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

The inquiry into Australian Special Forces’ misconduct in Afghanistan has found evidence of war crimes involving 25 current or former Australian Defence Force personnel.

The inquiry found “credible information” of 23 incidents in which one or more non-combatants or prisoners of war “were unlawfully killed by or at the direction of members of the Special Operations Task Group, in circumstances which, if accepted by a jury, would be the war crime of murder”.

In a further two incidents, a non-combatant or prisoner was mistreated in a way that would be “the war crime of cruel treatment”.

Some incidents involved one victim, and in some there were multiple victims.

The inquiry found a total of 39 individuals were killed, and a further two cruelly treated.

The 25 current or former ADF personnel were perpetrators “either as principals or accessories” some of them on a single occasion and a few on multiple occasions.

None of the alleged crimes involved decisions made “under pressure, in the heat of battle”.

The inquiry has recommended the Chief of the Defence Force refer 36 matters to the Australian Federal Police for criminal investigation, relating to 23 incidents, and involving 19 individuals.

The inquiry, which examined conduct by the Special Forces between and 2005 and 2016 was conducted by Justice Paul Brereton. Prime Minister Scott Morrison last week announced the establishment of a special investigator’s office to prepare material for the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions.

While the report is damning specifically for the special forces operation in the prolonged Afghanistan war, it will cast a pall over the Australian military more generally.

It recommends Australia immediately compensate families of Afghan nationals unlawfully killed, without waiting for criminal liability to be established.

“This will be an important step in rehabilitating Australia’s national reputation, in particular with Afghanistan, and it is simply the right thing to do,” the report says.

It says although many members of the Australian Operation Task Group showed great courage and commitment, and the group had considerable achievements, “what is now known must disentitle the unit as a whole to eligibility for recognition for sustained outstanding service.”

“It has to be said that what this Report discloses is disgraceful and a profound betrayal of the Australian Defence Forces’ professional standards and expectations.”

The inquiry has recommended revoking the award of the Meritorious Unit Citation, “as an effective demonstration of the collective responsibility and accountability” of the group as a whole.

The investigation found that while commanders on the ground were involved, those higher up the chain did not know of the war crimes being perpetrated.

Among the evidence, the inquiry found credible information that “junior soldiers were required by their patrol commanders to shoot a prisoner, in order to achieve the sliders first kill, in a practice that was known as ‘blooding’”.

It also found that “throwdowns” (weapons and radios) would be placed with the body as a “cover story” for operational reporting and to deflect scrutiny.

“This was reinforced with a cone of silence.”

The report laid blame on culture, condemning the “warrior culture” of some SAS commanders in Australia.

The Chief of the ADF, Angus Campbell said at a news conference he “sincerely and unreservedly apologised” for any wrongdoing by Australian soldiers.

Campbell said he had accepted all 143 Brereton recommendations, dealing with culture, governance, and accountability.

– ref. Evidence of war crimes found against 25 Australian soldiers in Afghanistan – https://theconversation.com/evidence-of-war-crimes-found-against-25-australian-soldiers-in-afghanistan-150377

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Thwaites, Chair, Monash Sustainable Development Institute & ClimateWorks Australia, Monash University

As Australia plans its recovery from COVID-19, our strategies should be based on a broader set of priorities than we have used in the past.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), agreed to by all countries at the United Nations, provide a set of objectives and targets that can serve as a blueprint to “build back better” after the pandemic.

This week, a report card is being released on Australia’s progress toward achieving these goals. It also highlights the potential impact of COVID-19 on our ability to meet our SDG targets by 2030.

The report shows Australia is performing well in health and education but failing in climate, environment and areas linked to social inequality.

The good news is that trust in government has risen significantly since the pandemic began, no doubt reflecting in part Australia’s relatively good response to the crisis.

Australians are proud of what we have been able to achieve, and this trust and optimism will be needed as we try to tackle some of the stubborn challenges highlighted in the report.

Read more: We can build a more inclusive government and economy out of the pandemic — this blueprint shows us how

Why targets are critical

In adopting the SDGs, all countries (including Australia) recognised the need to take a long-term and integrated approach to national planning informed by data and evidence.

Central to this approach is the setting of economic, social and environmental targets for 2030, which help to provide clear signposts for where we want to go.

Targets are critical. They set the priorities and level of ambition, encourage a shift from short- to long-term thinking, provide investment certainty and mobilise people to collaborate to solve problems.

They also enable a clear picture of where we are on track or off track, and the scale and pace of change needed.

Read more: Australia falls further in rankings on progress towards UN Sustainable Development Goals

With only 10 years left to achieve the SDGs, Australia still lacks national targets for many of the specific goals and this is undermining our ability to plan effectively for our future.

The report card makes three important contributions:

1) it proposes an initial set of 2030 targets for Australia across economic, social and environmental indicators

2) it assesses Australia’s progress towards these targets over the past two decades, highlighting where we are falling behind and where accelerated action is needed

3) it evaluates the affects of COVID-19 on Australia’s capacity to achieve the SDGs.

Where Australia is falling behind

Our key findings in this week’s report show where Australia needs to focus its energies to meet our SDGs.

Social challenges

• Australians are living longer but are more obese and, since the pandemic, drinking more alcohol.

• Domestic violence has increased during COVID-19.

• Homicide rates have halved since 2000, yet the prison population has increased by 32% since 2006, with Indigenous Australians vastly over-represented.

• Women have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, experiencing more psychological distress and a greater chance of job disruption.

Environmental challenges

• Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions have declined only marginally since 2000 and little progress has been made since 2013. Australia is not on track to meet a 2030 emissions target consistent with the Paris Agreement objective to keep global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius.

• Australia’s per capita material footprint is one of the highest in the world — more than 70% above the OECD average — and rising.

• Hard coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef has declined and the number of species now threatened has increased since 2000.

Economic challenges

• Women, young people and those without high school qualifications are more likely to have had their employment disrupted by COVID-19.

• Australia’s relatively low levels of government debt will help in the COVID-19 recovery, yet household debt is well above the OECD average.

• Wealth inequality is getting worse with the share of household net worth of the bottom 40% of the population declining by 30% since 2004.

• Since 2012, middle-class wages and incomes have stalled.

• COVID-19 has stymied trade, foreign investment and skilled migration, prompting the need for new drivers of growth.

An opportunity for major policy changes

This report comes at a pivotal moment. All countries are facing a series of complex and related crises — a global health emergency, climate change, growing inequality, unemployment and biodiversity decline.

COVID-19 has reduced pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, but emissions are now returning to pre-COVID-19 levels.

And increased public deficits and debt may constrain governments’ abilities to address social and environmental challenges in the coming decade.

Read more: Why more housing stimulus will be needed to sustain recovery

On the other hand, COVID-19 has given governments the chance to undertake much more significant interventions than previously thought possible.

Australia has a huge opportunity to design a recovery strategy that strengthens our resilience to future shocks, addresses many of the challenges of sustainable development that we have not properly dealt with, and ensures the country’s long-term, sustainable prosperity.

– ref. Australia is lagging on climate action and inequality, but the pandemic offers a chance to do better – https://theconversation.com/australia-is-lagging-on-climate-action-and-inequality-but-the-pandemic-offers-a-chance-to-do-better-149983

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Misha Schubert, Visiting Fellow at the National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science at the Australian National University, Australian National University

Australia’s chief scientist, Alan Finkel, will bring his five-year stint in the role to a close at the end of 2020. His successor will be Cathy Foley, a physicist and current chief scientist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), the national government research agency.

What legacy will Finkel leave behind? If there’s a defining theme to his time as chief scientist, it must surely be how he has drawn science and evidence more deeply into government policy-making. Among his many achievements in this vein, two key examples leap out.

Bringing scientists to public service

The first is the Australian Science Policy Fellowship pilot program. Based on a hugely successful US scheme run by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, this program recruits brilliant professionals from scientific, technical, engineering and mathematical (STEM) fields and places them in the federal public service. Now in its third successful year, the scheme has been embraced by 10 Commonwealth government departments.

The embedded scientists, technology experts, engineers and mathematicians not only bring their specific expertise into public service careers. They also bring the broad analytical skill set that is a hallmark of a high-quality STEM education. In STEM, you’re taught to question timeworn assumptions, pull things apart to understand how they really work, look at problems from fresh angles, and strive to innovate and improve things.

The program is a defining legacy for Finkel, who is himself an engineer by training, an entrepreneur by instinct, and a cross-disciplinary STEM leader by evolution.

Connecting government with research and expertise

The second example hails from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. As chief scientist, Finkel found himself fielding requests from government ministers for the latest expert scientific evidence about the coronavirus and the effects of the outbreak.

With a huge volume of research being undertaken at record speed, this was no small task. Finkel looked to leverage the collective brains trust of our nation’s learned academies and peak bodies, such as Science & Technology Australia (STA), to reach deep into our nation’s STEM workforce. (Disclosure: we are the president and CEO of STA, respectively.)

Read more: Bees, pesticides and … what are chief scientists for?

He created the Rapid Research Information Forum. It handled questions from ministers, swiftly crowd-sourcing leading experts to produce clear and concise guides to the emerging evidence. It is a model for future policy-making, and should be resourced as an ongoing vehicle for expert advice to complement the in-house work of the public service.

A complex balancing act

Finkel’s legacy also includes a vast amount of work on energy and education policy, and myriad reports, reviews and roadmaps to help the government navigate complex challenges by leveraging Australia’s STEM strengths.

He also created the STARportal, a digital treasure trove of STEM resources for parents and teachers to engage kids in STEM – especially girls. And his office has run campaigns such as Summertime Science, Science Superheroes, the Storytime Pledge, and STEMEverywhere to get the public more involved in STEM.

The chief scientist’s role is a complex balancing act. It demands great intellect, mastery of policy and political engagement, strong management of relationships with the STEM sector, expert media skills and the ability to communicate clearly to the Australian public.

Behind the scenes, the chief scientist is an advocate for science-informed policy, and an independent source of wise counsel to the prime minister and other ministers on science, technology and innovation. But they are also drawn into media and public debates about the role of science in any number of issues, requiring dexterous skill and a strong command of detail, nuance and politics.

Supported by his top-notch staff, Finkel racked up a catalogue of luminous speeches in the finest tradition of using formal speechcraft to stake out an agenda. He proposed many big and bold ideas, elegantly articulated with warmth, wit and historical anecdotes aplenty.

Read more: Chief Scientist’s address to the National Press Club: The voyage of science and innovation

A strong relationship with the prime minister has been one of Finkel’s greatest assets. Scott Morrison’s speech at the award ceremony for the Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science this year carried a special note of personal connection.

As well as thanking the thousands of scientists who kept us safe this year working on everything from vaccines to epidemiological modelling to ventilators and virus transmission, Morrison paid tribute to Finkel, noting his public service was far from over.

Stronger collaboration, more inspiration

Finkel’s successor will be physicist Cathy Foley. She is currently chief scientist for Australia’s national science agency, the CSIRO, where she has spent 36 years of her impressive career.

We can expect Foley to combine Finkel’s instincts for strong public engagement with the mastery of public service machinery that Finkel’s predecessor Ian Chubb displayed deftly in the role.

Foley is also impeccably connected across the STEM sector. She’s a former president and policy committee chair of STA, a fellow of two learned academies – the Academy of Technology and Engineering and the Australian Academy of Science – and a generous mentor to many young scientists and women in STEM through STA’s Superstars of STEM program.

What will her priorities be? Morrison has noted he would like her to drive stronger collaboration between industry and the science and research community to create jobs for the COVID-19 recovery and beyond.

Federal Science Minister Karen Andrews proposed Foley for the job and is herself a longstanding champion of women in STEM. Andrews said the new chief scientist would help Australia’s manufacturing sector leverage science and technology to strengthen our sovereign capabilities.

For her part, Foley has stated a strong desire to help the government draw on expert scientific advice, serve the nation, and inspire more young people – especially girls – into STEM.

She’s already off to an astute start – turning up at the media call to announce her appointment with gifts for Morrison’s two daughters to inspire in them an even deeper love of science.

Read more: We can’t let STEM skills become a casualty of COVID-19

– ref. As Australia’s chief scientist, Alan Finkel brought more science into government. His successor Cathy Foley will continue the job – https://theconversation.com/as-australias-chief-scientist-alan-finkel-brought-more-science-into-government-his-successor-cathy-foley-will-continue-the-job-150156

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alison McIntosh, Professor of Tourism, Auckland University of Technology

Prison food and fine dining aren’t usually mentioned together. But various initiatives around the world are changing that, with restaurants located within jails offering both culinary satisfaction and opportunities for positive social change.

Prison catering and dining programs aim to tackle re-offending and recidivism by offering inmates training and practical experience before they finish their sentences and re-enter society.

The success of various restaurants based in minimum- or medium-security prisons, including The Clink restaurants in the UK, the InGalera restaurant in Italy and INTERNO in Colombia, suggests a definite trend toward this form of responsible, socially conscious hospitality.

Britain’s Clink Charity operates four restaurants in working prisons in Brixton, Cardiff, High Down and Styal. All are registered catering colleges. Despite the security measures and no alcohol on the menu, we found these restaurants offer a dining experience comparable to any modern, stylish, fine dining establishment.

Brixton prison’s Clink restaurant consistently ranks in Tripadvisor’s top ten restaurants in London. The charity itself has received more than 60 awards since its first restaurant opened in 2009.

A hit with diners

The differences between conventional fine dining establishments and prison restaurants are obvious. But changing public perceptions of prisoners through prison dining programs is key to their wider rehabilitation.

The restaurants are usually staffed by prisoners with six to 18 months left on their sentences. They have completed restorative courses and are lower risk or chosen for their good behaviour.

Analysis of 3,951 Tripadvisor customer reviews of the four Clink restaurants shows diners reported great meals and professional and memorable experiences. They also appreciated the charity’s inspiring ethos. Comments include:

It is not every day that you get to dine in a category C prison, but I can strongly recommend it. A great concept where training and rehabilitation are the key drivers here — they deliver excellent quality food in a relatively relaxed environment. Well worth supporting.

Rehabilitation — new chances — go for it. Feelgood experience while enjoying superbly cooked and presented food. Great value. And it’s not just about supporting a good cause, you will appreciate the quality as well.

Although these restaurants lie within the walls of a prison, customers noted the warm welcome and the relaxed and friendly atmosphere during their visits, despite the initial security checks (including having to leave their phones and laptops outside).

Importantly, the prisoners staffing the restaurants came to be viewed less as inmates and more as trainee hospitality employees capable of delivering outstanding service.

Reducing reoffending

Gaining formal qualifications and training in prison restaurants, as well as having mentoring and support on their release, provides offenders with valuable skills, confidence, dignity and a work ethic that helps them on the outside.

Prison restaurant initiatives also help reduce recidivism. The Clink training programs — based on five stages from recruitment, training, in-prison support to employment and post-prison mentoring — have reduced the chance of a Clink graduate reoffending by 65.6%.

As Clink CEO Christopher Moore has explained:

The key to the success of The Clink Charity is that we are one of the only organisations to deliver a five-step integrated model, both sides of the wall.

A solution for New Zealand

Adopting the successful hospitality training model demonstrated by The Clink Charity should be considered for New Zealand. Our imprisonment rate is high by developed world standards, with a re-offending rate over 50%.

The low numeracy and literacy skills among New Zealand’s prisoner population, as well as general substance abuse and mental health issues, suggest an urgent need for innovative solutions to reoffending and reincarceration rates. It is widely accepted that education reduces recidivism rates.

Adding prison dining programs would build on existing opportunities for inmates. In 2018, 2,017 New Zealand prisoners gained 3,003 qualifications. Hospitality qualifications are offered in 13 New Zealand prisons, but there are few genuine equivalents to the Clink model beyond Rimutaka Prison’s participation in the Wellington on a Plate festival, and the Auckland Region Women’s Correction Facility cafe.

Creating change will be difficult, but prison dining programs have demonstrated success in increasing prisoners’ skills, social support and meaningful employment in the hospitality industry after release.

Furthermore, such programs provide restaurant goers with an opportunity to contribute to meaningful change and help break down stereotypes that hold former prisoners back from making a successful transition from cell to society.

– ref. Serving time: how fine dining in jail is helping prisoners and satisfying customers – https://theconversation.com/serving-time-how-fine-dining-in-jail-is-helping-prisoners-and-satisfying-customers-149161

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Esterman, Professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, University of South Australia

It’s been a busy week or so for news about COVID vaccines. First we heard preliminary clinical trial results from the Pfizer vaccine, then the Russian Sputnik V vaccine. This week, we heard about the Moderna vaccine. All these results were shared with the media, ahead of being peer reviewed and published in a journal.

As we expect preliminary results from more vaccine trials to be released in the coming weeks and months, it’s important to understand what’s behind these announcements, what news reports don’t tell us, and what researchers don’t yet know.

This can help us identify good news when we see it, be more critical of news reports, or delay our judgement until we have more information.

Read more: We may have to accept a ‘good enough’ COVID-19 vaccine, at least in 2021

1. Does the news report tell me what type of trial it is?

At this stage of the pandemic, trial results making the headlines are generally the interim results of late-stage clinical trials, known as phase 3. This is when a vaccine is given to thousands of people and tested for how well it works and whether it’s safe (more on these issues later).

In these trials, volunteers are randomised into two study arms, the vaccine arm (people who get the actual vaccine), and the placebo arm (people who get the placebo, usually an inert substance, such as a saline injection). However, some vaccine trials use vaccines against other diseases as the placebo.

So, ideally, media reports should mention how the vaccine results compare with the placebo or the comparator vaccine.

Read more: Explainer: how do drugs get from the point of discovery to the pharmacy shelf?

Before the vaccine gets to this stage it will have successfully completed smaller trials (phase 1 and 2). Often, clinical trial phases are combined. So you could have results from a trial that combines phases 1 and 2, or phases 2 and 3.

2. Does the media report mention safety?

As vaccines are mainly tested on healthy volunteers, it is extremely important to demonstrate the vaccine is safe.

Side effects (also called adverse events) are reported to an independent committee — usually with two or more experts in immunology and medicine as well as a biostatistician. It’s one of the jobs of this data monitoring committee to receive and examine reports of adverse events, and to look at interim results to determine whether the trial should continue.

Sometimes, if safety concerns are raised, a trial is temporarily halted while the committee investigates. This is what happened with the University of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine trial, which has since recommenced.

So any media report should mention how many people are affected by side effects, the type of side effects (common/rare, serious/minor), whether they were in people in the vaccine or placebo arm of the trial, and whether the data monitoring committee is investigating. Not all these details are available to the public.

Read more: Halting the Oxford vaccine trial doesn’t mean it’s not safe – it shows they’re following the right process

3. Does the media report mention how well the vaccine works?

Trial outcomes are measured at one or more interim time points, and at the end of the trial. This is another factor the data monitoring committee oversees.

For instance, the committee has rules about vaccine efficacy it applies part-way through the trial to work out whether the trial proceeds. So a rule might be something like “For the trial to continue, vaccine efficacy must be at least 60% after 25% of subjects have completed the trial”.

The types of results making the headlines currently come from this type of interim analysis. In other words, the committee will have assessed the results so far and will have given the trial a green light to proceed.

No phase 3 clinical trial has yet reported the full analysis from tens of thousands of study participants, but this will happen over the next few weeks.

Vaccine efficacy

Vaccine efficacy describes how well the vaccine offers protection against the target disease. The formulae and calculations can get quite complicated, so I will only give a simple example here.

One measure is based on the “attack rate”, which is the proportion of the people in the trial diagnosed with COVID-19. We measure the attack rate in the vaccine arm and the placebo arm separately, then divide one by the other to give the “attack rate ratio”. We then subtract the attack rate ratio from 1 to get one measure of vaccine efficacy.

For example, if 5% of the vaccine arm are diagnosed with COVID-19, while 40% of the placebo are diagnosed, then the attack rate ratio is (5%/40%) or 0.125 or 12.5%. That gives a vaccine efficacy of 87.5% (100% – 12.5%).

Read more: Pfizer vaccine: what an ‘efficacy rate above 90%’ really means

Immune response

Some vaccine trials report how well the immune system responds (immunogenicity). For example, the University of Oxford/AstraZeneca trial has reported the antibody response as well as several other measures of immunogenicity.

Some trials only report on immunogenicity. This allows the trial to be smaller, shorter, and less expensive than vaccine efficacy trials, as they use immunogenicity as a surrogate for vaccine efficacy.

Although efficacy is the preferred endpoint for vaccine trials, some regulating authorities accept evidence of immunogenicity to authorise a vaccine.

Vaccine effectiveness

Vaccine effectiveness describes how well the vaccine offers protection against the target disease in the real world, rather than in a controlled clinical trial. Vaccine trials usually include healthy volunteers, but often don’t tell us how well the vaccine works in children, elderly people, or those with compromised immune systems.

Reported vaccine efficacies of 90-95%, as we’ve heard recently, may sound impressive. However, under real-world conditions, the vaccines are likely to offer much less protection in some population groups.

Read more: 5 ways our immune responses to COVID vaccines are unique

4. What else do I need to know?

Current trials are reporting whether or not a vaccine prevents COVID-19 (in other words, symptoms), not whether it prevents the infection itself.

However, a recent media report about the Pfizer vaccine says it is likely to prevent 50% of infections, as well as 90% of symptomatic COVID-19.

If the vaccine has 90% efficacy, then 10% of vaccinated people could still get the symptomatic disease. We would hope these people would have a much milder illness, but we don’t know if this is the case.

We also don’t know how long immunity lasts or if there are any long-term side effects.

All we can do now is wait with patience for the full phase 3 trial results to come in over the next few weeks.

– ref. How to read results from COVID vaccine trials like a pro – https://theconversation.com/how-to-read-results-from-covid-vaccine-trials-like-a-pro-149916

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan Pears, Senior Industry Fellow, RMIT University

Renters will no longer have to contend with poorly insulated homes and Victoria will move closer towards 7-star home efficiency standards under a A$797 million plan announced this week. It’s purportedly the biggest energy efficiency scheme in any Australian state’s history.

Energy efficiency essentially means using less energy to perform the same job. It’s often the quickest and cheapest way to reduce emissions from energy use, yet state and federal governments in Australia have traditionally done little to seize the opportunity.

Australia’s national energy productivity plan, agreed by the nation’s energy ministers in 2015, has stalled. It aims for a 40% improvement in energy productivity by 2030, but has so far achieved only a fraction of that.

It’s clearly time to kickstart the energy efficiency revolution in Australia – to reduce energy bills, make homes more comfortable and meet our climate goals. So let’s examine Victoria’s plan, and how other states might follow.

Better homes, lower bills

The Victorian package is strongly focused on helping renters and low-income households in existing homes, and forms part of the state’s 2020-21 budget.

The measures include:

• A$335 million to replace old wood, electric or gas-fired heaters with more efficient systems. The program will be open to low-income earners

• A$112 million to seal windows and doors, and upgrade heating, cooling and hot water in 35,000 social housing properties

• minimum efficiency standards for rental properties, expected to benefit renters living in around 320,000 homes with poor heating and insulation

• funding to help Victoria move to 7-star efficiency standards for new homes

• a A$250 payment for those struggle to pay their bills

• A$14 million to expand the Victorian Energy Upgrades program, including rebates for “smart” appliances.

The package follows a A$5.3 billion announcement earlier this month to build 12,000 new social and community housing units over four years. These new homes will meet a 7-star energy rating, rather than the mandatory 6 stars.

A new approach

To date, energy efficiency policies and programs in Australia have mostly focused on new and owner-occupied homes. These homes are easy targets, because they’re on separate titles and don’t involve negotiations with owners’ corporations or landlords.

So Victoria’s program helps to fill a big gap. Currently, the average Victorian home has a 3-star energy rating, so there is plenty of room for improvement in existing homes. The approach will ensure renters, and those in homes already built, see the benefits of energy efficiency. And it means emissions reductions are realised across the residential sector.

In the past, policy in this area has largely been debated on narrow economic assessments of “cost effectiveness”. And in my experience, powerful industry groups and political agendas seek to slow progress behind closed doors, while consumers often lack a voice in decision-making.

Both the Victorian government announcement, and progress at the COAG level, follow advocacy from social justice groups and Energy Consumers Australia (ECA) building on academic research (eg https://www.ahuri.edu.au/research/final-reports/338 ). These groups have helped highlight how poor housing affects vulnerable people, causing high energy bills and health problems.

Read more: Australia has failed miserably on energy efficiency – and government figures hide the truth

In February 2019, COAG agreed to a national plan towards zero-net-energy new buildings for Australia. In November that year it resolved to extend the plan to existing homes. Proposed measures include national frameworks for use by states and territories, covering energy disclosure at the time of a home’s sale or lease, and minimum energy efficiency requirements for rental properties.

Victoria’s commitment this week to introduce minimum energy standards for rental properties puts it at the forefront of this process.

The Victorian government had earlier developed a Residential Efficiency Scorecard suitable for rating homes under an energy disclosure scheme assessment tool. So far it’s been rolled out as a voluntary scheme and been trialled in other states.

In Melbourne, a 7 star building would require around 25% less heating and cooling energy than a 6 star home.

Of course, the devil is in the detail. When will energy disclosure and rental energy standards be introduced? How stringent will the standards be? Will there be sufficient focus on improving summer performance to cope with climate change? Will old gas appliances be replaced by alternatives that use renewable electricity? How much of the package will be implemented before Victoria’s next election in late 2022? Time will tell.

Time to get on board

Other Australian states and territories, including NSW, the ACT and South Australia, have introduced impressive energy efficiency measures. The ACT, in particular, has had a mandatory energy disclosure scheme at time of sale for many years. And NSW is introducing a scheme to encourage a reduction in peak electricity demand.

Action by individual states and territories may encourage other jurisdictions to follow. However different energy efficiency approaches across states may dilute benefits while increasing confusion among households and complicating life for industry. This must be guarded against.

In June, the International Energy Agency released a global “green recovery” plan to help economies recover from the pandemic. Many of the millions of new jobs created through the plan would be in retrofitting buildings to improve energy efficiency. Increasing energy efficiency would also improve electricity security, lowering the risk of outages.

But globally, improvements in energy efficiency have slowed in recent years, making it harder to curb climate changes. The federal government, so far fixated on a “gas-led” path out of recession, must also get on board the energy efficiency wagon.

Read more: House hunters are rarely told the home energy rating – little wonder the average is as low as 1.8 stars

– ref. Renters in Victoria soon won’t have to deal with dodgy heaters and insulation. Now other states must get energy-efficient – https://theconversation.com/renters-in-victoria-soon-wont-have-to-deal-with-dodgy-heaters-and-insulation-now-other-states-must-get-energy-efficient-150358

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julia E. Morris, Senior Lecturer, Visual Arts Education, Edith Cowan University

The COVID pandemic has meant many students learnt from home for a lot of the year. But with schools returning to normal across Australia, how will students readjust from learning at the kitchen table (or couch, or bedroom) to being at desks and chairs in classrooms?

We conducted a study to find out how primary school students feel about different types of classroom furniture.

The students we spoke to clearly explained the reasons why they prefer certain types of furniture. They know furniture can suit their physical and learning needs, and they talked about how they actively set up their own environments to get them ready for learning in the way they know works best for them.

Teachers and students have the opportunity to think about how the learning environment can be re-imagined to best support students’ (and teachers’) needs.

What do classrooms look like?

Research shows three quarters of primary and secondary students in Australian and New Zealand schools learn in traditional classrooms. The majority of these classrooms have uniform desks and chairs facing the teacher at the front of the room. This type of classroom is a hangover from the industrial revolution.

While some teachers can teach well in such traditional settings, evidence suggests more flexible learning environments are associated with deeper learning. Deep learning is when students go beyond learning facts. They instead apply knowledge to their context, using critical and creative thinking skills to engage in learning they are curious about.

Read more: Knowledge is a process of discovery: how constructivism changed education

Flexible learning environments have a range of furniture options including ottomans, stools, multi-height chairs and different height tables. A mix of private retreat spaces and public group spaces means the teacher is everywhere — there is no front to the classroom.

What students say about classroom furniture

We are conducting a three-year industry-funded study investigating how flexible furniture affects student learning in primary school classrooms.

We surveyed 300 students in Years 3 to 6. About 93% said flexible furniture helped them learn better.

The most popular types of furniture were high tables with height adjustable stools, round or triangular-shaped tables that promoted collaboration, and soft seating like ottomans.

Students said having options meant they could choose furniture to meet their physical and other learning needs.

More than half (54%) of students said comfort was the main reason for their furniture selection. They preferred furniture where they could adjust their position if working in one place for long periods of time.

They also liked it when the furniture could suit their body types or manage injuries. One student said he preferred a higher table with a stool because it “helps my back because its strait [sic] and you can’t wobble on it”.

Another said about a multi-height table:

… [it] allows me to either stand or sit while being comfortable.

Students also chose furniture they said helped them learn better. They preferred furniture they could move to support concentration, and facilitate independent and collaborative work.

Students said they made decisions about the arrangement of furniture to manage their behaviour in class. One student told us:

It helps me to stay focused because I have to turn my head to socialise with my friends and if I do that too much my neck will start to hurt.

Portable furniture was also important for students who felt they had extra energy to burn. Small bounces on a gym ball while working helped some relax and stay focused.

Read more: Kids spend nearly three-quarters of their school day sitting. Here’s how to get them moving — during lessons

Flexible furniture helps teachers too

Teachers spend more time talking at the students, and delivering content, when they are facing the students sitting at rows of desks.

But flexible furniture allows teachers to use more student-centred ways of teaching. This means they give students more autonomy to be active learners, participating in collaboration with peers or leading their own work.

In our study, we noticed teachers spent more time giving instructions to the whole class when using the traditional furniture arrangement. But when flexible furniture was available they gave instructions to smaller groups, making it easier to tailor specific tasks to students and help those who may need it.

Read more: Explainer: what is inquiry-based learning and how does it help prepare children for the real world?

The type of teaching in classrooms with flexible furniture aligns with educational outcomes such as those in the Alice Spring (Mparntwe) Education Declaration, which call for students to become autonomous, confident learners.

We also found teachers felt they built better relationships and trust with students when they were working in flexible furniture arrangements.

While we don’t yet have enough evidence to say using flexible furniture results in higher student achievement, it is clearly a factor that affects students’ learning experience.

– ref. Group tables, ottomans and gym balls: kids told us why flexible furniture helps them learn – https://theconversation.com/group-tables-ottomans-and-gym-balls-kids-told-us-why-flexible-furniture-helps-them-learn-150069

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Roslyn Petelin, Course coordinator, The University of Queensland

This week, it was announced two types of Allen’s lollies, Red Skins and Chicos, will be known from January 2021 as Red Ripper and Cheekies.

The Swiss-headquartered Nestle Corporation decided the original names did not express their brand values, presumably because of the racist connotations of redskins (Native Americans) and chicos (Latin Americans).

But don’t be surprised if the Nestle marketing department requests a further name change. As the Daily Mail reported, “Red Ripper” was the moniker of a notorious Soviet criminal, Andrei Chicatilo, responsible between 1978 and 1990 for the violent deaths of 52 women, some of whom he ripped apart.

Haven’t you heard of Google?

Nestle is not the only corporation neglecting to Google before using language that causes offence.

Two episodes of the Emmy-award-winning children’s show Bluey were removed from the ABC streaming platform iview and subsequently edited after a complaint from a viewer about the racial connotations of the term “ooga booga”.

The viewer pointed out the Macquarie Dictionary defines “ooga booga” as a “stereotypical rendering of what the speaker regards to be the language of those deemed by them to be African savages”.

In an apology, the ABC and Ludo Studios said they were unaware of the term’s potentially derogatory meaning and was only intended as “irreverent rhyming slang often made up by children”.

The term “ooga booga” connotes primitivism and superstition. In B-grade movies, when uttered by a witch-doctor, it could mean anything at all and saved any more complex scriptwriting.

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

The racism or otherwise of the term today is, however, entirely dependent on context. Today, it can be considered a satirical term for the inauthentic representation of indigenous people as savages.

When the leading Indigenous art collective proppaNow exhibited works under that title, they used it critically to play on the absurdity of various traits attributed to Aboriginal people by white Australians.

But if used to deride a culture itself, it is profoundly offensive.

Our changing norms

Noddy’s golliwogs have been exiled, as has the “n” word in Huckleberry Finn and elsewhere. Enid Blyton’s Faraway Tree children Fanny and Dick were renamed Frannie and Rick — raising the ire of many devotees and sending them scrambling to second-hand bookshops for early editions.

Discriminatory language — in the form of ageist, classist, racist, and sexist expressions — has long been unacceptable in Australia and other parts of the world. The Black Lives Matter movement has dominated the headlines this year, raising awareness of racism in word and deed.

But why has it taken so long for American food companies such Quaker Oats and Dreyer Icecream to feel the pressure to rename Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix and Eskimo Pie? Aunt Jemima, based on a black “mammy”, is disappearing altogether and Eskimo pie is now called Edy’s.

One part of the world that has not seen the necessity to rename products with racist connotations is mainland China. One of south east Asia’s best-selling toothpaste brands is “Darlie”. From 1933 to 1989 there was a “k” where the “l” now is, constituting a longstanding racial slur against African Americans.

Colgate Palmolive must have been aware of how disgustingly racist the name was when they bought into the company in 1985. It took them four years to change the English name — but the Chinese language name still translates to “black people toothpaste”.

Language shapes our world

Of course, the Allen’s lollies’ name change has been called unnecessary by some critics, who have derided “political correctness” and “cancel culture”.

In recent years these movements have been allied to “wokeness”, which has also been subjected to derision, though its concern is being attentive to important issues —especially issues of racial and social justice.

George Orwell’s 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language, focused on the political dangers of not caring for language. Language is everyone’s business.

Surely our stance should encompass empathy, respect and civility? In the quest for this empathy, these name changes are a small but important step forward.

– ref. Renaming of Red Skins and Chicos is a shaky step towards leaving discriminatory ideas in the past – https://theconversation.com/renaming-of-red-skins-and-chicos-is-a-shaky-step-towards-leaving-discriminatory-ideas-in-the-past-150178

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

The findings of the inquiry by Justice Paul Brereton into the misconduct – including allegations of murder of non-combatants and mistreatment of prisoners – by Australian special forces in Afghanistan are released on Thursday.

Scott Morrison last week warned these findings will be “difficult and hard news” for Australians.

The leadership of the Australian Defence Force will drive a program of reform in the wake of behaviour that puts a deep blemish on what the ADF and most Australians see as the nation’s proud military tradition.

Allan Behm, from The Australia Institute, an expert on defence and security issues and a former senior public servant and ministerial adviser, joined the podcast on the eve of the release to discuss the background to the report.

“I think it is going to be quite shocking for many of us. And I think … we will feel a sense of shame.”

“It will get many people to think about issues of moral hazard. It will certainly get people to think about what kind of administrative and organisational arrangements within the Australian Defence Force permitted this to happen.”

“I think it will cause a lot of Australians to think quite deeply about the moral peril that we expose young soldiers to in warfare.”

If reports are true “that prisoners were shot dead, that noncombatants were simply ‘wasted’, to use the language of warfare, as collateral damage in pursuit of military objectives, many, many ADF people will be very perturbed by that.”

Asked about the culture of these soldiers, Behm described the special forces as “elites”. “Elites can be highly problematic,” he says.

In the wake of the report, there will be the question of whether special forces are needed, he said.

If they are to be retained, “the second thing will then be to decide whether we need to have the special forces quarantined, separate from the rest of our forces … or whether the special forces should be more clearly part of our standing army.”

Having the special forces work across a wider base within the military could “militate against the formation of uncontrollable elites or rogue elements”.

“And there’s history to be dealt with.

“I mean, we have a regiment which is highly decorated and highly recognised. At the same time, it is this regiment and this function, which … has brought this shame upon us.

“And that will require a lot of evaluation.”

Additional audio

A List of Ways to Die, Lee Rosevere, from Free Music Archive.

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Defence expert Allan Behm on the background to the Brereton report – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-defence-expert-allan-behm-on-the-background-to-the-brereton-report-150384

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Bennett, Chair in Epidemiology, Deakin University

South Australian Premier Steven Marshall today announced a six-day “circuit breaker” lockdown to try and snuff out the state’s COVID outbreak.

From midnight Wednesday, residents will be asked to stay in their homes. Hospitality venues will shut, as will schools and universities. Construction will grind to a halt and exercise won’t be allowed outside the home.

The only permitted reasons to leave home are to shop for food or medicine, or for essential health care. Elective surgery will be paused, except for urgent operations.

There are now 22 cases linked to the cluster that emerged from hotel quarantine, and a further seven suspected cases.

Why lockdown?

While this may seem like an overly cautious approach to a cluster that isn’t yet as big as we’ve seen in other places, I think it’s a wise move.

This is how lockdowns should be used. Indeed, the World Health Organisation advocates lockdowns as a way to buy precious time while other essential public health measures are mobilised, such as contact tracing and widespread testing. The focus here is on preventing a rise in cases, unlike the lockdown in Melbourne where the cases had already taken off widely in the community and it was about turning the wave around.

We’ve seen the virus in this particular cluster spread very rapidly. In just two weeks it has spread through five generations — that is, to five “rings” beyond the initial case.

We’ve also seen cases passed on through quite casual contact, via a pizza shop in the suburb of Woodville.

The state’s chief health officer, Nicola Spurrier, said:

This particular strain has […] a very, very short incubation period. That means when somebody gets exposed, it is taking 24 hours or even less for that person to become infectious to others, and the other characteristic of the cases we have seen so far is they have had minimal symptoms and sometimes no symptoms but have been able to pass it on to others.

This short incubation period and rapid spread is why the government has opted for a six-day lockdown, giving the space to put out the spot fire while protecting the wider community, and especially high-risk settings and vulnerable populations where cases numbers can escalate rapidly with serious consequences.

Also, as Spurrier said, the cases so far have had no, or very mild, symptoms. So this six-day window allows the testing of close and casual contacts to be completed so the cases that are out there become visible to the health department.

The decision to restrict exercise altogether is strict, but warranted in my view. The rationale is similar to putting a wide range of people into isolation, as they don’t yet know where the edge is of the current cases, or the full extent of exposure. The rationale for the extension of restrictions beyond Adelaide and surrounds to the whole state is less clear at this stage.

If it protects the population from an escalation of cases, then six days without outdoor exercise will ultimately be better for physical and mental health than longer strict rules, even with some exercise allowed.

Significant restrictions will remain after the six days, but not full lockdown, according to the state’s Police Commissioner Grant Stevens.

Read more: South Australia’s COVID outbreak: what we know so far, and what needs to happen next

The good news

The good news is there have been no mystery cases so far. All positive cases have been linked back to hotel quarantine at the Peppers Waymouth Hotel (known as a “medi-hotel” locally).

Testing rates have been very high. Some 5,300 tests were done on Monday, and more than 6,000 on Tuesday. This number of tests is comparable to three or four times that number in a larger city like Melbourne. Local residents have been very patient in queuing up to get tested, sometimes for several hours.

South Australia’s contact tracing team hasn’t really been severely tested during the pandemic. But the team has received extensive training and is reportedly robust, having been given the tick of approval from Chief Scientist Alan Finkel’s recent review into Australia’s contact tracing, published last Friday.

Read more: Exponential growth in COVID cases would overwhelm any state’s contact tracing. Australia needs an automated system

More than 4,000 people have been quarantined already, including not just contacts, but contacts of contacts, and even beyond that to ensure “casual contacts” are also followed up and tested. This is a sign of a rapid and strong public health response.

What needs to change?

Before this cluster, testing was not mandatory for hotel quarantine staff — although this has now changed to compulsory weekly testing.

This is a positive step, but in my view we should ideally start testing hotel quarantine staff daily.

Getting a nasal swab every day is quite intrusive, so I think we could use saliva tests instead. Yes, they don’t have quite the same level of sensitivity as the “gold standard” PCR tests based on nose and throat swabs, but they’re more tolerable for frequent testing.

Saliva samples can also be efficiently managed if pooled together, and if there’s evidence of a positive test in the broad sample, individual samples can then be checked. Testing early and often is the best approach.

We also need to get serious about resourcing our hotel workers. Spurrier confirmed some workers had worked at multiple sites. This obviously increases the risk of the virus spreading through the community — we saw this with some aged-care staff working across multiple venues in Victoria.

We need to prevent workers from needing to work across multiple sites, by paying them more. Even if they’re not working full-time, they need to be paid as such to ensure they don’t need to take on extra work and increase the risk of spreading the virus to other workplaces. This goes for all staff — security staff as well as cleaners. Cleaners have a very important job and are particularly vulnerable.

I’d like to see national guidelines crafted for hotel quarantine. Today there is national agreement on weekly testing, but I think this should be a minimum. Infection control protocols and monitoring, and pay rates with accompanying sole employment rules also need to be considered. It’s an issue that isn’t going to go away, and it’s an important gap that needs to be filled.

Read more: How’s your life under lockdown? Tweets tell the tale of how neighbourhoods compare

– ref. South Australia’s 6-day lockdown shows we need to take hotel quarantine more seriously – https://theconversation.com/south-australias-6-day-lockdown-shows-we-need-to-take-hotel-quarantine-more-seriously-150368

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Haskell-Dowland, Associate Dean (Computing and Security), Edith Cowan University

Last week, the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) issued warnings to Australian health-care providers that it had observed an increase in cyber incidents targeting the sector.

These attacks seem to be aimed at infiltrating networks and burrowing deep into their infrastructure before deploying further attacks.

The ACSC is tasked with improving Australia’s cyber security posture, and provides advice and support to help ensure Australia is a secure place to live and work. As part of its warning, the ACSC flagged the possibility of “ransomware” being deployed, which could disable critical systems unless a ransom is paid. In a hospital or other health-care facility, this could be a life-threatening situation.

Attacks against the health-care sector are dangerous at any time. But when services are under pressure from COVID-19, and information-sharing (including tools such as contact tracing) is increasingly important, an all-out cyber attack against the health sector could be very damaging.

The current threat

The ACSC guidance identifies two significant threats.

The first is the SDBBot Remote Access Tool (often referred to as a RAT), whereas the second is a ransomware tool named Cl0p. While neither is desirable, the combination of the two is particular concerning in a health-care setting.

SDBBot Remote Access Tool (RAT)

A RAT is a piece of malicious software designed to allow criminals to remotely access and control one or more systems in an organisation. Once run, the SDBBot RAT installs itself, downloads additional components and deploys the remote-access capability.

Once fully installed, criminals will often use a compromised computer to explore other systems – a technique often referred to as “pivoting”. As the criminals move through the network, they often take the opportunity to make copies of sensitive data. This can be a valuable asset to use for coercion, blackmail or even sell through the underground economy.

Cl0p ransomware

Having the SDBBot RAT successfully deployed enables other attacks – one of the most concerning is that of ransomware. While not an inherent feature of SDBBot, a frequent consequence of infection is the subsequent deployment of the Cl0p ransomware.

Ransomware generally encrypts an organisation’s files or data so they are no longer accessible. Recovering the files typically involves paying a ransom, often in Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency.

In October, German company Software AG faced a US$20 million ransom demand after a Cl0p ransomware attack. In this incident, the criminals claimed to have more than a terabyte of stolen data, including emails, financial records and even scanned copies of passports. This data trove was published online when the company failed to pay the ransom.

This is an example of an increasingly common tactic referred to as “double extortion”, in which not only is data stolen and held to ransom, but there is the added threat the data will be posted in public or auctioned to interested parties. The threat of public exposure of the breach, coupled with the potential release of confidential data, can often encourage organisations to pay the ransom.

Potential consequences

A recent ACSC report on ransomware in Australia identified the health-care sector as the most targeted, by a significant margin. This is perhaps not surprising, given the sector’s lack of training, lax security practices and chronic underinvestment in technology and digital infrastructure.

Health-care providers face two significant consequences of cyber compromise. First, personal or sensitive data are valuable to criminals. Having such data leaked online is embarrassing and has significant legal implications for the organisation and the government.

A second, more serious, consequence can be seen when a ransomware attack impacts critical systems. The most notable example in recent years was the Wannacry attack in 2017 that targeted the UK National Health Service, among others.

The NHS suffered a major outage over several days following the Wannacry ransomware attack, resulting in thousands of operations and appointments being cancelled. Wannacry was estimated to have cost billions of dollars globally, with the UK NHS spending close to US$100 million to recover and strengthen its cyber defences.

A ransomware incident earlier this year in Germany had deadly results. When ransomware crippled a hospital in Dusseldorf, an emergency patient was sent to another facility instead. She died, and her death has been attributed to the delay in treatment.

Australia has had similar incidents in the past. Last year saw seven hospitals affected by a ransomware attack.

Read more: Defending hospitals against life-threatening cyberattacks

Should we be worried?

Cyber attacks are a constant threat, and most organisations are well aware of the risks to their business operations, intellectual property, sensitive data and reputation.

But in the health-care sector the stakes are higher. Losing data can cost lives, and patient records being stolen is a breach of privacy that can have long-lasting effects for the patient.

With systems intertwined and dependent on each other, just one compromised target can have major implications.

Interestingly, the Cl0p Leaks website (only available on the dark web through the TOR web browser) features the following reassuring statement in relation to hospitals – perhaps showing an ethical streak to the criminal group.

Cyber criminals are usually motivated by profit. Ransomware attacks work because individuals within organisations make mistakes. When combined, there is a strong motivation for criminals to continue these actions and for organisations (and us) to continue to pay to clean up the mess that’s left behind.

– ref. Australian hospitals are under constant cyber attack. The consequences could be deadly – https://theconversation.com/australian-hospitals-are-under-constant-cyber-attack-the-consequences-could-be-deadly-150164

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katrina Raynor, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Hallmark Research Initiative for Affordable Housing, University of Melbourne

The Victorian government has announced the big social housing investment for which housing advocates, industry groups, academics and social service providers have been clamouring for decades.

The A$5.4 billion “Big Housing Build” aims to create over 12,000 homes in four years. Of these, 9,300 will be social housing. The rest will be affordable or market-rate housing. The program will replace 1,100 old public housing units.

Read more: Why the focus of stimulus plans has to be construction that puts social housing first

The headline programs include:

• $532 million to build on public land, including six “fast start” sites, resulting in 500 social housing homes and 540 affordable and market homes

• $948 million to spot-purchase homes, projects in progress or ready-to-build dwellings from the private sector, adding 1,600 social housing and 200 affordable homes

• $1.38 billion for community housing projects to build up to 4,200 homes

• $2.14 billion for “new opportunities” with private sector and community housing providers, producing up to 5,200 homes.

Up to $1.25 billion will go into regional Victoria, which is welcome.

In addition, $498 million was announced in May to refurbish and build public housing.

Just how big is the Big Housing Build?

A target of 9,300 new social housing units over four years is definitely “big” by recent Victorian standards. The state’s social housing stock grew by just 12,500 dwellings over the past 15 years – about 830 dwellings a year.

The only comparable investment in Australia in the past two decades was the Commonwealth’s $5.6 billion Social Housing Initiative in 2009. This post-GFC stimulus program built around 19,700 social housing dwellings and repaired 12,000.

Is it enough?

No. It will take a long time and continued commitments of a similar scale to overcome the massive shortages in Victoria and Australia.

Victoria has a history of spending less on social housing per person than the rest of Australia.

University of Melbourne research estimated a 164,000 shortfall in social and affordable housing in Victoria in 2018. The Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute estimated an extra 166,000 social units would be needed by 2036.

Read more: Australia needs to triple its social housing by 2036. This is the best way to do it

The Big Housing Build aims to increase social housing dwellings in Victoria from 80,500 to about 89,000 – about 3.5% of all housing. That’s still less than the Australian average of 4.2% and the OECD average of 6%.

What the scheme gets right

This program leans heavily on the use of state and local land to reduce the cost of the new housing. My colleagues and I have previously pointed out the large swathes of “lazy” government land across Victoria that could be used for this.

Read more: Put unused and ‘lazy’ land to work to ease the affordable housing crisis

Offering $1.38 billion in competitive capital grants for community housing providers is also substantially more cost-effective for government than models that rely on private finance and provide an operating subsidy to providers. It appears the entire amount will be spent on supporting construction, rather than on creating a seed fund that drip-feeds investment returns into the not-for-profit sector like the Social Housing Growth Fund does.

Victoria is also joining Canada and the state of California in spot-purchasing homes from the private sector in response to COVID-19. This will deliver social housing quickly. It will also support developers in a depressed market while capitalising on lower prices.

The focus on victim-survivors of domestic violence, Indigenous Australians and people living with mental health conditions is welcome too.

Read more: Why more housing stimulus will be needed to sustain recovery

Remaining concerns

Privatisation of social housing

This announcement continues trends across Australia to shift social housing provision from a state responsibility (public housing) to a more partnership-based model led by community housing providers (community housing).

This approach can leverage substantial contributions from other sectors in the form of land, capital, skills and ideas, producing exemplary outcomes. An example is the Education First Youth Foyer partnership, which is changing how “at risk” young people access housing, education and other services.

However, complex arrangements between multiple partners, especially when using private finance, can be inefficient and costly. Such partnerships are often opportunistic rather than strategic, with priority given to commercial over social outcomes. Community housing residents have less tenancy rights than those in public housing and sometimes pay more of their income on rent.

An emphasis on mixed-tenure developments can lead to cherry-picking of “acceptable” tenants and destroy tightly knit communities. Previous public housing renewal programs based on private sector involvement left a legacy of poorly integrated communities and loss of public land for negligible gains in social housing. We cannot afford to make those mistakes again.

Read more: Social mix in housing? One size doesn’t fit all, as new projects show

Lack of a strategic plan

The program comes with a new government agency, Homes Victoria, and the promise of a ten-year policy and funding framework. This level of strategic leadership has been lacking in Victoria and will require bipartisan support. Strong partnerships with local councils will also be needed.

Good policy depends on many elements, including:

• research
• housing targets with geographical and population-group breakdowns
• transparent decision-making
• clearly identified funding streams and responsible agencies
• shared definitions
• monitoring and evaluation mechanisms
• clear time frames
• integration with other policy areas and levels of government.

These elements appear to still be a work in progress for the Big Housing Build. The risk is that this announcement will follow Australia’s pattern of “lumpy” funding and inconsistent policy on social and affordable housing.

Without long-term funding streams, providers find it hard to to scale up, make strategic decisions, invest in internal capacity and plan development pipelines. Without overarching strategy and monitoring, Victoria’s lacklustre history of social housing provision may continue.

Read more: Ten lessons from cities that have risen to the affordable housing challenge

Reduced community engagement

Planning approvals for larger social housing developments will be streamlined. In many cases, the state will take over final decision-making from local government. This will reduce opportunities for community consultation and the state government will need to work hard to ensure high-quality design is integrated into developments.

Where to from here?

As COVID-19 has made clear, everyone needs a home and society benefits from caring for those in need. The speed with which governments moved to house rough sleepers, a seemingly intractable problem before COVID, shows homelessness and severe housing stress can be overcome.

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

The Big Housing Build is not perfect and will not solve Victoria’s huge housing challenges on its own. It must be the start of regular cycles of funding to sustain social housing in Victoria. It should also be tied to longitudinal evaluation of outputs and an aligned research agenda to shape best-practice outcomes.

And powers-that-be in Canberra, the list of partners in this program has a large federal-government-shaped gap. When are you going to come to the party?

– ref. Victoria’s $5.4bn Big Housing Build: it is big, but the social housing challenge is even bigger – https://theconversation.com/victorias-5-4bn-big-housing-build-it-is-big-but-the-social-housing-challenge-is-even-bigger-150161

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Jorm, Professor emeritus, University of Melbourne

The Productivity Commission’s report on mental health, released earlier this week, prompted headlines emphasising the huge economic cost of mental ill-health and suicide in Australia.

The commission estimated the direct economic costs at between A$43 billion and A$70 billion, with an additional A$151 billion due to the cost of disability and premature death.

While there have been many reports on mental health reform in the past, this one is different. The Productivity Commission looks at issues through an economic rather than a health lens. Its remit in producing the report was to examine “the effect of mental health on people’s ability to participate in and prosper in the community and workplace, and the effects it has more generally on our economy and productivity”.

This meant the report covered the impact of mental ill-health on the whole of Australian society and the role of all levels and sectors of government in helping to alleviate it.

The recommendations

While this economic lens inevitably involved an analysis of costs, the report’s real significance is in the more than 100 “actions” the commission recommended the federal, state and territory governments take.

Besides the health sector, these recommended actions involve families, schools, tertiary education, workplaces, income and employment support, insurance, criminal justice, police, housing and Indigenous communities. This breadth of coverage reflects the huge impact of mental ill-health right across Australian society, and acknowledges a whole-of-government, and indeed whole-of-society, response is needed.

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

This extraordinary breadth makes it hard to summarise the recommendations briefly, but there are some key themes that stand out:

• the commission has recognised mental ill-health often has its origins early in life, and action for prevention and early intervention is needed in families, preschools and schools

• telehealth and online services are likely to become increasingly important. This is an area where Australia is already a world leader, but the report recommends a major integration and expansion of these approaches

• tertiary educational institutions are recommended to see mental health as central to their mission. This includes the need for better services for international students.

• mentally healthy workplaces are vital, with recommendations covering psychological health and safety, employers’ duty of care, workers’ compensation claims, and standards for employee assistance providers

• the report recognises the higher risk of mental ill-health and suicide among Indigenous Australians, with recommendations on empowering Indigenous communities and including a role for traditional healers

• there is recognition of the poor physical health and substantially reduced life expectancy of people with severe mental illnesses, with recommendations for improved physical health care

• the importance of social factors in mental illness is reflected in recommendations on reforms in housing, justice and income support.

Read more: If Australia really wants to tackle mental health after coronavirus, we must take action on homelessness

An overarching theme behind all the recommendations is the need for better data and evaluation. In the past, large sums of public money have been spent on programs that have never been properly evaluated or, when they were evaluated, found not to deliver the expected benefits. The commission urges all innovations be rigorously evaluated before being rolled out.

Where to from here?

If the commission’s recommendations were fully implemented, Australia would be the undisputed world leader in mental health reform. The cost of implementation is inevitably a barrier, but the commission has done the hard-nosed economic analysis and concluded the benefits outweigh the costs.

The report estimates the recommended reforms would deliver up to A$18 billion in benefits per year, mainly from improvements to people’s quality of life, plus a further A$1.3 billion a year from increased economic participation and productivity. These benefits would require up to A$4.2 billion of expenditure per year.

Many of the recommended actions, such as giving Australians the right to choose their preferred mental health specialist and the recognition of mental health advance directives by state and territory governments, cost little or nothing, as they merely represent better ways of doing things we already do.

Read more: 3 in 4 people with a mental illness develop symptoms before age 25. We need a stronger focus on prevention

The danger is governments will see the recommended actions as a menu from which they choose a few items at budget time. Over the past 20 years, Australia has been through a piecemeal process of lobbyist-led reform, in which ministers fund particular programs that make good “announceables” when an election or budget rolls around.

This approach has failed to improve Australians’ mental health. What we need is unified support from the mental health sector, and the community more generally, for the commission’s recommendations as a total reform package.

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

– ref. The Productivity Commission says mental ill-health costs Australia billions — it’s time for a proper investment in making things better – https://theconversation.com/the-productivity-commission-says-mental-ill-health-costs-australia-billions-its-time-for-a-proper-investment-in-making-things-better-150184

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Manu Saunders, Lecturer, University of New England

From ethereal kelp forests off the south east Australian coast to grassy woodlands and their stunning wildflowers, many ecological communities are under threat in Australia.

But national environment legislation — the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act — has so far been ineffective at protecting them.

In our recent paper, we identify a major flaw in the current approach to listing threatened ecological communities for protection under the EPBC Act: the requirement to meet unrealistic condition thresholds.

In other words, where areas of a community do not meet these specific minimum thresholds, they’re considered too degraded to warrant conservation and aren’t protected under the EPBC Act.

What’s an ecological community anyway?

An ecological community is a group of species that co-exist in a specific type of habitat and interact with each other. For example, a mangrove community is clearly different in structure and the types of plants and animals is supports, compared to what you would see in a salt marsh community nearby.

Just like individual species, ecological communities can occur over thousands of kilometres, even though examples of this type of community may only be found in small and patchy areas across that range.

There are currently 85 threatened ecological communities listed in the EPBC Act, and the majority of them are listed as critically endangered or endangered.

Major threats to these communities include land clearing and development, which can increase their risk of extinction.

Read more: How drought-breaking rains transformed these critically endangered woodlands into a flower-filled vista

For example, less than 5% of the box gum grassy woodlands remain in good condition. This critically endangered community is home to a number of threatened plant and animal species, such as the spotted-tailed quoll, but many areas have been degraded and cleared for farming, threatening their survival.

The flaw in the law

Most listings of threatened ecological communities contain very specific “condition thresholds”. These thresholds were introduced to the legislation in 2005 in an effort to prioritise habitats considered higher quality.

Condition thresholds are usually defined in consultation with experts and often involve very specific descriptive characteristics, such as minimum patch sizes or numbers of species.

If areas of a community do not meet these specific minimum thresholds, it means a landholder doesn’t require approval to clear or develop parts of a community, if those parts are perceived to be “poor quality” habitat.

For example, the condition thresholds for Coolibah-black box woodlands suggest protection only applies to woodland patches larger than five hectares. This ignores the ecological importance of smaller patches that increase the connectivity of habitat in the landscape.

What’s more, condition thresholds make it hard to justify conservation funding to restore areas that don’t meet those criteria.

Unrealistic thresholds threaten wildlife

This is bad for biodiversity conservation in Australia for two reasons.

First, excluding examples of a threatened ecological community from protection because they don’t meet restrictive condition thresholds assumes these areas have no ecological value.

This is clearly a flawed assumption, as small, disturbed or degraded remnants can still be important to conservation. They could, for instance, be a target for restoration, a source of regeneration for nearby areas of the community as part of a larger natural corridor, or a habitat for threatened species.

Let’s take the critically endangered ecological community of the Cumberland plain woodland in the Sydney Basin as an example. Only 9% of the woodlands’ original extent remains today.

Despite providing habitat for threatened squirrel gliders, bats, and land snails, urban development in areas containing the woodland were continually approved during the 2000s — a death by a thousand cuts for the species and communities in patchy conditions.

Second, restrictive condition thresholds aren’t appropriate for conservation and management of communities that naturally change over seasons and years. This is particularly a problem for dynamic ecosystems like wetlands that cycle through natural dry and wet phases.

Wetlands can support completely different groups of plant and animal species in different phases, from waterbird breeding events when they are wet, to kangaroos and butterflies when they are dry.

Read more: Why a wetland might not be wet

These dynamic systems rarely exist in a state that would warrant protection under the restrictive thresholds.

For example, the listing for upland wetlands of the New England tablelands and the Monaro plateau excludes farm dams and domestic water storages.

This is a problem, because most remaining examples of these wetlands are on private property and almost all have been modified by humans in some way, including damming. Few of these modified wetlands would technically qualify for protection.

Yet some of these modified wetlands still support diverse plants and animals and are important sites for migratory waterbirds, such as Latham’s snipe.

Because this threatened community has such a small distribution and very few examples remain (only 58 lagoons are left in the Northern Tablelands), excluding even a few because of unrealistic condition thresholds greatly increases their risk of extinction.

New attitudes in a changing world

It’s clear governance frameworks have struggled to keep up with the changes in ecosystems that human activity causes.

Read more: Climate-driven species on the move are changing (almost) everything

These frameworks are often based on a flawed assumption: that natural systems remain essentially the same over time. To prevent further biodiversity loss, we need better understanding of how, when and why ecological communities shift between different states.

Importantly, we need to change our approach to environmental governance frameworks, including seriously rethinking condition thresholds in the EPBC Act, to ensure we can continue to protect biodiversity as it rapidly changes before us.

– ref. We found a huge flaw in Australia’s environment laws. Wetlands and woodlands will pay the price – https://theconversation.com/we-found-a-huge-flaw-in-australias-environment-laws-wetlands-and-woodlands-will-pay-the-price-150083

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

Christmas is a time of celebration, relaxation and gift giving.

But choosing gifts can also make it a time of stress and anxiety. The wrong gift can actually do more harm than good.

Here is some advice, based on decades of research, on how to side-step such pitfalls.

Why do we give gifts?

Research into the psychology of gift-giving suggests there are two goals to consider when giving someone a gift.

The first is to make the recipient happy. That mostly depends on whether the gift is something they want.

The second is to strengthen the relationship between giver and recipient. This is achieved by giving a thoughtful and memorable gift – one that shows the giver really knows the recipient. Usually this means figuring out what someone wants without directly asking.

You can see the conundrum.

To get someone the gift they most desire, the obvious thing to do is ask. This approach can achieve high marks on desirability. But it is set up to fail on communicating thoughtfulness.

The following graphic illustrates the problem (with myself as the example recipient).

The best kind of gift is one both desired by the recipient and is thoughtful. For me this might be a custom t-shirt printed with an in-joke.

The worst kind of gift, on the other hand, is neither desired nor thoughtful. For me, this might be a pair of socks.

Then there are desirable but unthoughtful gifts, such as cash, and undesired but very thoughtful gifts, which for me would be officially naming a star in my honour. I love astronomy but this just isn’t for me.

Read more: We’re not as Grinchy as we think: how gift-giving is inspired by beliefs-based altruism

Navigating social risk

This is why buying a gift can be so anxiety-inducing. There is a “social risk” involved.

A well-received gift can improve the quality of relationship between giver and recipient by increasing feelings of connection, bonding, and commitment. A poorly received gift can do the opposite.

This has been shown by research. A 1999 study asked 129 people to describe in detail a situation in which they had received a gift. Ten people reported gifts that weakened the relationship. Two people actually ended the relationship after the gift.

How much does the thought count?

Research also shows people tend to overestimate their ability to discern what a recipient will like, and therefore what gifts will lead to a strengthening of the relationship.

A 2011 study asked respondents to think back to either their own wedding or a wedding to which they were a guest. Gift recipients were asked to rate how appreciative they were of gifts either listed on the gift registry or not. Guests were asked to estimate how well they thought gifts were received.

Gift recipients strongly preferred gifts on their list. However, gift givers tended to wrongly assume unsolicited gifts (those not on the registry) would be considered more thoughtful and considerate by their intended recipients than was the case.

Gift givers also tend to overestimate that more expensive gifts will be received as being more thoughtful. But it turns out gift recipients appreciate expensive and inexpensive gifts similarly. In reality, they actually feel closer to those who give convenient gifts, such as a gift certificate to a nearby ordinary restaurant rather than a distant upscale restaurant.

The psychology of cash

What about simply giving cash?

After all, the recipient can buy exactly what they most desire. But cash is considered unthoughtful because it requires no effort and seems to put a dollar value on the relationship.

In Chinese cultures, cash is given in a red envelope to decommodify the money by literally enveloping it in a symbol of good luck. If you’re going to give cash, think about doing it creatively, such as through clever origami or in some other way that personalises it. This will show a degree more thoughtfulness.

The closest alternative to cash is the gift card. The main benefit is that it requires some effort and allows some thoughtfulness in the selection of which gift card to purchase. Nevertheless, the research suggests the gift card is often reached for as a last resort.

Read more: No presents, please: how gift cards initiate children into the world of ‘credit’

The best gift of all

If you want to have a wrapped gift under the Christmas tree and haven’t been tipped off on exactly what the recipient wants, go for something practical with a personalised touch. If you really are struggling, then a thoughtful card together with a flexible gift card is a safe option.

But the main takeaway from the psychology of gift-giving research is that, if your goal is to strengthen your relationship with the recipient, give them an experience.

A 2016 study asked people to give a friend either a “material” or “experiential” gift (valued at $15). Material gifts included things such as clothing. Experiential gifts included things such as movie tickets. Recipients of the experiential gifts showed a stronger improvement in relationship strength than recipients of the material gifts.

The most precious gift you can give a loved one, though, is actually quite simple: quality time. In a 2002 study involving 117 people, more happiness was reported from family and religious experiences than from events where spending money and receiving gifts was the focus.

So this Christmas, grab a drink, sit down and have a conversation. Get to know each other. If done well, come next Christmas, you’ll both know exactly what gift to get each other.

– ref. How to choose the right Christmas gift: tips from psychological research – https://theconversation.com/how-to-choose-the-right-christmas-gift-tips-from-psychological-research-149739

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Craig Mark, Professor, Faculty of International Studies, Kyoritsu Women’s University

In his first overseas trip since the COVID-19 pandemic, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has finally concluded a Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA) with Japan. Australia is only the second country in 60 years to reach such an arrangement with Japan’s Self-Defence Forces (SDF).

By undertaking his 24-hour visit to Tokyo, Morrison became the first foreign leader to personally meet Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga in Japan. That Morrison made such an effort, which will require two weeks of quarantine upon his return, shows how important the strategic partnership between the two countries has become.

Morrison was scheduled to visit Papua New Guinea on the return trip. He was forced to cancel due to PNG’s latest political crisis, which has destabilised the government of Australia’s largest Pacific neighbour.

Morrison was also the first foreign leader to call and congratulate Suga when he succeeded Shinzo Abe in September.

The prime ministers then held online meetings prior to this visit. This included the ASEAN-related series of virtual summits, which concluded last weekend with the online signing of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) trade agreement.

Read more: We’ve just signed the world’s biggest trade deal, but what exactly is the RCEP?

Strengthening defence ties

Morrison’s visit was presaged by ministerial visits to Tokyo last month. Foreign Minister Marise Payne came for the second foreign ministers’ summit of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue between Japan, the United States, Australia and India. This meeting also approved Australia’s participation in the Malabar naval exercises held by India after a 13-year hiatus.

Defence Minister Linda Reynolds then met Suga’s new defence minister, Shinzo Abe’s younger brother Nobuo Kishi. This was important preparation for the Reciprocal Access Agreement, as Japan agreed the Australian Defence Forces (ADF) could come under the protection of Japan’s SDF. This is part of the collective self-defence legislation passed by the Abe government in 2015. Australia is the only country after the United States to be so covered.

Read more: Yoshihide Suga – who is the man set to be Japan’s next prime minister?

Morrison’s latest trip to Japan, the second after the G20 Osaka summit last year, continues the now well-established practice of annual reciprocal visits between Australian and Japanese prime ministers. These leadership summits have incrementally upgraded the level of co-operation between the ADF and SDF, formally approving security pacts such as the 2007 Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation and the 2010 Access and Cross-Servicing Agreement, which was revised in 2017.

Morrison has invited Suga for his first official prime ministerial visit to Australia next year, to formally sign the RAA.

… and regional security

The ADF and SDF have co-operated in peacekeeping since the 1990s. The SDF also regularly participates in military exercises in Australia, such as Kakadu and Talisman Sabre, and in joint naval patrols in the South China Sea.

Since 2018, the airforce has been conducting surveillance flights from Japanese bases to enforce sanctions against North Korea. It also undertook air combat training exercises at Hokkaido in 2019. By authorising an even higher level of integrated operational capability, the RAA will now allow ADF units to be stationed in Japan, and the SDF in Australia.

Japan has had a Status of Forces Agreement with the US since 1960. It has long caused friction among local Japanese communities over the burdens of the US military presence, particularly in Okinawa, where most US forces in Japan are based.

Negotiations for the RAA have dragged out for six years. The sticking point was potential application of the death penalty to ADF personnel if they commit capital crimes while off duty in Japan. It is still unclear whether the jurisdiction of Japanese law will apply, with only a commitment from both sides to address such issues on a case-by-case basis.

From the Japanese perspective, there may also be concerns over co-operating with the ADF in potential combat situations, after the investigation into alleged war crimes committed by ADF Special Forces in Afghanistan.

Despite any such misgivings, ratification of the RAA by Japan should proceed fairly smoothly, given the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s majority in both houses of the Diet. However, the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party and the Japanese Communist Party are still likely to raise concerns over whether the RAA undermines the pacifist ideals of Article 9 of the Japanese constitution.

Trade promising, but ‘travel bubble’ less so

On other matters raised by Morrison’s visit, establishing a pre-vaccine “travel bubble” with Australia now seems unlikely. This is due to a recent spike in coronavirus cases in Japan.

Australians stranded in Japan because of Australia’s strict pandemic travel restrictions also hope more efforts will be made to help them return home.

Japan has long been Australia’s second-largest trading partner, so there were hopes it might pick up some of the slack for the loss of Chinese export markets.

In meetings with Japanese business leaders in Tokyo, Morrison insisted carbon capture and storage will still allow Australian LNG and “clean” coal exports to “evolve” and supply Japan’s energy market.

To take advantage of Suga’s recent declaration in his maiden policy speech of Japan’s net-zero emissions target by 2050, Morrison also promoted Australian hydrogen exports.

Ammonia-based fuel exports could have even more long-term potential. However, it will be a challenge to crack the emerging Japanese renewables market, which is likely to be primarily domestically supplied through wind and solar power.

The intensification of the Australia-Japan alliance is a further development of the “minilateral” approach by Indo-Pacific middle powers to improve their security ties. This in turn helps resist rising Chinese hegemony.

It is also a reflection that their US alliance partner has become less reliable, wrought with its internal divisions and political turmoil.

Read more: Hopes of an improvement in Australia-China relations dashed as Beijing ups the ante

In his first call with President-elect Joe Biden, Suga reconfirmed the defence of Japan under the US-Japan Security Treaty covers the Senkaku Islands (claimed as the Diaoyu Islands by China).

Morrison has not yet made a similar commitment, but could be pressed to do so, given this latest deepening of the defence relationship.

In this time of geopolitical flux, Japan and Australia have taken another step closer towards a formal military alliance.

– ref. Morrison’s Japan trip yields defence pact, but travel bubble less certain – https://theconversation.com/morrisons-japan-trip-yields-defence-pact-but-travel-bubble-less-certain-149985

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kliti Grice, John Curtin Distinguished Professor of Organic and Isotope Geochemistry, Curtin University

Chemical clues left behind by humble microbes have rewritten the timeline of one of the biggest mass extinction events in Earth’s history.

The so-called “end-Triassic mass extinction”, thought to have occurred just over 200 million years ago, wiped out swathes of prehistoric creatures both on land and in the oceans. It was prompted by the breakup of the supercontinent Pangea, which triggered massive volcanic activity that flooded the atmosphere with carbon dioxide and acidified the oceans.

But our new research, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests these cataclysmic events actually happened later than previously thought.

We made this discovery by examining molecular fossils — trace chemicals derived from microbial “mats” that bathed in prehistoric waters.

A likely story

Traditionally, scientists have placed the mass extinction event, and the volcanic upheaval that presaged it, at about 201 million years ago.

They came to this conclusion after studying rocks of that age from the Bristol Channel, UK, which show a distinctive chemical signature. The ratios of different isotopes of carbon within these rocks suggest this was the moment when the global atmosphere changed, as huge amounts of methane were pumped into the skies due to massive volcanic activity covering the central Atlantic, in turn altering the chemical composition of rocks that formed during this time.

But we made a discovery that challenged this assumption. We found evidence of ancient microbial mats in the same region, at the same time. It was these flourishing communities of microbes that actually created the change in the chemical signature of the rocks, rather than a global volcanic event.

These microbial mats formed as the region’s waters changed from salty seawater to brackish or fresh water, and water levels dropped to puddle-like centimetre depths. This is another reason why scientists mistook this event for a mass extinction — marine creatures disappeared from the local fossil record at this time not because they had all died out, but because it was no longer marine.

Of course, the world’s marine creatures had only earned a relatively brief reprieve. We know the volcanic cataclysm did occur, but just not as long ago as previously assumed.

Read more: Elementary new theory on mass extinctions that wiped out life

Still going strong

Remarkably, the microbial mats recorded in UK samples are similar to living microbial mats in Australia, such as in Western Australia’s Shark Bay. It’s amazing to think similar microbial communities are still living on Australia’s shorelines to this day.

Microbes have also been useful resources in research to learn about several other mass extinction events too, such as the “Great Dying” that marked the end of the Permian period roughly 252 million years ago, and the dramatic demise of the dinosaurs in a mass extinction some 66 million years ago.

For example, pigments and lipid remains from microbial mats found in the Chicxulub crater in the Gulf of Mexico — formed by the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs — show that photosynthetic processes had bounced back within 200,000 years of the impact.

Microbial mats also have helped to preserve an amazing range of fossil evidence from prehistoric animals, including soft tissues, red blood cells and chemical clues to ancient animals’ diets.

A warning from prehistory

While we don’t know exactly how much later the global end-Triassic mass extinction event actually occurred, what we can say is that our research sounds a stark warning for potential future mass extinctions on Earth.

The end of the Triassic Period featured huge environmental shifts, including declines in biodiversity, ocean acidification, reduced oxygen levels, habitat destruction, nutrient shifts and changing sea levels.

Knowing more about these changes will provide crucial information that could help understanding the threats our own ecosystems face today, and potentially help safeguard them for the future.

Read more: Triassic mass extinction may give clues on how oceans will be affected by climate change

– ref. How chemical clues from prehistoric microbes rewrote the story of one of Earth’s biggest mass extinctions – https://theconversation.com/how-chemical-clues-from-prehistoric-microbes-rewrote-the-story-of-one-of-earths-biggest-mass-extinctions-150170

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Darren Pennay, Campus Visitor, ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods, Australian National University

Election polling has had a torrid time in recent years.

Prominent examples of the polls performing below expectations include the United Kingdom’s 2015 general election, the 2016 Brexit referendum and the United States’ 2016 presidential election.

Read more: How did we get the result of the US election so wrong?

The dust is yet to settle on how well the polls performed in the recent US election, but the highly respected Pew Research Center is reporting that by the end of counting, the polls will likely have overestimated the Democratic advantage by about four percentage points.

Closer to home, we saw the below par performance of national election polls during the 2019 federal election. All of these showed Labor had the support of the majority of Australian voters.

Yet, the Coalition went on to win with 51.5% of the vote compared to Labor with 48.5%, almost the mirror opposite of what the final polls found.

After the election, the polls attracted widespread criticism.

In response, the Association of Market and Social Research Organisations and the Statistical Society of Australia launched a joint inquiry into the performance of the polls, which I chaired.

This involved trying to obtain primary data from the pollsters, assembling the sparse information in the public domain and finding additional data sources to inform our report.

What went wrong in 2019?

The inquiry found Australian election polling had a good track record, by and large.

Across the ten federal elections since 1993, Australian pollsters had a 73% success rate in “calling the right result” with their final polls. The comparable success rate of US pollsters over a similar period was 79%, according to fivethirtyeight.

Australian pollsters had an even better track record in more recent times with 25 out of 26 final polls from 2007 to 2016 calling the right result, a phenomenal 96% success rate.

So what went wrong in 2019? With limited cooperation from the pollsters themselves, the inquiry identified a number of factors.

Conditions for polling, as reflected in response rates for surveys, got a lot harder. The report documents a decline in response rates for typical telephone surveys from around 20% in 2016 to 11% in 2019, with the polls likely to be achieving much lower response rates than this.

Read more: Outrage, polls and bias: 2019 federal election showed Australian media need better regulation

This recent fall in response rates was part of a longer term decline, coinciding with the increasing take-up of lower cost polling methodologies (predominately online and robopolling) and pressure on polling budgets.

It also seemed to be the case — perhaps lulled into complacency by a long period of relative success and a mistaken belief that compulsory voting made Australia different — that our pollsters did not heed the lessons emerging from the polling reviews into 2015 UK and 2016 US elections. These identified unrepresentative samples (in the UK) and the failure of many polls to adjust for the over-representation of college graduates (in the US) as primary reasons for poll inaccuracies.

Systemic polling failure in Australia

The inquiry found no compelling evidence for the “shy conservative” theory — that people were afraid to admit their true intentions to pollsters — as a possible explanation for the performance of the polls in 2019. It also found no compelling evidence of pollsters being deliberately misled by respondents, or a comprehensive late swing to the Coalition that may have been missed by the polls.

But we did find the polls most likely over-represented people who are more engaged in politics and almost certainly over-represented persons with bachelor level degrees or higher.

Both of these factors are associated with stronger levels of support for the Labor Party and were not reduced by sample balancing or weighting strategies.

So, the performance of the polls in 2019 had the hallmarks of a systematic polling failure rather than a one-off polling miss. The pollsters were stung into action with several announcing their own internal reviews. They also launched an Australian Polling Council,

with the aim of advancing the quality and understanding of public opinion polling in Australia.

What needs to change

With the next federal election possible as soon as August 2021, the need for reform of polling standards in Australia is urgent.

The main recommendations from our inquiry are as follows:

• a code of conduct: the development of the code could be led by the pollsters, but also informed by other experts, including statisticians, political scientists, the Australian Press Council and/or interested media outlets. Disclosure requirements for pollsters would be fundamental here — as well as how these are monitored, and how compliance is ensured. The code should be made public so it can hold pollsters, and those reporting on the polls, to account. It would make polling methods, and their limitations, more transparent. This will help foster more realistic expectations of polling.

• methodology: pollsters need to investigate and better understand the biases in their samples and develop more effective sample balancing and/or weighting strategies to improve representativeness. Weighting or balancing by educational attainment seems promising, and the report suggests several other variables for further experimentation such as health status, life satisfaction and past voting behaviour.

• conveying uncertainty: currently, polls are usually published with a “margin of error”. This isn’t good enough — it is often inadequately calculated and inadequately reported. Pollsters need to use more robust methods for conveying the variability associated with their results. In addition, pollsters should routinely report the proportion of respondents who are “undecided” about their vote choice and identify those who are only “leaning” towards a particular party.

• get media outlets onside: Australian media organisations should comply with and actively support any new code of conduct.

• provide educational resources: educational resources about polling methods and standards should be developed and made available to journalists, academics and others who use the results.

Election polling plays such an important role in informing decisions and shaping expectations ahead of elections. Time is running out to learn the lessons of 2019. Rapid implementation of our recommendations is vital.

– ref. How can Australia reduce the risk of another ‘systemic polling failure’? – https://theconversation.com/how-can-australia-reduce-the-risk-of-another-systemic-polling-failure-149984

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Barbara Mintzes, Associate professor, School of Pharmacy and Charles Perkins Centre, University of Sydney

As the world continues to battle COVID-19, the prospect of a vaccine gives us hope of returning to some kind of “normal” in the not too distant future.

The Australian government has signed supply agreements with manufacturers of four COVID vaccines currently in clinical trials. Assuming one or more meets the requirements for safety and effectiveness, everyone will be able to be vaccinated for free.

However, as vaccine supply will be limited at least initially, the government has specified certain groups that will take priority to receive vaccines first. These include people at higher risk of exposure to COVID-19 (such as health-care workers), and those who are more vulnerable to severe disease (such as older people).

At the same time, the head of the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), John Skerritt, has noted manufacturers will also be able to sell vaccines privately:

We live in a free market economy […] There’s nothing stopping companies as long as they have the TGA approval to put that vaccine on the market in Australia.

Read more: 90% efficacy for Pfizer’s COVID-19 mRNA vaccine is striking. But we need to wait for the full data

This arrangement reinforces the status quo of Australia’s health system: a public health system with a private market on the side. But COVID is not the status quo. It’s a global public health emergency that has already claimed more than 1.3 million lives.

Allowing people to jump the queue via the private market is a bad idea, for several reasons.

1. A private market puts wealth ahead of need

Those most likely to buy the vaccine privately are those who have not been deemed at high enough risk to receive the vaccine for free until later on, but have the means to do so (we don’t know yet how much it might cost).

Prices are often higher in the private sector because public drug schemes benefit from their size and bargaining power to keep prices low, which could lead vaccine manufacturers to prioritise private sales. If companies set aside a portion of their limited supply for private sales, people who need the vaccine the most, such as health workers and older people, may have to wait longer.

If there are exceptions where people who don’t fall into the priority categories need a vaccine, such as for essential travel to a country that mandates vaccination as a condition of entry, the answer is to build in flexibility through special access requests, not private sales.

2. People buying privately may not get the vaccine they need

Several vaccines may come onto the market, and we don’t yet know if all will be equally effective for everyone. For example, it’s possible a particular vaccine won’t work as well in older people.

The allure of private sales may lead companies to promote their vaccines, in turn affecting which one a patient gets. Drug companies have a long history of intensive marketing to doctors, often casting a wide net in terms of who they suggest might benefit. In the case of the opioid epidemic, these practices have been associated with serious harm to patients.

Companies cannot advertise prescription-only products, including vaccines, to the public in Australia. But they can run unbranded disease awareness campaigns that indirectly promote products to consumers, often through emotional images and appeals.

3. Follow-up may be poorer

COVID vaccine development is moving very quickly, with shorter pre-market testing than a vaccine would normally have. This makes it all the more important to keep careful track of who receives the vaccine, any health problems they experience, and longer-term effectiveness. Uncoordinated private provision creates extra logistical challenges for follow-up.

Read more: Why we should prioritise older people when we get a COVID vaccine

4. Private supply may be impractical

As an example, Pfizer’s mRNA-based vaccine must be stored at -80℃. Special cold chain management is not easy for any provider, but is likely better handled by larger-scale providers set up to deliver COVID vaccines.

Further, all COVID-19 vaccines are likely to require at least two doses. Especially if supply is limited, it may become challenging to make sure private patients get their second dose. And delays or missing the second dose will likely lead to lower effectiveness.

An issue of equity

Some 40 countries have joined the World Health Organisation’s Solidarity Call to Action to support equitable global access to COVID-19 health technologies. Similarly, the COVAX initiative, which Australia supports, provides direct funding for vaccine access in less advantaged countries.

Echoing the principles of these initiatives, Prime Minister Scott Morrison told the United Nations in September:

[…] it’s a moral responsibility for a vaccine to be shared far and wide. Some might see short-term advantage or even profit, but I assure you, to anyone who may think along those lines, humanity will have a very long memory, and be a very, very severe judge.

Given this moral responsibility, why allow wealthier Australians to jump the queue? The planned public rollout of free COVID-19 vaccines for all is laudable. The main rationale for a parallel private system is “short-term advantage or even profit”, to borrow the prime minister’s words. Let’s not go there.

Read more: Creating a COVID-19 vaccine is only the first step. It’ll take years to manufacture and distribute

– ref. You may be able to buy a COVID vaccine ahead of the government rollout. But jumping the queue comes at a price – https://theconversation.com/you-may-be-able-to-buy-a-covid-vaccine-ahead-of-the-government-rollout-but-jumping-the-queue-comes-at-a-price-149972

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Komesaroff, Professor of Medicine, Monash University

Australian health minister Greg Hunt said recently the government is on track to deliver COVID-19 vaccines from March 2021.

US biotech firm Moderna has just announced its COVID-19 vaccine has 95% efficacy, following on the heels of Pfizer’s claimed 90% efficacy and the Russian Sputnik V vaccine’s 92% efficacy, albeit based on limited data and yet to be peer-reviewed.

We’ll likely see more preliminary results from other vaccine trials reported in the media in coming weeks and months.

While an effective vaccine will provide the best chance of controlling the disease, it is sadly not so simple. No vaccine will be perfect or end the pandemic instantly. The first vaccines are also likely to have significant limitations.

The issue is how good a vaccine is good enough? We also need to think about what imperfections we — as individuals, regulators or governments — will be prepared to accept.

How safe is safe enough?

Safety is obviously the major concern. Vaccines are designed to be given to very large numbers of healthy people. This means even an extremely rare, serious adverse event, when applied to a population of millions, can produce major harm.

Short-term trials on small population samples relative to the numbers expected to receive the vaccine may also not be able to pick up relatively rare but important risks. This is a problem we may not be able to avoid because the only way to find out is to give the vaccine to large numbers of people and then allow long periods of time to elapse, for any long-term adverse events to become evident.

Obviously, all therapeutic agents carry the possibility of adverse effects and in individual cases decisions have to be made about whether the potential benefits justify taking the risks. It is arguable that the extreme dangers associated with COVID-19 justify accepting a higher level of risk for the vaccine. However, while the US and Australian regulatory authorities have broad guidelines relating to vaccine safety, neither has issued guidelines regarding the levels of risk that are considered justified for a coronavirus vaccine, and there has been only limited public debate on this subject.

Read more: Who pays compensation if a COVID-19 vaccine has rare side-effects? Here’s the little we know about Australia’s new deal

How effective is good enough?

Efficacy — the vaccine’s ability to produce clinical and public health benefits — is also uncertain.

Ideally, a vaccine should prevent any person who receives it from catching the disease. However, at least with the first vaccines, it is likely the benefits will be more limited. For example, they may slightly reduce the severity of the illness, or they may only benefit a small subset of the population. No current trials are looking at purely whether the vaccine will reduce the chance of dying from COVID-19 of individuals in specific risk groups.

In fact, different clinical trials have different “efficacy end points”, including (among others) effects on susceptibility to infection, severity of disease, time to recovery and mortality, in different age and population groups.

There is no guarantee vaccines under development will provide significant protection for those in most need, such as people in older age groups or those with existing medical conditions. Not all trials are specifically recruiting such participants and there is a real possibility benefits will not extend to them. In other words, a clinical trial might show “efficacy” in a formal sense but might not solve the key problems we are facing in the real world.

Read more: Pfizer vaccine: what an ‘efficacy rate above 90%’ really means

Earlier this year, the US Food and Drug Administration said it would only consider approving vaccines that “prevent disease or decrease its severity in at least 50% of people who are vaccinated”. Australia’s equivalent, the Therapeutic Goods Administration, has not issued any similarly precise guidance.

How equitable is good enough?

Access and distribution of any vaccine pose major problems. Some of these are built into the nature of the product itself.

For example, vaccines like the mRNA vaccine developed by Pfizer that need to be transported and stored at around -70℃, will have limited utility in low and middle income countries with limited health infrastructure and in rural and remote communities all over the world – meaning other vaccines may need to be found for these populations.

Read more: Keeping coronavirus vaccines at subzero temperatures during distribution will be hard, but likely key to ending pandemic

The role of minorities in relation to clinical studies of therapeutic products in the US is very uneven, in terms of participation, exposure to risk and access to benefits. There is a serious chance that in the search for a COVID-19 vaccine those least likely ultimately to receive the final product will be the ones who carry the greatest risk. This creates a possibility the social divisions already exposed by the COVID crisis will be further exacerbated.

Further, while there has been widespread acknowledgement of the need for access and supply of COVID vaccines to poorer nations there is no legal structure to ensure this and no guarantee it will actually happen.

Read more: Australia’s just signed up for a shot at 9 COVID-19 vaccines. Here’s what to expect

Where to next?

A number of COVID-19 vaccines will likely become available during 2021 that offer either limited protection from infection or lower the risk somewhat of severe disease. However, these benefits may not necessarily be for those most at risk.

Robust regulatory systems, and independent scrutiny of clinical trial results, mean COVID-19 vaccines will likely be safe in the short-term. However, no-one will know about long-term risks and distribution may be limited, for logistic, economic and cultural reasons.

Even if we develop a “good enough” vaccine, there are no guarantees. Although many will be prepared to chance the first vaccines, many others will refuse them, despite government attempts at persuasion.

So herd immunity via vaccination, which for the coronavirus requires effective immunisation of at least two-thirds of the population, will remain a long way away.

This means strategies to reduce the spread, such as physical distancing, use of face masks and hand hygiene and, where necessary, rigorous quarantine measures, will be with us for some time.

– ref. We may have to accept a ‘good enough’ COVID-19 vaccine, at least in 2021 – https://theconversation.com/we-may-have-to-accept-a-good-enough-covid-19-vaccine-at-least-in-2021-148168

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Madeline Taylor, Lecturer, University of Sydney

Last week San Francisco became the latest city to ban natural gas in new buildings. The legislation will see all new construction, other than restaurants, use electric power only from June 2021, to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

San Francisco has now joined other US cities in banning natural gas in new homes. The move is in stark contrast to the direction of energy policy in Australia, where the Morrison government seems stuck in reverse: spruiking a gas-led economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Natural gas provides about 26% of energy consumed in Australia — but it’s clearly on the way out. It’s time for a serious rethink on the way many of us cook and heat our homes.

Cutting out gas

San Francisco is rapidly increasing renewable-powered electricity to meet its target of 100% clean energy by 2030. Currently, renewables power 70% of the city’s electricity.

The ban on gas came shortly after San Francisco’s mayor London Breed announced all commercial buildings over 50,000 square feet must run on 100% renewable electricity by 2022.

Buildings are particularly in focus because 44% of San Franciscos’ citywide emissions come from the building sector alone.

Read more: 4 reasons why a gas-led economic recovery is a terrible, naïve idea

Following this, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously passed the ban on gas in buildings. They cited the potency of methane as a greenhouse gas, and recognised that natural gas is a major source of indoor air pollution, leading to improved public health outcomes.

From January 1, 2021, no new building permits will be issued unless constructing an “All-Electric Building”. This means installation of natural gas piping systems, fixtures and/or infrastructure will be banned, unless it is a commercial food service establishment.

Switching to all-electric homes

In the shift to zero-emissions economies, transitioning our power grids to renewable energy has been the subject of much focus. But buildings produce 25% of Australia’s emissions, and the sector must also do some heavy lifting.

A report by the Grattan Institute this week recommended a moratorium on new household gas connections, similar to what’s been imposed in San Francisco.

The report said natural gas will inevitably decline as an energy source for industry and homes in Australia. This is partly due to economics — as most low-cost gas on Australia’s east coast has been burnt.

Read more: A third of our waste comes from buildings. This one’s designed for reuse and cuts emissions by 88%

There’s also an environmental imperative, because Australia must slash its fossil fuel emissions to address climate change.

While acknowledging natural gas is widely used in Australian homes, the report said “this must change in coming years”. It went on:

This will be confronting for many people, because changing the cooktops on which many of us make dinner is more personal than switching from fossil fuel to renewable electricity.

The report said space heating is by far the largest use of gas by Australian households, at about 60%. In the cold climates of Victoria and the ACT, many homes have central gas heaters. Homes in these jurisdictions use much more gas than other states.

By contrast, all-electric homes with efficient appliances produce fewer emissions than homes with gas, the report said.

Zero-carbon buildings

Australia’s states and territories have much work to do if they hope to decarbonise our building sector, including reducing the use of gas in homes.

In 2019, Australia’s federal and state energy ministers committed to a national plan towards zero-carbon buildings for Australia. The measures included “energy smart” buildings with on-site renewable energy generation and storage and, eventually, green hydrogen to replace gas.

The plan also involved better disclosure of a building’s energy performance. To date, Australia’s states and territories have largely focused on voluntary green energy rating tools, such as the National Australian Built Environment Rating System. This measures factors such as energy efficiency, water usage and waste management in existing buildings.

But in 2020, just 2% of buildings in Australia achieved the highest six-star rating. Clearly, the voluntary system has done little to encourage the switch to clean energy.

The National Construction Code requires mandatory compliance with energy efficiency standards for new buildings. However, The code takes a technology neutral approach and does not require buildings to install zero-carbon energy “in the absence of an explicit energy policy commitment by governments regarding the future use of gas”.

An economically sensible move

An estimated 200,000 new homes are built in Australia each year. This represents an opportunity for states and territories to create mandatory clean energy requirements while reaching their respective net-zero emissions climate targets.

Under a gas ban, the use of zero-carbon energy sources in buildings would increase, similar to San Francisco. This has been recognised by Environment Victoria, which notes

A simple first step […] to start reducing Victoria’s dependence on gas is banning gas connections for new homes.

Creating incentives for alternatives to gas may be another approach, such as offering rebates for homes that switch to electrical appliances. The ACT is actively encouraging consumers to transition from gas.

Read more: Australia has plenty of gas, but our bills are ridiculous. The market is broken

Banning gas in buildings could be an economically sensible move. As the Grattan Report found, “households that move into a new all-electric house with efficient appliances will save money compared to an equivalent dual-fuel house”.

Meanwhile, Austrlaia’s energy market operator ARENA confirmed electricity from solar and wind provide the lowest levelised cost of electricity, due to the increasing cost of east coast gas in Australia.

Future-proofing new buildings will require extensive work, let alone replacing exiting gas inputs and fixtures in existing buildings. Yet efficient electric appliances can save the average NSW homeowner around A$400 a year.

Learning to live sustainability, and becoming resilient in the face of climate change, is well worth the cost and effort.

Should we be cooking with gas?

Recently, a suite of our major gas importers — China, South Korea and Japan — all pledged to reach net-zero emissions by either 2050 or 2060. This will leave our export-focused gas industry possibly turning to the domestic market for new gas hookups.

But continuing Australia’s gas production will increase greenhouse gas emissions, and few Australians support an economic recovery pinned on gas.

The window to address dangerous climate change is fast closing. We must urgently seek alternatives to burning fossil fuels, and there’s no better place to start that change than in our own homes.

Read more: No, Prime Minister, gas doesn’t ‘work for all Australians’ and your scare tactics ignore modern energy problems

– ref. San Francisco just banned gas in all new buildings. Could it ever happen in Australia? – https://theconversation.com/san-francisco-just-banned-gas-in-all-new-buildings-could-it-ever-happen-in-australia-150171

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Shields, Professor of Human Resource Management and Organisational Studies, University of Sydney

Australian universities have come to rely heavily on revenue from onshore international students. Numbers more than doubled in the decade to 2018. But the proposition that Australia’s public universities should step back 50 years, retreat from international education and focus wholly or largely on domestic students is naively nostalgic.

Such a move would be a backward step economically, culturally and diplomatically, as a new Asia Taskforce discussion paper concludes. It would diminish Australia and its global standing.

However, 37 of our universities are publicly owned and thus have a social obligation to serve domestic students. It is right that we have a robust debate about the international student presence on our campuses.

Unfortunately, the debate has generated more heat than light. It’s at risk of being hijacked for ideological purposes, rather than generating credible and practical solutions on which the sector and government can act.

Read more: COVID-19: what Australian universities can do to recover from the loss of international student fees

Getting to the root of the problem

Criticisms of the sector aren’t without merit. As some academics have suggested, and as COVID-19 has writ large, universities’ high exposure to the international education market is high risk.

The proportion of international students per institution in 2018 averaged 22%, ranging from a low of 4% (New England) to a high of 48% (Bond). At some business and engineering faculties, the proportion exceeded 50%.

Enrolments at some of our largest universities also have an unacceptable skew towards single countries – either China or India. Some universities, particularly Group of Eight institutions, have fallen into the habit of setting international fees according to what China – the world’s largest student market – will bear. This has eroded competitiveness in more cost-sensitive countries like those in South East Asia and Latin America.

Furthermore, the sector can and must lift its game on all-round educational quality. The issues include academic and English-proficiency admission standards, the quality of the learning experience, and graduate employability and job outcomes.

Whatever the critics might assert, though, the root cause of this reliance is not institutional greed. The underlying driver has been bipartisan attachment to weaning the sector off the public purse and requiring it to stand on its own two feet financially.

Read more: How universities came to rely on international students

In the two decades to 2015, OECD data suggest Australia slipped from sixth place to 24th among OECD countries in terms of public investment in higher education as a share of GDP. While some dispute these metrics, the flatlining of real direct funding by government has created a university sector that is neither fish nor fowl: publicly owned yet increasingly reliant on commercial income sources.

Fee revenue isn’t the only benefit

A striking feature of criticisms of the international student presence is a refusal to acknowledge its benefits. Education was the nation’s third-largest export earner last year. Higher education alone contributed A$31 billion.

International students contribute greatly to local economies too. They spend on accommodation, food, leisure and entertainment. Over 31,000 jobs rely on the University of Sydney alone.

Falling onshore international student numbers have magnified the pandemic’s impacts. A Mitchell Institute research paper last week forecast a 50% decline in onshore international students by mid-2021. The paper detailed the suburb-by-suburb economic impact on our cities.

Read more: COVID to halve international student numbers in Australia by mid-2021 – it’s not just unis that will feel their loss

The socio-cultural benefits these students bring are also habitually ignored or dismissed.

Neglected, too, are the many benefits and opportunities, including “soft power” projection, that flow from having hundreds of thousands of Australian university alumni worldwide. There are well over 200,000 in China alone.

Low road or high road?

The sector and policymakers now face a stark choice regarding the number, size and student profile of universities. In the post-pandemic world, and in the absence of increased direct government funding per student, the sector must choose between the “low road” and the “high road” to survival and sustainability.

The low road would involve pulling back to a largely or even wholly domestic focus. The results would very likely be sector-wide decline, shrinking universities, deteriorating campus facilities, a lowering of horizons and a reversion to a pre-1990s focus on domestic student education.

Read more: Without international students, Australia’s universities will downsize – and some might collapse altogether

Internationalism would give way to isolationism and educational nationalism of Trumpian proportions. This path would consign the sector to a future of parochialism, mediocrity and global irrelevance.

Alternatively, the sector could take the “high road”. This would involve repositioning itself as a high-quality provider of new forms of learning for both international and domestic students.

The sector and government would have to work in partnership to rebuild universities’ global brand and reputation, recover international student numbers and reprofile this student cohort. The latter step would aim both to improve the academic merit of students from China and diversify intakes.

The high road is also the hard road. It requires a pro-active (not defensive) mindset and an all-round shift in perceptions of Australia, Australians and our universities. But it may well set the sector on a bright new path.

The hope that a surge in domestic student demand will save the sector from atrophy is delusional. The government must either greatly increase recurrent funding per student or provide strong tactical support to recover and diversify international student enrolments. The latter approach would enable the sector to continue to cross-subsidise degree studies by domestic students, fund high-quality research, and develop campus and IT infrastructure fit for the fourth industrial revolution.

Read more: $7.6 billion and 11% of researchers: our estimate of how much Australian university research stands to lose by 2024

The sector can do this without major direct funding increases from a debt-burdened government. But government needs to help the sector help itself.

A 10-point action plan

Universities should act decisively and in concert to:

1. diversify international students

2. focus on all-round quality (admission quality, learning quality, graduate outcome quality) of Chinese students

3. increase strategic partnerships with international institutions as a channel for recruiting high-quality students

4. leverage international alumni networks more effectively to promote the sector and assist student recruitment and graduate placement

5. accentuate intensive courses for international students to capitalise on booming demand for life-long learning.

Government could support progress along the high road as follows:

1. sponsor tripartite trade and education missions to target countries

2. expand support for intensive study visits

3. host sector-wide events and promote further learning for international alumni

4. actively encourage employers to provide in-program placements and onshore post-study work for new international graduates

5. sponsor initiatives to help graduates secure quality jobs in their home countries.

The sector and government should embrace the high road in partnership. This can only be achieved if we engage in a mature and nuanced discussion about root causes, practical solutions and the sort of university system we really wish to have in this country.

– ref. Our unis do need international students and must choose between the high and low roads – https://theconversation.com/our-unis-do-need-international-students-and-must-choose-between-the-high-and-low-roads-149973

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

The virus that causes COVID-19 is much more likely to spread indoors rather than outdoors. Governments are right to encourage more outdoor dining and drinking, but it is important they also do everything they can to make indoor venues as safe as possible. Our recent monitoring of public buildings has shown many have poor ventilation.

Poor ventilation raises the risks of super-spreader events. The risk of catching COVID-19 indoors is 18.7 times higher than in the open air, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Read more: Poor ventilation may be adding to nursing homes’ COVID-19 risks

In the past month, we have measured air quality in a large number of public buildings. High carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels indicate poor ventilation. Multiple restaurants, two hotels, two major shopping centres, several university buildings, a pharmacy and a GP consulting suite had CO₂ levels well above best practice and also above the absolute maximum mandated in the National Construction Code.

Relative humidity readings of less than 40% associated with both heating and cooling air are also of concern. Evidence now suggests low humidity is associated with transmission.

If anyone had COVID-19 in these environments, particularly if people were in them for an extended period, as might happen at a restaurant or pub, there would be a risk of a super-spreader event. Less than 20% of individuals produce over 80% of infections.

Read more: A few superspreaders transmit the majority of coronavirus cases

Many aged-care deaths were connected

It appears a relatively small number of super-spreader events, probably associated with airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, were responsible for most of the deaths in Victorian aged-care facilities.

Of the 907 people who have died of COVID-19 in Australia, 746, or 82% of COVID-19 deaths, were associated with aged care. In Victoria, there were 52 facilities with more than 20 infections. Three had over 200 infections. As a result, 639 of the 646 aged care residents who died in Victoria were located in just 52 facilities.

But official advice hasn’t changed

Aged-care operators and the states based their infection control on the advice of the Commonwealth Infection Control Expert Group (ICEG). As of September 6, the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Residential Aged Care Facilities Plan for Victoria stated:

Coronavirus (COVID-19) is transmitted via droplets, after exposure to contaminated surfaces or after close contact with an infected person (without using appropriate PPE). Airborne spread has not been reported [our emphasis] but could occur during certain aerosol-generating procedures (medical procedures which are not usually conducted in RACF). […] Respiratory hygiene and cough etiquette, hand hygiene and regular cleaning of surfaces are paramount to preventing transmission.

In early August, more than 3,000 health workers had signed a letter of no confidence in ICEG. The letter noted that aerosol transmission was causing infections in medical staff, many of whom worked in aged-care facilities.

On September 7, we wrote to the federal aged care minister, Richard Colbeck, drawing attention to our August 20 article in The Conversation, which referenced a July 8 article in Nature. The Nature article identified an emerging consensus that aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is probable in low-ventilation environments.

Read more: How to prevent COVID-19 ‘superspreader’ events indoors this winter

The director of the Aged Care COVID-19 Measures Implementation Branch wrote back on Colbeck’s behalf on September 28 saying:

Current evidence suggests COVID-19 most commonly spreads from close contact with someone who is infectious. It can also spread from touching a surface that has recently been contaminated with the respiratory droplets (cough or sneeze) of an infected person and then touching your eyes, nose or mouth.

In other words, Commonwealth authorities were still playing down the significance of airborne transmission nearly two months after the letter of no confidence was sent to ICEG and three months after the article in Nature. By the end of September, Victorian aged-care facilities had reported over 4,000 cases of COVID-19, about half of them in staff.

On October 23, ICEG was still saying:

There is little clinical or epidemiological evidence of significant transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) by aerosols.

Focus on the ‘3 Vs’ to reduce risks

The key thing we need to do until a vaccine is rolled out is to try to prevent indoor super-spreader events. According to the University of Nebraska Medical Centre, we should remember the “three Vs” that super-spreader events have in common:

Venue: multiple people indoors, where social distancing is often harder

Ventilation: staying in one place with limited fresh air

Vocalization: lots of talking, yelling or singing, which can aerosolize the virus.

Measuring indoor ventilation is quick and easy using a carbon dioxide detector. Any CO₂ reading of over 800 parts per million is a cause for concern – the level for air outside is just over 400ppm.

There is no excuse for governments, health authorities and building owners not to monitor ventilation levels to help ensure members of the public are as safe as is reasonably practicable when indoors.

There is also no excuse for the Australian Building Control Board not to change the National Construction Code to require fall-back mechanical ventilation systems be fitted and CO₂ and humidity monitored in all buildings frequented by the public, particularly aged-care facilities.

With the knowledge we have now and a low rate of community infection, Australia should be able to make it through to vaccine roll-out with relatively few further infections and deaths. But that depends on being vigilant about the quality of ventilation indoors and the associated possibility of super-spreader events. This is especially important in aged-care facilities and quarantine hotels.

It’s probably a good idea for us all to open the windows and let the fresh air in.

– ref. Many of our buildings are poorly ventilated, and that adds to COVID risks – https://theconversation.com/many-of-our-buildings-are-poorly-ventilated-and-that-adds-to-covid-risks-149830

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Margot Hillel, Professor, Children’s Literature, Australian Catholic University

She couldn’t get much simpler in visual terms. A white bunny cutout, dots for eyes and a little crisscross mouth. But Miffy is an enduringly endearing rabbit.

Called nijntje in the author’s native Dutch, Miffy was originally created by Dick Bruna for his son. Now 65 years on, Miffy remains universally popular.

Miffy books are available in 50 languages and have sold millions of copies around the world. A stop-motion animated television series brought more world fame and a Miffy museum in Bruna’s native Utrecht was established in 2016.

Bruna, who died in 2017, was reportedly stopped daily near his home for selfies with teenage fans and Miffy merchandise features heavily at popular Japanese tulip festivals.

An exhibition, Miffy & Friends, is soon to open at the QUT Art Museum Gallery. As its director Vanessa Van Ooyen has noted, Bruna’s illustrations have a deceptive simplicity, which belies the artistry behind them.

Read more: Children’s books must be diverse, or kids will grow up believing white is superior

Shades of Mondrian

It is that very simplicity which, in part, gives Miffy her long-lasting charm. The illustrations are instantly appealing, even for very small children.

Researchers have found that reliably positive responses to simple curvilinear shapes seem to be present early during development, before language is acquired. Researchers also hold that children associate more positive emotions, like happiness or excitement, with bright colours. Bruna seemed to understand this instinctively from the beginning.

The blocks of colour — Bruna cited countryman Piet Mondrian and Henri Matisse as inspirations — have a universality to them. The settings are not country-specific and, when landscape is depicted, it too can be read as applicable to anywhere and everywhere. Bruna wrote for a 2005 illustration exhibition:

I hope that the child’s imagination is stimulated to see things in their simplest form … so that life, with all its complications, becomes a little clearer.

Miffy is anthropomorphic, a little white rabbit doing many of the everyday things that lots of children do. She was “born” when the author was on holiday with his family and started telling his son stories about a little rabbit in the garden.

In story books, Miffy plays with friends, goes on outings with her parents, helps to paint her room, goes to the zoo and the beach and helps in the garden. There is a wholesomeness and innocent joy in the easily relatable tales.

Some of the books help make potentially difficult situations or experiences familiar and less frightening, such as when Miffy goes to hospital. Miffy is apprehensive but she is met by a friendly nurse who helps her undress and put on hospital clothes and gives Miffy a pre-operation injection, (which didn’t hurt as much as she had feared). When she wakes from the anaesthetic, Miffy is comforted by the presence of the nurse and then a visit from her parents.

Miffy’s school activities will be familiar to those children who have already started formal education and enticing and intriguing for those getting ready to start.

Friendship features strongly in the books. Miffy’s walk to school with friends is warm and exuberant and they are welcomed by the teacher when they arrive. Soon Miffy is enjoying learning to write, how to add up and — her very favourite — listening to the teacher reading a story.

Read more: 5 reasons I always get children picture books for Christmas

Easy reading for small hands

The size of the majority of the Miffy books (16 centimetres square) makes them easy for small readers and pre-readers to hold.

The language is accessible but does not patronise young readers or “talk down” to them. The rhyme and structure of many of the stories gives them four lines on each page with the second and fourth lines rhyming.

This formula gives a welcome familiarity to the books.

Bruna wrote and illustrated more than 100 books, many of them about Miffy. There are Miffy activity books, sticker books, board books, and special titles like Miffy x Rembrandt which introduces children to the works of two Dutch masters: Rembrandt and Bruna. Miffy’s 123 and Miffy’s ABC books use the character as a stimulus for teaching foundational literacy and numeracy.

In addition to screen adaptations and the continuing popularity of the books themselves, there are many items of merchandise to keep Miffy’s appeal alive. The merchandise encourages book sales and reading and the reverse is true too. Miffy appears on everything from clocks, cushions, keyrings, clothing and lunchboxes to lamps.

In her native Netherlands, Miffy likenesses are printed on babies’ bibs; there are plush toys in traditional Dutch dress and there is a Miffy room at Keukenhof, the large flower gardens at Lisse.

Miffy is perfectly ubiquitous, her simply drawn face always friendly.

miffy & friends is a free exhibition at QUT Art Museum from November 21 until until 14 March 2021. It will then tour to Bunjil Place Gallery in Melbourne from 3 April–13 June 2021.

– ref. Unpacking the magic of Miffy, a simply drawn, bunny-shaped friend – https://theconversation.com/unpacking-the-magic-of-miffy-a-simply-drawn-bunny-shaped-friend-149725

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Barbara Allen, Senior Lecturer in Public Management, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

The world was ablaze with hope following the announcement last week that a vaccine developed by Pfiser and BioNTech may be more than 90% effective in preventing COVID-19.

New Zealand politicians were quick to point out 1.5 million doses had already been pre-purchased through a legally binding agreement signed in late September to buy any vaccine to emerge from the multilateral COVAX facility.

Within the week, a second potentially effective vaccine emerged from US biotech firm Moderna. Health Minister Chris Hipkins would not say if New Zealand had negotiated for this option.

But assuming an approved vaccine is coming, attention then turns to logistics. Funding, procurement, storage and distribution all raise significant questions about values, decision-making and ethics.

We know there are multiple candidates for a COVID-19 vaccine, but there will be few “winners”, as many countries have already pre-contracted substantial amounts based on calculated risk assessments of which will emerge first. Even then, the challenges will be immense.

For example, assuming the Pfizer vaccine does become available as a safe option, it must be held in “ultra-cold storage” at -70 degrees Celsius. As has been observed already, “Distributing an effective COVID-19 vaccine to the global population will likely be the greatest logistical challenge since World War II.”

Who gets a vaccine first?

For New Zealand, as with all countries, the questions raised are complex: do we now spend a large amount of money to scale up a logistics, distribution and storage system for the Pfizer drug? Or should we wait for an alternative that is more effective, easier to transport and store, and possibly cheaper?

After all, the first available vaccine might not achieve the outcomes we want. But would it be fair (or feasible) to make the country wait?

Read more: Moderna follows Pfizer with exciting vaccine news – how to read these dramatic developments

Furthermore, because enough doses to treat everyone will not be available immediately, it will be necessary to prioritise recipients. What are the country’s obligations here? Do we offer the vaccination first to the oldest, or the youngest, or the most vulnerable?

National health systems will have some idea about how to go about this, but wealthy countries have never faced an immediate requirement on this scale.

An ethical framework

Answering these questions means calling simultaneously on a number of different ethical perspectives:

• an ethic of justice to assess the fairness of a decision

• an ethic of consequentialism to look at outcomes

• the ethics of obligations to see who we may have made commitments to

• an ethic of care to look at individual cases, rather than relying on abstract logic.

Only when we combine these perspectives can we begin to make sense of priorities.

The vaccine marketplace is a kind of oligopoly, with a few extremely large firms deciding which vaccines get made, when and at what price. Pharmaceutical companies are reluctant to invest in producing new vaccines for the developing world because they have little prospect of earning an attractive return.

While global organisations such as vaccine alliance GAVI have been instrumental in getting vaccines to developing countries, given the geopolitics of procurement it could be a long time before an effective COVID-19 option reaches the poorest populations.

The moral dimension

All this points to the deeper ethical issue of inequality. Many agencies, including the World Health Organisation (WHO), have demonstrated that health outcomes are related to socio-economic, ethnic and gender inequalities. COVID-19 has only made these inequalities worse.

Only last week, for example, a UK study showed 57.7 more people per 100,000 have died in the poorest areas of northern England than in the rest of the country.

Read more: COVID-19 vaccines could go to children first to protect the elderly

This matches other research showing how the pandemic has disproportionately affected poorer families, including their being less likely to be able to work from home or adapt to home-schooling.

Limited or selective availability of a vaccine could exacerbate these problems. And while New Zealand may be in a relatively privileged position, this doesn’t mean there won’t be negative consequences for other countries.

This adds an international dimension to our national dilemma: we have a duty to protect our own citizens, but is there a way we can minimise harm to others at the same time?

– ref. Buying and distributing a COVID-19 vaccine will involve hard ethical and practical choices – https://theconversation.com/buying-and-distributing-a-covid-19-vaccine-will-involve-hard-ethical-and-practical-choices-149980

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Magdalena Plebanski, Professor of Immunology, RMIT University

American biotech firm Moderna has released early results from its phase 3 clinical trials, announcing in a press release on Monday (US time) that its COVID vaccine has an efficacy of 94.5%, according to an “interim analysis” by an independent data and safety monitoring board.

Here’s how the percentage was calculated. First, there are two groups in the study: the vaccinated group, who received the candidate vaccine, and the placebo group, who received a shot of salt water.

Among 30,000 trial participants, 95 people developed COVID just in the one week after the final vaccination. But encouragingly, 90 of those positive cases occurred in the placebo group, and only five were in the vaccinated group.

While this is good news, many questions remain. We don’t yet know how long protection against the virus will last with this vaccine. We also don’t know for sure whether this vaccine is safe and effective in different types of people, such as pregnant women, the elderly, or those with a chronic illness.

Once a vaccine is deployed “in the real world”, we’ll start to understand its true effectiveness. In practice, this is likely to be different to its efficacy in highly controlled clinical trials.

Thus far, we can only say the Moderna vaccine prevents COVID symptoms, as only volunteers who developed symptoms in this trial were analysed. We don’t know for sure if it can prevent infection altogether.

Vaccines that control disease symptoms, rather than stopping infectious viruses from being transmitted from person to person, are valuable. But it is “transmission-blocking” vaccines that are most effective at rapidly reducing viral spread and have the highest chance of eliminating a pathogen from a population.

Moderna’s is easier to distribute

Like Pfizer’s vaccine, Moderna’s is an mRNA vaccine.

The company is co-developing it with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the US federal health department.

The practical advantage Moderna appears to have over Pfizer is that its temperature requirements for distribution are simpler: 4℃ rather than -70℃. Storing and transporting a vaccine at 4℃ initially — the temperature of a household fridge — is much easier. By contrast, -70℃ freezers may only be found at major hospitals. For storage beyond 30 days the Moderna vaccine needs to be kept at -20℃, but even -20℃ freezers can be secured more easily.

However, while both vaccines seem to induce neutralising antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 “spike protein”, both report relatively poor induction of the other arm of the immune response: T cells that can target the virus, particularly those that can do it after the virus has hidden inside cells.

What’s more, neither vaccine has been shown to perform as well in older people compared to young adults. As a matter of fact, early phase 1 and 2 trials of the Pfizer vaccine saw the vaccine perform half as well in older individuals for antibody production.

Moderna’s latest human trial assessing safety and the vaccine’s ability to induce immune responses, which published final results in September after peer review, showed its vaccine induced the production of a similar amount of antibodies in adults under 70 years old, compared with those over 70. This is great news.

However, the shot induced significantly fewer T cells in adults over 71, particularly the type of T cells expected to be able to kill virus infected cells. Thus far, it’s not known whether this will result in less protection or less sustained immunity, but it is concerning this vaccine could be potentially less effective in older people.

Read more: Australia may miss out on several COVID vaccines if it can’t make mRNA ones locally

We might end up with multiple successful vaccines

We now have two mRNA COVID vaccines with greater than 90% reported efficacy, according to early phase 3 trial results.

It’s great news that multiple vaccines in the pipeline are showing good results. It opens the door to the possibility we might have many successful vaccines, and be able to tailor different vaccines to people with different needs.

Read more: 90% efficacy for Pfizer’s COVID-19 mRNA vaccine is striking. But we need to wait for the full data

There are still more than 200 COVID vaccine candidates, many of which use different processes and types of technology. Some of these will work better for different people, for example older people, pregnant women or people with chronic diseases.

For example, the “adenovirus” vaccines, of which the Oxford University vaccine is one, seems to be good at inducing T cells.

And the University of Queensland’s vaccine looks well placed to induce immune responses specifically in older people.

Tailoring different vaccines to different people will help us increase coverage and hopefully increases the likelihood we can eliminate this virus safely.

The Australian federal government has formed a key group, the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation for COVID, which will be able to advise on which vaccines might be best for which people.

– ref. Moderna’s COVID vaccine reports 95% efficacy. It means we might have multiple successful vaccines – https://theconversation.com/modernas-covid-vaccine-reports-95-efficacy-it-means-we-might-have-multiple-successful-vaccines-150266

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By C Raina MacIntyre, Professor of Global Biosecurity, NHMRC Principal Research Fellow, Head, Biosecurity Program, Kirby Institute, UNSW

The people at highest risk of getting infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, are close contacts of infected cases. So tracking these close contacts, and quarantining them so they can’t infect others, is key to efficient epidemic control. Sometimes we also have to track contacts who attend venues where super-spreading occurs.

Victoria’s second wave prompted the National Cabinet to order a review into contact tracing, which became a flashpoint during the crisis.

The report, by Australian Chief Scientist Alan Finkel and released on Friday, broadly makes the following recommendations:

• establish performance metrics on the speed of testing and contact tracing

• states and territories should pursue their own contact tracing systems, but have a national digital data exchange mechanism

• invest in technology, automation and digital systems for outbreak management

• strengthen the public health workforce, training and career tracks, as well as surge capacity for outbreaks

• go hard, go early and never fall behind

• maintain other public health measures such as social distancing, personal hygiene and early testing; and use waste-water surveillance for early warning of community transmission

• engage and communicate with communities, including those in higher risk groups and those with with diverse cultural or language needs.

We must invest in the public health workforce

The report recognises the efforts of all jurisdictions in continually improving mechanisms for control of COVID. It also recognises some of the challenges posed by confusing and inconsistent terminology, and also in differing testing protocols between jurisdictions.

It also reviews various digital technologies used to help with outbreak management across Australia, some of which are linked to pathology testing, and others to attendance at public venues, schools or workplaces. In Western Australia, for example, the G2G app enables facial recognition and mobile phone location data to help police to enforce quarantine.

Another strength of the report is the recognition of the public health workforce as a distinct and equally important part of the pandemic response as the clinical workforce.

Early in the pandemic, we did well to expand ICU beds and ventilator capacity. However, the requirements for public health capacity during pandemics has long been neglected. Victoria was under-resourced compared to other states and had fewer trained personnel for contact tracing and outbreak response, so when clusters began occurring in June, authorities were unable to stamp them out as NSW had done.

The report recommends surge capacity but no specific strategies. One strategy could involve harnessing the thousands of Bachelors or Masters of Public Health students and graduates around Australia. A course on contact tracing and surveillance within these degrees could create a large surge capacity of people with more baseline public health knowledge, compared with other options used in Victoria.

Read more: Where did Victoria go so wrong with contact tracing and have they fixed it?

Manual contact tracing can’t keep up with exponential growth

However, while Victoria was compared to NSW unfavourably, NSW has not yet been stressed with substantial daily community case numbers, and may also be unable to keep up without digital tracing.

This is actually the crux of the problem. If an epidemic grows too large, no city or state — no matter how well-resourced — will be able to keep up with contact tracing using manual methods such as whiteboards, phone calls or SMS.

What the report doesn’t make clear is the enormous human resources requirement for contact tracing, how rapidly it increases and becomes unfeasible, and the critical importance of digital contact tracing methods which will automate the identification of contacts.

Every person with COVID will have 10-20 contacts to trace, which means if you have 100 cases a day, you need to trace 1,000-2,000 contacts within 24-48 hours. If you don’t trace them rapidly, you will miss the window of opportunity to prevent them infecting others. If you don’t trace them all, you will face a growing backlog and lose control of the epidemic.

Compounding this is the exponential growth of epidemics. New cases per day can grow from 20 to 700 in a matter of weeks, as we saw in Victoria, so the task of keeping up with contact tracing becomes more and more difficult as an epidemic grows.

Even in Wuhan, the human resource capacity for contact tracing was exceeded when the outbreak reached thousands of new cases a day – equating to tens of thousands of contacts to be traced every day, and hundreds of thousands being monitored in quarantine at any one time. So authorities used digital contact tracing to keep up.

Australia should expand public health workforce and implement automated contact tracing

Of the different digital tools discussed in the report, automated contact tracing is only mentioned fleetingly, but is essential.

This could be done with QR codes and a colour-coded alert system, as was used in China. With their QR code, people receive a colour code – if they are green, they are free to move about; if orange or red, they must quarantine.

We’ve heard many stories of restaurants and entertainment venues breaching requirements for recording patron details, so that when an outbreak occurs, we have no information to enable contact tracing.

To use QR codes successfully, there has to be enforcement and substantial disincentives to noncompliance.

Australia’s COVIDSafe App, in contrast, was an opt-in app that users had to download themselves, and has had low uptake and some technical issues. Other automated methods that do not require people to actively opt in include harnessing location data from mobile phones, credit card use and other digital footprints. However, many of these raise privacy issues, which is likely why they have been used less in Western countries than in Asia.

The bottom line is that finding all cases and tracing their contacts are the most important strategies to mitigate epidemic growth. We need to have methods to scale up vastly and rapidly with both manual and digital tracing in the event of an epidemic blowout.

Read more: South Australia’s COVID outbreak: what we know so far, and what needs to happen next

– ref. Exponential growth in COVID cases would overwhelm any state’s contact tracing. Australia needs an automated system – https://theconversation.com/exponential-growth-in-covid-cases-would-overwhelm-any-states-contact-tracing-australia-needs-an-automated-system-150166

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sebastian Leuzinger, Professor, Auckland University of Technology

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

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

What would happen if we cut down the entire Amazon rainforest? Could it be replaced by an equal amount of reforestation elsewhere?

Removing the entire Amazon rainforest would have myriad consequences, with the most obvious ones possibly not the worst.

Most people will first think of the carbon currently stored in the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest. But the consequences would be far-reaching for the climate as well as biodiversity and ecosystems — and, ultimately, people.

The overall impact of the Amazon’s complete removal is unthinkable and beyond the power of our current predictive tools. But let’s look at some aspects we can describe.

Read more: Statistic of the decade: The massive deforestation of the Amazon

Storing carbon, distributing water

The Amazon rainforest is estimated to harbour about 76 billion tonnes of carbon. If all trees were cut down and burned, the forest’s carbon storage capacity would be lost to the atmosphere.

Some of this carbon would be taken up by the oceans, and some by other ecosystems (such as temperate or arctic forests), but no doubt this would exacerbate climate warming. For comparison, humans emit about 10 billion tonnes of carbon every year through the burning of fossil fuels.

But the Amazon forest does more than store carbon. It is also responsible for the circulation of huge quantities of water.

This image, captured by NASA’s Aqua satellite in 2009, shows how the forest and the atmosphere interact to create a uniform layer of “popcorn” clouds during the dry season. It is during this period, the time without rain, that the forest grows the most.

If the Amazon’s cloud systems and its capacity to recycle water were to be disrupted, the ecosystem would tip over and irreversibly turn into dry savannah very quickly. Estimates of where this tipping point could lie range from 40% deforestation to just 20% loss of forest cover from the Amazon.

Reforestation elsewhere to achieve the same amount of carbon storage is technically possible, but we have neither the time (several hundred years would be needed) nor the land (at least an equivalent surface area would be required).

Another reason why reforestation is not a remedy is that the water the rainforest circulates — and with it the availability of nutrients — would disappear.

Once you cut the circulation of water through (partial) deforestation, there is a point of no return. The water doesn’t disappear from the planet, but certainly from the forest ecosystems, with immediate and powerful consequences for the world’s climate.

Read more: We found 2˚C of warming will push most tropical rainforests above their safe ‘heat threshold’

Loss of life

Perhaps the most drastic, and least reversible, impact would be the loss of wildlife diversity.

The Amazon hosts an estimated 50,000 plant species — although more recent estimates cite a slightly lower number.

The number of animal species found in the Amazon is even higher, with the largest part made up by insects, representing around 10% of the known insect fauna, as well as a large but unknown number of fungi and microbes.

Once species are lost, they are lost forever, and this would ultimately be the most harmful consequence of cutting down the Amazon. It would possibly be worse than the loss of its role as a massive redistributor and storage of water and carbon.

Last but certainly not least, there are about 30 million people living in and near the Amazon rainforest.

The consequences of losing the forest as a provider of the ecosystem services mentioned above and as a source of food and habitat are unfathomable. The repercussions would reach far into global politics, the global economy, and societal issues.

– ref. Climate Explained: what would happen if we cut down the Amazon rainforest? – https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-what-would-happen-if-we-cut-down-the-amazon-rainforest-150054

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Noble, Education Policy Fellow, Mitchell Institute, Victoria University

Recent reports suggest several Liberal MPs are calling for child-care costs to be tax-deductible. They argue allowing families who can’t access subsidies to claim child-care costs as a tax deduction would boost women’s workforce participation and productivity.

They also say it would give greater choice to families whose working hours aren’t suited to mainstream centre-based child care.

The proposal draws on research and modelling by the UNSW New Economic Policy Initiative. The policy report, published in November 2019, suggests families be given a choice between continuing to receive their current child-care subsidy, or opting instead to pay fees up front and claim them as a tax deduction.

Read more: Vital Signs. Untaxing childcare is a bold idea that seems unfair, but might benefit us all

Both Labor and the Coalition appear to be focused primarily on child-care affordability and encouraging parents to work more. But tinkering with subsidies risks making a complex system even more complicated, and detracting attention from quality, which matters to children.

Tax deductions versus increasing subsidies

The UNSW policy proposal aims to address concerns raised by the Productivity Commission in a 2014 report, which found:

[…] tax deductions or rebates are not an effective means of support for lower and middle income families who, in the absence of ECEC [early childhood education and care] assistance, are likely to have the greatest difficulty affording care.

In the policy, because families would choose what’s best for them — either a tax deduction or the use of a subsidy — the idea is no family would be worse off.

But the benefits of opting into tax-deductible child care still wouldn’t be evenly distributed if the Liberals adopted the policy. According to the UNSW modelling, households with the highest incomes would benefit most from the policy, saving around A$1,080 per year more compared with their current spending on child care. Families on lower incomes could save around $618 compared to what they’re currently spending.

Families on lower incomes would be also be less likely to opt into the tax deduction. Even if they were to save as a result of it, they would be less able to pay full child-care fees up front.

On the other hand, Labor’s proposal for early childhood education and care focuses on low-income families first, by extending the subsidy. It would increase the maximum child-care subsidy from 85% to 90% for the lowest-income families in the short term, with a long-term plan of increasing the subsidy to that rate for all families.

Read more: Labor’s childcare plan may get more women into work. Now what about quality and educators’ pay?

Labor would also scrap the annual $10,560 subsidy cap for households earning between $189,390 and $353,680 a year. Education Minister Tehan argued Labor’s plan would benefit higher-income families at the expense of the more disadvantaged. He said in the long run it would result in “a family in Townsville […] subsiding the child-care fees of a millionaire living in Sydney”.

This is because Labor’s plan would increase subsidies for all families, compared with the current system which is means-tested and requires families on the highest incomes to pay full child-care fees.

The UNSW report authors write:

One potential objection to this two-pronged approach is that it would benefit high-income earners. There are, however, three important answers to this: first, it ignores the actual distribution of the likely benefits of the policy; second, it misconceives the nature of the policy (as welfare— rather than productivity-focused); and third, it ignores the significant gender equality and fairness arguments in favour of the policy.

The evidence actually suggests both policy options — an increase to the child-care subsidy and the policy some Liberal backbenchers are calling for – would likely pay for themselves. Economic modelling of various options for down payments towards a universal child-care subsidy indicates a return on investment of more than 100%. This is the same as modelling of the combined child-care subsidy and tax-deduction system.

More ambitous, child-focused reform

Whether the policy benefits high-income or low-income families matters, but it also misses the point — early childhood policies need to focus on what benefits children.

With over one in five children still developmentally vulnerable when they start school, Australia needs to be talking about how early childhood services can support children to learn and thrive.

This support needs to be available to all children, irrespective of their parents’ incomes.

Research shows that for every dollar invested in early childhood education, $2 is returned into the economy. Evidence also shows that while all children benefit from early education, children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds stand to gain the most.

Read more: Report finds every $1 Australia spends on preschool will return $2, but this won’t just magically happen

But these benefits are reliant on high-quality, play-based learning supported by skilled, warm and responsive educators.

Parental workforce participation is important for economic growth, but the long-term benefits to children’s learning and development can pay even greater dividends.

It’s great both parties are thinking about early childhood policy, but they need to start looking at the whole picture.

– ref. The child-care sector needs an overhaul, not more tinkering with subsidies and tax deductions – https://theconversation.com/the-child-care-sector-needs-an-overhaul-not-more-tinkering-with-subsidies-and-tax-deductions-150264