainimarama and Qiliho’s alleged interference and more charges are expected to be laid.
Meanwhile, both men were taken in today for further questioning by the Criminal Investigations Department (CID).
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Kept in custody Fijivillage News reports that Bainimarama and Qiliho have both been formally charged with abuse of office and will be kept in custody tonight.
Former PM Bainimarama and suspended Commissioner of Police Qiliho are again being questioned by Police pic.twitter.com/YT3OFyaHNq
— Stanley Ian Simpson (@stansimpsonfj) March 9, 2023
The CID chief and Acting Assistant Police Commissioner Sakeo Raikaci told a media conference tonight they would appear in the Suva Magistrates Court at 8am tomorrow.
Acting ACP Raikaci said that given the seriousness of the charge, the pair could not be granted bail as it was not a bailable offence.
Additional security will be provided for the special court sitting tomorrow.
The maximum penalty for abuse of office is 10 years imprisonment.
The Crimes Act states that if the act is done or directed to be done for gain, then the maximum penalty is 17 years imprisonment.
Republished with permission.
Voreqe Bainimarama and Sitiveni Qiliho formally charged. Video: Fijivillage News
One of those closely watching the extraordinary legal face-off between independent Monique Ryan and her former high-profile staffer, Sally Rugg, will be Josh Frydenberg, who lost Kooyong to the “teal” at last year’s election.
The outcome of the case, going to whether Rugg was forced to work unreasonable hours, could have significant ramifications for parliamentary staffs’ conditions.
But Frydenberg will be focused on whether the fight takes paint off Ryan.
Now in the private sector, Frydenberg hasn’t declared whether he will run again for Kooyong, but he hasn’t lost his political ambition.
He didn’t put his hand up for the Aston byelection, but then insiders didn’t expect him to. He’s concentrated on Kooyong – anyway the Liberals needed a woman in Aston.
If Frydenberg could regain his seat and Peter Dutton lost the 2025 election, one scenario for the Liberals would be for Frydenberg to take over the leadership and position the party to be competitive for the 2028 poll.
There are a lot of “ifs” involved, not least the 2025 result in Kooyong. Its boundaries will be affected by a redistribution. Ryan has another two years to dig in, and independents can be hard to dislodge.
Still, the teals were elected in very special circumstances, helped by the acute unpopularity of Scott Morrison, and some could be vulnerable next time. Ryan might be one of those.
Frydenberg would benefit if the economy were central at the election. But he’d need to make a decision on contesting relatively early, and run a savvier campaign than last time, when he unwisely derided his opponent as a “fake” independent.
There are those who cast doubt on how well Frydenberg would do as leader. Critics argue it’s hard to know what he stands for and that he wants to be popular with everyone. On the other hand, as a former treasurer and former energy minister, he has a wealth of front-line experience.
Frydenberg started out with the label of a conservative, but became more centrist. In 2018 he won the Liberal deputyship overwhelmingly. He carries baggage from the Morrison years, including what some saw as excessive loyalty to the then PM (he was also loyal to PMs Abbott and Turnbull).
Whatever his limitations, however, a Liberal party defeated in 2025 wouldn’t be replete with leadership talent.
Speculation about the significance of a Frydenberg return carries with it the assumption Dutton is doomed to failure. Caveats are required. I recalled being sceptical when Tony Abbott was elected leader. Then he nearly won his first election, and cleaned up at his second.
That said, it would be difficult at present to find anyone who’d put any money on Dutton.
Meanwhile he and his party are struggling for a strategy.
Dutton is, on a range of issues, adopting the “just say no” approach. The Liberals are opposing the legislation for implementing the government’s emissions reduction target (the safeguard bill), and bills for the national reconstruction fund (a kick-start for manufacturing), and a fund to generate a money stream to help provide affordable housing.
The “say no” strategy means Labor can counter Liberal attacks on the government over, for example, energy prices, by pointing out the Coalition voted against legislation last year to curb price rises.
Dutton jumped on the government’s superannuation tax rise, but the subsequent polling did not meet Liberal hopes they were on a winner. Newspoll showed strong support (64%) for the change, including 54% of Coalition voters.
While the Coalition is pursuing negative tactics (as Abbott did in opposition), this doesn’t extend to everything. There is important bipartisanship, for instance, on AUKUS. With the deal on the nuclear-powered submarines to be unveiled next week, Dutton on Thursday reaffirmed the opposition “will support the decisions of the government under AUKUS”.
However, one test coming up will be on the level of defence spending in the budget. Will the opposition say it should be higher than whatever the government settles on?
On the Voice to Parliament, Dutton has yet to declare a formal position. But he’s had nothing positive to say about it, and his party room would have a majority against. If the Liberals oppose it, that’s likely to go down poorly with younger voters.
Among the Liberals’ multiple problems is a weak team, which also lacks balance.
Senior people such as Liberal deputy Sussan Ley and shadow treasurer Angus Taylor are poor performers.
The moderates were decimated at the election, and those left are failing to act as a cohesive influence.
Backbencher Bridget Archer speaks out on issues, but comes across as reflecting and protecting her seat rather than having wider clout within the party.
The Liberals’ Senate leader, Simon Birmingham, is a heavyweight moderate who is not the driving force he should be. Former foreign minister Marise Payne, also a moderate, is neither seen nor heard publicly.
Valuable parliamentary seats are taken up by people with extreme positions, such as senators Gerard Rennick from Queensland and Alex Antic from South Australia.
Scott Morrison is in another category, but should make way for new blood.
The challenge of recruiting good potential candidates and getting them selected is only likely to get worse at a time when a political career has become unattractive to many, and the party erects road blocks to the best and brightest.
At the grass roots, it is vulnerable to infiltration by fundamentalist religious groups. Organisationally, it’s riven by factionalism and incompetent, with the Victorian, NSW and Western Australian divisions dysfunctional. Dutton needs to tackle this, but it’s a near-impossible task.
Among Dutton’s problem is Dutton himself.
As leader, the right-winger has shown himself pragmatic and managed to hold the party together. He is an asset in his home state of Queensland, where Labor is weak. But it is hard to see him making inroads in the south, especially in the progressive state of Victoria. Observers are looking to Aston to give an early reading.
Labor holds government by a very narrow margin, but as things stand now, Dutton’s only route to victory in 2025 would require the Albanese government – which faces some tough economic problems – to fail lamentably in the next two years.
Not impossible. Labor went into minority government in 2010 after a good win in 2007. Malcolm Turnbull turned Abbott’s 2013 landslide into a close result in 2016.
But if Albanese doesn’t squander power, the Liberals would be pitching for a two-stage comeback at best. And Frydenberg just might be back in the play.
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.
Fiji police have apologised for “miscommunication” that led to an incident before the Reclaim the Night march last night that almost led to it being called off, Fijivillage News reports.
Police Chief Operations Officer Acting Assistant Commissioner Livai Driu apologised, saying they had been following the conditions of the permit issued.
However, he said the issue was sorted and officers had been directed to allow the march to continue and to provide security measures.
It was earlier reported by Fijivillage News that police had told organisers amid scenes of “high drama” at the Suva Flea Market when the march was about to begin that there should be “no messages about West Papua or other international matters”.
Minister for Home Affairs Pio Tikoduadua has also apologised over the incident and said that it should never have happened.
Tikoduadua last night tweeted an apology for the mix-up. He said that human rights were paramount, and he had been making that clear.
Suva’s Reclaim The Night rally last night . . . controversial police instructions. Image: Fijivillage News
The minister said the government was working with the police to “undo the mentality that has been the norm [under the former FijiFirst government] over the past 16 years”.
He added that the change was slow, “but it will happen”.
While speaking at the end of the march, Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre coordinator Shamima Ali said they almost called off the march because of the incident.
Again, I apologize for the mix up. It should never have happened.
Your Human Rights are paramount and I’ve been making that clear. We are working together with Police to undo the mentality that has been the norm over the past 16 years– it’s slow but it will happen! https://t.co/zsttk3ko7p
A recent cash payment by the state for the release of three hostages held captive by armed gunmen in Papua New Guinea’s Southern Highlands province has set a “dangerous precedent”, says the opposition.
Deputy opposition leader Douglas Tomuriesa said in a statement that the Marape government had set a bad precedent in allowing ransom money to be paid to the kidnappers for the release of the three hostages late last month instead of eliminating the gunmen.
The shadow treasurer said that thankfully the three captives had been set free without any harm but he expressed sadness that such a bad precedent had been set for the country which was likely to spur similar hostage-taking incidents in future.
How the Post-Courier’s front page reported the release of the hostages on February 27. Image: PNG Post-Courier screenshot APR
Tomuriesa said since the hostages were now free, Police Commissioner David Manning must ensure that the culprits would be brought to justice and face the full force of the law.
He said it was “shameful” that the Prime Minister had contradicted his Police Commissioner by initially denying that any ransom had been paid.
“I now demand the Prime Minister tell the truth and reveal the actual amount of ransom paid to the criminals and why a third party was involved,” Tomuriesa said.
One of three women captives was released on February 23 while the other two were released with Australia-based New Zealand academic Professor Bryce Barker on February 26 after K100,000 (NZ$46,000) had been paid, according to one news report.
“If all the government can do is pay ransom to terrorists, then PNG can forget about promoting tourism and foreign investment in the country as investors will view the country as too dangerous.
“By very quickly resorting to allowing payment of ransom money, the government has now realised that the PNG police and military are very ill-equipped to deal with a dangerous hostage-taking situation.
“The whole country will remain at risk unless the gunmen are made to surrender all their guns, including the high-powered machines stolen from the PNG Defence Force armoury.”
Tomuriesa said the government must now seek specialised training and assistance from friendly countries like Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, or the United States to establish and train a special task force for the PNG police and military.
The special force would need to be capable of undertaking search and rescue operations should similar hostage-taking situations arise in future.
Republished from the PNG Post-Courier with permission.
The United Kingdom’s Illegal Migration Bill, introduced in the House of Commons this week, will look very familiar to Australians.
If passed, the bill would see asylum seekers who arrive in the UK without a visa deemed “illegal” and prohibited from applying for protection under the refugee system. Any claim for protection will be deemed “inadmissible”, and anyone arriving “illegally” will be removed to their home country or a so-called “safe” third country.
The bill also grants enhanced detention powers to the government while removal arrangements are under way. In other words, it lifts directly from the Australian handbook when it comes to punitive refugee policy, including the potentially devastating human impact and disregard for human rights.
The similarities extend to political spin as well as policy. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has firmly backed the bill, vowing this week to “fight” for the legislation. He made his address behind a lectern emblazoned with the slogan “stop the boats” – the same three-word slogan that helped former Australian Liberal Prime Minister Tony Abbott win the 2013 federal election, and launched a particularly dark chapter in refugee policy in Australia.
While the UK government notes that irregular migrant arrivals have “increased notably” since 2019, it is imperative to consider the origin of those seeking asylum.
Afghans consist of the largest nationality group to have crossed the English Chanel in recent months, consistently increasing since the resurgence of the Taliban.
Countries do not exist in a vacuum. When wars and conflict erupt, people are forced to flee elsewhere. This is the fundamental premise upon which the Refugee Convention was drafted in the aftermath of the second world war.
The dark history of Australia’s refugee policy
The reintroduction of regional processing of asylum seekers in Australia in 2012 followed a long history of turning back boats at sea. The turn-backs were drastically stepped up in the immediate aftermath of the 2013 election under the guise of Operation Sovereign Borders.
Both policies remain in place under the new Labor government at an estimated cost of $9.65 billion over the past decade for offshore processing alone. Australia’s policy of sending asylum seekers to third countries – Nauru and Papua New Guinea – has been found to contravene human rights by numerous international bodies.
Australia’s offshore detention regime has been widely criticised as cruel and degrading. Aziz Abdul/AAP
Australian law provides that an application for a protection visa is not valid if made by an “unauthorised maritime arrival”. It also stipulates that such arrivals “must” be removed to a regional processing country.
The UK bill similarly places a duty on the secretary of state to remove any person who arrives without authority, irrespective of their claim for protection under refugee law. This amounts to a dangerous repudiation of the UK’s obligations under international refugee law to respect the doctrine of non-refoulement. It’s a cornerstone principle that protects refugees from being returned to a place where they may suffer harm.
This is but one of the more drastic ways in which the UK bill contravenes human rights law. Home Secretary Suella Braverman has acknowledged she cannot guarantee the bill is compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.
Concerningly, the UK bill further authorises the secretary to “make arrangements for the removal” of an unaccompanied child who arrives alone.
Removal of children is sadly commonplace in the Australian experience, with devastating impacts. More than 8,000 pages of leaked incident reports from Australia’s detention camps on Nauru in 2016 (known as the “Nauru files”) detailed numerous cases of child abuse and sexual assault suffered on the island. More than 1,000 of the leaked reports documented harm to children.
There’s no denying the issue of refugees arriving by sea is complex. But within the tangle of competing arguments, some things are simple. There’s no excuse for harming people.
With the UNHCR estimating the “vast majority” of those arriving in the UK via the English Channel would be accepted as refugees if their claims were fairly determined, this bill undermines the fundamental system of international protection. It represents a dangerous trend by governments eager to follow the lead of Australia’s punitive policy.
Beneath the intellectual discussion of human rights violations lies the devastating human impact of the Australian policy Britain seeks to replicate. Over the past ten years, we’ve represented and heard from many who have suffered irreparable harm from Australia’s refugee policy.
Among them were children who have attempted self-harm and speak about no longer wanting to live. A tall, gentle man who lost his eye and suffered blunt facial trauma while witnessing his friend die during a riot in detention on Manus Island. A wife who watched on helplessly as her husband self-immolated on Nauru. He died in agonising pain two days later from burns the inquest into his death heard were “very survivable”. There were also pregnant women medically evacuated to Australia with life-threatening conditions, shaking on the hospital bed as they recall their ordeal and clutch their newborn.
We have witnessed families separated across oceans; fathers who missed the birth of their children. The ongoing physical and mental harm suffered by refugees in Australia cannot be overestimated – nor can the damage to the soul of the nation.
The Australian experience of deterring and punishing people seeking asylum by boat should serve as a warning rather than a blueprint for the UK. Australia represents an example of a dangerously inhumane and exorbitantly costly policy that has damaged its human rights standing globally. But, more fundamentally, it’s an example of the devastating human toll that will ensue if this bill is passed into law.
Michelle Foster receives funding from Australian Research Council.
Katie Robertson 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.
Macquarie Island, around 1,500km southeast of Tasmania, is more than just a remote rocky outcrop. In fact, it’s the only piece of land on the planet formed completely from ocean floor, which rises above the waves to form peaks that teem with penguins and other bird species, some of them found nowhere else on Earth.
These are just some of the reasons why this unique island, and the seas that surround it, have globally significant conservation values. Our new independent assessment of these values forms the scientific evidence base of Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’s announcement last month of plans to significantly increase protections for the waters surrounding Macquarie Island.
By comprehensively assessing the available data on the marine ecosystems and the many species that live on and around Macquarie Island, our report reveals a subantarctic environment that is crucial for breeding and feeding for millions of seabirds and thousands of marine mammals.
Macquarie Island and its surrounding seas (to a distance of 5.5km) are already protected as a Tasmanian reserve, and the area (this time including seas to a distance of 22km) is also a World Heritage Area. A Commonwealth marine park also covers most of the southeast quadrant of the island’s “economic exclusion zone”, including a sanctuary zone and two seafloor management zones.
The federal government’s proposed expansion of the marine park would cover the island’s entire economic exclusion zone, increasing the area of Australia’s marine sanctuaries by more than 388,000 square kilometres, an increase larger than the area of Germany.
The existing marine park (green), and the proposed expansion (yellow). Australian government
An outstanding spectacle
Macquarie Island is the exposed crest of the 1,600km-long undersea Macquarie Ridge, which makes Macquarie Island the only piece of land in the world formed entirely of oceanic crust.
Macquarie Ridge is one of only three such ridges that impede the eastward flow of a current called the Antarctic Circumpolar Circulation, resulting in distinct differences between the west and east sides of the ridge, which are used in different ways by different species.
The oceanography is further divided north to south by two major ocean fronts, the Sub-Antarctic Front and the Polar Front, creating three distinct bodies of water. They are closer here than anywhere else in the Southern Ocean, and as they interact with the Macquarie Ridge create at least six different large-scale oceanographic habitats.
A haven for penguins and other seabirds. Agami/Marc Guyt, Author provided
This creates an outstanding spectacle of wild, natural beauty and a diverse set of habitats supporting vast congregations of wildlife, including penguins and seals. Fifty-seven seabird species, including four species of penguins and four species of albatross, have been recorded on Macquarie Island, and 25 of these species have been observed breeding there. The royal penguin and the Macquarie Island imperial shag live nowhere else on Earth.
The ridge includes a series of undersea mountains that act as “stepping stones” linking subantarctic and polar animals on the sea floor, such as brittlestars.
Our report shows the area around Macquarie Island is not well represented by the current marine park. In particular, the entire area to the west, and most of the northern and southern parts of the Macquarie Ridge, are not protected by the current marine park, but will be included in the proposed expansion.
Our report also considers several options for protecting the area’s unique ecosystems and concludes that the most sensible approach, given the available data, would be to declare the whole area around the Macquarie Ridge as a marine park, increasing the protection outside the current sanctuary zone, while allowing the current fishery to continue in a habitat protection zone.
This provides the simplest, most expeditious reserve design that is relatively easy to implement, achieves environmental protection and sustainable fishing, recognises the importance of the entire Macquarie Island region, and provides the most resilience to climate change.
The island is already a nature reserve, but its surrounding waters need greater protection. Agami/Marc Guyt, Author provided
Direct human impacts in the area are predominantly due to fishing and marine debris, although climate change is an ever-present threat too. The fishery targets the deepwater Patagonian toothfish using bottom longlines, mostly in the central zone of the Macquarie Ridge. This fishery is generally well regarded for its best-practice fishing methods and commitment to positive environmental outcomes, and this fishing activity would continue under the new plans.
But if new fisheries were allowed to develop targeting midwater species, or new industries such as seabed mining were permitted, these could directly impact the seabirds, marine mammals and other species that live in these areas.
The proposal put forward by Minister Plibersek protects all of the Commonwealth waters in two different zones of a marine park, effectively tripling the size of the current marine park. It protects the marine domain and allows the current fishery to continue without significant changes to current practices or catches.
Restrictions on any potential future fisheries would be determined by the distribution of “sanctuary zones” which would preclude fishing, and “habitat/species zones”, which could accommodate sustainable fishing. Mining would be precluded under either category of protection.
The government’s proposal signals a clear priority for protection over development in this area. A period of public consultation on the proposal will commence in March. Any future development of the marine park would need to be orderly and careful, including prior consideration of environmental impacts. Any changes to the current fishery management arrangements should ensure that the changes maintain or enhance conditions for a long-term sustainable fishery.
More broadly, our report also demonstrates the potential for, and importance of, compiling the most up-to-date available data for any region prior to any formal review process to update Australia’s marine park network.
The authors thank Anthony D. M. Smith for his contribution to this article and the report on which it’s based.
Ian Cresswell received funding from the Australian Marine Conservation Society and the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Andrew John Constable has received Funding from the Australian Marine Conservation Society and Pew Charitable Trusts.
Nic Bax has received funding from the Australian Marine Conservation Society and the Pew Charitable Trusts
Keith Reid does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Madeleine McCann, the British girl who vanished as a three-year-old from her family’s holiday apartment in Portugal in 2007, was back in the news recently as yet another person claimed to be her. It’s a phenomenon fuelled by social media – in 2020 a TikTok trend emerged in which women uploaded images to compare themselves to Madeleine.
The latest claim was quickly debunked by police, but it raises an interesting question: why do some cases stick in the public consciousness? What generates the ongoing engagement and interest?
Put this into the context that two people under the age of 18 go missing every hour in Australia. That’s 48 every single day.
In the United Kingdom, of the 353,000 missing person incidents reported annually, almost 215,000 relate to children. Of these, 98% will be found within 2 days, while the other 2% will remain missing for more than a week – and, as in Madeleine’s case, some will stay missing for years.
The case of Madeleine McCann
I was living in the UK when Madeleine was abducted, and remember vividly the photos of her, and the constant live news coverage from the scene.
And I remember the interviews with Madeleine’s parents. I was working in a forensic centre, and I can recall conversations with criminal psychologists and forensic practitioners about the parents – we were all of the same mind. They were behaving exactly as parents would if their child had been abducted. Their body language, verbal cues, everything said they were telling the truth.
But their innocence was not accepted by everybody, and some people were suspicious because of the parents’ apparent determination to stay in the spotlight. For me, the reason was clear – keeping Madeleine on page 1, at the beginning of every news bulletin, constantly in the public eye and on the public’s mind, was their best chance of getting her back. They were trying to use the world’s media to help find their daughter.
Sadly, it failed, and we still don’t know what happened to Madeleine, or why, and ultimately who is responsible.
But it was that media strategy, fuelled by the parents’ intelligence, perseverance and strength, that made Madeleine a worldwide story. Add to that the pictures of Madeleine constantly circulated in the media, an innocent, angelic, blonde-haired child, and she has become part of the world’s collective conscience.
Madeleine is what social scientists would call an “ideal victim”, a term coined by criminologist Nils Christie as “a person or category of individuals who, when hit by crime, most readily are given the complete and legitimate status of being a victim”.
Once her face was implanted on our public consciousness, the story played into every parent’s worst nightmare: their child being taken by a predator, without leaving a trace, and never seen again.
Madeleine McCann and the ideal victim
It wasn’t that the circumstances around Madeleine’s disappearance were different to others, but the family that changed the script by how they responded. That’s why the whole world knows her name.
The term “ideal victim” can be a little confronting, and criminologists are not saying they are a good choice – but rather that the victim wasn’t engaging in any risky behaviour, they weren’t involved in any criminal activity, they were in essence totally blameless for what happened to them.
This is complicated framing, as people’s unconscious and conscious bias plays into how we judge a victim’s culpability, and ultimately how much we care about them as a victim or survivor.
I’ve spoken about this “weighing of human worth” and our associated interest in some cases over others before. In an earlier piece for The Conversation , I discussed the notion of “White women’s syndrome” and why there is always more media and public interest when a young, attractive, Caucasian female vanishes, when compared to a woman of colour for example.
I used the media storm around Gabby Petito to illustrate this: Gabby was another “ideal victim” – young, innocent, vulnerable, and the target of an abusive, controlling man.
But how has that level of public attention on the case, dissection almost, expressed itself? Well, if you type ‘Madeleine McCann’ into a Google search, you will return around 26,200,000 hits.
Channel 9 created a podcast, which releases new episodes every time there is a “breakthrough”. Dozens of other podcast series have produced episodes on the case.
A comparable Australian story
William Tyrrell is Australia’s Madeleine. William was also three years old when he vanished from his step-grandmother’s home in New South Wales in 2014. Like Madeleine, he vanished without a trace, and there were images of William available in the media, showing a gorgeous little boy, the very picture of innocence.
Who can forget the little boy in the Spider-Man suit? Another ideal victim, and one the media – and the public – took to their hearts.
NSW boy William Tyrrell was aged three when he went missing in 2014. NSW Police
But not all children get the same attention. Do you know the name of Bradford Pholi, a ten-year-old Indigenous boy who disappeared after leaving his family home in Sydney on Boxing Day in 1982?
It’s likely Bradford was murdered, and a $100,000 reward was offered in 2009. While his siblings remain hopeful one day they will find out what happened to their brother, I doubt his face is one you will recognise.
I have never seen it age-progressed to see what Bradford would look like now, as has been done for both Madeleine and William.
Supplied photo made available, Sunday, June 14, 2009, of Bradford Pholi, 10, who was last seen by his mother leaving his home in the Sydney suburb of Dundas on Boxing Day, 1982. NSW Police
Stories about First Nations children do not generate the same attention as that seen for white children, a sad truth and one that must be recognised and faced. Why are we less engaged with stories like Bradford’s? This is a question I wrestle with as a criminologist and as a person.
One positive that can be taken away from Madeleine’s case is that the media strategy used by her parents has changed the ways families of missing children interact with the media.
To gain interest and keep the search front and centre for the missing children, the family has to engage and face the media pack, as hard as that is under such an extremely stressful situation. They need to be the voice for their missing child.
It worked in the case of Cleo Smith, the four-year-old who was abducted while camping with her mother and de facto father in regional Western Australia in 2021. Again, the world watched and breathed a collective sigh of relief when 18 days later Cleo was found.
Sadly, the media strategy has not paid off, yet, in Madeleine’s case, but the world lives in hope that one day we will find out what happened to her.
Xanthe Mallett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
.jpg){kind=link}