Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrea Waling, ARC DECRA Research fellow in Sex & Sexuality, La Trobe University

Since the 2012 hit film Magic Mike explored the hedonistic lifestyle of men who strip for women, popular culture has exploded with images of sexy, muscular, athletic and shirtless (or pantless!) “hot” men.

In our contemporary digital world, pornography and online dating apps offer male bodies to look at in various states of undress.

Some people celebrate the growth of such imagery as an increasing recognition of women’s sexual interests and desires. Others express concern about the potential consequences of objectification for young men, in a similar vein to that of women.

Researchers have argued sexualised images of men do not advance feminist values, as they glorify “superficial” ideals of beauty and youthful, able bodies. Others say this media representation of a muscular male body ideal reinforces “toxic” aspects of masculinity by emphasising strength and power.

Read more: Why the sexual objectification of men isn’t just a bit of fun

But what do everyday women think?

We conducted focus groups with 24 women living in Melbourne. We wanted to understand how they thought about the increased sexual visibility of men’s bodies — and what this might mean for sexual equality.

Most participants were university educated and familiar with popular feminist ideas about sexual objectification.

We showed them a range of images of men’s sexualised bodies from advertising, films and TV and asked various questions. We also asked whether they felt the phenomenon of men being more interested in their appearance affected their sexual relationships with women.

The women took pleasure in talking about sexualised male bodies. As one participant noted of the star of Magic Mike, “Damn! Channing Tatum can move!”

Yet despite this, participants did not talk about men’s appearance alone. They did not want to be thought shallow, unethical, or “un-feminist”. Some struggled to “objectify” men at all, and when it came to their preference for a long-term relationship, sexy fantasy figures were out.

Read more: Where are the Willies? The Missing Penis in “Magic Mike”

Personality over abs

Interestingly, some women described the attractiveness of men’s bodies according to what men could do, rather than how they looked. They also discussed specific body parts as aspects of the whole person. This was partly about not wanting to be seen as treating a man as just a body part, as women often see men doing to other women.

Kaitlyn, (24, bisexual, single), noted:

I can become fixated on somebody’s hands because it shows how they’re interacting with the environment, or how they’re interacting with my body as well.

Some women thought themselves sexually deficient in not being able to objectify men. They thought men who posted sexualised images of their bodies on social media or dating sites might be shallow or superficial.

Scarlett, (30, heterosexual, single), said:

I’m looking for the personality in the picture of their body and I’m not getting that necessarily from someone that posts a picture of their washboard abs.

Others thought muscular and attractive men represented broader interests in fitness and athletics that might not align with their own values.

Yu, (19, unsure/pansexual, in a relationship), noted:

… I guess if someone’s like super muscular, I don’t think they’re, like, a douche bro or anything but, like, I guess it gives me the impression that they really value fitness and stuff. So, that’s not really, particularly within my interests.

Intensifying women’s anxieties

Women described muscular and athletic men as sexual fantasy figures but discounted them as viable, long-term partners. They thought them too preoccupied with their own attractiveness. Indeed, these men’s work on their muscles intensified some women’s anxieties about their own bodies.

Jane, (34, heterosexual, in a relationship), said

Yeah, I want my superman to be really big […]. But I think if I was married to someone that would feel a bit uncomfortable, like, I wasn’t keeping up my end of the bargain.

Some women also thought that while conventionally attractive men were acceptable for sexual gratification, they were less certain about such men for serious, committed relationships.

Jane said:

I’ve had one boyfriend who was like, massive, perfect … I’d show him off to people … It wasn’t a serious relationship; it was very shallow.

Asked if she had thought about a long-term relationship with this man, she replied, “No, no way, he fulfilled a certain role and, yeah, fun.”

Added Abigail, (45, heterosexual, in a relationship): “The ‘shut up and f..k me’ role.”

‘A little bit of tummy’

Some participants described their preferences for “dad bods” over muscular physiques, gesturing to other qualities that could define a partner as attractive.

Harriet, (29, pansexual, in a relationship), said:

I really love that dad bods are in … that’s the perfect body, guys who are having fun and a little bit of a tummy.

Our research found while women might consider a sexy hunk for a fling, they would not necessarily do so for a long-term relationship. “Dad bods” spoke to what were thought to be more easygoing, equitable and grounded personalities.

Elsa, (33, mostly straight, single), noted:

Most of my ex boyfriends have been, I guess — dad bods actually does describe it reasonably well, like, a little bit of weight, not super muscly … And it’s never really worried me as long as … they’ve got nice hands, like, I can look into their eyes and feel a connection. The rest of it isn’t super important.

In seeking to avoid treating men like “objects”, these women struggled with familiar ideas linking vanity with femininity, monogamy with ethical sex, and the need to value men according to a wider set of attributes than appearance alone (unless in casual sex).

This suggests that beneath the veneer of sexual empowerment presented by Magic Mike etc., women’s sexual lives are still often shaped by traditional values.

– ref. We asked 24 women to reflect on images of ‘hot’ men — and it’s good news for those with ‘dad bods’ – https://theconversation.com/we-asked-24-women-to-reflect-on-images-of-hot-men-and-its-good-news-for-those-with-dad-bods-146753

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

Attorney-General Christian Porter and fellow cabinet minister Alan Tudge have been accused of sexual indiscretions, in a sensational Four Corners expose the government first tried to head off and then to discredit before it went to air.

In the program, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull recounted how in December 2017 he had told Porter, then social services minister, that “I had heard reports of him being out in public having had too much to drink in the company of young women”.

“He knew that I was considering appointing him attorney-general, which of course is the first law officer of the Crown, and has a seat on the national security committee, so the risk of compromise is very very real,” Turnbull told the program.

Turnbull, however, was satisfied with the conversation and went on within a fornight to promote Porter to the post.

Rachelle Miller, a Liberal staffer in 2010-18, told the program she had a consensual affair with Tudge when on his staff.

Tudge had “put a lot of pressure” on her, asking her “to ‘war game’ the line that I was going to give the journalists to try and kill the story” when rumours spread of their liaison.

She said when she walked into a parliamentary mid-winter ball with Tudge, she felt like “I was being used as an ornament”.

Miller described an incident in Canberra “Public Bar” near parliament house, where there were journalists and politicians, when she and Tudge saw Porter with “someone in the corner”.

“They were cuddling, they were kissing. It was quite confronting given that we were in such a public place”.

She said Tudge had demanded a journalist delete photographs taken of Porter.

Before the program aired Four Corners executive producer Sally Neighbour tweeted “The political pressure applied to the ABC behind the scenes over this story has been extreme and unrelenting. All credit to the ABC’s leadership for withstanding it”.

The program, “Inside the Canberra Bubble” focused on what it described as the “heady, permissive culture” around federal politics that “can be toxic for women”. Its investigation questioned “the conduct of some of the most senior politicians in the nation”.

In Senate estimates the ABC’s managing director David Anderson faced hostile questioning from Liberal senators, with pre-emptive attacks on the program for not looking at the behaviour of members of other parties.

Anderson strongly defended the program’s integrity including saying the ABC chair Ita Buttrose had seen it and approved it going to air.

He said government staff had questioned whether the program was in the public interest, but had not made threats. The Prime Minister’s Office had not been involved.

The controversial investigation will intensify the criticisms of the ABC constantly made by some in the Coalition and media critics of the public broadcaster.

The program presented a damaging picture of Porter, delving back decades to expose his attitudes to and comments about women.

Barrister Kathleen Foley said she knew Porter from when she was 16. She was in the Western Australian state debating team and he was brought in to coach it; later she knew him when she was at the WA state solicitor office and he was at the office of the director of public prosecutions.

“I’ve known him to be someone who was in my opinion, and based on what I saw, deeply sexist and actually misogynist in his treatment of women, the in way that he spoke about women,” she said.

In a statement late Monday night Porter said many of the claims on Four Corners were defamatory and “I will be considering legal options.”

He “categorically rejected” the depiction of the Public Bar incident.

“The other party subjected to these baseless claims directly rebutted the allegation to 4 Corners, yet the programme failed to report that. This fact usually would be expected to be included in a fair or balanced report.”

Porter said that journalist Louise Milligan “never contacted me or my office, despite my awareness that for many months she has been directly contacting friends, former colleagues, former students – even old school friends from the mid 1980’s – asking for rumours and negative comment about me.

“The ABC’s Managing Director told a Senate Committee just today that all relevant information had been provided to Ministers who were the subject of tonight’s programme – that is not the case,” Porter said.

He said that in his time as attorney-general in Turnbull’s government, “I never had any complaint or any suggestion of any problem from Malcolm regarding the conduct of my duties as AG until the last week of his Prime Ministership when we had a significant disagreement over the Peter Dutton citizenship issue”.

Porter did apologise for sexist material he wrote in a law journal 24 years ago.

Tudge, who is now Minister for Population, Cities and Urban Infrastructure, said in a statement after the program: “Tonight, matters that occurred in my personal life in 2017 were aired on the ABC’s Four Corners program.

“I regret my actions immensely and the hurt it caused my family. I also regret the hurt that Ms Miller has experienced.”

The President of the Law Council, Pauline Wright, said: “Allegations of misconduct regarding public or elected officials require an appropriate framework for investigation, which is why the Law Council has long called for an integrity commission to be established at the federal level with appropriate powers and definitions of misconduct”.

Porter is in charge of the legislation recently released in draft form for an integrity commission.

– ref. Porter rejects allegations of inappropriate sexual behaviour and threatens legal action after Four Corners investigation – https://theconversation.com/porter-rejects-allegations-of-inappropriate-sexual-behaviour-and-threatens-legal-action-after-four-corners-investigation-149774

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy J. Lynch, Associate Professor in American Politics, University of Melbourne

In a post-election poll for the University of Melbourne’s US election webinar series we asked the several hundred people in the audience if President Donald Trump’s defeat would mean the death of “Trumpism”. A full 92% said “no”.

Now that Democratic challenger Joe Biden has won the election and will become the next president, the logical question for the Republican Party is: what’s next?

Will Trump — and Trumpism — remain dominant features of American life after the election, and if so, what does this mean for the Republicans?

If you are conservative, there are at least five reasons to feel concerned about Trump’s legacy — and another five to be optimistic about it.

Five reasons to be pessimistic

1) Biden has won the presidency with the largest popular vote tally in American history (more than 75 million and counting).

His mandate is considerable for this reason. He now gets to establish the country’s political agenda, both domestically and internationally. Republicans will seek to block him at every turn, but as they they have now lost the presidency, they have also lost the initiative.

Read more: Why Republicans and others concerned about the economy have reason to celebrate Biden in the White House

2) Trump’s enduring popularity (no Republican has ever received more votes in a presidential election) means he will continue to set the agenda and tone of conservative politics for at least the next few years.

This will no doubt upset conservative critics and “Never Trumpers” like David Brooks, Bret Stephens, Peter Wehner and Jennifer Rubin, as well as activists at the Lincoln Project, who have articulated a revulsion for Trump since he became a presidential contender.

For them, he represents a brand of populism antithetical to conservative values like the importance of institutions in public life, reverence for good character and the rule of law.

3) Trump’s ability to galvanise grassroots conservatives around the country means polarisation is set to endure.

This will happen at two levels. Polarisation will likely deepen between the two parties, making bipartisan decision-making on COVID-19, China, climate change and the national debt impossible.

And the rift between the two wings of the GOP will likely widen, making a return to civility and compromise more nostalgic than real. The party looks set to be a noisy voice of discordant protest – “This election was stolen!” – rather than a key force of conservative renewal.

There is already evidence of division within the GOP over whether to support Trump’s claims of electoral fraud, with many choosing to remain silent rather than pick a side.

Read more: Trump still enjoys huge support among evangelical voters — and it’s not only because of abortion

4) Despite being the party that liberated African Americans from slavery after the Civil War, the Republicans remain too white and too rural today.

These twin demographics are in long-term decline, which makes replicating Trump’s electoral success on the national stage a losing game. As long as Trump’s brand of ethnic nationalism and white identity politics endures, Republicans will find it hard to build the governing coalitions necessary for national power.

The GOP needs to appeal more to non-whites in the cities and suburbs. Trumpism complicates that task.

5) If the party can’t reach more diverse voters, this creates a climate where conservatism is increasingly depicted by its opponents as illegitimate and politically incorrect.

Public discourse will mutate further into a shouting match of the extremes. The reasonableness and common sense so crucial to the conservative disposition will struggle to be heard.

Five reasons to be cheerful

1) Significant parts of the political and judicial systems look likely to remain in conservative hands.

The Republicans have a good chance of retaining control of the Senate (depending on two run-off elections in Georgia in January), and they have strengthened their minority in the House.

With Amy Coney Barrett’s recent appointment, the Supreme Court also has six conservative-leaning justices (against three liberals).

As a result of all this, conservatism will remain a vital institutional component of American politics.

2) Despite Trump’s loss, there was still a strong Republican vote among those who feel they’ve been ignored or forgotten by the Democratic Party.

The poorest states in the union generally voted GOP, while the richest went Democratic. This trend has been evident for some time, but was affirmed in the election.

And though Biden made some inroads among white voters without college degrees, their support for Trump remained strong. He won six in ten of those voters nationally, according to The Washington Post exit poll.

Expect Republicans to hone their working-class appeal as they build toward taking back the White House (with or without Trump) in 2024.

3) A white demographic decline need not spell disaster for the GOP. Despite his dog-whistle racism, Trump performed better than expected among Black voters. According to The New York Times and Post exit polls, which took into account early voting, nearly one in five Black men voted for Trump.

He also laid to rest the canard that Latino and Asian voters are the exclusive preserve of the Democratic Party. Trump fared better among both demographic groups than expected, particularly among Latino voters in Florida and Texas, where he increased his vote margin from 2016.

Overall, Trump won 26% of the non-white vote, according to the Times and Post exit polls. The trick now is to turn this into a lasting multiracial conservative voting bloc.

4) Albeit crudely, Trump has tapped into a fervour for conservative politics among large sections of the voting public that his predecessors could not and that his successors can draw strength from.

He outperformed the pre-election polls in key battleground states when everything from an economic recession to a global pandemic suggested he would struggle.

Getting past Trump’s long shadow will be a central issue for Republicans – 52% of GOP voters said they cast their ballots in professed loyalty to him.

Read more: Who exactly is Trump’s ‘base’? Why white, working-class voters could be key to the US election

5) The Biden win obscures how riven progressive politics have become.

Biden was a compromise candidate — the only one acceptable to both the progressive and moderate wings of his party. According to The New York Times exit poll, just 47% of Democrats voted for Biden, mainly because they supported him, while 67% said they were voting against Trump.

Biden will have to learn how to bargain not just with Republicans in Congress, but with his own side. This task would be exhausting for any leader, not least for the oldest man to ever hold the office.

Trump has increased the appeal of American conservatism, even as he has complicated its meaning. Republicans and Democrats must now find a way of appealing to a forgotten American middle class that Trump energised. That could be his most enduring and positive legacy.

That is good for democracy. And if Republicans can make this support routine, it could be good for conservatism and the diversity of ideas on which the American experiment itself depends.

– ref. What’s next for the Republicans after Trump? Here are 5 reasons for pessimism — and 5 reasons for hope – https://theconversation.com/whats-next-for-the-republicans-after-trump-here-are-5-reasons-for-pessimism-and-5-reasons-for-hope-149526

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Trisia Farrelly, Senior Lecturer, Massey University

After banning plastic bags last year, New Zealand now proposes to regulate single-use plastic packaging and to ban various hard-to-recycle plastics and single-use plastic items.

These moves come in response to growing public concern about plastics, increasing volumes of plastic in the environment, mounting evidence of negative environmental and health impacts of plastic pollution and the role plastics play in the global climate crisis.

Addressing plastic packaging is key to reversing these negative trends. It accounts for 42% of all non-fibre plastics produced.

But the plastics industry is pushing back. Industry representatives claim efforts to regulate plastic packaging will have negative environmental consequences because plastic is a lightweight material with a lower carbon footprint than alternatives like glass, paper and metal.

These claims are based on what’s known as life-cycle assessment (LCA). It’s a tool used to measure and compare the environmental impact of materials throughout their life, from extraction to disposal.

Industry arguments to justify plastic packaging

LCA has been used to measure the impact of packaging ever since the Coca-Cola Company commissioned the first comprehensive assessment in 1969.

While independent LCA practitioners may adopt rigorous processes, the method is vulnerable to misuse. According to European waste management consultancy Eunomia, it is limited by the questions it seeks to answer:

Ask inappropriate, misleading, narrow or uninformed questions and the process will only provide answers in that vein.

Industry-commissioned life-cycle assessments often frame single-use plastic packaging positively. These claim plastic’s light weight offsets its harmful impacts on people, wildlife and ecosystems. Some studies are even used to justify the continued expansion of plastics production.

Read more: Cheap plastic is flooding developing countries – we’re making new biodegradable materials to help

But plastic can come out looking good when certain important factors are overlooked. In theory, LCA considers a product’s whole-of-life environmental impact. In practice, the scope varies as practitioners select system boundaries at their discretion.

Zero Waste Europe has highlighted that life-cycle assessment for food packaging often omits important considerations. These include the potential toxicity of different materials, or the impact of leakage into the environment. Excluding factors like this gives plastics an unjustified advantage.

Researchers have acknowledged the method’s critical failure to account for marine pollution. This is now a priority for the research community, but not the plastics industry.

Even questionable LCA studies carry a veneer of authority in the public domain. The packaging industry capitalises on this to distract, delay and derail progressive plastics legislation. Rebutting industry studies that promote the environmental superiority of plastics is difficult because commissioning a robust LCA is costly and time-consuming.

Read more: Why the pandemic could slash the amount of plastic waste we recycle

Life-cycle assessment and packaging policy

LCA appeals to policymakers aspiring to develop evidence-based packaging policy. But if the limitations are not properly acknowledged or understood, policy can reinforce inaccurate industry narratives.

The Rethinking Plastics in Aotearoa New Zealand report, from the office of the prime minister’s chief science adviser, has been influential in plastics policy in New Zealand.

The report dedicates an entire chapter to LCA. It includes case studies that do not actually take a full life-cycle approach from extraction to disposal. It concedes only on the last page that LCA does not account for the environmental, economic or health impacts of plastics that leak into the environment.

The report also erroneously suggests LCA is “an alternative approach” to the zero-waste hierarchy. In fact, the two tools work best together.

The zero-waste hierarchy prioritises strategies to prevent, reduce and reuse packaging. That’s based on the presumption that these approaches have lower life-cycle impacts than recycling and landfilling.

One of LCA’s limitations is that practitioners tend to compare materials already available on the predominantly single-use packaging market. However, an LCA guided by the waste hierarchy would include zero-packaging or reusable packaging systems in the mix. Such an assessment would contribute to sustainable packaging policy.

New Zealand already has growing numbers of zero-waste grocers, supplied by local businesses delivering their products in reusable bulk packaging. We have various reuse schemes for takeaways.

New Zealand is also a voluntary signatory to the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment, which includes commitments by businesses and government to increase reusable packaging by 2025.

Prominent organisations, including the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts, estimate reusables could replace 30% of single-use plastic packaging by 2040. The Pew report states:

A reduction of plastic production — through elimination, the expansion of consumer reuse options, or new delivery models — is the most attractive solution from environmental, economic and social perspectives.

The plastics industry has misused LCA to argue that attempts to reduce plastic pollution will result in bad climate outcomes. But increasingly, life-cycle assessments that compare packaging types across the waste hierarchy are revealing that this trade-off is mostly a single-use packaging problem.

Policymakers should take life-cycle assessment beyond its industry-imposed straitjacket and allow it to inform zero-packaging and reusable packaging system design. Doing so could help New Zealand reduce plastic pollution, negative health impacts and greenhouse gas emissions.

– ref. How life-cycle assessments can be (mis)used to justify more single-use plastic packaging – https://theconversation.com/how-life-cycle-assessments-can-be-mis-used-to-justify-more-single-use-plastic-packaging-147672

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy J. Lynch, Associate Professor in American Politics, University of Melbourne

In a post-election poll for the University of Melbourne’s US election webinar series we asked the several hundred people in the audience if President Donald Trump’s defeat would mean the death of “Trumpism”. A full 92% said “no”.

Now that Democratic challenger Joe Biden has won the election and will become the next president, the logical question for the Republican Party is: what’s next?

Will Trump — and Trumpism — remain dominant features of American life after the election, and if so, what does this mean for the Republicans?

If you are conservative, there are at least five reasons to feel concerned about Trump’s legacy — and another five to be optimistic about it.

Five reasons to be pessimistic

1) Biden has won the presidency with the largest popular vote tally in American history (more than 75 million and counting).

His mandate is considerable for this reason. He now gets to establish the country’s political agenda, both domestically and internationally. Republicans will seek to block him at every turn, but as they they have now lost the presidency, they have also lost the initiative.

Read more: Why Republicans and others concerned about the economy have reason to celebrate Biden in the White House

2) Trump’s enduring popularity (no Republican has ever received more votes in a presidential election) means he will continue to set the agenda and tone of conservative politics for at least the next few years.

This will no doubt upset conservative critics and “Never Trumpers” like David Brooks, Bret Stephens, Peter Wehner and Jennifer Rubin, as well as activists at the Lincoln Project, who have articulated a revulsion for Trump since he became a presidential contender.

For them, he represents a brand of populism antithetical to conservative values like the importance of institutions in public life, reverence for good character and the rule of law.

3) Trump’s ability to galvanise grassroots conservatives around the country means polarisation is set to endure.

This will happen at two levels. Polarisation will likely deepen between the two parties, making bipartisan decision-making on COVID-19, China, climate change and the national debt impossible.

And the rift between the two wings of the GOP will likely widen, making a return to civility and compromise more nostalgic than real. The party looks set to be a noisy voice of discordant protest – “This election was stolen!” – rather than a key force of conservative renewal.

There is already evidence of division within the GOP over whether to support Trump’s claims of electoral fraud, with many choosing to remain silent rather than pick a side.

Read more: Trump still enjoys huge support among evangelical voters — and it’s not only because of abortion

4) Despite being the party that liberated African Americans from slavery after the Civil War, the Republicans remain too white and too rural today.

These twin demographics are in long-term decline, which makes replicating Trump’s electoral success on the national stage a losing game. As long as Trump’s brand of ethnic nationalism and white identity politics endures, Republicans will find it hard to build the governing coalitions necessary for national power.

The GOP needs to appeal more to non-whites in the cities and suburbs. Trumpism complicates that task.

5) If the party can’t reach more diverse voters, this creates a climate where conservatism is increasingly depicted by its opponents as illegitimate and politically incorrect.

Public discourse will mutate further into a shouting match of the extremes. The reasonableness and common sense so crucial to the conservative disposition will struggle to be heard.

Five reasons to be cheerful

1) Significant parts of the political and judicial systems look likely to remain in conservative hands.

The Republicans have a good chance of retaining control of the Senate (depending on two run-off elections in Georgia in January), and they have strengthened their minority in the House.

With Amy Coney Barrett’s recent appointment, the Supreme Court also has six conservative-leaning justices (against three liberals).

As a result of all this, conservatism will remain a vital institutional component of American politics.

2) Despite Trump’s loss, there was still a strong Republican vote among those who feel they’ve been ignored or forgotten by the Democratic Party.

The poorest states in the union generally voted GOP, while the richest went Democratic. This trend has been evident for some time, but was affirmed in the election.

And though Biden made some inroads among white voters without college degrees, their support for Trump remained strong. He won six in ten of those voters nationally, according to The Washington Post exit poll.

Expect Republicans to hone their working-class appeal as they build toward taking back the White House (with or without Trump) in 2024.

3) A white demographic decline need not spell disaster for the GOP. Despite his dog-whistle racism, Trump performed better than expected among Black voters. According to The New York Times and Post exit polls, which took into account early voting, nearly one in five Black men voted for Trump.

He also laid to rest the canard that Latino and Asian voters are the exclusive preserve of the Democratic Party. Trump fared better among both demographic groups than expected, particularly among Latino voters in Florida and Texas, where he increased his vote margin from 2016.

Overall, Trump won 26% of the non-white vote, according to the Times and Post exit polls. The trick now is to turn this into a lasting multiracial conservative voting bloc.

4) Albeit crudely, Trump has tapped into a fervour for conservative politics among large sections of the voting public that his predecessors could not and that his successors can draw strength from.

He outperformed the pre-election polls in key battleground states when everything from an economic recession to a global pandemic suggested he would struggle.

Getting past Trump’s long shadow will be a central issue for Republicans – 52% of GOP voters said they cast their ballots in professed loyalty to him.

Read more: Who exactly is Trump’s ‘base’? Why white, working-class voters could be key to the US election

5) The Biden win obscures how riven progressive politics have become.

Biden was a compromise candidate — the only one acceptable to both the progressive and moderate wings of his party. According to The New York Times exit poll, just 47% of Democrats voted for Biden, mainly because they supported him, while 67% said they were voting against Trump.

Biden will have to learn how to bargain not just with Republicans in Congress, but with his own side. This task would be exhausting for any leader, not least for the oldest man to ever hold the office.

Trump has increased the appeal of American conservatism, even as he has complicated its meaning. Republicans and Democrats must now find a way of appealing to a forgotten American middle class that Trump energised. That could be his most enduring and positive legacy.

That is good for democracy. And if Republicans can make this support routine, it could be good for conservatism and the diversity of ideas on which the American experiment itself depends.

– ref. What’s next for the Republicans after Trump? Here are 5 are reasons for pessimism — and 5 reasons for hope – https://theconversation.com/whats-next-for-the-republicans-after-trump-here-are-5-are-reasons-for-pessimism-and-5-reasons-for-hope-149526

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Aashish Srivastava, Senior Lecturer, Department of Business Law and Taxation, Monash University

Students enter university as young adults embarking on a new life. Hazing rituals are meant to be a lighthearted initiation into university life that breaks down barriers between seniors and freshers and prepares the newcomers for their future. But hazing can be a terrifying ordeal.

Many practices associated with being initiated by other students are cruel and inhumane. Hazing has, in some cases, led to homicide, rape, sodomy, infliction of physical injuries, mental torture and forced binge drinking of alcohol.

Innocent lives are lost and student careers ruined. Many carry the mental scars of hazing for life. However, if they refuse to participate in hazing, they are ostracised.

Internationally, courts are increasingly holding universities responsible for the impacts of hazing on their students. Unlike other countries, Australia lacks legislation that clearly makes universities and their colleges responsible for hazing. But the overseas experience shows legislation alone isn’t enough; cultural change is essential.

How widespread is the problem?

Hazing is culturally entrenched in Australian universities, especially in residential colleges. The 2018 privately commissioned The Red Zone Report: An investigation into sexual violence and hazing in Australian university residential colleges describes hazing as “endemic”. Sydney University’s vice chancellor has confessed he is “powerless” to stop hazing.

Read more: Hazing and sexual violence in Australian universities: we need to address men’s cultures

In 2017, 39 Australian universities had commissioned the Australian Human Rights Commission report Change the Course. The report was scathing about the prevalence of hazing, sexual assault and harassment at university campuses and residential colleges.

Hazing poses a threat to international education in Australia, a A$35 billion “export industry” employing more than 200,000 Australians. It is just behind iron ore, coal and natural gas.

In the US, 55% of students on university campuses face hazing. In India 60% of students at universities and professional institutions are victims of hazing. In 2018 reported incidents of hazing increased by 75% in India.

In Australia, as many as half (51%) of all Australian university students were sexually harassed in 2016, many as part of hazing rituals. Many are subjected to other indignities.

Read more: Why hazing continues to be a rite of passage for some

Universities can’t escape responsibility

While the individual perpetrators of hazing are subject to criminal and civil sanctions, the reality is that it is up to institutions to deal with the problem. Australia does not have standalone hazing legislation that clearly makes this the responsibility of universities and/or their colleges.

Such legislation exists in the US (in 44 out of 50 states) and India (in 14 out of 29 states). These laws provide for wrongdoers to be imprisoned or fined. However, criminal liability has failed to stem the tide of hazing.

Civil courts have sought to help. They have recognised the university’s responsibility to its students and awarded damages to them under tort law. The US courts began this trend by imposing a duty of care on universities that left them liable for failure to control hazing.

In Mullins v Pine Manor College it was held that the university controlled residential premises. Thus, it was liable for the rape of a campus resident that happened due to its failure to arrange adequate security.

Furek v University of Delaware resulted from a fraternity hazing ritual during which oven cleaner was poured on the plaintiff’s face and neck, burning and permanently scarring him. The court held the university liable as through its clearly pronounced policies it had assumed responsibility for controlling hazing.

A 2018 US case, Regents of University of California v Superior Court, produced the most expansive view on the university’s liability. The behaviour of a student who suffered from schizophrenia had become erratic. The university knew about his behaviour. This student attacked another student with a kitchen knife, who then sued the university.

The court held the university liable as there was “a special relationship” between a university and students, creating a duty to protect the latter. The Regents decision reflects the modern reality of how much control an institution exerts over students and how much they depend on the university for their safety.

In Australia, there have been calls for a statutory duty of care to be imposed on universities. The ACT Supreme Court recently reached the same conclusion.

In SMA v John XXIII College (No 2), the plaintiff had non-consensual sex with a fellow student following the hazing ritual of binge drinking on the college premises and outside. She sued an affiliate college of ANU. The defendant was held liable for breaching its duty of care to the plaintiff on the grounds it failed to:

• stop the hazing ritual of drinking

• direct the students in an intoxicated state to leave the college

• properly handle the student’s sexual harassment complaint.

Read more: Why governments should be cautious about criminalising hazing

Cultural change is essential

Universities are an ecosystem in which students prepare for their life ahead. Judicial decisions both in the US and Australia emphasise universities have assumed responsibility for student safety, and it is they who must control hazing.

Hazing has become a “pandemic”. An isolated civil suit by a student helps but does not go to the heart of the problem.

What is required is cultural change. The institutions themselves must drive this change.

A failure to stop hazing damages an institution’s own students and tarnishes its image. Universities, members of civil society and political leaders need to get serious about tackling the evil of hazing.

This article was co-authored by D.K. Srivastava — formerly professor at the City University of Hong Kong and pro-vice-chancellor of OP Jindal Global University, India.

– ref. Brutal rituals of hazing won’t go away — and unis are increasingly likely to be held responsible – https://theconversation.com/brutal-rituals-of-hazing-wont-go-away-and-unis-are-increasingly-likely-to-be-held-responsible-147849

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Toss Gascoigne, Visiting fellow, Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, Australian National University

It’s a challenging time to be a science communicator. The current pandemic, climate crisis, and concerns over new technologies from artificial intelligence to genetic modification by CRISPR demand public accountability, clear discussion and the ability to disagree in public.

However, science communication is not new to challenge. The 20th century can be read as a long argument for science communication in the interest of the public good.

Since the Second World War, there have been many efforts to negotiate a social contract between science and civil society. In the West, part of that negotiation has emphasised the distribution of scientific knowledge. But how is the relationship between science and society formulated around the globe?

We collected stories from 39 countries together into a book, Communicating Science: A Global Perspective, to understand how science communication has unfolded internationally. Globally it has played a key role in public health, environmental protection and agriculture.

Three key ideas emerge: community knowledge is a powerful context; successful science communication is integrated with other beliefs; and there is an expectation that researchers will contribute to the development of society.

Read more: Three key drivers of good messaging in a time of crisis: expertise, empathy and timing

What is science communication?

The term “science communication” is not universal. For 50 years, what is called “science communication” in Australia has had different names in other countries: “science popularisation”, “public understanding”, “vulgarisation”, “public understanding of science”, and the cultivation of a “scientific temper”.

Colombia uses the term “the social appropriation of science and technology”. This definition underscores that scientific knowledge is transformed through social interaction.

Each definition delivers insights into how science and society are positioned. Is science imagined as part of society? Is science held in high esteem? Does association with social issues lessen or strengthen the perception of science?

Read more: Engaging the disengaged with science

Governments play a variety of roles in the stories we collected. The 1970s German government stood back, perhaps recalling the unsavoury relationship between Nazi propaganda and science. Private foundations filled the gap by funding ambitious programs to train science journalists. In the United States, the absence of a strong central agency encouraged diversity in a field described variously as “vibrant”, “jostling” or “cacophonous”.

The United Kingdom is the opposite, providing one of the best-documented stories in this field. This is exemplified by the Royal Society’s Bodmer Report in 1985, which argued that scientists should consider it their duty to communicate their work to their fellow citizens.

Russia saw a state-driven focus on science through the communist years, to modernise and industrialise. In 1990 the Knowledge Society’s weekly science newspaper Argumenty i Fakty had the highest weekly circulation of any newspaper in the world: 33.5 million copies. But the collapse of the Soviet Union showed how fragile these scientific views were, as people turned to mysticism.

Many national accounts refer to the relationship between indigenous knowledge and Western science. Aotearoa New Zealand is managing this well (there’s a clue in the name), with its focus on mātauranga (Māori knowledge). The integration has not always been smooth sailing, but Māori views are now incorporated into nationwide science funding, research practice and public engagement.

Ecologist John Perrott points out that Māori “belonging” (I belong, therefore I am) is at odds with Western scientific training (I think, therefore I am). In Māori whakapapa (genealogy and cosmology), relationships with the land, flora and fauna are fundamental and all life is valued, as are collaboration and nurturing.

Science communication in the Global South

Eighteen countries contributing to the book have a recent colonial history, and many are from the Global South. They saw the end of colonial rule as an opportunity to embrace science. As Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah said in 1963 to a meeting of the Organisation of African Unity:

We shall drain marshes and swamps, clear infested areas, feed the under-nourished, and rid our people of parasites and disease. It is within the possibility of science and technology to make even the Sahara bloom into a vast field with verdant vegetation for agricultural and industrial developments.

Plans were formulated and optimism was strong. A lot depended on science communication: how would science be introduced to national narratives, gain political impetus and influence an education system for science?

Science in these countries focused mainly on health, the environment and agriculture. Nigeria’s polio vaccine campaign was almost derailed in 2003 when two influential groups, the Supreme Council for Shari’ah in Nigeria and the Kaduna State Council of Imams and Ulamas, declared the vaccine contained anti-fertility substances and was part of a Western conspiracy to sterilise children. Only after five Muslim leaders witnessed a successful vaccine program in Egypt was it recognised as being compatible with the Qur’an.

Three key ideas

Three principles emerge from these stories. The first is that community knowledge is a powerful force. In rural Kenya, the number of babies delivered by unskilled people led to high mortality. Local science communication practices provided a solution. A baraza (community discussion) integrated the health problem with social solutions, and trained local motorcycle riders to transport mothers to hospitals. The baraza used role-plays to depict the arrival of a mother to a health facility, reactions from the health providers, eventual safe delivery of the baby, and mother and baby riding back home.

A second principle is how science communication can enhance the integration of science with other beliefs. Science and religion, for example, are not always at odds. The Malaysian chapter describes how Muslim concepts of halal (permitted) and haram (forbidden) determine the acceptability of biotechnology according to the principles of Islamic law. Does science pose any threat to the five purposes of maslahah (public interest): religion, life and health, progeny, intellect and property? It is not hard to see the resemblance to Western ethical considerations of controversial science.

Read more: What science communicators can learn from listening to people

The third is an approach to pursuing and debating science for the public good. Science communication has made science more accessible, and public opinions and responses more likely to be sought. The “third mission”, an established principle across Europe, is an expectation or obligation that researchers will contribute to the growth, welfare and development of society. Universities are expected to exchange knowledge and skills with others in society, disseminating scientific results and methods, and encouraging public debate.

These lessons about science communication will be needed in a post-COVID world. They are finding an audience: we have made the book freely available online, and it has so far been downloaded more than 14,000 times.

– ref. Science communication is more important than ever. Here are 3 lessons from around the world on what makes it work – https://theconversation.com/science-communication-is-more-important-than-ever-here-are-3-lessons-from-around-the-world-on-what-makes-it-work-147670

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bo Li, Associate professor, University of Wollongong

A mountainside cave now used as a Tibetan Buddhist sanctuary was home to prehistoric humans known as Denisovans for tens of millennia.

Our painstaking efforts there are helping unravel the story of how early humans adapted to live in one of the world’s most remote and mountainous places.

Our research, published in Science, provides a better understanding of the little-known prehistoric humans who lived tens of thousands of years ago on the roof of the world.

Read more: Fresh clues to the life and times of the Denisovans, a little-known ancient group of humans

Mountain retreat

In 1980, half of a fossilised jawbone was found by a monk in the Baishiya Karst Cave in China’s Gansu province, in the northeastern part of the Tibetan Plateau. The jawbone’s long-deceased owner was dubbed “Xiahe Man”.

Analysis showed the mandible was actually the 160,000-year-old remains of a Denisovan. This group of mysterious prehistoric humans was originally discovered in the Denisova Cave in Siberia, Russia.

So this fossil was not only the earliest evidence of human occupation on the Tibetan Plateau, but also the first Denisovan fossil to be found outside of Denisova Cave — and the largest to ever be found.

However, without other archaeological evidence to put the solitary jawbone in context, this single fossil gave us little convincing evidence to piece together the full story of the mysterious Denisovans living on the roof of the world.

For this, we needed to properly excavate the Baishiya Karst Cave and see what we could find. After dozens of visits to the cave and others nearby, in 2016 we finally found the first indisputable stone artefacts (probably made by Denisovans) on the cave floor.

With this, we became further convinced the cave was a treasure trove of archaeological deposits that could help tell the story of the Denisovans. But, as it’s also a Buddhist holy cave, we weren’t allowed to dig inside it — not even one scrape of a trowel.

Midnight digging in the depths of winter

After two years of wrangling with authorities and extended negotiations with the temple’s Buddhist caretakers, we finally got permission to excavate a limited area within the cave. This was on the condition we worked late at night during the cold of winter, when no monks or tourists were visiting.

So every night, for three weeks, we inched our way across a frozen river, trudged up the mountainside through prickly branches and thick snow to reach the cave 3,280 metres above sea level. We slept during the day and excavated at night.

Despite the bone-chilling wind and darkness punctuated only by weak lamplight, it was exciting work. And our efforts were rewarded.

The archaeological remains we uncovered were richer and even more beautiful than we’d expected, including stone artefacts and animal bones buried throughout the sediments.

In 2019, a fresh permit allowed us to work during the day, too, albeit still in December (the coldest month of the Tibetan winter). We found yet more archaeological riches, including stone artefacts, animal bones and the remains of fires — crucial evidence of people living in the cave.

Crucial questions

Our discoveries have raised several questions. Who lived in the cave and made these artefacts, and when? Were they Denisovans like the original Xiahe Man from 160,000 years ago, or modern humans? Or perhaps a genetic combination of both?

The “when” question was tackled using two techniques. By radiocarbon-dating the animal bones, we worked out when they were brought into the cave — either as food for human occupants, or simply animals sheltering alongside humans.

Our dating techniques, similar to those used previously at Denisova Cave, revealed the oldest stone artefacts in the Baishiya Karst Cave were buried more than 190,000 years ago. Since then, sediments and stone artefacts accumulated over time until at least 45,000 years ago, or perhaps more recently still.

DNA identification

But who were the people who lived there? To answer that question without any fresh human fossils besides the original jawbone, we needed to examine human DNA in the sediment samples.

We focused on identifying sequences of “mitochondrial DNA”, as cells contain many more copies of this than they do nuclear DNA. Thus, mitochondrial DNA is easier to obtain and analyse for research.

We found mitochondrial DNA matching Denisovans in cave sediments between 100,000–60,000 years old. What’s more, we found the newer samples were more closely related to those from Denisova Cave than older ones, indicating Denisovans were indeed more widespread than originally thought.

It’s possible they could have even contributed significantly to modern human DNA. For example, they may have helped today’s Tibetan Plateau dwellers on their evolutionary journey of adapting to high-altitude mountain life.

To confirm this, we’ll need to find out how long the Denisovans lived in the region around the Baishiya Karst Cave, and crucially, whether they survived long enough to intermingle with the modern humans who arrived on the Tibetan Plateau between 40,000–30,000 years ago.

Although, even if Denisovans and modern humans did come face to face, they would have actually had to interbreed for Denisovans to be able to share their high-altitude evolutionary adaptations.

Read more: Explainer: what are mitochondria and how did we come to have them?

It’s difficult to know whether this happened by only analysing mitochondrial DNA, since this only carries information about the maternal lineage.

This means it doesn’t always reflect the complete population history of a specimen. Future attempts to extract nuclear DNA from the Baishiya Karst Cave may finally provide the tools needed to explore these questions.

– ref. How midnight digs at a holy Tibetan cave opened a window to prehistoric humans living on the roof of the world – https://theconversation.com/how-midnight-digs-at-a-holy-tibetan-cave-opened-a-window-to-prehistoric-humans-living-on-the-roof-of-the-world-148927

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kathomi Gatwiri, Senior lecturer, Southern Cross University

Race informs how Black parents raise their children in Australia. Our study, published in the journal Child and Family Social Work, found it complicates parenting in ways that non-Black parents might not have to consider.

We interviewed 27 highly skilled professional African migrants from eight different Sub-Saharan African countries about their experiences of employment, belonging and parenting in Australia. Parents of Black African children told us they had to consider how race affected the identity, perception, opportunities and well-being of their children.

One parent, who overheard her daughter telling her (white) friends about her experiences as a Black teenager, reflected:

This week I heard her tell one of her friends; there is no one day that passes without her thinking about this (race). Yeah, and her friends were really, really […] shocked. They said they do not have to think about it. Then, she said, ‘Every day when I get on to the bus, you know, I think about who I am and if somebody is going to say something, when I am on the streets, you know, I think about what will somebody think or say or do.’

Read more: Growing Up African in Australia: racism, resilience and the right to belong

Parenting is complicated by race

Many parents said they were unprepared for the extent to which race would become a defining marker of their parenting process in Australia.

One parent noted school was especially difficult for his children. He described instances in which his son had been called “a nigger” and threatened with violence, as well as fighting for his daughter’s rights to wear her afro-natural hair in school.

It put a lot of pressure on them and on me as a parent to explain without creating differences between them and the white kids […] We create a lot of explanations and conversations around who they are.

Parents of Black men and boys, in particular, reported feeling more concerned about the stereotype of black masculinity and how much more likely their sons were to be criminalised or profiled by police.

One parent said she constantly reminds her son that, because he is a young African male, he must

…always be conscious wherever he goes or wherever he is.

Some parents reported feeling overwhelmed and unprepared to support their children to deal with racial slurs, micro-aggressions (such as racial “jokes”, comments and “nicknames”) and racial exotification (such as hair-touching, invasive questions about their bodies or being described as “exotic”).

Teaching Black children about racial dignity

Participants reported a significant aspect of parenting involved teaching their children about their blackness and self-worth.

Because blackness is often inferiorised in white-dominant contexts, many told us they felt if their children weren’t taught about racial dignity and self-worth, they would grow up internalising feelings of inferiority.

One parent explained how, for her two children:

We have conversations about what they look like, how they are different to other people, and people may want to point out those differences. [We teach them] being different does not mean being inferior or anything like that […] we talk to them to be confident about who they are and to be proud about where they have come from and their African heritage.

Another parent reflected:

We have had instances […] where he has sort of alluded to the fact that somebody told him, ‘You are Black, you are not like us’. And we have taken that up very quickly with the school authorities (but) we have (also) tried to tell him in a soft way […] being African doesn’t make him inferior.

‘Having the talk’ and affirming children’s experiences

Most parents in this study considered that explicitly teaching their children about race was necessary while growing up in Australia.

This involved “having the talk” and explaining to children about why their skin colour was different — preparing them to live in a world where their blackness was sometimes going to be a hindrance and how deal with such instances, including interactions with police.

This process of teaching children about race and racism while also sharing positive cultural knowledge, concepts racial dignity and resilience is called racial socialisation.

However, despite the efforts to instil a sense of pride about their African heritage in their children, many parents also encouraged their children to “curate or minimise” their blackness and/or Africanness in an effort to reduce their experiences of racism or racial profiling.

Others told us they pushed their children “to be exemplary”; that they had to be great representatives of the African/Black communities.

For the children, these expectations from family can lead to their blackness being worn as a “burden”. Parents, however, saw it as a necessary form of racial socialisation that prepares their children to face racial discrimination with greater resilience.

‘Colour-blind parenting’

A minority of parents interviewed believed their children “do not see colour” and tried their best “not to make race an issue”. One parent, for example, said:

We always taught our children race is not an issue, we are all the same, so it was easy for them to fit in.

Another parent said:

…when it comes to my children, they do not really have that idea of […] ‘I am a certain colour’ […] we’ve not had that conversation because there has been no reason to. We are people, we are not ‘coloured’ people.

This “colour-blind parenting” aligns with mainstream Australian ideas that people “are all the same”, and that racism is not a significant issue in contemporary multicultural Australia.

While well-intentioned, such an approach might make it harder for children to discuss potential experiences of “racial otherness” with their parents.

Where to from here?

Media representations of African migrant families often depict irreconcilable cultural clashes after relocation. But our interviewees were able to successfully adapt and change their parenting behaviour and attitudes after migrating, which improved family dynamics.

If you’re a parent, talk with your children about race and racism, and its effects. It is important Black children know that they are not imagining their racialised experiences.

Think about ways you can introduce these concepts to your children. Young children can understand complex concepts when discussed in age-appropriate terms — and through humour.

Children’s books such as Sharee Miller’s Don’t touch my hair!, for example, help introduce the importance of setting — and respecting — personal boundaries.

We also summarised some tips on how to raise racially conscious children in an SBS video here.

Read more: The politics of black hair: an Australian perspective

– ref. Not a day passes without thinking about race: what African migrants told us about parenting in Australia – https://theconversation.com/not-a-day-passes-without-thinking-about-race-what-african-migrants-told-us-about-parenting-in-australia-149167

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ashleigh Best, PhD Candidate and Teaching Fellow, University of Melbourne

The Black Summer bushfires were devastating for wildlife, with an estimated three billion wild animals killed, injured or displaced. This staggering figure does not include the tens of thousands of farm animals who also perished.

The bushfire royal commission’s final report, released on October 30, recognised the gravity of the fires’ extraordinary toll on animals.

Read more: Click through the tragic stories of 119 species still struggling after Black Summer in this interactive (and how to help)

It recommended governments improve wildlife rescue arrangements, develop better systems for understanding biodiversity and clarify evacuation options for domestic animals.

While these changes are welcome and necessary, they’re not sufficient. Minimising such catastrophic impacts on wildlife and livestock also means reducing their exposure to these hazards in the first place. And unless we develop more proactive strategies to protect threatened species from disasters, they’ll only become more imperilled.

What the royal commission recommended

The royal commission recognised the need for wildlife rescuers to have swift and safe access to fire grounds.

In the immediate aftermath of the bushfires, some emergency services personnel were confused about the roles and responsibilities of wildlife rescuers. This caused delays in rescue operations.

To address this issue, the royal commission sensibly suggested all state and territory governments integrate wildlife rescue functions into their general disaster planning frameworks. This would improve coordination between different response agencies.

Read more: The bushfire royal commission has made a clarion call for change. Now we need politics to follow

Another issue raised by the commission was that Australia does not have a comprehensive, central source of information about its native flora and fauna. This is, in part, because species listing processes are fragmented across different jurisdictions.

For example, a marsupial, the white-footed dunnart, is listed as vulnerable in NSW, but is not on the federal government’s list of threatened species.

To better manage and protect wild animals, governments need more complete information on, for example, their range and population, and how climate change threatens them.

As a result, the royal commission recommended governments collect and share more accurate information so disaster response and recovery efforts for wildlife could be more targeted, timely and effective.

Helping animals help themselves

While promising, the measures listed in the royal commission’s final report will only tweak a management system for wildlife already under stress. Current legal frameworks for protecting threatened species are reactive. By the time governments intervene, species have often already reached a turning point.

Governments must act to allow wild animals the best possible chances of escaping and recovering on their own.

This means prioritising the protection and restoration of habitat that allows animals to get to safety. As a World Wildlife Fund report explains, an animal’s ability to flee the fires and find safe, unburnt habitat — such as mesic (moist) refuges in gullies or near waterways — directly influenced their chances of survival.

Read more: Summer bushfires: how are the plant and animal survivors 6 months on? We mapped their recovery

Wildlife corridors also assist wild animals to survive and recover from disasters. These connect areas of habitat, providing fast moving species with safe routes along which they can flee from hazards.

And these corridors help slow moving species, such as koalas, to move across affected landscapes after fires. This prevents them from becoming isolated, and enables access to food and water.

Hazard reduction activities, such as removing dry vegetation that fuels fires, were also a focus for the royal commission. These can coexist with habitat conservation when undertaken in ecologically-sensitive ways.

As the commission recognised, Indigenous land and fire management practices are informed by intimate knowledge of plants, animals and landscapes. These practices should be integrated into habitat protection policies in consultation with First Nations land managers.

The commission also suggested natural hazards, such as fire, be counted as a “key threatening process” under national environment law. But it should be further amended to protect vulnerable species under threat from future stressors, such as disasters.

Read more: Let there be no doubt: blame for our failing environment laws lies squarely at the feet of government

Governments also need to provide more funding to monitor compliance with this law. Another World Wildlife Fund report, released today, warns that unless it is properly enforced, a further 37 million native animals could be displaced or killed as a result of habitat destruction this decade.

And, as we saw last summer, single bushfire events can push some populations much closer to extinction. For example, the fires destroyed a large portion of the already endangered glossy black-cockatoo’s remaining habitat.

What about pets and farm animals?

Pets and farm animals featured in the commission’s recommendations too.

During the bushfires, certain evacuation centres didn’t cater for these animals. This meant some evacuees chose not to use these facilities because they couldn’t take their animals with them.

To guide the community in future disasters, the commission said plans should clearly identify whether or not evacuation centres can accommodate people with animals.

Read more: Seven ways to protect your pets in an emergency

Evacuation planning is crucial to effective disaster response. However, it is unfortunately not always feasible to move large groups of livestock off properties at short notice.

For this reason, governments should help landholders to mitigate the risks hazards pose to their herds and flocks. Researchers are already starting to do this by investigating the parts of properties that were burnt during the bushfires. This will help farmers identify the safest paddocks for their animals in future fire seasons.

Disasters are only expected to become more intense and extreme as the climate changes. And if we’re to give our pets, livestock and unique wildlife the best chance at surviving, it’s not enough only to have sound disaster response. Governments must preemptively address the underlying sources of animals’ vulnerability to hazards.

Read more: How we plan for animals in emergencies

– ref. 3 billion animals were in the bushfires’ path. Here’s what the royal commission said (and should’ve said) about them – https://theconversation.com/3-billion-animals-were-in-the-bushfires-path-heres-what-the-royal-commission-said-and-shouldve-said-about-them-149429

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daniella J. Forster, Senior Lecturer, Educational ethics and philosophies, University of Newcastle

As an educational ethicist, I research teachers’ ethical obligations. These can include their personal ethics such as protecting students from harm, respect for justice and truth, and professional norms like social conformity, collegial loyalty and personal well-being.

Moral tensions in schools can come about when certain categories of norms conflict with each other. For example, sometimes students’ best interests are pitted against available resources. These present difficult decisions for the teacher, the school community and its leaders.

As part of a global study on educational ethics during the pandemic, I conducted focus groups with Australian childcare, preschool, primary and secondary school teachers to find out what ethical issues were most pressing for them.

Below are three ways in which the pandemic highlighted existing tensions between ethical priorities.

1. Student well-being versus learning

The Australian Professional Standards for Teachers emphasise student well-being is important to learning. But they note teachers’ main priority is making sure the student learns at their stage of the Australian National Curriculum.

During COVID, this flipped and well-being took precedence. A primary school teacher told me:

It’s the first time in my teaching career where the learning became a low priority, and well-being took over … if we could keep them chugging along, that was good enough.

An Aboriginal-identifying teacher who shared their strong cultural background with students said:

… a lot of the Aboriginal students … didn’t have access to … resources. And so there was already this disconnect that became even wider by the time they had to learn from home … Some students were not able to complete the work that I was putting on the online forum because they were caring for little brothers and sisters when they were at home … or home life was extremely volatile …

A secondary school teacher said:

There were certain students that we were made aware of by the well-being coordinators that we weren’t to make contact with. If there were more extenuating circumstances in the life of the child then we weren’t to … exacerbate that by sending emails home about them not completing work …

Some teachers found it particularly difficult to identify students at heightened risk and to put in place their duty of care requirements.

Read more: ‘The workload was intense’: what parents told us about remote learning

A public primary school principal in a low socioeconomic area said:

We had a couple of instances where we would have had more contact with family, community services and since (then) we have heard stories of what happened when the children weren’t coming to school … we would have made an instant call to DOCS [Department of Community Services], but because we weren’t having that day to day contact we didn’t know. A lot of those things were hidden, very serious issues.

2. Government policy versus staff well-being

Leading teachers and principals found the tension between their personal safety and that of their colleagues were often in conflict with a lag in institutional directives.

For instance, on March 25 The NSW Teachers’ Federation urged the education department to immediately prioritise the safety of staff and students.

But the department took time to mandate social distancing measures, school closures and learning from home. In the meantime principals were on alert for risk management, anticipating directives for extensive social distancing, such as cancelling school assemblies, before being instructed to do so.

One public school principal said:

The federation is telling us this. The department is telling us that … I would make a decision and then a couple of weeks later … the department would come up with the same strict instructions … it was the well-being of the staff first for me … even to the point where we sent the kids home for the first week with no learning … the second that one child comes to school and catches COVID, then I’m not going to be able to live with myself.

Read more: ‘We had no sanitiser, no soap and minimal toilet paper’: here’s how teachers feel about going back to the classroom

But it wasn’t the same in all schools. A primary school teacher in a bushfire affected area reflected on the decisions made by the principal.

I’m trying to be diplomatic … We were very slow to engage with kids who were starting to be kept home from school. And we were very slow for teachers to be able to work from home and we were very quick to come back to … school … We have a parent who worked at the local high school saying, ‘Oh, yeah, we’ve been working at home all week’. We haven’t even been told that’s a possibility …

3. Personal well-being versus professional integrity

A teacher’s professional integrity is how they evaluate the alignment between the expectations of their role and their values. When a schism arises, it throws into question some core professional values.

One public school principal’s integrity had an extremely high bar.

I’ll be really honest, despite all of the warnings and all of the advice, my own well-being was my last priority. And the ethical dilemma for me was, I can’t look after myself because I’ve got so many other people to look after first, despite all the warnings, despite all the advice.

Teachers reported the personal cost of changing work arrangements into remote settings, concerned about how they were to fulfil their professional integrity to provide the kind of meaningful interactions students needed.

A secondary Catholic school teacher said:

Remote learning really threw me off balance and I struggled to find myself and how I fit into that situation … I had to learn to let go and … work out what is really important.

For the next generation of teachers, the dilemma was more about how to set boundaries in an emerging professional identity.

One early career public secondary teacher said:

I did go out of my way to with my Year 11s, them being my most senior year … Which did bring up the ethical thing … there were times I would get a message at one o’clock and I’d be up but I’d say, I’m not answering that, I’m not looking at it. I’m looking at it in the morning. That’s too much in each other’s heads. And, yeah, the barriers were tough.

An experienced secondary teacher in an International Baccalaureate school said:

I was working sending emails at midnight, and getting up three hours before my lessons to try and make sure that the platform is working … and obviously all my lessons that I plan had to be then turned into online lessons. So that takes a whole other weekend for everything … I got WhatsApp messages at all hours …

She said students sent her emails to thank her for the commitment. She realised it was a toxic message to send, and that implied this should be the norm for teachers. While teaching is a generous profession, COVID highlighted the expectations on their generosity.

Read more: ‘Exhausted beyond measure’: what teachers are saying about COVID-19 and the disruption to education

– ref. Is learning more important than well-being? Teachers told us how COVID highlighted ethical dilemmas at school – https://theconversation.com/is-learning-more-important-than-well-being-teachers-told-us-how-covid-highlighted-ethical-dilemmas-at-school-144854

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

A Grattan Institute report released today finds Australian governments spent A$34 billion, or 21%, more on transport projects completed since 2001 than they first told taxpayers they would. And as we enter the era of megaprojects in Australia, costs continue to blow out.

Transport projects worth A$5 billion or more in today’s money were almost unheard of ten years ago. Today, as the chart below shows, megaprojects make up the bulk of the work under way across the country.

These megaprojects include WestConnex in Sydney, West Gate Tunnel in Melbourne and Cross River Rail in Brisbane. And this is to say nothing of some enormous projects being planned, such as Melbourne’s Suburban Rail Loop.

We are also hearing calls to add to this bulging pipeline. In June, the transport and infrastructure ministers of all states and territories said they were “clearing the way for an infrastructure-led recovery” from the COVID-19 recession.

Read more: We may live to regret open-slather construction stimulus

Cost overrun risks rise with project size

The Grattan report, The rise of megaprojects: counting the costs, sounds a warning about the risks of this approach. The report uses the Deloitte Access Economics Investment Monitor to look at the final cost of all public road and rail projects worth A$20 million or more and completed since 2001. As the chart below shows, we found bigger projects overran their initial cost estimates more often and by more.

Almost half of the projects with an initial price tag of more than A$1 billion in today’s money had a cost overrun. These projects overran their initial costs by 30% on average. The extra amount spent on some megaprojects was the size of a megaproject itself.

Cost announcements before governments were prepared to commit formally to a project were particularly risky. Only one-third of projects had costs announced prematurely, but these accounted for more than three-quarters of the A$34 billion overrun.

Read more: Missing evidence base for big calls on infrastructure costs us all

When early costings of infrastructure turn out to be too low, it distorts investment planning in three ways:

1. underestimating the costs of transport infrastructure can lead to over-investing in it relative to other spending priorities

2. if governments misunderstand the uncertainty in a project’s cost at the time they commit to it, their decision to invest in that project was made on an incorrect basis

3. because unrealistic cost estimates are more prevalent for larger projects, governments are more likely to over-invest in larger projects.

There’s also a fourth and no less important problem: when unrealistically low cost estimates are announced, the public is misled.

Despite the experience of the past 20 years, the costs of big projects continue to be underestimated. The chart below shows A$24 billion more than first expected will be spent on just six mega megaprojects (that is, projects with an initial cost estimate of A$5 billion or more) now under construction. Overruns on other megaprojects have been reported too.

Read more: Transport promises for election 2019: the good, the bad and the downright ugly

What needs to be done?

With megaproject costs continuing to blow out, governments should take immediate steps to manage better the portfolio of work under way — particularly if they are looking to add to it in the name of economic stimulus.

Each state’s auditor-general should conduct a stocktake of current projects. This would give the public and the government a clear picture of the situation.

Ministers should begin reporting to parliament on a continuous disclosure basis. Any material changes in expected costs, benefits or completion dates of very large projects should be disclosed.

Steps should be taken to put decisions on the incoming batch of projects on a sounder basis, too. When announcing a cost, ministers and government agencies should disclose how advanced the estimate is. If the proposal is at an early stage, they should quote a range of estimates.

Governments should also require their infrastructure advisory bodies to at least assess — if not approve — large proposals before funding is committed.

Looking further ahead, action is needed to stop the pattern of spending billions more than expected on megaprojects. State departments of transport and infrastructure should devote more resources to identifying modest-sized transport infrastructure proposals.

Read more: The PM wants to fast-track mega-projects for pandemic recovery. Here’s why that’s a bad idea

And governments need to start learning from the past. Detailed project data, particularly on expected and actual costs, should be centrally collated in each state.

Post-completion reviews should be mandatory on all large projects. These reviews should be published.

If there is no change in the way infrastructure is conceived and delivered in Australia, then the era of the megaproject will indeed mean megaproblems.

– ref. $34bn and counting – beware cost overruns in an era of megaprojects – https://theconversation.com/34bn-and-counting-beware-cost-overruns-in-an-era-of-megaprojects-149149

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gail Jones, Professor, Writing and Society Research Centre, Western Sydney University

This is an edited version of author Gail Jones’ submission to the parliamentary inquiry into the creative industries.

Literary culture carries profound social value. In general terms it is essential to employment, cultural literacy and understanding of community, as well as to Australia’s post-pandemic recovery and growth. It is also radically underfunded and in urgent need of new support.

I am particularly concerned with the low level of investment in literature through state and federal funding agencies compared with other art forms.

The economic benefits

Literature is a mainstay of the creative and cultural industries, which contributed $63.5 billion to the Australian economy in 2016-17. Creative arts employ 645,000 Australians and those numbers were increasing before the pandemic. Literature operates in the economy in many and complicated ways, since writers are “primary producers” of creative content.

Books form an often invisible bedrock of robust resources for the wider economy. They provide creative content in areas such as film, television, theatre and opera; moreover they contribute fundamentally to the educational sector, to libraries, events and what might be called our forms of cultural conversation.

The most conspicuous areas of economic benefit and employment are libraries, universities, schools, festivals, bookshops and publishing.

Indirect benefits, such as to tourism and cross-cultural understanding, are often overlooked in reference to the economic benefits of literature. Our books carry implicit, prestigious reference to a national culture and place; they attract interest, visitors and students and arguably establish a presence of ideas above and beyond more direct mechanisms of cultural exchange.

Cross-cultural exchange and understanding are crucial to the literary industries and of inestimable benefit in “recommending” Australia and its stories.

However, writers’ incomes are disastrously low, $12,900 on average; and COVID-19 has eliminated other forms of supplementary income. It has always been difficult to live as a writer in Australia (which is why most of us have “day jobs”) and it is clear writers are disproportionately disadvantaged. Although essential to the economic benefits of a healthy arts sector overall, writers are less supported by our institutions and infrastructure.

Read more: Five ways to boost Australian writers’ earnings

Total literature funding at the Australia Council has decreased by 44% over the past six years from $9 million in 2013-14 to $5.1 million in 2018-19. The abolition of specific literature programs such as Get Reading, Books Alive and the Book Council has been responsible for much of this decrease.

We need additional government-directed support such as the funding delivered to visual arts through the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy ($6.6 million in 2018-19), regional touring delivered through Playing Australia ($7.4 million 2018-19) and the Major Festivals Initiative ($1.5 million 2018-19).

Shaping national identity

The literary culture in Australia is chronically underfunded, but its benefits are persistent, precious and immense. “Social well-being” requires social literacy, a sense of connection to one’s history, community and self: these are generated and nourished through narrative, conversation and reflection.

The literary arts create a sense of pride, community and solidarity. A single library in a country town can offer astonishing opportunities of learning and self-knowledge: how do we calculate value like this?

Read more: Friday essay: the library – humanist ideal, social glue and now, tourism hotspot

As someone who grew up in remote and regional areas, I’m aware of how crucial libraries and book culture are to a sense of connection with the nation. Moreover, reading is an indicator of mental health, especially among young people.

“National identity” also requires reflexive literacy: social understanding and agency derive from reading and writing; a nation that neglects its literary culture risks losing the skills that contribute to creative thinking in other areas — including in industry and innovative manufacturing. Local reading and writing initiatives have had remarkable success in areas like Aboriginal literacy and aged care mental support.

More Australians are reading, writing and attending festival events than ever before. Reading is the second most popular way Australians engage with arts and culture.

Writers’ festivals are flourishing and attendances growing. Libraries remain crucial to our urban and regional communities. It is no overstatement to claim that literature has shaped and reflected our complex national identity.

Australian literature at universities

The formulation of a Creative Economy Taskforce by Arts Minister Paul Fletcher is a positive step in establishing better understanding of this crucial economy. I would draw attention, however, to the lack of literary expertise on the taskforce. The appointment of a publisher or a high-profile Indigenous writer, for example, would give more diversity to the collective voice of our literary community.

The additional appointment of an academic concerned with Australian literature, such as the current director of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, would further enhance the claims of literature.

The education sector will have a role in implementing creative arts initiatives. There has been a deplorable lack of support for Australian literature within the academy.

Under the current wish to renovate the jobs sector through the creative arts there is an opportunity to direct dedicated funds within the education budget to establishing a Chair of Australian Literature in each university (or at least in the Group of Eight).

There is currently one Chair at the University of Western Australia and a privately endowed one at the University of Melbourne. Postgraduate scholarships could also be offered specifically in the area of Australian literary studies.

For a comparatively small outlay in budget terms, such a move would signal direct support for Australian reading, writing and research and would be widely celebrated in the education and library sectors.

‘Embarrassing’

It is embarrassing to discover that some European universities (in my experience Belgium, Germany and Italy, in particular) study more Australian literature than is offered in our own nation.

The case for increased Australia Council funding in the neglected area of literature has already been made. Writers’ incomes are, as attested, direly low and I worry in particular about diminishing funding for new and emerging writers.

An injection of funds into the literature sector of the Australia Council is another efficient and speedy way in which to signal understanding of the fundamental role of literature to our cultural enterprises and economic growth.

Cuts to publishing, festivals, journals, individual writers’ grants and programs generally, have had a disastrous effect on the incomes and opportunities for writers in this nation. Notwithstanding a few highly publicised commercial successes, most writers truly struggle to make ends meet. The “trickle down effects” — from a sustaining grant, say, to a literary journal — have direct economic benefits to writers and therefore to the wider economy.

Read more: Literary magazines are often the first place new authors are published. We can’t lose them

Most writers’ work is not recognised as a “job”; if it were, if there were a definition of “writer” as a category of honourable labour (such as it is, for example, in Germany and France), writers would be eligible for Jobmaker and Jobseeker benefits.

This may be blue-sky thinking, but I look forward to a future in which forms of precarious labour, like writing, are recognised and honoured as legitimate jobs.

Another area that may work well with literature is foreign aid. The government of Canada, for example, donates entire libraries of Canadian literature as part of its aid program. (I’ve seen one installed on the campus of the University of New Delhi.)

This works as a stimulus to the host economy (benefiting publishers and writers) and also the receiving community, for whom access to books and education may be difficult. It also encourages study of the host culture’s writings and has benevolent “soft power” effects of inestimable worth.

‘Literature houses’

The government has indicated physical infrastructure (buildings and so on) will be necessary to the renovation of the domestic economy post-COVID. This is a wonderful opportunity to consider funding “literature houses”, purpose-built sites for readings, writer accommodation for local and overseas residencies, places for book-launches, discussion and the general support of literature.

The Literaturhaus system in Germany, in which all major cities have funded buildings for writer events, and in which, crucially, writers are paid for readings and appearances, is a wonderful success and helps writers’ incomes enormously.

The inclusion of Indigenous, regional, rural and community organisations in proposals for “literature houses” would stimulate local building economies and generate community recognition of Australian literature.

The Regional Australia Institute considers creative arts as a potentially productive area of regional economies. However its 2016 map of Australia has a tiny space allocated to creative industries (situated around Alice Springs and linked to the Indigenous art industry). This strikes me as a radical imbalance and a missed opportunity.

A priority for this inquiry could be support for initiatives in literature, perhaps through existing library or schools infrastructure, to address creatively matters of both rural innovation and disadvantage.

Encouraging workshops in writing, including visiting writers, addressing reading and writing as a creative enterprise for the community as a whole: these could form the basis for an enlivening cultural participation and skills. Dedicated funds in literature for regional, remote and rural communities are urgently required.

Literature, in all its forms, is crucial to our nation — to the imaginations of our children, to the mental health and development of our adolescents, to the adult multicultural community more generally — in affirming identity, purpose and meaning.

– ref. Gail Jones: Australian literature is chronically underfunded — here’s how to help it flourish – https://theconversation.com/gail-jones-australian-literature-is-chronically-underfunded-heres-how-to-help-it-flourish-148906

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

Scott Morrison has lost no time pivoting to the incoming US administration, declaring on Sunday he hopes Joe Biden and his wife Jill will visit Australia for next year’s 70th anniversary of ANZUS.

“This is a profound time, not just for the United States, but for our partnership and the world more broadly,” Morrison told a news conference.

“And I look forward to forging a great partnership in the spirit of the relationships that has always existed between prime ministers of Australia and presidents of the United States.”

Those around Morrison say the government is already familiar with many figures in the Biden firmament, who were players in the Obama years.

Morrison also thanked Donald Trump and his cabinet “with whom we have had a very, very good working relationship over the years of the Trump administration and, of course, that will continue through the transition period.”

Meanwhile, Anthony Albanese retrospectively sought to put a less controversial gloss on his Friday comment, when he said Morrison should contact Trump and convey “Australia’s strong view that democratic processes must be respected”.

On Sunday Albanese said: “What I suggested was that Scott Morrison needed to stand up for democracy. He’s done that in acknowledging the election of President-elect Biden”.

Within Australia political attention is quickly turning to what a Biden administration will mean for the Morrison government’s climate change policies, and how Biden will handle China.

With an activist climate policy a central feature of Biden’s agenda, including a commitment to net zero emissions by 2050 (which Australia has refused to embrace), Australia faces an increased risk of becoming isolated internationally on the issue.

That could have trade and investment implications, something of concern to the business community.

Morrison sought to highlight a common Australian-US commitment to technology.

He said he particularly welcomed campaign comments Biden made “when he showed a lot of similarity to Australia’s views on how technology can be used to address the lower emissions challenge.

“We want to see global emissions fall and it’s not enough for us to meet our commitments,” Morrison said.

“We need to have the transformational technologies that are scalable and affordable for the developing world as well, because that is where all the emissions increases are coming from … in the next 20 years,” he said.

“I believe we will have a very positive discussion about partnerships we can have with the United States about furthering those technological developments that will see a lower emissions future for the world but a stronger economy as well where we don’t say goodbye to jobs,” Morrison said.

Labor will use the Biden win as a springboard to ramp up its attack on the government over climate policy, including in parliament this week.

Albanese said Biden would reject “accounting tricks” like the government’s argument to be allowed to use carryover credits to reach emission reduction targets.

Former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull told the ABC the US result gave Morrison the opportunity to pivot on climate policy. Now was the time for him to say, “I don’t have to go on with all of the BS about a gas-led recovery, which is political piffle,” Turnbull said.

Chief of the Australian Industry Group Innes Willox said the Biden administration would place much more emphasis on climate change and energy policy.

“The commitment to net zero emissions by 2050 will encourage other economies to move down this path. We are already seeing significant steps in recent times from other major trading partners such as Japan, South Korea, the UK and the European Union.

“Australia, led by industry and investor action, is already headed this way without making a formal target commitment,” Willox said.

Read more: Grattan on Friday: A Biden presidency would put pressure on Scott Morrison over climate change

Willox said independent Zali Steggall’s climate change bill – with a pathway to a 2050 target – provided an immediate opportunity to move the debate forward. The bill will be introduced on Monday.

“The Bill is non-partisan. 2050 is many changes of government away, but for some industries it’s just a couple of investment cycles,” Willox said. The Steggall bill is receiving considerable business support.

Willox said the other major shift from a Biden administration would be “the opportunity for the US to re-engage with China on trade and broader economic issues.

“Efforts to take the heat out of differences on global trade through a change in tone will be welcomed but there should be no illusion that a Biden administration would seek to markedly soften the US’s stance on key issues,” Willox said.

“The risk for Australia until now has been that we have been caught up as collateral damage in the US-China trade dispute.

“The future risk is that China may seek to substitute Australian exports in key sectors with goods from the US in an effort to reset their economic relationship,” Willox said.

Asked about the prospect of the US rejoining the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Morrison said, “I think it would be very early days to speculate on those matters. I would simply say to the United States, the door has always remained open on the TPP. It is open now. It will be open in the future and you are welcome any time.”

– ref. View from The Hill: Morrison urges Biden to visit in 2021, as US result injects new force into Australia’s climate debate – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-morrison-urges-biden-to-visit-in-2021-as-us-result-injects-new-force-into-australias-climate-debate-149715

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Saul Eslake, Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow, University of Tasmania

Last week, the fifth most senior minister in the Morrison Government, Agriculture Minister and Deputy National Party Leader David Littleproud, threatened the ANZ bank with “every lever at the federal government’s disposal – including the availability of deposit guarantees”.

His concern was an ANZ statement about climate change.

The bank had said that it supported the transition to a net zero emissions economy by 2050, and that as a consequence it would no longer provide banking services for new business customers with “material thermal coal exposures”.

For me, it evoked 18-year old memories of when I was the ANZ bank’s chief economist in the early 2000s.

I had delivered a speech to a conference of accountants in which I’d been critical of the Howard government for its pretence that the goods and services tax wasn’t a federal tax and therefore didn’t need to be included in budget estimates of total tax collections.

After seeing media reports of that speech, the then treasurer Peter Costello phoned the then chief executive of the ANZ John McFarlane threatening (as McFarlane subsequently relayed his words to me) regulatory action which ANZ would not like if I said that sort of thing again.

‘Regulatory action ANZ would not like’

Costello also had his then press secretary fax (it was 2002) a press report of my remarks to the then Chairman of ANZ, Charles Goode, with the offending passage circled.

I was, frankly, astonished, that the third most important minister in the government at that time, someone who by his own account was single-handedly returning the budget to surplus, promoting wide-ranging tax reform and reversing a long-term decline in Australia’s birth rate, would have the time to ring the head of one of Australia’s big four banks to complain about something its chief economist had said on an arcane topic to an obscure conference.

Read more: The art of the leak: how the budget is strategically doled out for maximum effect

And I was appalled that any Australian treasurer would be willing to use the regulatory powers granted to him to help ensure the stability of the financial system to (at the very least) silence someone who’d had the temerity to question the accounting treatment of a tax measure.

To their very great credit, neither the chief executive John McFarlane nor the chairman Charles Goode sought to take any disciplinary actions against me.

A delicate relationship

Goode sought an assurance that there was nothing personal in what I’d said (there wasn’t) and reminded me that I should not create the impression that ANZ was aligned with any side of politics.

McFarlane indicated that it was important that the ANZ “got on well” with the man who was (in his words) “likely to be the next prime minister”, and asked me to ring Costello up and “smooth things over”, and to avoid commenting on that particular topic again.

In accordance with these instructions I rang the treasurer’s office, but he refused to take the call (so I was told).

I scrupulously avoided such comments from then on.

When I declined an invitation from a journalist to comment on a subsequent government decision to fiddle with the timing of the Reserve Bank dividend to improve the 2004-05 budget position at the expense of the 2003-04 one, I received a note from McFarlane thanking me “for taking the greater good of ANZ and an easier life for me into account”.

A more ominous threat

Minister Littleproud’s threat to the ANZ’s current chief executive Shayne Elliott is more sinister.

Costello was trying to silence what could never have been more than a mere irritant.

Littleproud is seeking to prevent one of Australia’s leading banks from making a conscious, ethically-based decision to bring its lending practices into line with the goal of reducing Australia’s carbon emissions.

He is threatening to withdraw from its deposit customers the protection provided by Australia’s deposit insurance scheme – presumably in the hope that those customers would take their deposits to another financial institution.

It’s an odd approach for a member of a government that says it believes in a “vibrant, productive, free enterprise system”.

Such a free enterprise system would, presumably, be one in which privately-owned enterprises were free to decide who they did business with.

Read more: Saving for retirement gives you power, and ethical responsibilities

Instead Littleproud seems to believe (as perhaps does the government of which he is a part, since no-one more senior has sought to “clarify” his remarks), that the government should decide who gets loan funds, and the circumstances under which they get them.

Free enterprise is only as free as the government allows it to be.

– ref. From coal to criticism, this isn’t the first time the Coalition has tried to heavy the ANZ – https://theconversation.com/from-coal-to-criticism-this-isnt-the-first-time-the-coalition-has-tried-to-heavy-the-anz-149315

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Melbourne

Pennsylvania and Nevada were today called for Joe Biden, taking him to 279 Electoral Votes, nine more than the 270 required to win. Biden is now the US president-elect, defeating an incumbent president for the first time since 1992.

Donald Trump has won 214 electoral votes. He is very likely to win North Carolina and Alaska. In Georgia, Biden leads by over 9,000 votes or 0.2%, with virtually all votes counted. In Arizona, Biden leads by under 19,000 votes or 0.6%.

If Biden holds his current leads in Georgia and Arizona, he will win the Electoral College by a 306 to 232 margin. That’s the exact margin by which Trump won the 2016 election, ignoring “faithless” electors.

On election night, Trump was well ahead in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. This occurred because election day votes were strongly Republican, and much of the mail-in votes in those states had not been counted. With the inclusion of mail-ins, Biden won Wisconsin by 0.6% and Michigan by 2.6%.

Pennsylvania took longer to process its mail, but Biden’s lead there will expand from its current 37,000 or 0.6%. Virtually all votes needed to be counted in Georgia for Biden to move ahead.

The late counting trend has been different in Arizona, in which Biden’s large lead on election night induced Fox News and the AP to prematurely call for him. In Arizona, the early mail, which was counted on election night, was good for Biden, but the later mail has been good for Trump. This pattern has normally been reversed in Arizona.

Cook Political Report analyst Dave Wasserman has a graphic tracking the national popular vote. Biden currently leads Trump by 50.7% to 47.6%, and that margin will expand further owing to there being far more vote remaining to be counted in Democratic strongholds like California and New York. The total number of votes cast is already up over 9% from 2016.

While the polls were biased against Trump both nationally and in key states, there was a large gap between the popular vote and the Electoral College “tipping-point” state, as they predicted. Wisconsin, which Biden won by just 0.6%, is likely to be the tipping-point state, with Biden’s lead likely to grow in Pennsylvania but drop in Arizona.

If Biden wins the national popular vote by four to five points, Wisconsin would be 3.5 to 4.5 points better for Trump than the overall popular vote.

While Trump outperformed his polls, the cause was unlikely to be shy Trump voters, as Trump under-performed Republican candidates for the House and Senate. CNN analyst Harry Enten says Republican House candidates are leading overall in Pennsylvania by two points. The small portion of the electorate that voted for Biden but Republicans in Congress made the difference.

The final FiveThirtyEight forecast gave Trump a 10% chance to win. Analyst Nate Silver wrote that in 2016, Trump was just a “normal polling error” from winning, but he needed a bigger error in 2020. In the end, Biden’s polling lead was large enough to survive the errors that occurred.

In the Senate, Republicans are tied 48-48 with Democrats in called races, but Republicans are very likely to win the final two uncalled races in Alaska and North Carolina. Democrats would need to win both Georgia Senate runoffs on January 5 to tie it 50-50, and allow Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to break the tie.

In the House, Democrats lead Republicans by 215 to 196 with 24 races uncalled. Republicans have so far made a five-seat net gain from the 2018 results.

– ref. Joe Biden wins US presidential election as mail-in votes turn key states around – https://theconversation.com/joe-biden-wins-us-presidential-election-as-mail-in-votes-turn-key-states-around-149700

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jared Mondschein, Senior Advisor, US Studies Centre, University of Sydney

A timeless tradition in political journalism is trying to find a narrative that explains an electoral outcome.

A widely accepted narrative to explain Barack Obama’s win over John McCain in 2008 was that Americans wanted to embrace the “change” candidate who appeared the most dissimilar to then-President George W Bush. The narrative four years later in 2012 was that Republican Mitt Romney was too “elite” to resonate with American voters, and Obama was returned. Then in 2016, it was that Hillary Clinton was so confident of becoming president, she overlooked “Middle America”.

The accuracy of these widely accepted narratives in explaining electoral victories is fiercely debated. So, too, will be many of the narratives for Joe Biden’s election win to become the 46th president of the United States.

One narrative for this election may be that Biden ran a campaign that was unspectacular, when unspectacular was exactly what Americans wanted after four years of endless spectacles. Perhaps Americans wanted more conventionality after an exceedingly unconventional president.

Another potential narrative may be the death toll of nearly a quarter of a million Americans from the coronavirus pandemic was simply too overwhelming for President Donald Trump to overcome. When a majority of Americans blame the US government for the coronavirus situation in the country now seeing record numbers of infections each day, it’s not hard to see why they would want to change course.

Yet perhaps the most lasting narrative of this election is how fearful, uncertain, and polarised Americans are. Although this is not novel in modern American history, the ever-increasing reach and volume of this sentiment certainly is.

Read more: ‘America First’ is no more, but can president-elect Biden fix the US reputation abroad?

Passion, polarisation – and guns

In receiving more than 70 million votes, more Americans voted for Trump in this election than any other candidate in history – except for Biden, who earned more than 74 million votes. (Both of these totals will likely increase as further ballots are counted.) There’s no denying increased voter participation is an encouraging sign for American democracy, yet some of the passions fuelling that turnout are worrying.

Recent polling found a majority of Americans unwilling to agree the other side’s electoral victory in the presidential election should be accepted.

Americans recognise this in the other side too: only 16% of Trump voters said Democrats would accept a Trump re-election; 26% of Biden supporters said Republicans would accept a Biden win.

Alarmingly, other polling found around a third of Americans believed violence could be justified in support of their political parties’ goals, while 21% of those with a strong political affiliation were “quite willing to endorse violence if the other party wins the presidency”.

With more than three quarters of Americans saying they expected violence in the aftermath of the election, a record number of Americans in 2020 decided to arm themselves.

For more than a decade, the United States has had more guns than people. But 2020 has already broken records for the number of gun sales. This was often a partisan trend in previous years – Americans who leaned Republican were more than twice as likely to own a gun as those who leaned Democratic – yet there are some indications that in 2020, increased gun ownership became bipartisan.

Just last month, the Trump administration’s own Department of Homeland Security – an organisation set up in the aftermath of the September 11 2001 terror attacks – said it was Americans, specifically violent white supremacists, who posed the “most persistent and lethal threat in the homeland”.

Amid reports of a foiled plot to attack a vote-counting centre in Philadelphia and continued inflammatory rhetoric, there is little question as to whether violence in the aftermath of this election is likely.

So what happens now?

Trump will remain president for another 73 days, as a “lame duck” president. Biden will be inaugurated on January 20 2021.

So far, Trump has refused to concede defeat – in fact, he in insisting he won without offering any evidence of it – and has launched a series of legal challenges to the outcome. Many of those challenges have already been dismissed.

Simultaneous to his ceaseless battles over the integrity of his electoral loss, Trump will likely face extensive lobbying for presidential pardons – a unique privilege given to the president by the constitution “to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States”.

Conventional presidents have traditionally been concerned about how history will perceive their pardons. Trump is certainly not conventional, having used and considered using pardons for much of his presidency.

Trump will eventually leave the White House. But it is hard to see his loyal base leaving him anytime soon. Like so many other norms, Trump will be unlikely to adhere to the norm that former US presidents retire from political life after leaving the White House.

The fact Trump is still eligible to run for another term of office may allow him to follow in the footsteps of President Grover Cleveland, who was ousted from the White House by Benjamin Harrison in 1888, but four years later, defeated Harrison and took back the presidency.

While some Republican leaders are distancing themselves from the president, the fact Trump still enjoys a 95% approval rating among Republicans means he is undeniably an early favourite for the 2024 Republican nominee for president.

Lastly, Biden will assume the presidency facing multiple crises, ranging from a pandemic and economic downturn to overwhelming levels of fear, uncertainty, and polarisation. Should the US Senate remain Republican-controlled, he will need to navigate these crises in the face of a divided government. In this scenario, his former Republican colleagues in the senate would have final approval of his cabinet and legislative agenda.

From expanding NATO to the 2009 economic stimulus bill, Biden comes to the White House with arguably more bipartisan achievements than any president of the last half century. The question is whether he will overcome the widely-accepted narrative of a dangerously divided America.

Read more: Even if Biden has a likely win, leading a deeply divided nation will be difficult

– ref. Joe Biden wins the election, and now has to fight the one thing Americans agree on: the nation’s deep division – https://theconversation.com/joe-biden-wins-the-election-and-now-has-to-fight-the-one-thing-americans-agree-on-the-nations-deep-division-148106

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne

In the United States, democratic norms are breaking down.

The president, Donald Trump, baselessly claimed at a White House press conference on Friday morning, Australian time, that the presidential election has been stolen from him by fraudulent and corrupt electoral processes.

This confronted the television networks, whose job is to report the news, with an acute dilemma.

In an already volatile political atmosphere, do they go on reporting these lies, laced with an undertone of veiled incitement to violence? Or do they cut away on the grounds that by continuing to broadcast this stuff, they are helping to propagate lies and perhaps to oxygenate a threat to the civil peace?

Major networks tune out

Many of the major networks — MSNBC, NBC News, CNBC, CBS News and ABC News — decided to cut away. So did National Public Radio.

MSNBC presenter Brian Williams said of Trump’s speech:

It was not rooted in reality and at this point, where our country is, it’s dangerous.

CNBC presenter, Shepard Smith, said the network was not going to allow it to keep going because what Trump was saying was not true.

CNN and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News broadcast Trump’s entire press conference but immediately afterwards challenged what he said. CNN’s fact-checker Daniel Dale said it had been the most “dishonest” speech Trump had ever given, with anchor Jake Tapper saying Trump’s statements were “pathetic” and “a feast of falsehoods”.

Fox’s host Martha MacCallum said the supposed evidence and proof of election misconduct would need to be produced.

Even Murdoch’s New York Post, which had endorsed Trump’s re-election, accused him of making “baseless” election fraud claims, quoting a Republican Congressman as saying they were “insane”.

The Washington Post carried two news stories on its front page, clearly calling out Trump’s lies: “Falsehood upon falsehood”; “A speech of historic dishonesty”.

A serious decision to silence the President

But what of the networks’ decision to cut away?

Silencing a public official in the course of his official duties is a very serious abrogation of the media’s duty in a democracy.

But so is allowing the airwaves to be used in such a way as to arouse fears for public confidence in the democratic process and — as MSNBC’s Williams argued — even public safety.

On the run, many of the big networks prioritised public confidence in the democratic process, and public safety, over the reporting of the president’s words.

It is a rare circumstance in any democratic society that the media are placed in the position of having to shoulder such a heavy burden of responsibility.

It is most unlikely that once the present crisis is over, assuming Democrat candidate Joe Biden wins, the American media will find themselves in this position again.

Even so, a Rubicon has been crossed. A president of the United States, a publicly elected official, has been silenced by significant elements of the professional mass media in the course of his public duties.

Read more: Grattan on Friday: A Biden presidency would put pressure on Scott Morrison over climate change

This was done principally on the grounds he was lying to the people in circumstances where there was a foreseeable risk of serious harm to the body politic, and there was no practicable way to reduce the risk.

Is that a standard the media is prepared to set for the future? If so, it would be giving itself a power that goes well beyond anything the media has claimed for itself up till now.

Journalists need to keep their nerve

In considering this, two questions arise.

What if all media outlets had adopted this course? No one except those at the White House press conference would have known the whole of what Trump said, seen the context and observed the demeanour with which he said it.

Would it have been enough to do as CNN and Fox did — report the speech and then repudiate it?

Read more: 5 types of misinformation to watch out for while ballots are being counted – and after

An answer to that would be: the lies were coming so thick and fast, and were so damaging to the public interest, that it would have been impossible to set the record straight in anything like real time.

Real-time fact-checking is a relatively new development, and a welcome one. But its feasibility should not be a criterion for deciding whether to publish breaking news, unless there is doubt about whether the breaking news is actually happening.

The networks that cut away doubtless acted in good faith to do right by the country. Trump’s speech was shocking and irresponsible.

However, American democracy is in crisis. At this time, above all, the public needs the institution of the fourth estate to keep its nerve and a clear head.

A primary norm of journalism is to inform the public. That certainly means being fair and accurate. But if the news contains lies, the norm is to publish and then call out the lying and set the record straight as soon as possible.

The networks need to explain to their audiences their reasoning behind the decision to cut away, and the media as a whole need to realise that if the norms of journalism break down, that just adds to the tragic chaos into which their country has descended.

– ref. To stay or cut away? As Trump makes baseless claims, TV networks are faced with a serious dilemma – https://theconversation.com/to-stay-or-cut-away-as-trump-makes-baseless-claims-tv-networks-are-faced-with-a-serious-dilemma-149628

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kristen Rundle, Professor of Law, University of Melbourne

The division of the findings of the Victorian COVID-19 Hotel Quarantine Inquiry into two – the interim report published today, with a final report due December 21 – is aimed at making a timely contribution to the redesign of the quarantine systems that will remain key to Australia’s management of the COVID-19 pandemic for some time to come.

With a view to the expected influx of returnees at Christmas, the national cabinet is due to discuss necessary changes later this month. Justice Jennifer Coate’s clear recommendations for how to devise and operate a quarantine system will surely be pivotal to its deliberations.

Key recommendations

Coate’s primary message is that quarantine – in whatever form it might take – is a public health operation. So any future quarantine system needs to be designed in a manner that ensures the centrality of this public health imperative.

We must wait until the final report to find out what Coate has to say on the larger governance and accountability questions surrounding “the decision” to contract out the front line of Victoria’s hotel quarantine operation to private security provision. However, her interim report already tells us a lot – if indirectly.

The report states it “is clear from the evidence to date” that the majority of those involved in the hotel quarantine program who contracted the virus were:

private security personnel engaged by way of contracting arrangements that carried with them a range of complexities.

It is therefore unsurprising that the issue of the appropriateness of contracting-out is the elephant in the room across a number of its key recommendations.

In particular, the recommendations record that the expertise of those involved in future quarantine operations will be crucial. Moreover, every effort should be made to ensure people working at quarantine facilities are “salaried employees” who are “not working in other forms of employment”.

It takes little effort to surmise that contracted-out service delivery is unlikely to meet any of these demands.

As I have explained elsewhere, to contract out a statutory function in whole or in part requires that it be translated into a “service” that private sector providers are capable of delivering.

In the Victorian case, this meant the front line of the hotel quarantine operation was performed pursuant to an “observe and report” security services contract. It was carried out by an entirely casualised workforce with little infection-control training and no lawful powers of enforcement. Many or most of them worked in other jobs at the same time.

Read more: Melbourne’s hotel quarantine bungle is disappointing but not surprising. It was overseen by a flawed security industry

Coate also recommended that, alongside the “embedded” presence of expert infection-control personnel, a 24/7 police presence be established at every facility-based quarantine operation. This clearly points to the failure of contracting-out from an enforcement perspective as well.

So, by implication or otherwise, the interim report confirms that too little thought was given to whether the contracted service could meet the dual public health and detention demands of the function at issue.

Coate’s conclusions on how a facility-based quarantine program should work make the multiple dimensions of this mismatch plain.

Where to from here?

The final report of the inquiry may well prove to be the most sustained critique of contracting-out, from the perspective of public expectations of government action, that Australia has yet seen. This would be a welcome shift from what has prevailed so far, with much more effort dedicated to refining and expanding the practice than to challenging it.

As for where the interim report fits with the “whodunnit” exercise that has dominated so much of the interest in the inquiry’s work so far, Coate makes clear we must wait until the final report to find out more. Whether Victoria ended up with private security at the front line of its hotel quarantine program as a result of a “decision” by one or more individuals, or (as counsel assisting Rachel Ellyard described it) a “creeping assumption that became a reality”, is something that ultimately might never be clear.

Either way, the question of accountability will remain. Providing a clear answer to it stands to be every bit as complicated as it has been so far.

The inquiry, which found the bungled scheme cost the state $195 million, has shown the relationship between contracting-out and political accountability is incoherent. Substantial reform in both directions is needed to make it otherwise. Coate’s final report will hopefully guide that much-needed conversation.

But, again, we can already take a lot from the interim report about where – minimally – we need to be. Any future Victorian quarantine program must be operated “by one cabinet-approved department”, in accordance with a “clear line of command vesting ultimate responsibility in the approved department and Minister”.

That department must in turn be “the sole agency responsible for any necessary contracts”. Among other things, its responsible minister must also ensure senior members of its governance structure “maintain records […] of all decisions reached”.

Such is the vision for the future. But it also highlights why it is so important not to lose sight of the “why” questions when the issue of accountability for what actually happened in Victoria’s disastrous hotel quarantine program is again upon us.

If the front line of the hotel quarantine system was simply too important a responsibility to be outsourced, it is time to get to the bottom of why this was the case, and why it might also be the case for other high-stakes government functions that carry serious consequences for public health or safety.

Providing sensible answers to those questions needs to be the goal. But what matters above all else is that we actually start asking them.

Read more: Grattan on Friday: Premiers facing elections play hardball with hard borders

This piece was co-published with the University of Melbourne’s Pursuit.

– ref. Hotel quarantine interim report recommends changes but accountability questions remain – https://theconversation.com/hotel-quarantine-interim-report-recommends-changes-but-accountability-questions-remain-147094

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anne Twomey, Professor of Constitutional Law, University of Sydney

Mining magnate Clive Palmer has lost his challenge to the closure of the Western Australian border in response to COVID-19. Palmer has also been ordered to pay costs.

While it is clear from the High Court’s order in Palmer v Western Australia that Palmer lost, it remains unclear whether the border closure was and remains valid.

Read more: WA border challenge: why states, not courts, need to make the hard calls during health emergencies

The reason for the lack of clarity is because the High Court has not yet handed down its reasons, which may take weeks or months. In the meantime, all we have is its orders – and they are phrased in a rather peculiar and limited way.

What did the court decide?

The High Court was asked whether WA’s Emergency Management Act or its Quarantine (Closing the Border) Directions were invalid because they breached the Constitution by stopping people from crossing the state’s border.

Section 92 of the Constitution says the movement of people among the states shall be “absolutely free”. But the High Court has previously accepted it can be limited if it is reasonably necessary to achieve another legitimate end, such as the protection of public health.

In the Palmer case, the High Court gave a very limited answer to the questions it was asked. In relation to the Emergency Management Act it said that “on their proper construction”, sections 56 and 67,

in their application to an emergency constituted by the occurrence of a hazard in the nature of a plague or epidemic comply with the constitutional limitation of section 92 of the Constitution.

Both these sections are quite general in nature. Section 56 says the minister can declare a state of emergency in the whole of the state or a part of it. There is nothing on obvious that would appear to offend section 92 of the Constitution in each of its limbs.

Section 67 says during a state of emergency, certain officers may issue directions that prohibit the movement of persons within, into or out of an emergency area. On the face of it, it is not directed at the movement of people across state borders. However, if a state of emergency were issued for the entire state under section 56, then section 67 would potentially allow a direction to be made that would prevent people from entering or leaving WA.

The High Court’s qualification in the phrase “on their proper construction” is therefore important. This raises the question of how the High Court has interpreted section 67 and whether it has restricted its interpretation in a manner that accommodates section 92 of the Constitution. We will have to wait for the High Court’s reasons to learn this.

The court’s order in relation to the Quarantine Directions is more unusual. It says the exercise of this power under clauses 4 and 5 of the directions “does not raise a constitutional question”. This refers to an issue raised during the hearing. The argument, initially raised by Victoria, was that the validity of a direction made under a power conferred by an act will depend on whether the direction falls within the scope of that power in the act.

Read more: States are shutting their borders to stop coronavirus. Is that actually allowed?

If the section in the act that confers the power (in this case, section 67 of the Emergency Management Act) is constitutionally valid, then any direction that falls within that power will be valid too.

The real question, then, is whether the direction falls within the scope of the legislative power. This is not a constitutional question, but a question of administrative law. The High Court then said in its order that it had not been asked this question, so it did not need to answer it.

On the basis of this technicality, the High Court (or at least a majority of the Justices) concluded it was not necessary to address whether the actual directions that stop people going in or out of Western Australia were valid.

Does this mean more litigation?

As this case does not seem to have resolved whether or not the directions are valid, will there be more litigation? It is possible someone could challenge the directions, arguing this time that they do not fall within the scope of the authorising section in the legislation.

But such litigation would have to start from square one and so would take some time to determine. As it would not be a constitutional matter, it might have to be decided by a lower court first.

Further, before initiating any such litigation, it would be important to read the High Court’s reasons, which may not be produced for some time. Those reasons will tell us about the scope of the legislative provision, which will be essential to know before any challenge to the directions made under it could proceed.

Hopefully, by the time we get to that point, there will be no need for such litigation because no such directions will exist, if the pandemic continues to ease in Australia.

Read more: How Clive Palmer could challenge the act designed to stop him getting $30 billion

But it does mean we may be left with inadequate guidance about such matters for the future, which would be unfortunate given the cost and time taken with this litigation. Perhaps the court’s reasoning about the interpretation of section 67 of the Emergency Management Act will give us sufficient understanding about the operation of section 92 of the Constitution and the tests applicable to border closures in a pandemic. But that remains to be seen.

Victorian lockdown challenge also rejected

In a busy day for the High Court on Friday, it also threw out hotelier Julian Gerner’s challenge to Melbourne’s lockdown laws.

Read more: Can a High Court challenge of Melbourne’s lockdown succeed? Here’s what the Constitution says

Gerner’s challenge, to be successful, would have required the High Court to find an implied freedom of movement in the Constitution.

This would have opened up all sorts of other laws to challenge and been condemned by conservatives as judicial activism. The court was so unimpressed by the argument that it unanimously rejected it on the spot, without even needing to hear Victoria’s response.

The end of the case was swift and brutal. It is unlikely this point will be raised again before the court.

– ref. Clive Palmer just lost his WA border challenge — but the legality of state closures is still uncertain – https://theconversation.com/clive-palmer-just-lost-his-wa-border-challenge-but-the-legality-of-state-closures-is-still-uncertain-149627

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Liz Minchin, Executive Editor

The article was updated on Friday November 6, 2020, to reflect the final official figures released by the Electoral Commission.

Labour is celebrating a landslide victory tonight after winning 49% of the vote (confirmed as 50% after special votes were counted). The result means Labour could govern alone — the first time this has happened since New Zealand introduced a mixed member proportional (MMP) electoral system in 1993.

In her victory speech, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the result gave Labour “the mandate to accelerate our [COVID-19] response and our recovery. And tomorrow we start”.

Earlier, National Party leader Judith Collins, whose party only won 26.8% of the vote (reduced to 25.6% in the final count), promised to be a “robust opposition” and “hold the government to account for failed promises”.

You can read the analysis of the results by our five political experts here.

In the new parliament, Labour will have 65 seats — four more than the 61 needed to form government. National has 33, the Green Party ten, ACT ten and the Māori Party is expected to return to parliament with one seat (later increased to two seats after special votes increased the party vote to 1.2%).

The numbers are a reversal of the 2017 results, when Labour polled 36.9%, National had 44.4% of the vote and New Zealand First leader Winston Peters became the kingmaker.

New Zealanders had to wait almost a month before Peters announced he would form a coalition with the Labour Party, becoming deputy prime minister. The Green Party joined the coalition in a confidence and supply arrangement.

In this election, NZ First was ousted from parliament, after the party failed to reach the 5% threshold and neither of its candidates managed to win an electorate seat.

Five parties gained seats in parliament. The Māori Party is expected to win one of seven Māori electorate seats and return to parliament even though it only achieved 1% of the party vote (1.2% in the final count). None of the other minor parties won electorate seats or reached the 5% party vote threshold.

Compared to previous elections, record numbers of New Zealanders voted early in 2020. A day before the election, almost 2 million people had already cast their vote.

Read more:
NZ election 2020: how might record advance voting numbers influence the final outcome?

Results of the referendums

People also voted on two referendums: whether the End of Life Choice Act 2019 should come into force and whether the recreational use of cannabis should become legal.

The results for those are now finalised. Almost two thirds of the vote was in support of the introduction of the Right to Life legislation.

The vote for legalising the recreational use of cannabis was much closer but the majority favoured the No decision.

2017 election results

In 2017, the National Party won 44.4% of the votes and on election night, then prime minister Bill English celebrated victory.

But NZ First won 7.5% and held the balance of power. It was the third time for NZ First leader Winston Peters to become the veto player in the government-formation process.

After almost four weeks of negotiations, he opted to go into coalition with Labour, with the Green Party in a confidence and supply role. For the first time under New Zealand’s MMP electoral system, the new government was not led by the party that had won the largest number of seats.

Jacinda Ardern became prime minister in an extraordinary period in New Zealand’s political history. Just three months earlier, Ardern had been the deputy leader of a Labour Party polling in minor party territory.

– ref. New Zealand’s new parliament turns red: final 2020 election results at a glance – https://theconversation.com/new-zealands-new-parliament-turns-red-final-2020-election-results-at-a-glance-147757

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Perkins, Director, Centre for Rural and Remote Mental Health and Professor of Rural Health Research, University of Newcastle

Among the Bushfire Royal Commission’s 80 recommendations, released last week, was a call to prioritise mental health support during and after natural disasters.

The Australian Medical Association this week called on the federal government to implement the recommendations to lessen the health impacts of future disasters, noting the ongoing mental health fallout from the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires.

The Royal Commission’s report comes as Australia heads into a bushfire season during a pandemic. Some farmers have this year lost their crops due to unseasonal rain and hail, as many rural communities anticipate further “big weather” events. Certain local economies, which are reliant on exports like wine and barley, are concerned about strained trade relations with China.

The combined effects of these adverse events is taking a toll on the health and well-being of rural people.

A year of cumulative stress

Australian Bureau of Statistics released last month showed rural suicide rates are much higher than those in the big cities.

The causes of psychological stress for rural people are many and varied, depending on who you are and where you live. Many are facing environmental and weather events at increasing frequency and intensity. Some of these events happen rapidly, such as fire and floods, whereas others are long-lasting and uncertain, like drought.

The effects of these events include direct losses such as injury and death, as well as loss of livestock and buildings. Indirect losses include declines in businesses and employment, and the disruption of social fabric when friends or family leave town.

Recovery or adaptation can take many years.

Read more: Distress, depression and drug use: young people fear for their future after the bushfires

These stresses of course come in addition to life’s normal challenges likes illness, bereavement and relationship breakdown.

For rural people, COVID has likely compounded these cumulative stresses and contributed to higher levels of trauma, mental ill-health and in some cases, suicidal behaviour.

Band-aid policies

In most rural communities, access to mental health services is relatively poor.

There’s longstanding evidence Medicare Benefits Scheme expenditure for mental health services is skewed towards metropolitan services.

State expenditure is focused on hospital services and care for those with high and complex needs. Consequently, many rural people with mild to moderate needs are under-served.

Traditionally, governments respond to crises reactively and by treating these events as short-term and disconnected. But this isn’t the experience of rural people.

Each adverse event is accompanied by (usually short-term) funding announcements by governments and agencies for new Headspace centres, expanded telephone helplines, websites, counsellors, or coordinators in the most affected areas.

Sometimes there’s overlap of effort across different government departments, federal and state jurisdictions or from different disaster responses, potentially wasting resources.

For example, in NSW, the longstanding drought has recently broken. But the social and economic recovery will take longer — possibly up to five years with consistent rain as it did following the Millennium drought.

Counsellors were funded to support rural residents during the drought in 2018, with more counsellors funded in response to the bushfires. And now additional services are being offered due to COVID.

While the extra support is welcome, the fragmentation and temporary nature of the funding means rural people may not know what services are available, and accessing services becomes confusing.

What’s more, with short-term contracts, it may be the same staff moving between roles and agencies, therefore not actually adding new staff to support local rural communities. This funding instability makes it difficult to retain a stable rural mental health workforce.

Read more: Budget funding for Beyond Blue and Headspace is welcome. But it may not help those who need it most

What can be done?

In the first instance, policymakers need to ask people living in rural areas what they need and involve them in the process of developing appropriate and accessible services.

Second, we need to adopt a systemic approach that examines the full range of adverse events that affect the mental health and well-being of individuals, families and communities. This means going beyond treating illness, to addressing environmental, economic, social and personal factors.

As part of this, we need people on the ground to support communities through preparedness activities such as educating people about mental health and how to access services, while stepping into disaster response and recovery as needed. Continuity and building on what already exists locally is key.

The Rural Fire Service is a good example of such a structure. It has a clear role in disaster response, but also works to prepare communities between disasters (for example, by conducting back-burning and educating about bushfire plans).

Localised support is important because preparedness and response look very different depending on where you live in rural Australia. For example, Lismore on the northern NSW coast experiences regular flooding, whereas Broken Hill in the state’s far west contends with more frequent drought, and fierce dust storms.

Third, to fully understand and plan for the diversity of rural communities, we need sophisticated data planning, collection and analysis systems. Beyond health data, we need to look at the social, economic, environmental factors which all contribute to mental health and the way people access care.

If we can do this well, local planning will become easier, more transparent and tailored to need.

Finally, rural communities need support to develop local leadership, so they’re empowered to lead local responses. This is unlikely to succeed with short-term band-aid solutions, but rather with long-term investment and strategic policy to build and sustain capacity to cope with adversity.

Read more: Collective trauma is real, and could hamper Australian communities’ bushfire recovery

– ref. Bushfires, drought, COVID: why rural Australians’ mental health is taking a battering – https://theconversation.com/bushfires-drought-covid-why-rural-australians-mental-health-is-taking-a-battering-148724

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

University of Canberra Professorial Fellow Michelle Grattan and University of Canberra Assistant Professor Caroline Fisher discuss the week in politics.

This week the pair discuss the outcome of the Queensland election, the likely outcome and repercussions of the US election, as well as Christine Holgate’s resignation as CEO of Australia post, and the government’s securing of additional possible vaccination distribution agreements.

– ref. VIDEO: Michelle Grattan on the Queensland election, the US election, and the reserve bank – https://theconversation.com/video-michelle-grattan-on-the-queensland-election-the-us-election-and-the-reserve-bank-149625

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By DB Subedi, Postdoctoral research fellow, University of New England

Over 37 million Myanmar citizens, including 5 million first-time voters, will go to the polls on November 8.

The election represents a litmus test for the popularity of National League for Democracy (NLD) leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was placed under a house arrest by the military for about 15 years intermittently between 1989 and 2010.

Much is at stake in this election, but the role of the military still looms large in Myanmar politics.

The constitutional change needed to further democratise Myanmar is impossible without the military’s consent, so achieving major political transformation through the election alone seems unlikely.

Read more: Rohingya genocide case: why it will be hard for Myanmar to comply with ICJ’s orders

The recent past

In 2011, after about five decades of military rule, the military nominally handed power to the government of President Thein Sein and his Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).

Soon after, in the 2015 election, Suu Kyi’s NLD party won a landslide victory. She is now Myanmar’s incumbent state counsellor (equivalent to prime minister) but her international standing has taken a hit in recent years.

Critics accuse her of allowing widespread abuse of minority Rohingyas. Many Rohingya villages were burned down during a military crackdown in 2016 and 2017. Over 900,000 Rohingya — including more than 400,000 children — fled to Bangladesh and a large number of Rohingya refugees are dispersed across Southeast Asia.

Meanwhile, armed conflicts between ethnic armed organisations and the military continue, especially in the Rakhine state and the northern borderlands, and Myanmar’s transition to democracy is faltering.

New parties and political alliances

Suu Kyi’s NLD and its main rival, the USDP, are the two largest political parties vying for a majority of seats.

With its origin in the bloody 1988 anti-government uprising, the NLD has long fought for democracy and freedom.

The USDP (currently chaired by Than Htay), on the other hand, was formally registered in June 2010 with tacit support from the military. However, the USDP’s recent decision not to favour retired military generals as candidates indicates its ties with the military are weakening.

Many smaller parties and alliances are emerging and some, such as the People’s Party and the United Political Parties Alliance (UPPA), are likely to divide NLD’s traditional voters.

Two new political parties, the Union Betterment Party and the Democratic Party of National Politics, both formed by ex-military generals, will likely split the military sympathisers and cut into the USDP’s traditional voter base.

In states such as Kachin, Shan, Rakhine, Mon, Chin and Karen, many ethnic parties have recently merged to form a united front. They aim to win a majority in state parliaments and claim most of the national parliament seats in their states. These mergers may also weaken the NLD’s position; it had performed well in ethnic majority states in 2015.

Despite some notable economic and policy reforms, many ethnic parties are dissatisfied with the NLD government for the slow pace of transition from the military rule.

As the COVID-19 pandemic restricts freedom of movement, the candidates will be forced to campaign largely through social media and traditional media, which might work in the favour of larger and better-resourced parties. Not all parties and candidates have the finances to run online campaigns.

Big issues driving the voters

The election campaign will bring to light complex issues around Myanmar’s rich ethnic diversity: the continuation of armed conflict, demand from ethnic minorities for federalism, devolution of state power and better economic opportunities.

Despite the NLD’s promise of greater freedom and civil liberties, Suu Kyi’s government has prosecuted more journalists, social media users and human rights activists than the previous government.

Myanmar’s economic and infrastructure development has been limited and, as my research argues, has been manipulated for political gain by powerful interest groups.

This has helped radicalise a section of Buddhist extremists. The middle class and rural poor haven’t benefited greatly from development policies; more than 24% of people still live below the national poverty line.

Deep reforms for a federal system and equitable economic development policies are needed to bring real progress toward peace between ethnic armed groups and the government. The way land ownership and natural resources are managed would need to be overhauled. Such reforms, however, are constrained by provisions in Myanmar’s constitution that ensure state power is shared with the military.

The constitution allows the military to occupy 25% of parliamentary seats. Only serving military officers can lead the three most powerful ministries – defence, home affairs and border affairs. This makes the military a very powerful political institution, which effectively controls the peace process and the direction of the transition.

The Rohingya crisis: ‘seems a textbook example of ethnic cleansing’

The persecution of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, which then-United Nations human rights chief Zeid Ra‘ad al-Hussein said in 2017 “seems a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”, continues to loom large in Myanmar politics. It has created one of the world’s largest refugee crises.

Many international observers have criticised Suu Kyi’s silence on the Rohingya crisis. Inside Myanmar, however, her popularity remained strong (especially among the country’s majority Bamar community) as she was called to answer for allegations of genocide made at the International Court of Justice late last year.

The Bamar community makes up about 70% of the country’s population and is the major voter base of Suu Kyi’s party. They largely consider Rohingyas illegal migrants, despite the fact many have lived in Myanmar for generations. A section of the community supports radical Buddhist nationalism and resists ethnic pluralism.

The Rohingya crisis has made ethnic minority voters deeply sceptical of Suu Kyi, but within the Bamar community, Buddhist nationalist narratives have surged and may come to dominate electoral campaigns.

What’s the outlook for reform?

Myanmar’s military has frequently resisted constitutional reforms that would reduce its power.

If, as is expected, Suu Kyi’s NLD wins a majority this year, the military will likely collaborate with its allies in the parliament to block any constitutional reform.

If Suu Kyi’s political rivals — the USDP and other smaller parties and alliances — obtain a larger presence in the parliament, no single party will have a big enough majority to push through constitutional reforms. This will ultimately benefit the military and delay the transition to democracy.

– ref. Why Myanmar’s election is unlikely to herald major political reform or support transition to democracy – https://theconversation.com/why-myanmars-election-is-unlikely-to-herald-major-political-reform-or-support-transition-to-democracy-146021

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joseph Bevitt, Senior Instrument Scientist, Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation

Albanerpetontids, or “albies” for short, are the cute little salamander-like amphibians you’ve likely never heard of.

Now extinct, Albies had a dream run. They’d been around since the Middle Jurassic around 165 million years ago, and probably even earlier. They lived through the age of dinosaurs (and saw out their extinction), then lived through the rise of the great apes, before quietly disappearing about 2.5 million years ago.

Albie fossils are scattered across continents, including in Japan, Morocco, England, North America, Europe and Myanmar. But until recently, we knew relatively little about what they looked like or how they lived.

New research by my colleagues and I, published today in Science, reveals these amphibians were the earliest known creatures to have rapid-fire tongues. This also helps explain why albies were once misidentified as chameleons.

A miniature marvel uncovered

The reason albies remained largely elusive until recently is because they were tiny. Their slight, fragile bones are usually found as isolated jaw and skull fragments, making them hard to study.

The first almost complete albie specimen was found in the wetland environment deposits of Las Hoyas, Spain, and reported in 1995. Even though it was squashed flat, it was enough for palaeontologists to conclude albies were unlike any living salamander or any other amphibian.

They were completely covered in scales like reptiles, had highly flexible necks like mammals, an unusual jaw joint and large eye sockets suggesting good vision. Why were albies so unique?

Read more: Meet the super salamander that nearly ate your ancestors for breakfast

Mistakes do happen

The answer partly came to light in 2016, when a group of researchers published a paper demonstrating the diversity of lizards found in the Cretaceous forests of what is now Myanmar.

They presented a dozen tiny 99-million-year-old “lizards”, all preserved in amber. Some were even found with soft tissue remains such as skin, claws and muscles, still attached within the fossilised tree resin.

The researchers used “micro-CT” technology to digitally excavate and study the specimens in detail. This involved using 3D imaging to digitally remove the fossil from the amber and study it on a computer — a technique that avoids the risk of physically damaging the fossil.

They noticed one small, juvenile specimen had a long rod-shaped tongue bone. It was identified as the earliest known chameleon: a remarkable discovery! Or was it?

Alas, mistakes do happen in science. As lizard experts, the researchers had interpreted their results through this lens. It took the keen eye of Susan Evans, a professor of vertebrate morphology and palaeontology at University College London, to recognise this particular “lizard” was actually a misidentified albie.

A tongue-tying revelation

Some time later, Sam Houston State University assistant professor Juan Daza spotted another unbelievable specimen among a collection of fossils preserved in Burmite amber, ethically sourced from Myanmar’s Kachin state.

It was an adult version of the juvenile albie Evans identified. Needing higher-resolution 3D images, the sample was sent to me to study at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation’s Australian Synchrotron in Melbourne.

Named after a class of mythical spirits responsible for guarding natural treasures, Yaksha, and the person who discovered the fossil, Adolf Peretti (founder of the non-profit Peretti Museum Foundation) — the Yaksha perettii specimen was an entire skull trapped in golden amber.

Quick hits to unsuspecting prey

Its features that stood out were a long bone projecting back out of the mouth and soft tissue remains, including part of the tongue, jaw muscles and eyelids. By sheer luck, the soft tissue remains proved the long bone in the mouth was directly attached to the tongue.

In other words, Y. perettii was a predator armed with an incredible weapon: a specialised ballistic tongue that fired at lightning speed to capture prey — just as chameleons do today. It’s no wonder the original juvenile, only 1.5 centimetres long, was initially mistaken for a chameleon.

Modern chameleons have accelerator muscles in their tongues that lock in stored energy. This lets them fire their tongues at speeds of up to 100 kilometres per hour in just a fraction of a second.

We believe albies’ projectile tongues were just as fast, used to great effect while sitting motionless in trees or on the ground. If so, this also explains why albies had unusual jaw joints, flexible necks and large, forward-facing eyes. All these traits would have made up their predator toolkit.

Tree sap turned to iridescent amber

Despite these remarkable new insights, however, many mysteries of albanerpetontids remain. For instance, how exactly are they related to other amphibians? How did they survive for so long, only to die out relatively recently?

We’ll need more intact specimens to answer these questions. And most of these specimens will probably come from the Hukawng Valley in Kachin, Myanmar.

It’s expected about 100 million years ago this region was an island covered in vast forests. Global temperatures back then would have exceeded today’s, with trees producing vast amounts of resin (which later turned into amber) as a result of damage by insects and fire.

Amber studied from this region will not only increase our knowledge of its expired ecosystems, it could also provide insight into how certain organisms today might evolve in response to a warming climate.

Read more: Fossil footprints give glimpse of how ancient climate change drove the rise of reptiles

– ref. This tiny amphibian that outlived the dinosaurs provides the earliest example of a rapid-fire tongue – https://theconversation.com/this-tiny-amphibian-that-outlived-the-dinosaurs-provides-the-earliest-example-of-a-rapid-fire-tongue-149445