Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thomas Murray, Research Fellow (Coastal Management), Griffith University

Storms or tropical cyclones usually get the blame when Australia’s beaches suffer severe erosion. But on the New South Wales north coast at Byron Bay, another force is at play.

Over the past six months, tourists and locals have been shocked to see Byron’s famous Main Beach literally disappearing, inundated with water and debris. In October, lifesavers were forced to temporarily close the beach because they couldn’t get rescue equipment onto the sand. Resident Neil Holland, who has lived in the area for 47 years, told the ABC:

It’s the first time I’ve seen it this bad in all the time that I’ve been here, and it hasn’t stopped yet. The sand is just being taken away by the metre.

So what’s happening? To find the answer, we combined a brief analysis of satellite imagery with previous knowledge about the process behind the erosion and how it has been occurring at Byron Bay. The erosion is due to a process known as “headland bypassing”, and it is quite different to erosion from storms.

What is headland bypassing?

Headland bypassing occurs when sand moves from one beach to another around a solid obstruction, such as a rocky headland or cape. This process is mainly driven by wave energy. Along the coast of southeast Australia, waves generate currents that move sand mostly northward along the northern NSW coastline, and on towards Queensland.

However, sand does not flow evenly or smoothly along the coast: when sand arrives at a beach just before a rocky headland, it builds up against the rocks and the beach grows wider. When there is too much sand for the headland to hold, or there’s a change in wave conditions, some sand will be pushed around the headland – bypassing it – before continuing its journey up the coast.

Read more: King tides and rising seas are predictable, and we’re not doing enough about it

This large lump of moving sand is called a “sand pulse” or “sand slug”. The sand pulse needs the right wave conditions to move towards the shore. Without these conditions, the beach in front of the pulse is deprived of sand and the waves and currents near the shore erode the beach.

Headland bypassing was first described in the 1940s. However, only about 20 years ago was it recognised as an important part of the process controlling sand moving along the coast. Since then, with better technology and more data, researchers have studied the process in more detail, and helped to shed light on how headland bypassing might affect long-term coastal planning.

Recent studies have shown wave direction is particularly important to headland bypassing. Importantly, weather patterns that produce waves are affected by climate drivers including the El Niño Southern Oscillation and the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation. So, future changes in the way these drivers behave will affect the waves and currents that move sand along our coast, which in turn affects headland bypassing and beach erosion.

What’s happening at Byron Bay?

In October and November this year, a large amount of sand was present just north of Cape Byron, from Wategos Beach to The Pass Beach. As this sand pulse grew, Clarkes Beach, and then Main Beach, were starved of their usual sand supply and began to erode.

The sand pulse is visible on satellite images from around April 2020. Each month, it slowly moves westward into the bay. As the sand pulse grows, the beach ahead of the pulse gradually erodes. At present Main Beach is at the eroding stage.

Read more: La Niña will give us a wet summer. That’s great weather for mozzies

Similar erosion was observed at Main Beach in the early 1990s. The beach became wider again from 1995 to 2007. From 2009 onwards, the shoreline erosion slowly began again, and became very noticeable in the past six months.

The effect of sand pulses on beach erosion is not exclusive to Byron Bay. It has been described previously in other locations, such as NSW’s Kingscliff Beach in 2011. In that case, the erosion risked damaging a nearby holiday park and bowling club.

When will this end?

Mild waves from the east to northeast, which usually occur from October to April each year, will help some of the sand pulse move onto Clarkes Beach and then further along to Main Beach. This normally happens over several months to a year. But it’s hard to say exactly when the beach will be fully restored.

This uncertainty underscores the need to better forecast these processes. This would help us to predict when bypassing sand pulses will occur and to manage beach erosion.

Climate change is expected to affect wave conditions, although the exact impact on the headland bypassing process remains unclear. However, better predictions would allow the community to be informed early about expected impacts, and officials could better manage and plan for future erosion.

Meanwhile, Byron Bay waits and watches – knowing at least that the erosion problem will eventually improve.

– ref. One of Australia’s most famous beaches is disappearing, and storms aren’t to blame. So what’s the problem? – https://theconversation.com/one-of-australias-most-famous-beaches-is-disappearing-and-storms-arent-to-blame-so-whats-the-problem-150179

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jed Montayre, Senior Lecturer (Nursing), Western Sydney University

COVID-19 turned 2020 on its head for all healthcare workers, particularly those at the front line of the pandemic response.

Unexpectedly, the need to control the spread of the coronavirus has consumed healthcare systems. The healthcare workforce’s pivotal role in our pandemic response has been in the public spotlight. The experience has exposed knowledge gaps in curriculums, bringing to the fore questions about the education and training of front line healthcare workers.

The pandemic has highlighted the importance of including infection control, mental healthcare and ageing and aged care in all educational programs for health professions.

Infection control

All healthcare disciplines are expected to include infection control contents and principles in the curriculum. However, the teaching of this content was not designed to address a pandemic of historic proportions. Nor are healthcare workers specifically taught to apply infection controls in their workplaces with a pandemic in mind.

Read more: Rising coronavirus cases among Victorian health workers could threaten our pandemic response

Infection control protocol during this pandemic requires all front-line healthcare workers to wear protective personal equipment, observe strict hand hygiene and adhere to contact-tracing measures.

In addition to including the classic “chain of infection” in teaching healthcare, we need to ensure students can apply these concepts in specific clinical settings. For example, aged care homes have a different set of infection control challenges from hospitals. These include potential breaches of isolation and infection containment measures by COVID-positive residents visiting other residents, a lack of dedicated isolation rooms and staff with limited training.

Read more: Should all aged-care residents with COVID-19 be moved to hospital? Probably, but there are drawbacks too

Infection control goes beyond competence in the use of protective gear and isolation measures. Management skills are needed to ensure everyone follows recommended infection control practices within their organisations.

For example, registered nurses in aged care must oversee and manage staff adherence to infection control protocols with their facility. These workers include students, cooks and cleaners, so they too must have the essential infection control knowledge and training.

Ageing and aged care

Older people are unquestionably at greater risk of serious illness or death from COVID-19. To protect them, visits by family and friends are often curtailed, particularly in residential aged care facilities. Not surprisingly, loneliness and social isolation are increasing among older people.

Read more: Social isolation: The COVID-19 pandemic’s hidden health risk for older adults, and how to manage it

Psychosocial issues like these underscore the importance of a focus on ageing and aged care in healthcare curriculums. In Australia, pre-pandemic evidence indicated a lack of ageing-related education for health professionals. This was highlighted by the Aged Care Royal Commission recommendation to integrate age-related conditions and aged care into healthcare curriculums as an accreditation requirement.

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is crucial that healthcare students are well prepared to provide optimal care for our most vulnerable age group.

Mental health

The mental health impacts of COVID-19 have affected all population groups. Preventing further mental health issues is now the main goal.

Read more: We can’t ignore mental illness prevention in a COVID-19 world

However, not all healthcare programs include content that incorporates approaches to psychological distress and a potential mental health crisis. COVID-19 has exposed this gap in the education of healthcare workers who have had to attend to patients’ mental health needs during the pandemic.

Education and training are essential as complex challenges can arise when non-expert healthcare workers manage mental health issues. There’s a need to consider the inclusion in healthcare curriculums of mental health education encompassing the lifespan and life transitions – for example, maternal mental health with pregnancy and childbirth during a pandemic.

Building in pandemic preparedness

The emergence of COVID-19 has highlighted the need for healthcare curriculums to include pandemic preparedness.

Preparedness of course includes clinical competence of healthcare workers. However, a successful pandemic response also requires building resilience at a time of change in health systems. Students need to be prepared for changes in health-service delivery such as the use of telehealth and digital platforms.

Access to healthcare must be maintained even in the midst of a pandemic.

Read more: Even in a pandemic, continue with routine health care and don’t ignore a medical emergency

Upholding human rights

COVID-19 has raised ethical and moral issues relating to the rights of every individual to health. The pandemic has exposed inequalities at every level – for example, rationing healthcare resources for older people. It’s vital that healthcare curriculums integrate content on upholding human rights during a pandemic.

Understanding the social determinants of health in a pandemic also helps provide contexts for infection control, care for vulnerable groups and prevention of mental health issues.

Attention to the most vulnerable groups, people and their families who experienced COVID-19 deaths, and an understanding of universal health coverage are fundamental for healthcare students during this pandemic and beyond.

– ref. When health workers came up against COVID it laid bare gaps in their training – https://theconversation.com/when-health-workers-came-up-against-covid-it-laid-bare-gaps-in-their-training-150289

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kadir Atalay, Associate Professor in Economics, University of Sydney

Throughout the coronavirus recession we’ve been told there’s a balancing act when it comes to lives.

On one hand, lockdowns save lives by limiting the spread of coronavirus.

On the other, they are said to cost lives by winding back economic activity and pushing up unemployment and misery.

Some argue that on balance they increase deaths rather than preventing them.

Some claim the “great lockdown” will be as destructive as the Great Depression. Others talk of sharp increases in suicide rates. Others say it is complex and we just don’t know.

We are able to offer an alternative fact-based perspective, at least when it comes to Australia.

Downturns can save lives

In a just-published discussion paper we have examined the relationship between Australian unemployment and deaths over the four decades between 1979 and 2017 using administrative data sorted by state, age, sex, and cause of death.

Unemployment is a good proxy for economic downturns. As has been happening this year, unemployment goes up when the economy turns down.

On average we find no relationship between unemployment and mortality. In particular, we find no significant increase in suicide rates.

But we do find a significant effect on motor vehicle deaths.

The higher the unemployment rate, the fewer motor vehicle deaths.

In this respect, economic downturns save lives, mainly among young men aged 15 to 34.

We find that for each percentage point increase in the unemployment rate, 70 young lives are saved per annum.

Our estimates imply 425 fewer deaths from road accidents than normal in 2020 if the unemployment rate climbs from 5.1% to 10% in 2020 as predicted by the Reserve Bank.

Separate from our study, the Bureau of Statistics count shows that at times this year we’ve had fewer than normal non-COVID deaths.

Our findings aren’t that unusual. Minimal and even overall life-saving effects of economic downturns have been observed in the United States, Germany, Canada, France, the OECD and the Asia-Pacific.

Potential reasons why were set out by National Bureau of Economic Research economist Christopher Ruhm in a 2000 paper entitled Are Recessions Good for Your Health?

Read more: COVID lockdowns have human costs as well as benefits. It’s time to consider both

He argued that while economic downturns usually come with financial hardship, they leave people with more time to seek treatment, socialise, care for their relatives, and engage in healthier lifestyles. Fewer hours commuting mean fewer road accidents and fewer hours at work mean fewer workplace accidents.

But our findings are different in one respect. In contrast to recent findings for the US, we find no impact of weaker economic conditions on the mortality rates of relatively vulnerable populations such as very young children (0-4 years) and the elderly (65-84 years), nor on mortality due to heart disease, respiratory disease, cerebrovascular disease, pneumonia or influenza.

Health systems help

One reason for the difference between our findings for Australia and those for the US might be that in countries with universal health care downturns don’t deprive people of health coverage.

Canada and other OECD countries with universal coverage also perform better in downturns than the US.

During the current recession there are reasons to be even more optimistic.

Our estimates of lives we would expect to be saved among young men might be exceeded due to the impact of working from home and lockdowns in keeping traffic off the roads.

Road accidents cost lives

Road safety is a pressing problem for Australia.

Sydney ranks in the top 25 most deadly cities in the world for road accidents. Australia relies heavily on the car for transport, with almost 65% of all kilometres travelled and 90% of commuting kilometres travelled being by car.

Nevertheless, we present our findings with caution. The current crisis is unprecedented. They do not preclude an impact on suicides this time, although there’s so far no evidence for one.

They certainly don’t preclude an impact on wellbeing. But it would be wrong to conclude that downturns cost lives overall. In Australia, over the past 40 years, we’ve found no evidence that they do.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

– ref. So you think economic downturns cost lives? Our findings show they don’t – https://theconversation.com/so-you-think-economic-downturns-cost-lives-our-findings-show-they-dont-149711

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By T.J. Thomson, Senior Lecturer in Visual Communication & Media, Queensland University of Technology

Though we take a staggering number of photos each year (an estimated 1.43 trillion in 2020), we share relatively few of these and are using our cameras in different ways compared to the days of film.

Analysing how we use our camera phones, which are responsible for 90.9% of all photographs taken, and the images we share with them can reveal important insights about who we are and what we value.

I examined the lifecycle of a pool of about 5,000 images taken by more than a dozen people living in Australia to see what they photographed, “screenshotted”, and shared in a four-week period in early 2019.

I also interviewed these amateur photographers about how they used their phones to make images.

Women versus men

On average, one in four images on our smartphones is a screenshot, of say, a social media post or recipe.

And out of every four images, about 1.74 are of objects, 1.07 are of humans, 1 is of the built or natural environment, and just .18 are of animals. (The missing .01 percent are indeterminate because they are either underexposed or blurry.

Women and men seem to use their camera rolls differently. Women in the study were much more likely to photograph themselves or have themselves photographed.

They took selfies 8.6 times more often than men and were photographed 3.5 times more often than men. Women documented their possessions 5.4 times more than men.

Meanwhile, men were more than twice as likely to photograph strangers, such as passersby on the street, tourists, or crowds at gigs, beaches or parks.

Read more: From hidden women to influencers and individuals – putting mothers in the frame

A consistent look

Only 6.5%, on average, of the overall image pool was shared by its owner on soial media. Thus, the vast majority of images remained on participants’ camera rolls.

When they did share, nine out of 10 users shared to a single platform. Instagram was the most popular sharing platform, followed by Snapchat and then Facebook.

Photos of people and animals were the most shared, followed by places, and objects.

Participants were keen to share visual media with common reference points — presenting a consistent aesthetic motif to their followers — and images they considered flattering.

Read more: 3.2 billion images and 720,000 hours of video are shared online daily. Can you sort real from fake?

Why people take photos

Interviewees told me they whipped out their camera phones for five primary reasons.

1. Making memories

The urge to hold onto experience is strong. As one participant put it:

I’m getting ready to move so I’m just trying to get as many memories of my dogs as possible.

Another participant, prompted by a photo they’d taken, added:

I was out with my family going bowling and I took this because I wanted to have something as a reminder of that.

2. New experiences, rare treats or first times

These experiences included major milestones, such as the first day at university or moving into a new home, as well as more banal and everyday activities, such as when a normally busy space was uncharacteristically empty. One participant remembered:

This, I sent it [a photo of me working on my laptop in a coffee shop] to my friend and said, ‘I’m here’. It was a Polish coffee shop and no one else was there. No other customers and I thought it was kind of funny.

3. Ideas and inspiration

Some users took screenshots of tattoos they wanted to get, while others captured recipes, people posing, or arrangements of objects they liked. One interviewee said:

I’ll often screenshot photos of influencers I follow to try to copy makeup looks, outfits, how they edit their photos, that kind of thing.

4. Evidence and receipts

Phones were handy to document rental car damage, a builder’s progress, or dubious social media claims. One man noted:

There’s a group in my hometown called ‘[Redacted] Whispers’ and this person was telling a story and it reminded me of a video I had seen and I questioned the authenticity of it … I don’t remember if I shared it to anyone. I just remember taking the screenshot to prove, if need be, that I didn’t believe it.

5. Communication aids

When a contact asks, “Where are you?” or “What are you doing?”, some camera phone users reported they simply take a picture of their location or themselves and send it in response instead of typing a reply.

It’s just easier to send a photo than to explain.

Read more: #travelgram: live tourist snaps have turned solo adventures into social occasions

Our changing visual values

That participants used their smartphones most often to document objects is a testament to how digital technology has changed what we visually value.

Where once pictures of loved ones and travel destinations filled photo albums and scrapbooks, our camera rolls are now filled primarily with mundane and quotidian objects.

Humans came a distant second and environments came in an even more distant third. This indicates we’re using our smartphones for more functional purposes, such as screenshotting a work roster or timetable, compared to when we used cameras for more primarily aesthetic or relational purposes.

But when it comes to sharing, we still value human connection and disproportionately share images of humans over things or places.

As the number of images taken in 2021 is expected to grow again, consider what you photograph and screenshot in the coming year and what this reveals about yourself, your place in society, and your values.

– ref. I studied 5,000 phone images: objects were more popular than people, but women took way more selfies – https://theconversation.com/i-studied-5-000-phone-images-objects-were-more-popular-than-people-but-women-took-way-more-selfies-150080

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Apisalome Movono, Senior Lecturer in Development Studies, Massey University

News of successful COVID-19 vaccine trials has raised hopes in the Pacific that the hard-hit tourism industry will begin to re-open in 2021.

Even before the vaccine announcements, there was excitement in the Cook Islands over a recent New Zealand government delegation to survey the country’s borders and discuss a potential travel bubble.

Cook Islands Private Sector Taskforce chairperson Fletcher Melvin spoke for many when he said:

The New Zealand officials are here, and that has been the biggest breakthrough for many, many months. We are hopeful they will get here and see we are prepared and confirm that we are COVID-free and we are ready to welcome Kiwis back to our shores.

At the same time, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern dampened hopes of a trans-Tasman bubble before Christmas due to different tolerances for community transmission in New Zealand and Australia.

Beyond the ongoing uncertainty, though, the possibility of a Cook Islands-New Zealand bubble raises further questions about how Pacific tourism can and should be revived in general.

Culture and commerce

Our research examines these questions and provides interesting insights into how Pacific peoples are re-imagining the place of tourism in their lives.

The global pandemic has effectively closed Pacific state borders to international tourists for eight months. With thousands of jobs gone and economies undermined, many people in Fiji, Vanuatu, Samoa, Cook Islands and beyond have had to make huge adjustments.

Read more: Traditional skills help people on the tourism-deprived Pacific Islands survive the pandemic

In many cases, they have adapted to the lack of tourism income by drawing on their natural, cultural and spiritual resources. From this we can appreciate the strengths of Pacific cultures and how they might adapt to future uncertainties, including those associated with climate change.

Those affected by the pandemic now report wanting more time for family (including caring for the vulnerable), planting food and fishing, sharing surplus harvests, attending to cultural and religious obligations, relearning traditional skills and strengthening food systems.

Old ways should change

The crisis, while difficult, has allowed people to consider a more regenerative approach to tourism based on well-being and better work-life balance. As one Fijian elder put it:

Tourism must complement our way of life, rather than taking over.

The “old” tourism model is now seen by some as compromising their family’s well-being. Working long hours while commuting daily from a village to a hotel, or spending six weeks away from home at an island resort before getting one week off, is not ideal for parents of young children.

Many are on casual contracts and earn just above the minimum wage: FJ$2.68 (NZ$1.84) per hour in Fiji and NZ$7.60 per hour in Cook Islands.

Most tourism employees want tourism to return, but they hope for better terms, wages and working conditions. While a few called for caps on numbers in heavily touristed areas, others urged governments to open up new locations and promote off-season tourism.

People would also like to see greater local ownership and control of tourism enterprises, including joint ventures, building on existing strengths such as cultural or tropical garden tours and agri-tourism.

Life beyond tourism

Despite 73% of those surveyed living in households that experienced a major decline in income due to COVID-19, 38% were unsure about staying in tourism, or would prefer to find jobs in other areas.

Read more: Sun, sand and uncertainty: the promise and peril of a Pacific tourism bubble

Those interviewed sought more opportunities to pursue higher education, training in IT and trades, and wanted greater government support for creative industries.

This need for economic diversification is acknowledged across the Pacific region. But there has been little progress or policy development by governments to diversify economies in meaningful ways during the pandemic.

Perhaps understandably, given the severe economic pressures, many governments have focused on returning to the way things were. Fiji has enthusiastically urged tourists to return, opening “blue lanes” for yachties and a “bula bubble” for wealthy travellers.

Towards a new model

In this context the pandemic is being seen as an interruption, albeit welcome in some ways, to business as usual. As one Cook Islands elder expressed it:

This time to me is about restoring and renewing things, relationships, and giving our environment time to restore and breathe again before it gets busy, because I’m optimistic we will come out of this. People want to travel.

However, the pandemic should also provide an opportunity for Pacific countries to reset and chart a new way forward. When travel bubbles do open, they should do so in a way that benefits Pacific peoples, complements their way of life, and builds resilience in the process.

Read more: Why NZ’s tough coronavirus travel rules are crucial to protecting lives at home and across the Pacific

If and when Pacific travel is allowed again, the clear calls for culture and well-being to play a more central role in the lives of communities must be heard. One woman, a former resort employee in Fiji, put it well:

This break has given us a new breath of life. We have since analysed and pondered on what are the most important things in life apart from money. We have strengthened our relationships with friends and family, worked together, laughed and enjoyed each other’s company. We have strengthened our spiritual life and have never felt better after moving back to the village.

– ref. Pacific tourism is desperate for a vaccine and travel freedoms, but the industry must learn from this crisis – https://theconversation.com/pacific-tourism-is-desperate-for-a-vaccine-and-travel-freedoms-but-the-industry-must-learn-from-this-crisis-150722

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

The Labor party will hold its national conference “virtually”, before Easter next year, Anthony Albanese has announced.

The conference had been due to happen in Canberra next month but was put off due to COVID.

But some in the party complain that having the conference – which has 400 delegates – online will mean it will be even more highly stage-managed than in recent years. It seems a decision driven more by convenience and politics than health issues given COVID now appears under control in Australia.

Although Scott Morrison has indicated he intends to run into 2022, Labor has to be prepared for an election late next year, making it important for Albanese to keep the conference as predictable and friction-free as possible.

Albanese on Tuesday told the ABC the party’s national executive this week will discuss arrangements for the conference, with the dates to be finalised when the parliamentary sitting calendar is available.

He said the virtual staging of the two-day conference would draw on the experience of the Democratic Convention in the United States this year.

“In New South Wales, we held a party convention here for one day about six weeks ago. So, we have that experience.”

Observers would be able to watch the proceedings, he said.

Labor has already a draft platform drawn up for the conference.

Friday’s national executive meeting is also due to discuss the way ahead for the Victorian ALP. Earlier this year the executive intervened in the Victorian branch and installed administrators, after revelations of branch stacking.

Meanwhile Morrison next week will attend parliament’s question time virtually on three days, because he will still be in quarantine at The Lodge after his recent trip to Japan.

The Prime Minister has been busy with online activities since going into isolation, attending the G20 leaders meeting at the weekend, and before that, APEC, and delivering a speech on Monday night to a British audience. He is also doing some school functions. On Tuesday he shot a video on the latest AstraZeneca vaccine news. The company announced its vaccine was up to 90% effective.

On Tuesday he had a call – by phone – with Indonesia President Joko Widodo after the two saw each other at six virtual summit sessions over the past two weekends, including the East Asia Summit and APEC.

Among other matters they discussed COVID and progress on vaccine trials, as well as economic issues, and agreed to look for opportunities to increase bilateral co-operation further.

– ref. ‘Virtual’ ALP national conference will maximise stage management – https://theconversation.com/virtual-alp-national-conference-will-maximise-stage-management-150749

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gemma Beale, PhD Candidate, Flinders University

Over the course of a single week South Australia was plunged into one of the world’s strictest, and briefest, lockdowns.

The drama, estimated to have cost the state’s economy A$100 million, came down to pizza – specifically, fears the state’s outbreak of COVID-19 was an especially virulent strain transmissable by pizza boxes.

In the end it actually came down to a kitchen hand lying about having a second job at a pizzeria, rather than simply being a customer as he first told contact tracers.

South Australian premier Steven Marshall has said authorities will use “all and every avenue to throw the book at this person”. Members of South Australia Police’s “Taskforce Protect” have reportedly combed through hundreds of hours of CCTV and seized phones, a laptop and a hard drive “directly related to the person of interest”.

It is understandable state authorities would want to signal the importance of truthfulness in this scenario. But the instinct to grasp punitive measures fails to account for the cause of the problem.

This debacle again illustrates the problem of insecure and low-paid work, and the moral jeopardy it forces on hundreds of thousands of people really just trying to make ends meet.

We’ve seen this before, in Victoria, with the problem of nursing home staff and meat processing workers still going to work and not self-isolating despite having COVID symptoms.

Now South Australia has illuminated the problems of workers in “essential” jobs having to moonlight in second jobs, and perhaps feeling the need to lie about it.

We need a holistic response that considers the systemic reasons that force people into such situations to preserve their livelihood.

Read more: Workplace transmissions: a predictable result of the class divide in worker rights

Holding down second jobs

At least two links in the chain of events leading to the South Australian outbreak highlight the problem of precarious and insecure work.

The first is how the pizzeria – the Woodville Pizza Bar – became a transmission vector.

That had to do with a kitchen hand at the pizzeria also working as a security guard at Peppers Hotel, one of the hotels being used to quarantine travellers returning to the state. He apparently caught the virus from a cleaner at the hotel, who caught it from a quarantined guest.

This part of the story has prompted calls for workers at quarantine hotels to be banned from from working second jobs.

To which the obvious retort should be: if we don’t want people to work two jobs, perhaps we should ensure they have enough hours and pay so they don’t need to.

Read more: Uber drivers’ experience highlights the dead-end job prospects facing more Australian workers

Migrants in plight

The second link – the man who lied about working at the pizzeria – speaks to the predicament faced by tens of thousands of people in Australia on visas (in this case, a temporary graduate visa). In a bizarre coincidence, he too was working in the kitchen at another quarantine hotel (The Stamford).

There are an estimated 900,000 foreign nationals in Australia on visas with work rights, almost always with restrictions. The jobs they find are often insecure low-paid casual or gig jobs, possibly cash in hand.

Many of these jobs – in hospitality, for instance – were the first to disappear with lockdowns. And because they aren’t citizens, they have been excluded from federal government financial support.

Read more: We’ve let wage exploitation become the default experience of migrant workers

Address the problem, not the symptoms

Sure lying is wrong – particularly if it shuts a city down.

But it should also be unsurprising in the face of fear – and fear of losing work is central to insecure work.

This is compounded for migrant workers by an additional fear: losing the right to stay in the country, through breaking rules that limit working hours. But they often have little choice, as the only way to make enough money to compensate for being exploited and often earning well below the minimum wage.

What has happened in South Australia is a symptom of the same problem that bedevilled Victoria’s outbreak. It should have been foreseeable. Researchers have been warning about the negatives for years. The pandemic has made them plain.

A punitive and knee-jerk call for punishment is at best another half measure. It won’t fix the systematic problem of precarious work.

– ref. Hating on the Woodville Pizza guy won’t fix a problem that was entirely foreseeable – https://theconversation.com/hating-on-the-woodville-pizza-guy-wont-fix-a-problem-that-was-entirely-foreseeable-150650

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vinh To, Lecturer in English Curriculum and Pedagogy, University of Tasmania

Young children often write as they speak. But the way we speak and the way we write isn’t quite the same. When we speak, we often use many clauses (which include groups of words) in a sentence. But when we write – particularly in academic settings — we should use fewer clauses and make the meaning clear with fewer words and clauses than if we were speaking.

To be able to do this, it’s useful to understand specific written language tools. One effective tool in academic writing is called grammatical metaphor.

The kind of metaphor we are more familiar with is lexical metaphor. This is a variation in meaning of a given expression.

For example, the word “life” can be literally understood as the state of being alive. But when we say “food is life”, metaphorically it means food is vital.

Grammatical metaphor is different. The term was coined by English-born Australian linguistics professor Michael Halliday. He is the father of functional grammar which underpins the Australian Curriculum: English.

Halliday’s concept of grammatical metaphor is when ideas that are expressed in one grammatical form (such as verbs) are expressed in another grammatical form (such as nouns). As such, there is a variation in the expression of a given meaning.

There are many types of grammatical metaphor, but the most common is done through nominalisation. This is when writers turn what are not normally nouns (such as verbs or adjectives) into nouns.

Read more: 4 ways to teach you’re (sic) kids about grammar so they actually care

For example, “clever” in “she is clever” is a description or an adjective. Using nominalisation, “clever” becomes “cleverness” which is a noun. The clause “she is clever” can be turned into “her cleverness” which is a noun group.

“Sings” in “he sings”, which is a doing term or a verb, can be expressed by “his singing”, in which “singing” is a noun.

In these examples, the adjective “clever” and the verb “sings” are both expressed in nouns — “cleverness” and “singing”.

Grammatical metaphor, which is often done through nominalisation like in the examples above, typically features in academic, bureaucratic and scientific writing. Here are four reasons it’s important.

1. It shortens sentences

Grammatical metaphor helps shorten explanations and lessen the number of clauses in a sentence. This is because more information can be packed in noun groups rather than spread over many clauses.

Below is a sentence with three clauses:

When humans cut down forests (clause one), land becomes exposed (2) and is easily washed away by heavy rain (3).

With grammatical metaphor or nominalisation, the three clauses become just one.

Deforestation causes soil erosion.

“When humans cut down forests” (a clause) becomes a noun group – “deforestation”. The next two clauses (2 and 3) are converted into another noun group – “soil erosion”.

2. It more obviously shows one thing causing another

Grammatical metaphor helps show that one thing causes another within one clause, rather than doing it between several clauses. We needed three clauses in the first example to show one action (humans cutting down forests) may have caused another (land being exposed and being washed away by heavy rain).

But with grammatical metaphor, the second version realises the causal relationship between two processes in only one clause. So it becomes more obvious.

3. It helps connect ideas and structure text

Below are two sentences.

The government decided to reopen the international route between New Zealand and Hobart. This is a significant strategy to boost Tasmania’s economy.

Using grammatical metaphor, the writer can change the verb “decided” to the noun “decision” and the two sentences can become one.

The decision to reopen the international route between New Zealand and Hobart is a significant strategy to boost Tasmania’s economy.

This allows the writer to expand the amount and density of information they include. It means they can make further comment about the decision in the same sentence, which helps build a logical and coherent text. And then the next sentence can be used to say something different.

4. It formalises the tone

Using grammatical metaphor also creates distance between the writer and reader, making the tone formal and objective. This way, the text establishes a more credible voice.

While there have been some calls from academics to make writing more personal, formality, social distance and objectivity are still valued features of academic writing.

Read more: We should use ‘I’ more in academic writing – there is benefit to first-person perspective

It’s taught, but not explicitly

Nominalisation — as a linguistic tool — is introduced in Year 8 in the Australian Curriculum: English. It implicitly appears in various forms of language knowledge from Year 1 to Year 10.

It becomes common across subject areas in the upper primary years. And it is intimately involved in the increasing use of technical and specialised knowledge of different disciplines in secondary school.

But the term “grammatical metaphor” is not explicitly used in the Australian Curriculum: English and is less known in school settings. As a result, a vast majority of school teachers might not be aware of the relationship between grammatical metaphor and effective academic writing, as well as how grammatical metaphor works in texts.

Read more: Writing needs to be taught and practised. Australian schools are dropping the focus too early

This calls for more attention to professional learning in this area for teachers and in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programs. This will help equip student teachers and practising teachers with pedagogical content knowledge to teach and prepare their students to write effectively in a variety of contexts.

– ref. Saying more with less: 4 ways grammatical metaphor improves academic writing – https://theconversation.com/saying-more-with-less-4-ways-grammatical-metaphor-improves-academic-writing-147103

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Geoff Hanmer, Adjunct Professor of Architecture, University of Adelaide

Grocon, the Australian construction empire that grew from the family concreting business started by Luigi Grollo in Melbourne in 1948, is on its last legs.

But Grocon, the privately held property development empire headed by Luigi’s grandson Daniel Grollo, will continue to operate.

Media outlets have breathlessly reported Grollo’s announcement that Grocon’s construction business is insolvent, meaning it is no longer able to pay its debts, and that external administrators have been called in (as the law requires) to sort out if the business can be sold or its assets liquidated to pay off at least some of what is owed.

The Grocon group, though, is more than a construction business, having found better money-making opportunites in property development and being a landlord. It is a web of many legal entities and holding companies.

Exactly how much of the web is being put into administration is not yet clear – as a private company, disclosure requirements are fewer than those for public companies (listed on a stock exchange).

But based on Grocon’s track record – and common practice in the Australian building industry – the most likely upshot is that Grocon will cut its losses on ailing entities without affecting the profitable parts of the greater empire.

One thing seems sure, though. Daniel Grollo and other executives will not be at risk of losing their homes and livelihoods. The real losses will be felt by others.

Development beats construction

Luigi Grollo’s construction business began with pouring concrete on small projects. As time went by its projects got bigger. In the 1970s it moved beyond building for other entities into property development on its own account – acquiring land, gaining development approval, building and then selling or leasing the finished product.

Development, which requires a certain amount of vision, access to capital and solid political connections, is the route to making serious money.

Read more: Federal parliament just weakened political donations laws while you weren’t watching

Construction, by comparison, provides limited opportunities for a big payday and plenty of opportunities to make a hash of it.

The landscape for Australia’s “Tier 1” builders – the contractors able to take on the largest projects – has been poor for several years.

Lendlease, for example, announced in December 2019 it was selling its engineering construction business to Spanish infrastructure conglomerate Acciona. The sale followed huge losses on projects such as the Melbourne Metro underground rail project and Sydney’s NorthConnex motorway tunnel project.

John Holland, the builder of Melbourne’s West Gate Tunnel and the Sydney Metro light-rail project, lost A$60 million in 2019. CIMIC Group (previously known as Leighton) made a net loss of A$1 billion.

Grocon’s Barangaroo stoush

The stated catalyst for Grocon’s announcement about its construction business is a legal dispute with Infrastructure New South Wales, the state authority overseeing the development of Sydney’s Barangaroo precinct. Different companies are developing and building different parts of the project.

In 2018 Crown Resorts and developer Lendlease fought and won a legal case against Infrastructure NSW over fears buildings being built by a Grocon-led consortium as part of the “Central Barangaroo” precinct would block harbour views from Crown’s casino hotel and Lendlease’s high-rise apartments in the “Barangaroo South” precinct.

Grocon subsequently pulled out (selling its interests to Chinese partner Aqualand). It is suing Infrastruture NSW for A$270 million in compensation for not informing Grocon it needed to factor in sight lines from the Crown Resorts and Lendlease buildings.

Grollo blamed Infrastructure NSW for “forcing our hand to place the construction business into administration”:

While I have spoken before about moving Grocon away from the construction business model to new initiatives such as build to rent, I did not want to call in administrators.

But Grollo has said such things before.

In October last year Grocon put two subsidiaries into insolvency over a dispute with commercial landlord Dexus involving A$28 million in unpaid rent for space leased in Brisbane’s 480 Queen Street building.

Grollo also declared he was doing this reluctantly but had been forced into it.

Australian Securities and Investments Commission records indicate 27 Grocon entities have been deregistered or cancelled since about 2006. That leaves, by my count, 31 registered companies. How many of these will now be placed in administration is unclear.

Read more: These private companies pay less tax than we do – but reasons remain unclear

A notorious industry practice

The construction industry is notorious for the use of insolvency and administration mechanisms, dominating the statistics out of all proportion to its share of the economy.

Many in the industry see it as a normal business practice.

It’s a cost-effective solution, but it leaves subcontractors and other suppliers owed money in the lurch. It creates waves of bankruptcies among smaller businesses – electricians, plumbers, plasterers and so on – who have often secured business loans with their homes. Many are left destitute. It helps explain the industry’s high suicide rate.

Read more: Is illegal phoenix activity rife among construction companies?

Privatising profits, socialising losses

Is it right for a big operator with substantial resources to slice and dice its operating companies to ensure it continues to prosper while its subcontractor and consultant creditors are ruined?

The construction union – with which Grocon has long battled – has called for a national scheme to compensate subcontractors when a head contractor goes bust.

But this is an invitation to continue to privatise profits and socialise losses.

The first step governments could take is to adopt procurement policies using value-based assessments rather than just choosing tenders based substantially on price.

They should also not try to transfer unmanageable risks to constructors and consultants, including setting unachievable budgets and programs.

This would encourage contractors to submit honest tenders and deliver quality projects without exploiting the smaller players they rely on.

Effective monitoring of downstream activities, including payments to subcontractors, is also vital.

If we are going to have a construction industry that does not rely on the public purse to pick up the pieces, we don’t need another inquiry or royal commission. We do need a co-ordinated effort to fix the obvious problems, including effective laws to stop insolvency and administration being standard business practice.

Administrators and liquidators should have readier access to the assets of other companies in a group and also the assets of directors.

– ref. News of the collapse of the Grocon empire is greatly exaggerated – https://theconversation.com/news-of-the-collapse-of-the-grocon-empire-is-greatly-exaggerated-150546

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Crowe, Professor of Law, Bond University

The New South Wales Law Reform Commission has released its recommendations for reform of the state’s sexual consent laws.

After a process lasting more than two-and-a-half years, the report is a disappointment to survivors and advocates seeking comprehensive reforms.

The review was sparked by the advocacy of Saxon Mullins, the complainant in the high-profile rape case of Luke Lazarus.

A jury found Lazarus guilty of rape in 2015, but his conviction was overturned on appeal. He was then acquitted in a judge-only trial. An appeal court found a legal error in the judge’s reasoning, but ruled it would be “oppressive” for Lazarus to face a third trial.

The Lazarus case highlighted the complexity of consent law in NSW after two trial judges applied the law incorrectly. However, the Law Reform Commission report fails to address the main concerns raised by the case.

Importantly, the reforms would not require defendants to try to find out whether a person wants to have sex before claiming they believed the person consented. This undermines attempts to enshrine affirmative consent in NSW law.

Mistaken belief in consent

The central issue in the Lazarus case was whether he believed on “reasonable grounds” that Mullins was consenting. Judge Robyn Tupman ruled he did, because Mullins supposedly “did not say ‘stop’ or ‘no’” and “did not take any physical action” to resist him.

This approach is concerning, since sexual assault victims often “freeze”, meaning they do not physically resist their attackers. Recent research shows defendants are more likely to allege a mistaken belief in consent where a victim freezes during the attack.

The NSW Court of Criminal Appeal decided the judge made a mistake in failing to discuss what (if any) steps Lazarus took to ascertain consent. However, even if she had addressed this issue, the result might not have changed.

Read more: Queensland rape law ‘loophole’ could remain after review ignores concerns about rape myths and consent

NSW law does not require a defendant to check whether the other person wants to have sex before alleging a mistaken belief. It merely says the court must consider any steps they took to do so.

This means anything the defendant did to ascertain consent, no matter how inadequate, can be used to support their alleged mistake. However, a defendant who did nothing to obtain consent can still be acquitted on this basis.

A survey by the NSW Law Reform Commission found 77.5% of respondents agreed that:

a person who does not take steps to check if their sexual partner consents should not be allowed to argue that they believe there was consent.

However, the review did not embrace this change. It cited concern for “the rights of accused persons” – even though a positive steps requirement has existed in Tasmania and Canada for more than 15 years without apparent problems.

Affirmative consent

The review aimed to promote an affirmative consent standard. This means consent must be active and ongoing throughout a sexual encounter. It is based on “yes means yes”, rather than simply “no means no”.

To this end, the report proposes new jury directions to address widespread misconceptions about sexual violence. It acknowledges the substantial body of peer-reviewed evidence showing the impact of “rape myths” on criminal trials.

The report recommends the law should expressly state a person does not consent to sex if they do not say or do anything to indicate consent, as well as that a person does not consent simply because they don’t physically or verbally resist.

Read more: Review: Louise Milligan’s Witness is a devastating critique of the criminal trial process

These changes could help address cases where the victim freezes during an assault. However, the lack of any positive steps requirement for mistaken belief in consent undermines the recommendations.

A defendant would be unable to argue the victim consented just because she didn’t say no. But the defendant could still use the victim’s lack of resistance to support an alleged mistaken belief in consent – as in the Lazarus case.

Peer-reviewed research has found defendants use mistaken belief arguments to introduce factors that can’t be relied on to establish consent – such as the victim’s lack of resistance, sexual history and social conduct.

A positive steps requirement is therefore fundamental to affirmative consent.

Withdrawal of consent

The NSW Law Reform Commission’s reforms would clarify that a person who consents to a particular sexual act doesn’t consent to a different act. This would cover cases where a person covertly removes a condom during sex or switches to another type of sexual act without consent.

The report also recommends the law expressly state that a person may withdraw consent to sex by words or conduct at any time. This proposal might at first seem consistent with an affirmative consent standard.

However, the change would require a person to actively revoke consent once it is given. This is unrealistic where, for example, a person becomes unconscious during a sexual act or a consensual sexual interaction turns violent.

The proposal on withdrawal of consent has therefore been described as “a wolf in sheep’s clothing”. It would undermine affirmative consent by placing the onus on victims to resist aggressive or non-consensual sexual behaviour.

The NSW Law Reform Commission’s recommendations are a missed opportunity for the state to lead the way in making affirmative consent the law.

Instead, after two-and-a-half years – and thousands of submissions and survey responses – the proposals still fall short of shifting responsibility for sexual violence onto the perpetrators.

– ref. NSW law reform report misses chance to institute ‘yes means yes’ in sexual consent cases – https://theconversation.com/nsw-law-reform-report-misses-chance-to-institute-yes-means-yes-in-sexual-consent-cases-150628

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daryl Sparkes, Senior Lecturer (Media Studies and Production), University of Southern Queensland

In a new series, writers pay tribute to fictional detectives on page and on screen.

Hard-boiled doesn’t come close to describing Sam Spade.

He’s the original Private Investigator on which all other PIs are based. You’ll be very glad to have him on your side, and terrified to have him as your opponent.

Spade was the invention of the great noir crime writer, Dashiell Hammett, who published his first novel in 1929. Spade is often overlooked for the dashing Philip Marlowe, created by the more well-known crime writer, Raymond Chandler, who began publishing soon after Hammett stopped in the late 1930s.

Chandler was clearly influenced by Hammett, with Marlowe and Spade sharing many of the same qualities — tough, no-nonsense, hard-drinking and wise-cracking. Both are morally upright. And they share an eye for the ladies. But I’ve always thought that Spade was smarter than Marlowe, and had a deeper insight into the human condition, especially when that condition involved murder, blackmail and theft.

Serial contender

Spade and the first story he appeared in, The Maltese Falcon, made their debut in the 1920s Black Mask magazine, serialised over five editions.

Hammett wrote four other Spade stories for different magazines, collected in A Man called Spade and Other Stories. He also created the characters of Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man) and the Continental Op (Red Harvest and The Dain Curse).

In The Maltese Falcon, Spade investigates the sudden murder of his partner, Miles Archer, while fending off a myriad of shady characters — Joel Cairo, Wilmer Cook, Kasper Gutman and Spade’s love interest, Brigid O’Shaughnessy — all focused on locating a stolen fabled gold and jewelled black falcon figure. It was so popular it was soon released as a novel.

Humphrey Bogart played Spade in the second film portrayal, which became a hit when it was screeened in 1941. He portrayed Spade as Hammett described him:

Spade has no original … For your private detective does not … want to be an erudite solver of riddles in the Sherlock Holmes manner; he wants to be a hard and shifty fellow, able to take care of himself in any situation, able to get the best of anybody he comes in contact with, whether criminal, innocent bystander or client.

Read more: My favourite detective: Kurt Wallander — too grumpy to like, relatable enough to get under your skin

A hardened cynic

Spade isn’t just some rough and ready thug. He’s got smarts about him. Not just street smarts, but a psychological insight into what drives people to do the things they do. And he knows that motivation is often driven by greed, investigating according to the edict of “Follow the Money” some 47 years before the saying was uttered in the All the President’s Men.

Spade looks at others through a prism of distrust, dishonesty and deceit. But with his own personal honour intact. The fantastic thing about Spade, which you don’t realise until the end of The Maltese Falcon, is that he knows every single person he comes across is a liar and a fraud.

In his cynical and sceptical manner, he never believes anything anyone says to him at any stage.

Spade’s whole masterful performance is in pretending to believe each liar, to lull them into thinking he’s an easily manipulated stooge, while giving each of the other characters enough rope to, in some cases literally, hang themselves.

The magic of The Maltese Falcon is watching the liars try to out lie each other while Spade stands there chuckling to himself and pretending to believe their tangling webs of fiction.

Even when he makes out that he’s desperate, that his life is on the line as the police try to pin his partner’s murder on him, it is only a ploy to get the liars to stretch their version of the truth even thinner, and thus reveal their intentions even more clearly.

That’s where Spade’s charisma comes from. He’s the lone honest man in a room, playing all the players.

Read more: My favourite detective: Trixie Belden, the uncool girl sleuth with a sensitive moral compass

And loving it …

Put another way, he’s also a bit of a sadist. He enjoys seeing the liars turn and twist in the wind, always having the last laugh.

Spade knows there’s no honour amongst thieves so he plays Cairo, Gutman, Cook, and O’Shaughnessy off against each other, seeing who can be the most debased in their greed for the Falcon.

Coincidentally, Bogart played Philip Marlowe in Chandler’s The Big Sleep (1946) five years after The Maltese Falcon. And while Bogart lends both characters his distinctive delivery, there are major differences. Marlowe is not as edgy as Spade. He’s more trusting — a sucker for a pretty face. Spade isn’t any of these.

At the end of The Maltese Falcon, Brigid O’Shaughnessy accuses Spade of just pretending to love her because he is going to hand her over to the police for murder. But he responds, “I don’t care who loves who! I won’t play the sap!”

And even though Spade truly does love her, and will agonise over the decision to do so for the rest of his life, he still turns her in. That’s because Spade doesn’t play the sap for anyone.

He’s smarter and he’s made of stronger stuff than the rest of us. Maybe even something worth more than what he tells the cops is inside the black bird: “The stuff dreams are made of”.

Read more: Beauty and brawn: Lauren Bacall’s noir feminine legacy

– ref. My favourite detective: Sam Spade, as hard as nails and the smartest guy in the room – https://theconversation.com/my-favourite-detective-sam-spade-as-hard-as-nails-and-the-smartest-guy-in-the-room-149295

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ramon Zenel Shaban, Clinical Chair and Professor of Infection Prevention and Disease Control at the University of Sydney, University of Sydney

Airline travel health advice has so far mostly focused on how to stay hydrated and avoid deep vein thrombosis. What passengers really want, however, is a heightened focus on infection prevention and disease control, free masks, complimentary hand sanitiser, and more space between passengers on the plane.

That’s according to our new study, published in the journal Infection, Disease and Health, which drew on survey responses from 205 frequent flyers across the world.

Airline ticket bookings are likely to soar as borders open between New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland.

The aviation industry, which has been decimated by COVID-19, must work hard to restore customers’ faith in their commitment to infection control measures.

Here’s what you need to know if you’re considering taking a plane trip soon — and what the airlines can do to reduce risk.

Read more: Plane cabins are havens for germs. Here’s how they can clean up their act

Plane trips and COVID risk: what you need to know

Adopting a set of well established infection prevention and control measures will help minimise the risk of contracting COVID during a flight.

We would fly, if we had to — but we would follow all the same measures we would if we were catching a train or other form of public transport.

Those measures include, but are not limited to:

• staying home if unwell. Even if you have the mildest respiratory symptoms, such as a slightly sore throat or hint of a fever, you should not go to the airport and you should not catch a plane. Self-isolate and get tested without delay
• washing your hands regularly or using alcohol-based hand rub systematically
• observing physical distancing
• staying seated and avoiding touching your face
• where physical distancing isn’t possible, wearing a face mask.

These are the same long-held set of recommendations you should be following anyway, whether you are catching the train to work or shopping in a supermarket.

Using these well established infection control measures routinely and systematically will render the risk of contracting COVID during a plane trip low.

Passengers want more from airlines

The main finding from our study is that the flying public — in particular, frequent flyers — want more from their airlines about how to keep safe from infectious diseases.

We surveyed 205 frequent-flying adults across Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn on what they thought airlines need to do to restore passengers confidence and sense of security.

We found:

• 75.6% reported feeling “somewhat” to “extremely” concerned about contracting an infectious disease while flying, particularly respiratory-related infectious diseases
• Only 9.8% thought their preferred airline saw their health as an “essential priority”
• 86.8% wanted airlines to provide complimentary hand sanitiser
• 86.8% wanted airlines to provide complimentary sanitary wipes
• 64.4% wanted airlines to provide complimentary masks
• 90.7% wanted airlines to provide more information about preventing the spread of infections, which would make the majority feel safer to fly.

More than half of respondents reported never carrying their own alcohol-based hand sanitiser or sanitary wipes on flights in the past. Female respondents were more likely to carry alcohol-based hand sanitisers or sanitary wipes while flying.

We also asked respondents how often they wore a face mask before COVID, to protect themselves from infectious diseases while travelling by air. The vast majority (83.4%) said they never wore one.

However, the majority (83.4%) reported they would to “some extent” feel safe to fly if all passengers and staff were required to wear face masks while flying.

In other words, our study showed people are really prepared to engage in behaviours to reduce risk — some of which they expect airlines to support and others they would support themselves.

COVID-19 spreads around the world on planes

According to the International Air Transport Association, since 2020 began there have been “44 cases of COVID-19 reported in which transmission is thought to have been associated with a flight journey (inclusive of confirmed, probable and potential cases)”.

It’s important to note COVID-19 is a disease spread globally very quickly, via travellers who are infected.

Like many countries, Australia has imposed mandatory quarantine for international arrivals, which is where the infection in travellers is identified. That shows we — both passengers and airlines — must do all we can to implement proper infection prevention control measures around air travel.

Many airlines have introduced measures to reduce COVID-19 risk, such as temperature screening, physical distancing at check-in, and encouraging masks at the airport. That’s good but the research is telling us passengers want more.

As promising results emerge from the many COVID-19 vaccine trials underway around the world, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce has said:

We are looking at changing the terms and conditions to say for international travellers that we will ask people to have the vaccination before they get on the aircraft.

Vaccination is a really important way to prevent the spread of disease and it’s useful for airlines to signal vaccines are coming and are important to them.

We have some way to go before vaccines are available, and there much we don’t yet know — such as how long immunity from a vaccine might last or if booster doses might be required. So there are a range of factors to consider if airlines are to mandate vaccination for their passengers.

Joyce has also said it would be “uneconomical” to leave the middle seat in every row empty, instead pointing out its aircraft air conditioning units feature hospital-grade HEPA filters, which remove 99.9% of all particles, including viruses.

HEPA filters in closed spaces make good sense and are important. But they are not the be all and end all. If I am next to someone on a plane who unknowingly has COVID-19 and they are not wearing a face mask and they sneeze on me, and their droplets get into my eyes, nose or mouth, then I am at risk of contracting COVID-19 despite HEPA filtration in the cabin.

In other words, the best protection comes from adopting basic measures systematically. That includes staying home, isolating and getting tested if you have even the mildest of symptoms. It means regular hand hygiene, avoiding touching your face, physical distancing, and using a face mask if you cannot physically distance.

Practising these measures routinely, together with other measures like cabin air filtration, go a long way to keep us safe from infectious diseases when we fly.

Read more: Why the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine is now a global game changer

– ref. Worried about COVID risk on a flight? Here’s what you can do to protect yourself — and how airlines can step up – https://theconversation.com/worried-about-covid-risk-on-a-flight-heres-what-you-can-do-to-protect-yourself-and-how-airlines-can-step-up-150735

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Jenkins, Research Fellow, University of Otago

Periods of lockdown represent a massive disruption to people’s daily routines, but they also offer an opportunity to establish new habits.

Our research focus is on what motivates people to change their behaviour, particularly when it comes to physical activity routines.

We compared the levels of physical activity of New Zealanders before and during the country’s major lockdown between March and May. We found 38.5% of our sample were doing more physical activity then they did prior to lockdown. But 36% did less and 25.5% were doing about the same.

More interesting was that people whose physical activity was either below or at the World Health Organization’s (WHO) recommended guideline of 150 minutes of moderate activity per week increased their activity, while those who were highly active pre-lockdown did less.

Understanding motivation

Approved lockdown activities specifically allowed exercise and physical activity as long as people stayed in their local neighbourhood. These messages reinforced the benefits of being active, which are well recognised for both physical health and mental health.

Read more: The challenges and benefits of outdoor recreation during NZ’s coronavirus lockdown

Our study shows 23% of participants decided to increase their physical activity to improve their physical and mental health. Both the New Zealand government and the WHO emphasised the link between exercise and health and our results back it up — being physically active during lockdown was associated with greater self-reported psychological well-being. We measured this using the WHO-5 Well-being Index.

Motivation is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon. There are different types of motivation and each has a different influence on how likely a person is to change their behaviour and to maintain a new habit.

Someone who enjoys being active and sees the value of it experiences what is called autonomous motivation. This provides a strong impetus for people to continue being active in the long term.

In contrast, someone who is active because they feel they have to be (for example, their GP told them they need to improve a health condition) or to avoid feeling guilty about not getting enough exercise is experiencing controlled motivation.

Read more: The perils of perfectionism during lockdown

Our results show that, during lockdown, people’s levels of physical activity were associated with autonomous motivation, reflecting research from other countries.

Previous research has shown autonomous motivation leads to sustained physical activity behaviour. People who recognise and value the physical and mental health benefits of being active are likely to have continued being active once lockdown restrictions were lifted.

The role of context

Two other popular reasons for being active during lockdown were because people had more time (25%) or simply because it was a good excuse to get outside (19%). This might partly explain why some people stopped their physical activity after lockdown.

Once lockdown finished, the extra spare time many people reported was likely reduced again. Similarly, once restrictions were lifted, the use of physical activity as an excuse to get outside wasn’t necessary.

Autonomous motivation is not the only influence on whether physical activity is sustained or not.

Read more: Home cooking means healthier eating – there’s an opportunity to change food habits for good

Habits are formed as a result of repeated behaviours. Once a habit has been formed, it becomes automatic, thus taking very little to no conscious cognitive effort to maintain.

A key feature of habit formation is the role of context. If the context is kept constant during the early days of a new behaviour, it is more likely to become a habit. During lockdown, people spent a lot of time in and around one specific context — their home.

Consistently undertaking activities in the same location, possibly at the same time (another influence on successful habit formation), would have helped make physical activity habitual.

But this mechanism works both ways. When “bad” habits are formed, they are often more difficult to break.

Holding on to good habits

Our research shows lockdown prompted people to make changes. But then the end of lockdown changed the context in which new habits were formed, which might explain why activity levels dropped again.

That’s not to say these habits are lost forever. It just takes a bit of conscious effort to transpose the habit to a new context — to non-lockdown real life. Having autonomous motivation will support this recommitment.

If you find yourself less active now compared to the lockdown period, you can use this time as an opportunity for another reset. Think about why being physically active is important to you.

Whether to experience all the wonderful health benefits, as a chance to reconnect with family and friends, or any other reason you value, you can use this motivation to recommit to new habits. Identify times and places to be physically active, and repeat.

– ref. Why some people find it easier to stick to new habits they formed during lockdown – https://theconversation.com/why-some-people-find-it-easier-to-stick-to-new-habits-they-formed-during-lockdown-149438

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kathryn Williams, Professor in environmental psychology, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, University of Melbourne

With three hearts, blue blood, no bones and eight limbs attached to a bulbous head, octopuses seem like they’re from another planet. But in My Octopus Teacher, the hugely popular nature documentary on Netflix, these cephalopods as not only presented as remarkable — but relatable.

The documentary seeks to evoke empathy by telling a story about the bond between a human and a wild octopus off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa.

Burnt out film maker Craig Foster seeks solace in the ocean. He gains the trust of an octopus through daily visits to her world, and presents an engrossing story of her short life and its impact on him.

As a group of conservation social scientists researching how people relate to the natural world, we are curious about what this type of storytelling might mean for wildlife conservation. Let’s look at what the research says.

Empathy with non-humans

Scientific literature is increasingly recognising the importance of storytelling in science, including to help people empathise with the natural world and build support for conservation.

Stories encourage empathy by helping people experience events from the perspective of others. One feels and responds to the world through anothers’ “eyes” — or tentacles — and this shift of viewpoint is linked to the feeling of being transported to “another world”.

Read more: Understanding others’ feelings: what is empathy and why do we need it?

My Octopus Teacher transports viewers to the world of an amazing kelp forest, where one may sense trust and intimacy as the octopus wraps her tentacles around the narrator’s finger. Or distress as the octopus is hunted by a shark. And joy as she cleverly evades the threat.

In fact, research shows empathising with other animals or plants can promote positive relationships between humans and wildlife.

A 2007 experiment, for example, asked people to view photographs of an injured bird or felled tree and to either imagine how the bird or tree felt or to view the photographs objectively.

At the end of the experiment, people who empathised were more likely to express concern for the bird or tree and donate to an environmental charity.

Portraying an octopus as ‘human-like’ can be tricky

But stories that engage empathy can still bring challenges for conservation. One reason relates to concerns about anthropomorphism — ascribing human characteristics to things other than humans.

Some viewers may see this in, for instance, the narrator’s suggestion the octopus “dies for her offspring” or “suffers” from losing an arm.

The relationship between anthropomorphism and conservation is hotly debated.

Some scientists say anthropomorphism distorts scientific knowledge.

For marine biologist Zoë Doubleday in an interview with Australian Geographic, the suggestion the octopus “dies for her offspring” implies a moral decision rather than a biological imperative, which was among the parts of the film she sees as anthropomorphic.

Others warn against imposing human ways of seeing the world onto nature. Human ideas of social interaction may cloud the way viewers interpret scenes of the octopus resting on Foster’s chest, leaving what the octopus actually seeks with such behaviour unexplored.

Read more: ‘Compassionate conservation’: just because we love invasive animals, doesn’t mean we should protect them

On the other hand, there are arguments that “appropriate anthropomorphism” can promote conservation. Showing an octopus is intelligent or feels pain would be considered appropriate as it’s consistent with scientific understanding, and could raise awareness of an animal that rarely features in conservation campaigns.

Research from the US earlier this year suggests people who attribute “human-like” qualities of free will and emotions to animals are more likely to place value on humans and wildlife co-existing — a key conservation goal.

The slippery boundary between humans and non-humans is at the heart of My Octopus Teacher. But as viewers respond in different ways to how animals are depicted in stories, where we “draw the line in the sand” depends on individual values and cultural norms.

From empathy to action

Another challenge in using stories to promote conservation relates to whether empathy actually promotes action.

Empathy can cause distress if there’s no clear way to act in response to those feelings. So it’s worth reflecting on the lack of any obvious “call to action” in My Octopus Teacher — the film doesn’t explicitly ask us to donate money or change our behaviour such as what we eat.

We do learn from the epilogue that Craig Foster went on to establish The Sea Change Project to raise awareness of South Africa’s kelp forest. But the viewer is largely left to draw their own conclusions about how to respond to the empathy evoked.

Empathy can also lead to people backing the welfare of familiar species over less relatable — but still important — ones. For example, viewers may be less concerned for the welfare of the many pyjama sharks that hunt the octopus.

Some conservation scientists argue empathy should not be a moral code for conservation since it could undermine support for some actions that protect ecosystems, such as killing invasive, but charismatic, species like feral horses and cats.

Read more: One cat, one year, 110 native animals: lock up your pet, it’s a killing machine

This isn’t much of a risk in My Octopus Teacher, which actually says a lot about the importance of ocean ecosystems as a whole. The narrator talks about his re-found love for the ocean, its wildness, and the connections he observes between animals and plants.

Even so, these connections to the wider system may be outshone by the compelling story of one human and one octopus.

Stories for conservation

We conclude the emotive approach to storytelling used in My Octopus Teacher could be positive for wildlife conservation. There is certainly evidence that empathy can drive concern for wildlife as well as positive action.

The impact on conservation will, however, depend on how viewers respond to the emotive qualities of the story. Do they dismiss it as overly sentimental, feel empathy for just one octopus, or concern for the ocean ecosystem she inhabits? It will also depend on whether viewers can imagine positive ways to act on their feelings.

Read more: People are ‘blind’ to plants, and that’s bad news for conservation

We think the world needs more stories like My Octopus Teacher. We encourage conservationists to communicate through stories, making sure these stories evoke empathy not only for individual animals and plants but for whole communities of living beings, and that they suggest multiple pathways for conservation action.

And we hope many more people will watch and discuss this wonderful film, that viewers might “slowly start to care about all the animals” as Craig Foster did, and consider acting on their empathy‚ for example, by donating to marine conservation organisations or buying certified sustainable seafood.

– ref. Empathy in conservation is hotly debated. Still, the world needs more stories like My Octopus Teacher – https://theconversation.com/empathy-in-conservation-is-hotly-debated-still-the-world-needs-more-stories-like-my-octopus-teacher-149975

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lennart van Maldegem, Postdoctoral Fellow, Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University

Sponges are the simplest of animals, and they may stand at the root of all complex animal life on Earth, including us humans. Scientists study the evolution of the earliest sponges, hundreds of millions of years ago, to learn about the conditions that led life to develop from single-celled amoeba-like creatures to the large, mobile and even intelligent animals that surround us today.

Exactly when and how animals emerged on our planet is a subject of fierce debate among scientists. While the most ancient sponge fossils ever found are around 540 million years old, some have argued that fossil molecules dating from 635 million years ago are evidence of earlier animal life.

However, we have now shown that these fossil molecules may actually have been produced by algae and later transformed by geological forces to resemble traces of animal fats. Our international team of scientists, from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, the University of Bremen, the Australian National University, the University of Strasbourg, CSIRO and Caltech, have outlined our discoveries in two complementary papers published in Nature Ecology and Evolution today.

Ancient fat in the limelight

The oldest fossil remnants of sponges that can be recognised in ancient rocks are around 540 million years old and date to the early Cambrian period. But there are yet older fossils of animals that belong to the biota of the Ediacara period.

Among the enigmatic Ediacaran creatures that lived up to 40 million years before the “Cambrian explosion” of complex life was an oval-shaped organism called Dickinsonia. It could exceed one meter in size and its segmented body is popularly depicted as something like a quilted air-mattress.

Read more: Friday essay: trace fossils – the silence of Ediacara, the shadow of uranium

A recent study detected fossil cholesterol, 558 million years old, in Dickinsonia fossils. Cholesterol is a characteristic animal fat, so this suggests that Dickinsonia really was a genuine animal rather than a fungus or something else.

But even older than these cholesterol traces found in body fossils are fossilised organic molecules found alone. In 2009, a team of scientists discovered molecules called sterols in 635 million-year-old sediments in Oman on the Arabian Peninsula that once was the bottom of an inland sea.

At the time the study was conducted, the only organisms that were known to produce similar sterols were specific sponges. Here was the long-sought earliest evidence for animals in the world.

What is more, the fossil “sponge sterols” were found in rocks of this age around the globe, suggesting that these animals were very abundant, possibly covering much of the ocean floor.

This exciting discovery suggested that the ancient fat recovered from rocks in Oman represented some of the first recognisable traces that animals left on our planet. But do ancient fat signatures alone really suffice to reconstruct early animal evolution?

Geological time takes its toll

Unfortunately, interpretation of fossil sterols from million-year-old rocks may not be as straightforward as comparing it to the sterols of living organisms. After an organism dies, its remains settle on the bottom of the ocean. They get buried deeper and deeper as sediment builds up, and as the temperature rises, the biological molecules begin to change.

To the disappointment of us scientists, most knowledge about organisms of the past gets erased by these changes. The most informative parts of the molecules are also the most fragile, and they disappear over time to leave behind a more generic, chemically rigid skeleton.

We wondered whether other changes might occur as well, potentially producing molecules that look like fossil sterols of modern sponges but actually have nothing to do with animals. Working in two groups, we approached this question from different ends.

Deceptive alterations

One study, headed by Lennart van Maldegem and Benjamin Nettersheim, focused on sterol molecules preserved in sediments up to 800 million years old. It was thought that these molecules might extend the geological record of animals even deeper into Earth’s history than the famous Oman signatures.

In these sediments, the study uncovered a significant connection between some of the sponge-associated molecules and compounds known to be generated through geological alterations, indicating that they shared the same origin.

To verify this hypothesis, we then carried out laboratory experiments to simulate the effect of geological heating on particular molecules produced by algae. The resulting molecular signatures were surprisingly similar to those of the ancient rocks. So the fossil fat provides interesting insights into the molecular make-up of early algae, but unfortunately does not illuminate early animal evolution.

The second study, led by Ilya Bobrovskiy, focused on green algae themselves. Today they are mainly common in ponds, rivers and tidal pools, but between 500 million and 650 million years ago they dominated oceans all over the world.

By heating green algal molecules in the laboratory – similar to what happens to molecules in rocks – this study showed that some of the most common sterols of green algae can be easily altered into sponge-like molecules. This indicates that also the ancient Oman signature may represent sterols that were originally produced by primitive algae and subsequently altered by geological processes. It turns out that even ancient fat can be deceptive.

Oldest evidence of animals only 20 million years before the Cambrian Explosion

Together, our two studies demonstrate that sponge-associated molecules in ancient rocks are not a tell-tale sign of animals. Instead, they were most likely generated by the remains of common algae exposed to geological heating.

These results should now finally settle the long-lasting debate surrounding the oldest molecular traces of early animals. There currently is no evidence that sponge-like animals conquered the oceans before 540 million years ago, when the first unambiguous fossils of sponges and most other groups of animals start to appear in the geological record. The earliest evidence for animals on Earth is now the 558 million-years-old Dickinsonia and other Ediacaran animals.

Read more: Evolution’s ‘big bang’ explained (and it’s slower than predicted)

– ref. Ancient sponges or just algae? New research overturns chemical evidence for the earliest animals – https://theconversation.com/ancient-sponges-or-just-algae-new-research-overturns-chemical-evidence-for-the-earliest-animals-150635

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daniel Cooper, Lecturer at Griffith University, Griffith University

US President Donald Trump’s time in the White House is coming to an end. But, as has become obvious over the past few weeks, he is unlikely to deliver a gracious concession speech.

Instead, the president has spent much of his time since the November 3 election plotting ways to undo what has turned out to be a rather clear victory for President-elect Joe Biden – all credible media outlets have given Biden 306 electoral college votes to the outgoing president’s 232. The successful candidate needs to amass 270 electoral college votes to win the presidency.

Read more: Joe Biden wins US presidential election as mail-in votes turn key states around

Time is simply running out for Trump. By December 8, all states are required to certify their results, with the electors in each state to cast their votes by December 14. The inauguration of the next president takes place on January 20 2021.

None of this should obscure the anti-democratic coup d’état Trump is attempting as he refuses to concede defeat. However, it is unlikely to succeed.

His legal challenges alleging fraud and misconduct are close to running their course. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled against his claim that election “observers” were too far away in Philadelphia from workers counting ballots. In Georgia, a hand recount has finished with Biden confirmed the victor. And Michigan lawmakers appear ready to defy the president, who now seems intent on wreaking havoc on the certification process.

Trump’s efforts to undermine the legitimacy of the election are real. His attempt to influence Republican state legislators, in effect to persuade them to replace electors committed to voting for Biden with electors ready to vote for Trump, is profoundly undemocratic. Under a winner-takes-all system, Michigan’s 16 electoral college votes should be going to President-elect Biden, the clear winner of the state by almost three percentage points.

If Trump had succeeded in overturning the results, one could go as far as questioning America’s status as a liberal democracy. Not since Southern secessionists contested the legitimacy of Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860 has a single actor been so nefarious in their attempts to undermine an incoming president.

Look no further than Trump’s actions on the transition. With over 250,000 Americans dead from COVID-19, and case numbers exploding around the country, one would think an orderly transition in which the incoming president is given access to experts knowledgeable about the country’s readiness for mass distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine would be an urgent and unquestioned priority.

But not in Trump’s White House. The General Services Administration, run by a political appointee of the president, must certify Biden as the winner before the incoming administration is given access to top public health officials.

Such certification will eventually take place, as the president simply runs out of options. We suspect he will grudgingly acknowledge he will not be president for the next four years, repeating a never-ending series of fabrications about the legitimacy of the 2020 election. His arguments will resonate with his “base” and will have consequences beyond this election cycle.

Analysis by the Pew Research Center finds:

While a 59% majority of all voters say elections in the United States were run and administered well, just 21% of Trump supporters have a positive view of how elections were administered nationally. Among Biden supporters, 94% say the elections were run and administered well.

The magnitude of these differences is stark and suggests Biden will have much work to do in bringing the country together – if indeed that is possible. Biden himself is attempting to restore moral leadership to a country torn apart by pandemic, racial division and illiberal tendencies in the executive branch of government.

Rhetorically, Biden has hit many of the right notes, emphasising themes of unity and national healing. How this will play out in a policy sense will be seen once he takes office.

Of course, Trump will continue to make life difficult for the incoming Biden administration. Some reports suggest he is already considering running for office in 2024.

So, it should not be surprising if the outgoing president leaves a number of surprises for President-elect Biden. Some press reports in the US are stating that on Middle East policy, trade with China, securing oil drilling leases in Alaska, and the Iran nuclear deal – which Biden may wish to rejoin – the Trump team is doing its best to reduce the incoming administration’s policy options.

Political theorist David Runciman argues that in democracies molehills are often made out of mountains. Vote counting, constantly updating vote tallies, failed legal challenges, recounts, the wearing effects of days of politics dominating life, Biden’s non-spectacular calmness, certification and the meeting of the Electoral College will turn this post-election mountain into a molehill as Trump’s attempted coup will eventually fail.

Read more: Joe Biden wins the election, and now has to fight the one thing Americans agree on: the nation’s deep division

However, Trump has regularly shown us that, in the internet age, mountains can also be made out of molehills. The president’s lies and tweets have turned his presidency into a kind of reality TV show that has in turns transfixed, energised or horrified much of the world. Nevertheless, the show is in its final season and has not been renewed.

We are reminded of an article Rebecca Solnit wrote during the earliest days of the Trump presidency. In it, she presciently captures the predicament in which Trump now finds himself. Although his base and a large number of Republicans still support him, Trump has always surrounded himself with loyal followers reluctant to question their leader’s judgment and authority. This produces a form of isolation that is of Trump’s own making, a consequence of the man’s temperament and unwillingness to tolerate uncomfortable truths.

Reflecting on Trump-like leaders, Solnit explained:

In the end there is no one else in their world, because when you are not willing to hear how others feel, what others need, when you do not care, you are not willing to acknowledge others’ existence. That’s how it’s lonely at the top. It is as if these petty tyrants live in a world without honest mirrors, without others, without gravity, and they are buffered from the consequences of their failures.

Of course, sooner or later Trump will realise the presidency must be vacated. He will have to face the one thing in his life he has always tried to avoid: defeat.

– ref. Is Trump’s truculence an attempted coup or the last-ditch efforts of a man whose star is fading? – https://theconversation.com/is-trumps-truculence-an-attempted-coup-or-the-last-ditch-efforts-of-a-man-whose-star-is-fading-150617

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Hart, Senior Research Fellow, University of Melbourne

COVID-19 has changed the way we live, work and interact with one another. It has also changed the way we move, exercise, shop, prepare food, and eat.

During the pandemic, we’ve seen marked increases in reports of mental distress across the board. But Australian and international research suggests lockdown measures have presented unique challenges for people living with eating disorders.

Eating disorders are complex mental illnesses

Eating disorders include anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder and other diagnoses. They centre around disordered eating (for example, fasting and dieting, binge eating, or purging behaviours), and often include problems with body image.

Eating disorders are frequently associated with high levels of depression and anxiety.

For some people with these conditions, rigid routines (around exercise, food preparation or eating habits), are a way of coping with symptoms and distress.

It’s no secret the pandemic has significantly disrupted our usual routines. For example, working from home may have led people to be more sedentary, or allowed more time for exercise. Social distancing has meant we’ve spent less time seeing others and sharing meals.

COVID-19 restrictions and social distancing measures, though imperative to reduce the spread of the virus, have resulted in a significant rise in psychological distress, especially for people experiencing social isolation, reduced or uncertain employment, financial strain, or health concerns.

We know people with existing mental health problems have been particularly vulnerable. However, people with eating disorders are vulnerable not only to these mental stressors; but also to the physical changes to everyday routines, and social conversations about eating and body weight which have popped up during lockdowns.

Read more: How many people have eating disorders? We don’t really know, and that’s a worry

What does the research say?

Research published early in the pandemic predicted COVID-19 and the associated restrictions may increase eating disorder risk in a few important ways:

• disruptions to daily routines and reduced access to social supports

• increased exposure to anxiety-provoking media (messages about possible links between high body mass index and COVID, or joking on social media about weight gain during lockdown)

• increased use of videoconferencing where people are exposed to their own image on camera

• anxiety about contracting COVID-19 — the authors suggested this may lead people with eating disorders to engage in dieting for perceived immune system benefits.

Read more: Greater needs, but poorer access to services: why COVID mental health measures must target disadvantaged areas

Australian researchers conducted what was to our knowledge the first published study on disordered eating behaviours during COVID-19. Participants with eating disorders reported a worsening of symptoms — they were restricting their food consumption, binge eating and engaging in purging behaviours more often. They also reported doing more exercise, and high levels of depression, anxiety and stress.

Studies from around the world have since shown similar results. They’ve also found people with eating disorders have reported increased fears about not being able to find foods consistent with meal plans, while disruptions to routine have led to heightened psychological distress and worsening of eating disorder symptoms.

It comes as little surprise demand for eating disorder support has increased significantly. The Butterfly Foundation — Australia’s leading support organisation for people affected by eating disorders and body image issues — has reported a 57% increase in calls to its helpline over the course of the pandemic.

Similarly, inpatient and outpatient services around Australia — particularly in Victoria where residents experienced a prolonged second lockdown — have seen demand increase, resulting in longer wait lists for eating disorder services.

Looking ahead

Although we still don’t know what the long-term psychological effects of COVID-19 will be, previous pandemics such as SARS have taught us these sorts of crises can result in long-term mental health impacts, and may trigger the onset of mental illness, including depression and anxiety.

We don’t know yet conclusively whether the pandemic has triggered the onset of eating disorder symptoms or increased the incidence of these conditions. It doesn’t make it any easier that our understanding of the prevalence of eating disorders in Australia was poor to begin with.

But it does seem highly likely that we will see such increases. The information we have so far suggests pandemic-related challenges can increase the risk for people with eating disorders, or those who may be vulnerable to developing them, in many and varied ways.

Read more: People with eating disorders saw their symptoms worsen during the pandemic – new study

In addition, some research suggests food insecurity is associated with increases in eating disorders, and binge eating in particular.

So even if the pandemic is brought to an end with widespread vaccination, if the associated economic recession results in ongoing disruptions to food supply chains, or in impoverished households having limited or unreliable access to food, we may see further increases in eating disorders, well beyond the life of COVID-19.

It’s critical clinical services and support organisations provide extra support to these groups, not only during the pandemic, but for a significant amount of time after the crisis has resolved. This includes increased access to treatment, as well as online eating disorder supports like chatbots, and telephone hotlines.

If this article has raised concerns about body image or eating disorders, please contact the Butterfly Foundation national hotline on 1800 334 673, or visit their website.

– ref. COVID has presented unique challenges for people with eating disorders. They’ll need support beyond the pandemic – https://theconversation.com/covid-has-presented-unique-challenges-for-people-with-eating-disorders-theyll-need-support-beyond-the-pandemic-148903

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Doctor of Botany, University of Melbourne

As we come to the end of spring, look up from the footpath or at the park, and you may spot the fiery flowers of the silky oak, Grevillea robusta.

You may already be familiar with grevilleas – perhaps you have low- growing ground cover and shrub species in your garden.

Some people love the brilliant red, yellow, orange or white flowers of grevilleas. They’re also nesting and roosting havens for small native birds, and so people may plant them to attract wildlife.

Of all the grevillias, the silky oak is the one that catches my eye. It’s the largest and tallest of the species, reaching up to 30 metres. They’re now blooming along the east coast and in some inland places – like huge orange light bulbs dominating the skyline.

Strong like oak

Grevilleas have an ancestry older than dinosaurs. They originated on the super-continent Gondwana, and are closely related to banksias, waratahs and proteas.

Today, the 360 species of grevilleas occur in Indonesia and Australia and are a diverse group. Their colourful, distinctive flowers lack petals and instead consist of a long tube known as a “calyx”, which splits into four “lobes”.

Read more: Spring is here and wattles are out in bloom: a love letter to our iconic flowers

Like most other grevillea, silky oak possesses proteoid or cluster roots, which are dense and fine. These roots greatly increase the absorbing surface area and allow plants to thrive in nutrient-deprived soils.

The word “robusta” refers to the fact that the timber is strong like real oak. The freshly split wood has a silky texture, and a pattern and light colour resembling English oak – hence the common name “silky oak”.

Watch out for the cyanide

Grevilleas literally drip nectar, much to the delight of native birds and bees. Aboriginal people enjoyed the sweet nectar straight from the plant or mixed with water — the original lolly water.

But you have to know which species to taste as some, including the silky oak, contain hydrogen cyanide that could make you ill.

Like other grevilleas the silky oak also contains tridecyl resorcinol, which causes an allergic reaction leading to contact dermatitis. The chemical is similar to the toxicodendron in poison ivy.

So when working with silky oaks, you’d be wise to wear gloves, a face mask, protective eye wear (or face shield) and long sleeved clothing. Washing hands and showering at the end of the day is also recommended.

A prized timber

Silky oak timber was widely used in colonial times. Then it was marketed as “lacewood”, and that name persists today among some who use it.

Silky oak veneer was used widely in colonial table tops and other furniture. Over the years, silky oak has also been used to make window frames because it is resistant to wood rot.

Overseas, silky oak timber is still widely grown, in timber plantations and as windbreaks.

Read more: Here are 5 practical ways trees can help us survive climate change

But it’s not widely available in Australia, due to low market demand – the allergens and cyanide it contains means people are generally reluctant to work with it. However silky oak is still highly prized by those who make guitars, and wood turners who make bowls and cabinets.

In the garden

Although an evergreen tree, some specimens are almost semi-deciduous, losing most of their foliage just prior to flowering.

Some specimens of silky oak can be a bit scraggly in their canopy form. They can benefit enormously from a bit of formative pruning when they are young, and perhaps some structural pruning from a good arborist as they get older. A little attention at the right time will be amply rewarded with a safe and great looking tree that can live for 150 years or more.

Silky oak is drought-tolerant. In dry times they often flower a bit later than their usual October blooming, providing a big splash of colour in otherwise drab and difficult years.

The trees can be vulnerable to frost when young, but grow well once taller. This makes the silky oak a potential winner as climate change brings warmer, drier weather.

Silky oaks have been declared an environmental weed in parts of New South Wales and Victoria where it grows outside its native distribution range. They’re also considered an invasive or invader plant in Hawaii and South Africa. However Grevillea robusta is declining in its natural rainforest/wet forest habitat.

In some cities in China, silky oaks have been planted along roadsides with great success. The tree has also gained the Royal Horticultural Society’s Award of Garden Merit for its performance in growing under United Kingdom conditions. That just shows you how one person’s weed is another’s treasure.

Read more: The river red gum is an icon of the driest continent

– ref. Silky oaks are older than dinosaurs and literally drip nectar – but watch out for the cyanide – https://theconversation.com/silky-oaks-are-older-than-dinosaurs-and-literally-drip-nectar-but-watch-out-for-the-cyanide-148920

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Zoë Hyde, Epidemiologist, University of Western Australia

The role children, and consequently schools, play in the COVID-19 pandemic has been hard to work out, but that puzzle is now finally starting to be solved.

The latest research shows infections in children frequently go undetected, and that children are just as susceptible as adults to infection. Children likely transmit the virus at a similar rate to adults as well.

While children are thankfully much less likely than adults to get seriously ill, the same isn’t true for the adults that care for them. Evidence suggests schools have been a driver of the second wave in Europe and elsewhere. This means the safety of schools needs an urgent rethink.

It’s hard to detect COVID-19 in children

Infections with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in children are generally much more mild than in adults and easy to overlook. A study from South Korea found the majority of children had symptoms mild enough to go unrecognised, and only 9% were diagnosed at the time of symptom onset.

Researchers used an antibody test (which can detect if a person had the virus previously and recovered) to screen a representative sample of nearly 12,000 children from the general population in Germany. They found the majority of cases in children had been missed. In itself, that’s not surprising, because many cases in adults are missed, too.

But what made this study important, was that it showed young and older children were similarly likely to have been infected.

Official testing in Germany had suggested young children were much less likely to be infected than teenagers, but this wasn’t true. Younger children with infections just weren’t getting tested. The study also found nearly half of infected children were asymptomatic. This is about twice what’s typically seen in adults.

But children do transmit the virus

We’ve known for a while that around the same amount of viral genetic material can be found in the nose and throat of both children and adults.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean children will transmit the same way adults do. Because children have a smaller lung capacity and are less likely to have symptoms, they might release less virus into the environment.

However, a new study conducted by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found children and adults were similarly likely to transmit the virus to their household contacts.

Another study, of more than 84,000 cases and their close contacts, in India found children and young adults were especially likely to transmit the virus.

Read more: Children might play a bigger role in COVID transmission than first thought. Schools must prepare

Most of the children in these studies likely had symptoms. So, it’s unclear if asymptomatic children transmit the virus in the same way.

But outbreaks in childcare centres have shown transmission by children who don’t show symptoms still occurs. During an outbreak at two childcare centres in Utah, asymptomatic children transmitted the virus to their family members, which resulted in the hospitalisation of one parent.

What we know about outbreaks in Australian schools

Schools didn’t appear to be a major driver of the epidemic in Victoria, although most students switched to remote learning around the peak of the second wave.

However, schools did contribute to community transmission to some extent. This was made clear by the Al-Taqwa College cluster, which was linked to outbreaks in Melbourne’s public housing towers.

When researchers analysed cases in Victorian schools that occurred between the start of the epidemic and the end of August 2020, they found infections in schools mirrored what was happening in the community overall. They also found 66% of all infections in schools were limited to a single person.

Read more: Behind Victoria’s decision to open primary schools to all students: report shows COVID transmission is rare

This might seem encouraging, but we have to remember this virus is characterised by superspreading events. We now know that about 10% of infected people are responsible for about 80% of secondary COVID-19 cases.

Two major studies from Hong Kong and India revealed about 70% of people didn’t transmit the virus to anyone. The problem, is the remainder can potentially infect a lot of people.

What happened in Victorian schools was entirely consistent with this.

The risk associated with schools rises with the level of community transmission. The picture internationally has made this clear.

What we know about outbreaks in schools, internationally

After schools reopened in Montreal, Canada, school clusters quickly outnumbered those in workplaces and health-care settings combined. President of the Quebec Association of Infectious Disease Microbiologists, Karl Weiss, said

Schools were the driver to start the second wave in Quebec, although the government did not recognise it.

A report by Israel’s Ministry of Health concluded school reopening played at least some role in accelerating the epidemic there, and that schools may contribute to the spread of the virus unless community transmission is low. In the Czech Republic, a rapid surge in cases following the reopening of schools prompted the mayor of Prague to describe schools as “COVID trading exchanges”.

The opposite pattern has been seen when schools have closed. England just witnessed a drop in new cases, followed by a return to growth, coinciding with the half-term school holidays. This was before any lockdown measures were introduced in the country.

These observations are consistent with a study examining the effect of imposing and lifting different restrictions in 131 countries. Researchers found school closures were associated with a reduction in R — the measure of how fast the virus is spreading — while reopening schools was associated with an increase.

The risk has been spelled out most clearly by the president of the Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s equivalent of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Last week, he reported the virus is being carried into schools, and also back out into the community.

What we need to do

It won’t be possible to control the pandemic if we don’t fully address transmission by children. This means we need to take a proactive approach to schools.

At a minimum, precautionary measures should include the use of face masks by staff and students (including primary school students). Schools should also improve ventilation and indoor air quality, reduce class sizes, and ensure kids and staff practise hand hygiene.

School closures have a role to play as well. But they must be carefully considered because of the harms associated with them. But these harms are likely outweighed by the harms of an unmitigated epidemic.

Read more: From WW2 to Ebola: what we know about the long-term effects of school closures

In regions with high levels of community transmission, temporary school closures should be considered. While a lockdown without school closures can probably still reduce transmission, it is unlikely to be maximally effective.

– ref. Children may transmit coronavirus at the same rate as adults: what we now know about schools and COVID-19 – https://theconversation.com/children-may-transmit-coronavirus-at-the-same-rate-as-adults-what-we-now-know-about-schools-and-covid-19-150523

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachael Wallis, Lecturer, University of Southern Queensland

The idea of moving to the country has gained momentum through the COVID-19 pandemic. Many workplaces have introduced new policies on working from home that give employees the flexibility needed to make the switch.

Lockdowns have shown many just how cramped and uncomfortable life can be when you cannot escape to the usual activities that get you out of the house. And if everything is closed, what is the point of being in the city and paying a higher rent or mortgage anyway? The Reserve Bank has noted rents have gone down and vacancy rates have gone up in major cities.

Read more: Regional Australia’s time has come – planning for growth is now vital

At the same time, some real estate agents have noticed an upturn in interest in renting or buying rural and regional properties. The demand in some regional areas has pushed up prices by as much as 30% in the year to October. It seems many are already making the switch to country living.

It sounds idyllic. Escape the rat race, have space to grow veggies and let the kids play outside. You won’t have to commute any more, and you might even be able to buy a house in the country at a time when city prices remain out of reach for many. You could be living the dream.

Find a place that matches your values

So how do you know if this is right for you, or a disaster waiting to happen?

In my research with people who moved to the country, I found successful moves came down to how closely aligned people’s values were with the attributes of the place they moved to. For example, some people value space and quiet more than bustle and activity. If they found these attributes in their new home, then they were able to craft a new life that was deeply satisfying.

Read more: How moving house changes you

When you look through the pages of a glossy magazine such as Country Style, you might find yourself yearning for the lifestyle it depicts – the grassy fields, the peaceful but quirky homes filled with flea-market finds, the home-grown abundance and the happy, contented people. These are long-held and highly regarded values that many hold dear.

The roots of these ideals are deep. Representations of the country as a rural idyll, a place to escape to, are centuries older than our current media.

Epicurus (340BC to 270BC) moved from the centre of Athens to the countryside just outside so he could grow vegetables and live simply. Virgil’s (70BC to 19BC) Eclogues emphasised a rural idyll, as did much later painters such as John Constable and Eugene von Guérard. Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (1845) is an oft-quoted classic about an urban dweller moving to a rural place to live a better life (albeit temporarily in his case).

Early Australian writers such as A.B. “Banjo” Paterson and Henry Lawson took up this nostalgic ideal in the fledgling colony. So did artists such as Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Charles Condor when they travelled to then-rural Heidelberg, now part of Melbourne, to paint the uniquely Australian countryside.

More recently, we have seen Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence (1991) sketch a romantic picture of city dwellers moving to rural France. And there are popular television series such as The Good Life (1975-77), Seachange (1998-2000, 2019), River Cottage Australia (2013-16) and most recently Escape from the City.

Read more: Imagining your own SeaChange – how media inspire our great escapes

Beware the gap between depictions and reality

We know the media are a powerful factor in helping us develop and share our identity and personal narratives. We respond to television shows, books and magazines that we are interested in by becoming their audience. We might share values, goals, ideas or even similar stories with the media we watch. We then, consciously or unconsciously, learn from or adopt those ideas and values in a process of socialisation that shows us how we might live a better life.

Media are only a representation, however. A multitude of factors, not least of which are sales and advertising revenues, go into the process of decision-making as images and stories are crafted for the various outlets. There can be a tendency for media to adopt stereotypes as a shorthand form of communication, but these do not necessarily reflect the reality they purport to depict.

This might seem obvious, but it is all too easy to accept these images as truth when we are inclined towards that viewpoint anyway.

Do you value the things that make a rural place what it is, whether that is peacefulness, an absence of people, vistas of rolling hills, or the community of a small country town? If you do, there’s a good chance a move to the country will enable you to live more closely in line with your values and so be a successful one.

If, on the other hand, you value city-style living, which includes attractions, shops, events and being close to services, you might want to reassess whether a seachange or treechange is right for you.

Read more: Should I stay or should I go: how ‘city girls’ can learn to feel at home in the country

– ref. It seemed like a good idea in lockdown, but is moving to the country right for you? – https://theconversation.com/it-seemed-like-a-good-idea-in-lockdown-but-is-moving-to-the-country-right-for-you-148807

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Freebairn, Professor, Department of Economics, University of Melbourne

In tax design as in many endeavours, it’s easy to work out how things should be; harder to work out how to get there.

In NSW, Treasurer Dominic Perrottet wants to replace the one-off stamp duty on real estate transactions with an annual land tax.

In the long run, this one single reform could produce the biggest possible gains of any tax reform, state or federal.

This graph from the federal treasury’s 2015 tax discussion paper makes the point.

It says the “marginal excess burden” (damage) done by real estate conveyancing taxes amounts to 70 cents for each dollar raised.

It means people and businesses change addresses less often than they should. Households live further away from their work than they would like to, are reluctant to move to where there is better work, and spend money extending houses instead of moving to better ones.

Businesses resist changing property location and type when changes in markets and costs suggest they should.

In contrast, the treasury found the marginal excess burden of land tax was negative. By that it means every dollar raised actually makes things better off by making land more likely to be used for its best purpose and making land less likely to be not used at all.

Swapping the worst tax the treasury modelled for the best tax it modelled ought to have a huge economic payoff for use of property, for productivity and for living standards.

It’d also be fairer.

The NSW Thodey Review of federal financial relations commissioned by Treasurer Perrottet notes that 26% of owner-occupiers have remained in the same property for at least 20 years.

Most of these long-term same property owners have benefited “not only from the services provided by the state over that time, but also from a once-in-a-generation land price windfall”.

In exchange for these gains, they have contributed very little towards essential services and critical infrastructure via property taxation. Others who have moved more often than the average to find a job, to be closer to schools, or to match housing size to changes in their family situation have picked up the tab.

Thodey also identifies other reasons for making the switch. Land tax revenue is more stable and predictable than revenue that soars and dives at times when people are buying or are not buying properties.

How you get there matters

The Australian Capital Territory is well on the way.

In 2012-13 it began a 20-year transition. Stamp duty and insurance duty are being wound back (for everyone) and replaced by increases to general rates on land.

The transition is roughly revenue-neutral.

NSW is proposing a different approach. It is considering asking new buyers to “opt in” to an annual land tax in return for escaping stamp duty. Once a buyer has opted in, future buyers of that property won’t be able to opt out. They will pay land tax instead of stamp duty.

It’ll mean no property owner, new or old, need be a loser in the first instance.

Read more: Abolish stamp duty. The ACT shows the rest of us how to tax property

But it will stretch out the transition and involve very large reductions in revenue for years to come, with smaller but still-substantial losses over decades.

As an illustration, assume that in year one, rather than paying $100 of stamp duty, the buyer chooses to pay a much smaller annual land tax.

NSW is going the long way

On average about 5% of properties change hands each year, meaning on average each is transferred once every 20 years. That means that to be revenue neutral in the long term the annual land tax should be set at 5% of the stamp duty.

If all the buyers in the first year switch over to land tax, the government will lose 95% of the money it would have got from stamp duty in that year.

With the passing of time and a larger share of owners paying land tax the shortfall will get smaller. But even after a decade, it might be as much as 50%.

Some buyers will never opt-in

And the voluntary opt in will give buyers who expect to hold a property for longer than average, for more than 20 years, an incentive to turn down the offer of land tax and pay (the lesser) stamp duty as before; while those who expect a short stay will opt for the (lesser) land tax.

This entirely rational behaviour will further reduce government revenue, aggravate the inequity of the system we’ve got, lock some owners into the properties they already own in order to avoid paying for government services, and postpone the benefits of moving to a system in which tax doesn’t distort the use of land.

It’s easy to see why Perrottet has gone for a voluntary switchover.

There are better ways to avoid double taxation

Without some sort of concession, recent buyers would find themselves taxed twice, once through stamp duty and then again through annual land taxes.

The ACT’s 20-year transition is one way to get around the problem.

Despite concerns, it has proved popular enough.

Eight years in, the ACT Labor government has just won it’s sixth consecutive election.

A quicker way of realising the gains from switching while reducing double taxation would be to introduce land tax immediately and give recent buyers a partial credit for the stamp duty they’ve paid.

As an example, stamp duty paid in the past one, two, three, four and five years could receive a credit of 100%, 80%, 60%, 40% and 20%, respectively.

It would cost revenue over the transition period, but not as much as the opt in arrangement proposed by the NSW treasurer, and after that short period it would be revenue neutral. Importantly, it would reap the full efficiency benefits from day one, and ensure everyone paid the tax they should.

– ref. Axing stamp duty is a great idea, but NSW is going about it the wrong way – https://theconversation.com/axing-stamp-duty-is-a-great-idea-but-nsw-is-going-about-it-the-wrong-way-150629

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Higham, Professor of Tourism, University of Otago

Raise your hand if you’ve ever travelled for weeks or months as a backpacker on a limited daily budget. Keep your hand up if you were made welcome in the places you visited on your OE, enjoyed chance encounters and experienced the generosity of strangers.

And did those experiences leave a lifelong affection for the places you visited and people you met? If the answer is yes, then we need to consider what might happen in New Zealand were Tourism Minister Stuart Nash’s latest ideas to become policy.

To recap, Nash told the Tourism Summit in Wellington last week the industry should move away from catering for low-spending backpackers and instead target the rich. This would solve two problems: the environmental damage allegedly caused by freedom campers (including using nature as their toilet), and the pressure of too many visitors in general.

Nash was right to say we cannot return to the pre-COVID normal when the border reopens and the tourism recovery begins. Overcapacity, strained infrastructure and environmental impacts meant growing community resistance was reaching a tipping point.

But do we really want to banish backpackers and position New Zealand as expensive and exclusive — the Switzerland of the South Pacific? There are five reasons this approach would be a mistake.

1. Big spenders are big polluters

Lower-budget travellers generally stay much longer than the average. They usually make a higher aggregate economic contribution than those whose daily spend is high but who pass through quickly.

Does New Zealand really want only the uber-rich to experience our natural wonders, when flying business class, travelling by cruise ship and hiring helicopters are the most environmentally damaging ways to do so?

Read more: Serving time: how fine dining in jail is helping prisoners and satisfying customers

If we were to consider the wider social, economic and environmental impacts of discrete tourism markets, we would be banishing the cruise industry first, not backpackers.

2. Backpackers bring many benefits

Because they stay longer, backpackers can bring wider benefits to our society, economy and environment. They tend to be more dispersed, bringing economic development and employment opportunities to regional communities.

Also, their travel behaviours tend to align more with the concept of regenerative tourism. Backpackers are more likely to be conscious of their carbon footprint, engage in beach cleanups, plant trees and involve themselves in conservation projects.

They are a seasonal labour force, too, as has been shown by critical labour shortages in rural and regional economies due to border closures.

3. The importance of diverse tourism

Backpackers and freedom campers support small regional tourism businesses, attractions and local services that would not survive without them. Backpacker hostels, home-stays, camping grounds and other low-budget accommodation subsectors would be at risk, as would many small and medium tourism businesses.

Read more: Traditional skills help people on the tourism-deprived Pacific Islands survive the pandemic

During crises it is important that tourism destinations have a broad portfolio of markets. This ensures resilience and mitigates potential economic impacts from periodic disruptions to global tourism. Furthermore, as the mayor of Queenstown has observed, today’s backpackers return in future as high-end visitors.

4. Tackling climate change and overconsumption

Social tourism refers to the principle that opportunities to engage occasionally in leisure and tourism are important for personal well-being and an inclusive society. It is a form of tourism based on an ethic of social inclusion, as opposed to exclusion based on wealth.

By contrast, the carbon-intense lifestyles and sense of entitlement of the super-wealthy are major barriers to climate action.

Our tourism policies should not celebrate and encourage over-consumption, which works against shifting attitudes towards less carbon-intensive and more sustainable travel.

5. Damage to our international reputation

Do we really want to be perceived as exclusionary and elitist? A colleague based at a university in the Netherlands, for example, reported a social media backlash:

Everyone is complaining about the news that Kiwis do not want to have us anymore and they are only interested in tourists who fly business class and hire a helicopter around Franz Josef.

Similarly, the policy can look petty. A story headlined “New Zealand vows crackdown on defecating backpackers” in the Times of India reported the New Zealand government’s promise “to take action against backpackers relieving themselves at natural beauty spots as part of post-coronavirus tourism plans”.

The post-COVID challenge

Should New Zealand’s post-coronavirus tourism rebuild really be perceived as revolving around the defecations of low-budget tourists? While there have been cases of disgusting behaviour, this problem can be actively managed.

Non-self-contained campervans could be required to park overnight in fully serviced camping grounds for a nominal fee. New Zealanders should not bear the costs of tourism, anyway. Local councils transfer the costs of freedom camping to ratepayers when they provide “free” overnight parking and toilet facilities — putting rate-paying local camping grounds out of business.

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

Above all, our tourism rebuild should be closely aligned with what makes New Zealand unique. First and foremost, it should be founded on the Māori principles of kaitiakitanga and manaakitanga — a mutual responsibility to care for the land and culture, as expressed in the Tiaki Promise charter.

This would honestly reflect the ideals of generations of Kiwis who have set off on their own OEs to experience the world. If we consider this a birthright, is it fair that we deny the same to others who want to visit us?

– ref. 5 reasons why banishing backpackers and targeting wealthy tourists would be a mistake for NZ – https://theconversation.com/5-reasons-why-banishing-backpackers-and-targeting-wealthy-tourists-would-be-a-mistake-for-nz-150639

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Giblin, ARC Future Fellow; Associate Professor; Director, Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia, University of Melbourne

Many culturally important books by Australian authors are out of print, hard to find as secondhand copies, and confined to the physical shelves of a limited number of libraries. Effectively, they have become inaccessible and invisible — even including some Miles Franklin award winners by authors such as Thea Astley and Rodney Hall.

To ensure these works can be read, a team of authors, librarians and researchers are working together on Untapped: the Australian Literary Heritage Project.

By digitising out of print books and making them available for e-lending, the project will create a royalty stream for the authors involved, as well as income for the arts workers we are employing as proofreaders.

Commercial publishing lists, such as Text Classics and Allen & Unwin’s House of Books, do a great job of breathing new life into some of Australia’s lost books. But they often focus on literary fiction, to the exclusion of genre fiction, children’s books and non-fiction, which also need to be preserved.

Here are 10 of our favourites we’re excited to digitise so you can borrow from your local library straight to your e-device. We expect these and other books in the project to be available in the first half of 2021 – and you too can nominate a book for inclusion in the collection here.

Working Bullocks (1926) by Katharine Susannah Prichard

Before Coonardoo (1929), Prichard’s best known work, there was Working Bullocks.

The novel describes the trials of Red Burke, a bullock driver in Western Australia, trying to make a living in a post-war Australia.

Just after the novel’s original publication, it was described by John Sleeman of The Bookman in the UK as “the high-water mark of Australian literary achievement in the novel so far”.

Metal Fatigue (1996) by Sean Williams

Sean Williams has written over 50 books, including co-authored titles with authors such as Shane Dix and Garth Nix which have appeared on the New York Times bestseller list.

Metal Fatigue was Williams’ debut. Set in a small American city 40 years after the end of a nuclear war, the residents must decide if they want to join the newly forming Re-United States of America.

Depicting a dystopic future of violence, shortages and a divided USA, it still feels remarkably current today.

I’m Not Racist, But… (2007) by Anita Heiss

This poetry collection from activist, writer and member of the Wiradjuri Nation, Professor Anita Heiss, skewers Australia’s racist underbelly.

I’m Not Racist, But… explores identity, pride and political correctness; proposes alternative words to the national anthem; and reveals how it is to grow up as an Indigenous woman in Australia.

This is a landmark work along Australia’s slow road to racial reckoning.

Space Demons (1986) by Gillian Rubinstein

The multi-award winning Space Demons was Gillian Rubinstein’s first book and began the much-loved trilogy of the same name.

It follows four ordinary kids drawn into a dangerous new computer game – instead of simply watching the game on the screen, they become part of it. And there is no way to know if they will escape.

With its gripping plot and local setting, Space Demons introduced many children to Australian science fiction – and led to many Australians first discovering their love of reading.

Read more: Curious Kids: Why do adults think video games are bad?

Noonkanbah: Whose Land, Whose Law (1989) by Steve Hawke, with photographs by Michael Gallagher

In 1979-80, the Yungngora people protested to stop the American company Amax drilling for oil on a sacred site on Noonkanbah Station, Western Australia.

This book is the detailed first-hand account of what became a high profile, ground-breaking land rights campaign, leading to the formation of the Kimberley Land Council. The Yungngora people wouldn’t have their native title rights recognised until 2007.

Alongside the reporting by Hawke, son of former PM Bob Hawke?, the book includes photographs taken by anthropologist Michael Gallagher.

This is an essential work of Australian history.

The Unlucky Australians (1968) by Frank Hardy

Frank Hardy was known for his political activism around labour rights, and as the author of 16 books. Almost his entire backlist is out of print, with the notable exception of Power Without Glory (1950).

In The Unlucky Australians, Hardy tells the story of the Gurindji people and the opening years of the strike they began in 1966.

Their protest against poor working and living conditions, seeking the return of their traditional lands, lasted nine years.

The Whitlam government returned some of those lands in 1975 with the historic transfer of “a handful of dirt” and the strike led to the passage of the historic Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act in 1976.

A vital piece towards understanding the shameful labour conditions inflicted upon Indigenous Australians, this book should never have gone out of print.

Read more: An historic handful of dirt: Whitlam and the legacy of the Wave Hill Walk-Off

The Mandala trilogy (1993-2004) by Carmel Bird

Inspired by three real life charismatic and dangerous individuals, these dark stories of abused trust and misplaced faith are transformed, taking on a gothic quality, with complex narratives, unlikely narrators and fairy-tale elements.

The White Garden is an ambitious novel following the misdeeds of the psychiatrist Dr Goddard (or Dr God, for short) in a hospital in the 1960s. Red Shoes takes us into the world of a religious cult. Cape Grimm looks at a religious order after its members are killed by their charismatic leader.

The Mindless Ferocity of Sharks (2003) by Brett D’Arcy

The Mindless Ferocity of Sharks is coming-of-age story about “Floaty Boy”, an 11-year-old with a love of body-surfing, his family, and what happens when his older brother disappears.

Described by the Australian Book Review as “Tim Winton on speed”, D’Arcy shines his own spotlight on Western Australia, exploring the duality of a life spent between the waves and the shore – and what happens when a family becomes torn apart by loss.

Untapped will launch with a free online celebration on November 24 at 6pm. Register for the launch here, nominate a book for inclusion at untapped.org.au – and let us know what you think we should digitise in the comments.

– ref. 10 ‘lost’ Australian literary treasures you should read – and can soon borrow from any library – https://theconversation.com/10-lost-australian-literary-treasures-you-should-read-and-can-soon-borrow-from-any-library-150280

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

Australia’s actions should not be seen just through the lens of the strategic competition between China and the United States, Scott Morrison has said in a speech rejecting “binary choices”.

With China casting Australia as an extension of America, disrupting trade, and citing multiple grievances, Morrison reaffirmed the importance Australia put on wanting a positive bilateral relationship.

“Australia desires an open, transparent and mutually beneficial relationship with China as our largest trading partner, where there are strong people-to-people ties, complementary economies and a shared interest in regional development and wellbeing, especially in the emerging economies of Southeast Asia,” he said.

Equally, Australia was “absolutely committed” to its alliance with the United States, based on a shared world view, liberal democratic values and market-based economics.

“And at all times we must be true to our values and the protection of our own sovereignty.”

He acknowledged the global competition between China and the US “presents new challenges, especially for nation states in the Indo-Pacific”. Like other countries in the region “our preference is not to be forced into binary choices”.

Addressing the British Policy Exchange on Monday night, Morrison warned that “our present challenge in the Indo-Pacific is the foretaste for so many others around the world, including the United Kingdom and Europe.”

Australia’s pursuit of its interests in the midst of the China-US strategic competition was made more complex by the assumptions made about its actions, he said.

“Our actions are wrongly seen and interpreted by some only through the lens of the strategic competition between China and the United States.

“It’s as if Australia does not have its own unique interests or views as an independent sovereign state. This is false and needlessly deteriorates relationships.

“If we are to avoid a new era of polarisation, then in the decades ahead, there must be a more nuanced appreciation of individual states’ interests in how they deal with the major powers. Stark choices are in no-one’s interests.

“Greater latitude will be required from the world’s largest powers to accommodate the individual interests of their partners and allies. We all need a bit more room to move,” Morrison said.

He said international institutions also had an important role as circuit breakers. “To provide the space and frameworks for meaningful and positive interaction to be maintained, as a bulwark against any emerging divide.”

Morrison talked up the role the OECD had to play “in support of open trade and market-based principles”. The Australian government is currently running a strong campaign to try to have former finance minister Mathias Cormann elected secretary-general of the OECD.

Morrison also noted the importance of the World Trade Organisation in promoting shared interests, as well as the G7-plus, and the Five-Eyes arrangement, where co-operation had extended beyond traditional security to the economic realm.

He lamented that “two of the most important economies in the region – the United States and India” had decided not to joint the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the recently-concluded Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership respectively.

“Of course, we respect those decisions. But they both remain welcome to join. Our response is straightforward.

“Working with our partners, we plan to make the TPP such a powerful force for open trade and investment that the US and, in the future, India and others will join without reservation. And that includes the UK.

“Interestingly, [China’s] President Xi Jinping has also now expressed interest in possible participation in the TPP,” Morrison said.

“The critical thing about the TPP is that it developed WTO-plus disciplines in key areas of intellectual property, digital commerce and state-owned enterprises.

“These are some of the areas where the WTO has fallen short.”

– ref. Scott Morrison’s message to China: Don’t pigeonhole us – https://theconversation.com/scott-morrisons-message-to-china-dont-pigeonhole-us-150663

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

The Victorian government plans a pilot scheme for up to five days sick and carer’s pay, at the national minimum wage, for casuals or insecure workers in priority industries.

Even though the initiative is at a very early stage, with $5 million in Tuesday’s state budget for consultation on the pilot’s design, the federal government immediately attacked the move.

Industrial Relations Minister Christian Porter said it “raises a number of major issues”.

Once underway, the pilot would run two years in selected sectors with high casualisation. It could include cleaners, hospitality staff, security guards, supermarket workers and aged care workers.

“The pilot will roll out in two phases over two years with the occupations eligible for each phase to be finalised after a consultation process that will include workers, industry and unions,” a statement from Premier Daniel Andrews’ office said.

Casual and insecure workers in eligible sectors would be invited to pre-register for the scheme.

While the pilot would be government-funded, any future full scheme would involve a levy on business.

Andrews said: “When people have nothing to fall back on, they make a choice between the safety of their workmates and feeding their family.

“This isn’t going to solve the problem of insecure work overnight but someone has to put their hand up and say we’re going to take this out of the too hard basket and do something about it.”

But Porter said a fully-running scheme would put “a massive tax on Victorian businesses”, which would be paying both the extra loading casuals receive and the levy.

“After Victorian businesses have been through their hardest year in the last century, why on earth would you be starting a policy that promises to finish with another big tax on business at precisely the time they can least afford any more economic hits?”

Porter said it would be better to strengthen the ability of workers to choose to move from casual to permanent full or part-time employment if they wished.

He said this was what had been discussed in the recent federally-run industrial relations working group process involving government and employee and employer representatives.

“It must surely be a better approach to let people have greater choice between casual and permanent employment than forcing businesses to pay a tax so that someone can be both a casual employee and get more wages as compensation for not getting sick leave – but then also tax the business to pay for getting sick leave as well.”

Porter claimed the Victorian approach would be “a business and employment-killing” one.

In the pandemic the federal government has made available a special payment for workers who test COVID-positive or are forced to isolate and don’t have access to paid leave. The Victorian government has provided a payment for those waiting for the result of a COVID test.

The Morrison government will introduce an omnibus industrial relations reform bill before the end of the parliamentary ar, following its consultation process.

A central objective will be to streamline enterprise bargaining. Scott Morrison told the Business Council of Australia last week: “Agreement making is becoming bogged down in detailed, overly prescriptive procedural requirements that make the process just too difficult to undertake”.

He said various issues needed addressing. “The test for approval of agreements should focus on substance rather than technicalities. Agreements should be assessed on actual foreseeable circumstances, not far fetched hypotheticals.” Assessments by the Fair Work Commission should happen within set time frames where there was agreement from the parties.

Morrison said key protections such as the better off overall test would continue but “our goal is to ensure it will be applied in a practical and sensible way so that the approval process does not discourage bargaining, which is what is happening now”.

– ref. Daniel Andrews plans pilot for casual workers’ sick pay but Morrison government critical – https://theconversation.com/daniel-andrews-plans-pilot-for-casual-workers-sick-pay-but-morrison-government-critical-150648

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Roberto Musotto, Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre Postdoctoral Fellow, Edith Cowan University

It’s no secret the trail of data we leave online can reveal intimate details about our lives. And there are myriad people whose job it is to collect and sift through this, often with a goal to engage in targeted advertising.

Another use for the field of “social network analysis” could eventually be to help prosecutors in criminal courts make sense of huge amounts of digital evidence, collected both online and from devices offline.

This would be particularly useful in trials with several defendants, saving courts precious time and money. Criminal networks can use online spaces such as dark web marketplaces to organise crime and reach more victims and clients.

Transaction patterns, messages and page visits are all clues that can help unpack such a network.

What it is and how does it work?

Social network analysis involves using advanced computer software to explore segments of patterns that recur in social interactions, online and offline. It offers scholars a broad perspective on the world of human relations.

This form of analysis doesn’t just look at who you’re friends with on Instagram – it looks at which decisions you make as an individual, which you make in a group and how these layers of choices influence your world.

Read more: Your social networks and the secret story of metadata

In its simplest form, these social networks can be presented in graphs. There are “nodes” (which represent people) connected by lines or “edges”. An edge could represent a phone call, message or meeting.

Look at the graph of the real network of the Al-Qaeda terrorists involved in the September 11 attack. Can you figure out who the most “connected” terrorist is?

The murky networks of crime syndicates

This information is often expressed in mathematical form, too. These numbers offer information about the dynamics of a group and the specific role of each individual within.

Social network analysis is particularly effective in helping investigators understand covert criminal networks, whether this is a biker gang, group of cyber criminals or members of the Sicilian Mafia. It can reveal details such as:

• who the key individuals are in the group
• how the various members are connected with one another
• how the members combine, or act alone, to carry out crime.

A judge in a preliminary hearing could consult a graph like the one above to help decide whether there is a case to be made against each member.

Mathematical metrics could further filter out individuals for which there is enough evidence to prosecute. This would also help judges reach fairer decisions on jail terms or acquittals.

Surfing through oceans of data

Due to time, money and human resource restrictions, often not all evidence from investigations is used in criminal court proceedings.

Social network analysis would greatly benefit prosecutors in criminal trials involving an excess of digital evidence, which continues to grow alongside general online data.

In Australia, any electronic device seized by authorities must be evaluated in court. Western Australia’s police force processes over 2.8 terabytes of data (2,800 GB) for every case it investigates.

In the 2008 trial of Bell Group v Westpac Banking Corporation, digital evidence extended the final judgement enormously to more than 2,000 pages.

Similarly, a 2016 civil case in Victoria, McConnell Dowell Constructors v Santam and Others, required counsel to go through 1.4 million documents in electronic format. This would have taken about 583 weeks.

The Supreme Court allowed (for the first time) a technology-assisted review to isolate the most “relevant” documents.

But this didn’t help the court understand how the various documents were linked, which would only be possible through social network analysis.

Removing potential for bias

Moreover, large criminal investigations are often broken into multiple trials. While this is economical and maximises resources, it’s inherently risky because evidence can be evaluated differently depending on the court.

This is why the largest and most expensive Mafia trial in history, the 1986 Maxiprocesso trial, was heard by only one court and jury. The initial trial involved 349 hearings over almost two years.

In hindsight, discussions surrounding evidence in the trial could have been shortened had social network analysis been available at the time.

In any criminal investigation, there’s also potential for bias from investigating officers. This bias can introduce errors into the evidence pool, which may not be picked up during a trial, and subsequently distort any analysis conducted.

Technology: both a problem and a solution

Of course, social network analysis isn’t perfect. While it can tell us how an individual interacts with a syndicate, it can’t guide us as to whether that person should be considered separate to the main network or not. This remains the judge’s decision.

There are also limitations to how online networks can be investigated. Often, important data is stored outside police jurisdiction, or requires a search warrant from law enforcement before it can be accessed (such as with Facebook).

Other times, data that’s crucial for an investigation may be hosted on an encrypted service such as WhatsApp, or may be hard to trace if it was uploaded anonymously or under a fake persona.

Read more: Facebook’s push for end-to-end encryption is good news for user privacy, as well as terrorists and paedophiles

Still, social network analyses could prove to be an invaluable support tool to help judges and jurors assess the value of evidence.

If both have a detailed and holistic understanding of the case, this will help ensure the right people are convicted — as quickly as possible and with the sentencing deserved.

– ref. Prosecuting within complex criminal networks is hard. Data analysis could save the courts precious time and money – https://theconversation.com/prosecuting-within-complex-criminal-networks-is-hard-data-analysis-could-save-the-courts-precious-time-and-money-150087

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charlotte Ganderton, Lecturer, Swinburne University of Technology, Swinburne University of Technology

Many of us might not be as fit as we were before the pandemic hit, and as community sport restarts and gyms reopen across the country amid eased coronavirus restrictions, some people might be at increased risk of injury.

If you do pull your hamstring in your first game back, or work from home life has left you with a sore neck and headaches, you might think about visiting a health-care professional to treat your complaint.

But your sister sees a physiotherapist, your mother a chiropractor, your friend an osteopath and your cousin a myotherapist. All of them come highly recommended, so who do you choose to help manage your aches and pains, and what are the differences between the four?

In Australia, physiotherapists, osteopaths and chiropractors have extensive university training and are registered with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA). Myotherapists have completed an advanced diploma or bachelors degree in myotherapy or “musculoskeletal therapy”, but aren’t registered with AHPRA. All four types of health professionals are primary contact practitioners. This means you don’t need a GP referral to seek treatment.

You will find all four in private health care, but you’re more likely to be treated by a physiotherapist in the public sector (for example, at public hospitals) compared to chiropractors, osteopaths and myotherapists.

Read more: The chiropractic war with reality rages on…

Similar definitions, on paper

A physiotherapist assesses your problem, provides a diagnosis and helps you understand what’s wrong while considering your general health, activities, and lifestyle. They treat your complaint with a variety of “active” therapies, such as exercise programs and hydrotherapy. They also use “passive” therapies, such as massage, joint manipulation, and mobilisation (a technique used to increase movement of a joint).

There are many different sub-disciplines within physiotherapy. For example, some specialise in treating problems that arise from neurological conditions, like multiple sclerosis or stroke. Some also focus on assisting patients with heart and lung conditions, for example emphysema or after lung infections like pneumonia (or COVID!).

A chiropractor works on the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of mechanical disorders of the muscles, ligaments, tendons, bones and joints, and the effect on the nervous system. They have an emphasis on passive manual treatments, including joint and soft-tissue manipulation, and spinal adjustments. They may also prescribe exercises to help you rehabilitate from your condition as well as provide dietary advice.

Over the last decade, some forms of chiropractic care have come under media and scientific scrutiny, particularly in children and infants, and should therefore be approached with caution.

Read more: Chiropractic care in pregnancy and childhood – a castle built on a swamp

An osteopath focuses on the muscular and nervous systems, assessing the structure of the body to determine its impact on function. For example, the position of your spine and pelvis may impact on the way you reach over to weed your garden. Treatment involves a combination of active and passive therapies, including joint manipulation and mobilisation, massage, as well as postural advice and exercise programs.

A myotherapist works to assist your aches and pains by focusing on the muscles and joints. They offer a range of mostly “hands-on” treatments including dry needling, massage and joint mobilisation, but can also prescribe exercises.

The profession is not registered with AHPRA. Myotherapists are not formally recognised under the umbrella of allied health in some regions of Australia. As such, they were forced to delay reopening as coronavirus restrictions eased in Melbourne, as allied health including physiotherapists were allowed to reopen first.

There’s a lot of crossover in treatments offered between the four professions and not all services offered are supported by high-quality scientific research.

So, what is the scientific evidence?

Understanding if your health-care professional applies evidence-based practice to their treatment will help you decide which therapist is right for you.

Evidence-based practice relates to how any health professional integrates their clinical knowledge with the best available research evidence, and your individual values and circumstances, to assess and manage your health-care complaint. Whether or not this is implemented into daily practice will vary on the individual therapist, and may not be consistent across the entire profession.

Scientific evidence supports the use of treatments where you, as the client, are actively involved in the management of your condition, including education and undertaking an exercise plan — what we call “exercise prescription”.

The breadth of scientific evidence for exercise prescription as a treatment for muscle, ligament, tendon, bone and joint complaints far outweighs the limited scientific support for the prolonged use of “passive” treatments like massage, manipulation, and adjustments. Research suggests these passive treatments should only be used as adjuncts to active treatments. This type of therapy may be appropriate in the early stages of your care, and let’s face it, most people love a massage.

However, in the long term, it doesn’t equip you with the skills required to manage your condition. It may even result in over-reliance on your health-care professional and cost you more in the long run. It’s important to find a health-care professional that empowers you to participate in appropriate exercise, develop skills to self-manage your aches and pains and maintain a healthy, active lifestyle.

Anecdotally, we think that physiotherapists and osteopaths are well equipped to implement an active management plan for your aches and pains. However, as an individual, you should seek out a health-care professional that supports you to manage your own condition. You could do this by speaking to your doctor, reading the biography of your practitioner, or phoning the clinic to enquire about the type of care provided prior to booking an appointment. Your health professional should be someone that walks alongside you and guides you on your rehabilitation journey.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself to help decide if the health-care professional is the right fit for you:

1. will they consider my overall health status, social situation, and hobbies to create a treatment plan?

2. will they educate me on the importance of actively self-managing my aches and pains?

3. will they encourage me to undertake exercise and/or physical activity?

4. will they ask me about my goals and what I want the outcome to be?

5. will they help me determine what to do if my aches and pains flare up in the future?

– ref. Physio, chiro, osteo and myo: what’s the difference and which one should I get? – https://theconversation.com/physio-chiro-osteo-and-myo-whats-the-difference-and-which-one-should-i-get-149993

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Churchill, Research Fellow in Sociology, University of Melbourne

The disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has been so profound, particularly for women, that it threatens to upend the progress on gender equality in recent years. During the lockdown, women were doing more of the unpaid labour – care and housework. They were also more exposed to the risks of coronavirus either as essential workers or working in industries, such as retail, hospitality and accommodation services, that were forced to close.

There is evidence also of significant impacts on men’s labour force participation. In some cases men’s job losses early in the pandemic have not been recovered.

The impacts of COVID-19 on women and men extend beyond work and home to education, particularly tertiary education enrolments.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ latest data, 112,000 fewer students were enrolled in tertiary education in May 2020 – at the height of the first wave – compared to a year earlier. This is the largest drop in enrolments in over 15 years.

Like other aspects of COVID-19, the impact was gendered with a far greater decline among women. There were 86,000 fewer women enrolled to study in May 2020 than in May 2019, compared with just over 21,000 fewer men.

Big fall was for women over 25

What do these data tell us about COVID-19, education, work and potentially the future?

These data tell us COVID-19 has not only severely disrupted the lives of women in the workplace and the home, but also in education.

Read more: Chief Scientist: women in STEM are still far short of workplace equity. COVID-19 risks undoing even these modest gains

The biggest decline in tertiary enrolments was among women over the age of 25: 60,000 fewer women over 25 were enrolled in university in May 2020 than in 2019.

This steep decline in enrolments is particularly surprising given Australia’s success in educating women and potentially puts the nation’s reputation at risk. Australia is ranked equal first in the world in terms of educational attainment for women, according the World Economic Forum’s 2020 Global Gender Gap Index. The country has been atop the list for well over a decade.

Juggling caring roles with study

These data remind us caring responsibilities not only affect careers or work-life balance, but also education. The sharp decline in female enrolments over the age of 25 suggests it was likely because of caring responsibilities.

Read more: Victoria’s child-care shutdown is a hard blow for working mothers

Many of these women with caring responsibilities, for either young children or older family members, were likely forced to make a choice between caring and studying. And for those combining work and study on top of family commitments, many elected not to continue studying.

For many mature-aged students (those over 21), undertaking study is challenge, especially for those combining study with work and/or care. Previous research has shown a number of gendered expectations are put upon mature-aged students and their time.

For many of these mature-age women who are combining work and study, they increasingly do it flexibly or online and schedule it around other commitments. Others give up their leisure time for learning.

COVID-19 made that near-impossible. The loss of both family and formal childcare increased the burden of unpaid work for women at home. It was extended far into the workday and into the evenings where mature-aged women might ordinarily find time to study.

Read more: COVID-19 is a disaster for mothers’ employment. And no, working from home is not the solution

Enrolments rose for men over 25

The data also highlight the gendered complexities of COVID-19 on education. Women’s enrolments were disproportionately affected, whereas the data showed significant increases in men over the age of 25 enrolling in university in May 2020 compared with 2019. Male enrolments in this age group increased by about 26,000.

This increase suggests men were either “forced” into tertiary education because of a lack of opportunities, or it was a deliberate strategy on their part to upskill so they could be more competitive for jobs once the economy recovers. In this way, older age groups of men have shown themselves to be similar to young people who tend to go into education during times of recession. This is perhaps in contrast to previous recessionary periods where the participation rate of older men declined considerably.

All of this has implications for the future, particularly for women. These data are worrisome because, even though the returns from education for women are poor, many women obtain a number of qualifications just to get on an even keel with men in the labour market.

These latest trends might make it harder for women in the long run. However, it is worth noting these data capture enrolments at a point in time – during the first wave of the pandemic. Things might have changed significantly since then.

– ref. No one escaped COVID’s impacts, but big fall in tertiary enrolments was 80% women. Why? – https://theconversation.com/no-one-escaped-covids-impacts-but-big-fall-in-tertiary-enrolments-was-80-women-why-149994

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tanya Dalziell, Associate Professor, English and Literary Studies, University of Western Australia

In a new series, writers pay tribute to fictional detectives on page and on screen.

Trixie Belden, girl detective, does not rank in the world’s pantheon of cool sleuths. She’s unlikely to appear in a Coen brothers’ film (à la Marge Gunderson in Fargo (1996)), for example. Nor did she issue from the pen of hardboiled, mid-century crime writer Chester Himes.

Instead, she was the creation of Western Publishing — the American maker of Little Golden Books who wanted to market low-cost mysteries and adventures to children after the second world war — and Julie Campbell, a writer and literary agent who responded to their call.

Read more: My favourite detective: Kurt Wallander — too grumpy to like, relatable enough to get under your skin

Campbell wrote the first six books in the series from 1948 to 1958. The rest, some 30 or so, were composed by ghostwriters between 1961 and 1986 and published under the pseudonym, Kathryn Kenny.

As a child, I had no inkling of this origin story. So far as I knew, Trixie Belden was from Crabapple Farm, Sleepyside, in the Hudson River Valley. She had three brothers (two older, one younger) and her best friend was Honey Wheeler, met in the original book, The Secret of the Mansion (1948), which I read more than 30 years after it was first published.

Friends like these

Honey was rich and beautiful. So was Diana, who turned up a bit later in the series and was memorably said to have violet eyes. Trixie was neither of these things.

In the first book, at the age of 13, she found her detective vocation by uncovering the fortune of a deceased recluse. She also met its beneficiary. Jim Frayne, a runaway with a brutal stepfather, would become Honey’s adopted brother, Trixie’s blossoming love interest, and a member of the Bob-Whites, Trixie’s club of friends who formed the support cast for the Belden-Wheeler Detective Agency.

Whether searching for a lost weather vane or tracking down an arsonist, Trixie was at the centre of all the mysteries, which I avidly read and reread.

Read more: Friday essay: Alice Pung — how reading changed my life

My attraction to Trixie was not a matter of projection or identification; my world was clearly unlike hers.

I did not anticipate that I would come across a rabid dog; rescue a pilot from a burning aeroplane; or have to suck blood from my brother’s toe to prevent his poisoning by a copperhead. (And that was all in only the first book of the series).

Trixie was obsessed with horses, I was more interested in her setter dog, Reddy. Trixie was terrible at maths, which had yet to cause me trouble.

The differences between us didn’t matter so much as our shared interest in “running all the information through [our] mental computer” (from 1977’s The Mystery of the Uninvited Guest). I wanted to figure things out, just like Trixie. She nonetheless had many amateur sleuth competitors on my primary school reading list.

Read more: The kids are alright: young adult post-disaster novels can teach us about trauma and survival

Tips for young detectives

I had the non-fiction Detective’s Handbook out on constant library loan. It was instructive in disguise-wearing and decoding. Then there was Enid Blyton’s The Famous Five and The Secret Seven, and also Nancy Drew.

The child-groups constituting the two former titles were like the Bob-Whites insofar as they also formed detective communities. Although to my mind they put inordinate value on passwords, badges and boarding school holidays.

Nancy Drew was undeniably admirable in her older sophistication but a little too polished for my still-developing taste. She was confident and self-contained, which is surely why Hollywood created movie versions of her and why the intrusion of the Hardy Boys franchise into her narrative made no sense to me. It wasn’t like she needed any help.

By contrast, Trixie Belden was more accommodating and needing of others. She sometimes said mean things, and would then regret them and apologise.

She knew she wasn’t as pretty as Honey or Diana and, while that worried her a little, she shrugged it off and had far more interesting existential doubts. In the 17th book, The Mystery of the Uninvited Guest, she speaks of feeling as if she were inside a glass box:

All the people of the world march past me … I know that when I can tell just one person who I am, the glass will melt and I can join the parade.

I’m sure at the age of eight or nine I had only a vague idea of what she meant, but it sounded a lot like what growing up was all about.

Read more: Friday essay: why YA gothic fiction is booming – and girl monsters are on the rise

Smart and sensitive

Sticky situations, mistaken identities and stolen jewels were always worked out, revealed or returned to their rightful owners in the end. And the motives behind these events weren’t always nefarious.

Reassurance was offered in the sympathetic knowledge that circumstances, rather than moral flaws, can bring about bad deeds, and that detection itself trod a fine ethical line.

Trixie’s conscience was pricked by her practices of eavesdropping, surveillance and occasional breaking-and-entering. At times she determined that the status quo, which her detective work ostensibly upheld, was not right.

Maths might have stumped her, but as Honey appreciatively recognised of her friend:

Trixie was a down-to-earth person, keenly aware of information gathered by all of her five senses — plus that extra sense called horse sense.

She might not be cool, today or then, but — well-surpassing her intended pulp-fiction status — Trixie Belden was smart and sensitive in the ways that mattered.

– ref. My favourite detective: Trixie Belden, the uncool girl sleuth with a sensitive moral compass – https://theconversation.com/my-favourite-detective-trixie-belden-the-uncool-girl-sleuth-with-a-sensitive-moral-compass-149624