Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amie Hayley, NHMRC Peter Doherty Biomedical Early Career Research Fellow and Senior Research Fellow, Swinburne University of Technology

Around 25,000 Australians currently use medicinal cannabis products. They may be prescribed to relieve symptoms and pain associated with certain chronic medical conditions, for chemotherapy-induced nausea, or during palliative care.

In Australia, it’s an offence for someone to drive if they’re using medicinal cannabis products containing tetrahydrocannabinol (THC, the main psychoactive component of cannabis). If they injure another person in a traffic accident, they may face criminal charges of driving while impaired.

If they’re picked up at a roadside test, they’ll be penalised in the same way as someone who tests positive to illegal drugs.

But in Victoria, this could soon change. A parliamentary bill proposing to treat medicinal cannabis users like people who use other prescription drugs, rather than illegal drug users, is gaining support.

Generally, being on medication doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to drive. It seems fair that medicinal cannabis users should be treated in the same way as people who use legal drugs.

But we also need to weigh up any potential risks. Driving a car is a complex task that requires a driver to be attentive, competent and capable.

The relationship between cannabis and driving impairment is complex

The degree to which cannabis might impair a person’s ability to drive safely often depends on how much is consumed, how long people wait to drive after using it, the strength of the psychoactive components, and the driver’s age and/or experience.

Compared with drug-free drivers, drivers with high levels of THC have modestly increased odds of being responsible for a traffic accident resulting in injury or death.

High-THC cannabis also reduces a driver’s ability to control the car or respond to unexpected situations.

It also affects a driver’s attention, and the higher the THC concentration in their system, the greater the impairment.

Conversely, some research has suggested THC has minimal or no effect on the likelihood of being involved in a crash.

Read more: Why is it still so hard for patients in need to get medicinal cannabis?

Medicinal cannabis is different to the illegal stuff

Medicinal cannabis typically contains much less of the intoxicating component (THC), and more of the components that don’t produce a “high” (cannabidiol, or CBD). Compared with THC, CBD has much less effect on mood, awareness, thoughts, feelings and behaviour.

Most often, Australian medical cannabis products are CBD-only.

It’s not clear how CBD-only treatments might affect driving, although many studies are ongoing. As it stands, patients taking CBD-only medicines can lawfully drive, as long as they are not impaired.

Sometimes, medicinal cannabis products are CBD/THC-balanced or THC-dominant. How medicinal cannabis might impair a person’s ability to drive safely seems to depend how much THC is in it. CBD does not offset this intoxicating effect.

Roadside testing

In Australia, THC is a controlled Schedule 8 drug under the Poisons Standard. Victoria has a zero-tolerance drug-driving policy for controlled drugs. This currently includes medicinal cannabis products that contain THC.

Under this system, drivers are screened at the roadside for cannabis (THC), (meth)amphetamine or 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) using a saliva test. Drivers who return a positive result will undergo verification (additional testing of a sample sent to a laboratory) to confirm how much of a drug is present.

The minimum penalty for testing positive to THC is a six-month loss of licence and a fine. Drivers must also complete an education program.

The process is similar in other states.

Read more: Even if cannabis is legal, please don’t toke and drive

Roadside tests can’t differentiate between illegal recreational and medicinal cannabis products, or determine the THC concentration.

So patients legally prescribed medications that contain THC can be prosecuted in the same way as a driver who has consumed a higher level of THC for a non-medical reason.

Internationally, there’s been a move away from zero-tolerance approaches to systems that use thresholds to determine whether a person driving under the influence of THC is likely to be impaired.

Canada, and now many US states, have introduced limits of between 1, but no more than 5 nanograms of THC per millilitre of blood. This roughly equates to a blood alcohol content of 0.05%.

Penalties for having higher levels of THC are based on a graded system that factors in the level of drugs in the driver’s system, and whether the incident is a first or repeated offence. These laws apply to all drivers, including those with a medical authorisation to use cannabis.

The road ahead

As many as one in three Australian patients who use medicinal cannabis drive within three hours of taking their treatment. Some medications containing THC can be detected by roadside drug tests more than four hours after use, so patients who drive within this window may well be charged.

Determining whether patients who use medicinal cannabis products pose a risk to themselves or other road users is important for deciding what (if any) legislative changes would be appropriate. We need more research before we can move to a system like Canada or the US.

Introducing a conditional licence, subject to periodic review, may be one way of supporting people who use medicinal cannabis to drive lawfully and safely. A central registry could help law enforcement and health-care providers quickly reference what medication a driver is taking, at what dose, and for how long they’ve been using it.

As with other potentially impairing (but legal) medications, using mandatory driving hazard warning labels might be an easy way to help patients make better decisions about whether they are feeling well enough to drive when using these medications.

Read more: 1 in 10 women with endometriosis report using cannabis to ease their pain

With greater access to a wider range of medicinal cannabis products, it’s important we support the rights of patients who use these medications and continue to drive, as well as ensuring the safety of all road users.

Future decisions must include equal input from patient advocates, research groups, road safety groups and law enforcement.

– ref. Medicinal cannabis users in Victoria could soon be allowed to drive with THC in their system. Is it safe? – https://theconversation.com/medicinal-cannabis-users-in-victoria-could-soon-be-allowed-to-drive-with-thc-in-their-system-is-it-safe-148345

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andreea S. Calude, Senior Lecturer in Linguistics, University of Waikato

Hashtags are a pervasive feature of social media posts and used widely in search engines.

Anything with the intent of attracting a wide audience usually comes with a memorable hashtag — #MeToo, #FreeHongKong, #LoveWins, #BlackLivesMatter, #COVID19 and #SupremeCourt are just some examples.

First conceived in 2007 by blogger and open source advocate Chris Messina on Twitter, hashtags are now also escaping from social media contexts and appearing regularly in advertising and protest signs, and even in spoken language.

But are hashtags words?

If there is one thing linguists ought to know, it’s words. But when it comes to hashtags, the definition is not straightforward.

In our research, based on a collection of millions of New Zealand English tweets, we argue hashtags are, at best, artificial words.

Read more: Friday essay: Twitter and the way of the hashtag

Problems with words

Let’s first look at how we usually recognise words. The simplest way is by following a native speaker’s intuition.

If you had to identify the words in the previous sentence, you might begin by iterating everything separated by spaces: the, simplest, way and so on. But what would you do with “speaker’s”. Is that one word or two?

Laypeople will likely think of it as one word. Grammarians may argue it’s two, or even worse, 1.5 words: you have the speaker part and the possessive case marker (‘s), which is technically not a word, but not a non-word either (it is a clitic).

Read more: Political hashtags like #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter make people less likely to believe the news

But using spaces as clues for word boundaries is a luxury available only to written languages. What about languages that only have a spoken form, such as Tinrin of New Caledonia?

Phonological cues — acoustic “spaces” or short pauses between words — are no more reliable. Many grammar words, such as articles (the, a) and prepositions (to, of, at) are used frequently but typically unstressed and uttered quickly, receiving virtually no “airtime” in the rush of content words like nouns, verbs and adjectives that carry the most important part of a message.

Just about every criterion proposed for words has its own problems, as described by linguists Laurie Bauer and Martin Haspelmath. Despite their seemingly straightforward nature, words are tricky for linguists.

#HashtagsNotWords

There are two main theories regarding the linguistic status of hashtags. The first claims hashtags are like compound words. This is essentially a way of making new words by gluing two (or more) existing words together. In English, compounds can be spelled as one word (blackboard, greenhouse), or two words separated by spaces (bus stop, apple pie) or as hyphenated words (forget-me-not).

The second idea is that hashtags are words that arise from a completely different process, unlike anything we have seen before. This hashtagging is a much looser word-formation process, with fewer restrictions. As long as a hashtag symbol is used and no spaces appear between the parts, anything goes — #lovehashtagging, #lazysundayafternoon, #MāoriLanguageWeek.

Our research argues against both these proposals by rejecting the notion hashtags should be treated as words. We suggest hashtags are written to look orthographically like words, but their function is much broader and similar to keywords in a library catalogue or search engine.

But just because hashtags aren’t words per se, that doesn’t mean they are not linguistically interesting. On the contrary, we found hashtags allow tweeters to express themselves in many creative ways, and they are used for various functions, including humour and language play.

For example, some tweets start with the hashtag #youknowyoure(a)kiwiwhen or contain #growingupkiwi to reference, in a self-deprecating way, stereotypical Kiwi lifestyle qualities or childhood nostalgia.

In a more serious and controversial vein, in a bid to poke fun at the All Blacks’ performance of the haka before rubgy matches, the hashtag #hakarena references the Māori tribal dance haka and links it to the Latin American song macarena in what some consider a derogatory way.

Read more: The story of #DanLiedPeopleDied: how a hashtag reveals Australia’s ‘information disorder’ problem

The hashtags we analysed also showed new ways in which tweeters harness lexical resources from different languages. Hybrid hashtags, as we term them, are hashtags comprising one or more words from two distinct languages — in our case, English and Māori, the indigenous language of New Zealand. Examples include #kiaora4that and #letssharegoodtereostories.

Far from being a source of linguistic demise, social media language continues to help us understand a bit more of the puzzle of human communication.

– ref. Hashtags may not be words, grammatically speaking, but they help spread a message – https://theconversation.com/hashtags-may-not-be-words-grammatically-speaking-but-they-help-spread-a-message-133045

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jennifer Curtin, Professor of Politics and Policy, University of Auckland

Two weeks after Labour’s landslide election win, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced a ministry that is more diverse than any seen before in New Zealand.

Of those inside cabinet, 40% are women, 25% are Māori (two in five of those are women), 15% are Pasifika (two in three are women), and 15% are LGBTQI — one of whom is Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson.

Beyond the 20 cabinet ministers, there are four ministers outside cabinet and two undersecretaries. Of these six, three are women, two are Māori, one is Pasifika and one is Indian. Green Party co-leaders Marama Davidson and James Shaw are also associate ministers outside cabinet. The diversity of Ardern’s new government runs deep.

There remain important voices missing from cabinet, however. As Jonny Wilkinson of disability support network Tiaho Trust noted, disabled people are the largest minority group in New Zealand but they lack representation in parliament and cabinet.

Greater diversity over time

In 2017 Ardern set herself a target of a gender balanced cabinet. She missed achieving this in 2020 despite demands for, and achievement of, increased gender parity in government executive branches globally in recent years.

As the proportion of women in parliament increases, it is argued, so too does the pool of eligible candidates from which the prime minister can select women ministers.

Some leaders have ignored this, including former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott, who claimed there were insufficient women parliamentarians with the experience needed for cabinet. That position has become increasingly untenable over time.

Read more: Her cabinet appointed, Jacinda Ardern now leads one of the most powerful governments NZ has seen

While large scale comparative studies suggest women leaders are no more likely than their male counterparts to select women ministers, in New Zealand we know that it was Labour’s Helen Clark who substantially increased the proportion of women promoted to cabinet (from 11% in 1996 to 35% in 1999).

National Party Prime Minister John Key followed her example, ensuring his cabinets comprised at least 30% women. Ardern has moved the bar higher by selecting 40% women.

The gender quota debate

That we have yet to reach gender parity may raise questions in New Zealand and elsewhere. However, our major parties have long resisted implementing strict gender quotas, meaning incremental progress is the norm. That said, our global gender ranking has gone from 50th equal to 26th equal.

This contrasts with Canada’s Justin Trudeau, who in 2015 made history when he selected his first gender parity cabinet. There had been criticism of the policy by pundits who argued diversity and merit could not co-exist, but Trudeau’s response was pithy: “Because it’s 2015.”

Read more: New MP Ibrahim Omer’s election highlights the challenges refugees from Africa face in New Zealand

Five years on, Ardern may have anticipated similar resistance. Asked about the basis of her cabinet selection, she said it was based on “merit, talent and diversity”. Gender balance was the byproduct, in other words.

We also know that not all ministries are created equal. Globally it is finance, foreign affairs, defence and other highly resourced portfolios that are most prized. These usually make up the leader’s inner circle (remember former Labour Prime Minister David Lange’s all male “fish and chip brigade”).

However, the Interparliamentary Union’s annual maps of women in world politics reveal these ministries continue to be allocated more often to men than women.

Women inside the inner circle

This is not the case in Labour’s new cabinet. Ardern’s inner circle (or top five if the photos are anything to go by) includes two women. The top ten positions in cabinet are shared equally between the sexes, with the portfolios alternating between women and men in order of seniority.

New Zealand’s first female foreign affairs minister is Nanaia Mahuta, former associate minister of trade and a senior member of Labour’s Māori caucus. Fourth ranked Megan Woods, who holds a number of big-budget portfolios, has been made associate minister of finance.

Read more: Why equal health access and outcomes should be a priority for Ardern’s new government

There are four new women ministers (one of whom has come straight into cabinet from outside parliament), who have portfolios of their own but who are also associate ministers working with other senior ministers. This is an important strategy — if those senior ministers take their roles seriously, it will ensure these more junior women are likelier to succeed.

The challenge of wider diversity

One question that remains for women’s organisations, however, is whether this new-look ministry will enhance the substantive representation of women and other minorities.

Women workers (as well as the young, Māori and Pasifika) have borne the brunt of job losses during the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning we need gender and diversity analyses applied to all future economic recovery commitments.

Similarly, our family and sexual violence rates remain high, although the cross-portfolio policy responses continue to be led by talented ministers from both Labour and the Greens.

Whether this will be a feminist-focused cabinet remains to be seen. But the diversity of expertise, perspectives and lived experiences among the women around the cabinet table offers an opportunity to bring more diversity into policy deliberations and decisions. As it should — after all, it’s 2020.

– ref. Can New Zealand’s most diverse ever cabinet improve representation of women and minorities in general? – https://theconversation.com/can-new-zealands-most-diverse-ever-cabinet-improve-representation-of-women-and-minorities-in-general-149273

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Denham, Lecturer in Exercise Science, RMIT University

The controversial and banned practice of giving horses baking soda “milkshakes” before a race doesn’t work, according to our analysis of the available research.

Racing folklore says sodium bicarbonate milkshakes can boost racehorses’ endurance because the alkalinity of the baking soda helps counter the buildup of lactic acid in the blood when running.

But our systematic research review, recently published in the Journal of Equine Veterinary Science reveals milkshakes don’t boost horses’ athletic performance.

This means any trainer still tempted to flout the ban on this tactic would be endangering their horses’ welfare and risking heavy sanctions over a practice that is basically snake oil.

Despite the fun-sounding name, milkshakes are anything but. The process involves inserting a tube up the horse’s nose, down its throat and into the stomach, and then pumping in a concentrated solution of sodium bicarbonate dissolved in water.

This can be stressful to the horse, and potential side-effects include lacerations to the nasal cavity, throat and oesophagus, gastrointestinal upset, and diarrhoea. It can even be fatal if the tube is mistakenly inserted into the trachea and the solution is pumped into the lungs.

It’s little wonder Racing Australia has banned the use of “alkalising agents” such as milkshakes on race day, with potentially career-ending ramifications for trainers caught doing it.

No boost after all

The effect of baking soda on athletic performance has been studied in human athletes for decades with inconclusive results, but has only been analysed in horses since the late 1980s.

Our analysis included data from eight experimental trials featuring 74 horses. Overall, sodium bicarbonate administration in the hours before treadmill tests or simulated race trials did not improve horses’ running performance in either type of test.

In fact, in treadmill exercise tests in which horses were not ridden by jockeys, sodium bicarbonate actually had a very small negative effect on running performance, albeit not a statistically significant one.

Whereas human athletes might gain a placebo effect from sodium bicarbonate, this is unlikely to apply to horses who don’t understand the intended point of the milkshake. And while some racehorse trainers may be educated in exercise physiology and the importance of blood pH, others may believe they work simply because received wisdom and racing folklore say so.

Read more: Research shows whipping horses doesn’t make them run faster, straighter or safer — let’s cut it out

Racing aficionados steeped in tradition might respond with scepticism, or argue that research can’t replicate the unique conditions of race day. But given that our comprehensive analysis of a range of research trials shows no evidence that milkshakes work, we argue any recalcitrant trainers have a moral responsibility to listen to the science.

Milkshakes are already banned. But our research shows they deliver no benefit anyway. Trainers who are happy to continue this illicit practice and run the gauntlet of potential sanctions should consider whether it is worth it at all, and whether instead they should reconsider on moral, medical and scientific grounds.

– ref. Put the baking soda back in the bottle: banned sodium bicarbonate ‘milkshakes’ don’t make racehorses faster – https://theconversation.com/put-the-baking-soda-back-in-the-bottle-banned-sodium-bicarbonate-milkshakes-dont-make-racehorses-faster-148907

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jennifer S. Hunt, Lecturer, National Security College, Australian National University

It has been billed as the most significant US election in generations, and with nearly 100 million votes already cast, it is well underway. An estimated 50 million more votes are expected on the last day of in-person voting on Tuesday (Wednesday Australian time), with mail-in ballots still making their way through the postal service, including from overseas and military voters.

It is not only the White House up for grabs, but all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 of the 100-seat Senate. In addition, 11 gubernatorial (state governor) races, various state legislatures, and a plethora of local judges, sheriffs, school boards and supervisory roles are also on the ballot. A quick glance at a US ballot illustrates how America has more democratically elected positions per capita than any other country in the world.

A turbulent four years of Trump

This election will be one for the history books. The White House incumbent, impeached on abuse of power charges and litigating against Congressional oversight of potential financial conflicts of interest, has refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power.

In the year following more than 1,000 former federal prosecutors confirming President Donald Trump would be indicted if not for the current immunity the Oval Office provides him, Trump has stepped up rhetoric that any election that he does not win is “rigged”.

Then came the “October surprise” from the New York Times that the president has at least US$400 million in personally guaranteed loans due over the next possible term and previously undisclosed Chinese bank accounts. This has brought the president’s priorities under intense scrutiny alongside a flailing economy and federal mismanagement of the COVID pandemic response.

Read more: Trump has changed America by making everything about politics, and politics all about himself

Citing these concerns, formal endorsements of Trump’s political opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, have come from unlikely places. Republican national security veterans, GOP governors and nonpartisan communities of scientists and physicians have endorsed Biden, some for the first time in the history of their organisations.

A group of 73 high-level former GOP US National security officials from administrations spanning Reagan to Bush Jr wrote in an open letter that Trump is “dangerously unfit to serve another term”, citing his undermining of the rule of law, failure to lead Americans through the pandemic, and damage to the US’s global reputation.

More than 780 prominent Republicans and Democrats, including former defence secretaries, ambassadors, and retired military brass, also decried Trump, writing that:

[…] thanks to his disdainful attitude and his failures, our allies no longer trust or respect us and our enemies no longer fear us.

A chorus of Trump’s own former administration officials have joined The Lincoln Project, Republican Voters against Trump, 43 for Biden (featuring members of the George W. Bush administration) and former staffers of late senator John McCain, to mount powerful testimonials targeting Trump’s base, independents and new voters.

The Biden camp has stressed a return to decency and cooperation, a United States of America. A popular ad encapsulates the message,

There is only one America. No Democratic rivers, no Republican mountains. Just this great land and all that’s possible on it with a fresh start. There is so much we can do if we choose to take on problems and not each other and choose a president who brings out our best.

Other “anyone but Trump” ads target voters who may have supported him in 2016 as a fiesty outsider, but have tired of the noise.

Ads, endorsements and of course polls are potentially useful indicators during the final week of voting. But what are some other trends that will likely impact electoral turnout and the results? Here are a few to look out for.

Read more: Biden remains strong favourite for US election; Queensland Labor set for increased majority

Millennials

Against the tight margins of the 2016 election in a handful of decisive states, a new generation of voters has emerged who may tip the balance of power. They drove higher turnout in the 2018 midterm election and are not only voting but running and winning office. Enter the millennials.

The US is on the cusp of a generational shift. This is the first US presidential election in which the millennial generation is now the largest voting-age cohort, displacing the baby boomers who have held the title since the 1970s.

Younger millennials, who may have spent the previous presidential election in a high school walk out, or participated in the March for Our Lives for gun safety, are now eligible to vote. Older millennials, who are approaching 40, grew up with high school shootings and are now watching their own young children do lockdown drills, rewarded with a candy if they remain quietly hidden in the toilet with their feet up to avoid detection.

Amid concern about growing economic inequality, the millennials will likely be the first generation to be less financially secure than their parents, and the most likely to compare themselves with international OECD peers who enjoy universal healthcare, gun control and better financial support during the pandemic.

None of these issues is well represented by the current administration, and so Trump’s approval rating hovers around 28% among that age group.

Trump has called climate change a Chinese conspiracy to undermine American manufacturing, pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement, and is suing to eliminate the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”).

On these crucial issues, different informational diets between generations, political parties, and even families could drive very different voting patterns.

But the millennial vote could be decisive.

Disinformation

If “post-truth” was the Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year in 2016, “disinformation” is in the running for 2020.

Disinformation – the deliberate spreading of false or misleading information in order to deceive – is a growing problem in democratic elections. It was a key theme in the Republican-chaired Senate Intelligence Committee report into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

These reports documented key disinformation techniques, narratives and purpose. Akin to Russian “active measures”, disinformation is used to undermine authoritative sources of information by blurring the line between fact and faction.

The most popular narrative, according to this report, was the myth of “voter fraud”.

While the 2016 disinformation campaign centred on voter fraud, the 2020 version targets mail-in voting. These ballots, cast in the middle of COVID-19, are at the heart of competing narratives about the pandemic itself.

In this election, we’ve seen a catalogue of disinformation about COVID-19. While scientists, physicians and public health authorities have repeatedly warned the public and officials to take action to protect public health, the Trump administration has generally downplayed its severity.

Calling it “just the flu”, Trump said the problem impacts “virtually nobody”, even after nearly a quarter of a million Americans died. Recent research has shown Trump himself is one of the largest superspreaders of disinformation about COVID-19.

Some of that disinformation will affect how people cast their ballot. While 19 states have expanded mail-in ballot options as a result of the pandemic, others have made voting harder by closing voting places while not expanding alternate options. Texas, for instance, refused to recognise COVID-19 concerns as a valid reason for those under 65 to request a mail-in ballot, with South Carolina only recently reversing a similar restriction.

Disinformation about mail-in ballots is likely to feature in court challenges. Trump has insisted the results be known on election day, which would necessarily exclude mail-in ballots postmarked in time but not yet received through the mail, including those cast by overseas military voters. He has repeatedly signalled that his appointees in the judicial system (which number in the hundreds) will help secure his win.

While it is unprecedented for a president to attack electoral integrity, state level actions are also important to consider.

Disenfranchisement

Voting in the US is not easy to summarise. Devoid of democracy sausages and a non-partisan federal elections commission, elections are run at the state and county level, from voter rolls to polling locations and everything in between.

Each state is in charge of its own election, and there are nearly as many systems as there are states. Five states, including Oregon, vote entirely by mail. Five other states vote entirely on machine, including Georgia, with no traditional paper audit trail. Other state variations include the option of early in-person voting, whether voting places are open on a Sunday, how far in advance you must register to vote, and requirements for voter ID.

Each state’s ballots look different, with users selecting their choices via handmarked bubble sheets, hole punches or hanging chads, the latter made famous in the 2000 recount in Florida that delivered George W. Bush his first term.

One of the quirks of the US voting system is the electoral college. The college is essentially a distribution of electoral votes among the states according to population size, updated after every 10-year census.

In 2020, several large states are in the spotlight as toss-ups, including Texas, which carries a prize of 38 electoral votes in the race to 270. It will be one to watch on election day, with early voter turnout already surpassing its 2016 total. It is also the site of one of the most blatant attempts at disenfranchisement, with the GOP failing in its attempt to stop more than 120,000 ballots already cast in one of its largest counties.

Until recently, states were not allowed to make changes to voting procedures without judicial oversight. Plans to close significant numbers of polling places in certain districts, for instance, had to go through pre-clearance processes. However, these protections were dismantled by a US Supreme Court ruling in 2013. This year’s presidential election will be only the second without those protections, and voter disenfranchisement could result.

One key method of disenfranchisement could be mail-in ballots. In an interview in August, Trump said he planned to block funding for the US postal service to prevent increased voting by mail. A Trump appointee to the head of the postal service in July recently oversaw the destruction and dismantling of 700 mail processing machines, leading to more delays.

Read more: Explainer: what is the controversy around the US postal service and how might it affect the election?

Simple polls of voting intention do not capture voter disenfranchisement and intimidation.

Intimidation tactics have been increasing across several key states. In Pennsylvania, New Jersey and North Carolina, official Republican party mailers warned voters their voting history is a matter of public record.

In New Mexico, the GOP sent mailers that read

When the Democrats win the White House and you didn’t do your part to stop it, your neighbors will know. Voting is a matter of public record.

Experts warn of potential violence and rioting after the result. Growing polarisation, extremist groups such as QAnon threatening the use of force, and the availability of tactical weapons are all warning signs.

This year has seen more than 8 million more gun purchases than 2019, and scholars warn of increasing militia activity. Trump has publicly praised supporters who commit violence, including the Kenosha shooter.

International allies are also concerned. After Trump used armed guards to teargas peaceful protestors in Washington DC (which Australia watched live as its reporters were bashed on air), the Scottish Parliament voted to suspend exports of riot shields, tear gas and rubber bullets to the United States.

Australia recently updated its “do not travel” advisory to the US, citing civil unrest around the election.

Regardless of the outcome of the election, some of the trends may continue beyond Inauguration Day on January 21, 2021, affecting not just the US but its relationships with allies and adversaries alike.

Australia would do well to watch carefully and wait for the final results.

Read more: What would a Biden presidency mean for Australia?

– ref. As US election day nears, the outcome won’t be simply a matter of political will – https://theconversation.com/as-us-election-day-nears-the-outcome-wont-be-simply-a-matter-of-political-will-148441

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tilman Ruff, Associate Professor, Education and Learning Unit, Nossal Institute for Global Health, School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware this article contains the name of a deceased person.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons received its 50th ratification on October 24, and will therefore come into force in January 2021. A historic development, this new international law will ban the possession, development, testing, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons.

Unfortunately the nuclear powers — the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Russia, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea — haven’t signed on to the treaty. As such, they are not immediately obliged to help victims and remediate contaminated environments, but others party to the treaty do have these obligations. The shifting norms around this will hopefully put ongoing pressure on nuclear testing countries to open records and to cooperate with accountability measures.

For the people of the Pacific region, particularly those who bore the brunt of nuclear weapons testing during the 20th century, it will bring a new opportunity for their voices to be heard on the long-term costs of nuclear violence. The treaty is the first to enshrine enduring commitments to addressing their needs.

From 1946, around 315 nuclear tests were carried out in the Pacific by the US, Britain and France. These nations’ largest ever nuclear tests took place on colonised lands and oceans, from Australia to the Marshall Islands, Kiribati to French Polynesia.

The impacts of these tests are still being felt today.

All nuclear tests cause harm

Studies of nuclear test workers and exposed nearby communities around the world consistently show adverse health effects, especially increased risks of cancer.

The total number of global cancer deaths as a result of atmospheric nuclear test explosions has been estimated at between 2 million and 2.4 million, even though these studies used radiation risk estimates that are now dated and likely underestimated the risk.

The number of additional non-fatal cancer cases caused by test explosions is similar. As confirmed in a large recent study of nuclear industry workers in France, the UK and US, the numbers of radiation-related deaths due to other diseases, such as heart attacks and strokes, is also likely to be similar.

‘We all got crook’

Britain conducted 12 nuclear test explosions in Australia between 1952 and 1957, and hundreds of minor trials of radioactive and toxic materials for bomb development up to 1963. These caused untold health problems for local Aboriginal people who were at the highest risk of radiation. Many of them were not properly evacuated, and some were not informed at all.

We may never know the full impact of these explosions because in many cases, as the Royal Commission report on British Nuclear Tests in Australia found in 1985: “the resources allocated for Aboriginal welfare and safety were ludicrous, amounting to nothing more than a token gesture”. But we can listen to the survivors.

Read more: Sixty years on, the Maralinga bomb tests remind us not to put security over safety

The late Yami Lester directly experienced the impacts of nuclear weapons. A Yankunytjatjara elder from South Australia, Yami was a child when the British tested at Emu Field in October 1953. He recalled the “Black Mist” after the bomb blast:

It wasn’t long after that a black smoke came through. A strange black smoke, it was shiny and oily. A few hours later we all got crook, every one of us. We were all vomiting; we had diarrhoea, skin rashes and sore eyes. I had really sore eyes. They were so sore I couldn’t open them for two or three weeks. Some of the older people, they died. They were too weak to survive all the sickness. The closest clinic was 400 miles away.

His daughter, Karina Lester, is an ambassador for the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons in Australia, and continues to be driven by her family’s experience. She writes:

For decades now my family have campaigned and spoken up against the harms of nuclear weapons because of their firsthand experience of the British nuclear tests […] Many Aboriginal people suffered from the British nuclear tests that took place in the 1950s and 1960s and many are still suffering from the impacts today.

More than 16,000 Australian workers were also exposed. A key government-funded study belatedly followed these veterans over an 18-year period from 1982. Despite the difficulties of conducting a study decades later with incomplete data, it found they had 23% higher rates of cancer and 18% more deaths from cancers than the general population.

An additional health impact in Pacific island countries is the toxic disease “ciguatera”, caused by certain microscopic plankton at the base of the marine food chain, which thrive on damaged coral. Their toxins concentrate up the food chain, especially in fish, and cause illness and occasional deaths in people who eat them. In the Marshall Islands, Kiritimati and French Polynesia, outbreaks of the disease among locals have been associated with coral damage caused by nuclear test explosions and the extensive military and shipping infrastructure supporting them.

Pacific survivors of nuclear testing haven’t been focused solely on addressing their own considerable needs for justice and care; they’ve been powerful advocates that no one should suffer as they have ever again, and have worked tirelessly for the eradication of nuclear weapons. It’s no surprise independent Pacific island nations are strong supporters of the new treaty, accounting for ten of the first 50 ratifications.

Negligence and little accountability

Some nations that have undertaken nuclear tests have provided some care and compensation for their nuclear test workers; only the US has made some provisions for people exposed, though only for mainland US residents downwind of the Nevada Test Site. No testing nation has extended any such arrangement beyond its own shores to the colonised and minority peoples it put in harm’s way. Nor has any testing nation made fully publicly available its records of the history, conduct and effects of its nuclear tests on exposed populations and the environment.

These nations have also been negligent by quickly abandoning former test sites. There has been inadequate clean-up and little or none of the long-term environmental monitoring needed to detect radioactive leakage from underground test sites into groundwater, soil and air. One example among many is the Runit concrete dome in the Marshall Islands, which holds nuclear waste from US testing in the 1940s and 50s. It’s increasingly inundated by rising sea levels, and is leaking radioactive material.

The treaty provides a light in a dark time. It contains the only internationally agreed framework for all nations to verifiably eliminate nuclear weapons.

It’s our fervent hope the treaty will mark the increasingly urgent beginning of the end of nuclear weapons. It is our determined expectation that our country will step up. Australia has not yet ratified the treaty, but the bitter legacy of nuclear testing across our country and region should spur us to join this new global effort.

– ref. 315 nuclear bombs and ongoing suffering: the shameful history of nuclear testing in Australia and the Pacific – https://theconversation.com/315-nuclear-bombs-and-ongoing-suffering-the-shameful-history-of-nuclear-testing-in-australia-and-the-pacific-148909

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Flannery, Professorial fellow, Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, University of Melbourne

It is difficult to know what to do when governments fail us. But there’s no need to wait until the next election to deal with the climate crisis, we can act now.

An overwhelming majority of Australians want action on climate change. And the federal government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic shows governments can act decisively and effectively on imminent threats. But on climate action, there is a lack of political will.

So in the absence of federal leadership, what should be done? And who must do what?

Those questions are already being answered by state governments, councils, researchers, entrepreneurs and financiers who understand the climate problem. Their actions are slowing our slide to disaster – but they need others to step up.

States are filling the gap

Among the most important entities in climate action in Australia are the state and territory governments. The ACT was the first to eliminate fossil fuels for electricity generation. Tasmania is on track to be there by 2022, and has now set a 200% renewable energy target by 2040, with the additional clean energy to be used to produce hydrogen.

South Australia is also set to be powered solely by renewables by the 2030s. These jurisdictions show what can be done in Australia if there’s a political will, and successive governments stick with a plan.

Some larger states are catching up fast. New South Wales has recently gone from being one of the worst performers to among the best. The Berejiklian government has a ten-year plan to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, and the first stage prioritises the uptake of electric vehicles. It will change building codes to make it cheaper and easier to install electric charging points, encourage the uptake of electric vehicles by fleets, and change licensing and parking regulations to encourage their uptake.

If the states worked together to pursue the most ambitious targets and programs, Australia could do its bit to solve the climate problem.

Going local

Australia’s local councils have become powerhouses of innovative climate solutions. In June 2017 I attended the Climate Council’s Cities Power Partnership at Parliament House in Canberra. Some 34 mayors and councillors attended, and I listened with interest as one after another described the projects they were working on.

The breadth was astonishing, from promoting bulk buys of solar panels for disadvantaged residents to making low-carbon road surfaces at local plants. Many councils were planting trees, assisting with energy efficiency measures or converting waste to energy. Since that first meeting the Cities Power Partnership has grown hugely. It now includes more than 120 local governments, representing half of all Australians.

Read more: People power: everyday Australians are building their own renewables projects, and you can too

It is not just Australia’s local councils forging ahead with climate action. Individual households lead the world in producing clean energy. More than two million households — 21% of the nation’s total — have now installed solar panels. This, of course, was supported by the federal government’s renewable energy target. But it wouldn’t have happened without Australians paying good money for their rooftop solar panels.

Movements aimed at building momentum will doubtless continue. In September 2019, hundreds of thousands marched during the school climate strikes. The movement grew from a one-person protest by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, which took place just a year earlier. In Australia the crowds were unprecedented, as was their passion.

The demonstrations have had limited impact on the federal government, but people are also organising in different ways. Extinction Rebellion, an group just two years old, is one of the potentially more potent. Its members are committed to breaking the law peacefully. Part of their power lies in the fact that they keep reminding the police, courts and politicians that their actions aim to save everybody’s children, not just their own.

But what of national politics?

Action by state governments, councils, individuals and groups will be critical to tackling climate change. But that still leaves the problem of federal parliament.

More pro-climate independents in federal parliament would shift our politics in the right direction. At the last election, voters in the northern Sydney seat of Warringah dispensed with incumbent Tony Abbott, in favour of independent candidate Zali Steggall (who won an astonishing 58% of the two-party preferred vote). It shows what’s possible when traditionally conservative voters get sick of being held to ransom by climate deniers in parliament.

But other deniers in the parliamentary party remain influential. Their modus operandi, as former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has said, is that of terrorists threatening to blow the place up if they don’t get their way.

Read more: New polling shows 79% of Aussies care about climate change. So why doesn’t the government listen?

Getting more independents into parliament will not be easy. The major political parties, which have many millions of dollars to spend at elections, will fiercely oppose any challengers.

But imagine if the Liberal-Nationals were forced to rid themselves of denialists to head off challenges by independents. What if they could once more implement rational, enduring energy and climate policies? Well, we are at a moment in time where this might be possible.

Membership of both the Labor and Liberal parties has dwindled in recent decades. That means a tiny, self-selected portion of Australia’s population chooses the candidates we vote for.

This has exposed the Liberals, in particular, to hijack by climate deniers – given the small membership numbers, it’s not hard for denialist candidates to win preselection. But if party members let these wreckers run the show, Australia will continue on the path to catastrophe.

Time to step up

Australians have become used to living with governments that don’t serve our interests. Many people are rightly cynical and disengaged from politics. And that’s exactly where the climate deniers would like us to be.

But to effect real change, we must shake free of apathy. New people will have to step up and join those who have been persevering in pushing for climate action for years.

With enough momentum, we can embark on the cure for this most wicked of problems.

This is an edited extract from The Climate Cure: Solving the Climate Emergency in the Era of COVID-19 by Tim Flannery (Text Publishing).

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

– ref. Australia, the climate can’t wait for the next federal election. It’s time to take control – https://theconversation.com/australia-the-climate-cant-wait-for-the-next-federal-election-its-time-to-take-control-148252

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Ramsay, Professor, Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg appears to have backed down.

An extraordinarily rushed timetable that would have allowed investors and others just 12 days to comment on draft legislation permitting companies to hold virtual rather than face-to-face annual general meetings has been extended by seven days, to the end of this week.

And Frydenberg has suggested he no longer supports it. He now says “reforms to the regulation of AGMs should enhance the ability of shareholders to interact with the board, not diminish it”.

The idea took hold when it became apparent COVID-19 would stop companies being able to hold physical meetings of shareholders.

In May the federal government announced a six-month temporary relaxation of the Corporations Act rules to allow companies to hold online shareholder meetings.

The six months was later extended until March 22, 2021.

Temporary relief was to become permanent

Then, in a surprising development two weeks ago (on October 19), the federal government published draft legislation to permanently allow companies to hold virtual-only shareholder meetings, including annual general meetings.

The reaction was caustic.

There are two main criticisms. One is focused on the process adopted by the government. The other is focused on the proposal itself.

The process was undoubtedly flawed. Twelve days — in the midst of the AGM season — is an exceptionally short amount of time to consider such important reform.

The more fundamental criticisms relate to what’s proposed.

We believe it will undermine the role of shareholder meetings in making company directors answer to shareholders.

Shorter questions, fewer questions

There is evidence this has already been happening.

At some AGMs, shareholders’ questions have been ignored.

Others meetings have been much shorter.

The Australian Shareholders’ Association says a good AGM is an opportunity for healthy discussion and exchange of information and views. In contrast, a virtual meeting “is a sterile format where companies are able to ignore questions, and gloss over details”.

Read more: Australia is ripe for shareholder activism

In the US, the Council of Institutional Investors (representing institutional investors with more than US$45 trillion under management) has complained to the US Securities and Exchange Commission about the virtual meetings held because of COVID-19 — calling them a “poor substitute for in-person shareholder meetings” that placed obstacles in the path of shareholders wanting to participate in a meaningful way.

Hard evidence is emerging

A study published in August about virtual shareholder meetings during COVID-19 supports these concerns.

Research by Miriam Schwartz-Ziv examined the transcripts and audio recordings for 94 US corporations that held an in-person or predominately in-person meeting last year and a virtual meeting this year.

Read more: What limits shareholder activism as a force for good: the free-rider problem

The move to virtual meetings shortened the average meeting by 18%, decreased the time dedicated to providing a business update by 40%, and decreased the average time spent on answering questions by 14%.

Schwartz-Ziv says these findings:

may suggest that not having visibly present shareholders, and perhaps not observing shareholders’ responses throughout the meeting, ultimately leads to less information communicated by the company to the shareholders

Among the tactics used were company officials incorrectly stating there were no more questions and limiting questions to resolutions being voted on.

Shareholders are increasingly active

Right now shareholders are more active than ever, using AGMs to put matters such as climate change on the agenda.

This year’s Woodside Petroleum AGM made history when, for the first time in a major Australian listed company, a shareholder resolution requesting the company take action on climate change received more than 50% support from shareholders, even though the resolution was opposed by the company’s directors.

This type of activism, which is occurring in more companies, can indeed present challenges for directors who oppose the wishes of shareholders. Some of them might welcome an opportunity to limit questions.

There’s no rush

But that’s no reason for the government to facilitate it. The government’s proposal was rushed and poorly justified.

It would be better to debate the merits of permanently allowing what are called “hybrid” AGMs. This would involve a physical meeting along with online facilities for those who can’t be physically present.

Read more: How Westpac is alleged to have broken anti-money laundering laws 23 million times

This year’s AGM season will give us enough experience with virtual shareholder meetings to allow a more informed decision on their merits during 2021.

There’s plenty of time.

– ref. A rushed move to virtual AGMs would disempower shareholders – https://theconversation.com/a-rushed-move-to-virtual-agms-would-disempower-shareholders-149101

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Phoebe Macrossan, Associate Lecturer/Sessional Academic, Queensland University of Technology

In a new series, our writers explore their best worst film. They’ll tell you what the critics got wrong – and why it’s time to give these movies another chance.

In 2007, Columbia Pictures released the psychedelic Across the Universe, using 33 songs by The Beatles to form a story of young bohemians living in New York during the Vietnam War era.

Liverpool dockworker Jude (Jim Sturgess) heads to the US in search of his American father, where he becomes friends with Princeton dropout Max (Joe Anderson) and Max’s sister, Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood).

Max and Jude move to New York, sharing a flat with Prudence (T.V. Carpio), a lesbian runaway from Ohio; Sadie (Dana Fuchs), a Janis Joplin-like soul singer; and the Jimi Hendrix-like Jo-Jo (Martin Luther McCoy), who is fleeing the race riots in Detroit. When Lucy’s boyfriend is killed in Vietnam, she also moves to New York, where she and Jude fall in love.

The film is in a near-constant state of song — there are only 30 minutes of spoken dialogue – ending with the cast uniting in a rooftop performance of “All You Need is Love”. This mirrors The Beatles’ own final performance on the rooftop of the Apple Corps building in London in 1969.

The movie was blasted for its saccharine, hippy-dippy, sanitised depictions of the 60s. Critics called it commercialised fodder for bourgeois audiences who lacked any real engagement with the politics of the period – but I think the film actually asks something more complex of its audience.

A star director, a critical flop

Director Julie Taymor is most well known for her stage musical The Lion King (1997), for which she became the first woman to win the Tony Award for best direction of a musical. While she has mostly worked in theatre and opera, her films before Across the Universe included Titus (1999) and Frida (2002).

In the early 2000s, musicals based on popular songbooks experienced renewed popularity on stage and screen, and shows like American Idol (2002–), where contestants regularly sing 60s and 70s songs, became major hits.

The combination of a Beatles soundtrack and a star director should therefore have been a formula for a hit. But even with its popular soundtrack and Taymor’s credentials, Across The Universe did not replicate the success of other jukebox movie musicals of the decade like Moulin Rouge! (2001) or Mamma Mia! (2008).

The film was a total flop at the box office, making just US$29.6 million (A$41.8 million) against a production budget of US$70.8 million (A$99.9 million). It was slammed by critics.

Time Out described Across the Universe as “often so embarrassing to watch that you’ll be checking over your shoulder to check that no one’s looking.”

Stephen Holden from the New York Times called it “unadulterated white, middle-class baby boomer nostalgia”.

But these sentiments miss the beauty and the artistry of Taymor’s reinvention of the music and the period.

Our personal connection to pop music

Particularly interesting about Across the Universe is the way it activates a nostalgic longing for the counterculture of the 1960s through an absence of The Beatles – it is not a biopic about them, nor do they appear in the film.

Taymor uses The Beatles as a recognisable language. The characters take ownership of the songs’ sentiments, using popular music in the way ordinary people do all the time.

While Mamma Mia! completely decoupled ABBA’s songs from their origin, Across The Universe involves the audience in remembering The Beatles’ music, deploying these memories to make sense of the film and its reworking of the 1960s.

Jude and Max bond over their shared rejection of society and become involved in a free-wheeling group of artists; Jo-Jo, dejected after his brother is killed by the National Guard, joins Sadie in creating experimental music; Prudence runs away from home as she struggles with her sexuality.

All along, the Beatles’ songs allow the audience insight into young characters who struggle with identity, expression and emotional development. With glorious artistic direction and enthusiastic choreography, Taymor reworks the famous lyrics for new characters and a new narrative.

In I Want You (She’s So Heavy), the originally erotic song lyrics are sung by a frightening Uncle Sam during Max’s drafting appointment. Uncle Sam reaches out from his poster and drags Max into an aggressive medical examination that becomes a dance sequence with an army sergeant.

The song ends with Max and the fresh recruits carrying a giant Statue of Liberty through the Vietnamese jungle as they sing “she’s so heavy”.

This number resembles a trippy music video, relying on Taymor’s distinctive mix of theatrics, animation and puppetry. An originally sexy song becomes a frightening commentary on the senseless war in Vietnam.

When Max returns, he sings Happiness is a Warm Gun in a hospital ward with other injured soldiers. He hallucinates a vision of a beautiful nurse (Salma Hayek) who multiplies, administering morphine to the patients. The melancholy and nonsensical nature of the first verse is presented as Max’s incoherent ramblings to Lucy.

Across the Universe understands the ways a reworked cover version can be used as personal expression. I Want to Hold Your Hand is sung by the closeted Prudence as she pines after a fellow cheerleader.

A once cheerful upbeat pop song about a cutesy love interest turns into a slow lament of lost love.

Taymor says she set out to reimagine the film musical by harnessing the power of music videos as an alternative to traditional production numbers. The film successfully combined the film musical and the music video years before Glee (2009-15) used the same format when gay cheerleaders sang to each other.

Across the Universe was dismissed for its cliched pastiche of the 1960s. But if you consider the way the film re-purposed the music for a new 60s without the Beatles, Taymor reinvigorated both the film genre and the music we thought we knew.

– ref. My best worst film: Across the Universe is a Beatles jukebox musical masterpiece – https://theconversation.com/my-best-worst-film-across-the-universe-is-a-beatles-jukebox-musical-masterpiece-147175

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By A J Brown, Professor of Public Policy & Law, Centre for Governance & Public Policy, Griffith University

Australia has come a significant step closer to forming a federal anti-corruption agency, when federal Attorney-General Christian Porter released draft legislation designed to set up a Commonwealth Integrity Commission (CIC).

It is promising, but has big problems. Fortunately, the attorney-general has signalled key elements of the proposal are still up for negotiation in parliament. A consultation period will run from November 2020 to March 2021 to allow time for feedback on the draft legislation.

The bill puts detail on an anti-corruption model for which the federal government has already been heavily criticised since it was first released in December 2018.

But with the political consensus behind a federal agency now spread across all parties, and into a government bill, it’s a historic step towards a genuine strengthening of Australia’s integrity system in 2021 — if or when the Morrison government amends its bill to overcome the problems.

Three issues — resources, scope and powers — will determine if the new Commonwealth Integrity Commission can help restore flagging trust in Australia’s ability to deal with corruption.

Read more: As the government drags its heels, a better model for a federal integrity commission has emerged

Resources: where the CIC proposal is on its strongest ground

In the 15 years since Transparency International Australia first recommended a national anti-corruption agency, funding has been central to the discussion. A poorly-resourced Commonwealth Integrity Commission cannot be effective.

This is where the proposal is on its strongest ground. Porter’s announcement confirmed A$106.7 million in new funding over four years. That’s on top of the $40.7 million already spent on the ACLEI (Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity), to be absorbed by the CIC.

This means an agency with an annual budget of $42 million when fully operational.

That’s not enough to fix all the gaps in our creaking accountability framework, as shown in my research team’s soon-to-be-finalised national integrity system assessment of Australia. But it’s over double what the Australian Labor Party originally estimated.

It finally moves ACLEI well beyond the minuscule budget and narrow remit it had when it was founded in 2006, after the Howard government first promised to create what many hoped would be an independent national anti-corruption body.

With corruption risks rising in the post-COVID world, we are at least slowly going in the right direction — and that’s important.

Scope: the first big shortcoming

As it is proposed, the CIC’s full Royal Commission powers would only extend to about 20% of the federal public sector.

More agencies will be covered by ACLEI’s powers from January 1 2021, as its jurisdiction expands to cover four new law enforcement and regulatory bodies, including ASIC and the ATO. But for 80% of the federal government, including politicians, the CIC’s strong powers can only be exercised in private, and only where there is a reasonable suspicion of a criminal offence.

So the powers may be strong — including compelling people to give sworn evidence at private hearings, search and seizure of property (under warrant), and tapping phones. But there will be little or no jurisdiction to get to the bottom of “grey area” corruption like undisclosed conflicts of interest, unless a criminal offence like fraud, theft or bribery is already obvious.

The scope is also narrow because, while federal agency heads must report suspected corruption offences, this is only if they meet the same threshold.

If a public service whistleblower approaches the new commission directly, with reasonable suspicions of corruption breaches but no actual evidence of an offence, they would have to be turned away.

Indeed, under clause 70 of the bill, they could risk prosecution for making an unwarranted allegation. This is a draconian idea that defies the purpose of federal whistleblowing legislation.

Public hearing powers: a worry

The inability of the CIC to use public hearings for 80% of the federal government is the feature that would likely make many Australians most worried.

How this problem is fixed in the final bill will be the key to securing a strong agency with a wider, pro-integrity remit.

It’s a worry for the government because in Australia, and overseas, the problem of strong anti-corruption powers being used as a weapon against political opponents is real. There is little value in integrity bodies that become costly political weapons, damaging more than restoring public trust.

Coalition MPs are especially fearful of the way the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) has used public hearings in the past – such as its ambush of NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell in 2015, prompting his resignation despite the commission’s conclusion he had “no intention […] to mislead”.

The next steps will need to include other solutions to this problem, ensuring public hearing powers can be used when needed, and not when it’s unnecessary.

If this can be achieved, along with other improvements based on public feedback, there is a real chance of the Commonwealth Integrity Commission standing the test of time.

And that would mean, after 15 long years, an enduring, independent agency supported by all sides of politics – not one undermined by partisan criticism or allegations of ineffectiveness.

Read more: From Richard Boyle and Witness K to media raids: it’s time whistleblowers had better protection

– ref. Explainer: what is the proposed Commonwealth Integrity Commission and how would it work? – https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-the-proposed-commonwealth-integrity-commission-and-how-would-it-work-140734

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

Chief of Australia Post Christine Holgate has fallen on her sword, admitting the “optics” of her gift of Cartier watches to four high-performing employees did not pass the “pub test” for many people.

Holgate’s Monday resignation follows Scott Morrison’s ferocious parliamentary attack on her last month, when he said “the chief executive … has been instructed to stand aside, if she doesn’t wish to do that, she can go.”

Earlier that day, Holgate had revealed, under Labor questioning in Senate estimates, that she had given the watches as rewards.

The Prime Minister was particularly infuriated by Holgate’s claim they were not paid for by the taxpayer because Australia Post – which is government owned – was a commercial enterprise.

Morrison immediately set up an inquiry into the watches, which totalled nearly $20,000 in value, and other Australia Post expenses.

In a statement on Monday, Holgate said that with “great sadness” she had offered her resignation to the Post chair and board, with immediate effect. “I am not seeking any financial compensation,” she said.

She said she would make herself available to participate in the inquiry.

Holgate has been the object of a sustained leaking campaign to undermine her, perhaps involving disgruntled employees, former and/or current.

Morrison’s attack on her has been criticised by some high profile business figures, who think he went beyond what was justified in response to her misjudgement.

Holgate said as Christmas approached, with its significant challenges, it was critically important Australia Post was absolutely focused on its customers and communities.

“I firmly believe the ‘ship’ needs a strong captain at the helm to help navigate through this time,” she said.

“The current issue I am managing is a significant distraction and I do not believe it is good for either Australia Post or my own personal wellbeing.

“Consequently, I have made the difficult decision to resign, hoping it will allow the organisation to fully focus on serving our customers.”

While conceding the watches had been bad optics, Holgate defended rewarding the employees who had forged a deal for banking services to be available through Post Offices.

“I have always sought to recognise and thank the efforts of our 80,000 strong extended team, as together they are the real heroes behind our results. Philosophically, I believe if you want to drive positive change, you need to thank and reward positive behaviours.

“However, I deeply regret that a decision made two years ago, which was supported by the Chair, to recognise the outstanding work of four employees has caused so much debate and distraction and I appreciate the optics of the gifts involved do not pass the ‘pub test’ for many.

“I still believe firmly that the people who achieved the Bank@Post outcome for Australia Post deserved recognition, their work secured a $220m investment over the following years, which dramatically improved the financial performance of the company, protected a critical community service which more than 50% of the communities in Australia depend on and made our Community Post Offices sustainable for the long term.”

She said she had “no animosity towards the Government and have enjoyed working with the Prime Minister, the Shareholder Ministers and many other political leaders during my tenure”.

“I am deeply appreciative of the significant support I have received from our people, our customers, our partners – especially our Community Licensed Post Offices and individuals across the country. I have made this difficult decision to leave to enable Australia Post to be able to fully focus on delivering for our customers.

“My sincere apologies if my words or actions have offended others as this would never have been my intention because I have always held Australia Post in the greatest regard.”

The union covering postal workers said Holgate’s resignation would not solve the “rot” at Australia Post.

It said the workforce “had been dismayed at recent management strategies including intentional underemployment, the move away from daily deliveries and a parcel back log that continues to grow out of control in many areas”.

CEPU Communications Union National Secretary Greg Rayner said “There’s something seriously wrong when management thinks nothing of splashing out on Cartier luxury watches but delivers only cut backs and service cuts for the rest of us”.

He said the “rest of the so-called leadership team must be held accountable for this mess”.

– ref. Australia Post CEO Christine Holgate quits in Cartier watches affair – https://theconversation.com/australia-post-ceo-christine-holgate-quits-in-cartier-watches-affair-149275

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Glitsos, Lecturer in Arts and Humanities, Edith Cowan University

In times of flux and crisis, nostalgia works like a social ointment, mixed and mashed together through imperfect memory.

Netflix’s re-release of Dawson’s Creek (1998-2003) is an ointment tailor-made for adults who were once 90s kids. In the 90s we were on the verge of adulthood, all the complexity of the teenage drama playing out on Dawson’s Creek titillating our adolescence. And now we’ve arrived, we want desperately to go back to our teenage years.

Dawson’s Creek was time of simpler politics, the beauty of youth and the innocence of virginity.

In the idyllic town of Capeside, Dawson Leery (James Van Der Beek) is a typical 90s all-American teen with a passion for film and popular culture. The series traces the complexity of Dawson’s close adolescent friendship groups, romantic relationships and the angsty problems plaguing teen life.

As for sexual tension, Dawson’s Creek flirted with it all – from the virginal girl-next-door Joey (Katie Holmes) to the sexually-mature out-of-towner Jen (Michelle Williams). And let’s not forget Dawson’s best friend, Pacey Witter (Joshua Jackson), whose tryst with a 36-year-old English teacher seems even creepier in hindsight.

Still, like all things nostalgic, our memories of Dawson’s Creek have to do with a longing for a golden age that never truly existed. COVID has enhanced these feelings of longing for a romanticised past: whether a golden age of bread-baking or through wearing “Mom jeans”.

Comfort food

We often return to familiar stories after a crisis. After the 9/11 attacks, American television and film emphasised strong role models of masculinity and the “cowboy” mythology. Americans were looking for a sense of security – a steely-eyed hero to swoop in and make everything OK again.

Dawson’s Creek brings us back to innocence and simplicity. Even if it was always just a fantasy.

In the summery Cape Cod town of Dawson’s Creek, teens are free to touch, embrace, love, and roam freely. And they certainly do all those things in spades.

Read more: In my end is my beginning: why TV streaming services love exploiting your nostalgia

A central tension of the series is the love triangle between Dawson, Pacey and Joey. While it brings all manner of tears and diatribes, Dawson’s Creek offers a micro-drama we know will eventually resolve. The only thing better than no problem is a problem we know can be fixed.

Returning to the creek

When the series streamed on the weekend, I jumped in and found Capeside exactly where I had left it: in unbearably pristine condition. But with fresh eyes, the cringe-factor was astronomical.

One of the great elements of the show, differing from others of its nature and era was the cadence of the dialogue. The writers clearly had no regard for how teenagers spoke.

In the first episode, Joey foreshadows the coming season’s narrative, telling Dawson “[…] our emerging hormones are destined to alter our relationship and I’m trying to limit the fallout”.

Re-watching as an adult, it feels exactly how a teenager wants to sound, but usually falls endearingly short.

I can’t recall making any quippy statements that perfectly articulated a meta-analysis of my own chaotic adolescent experience.

Then there’s the scene where the new English teacher, Tamara (Leann Hunley), meets Pacey for the first time at the video store and asks for a copy of The Graduate (1967). Clearly, the writers were not going for subtlety.

Reliving teenage life

Dawson’s Creek brings with it a carnival of long-lost 90s moments: the posters on Dawson’s wall referencing Spielberg films; his job at the local video store; the cassettes and VHS tapes strewn around teenage bedrooms; the grunge-lite clothing.

Though our teen years comprise a small fraction of our lives, they often hold far more emotional weight. Psychologists theorise this is because of the impact of the often painful negotiation between holding onto the safety of childhood, and the dreams of emerging adulthood.

This negotiation marks these years with such force they stay imprinted in ways other decades do not.

During this time, there is also a critical relationship between the importance of popular culture and moments of identity formation. The art we grow up with imprints upon our psyche for life.

So perhaps I am not so much cringing at the show, but cringing at myself. Dawson’s Creek gives me a safe space to revisit my teenage years. Through remembering what I watched, I can remember who I was.

Known knowns

It is strange to watch the show now we know how it turned out – both on screen and off. We leave the crew as they leave the creek, trying to find their own feet in the world in their own burgeoning adulthoods.

Van Der Beek has had some minor success: he was impressive in The Rules of Attraction (2002) and pulled off some great self-referential television, playing himself in Don’t Trust the B Apartment 23 (2012–13).

Holmes had some great parts but never seemed to thrive in her acting career, while Jackson has shone in subsequent television roles. But it was Williams who became the breakout star. The youngest major cast member, she has been nominated for four Academy Awards.

Read more: Exploring the data on Hollywood’s gender pay gap

Back in the day Dawson’s Creek offered us an escape – even if momentarily. And now, perhaps it has a similar function. In the turmoil of 2020, it is comforting to return to the fantasy of Capeside’s pristine community, where the biggest problem is who will Joey choose?

– ref. Why Dawson’s Creek, in all its cringey glory, is the TV show 90s kids need right now – https://theconversation.com/why-dawsons-creek-in-all-its-cringey-glory-is-the-tv-show-90s-kids-need-right-now-148539

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

Two days before Wednesday’s US election (AEDT), the FiveThirtyEight national aggregate gives Joe Biden an 8.6% lead over Donald Trump (52.0% to 43.4%). In the key states, Biden leads by 8.3% in Wisconsin, 8.2% in Michigan, 4.8% in Pennsylvania, 3.1% in Arizona and 2.2% in Florida.

Biden’s lead in Pennsylvania is almost four points below his national lead, and that gives Trump hope of pulling off an Electoral College/popular vote split, as occurred at the 2016 election. Pennsylvania is the most likely “tipping-point” state that could put either Trump or Biden over the magic 270 Electoral Votes.

If Biden loses Pennsylvania, but wins Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona, he would have 269 Electoral Votes, one short of 270. Either Maine’s or Nebraska’s second Congressional District could in that scenario give Biden the narrowest of Electoral College wins. These states award one Electoral Vote to the winner of each of their districts, and two to the statewide winner. All other states are winner-takes-all.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton lost the tipping-point state (Wisconsin) by 0.8%, while winning the popular vote by 2.1% – a difference between the tipping-point and popular vote of 2.9%.

Analyst Nate Silver says while Trump can plausibly win, he would need the polls to be wrong by far more than in 2016. At this stage in 2016, the FiveThirtyEight forecast gave Trump a 35% chance; he currently has just a 10% chance. Trump only has a 3% chance to win the popular vote.

Trump had one very good poll result from a high-quality pollster: a Selzer Iowa poll gave him a seven-point lead in that state. But most high-quality polls have been far better for Biden: Siena polls for The New York Times gave Biden six-point leads in Arizona and Pennsylvania, a three-point lead in Florida and an 11-point lead in Wisconsin.

In FiveThirtyEight aggregates, Biden leads by 2.0% in North Carolina and 1.5% in Georgia. He trails by 0.3% in Ohio, 1.2% in Texas and 1.7% in Iowa. If Biden won all these states, he would win over 400 Electoral Votes. Florida is now in this group of states when it had previously been better for Biden.

Trump’s net job approval ratings have jumped three points since last week. In the FiveThirtyEight aggregate, his net approval with all polls is -8.5%, and -7.0% with polls of likely or registered voters. The RealClearPolitics average has Biden’s net favourability at +7, while Trump’s is -13.

I wrote for The Poll Bludger on October 22 that there are two key measures where Biden is doing far better than Clinton. First, Biden is over 50% in national polls, which Clinton never achieved. Second, he has a net positive favourability rating, whereas both Clinton and Trump were very unpopular in 2016.

The US election results will come through on Wednesday from 10am AEDT. You can read my wrap for The Poll Bludger of when polls close in the key states and results are expected. A key early results state is Florida; most polls close at 11am AEDT, but the very right-wing Panhandle closes an hour later.

In the FiveThirtyEight Classic Senate forecast, Democrats now have a 79% chance to win control. The most likely outcome is a 52-48 Democratic majority. The 80% confidence range is 48 to 56 Democratic seats.

Labor set for increased Queensland majority

With 68% of enrolled voters counted at Saturday’s Queensland election, the ABC is calling Labor wins in 50 of the 93 seats. The LNP has won 30 seats, all Others seven, and six seats are in doubt. Labor won 48 seats at the 2017 election, so they have already improved on that.

Current statewide primary votes are 40.2% Labor (up 4.8% since 2017), 35.8% LNP (up 2.1%), 9.0% Greens (down 1.0%), 7.0% One Nation (down 6.8%), 2.6% Katter’s Australian Party (up 0.3%) and a paltry 0.6% for Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party.

In Saturday night’s article, I wrote that the Greens could win four seats. They won Maiwar and South Brisbane, and appeared to have good chances in Cooper and McConnel. However, postal counting has pushed the Greens into third in both Cooper and McConnel, and they are now too far behind the LNP in both seats to realistically hope to overtake. Labor will win these seats on Greens preferences.

– ref. Biden remains strong favourite for US election; Queensland Labor set for increased majority – https://theconversation.com/biden-remains-strong-favourite-for-us-election-queensland-labor-set-for-increased-majority-148001

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Breunig, Professor of Economics and Director, Tax and Transfer Policy Institute, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

Polls point to a decisive defeat for Donald Trump. But his unexpected win in 2016 still has opponents rattled, fearing the same divisive rhetoric that characterised his 2016 campaign could help him scrape home.

The US has not been so divided by politics, religion and identity in decades. Particularly troubling are the nation’s inflamed ethnic divisions.

Overall, polls show a majority of voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of “race relations”.

But now, as in 2016, what matters is the view of voters in the “rust-belt” states of Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvannia, which all swung to Trump in 2016 on the back of strong support from white working-class voters.

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

Trump’s success depended on personal economic concerns being pipped by “racialised economics”, argue politics professors John Sides, Michael Tesler and Lynn Vavreck in their influential 2018 book Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America:

By racialised economics they mean the important sentiment underlying Trump’s support was not “I might lose my job” but “people in my group are losing jobs to that other group”. Individualised economic anxiety was replaced by group fears and perceived grievances.

Our more recent research, using a nationally representative sample of nearly 500,000 Americans, largely supports this contention. It also suggests that behind the appeal of this ethnic identity politics hide deeper issues of social disconnectedness.

With Trump’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic dominating 2020, and an opponent who isn’t Hillary Clinton, the dog whistling to white voters looks unlikely to work as it did four years ago.

But the problems Trump has weaponised won’t be defused merely by his defeat.

For Biden to make good on his promise to heal the nation’s divisions, he will need to address the social disconnection providing fertile conditions for racialised economics.

The psychology driving racial animus

To analyse the significance of racialised economics in the US, we combined county-level data on economic indicators with individual-level well-being and socioeconomic data. Our primary data source was nearly 500,000 observations from the US Gallup Daily Poll (which has polled 500 American adults every day since 2008). Our data set covered the period 2014 to 2018.

The key things we wanted to analyse from this information were measures of “relatedness”, “social capital” and “worry”, cross-relating these with “racial animus” and voting preference.

Relatedness reflects personal security and fulfilment from social connection. It is measured through responses to questions such as “I cannot imagine living in a better community”, “The area where I live is perfect for me” and “my friends and family give me energy every day”.

Social capital is also about connectedness, but to do with community cohesion rather than the personal experience of relationships. It is measured through things like the extent to which people know their neighbours and participate in community activities. Such connections have declined precipitously over the past 50 years. In particular, the share of adults who say most people can be trusted has fallen from 46% in the 1970s to 31%.

Worry is measured by a simple question of whether people experienced worry yesterday.

Racial animus means racial prejudice. We measure it at a county level using Google searches involving racist key words.

Read more: Racism has long shaped US presidential elections. Here’s how it might play out in 2020

High anxiety, low relatedness

Just as other researchers have found, our county-level results show a correlation between racial animus and Trump’s support in both the 2016 Republican primary race and the presidential election.

More importantly, they also show Trump’s support correlated with relatively high rates of anxiety and relatively low levels of relatedness – and that higher relatedness would have been enough to negate the effect of racial animus.

This suggests people lacking a sense of relatedness in their own environment look to higher-level connections like patriotism and ethnic identity.

That conclusion is supported by social psychology experiments showing that stoking anxiety leads to exaggerated loyalty to an in-group and disdain for other groups.

As cognitive scientist Colin Holbrook and his colleages explain:

Indeed, numerous studies have found that initially conscious reminders of threats that do not subsequently arouse conscious distress engender a form of evaluation bias termed worldview defence – the polarisation of ratings for pleasant and against aversive cultural attitudes.

Read more: 5 reasons not to underestimate far-right extremists

Diversity and social capital

None of this is to suggest declining connectedness and heightened anxiety is the only reason people voted for Trump. The rural communities of “heartland America” that are traditionally majority Republican typically have high social capital (through church affiliations and the like).

But in the key swing “rust-belt” states – constituencies to whom Trump promised to bring back manufacturing and mining jobs – our research suggests worry and anxiety channelled into ethnic group identification was the decisive factor. These areas showed the lowest rates of relatedness in the US.

How anxiety and the need for relatedness lead to racial voting

As he desperately tries to repeat his 2016 success, Trump’s “greatest hits” campaign has again sought to stoke the group fears of white voters.

His campaign has made some effort to suggest he has ethnically diverse supporters, but this is largely seen as as attempt to assure white women he isn’t a racist.

On the other hand, he has flubbed repeated opportunities to condemn white nationalism, defended Confederate statues, demonised the Black Lives Matter movement and made unsubtle statements about protecting suburbanites from “low-income housing”.

Such rhetoric, though, has been overtaken by events – namely Trump’s dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and failure to deliver a health-care plan. His other key strengths in 2106 – his appeal as an “outsider”, his promise to “drain the swamp”, his apparent unfiltered “candour”, and his assurances he would fix everything – are no longer so compelling.

But though Biden may well win the rustbelt states, these communities remain economically and cultural insecure, with thinning social capital. Their vulnerability to racial rhetoric remains.

To fulfil his promise to unite America, therefore, a Biden administration will need to address the underlying issues of low social capital and connectedness.

– ref. Hijacking anxiety: how Trump weaponised social alienation into ‘racialised economics’ – https://theconversation.com/hijacking-anxiety-how-trump-weaponised-social-alienation-into-racialised-economics-147366

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Holden, Senior Lecturer in Dental Ethics, University of Sydney

If your dentist recommends a crown, your wisdom teeth extracted, or some other common treatment, you may wonder whether it’s really necessary.

We don’t know how common such over-servicing is. However, our research, which includes interviews with Australian dentists in private practice, published today, shows it is an issue.

Not only is this a problem for patients, some dentists say they feel pressured to recommend unnecessary treatments. And the way dentists are paid for their services actually encourages it.

Read more: How often should I get my teeth cleaned?

What is over-servicing in dentistry?

Over-servicing can occur in many types of health care, with various definitions. But in dentistry, our research defines over-servicing as when dental treatments are provided over and above what’s clinically justified, or where there is no justification for that care at all.

Over-servicing in dentistry is reported internationally and discussed online.

And we’ve known about it in Australia for some time. In 2012, a Sydney dentist went to court and was fined more than A$1.7 million for performing almost $75,000 worth of treatment on one patient, knowing it was unnecessary and would be ineffective.

In 2013, another Sydney dentist was found guilty of over-servicing elderly nursing home patients, some of whom had dementia. He filed down their teeth to fit them for crowns they did not need, without anaesthesia.

However, over-servicing can be less extreme than revealed in these landmark court cases. Dentists we interviewed said they often felt pressured to over-service as part of their day-to-day practice.

Read more: Five commonly over-diagnosed conditions and what we can do about them

What we found

We analysed interviews with, and diary entries from, 20 Australian dentists working in private practice, the first study of its kind to include their perspectives on over-servicing.

Most dentists we interviewed had felt pressure to provide unnecessary care. Pressure came from practice owners, or their own need to meet financial commitments.

They spoke about a culture in some practices of “finding treatment” to do, rather than simply treating the issues patients had:

I quit my first job because they were overly commercial and I figured that out about two weeks in because there it was very much a matter of, “how many crowns are you doing per week? We expect our clinicians to be doing at least a crown a day” and there was no real care factor towards, what does the patient actually need? It was very much a matter of, “Okay, you’re seeing a new patient, see if you can get this much revenue out of that one”.

Why does this happen?

Most private dentists in Australia earn their wage linked to how much treatment they provide. So this fee-for-service model provides an incentive for them to provide more treatment, rather than less.

However, over-servicing isn’t inevitable. Some participants said their professional identities as dentists helped them place patients before profit:

Look, I’d always put my professionalism first. There’s been a couple of times when I’ve recommended a crown and I sort of thought “OK, am I doing this because the crown is a high-end item or because I really believe it’s the best thing for the patient?”, and I always go with what I believe is the best thing for the patient.

The dentists we spoke to also said they spent a lot of time considering how they managed patient care in a system inherently skewed to promote over-servicing.

So what happens when you shift away from purely a fee-for-service model? This might include a monthly fee for having a patient registered with a practice or service, as trialled in the United Kingdom.

The amount of clinical treatment reduced, with patients noting little change in the service they received.

Read more: Two million Aussies delay or don’t go to the dentist – here’s how we can fix that

How do we tackle this?

We could address the culture of over-servicing by changing the way dentists are paid, away from a pure fee-for-service model. Payments could be linked to measurable improvements in oral health, rather than purely just how much dentists do.

However, with fee-for-service being so entrenched in Australian dentistry, we admit this would be a difficult task, despite the increased awareness of the topic that research like ours brings.

Read more: 50 shades whiter: what you should know about teeth whitening

What if I’m not sure I need a recommended treatment?

If you’re not sure why your dentist is recommending a certain treatment, ask. You can also ask about the pros and cons of other options, including doing nothing for now and keeping an eye on things.

If you’re not satisfied with the answer, you can ask for a second opinion. One thing to consider is that you’ll need to ask your dentist for a copy of your clinical records and x-rays (to avoid these needing to be taken again). And if visiting another dentist, you probably will need to pay for another consultation.

If you’re unhappy with your care, the best place to complain to first is your treating clinician; dentists really value receiving feedback and the opportunity to put things right.

Read more: Patients have rights. Here’s how to use yours

– ref. Do I really need this crown? Dentists admit feeling pressured to offer unnecessary treatments – https://theconversation.com/do-i-really-need-this-crown-dentists-admit-feeling-pressured-to-offer-unnecessary-treatments-148638

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bruce Isaacs, Associate Professor, Film Studies, University of Sydney

What makes a film a classic? In this video series, film scholar Bruce Isaacs looks at a classic film and analyses its brilliance. (Warning: this video contains violence and may be upsetting for some viewers.)

Hollywood has a century-long tradition of political narratives, such as Oliver Stone’s 1991 film JFK. So how do you create a concise political history in cinematic form?

It starts with a staccato drum tattoo and moves into a swelling string movement. The voices of leaders rise from the depths of the past as the director of Salvador, Platoon and Wall Street builds a complex mosaic of American history. The images and sounds masquerade as factual account — but this is anything but objective. It’s creative storytelling using historical bits and pieces as building blocks.

See more video analysis of great movie scenes here.

Thanks to Shelagh Stanton (Digital Media, University of Sydney) for editing and mixing the audio.

– ref. The great movies scenes: in JFK’s opening montage Oliver Stone gets creative with history – https://theconversation.com/the-great-movies-scenes-in-jfks-opening-montage-oliver-stone-gets-creative-with-history-146920

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matt Fitzpatrick, Associate Professor in International History, Flinders University

After a summer of relative freedom of movement, autumn has brought a major spike in COVID-19 cases in many European countries. While the European Union fruitlessly searches for a united way forward across its various jurisdictions, national and regional initiatives are trying to solve the conundrum of how to contain and reverse the spread of the virus without having a significant impact on the economy.

Europe is not alone in its suffering – much of the northern hemisphere is dealing with spiralling infection rates as the autumn turns to a long winter. In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced a month-long lockdown as cases pass the 1 million mark; in the United States, a third wave of COVID is well underway, with the country recording a grim record of 100,000 new cases in a single day.

As France’s President Emmanuel Macron has admitted, the virus has spread through Europe “at a speed that even the most pessimistic predictions didn’t foresee”.

He has branded his new lockdown proposals a “brutal” brake on the virus, but compared with the determined measures undertaken in Victoria, it is a half-measure that stands little chance of eradicating or even suppressing the virus. Schools, shops and many businesses outside the hospitality and entertainment sector will remain open; so too will nursing homes. Travel to and from work will continue and exercise within 1 kilometre of home for up to an hour will also be permitted.

Given the fractious tone of contemporary politics in France, this is probably as far as Macron can go. Whether the French public, already deeply divided, will accept the measures is uncertain. His attempt to divert attention away from the health crisis by opportunistically courting a culture war with France’s Muslim citizens and the rest of the Islamic world has already had devastating consequences.

Read more: For French Muslims, every terror attack brings questions about their loyalty to the republic

Should it fall to police to force compliance in the absence of goodwill, protests will quickly sprout, as they have in the Czech Republic, where far-right elements presenting themselves as anti-mask protesters have clashed with police on the streets of Prague.

Germany, which had until recently been spared the higher infection rates of its neighbours, is now also heading on the same trajectory. Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned Germans the exponential growth of infections has left governments no choice but to implement dampening measures to begin on November 2.

Described as a “soft lockdown”, these measures, like those proposed in France by Macron, ban visits to bars, restaurants, clubs and pubs, but allow schools, shops and places of worship to stay open.

Candidly, Merkel has confessed she would have preferred to have undertaken these measures a fortnight ago, but felt they were simply politically unacceptable then. To her mind, the lag was not ideal. “That’s politics,” she admitted.

Her pessimism might be well founded. Many in Germany’s hospitality and entertainment industries already feel that, while much of society remains open, they have been made to play the part of the sacrificial lamb.

On the noisy margins, Germany’s Qanon-adjacent Querdenker movement insists any measure to stop people dying from COVID constitutes an egregious limitation to their personal liberty.

In typically opportunistic fashion, the right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD) has also heckled Merkel as she brought the measures before the Bundestag.

The party refused to support Merkel’s argument that it is only through “reason and social solidarity” that the virus can be brought back under control. Instead, like populist right-wing elements the world over, they implausibly argue Merkel is implementing a “corona dictatorship”.

With the entire European project predicated on freedom of movement – something accentuated in the debates over Brexit, the Australian approach of simply closing Europe’s internal borders, or even regional borders, has not generally been embraced.

Only Spain has moved rapidly in this direction, halting domestic travel as part of its extension of “state of alarm” measures. Here too, such measures have been met with protests.

As the state most committed to freedom of movement across the European Union, Germany has explicitly warned against such restrictions. Merkel told the EU:

…it is especially important for Germany as a country in the middle of Europe that the borders stay open, that there is a functioning economic circulation and that we fight the pandemic together.

However, it is unlikely the EU can or will move as one on border lockdowns, or indeed any other COVID measure.

The question of mobility is a vexed one for the EU and one where history is more deceptive than illuminating. The Spanish flu model, that many are using to understand the current phases of the pandemic, is not appropriate. Spanish flu was in part accelerated by the global movement of people accompanying demobilisation at the end of the first world war. Unlike then, a “return to normal” today does not mean a return to a condition of global immobility. Now, particularly in Europe, a return to normal means a return to hyper-mobility.

Read more: Europe’s second wave is worse than the first. What went so wrong, and what can it learn from countries like Vietnam?

In the absence of a vaccine, how societies respond to both the virus and governments’ attempts to mitigate its effects will matter greatly. As elsewhere, in Europe the pandemic has tested the strength of social solidarity. If there is a strong social conviction that the health of the individual is best protected by preserving the health of all, then governments merely have to offer a set of guidelines on how to put this instinct into practice.

This was to some extent the experience of the first set of lockdowns in the European spring. This time, however, the libertarian far right is far more organised. They see any limitation to personal freedom to ensure community safety as intolerable tyranny. Compounding this is the fact many Europeans are wary of their governments’ poor track records in fostering meaningful social cohesion.

Without community acceptance of government initiatives, the question shifts from organising communities’ desire to protect their vulnerable members to one of police-led enforcement. It is potentially a blunt and alienating approach that erodes whatever goodwill remains.

Europe’s coming winter will test not only the resilience of its health system, but the strength of its social fabric.

– ref. As COVID rampages through Europe, it will test not just health systems but social cohesion – https://theconversation.com/as-covid-rampages-through-europe-it-will-test-not-just-health-systems-but-social-cohesion-149074

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alice Gorman, Associate Professor in Archaeology and Space Studies, Flinders University

November 2 marks 20 years since the first residents arrived on the International Space Station (ISS). The orbiting habitat has been continuously occupied ever since.

Twenty straight years of life in space makes the ISS the ideal “natural laboratory” to understand how societies function beyond Earth.

The ISS is a collaboration between 25 space agencies and organisations. It has hosted 241 crew and a few tourists from 19 countries. This is 43% of all the people who have ever travelled in space.

Read more: Explainer: the International Space Station

As future missions to the Moon and Mars are planned, it’s important to know what people need to thrive in remote, dangerous and enclosed environments, where there is no easy way back home.

A brief history of orbital habitats

The first fictional space station was Edward Everett Hale’s 1869 “Brick Moon”. Inside were 13 spherical living chambers.

In 1929, Hermann Noordung theorised a wheel-shaped space station that would spin to create “artificial” gravity. The spinning wheel was championed by rocket scientist Wernher von Braun in the 1950s and featured in the classic 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Instead of spheres or wheels, real space stations turned out to be cylinders.

The first space station was the USSR’s Salyut 1 in 1971, followed by another six stations in the Salyut programme over the next decade. The USA launched its first space station, Skylab, in 1973. All of these were tube-shaped structures.

The Soviet station Mir, launched in 1986, was the first to be built with a core to which other modules were added later. Mir was still in orbit when the first modules of the International Space Station were launched in 1998.

Mir was brought down in 2001, and broke up as it plummeted through the atmosphere. What survived likely ended up under 5000 meters of water at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

The ISS now consists of 16 modules: four Russian, nine US, two Japanese, and one European. It’s the size of a five-bedroom house on the inside, with six regular crew serving for six months at a time.

Read more: Space invasions: what to do when stuff falls from the sky

Adapting to space

Yuri Gagarin’s voyage around Earth in 1961 proved humans could survive in space. Actually living in space was another matter.

Contemporary space stations don’t spin to provide gravity. There is no up or down. If you let go of an object, it will float away. Everyday activities like drinking or washing require planning.

Spots of “gravity” occur throughout the space station, in the form of hand or footholds, straps, clips, and Velcro dots to secure people and objects.

In the Russian modules, surfaces facing towards Earth (“down”) are coloured olive-green while walls and surfaces facing away from Earth (“up”) are beige. This helps crew to orient themselves.

Colour is important in other ways, too. Skylab, for example, was so lacking in colour that astronauts broke the monotony by staring at the coloured cards used to calibrate their video cameras.

In movies, space stations are often sleek and clean. The reality is vastly different.

The ISS is smelly, noisy, messy, and awash in shed skin cells and crumbs. It’s like a terrible share house, except you can’t leave, you have to work all the time and no-one gets a good night’s sleep.

There are some perks, however. The Cupola module offers perhaps the best view available to humans anywhere: a 180-degree panorama of Earth passing by below.

‘A microsociety in a miniworld’

The crew use all kinds of objects to express their identities in this miniworld, as space habitats were called in a 1972 report. Unused wall space becomes like your refrigerator door, covered with items of personal and group significance.

In the Zvezda module, Orthodox icons and pictures of space heroes like Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Gagarin create a sense of belonging and connection to home.

Food plays a huge role in bonding. Rituals of sharing food, celebrating holidays and birthdays, help form camaraderie between crew of different national and cultural backgrounds.

It’s not all plain sailing. In 2009, toilets briefly became a source of international conflict when decisions on the ground meant Russian crew were forbidden to use the US toilets and exercise equipment.

In this “microsociety”, technology isn’t only about function. It plays a role in social cohesion.

The future of living in space

The ISS is massively expensive to run. NASA’s costs alone are US$3-4 billion a year, and many argue it’s not worth it. Without more commercial investment, ISS may be de-orbited in 2028 and sent to the ocean floor to join Mir.

The next stage in space-station life is likely to occur in orbit around the Moon. The Lunar Gateway project, planned by a group of space agencies led by NASA, will be smaller than the ISS. Crews will live on board for up to a month at a time.

Its modules, based on the design of the ISS, are due to be launched into lunar orbit in the next decade.

One preliminary habitat design for the Lunar Gateway has four expandable crew cabins, to give people a little more space. But the sleeping, exercise, latrine, and eating areas are all much closer together.

Read more: Living in a bubble: inflatable modules could be the future of space habitats

Since ISS crews like to create improvised visual displays, we might suggest including spaces reserved for such displays in next-generation habitats.

In popular culture, the ISS has become Santa’s sleigh. In recent years, parents around the world have taken their children outside on Christmas Eve to spot the ISS passing overhead.

The ISS has shaped the space culture of the 20th and 21st centuries, symbolising international cooperation after the Cold War. It still has much to teach us about how to live in space.

– ref. How to live in space: what we’ve learned from 20 years of the International Space Station – https://theconversation.com/how-to-live-in-space-what-weve-learned-from-20-years-of-the-international-space-station-144851

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Duncan McDonnell, Professor, School of Government and International Relations, Griffith University

According to a formal measure of language simplicity, United States President Donald Trump’s acceptance speech at this year’s Republican National Convention was far more complex than challenger Joe Biden’s at the Democratic Convention.

While Biden’s speech could be understood by a fifth grader, Trump’s required an eighth-grade level of education.

Surprised? After years of stories about how Trump uses much simpler language than his rivals, you should be.

During the last campaign, we read numerous accounts of how Trump’s language was pitched low — at a child’s level.

Or, as The Boston Globe gleefully proclaimed, his 2015 announcement speech “could have been comprehended by a fourth-grader”. By contrast, the announcement speeches of other candidates, such as Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio scored several grades higher.

Those reports were easily believable to experts. Trump is a right-wing populist and academics have long asserted populist leaders use simple language in order to appear close to the “common people” and distance themselves from linguistically convoluted elites.

But as our new research shows, when you look at a comprehensive sample of populist leaders’ speeches, this is not always the case.

Researching the simplicity of leaders’ language

To investigate whether right-wing populists in different countries really do use simpler language than mainstream ones, we assembled a database of more than one million words. This was made up of speeches by populist leaders and their non-populist opponents in the United States, Italy, France, and the United Kingdom.

Looking at the simplicity of a single text, as the media had done with Trump’s 2015 announcement speech, makes for a good headline, but you need far more than that to make sound judgements about someone’s language.

For each populist and non-populist leader, we analysed at least 100,000 words (per leader) from their speeches over a given period of time, using an array of measures for evaluating linguistic simplicity.

These included Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level and Readability Tests for English, along with similar scales for Italian and French. Using these measures to assess simplicity is based on the idea that, the greater the presence of shorter words and sentences, the easier a text is to understand.

We also measured lexical density (the number of words conveying meaning), lexical richness (the number of different words), and the presence of words considered difficult in each language.

Our right-wing populists were the most prominent ones from their respective countries over the past decade: Trump, Matteo Salvini (leader of the League, one of Italy’s major parties), Nigel Farage (former leader of the UK Independence Party), and Marine Le Pen (France’s far-right presidential candidate).

Read more: Trump has changed America by making everything about politics, and politics all about himself

The mainstream leaders we used for comparison were their key opponents. For Trump and Le Pen, we chose their principal rivals in the last presidential campaigns, Clinton and French President Emmanuel Macron. In the UK and Italy, we compared Farage and Salvini to the main centre-right and centre-left leaders in those countries during the 2014-2016 period.

Surprising results

Our results were not what we expected.

First, the gap between Trump and Clinton in the 2016 campaign was actually not very wide. Trump’s speeches were pitched at a level comprehensible to a sixth grader, while Clinton’s required a seventh-grade level of education. On our other measures, there was little difference between the two.

In Italy, UK, and France, the results were even more surprising.

In Italy, the college dropout Salvini was only simpler on one of our measures than his opponents, law graduates, Democratic Party leader Matteo Renzi and New Center-Right leader Angelino Alfano.

Read more: Has the coronavirus proved a crisis too far for Europe’s far-right outsiders?

In the United Kingdom, it was Oxford graduate and Labour Party leader Ed Miliband who came out simplest, not Farage. The main reason for Farage’s greater complexity was the length of his sentences compared to both Miliband and former prime minister and Conservative Party leader, David Cameron. While Miliband’s sentences were on average 13.99 words long, and Cameron’s 15.49, Farage’s were a remarkable 24.61.

Meanwhile, in France, we found Le Pen consistently used much more complex language than the product of France’s elite Ecole Nationale d’Administration, Macron. According to the Kandel and Moles index for assessing the simplicity of French, Le Pen’s speeches were rated “difficult”, while Macron’s were “standard”. Her language was also significantly more complex according to all our other measures.

Why do populist leaders use more complex language?

How do we explain these counterintuitive results?

One possibility is that, since studies have shown the language of mainstream political leaders in countries like the US and Italy has become simpler over time, it could be that the gap between elite and populist language has reduced, thus making claims about greater populist simplicity outdated.

In other words, perhaps mainstream leaders like Clinton and Biden have moved closer to the populist Trump’s level (and sometimes even below).

Another, related, possibility is that, at the same time as mainstream politicians have followed the advice of professional communications advisers and reduced the complexity of their speeches, right-wing populists in some countries have instead chosen to appear less coached and more authentic.

For example, Farage’s long rambling sentences make his language more complex, but also add to his “man holding court in the pub” image. Similarly, as a French nationalist who opposes globalisation and its alleged cultural homogenising effects, Le Pen may see an advantage in not imitating English-speaking political language trends that, by contrast, Macron has embraced.

Opting for national rhetorical traditions as opposed to slogan-based communication techniques derived from the US model might thus be useful for right-wing populist leaders in Europe.

Mind the bias

If right-wing populists do not necessarily use simpler language than their mainstream opponents, it begs the question: why were we so easily convinced they do?

Read more: COVID won’t kill populism, even though populist leaders have handled the crisis badly

Perhaps the answer is many of us like to think right-wing populists speak like fourth graders and their “deplorable” supporters lap it up. It fits our biases to believe populists like Trump are successful because they cynically deliver their message in much simpler language than mainstream politicians like Biden.

Our research shows, however, despite this convenient and even comforting idea, the reality is much more complex.

– ref. We compared the language of populist leaders with their mainstream opponents — the results were unexpected – https://theconversation.com/we-compared-the-language-of-populist-leaders-with-their-mainstream-opponents-the-results-were-unexpected-148343

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Regina Scheyvens, Professor of Development Studies, Massey University

Tourism in the South Pacific has been hit hard by COVID-19 border closures with thousands of people out of work.

Tourism normally provides one in four jobs in Vanuatu and one in three jobs in Cook Islands. It contributes between 20% and 70% of the GDP of countries spanning from Samoa and Vanuatu to Fiji and Cook Islands.

But our research shows how people are surviving – and in some cases, thriving – in the face of significant loss of income.

This is due in part to their reliance on customary knowledge, systems and practices.

Islands impacted by border closures

The research involved an online survey completed by 106 people, along with interviews in six tourism-dependent locations across five countries.

Research associates based in these countries did interviews in places such as villages next to resorts, or communities that regularly provided cultural tours for cruise ship passengers.

Read more: Pacific Islands must stop relying on foreign aid to adapt to climate change, because the money won’t last

They spoke with former and current tourism workers, community members and business owners who reflected on how they had adapted and what they hoped the future would hold.

Almost 90% of survey respondents lived in households facing significant reductions in income. Owners of tourism-related businesses faced particular financial strain, with 85% of them saying they lost three-quarters or more of their usual income.

But people showed considerable adaptive capacities and resilience in devising a range of strategies to meet their needs in the face of this dramatic loss of earnings.

More than half the respondents were growing food for their families. Many were also fishing. People talked about using the natural abundance of the land and sea to provide food.

One person from Rarotonga, part of the Cook Islands, said “no one is going hungry” and this was due to a number of factors:

1. people had access to customary land on which to grow food

2. traditional systems meant neighbours, clan members and church communities helped to provide for those who were more vulnerable

3. there was still sufficient knowledge within communities to teach younger members who had lost jobs how to grow food and fish.

One young man from Samoa, who had lost his job in a hotel, said:

Like our family, everyone else has gone back to the land … I’ve had to relearn skills that have been not been used for years, skills in planting and especially in fishing … I am very happy with the plantation of mixed crops I have now and feeling confident we will be OK moving forward in these times of uncertainty.

Alternative livelihood options

People also engaged in a wide range of initiatives to earn cash, from selling products from their farms (fruit, root crops, other vegetables, cocoa, pigs and chickens) and the sea (a wide range of fish and shellfish) to starting small businesses.

Examples included planting flowers to sell in bunches along the roadside, making doughnuts to take to the market, or offering sewing, yard maintenance or hair-cutting services.

Goods and services were also bartered, rather than exchanged for cash.

Sometimes social groups banded together to encourage one another in activities that earned an income. For example, a youth group near the resort island of Denarau, in Fiji, gained a contract to provide weekly catering for a rugby club.

When times are hard, it’s not all bad

Our study also examined four aspects of well-being: mental, financial, social and physical. Understandably, there was a clear decline in financial well-being. This was sometimes associated with greater stress and conflict within households.

As one Cook Islands man said:

There’s so many people in the house that we’re fighting over who’s going to pay for this, who’s going to pay for that.

But the impacts on social, mental and physical well-being were mixed, with quite a number of people showing improvements.

Many people were effusive in their responses when talking about how they now had more time with family, especially children. This was particularly the case for women who had previously worked long hours in the tourism sector. As one said:

I feel staying (at home) during this pandemic has really helped a lot, especially with my kids. Now everything is in order. The spending of quality time with my family has been excellent and awesome.

Others expressed satisfaction they had more time for meeting religious and cultural obligations. As one said, “everyone is more connected now”, and people had more time to look after others in the community:

Extended family harmony has improved, particularly with checking welfare of others who may need help during this time.

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

Business owners appreciated the chance to “rest and recharge”. As one Fijian business owner said:

This break has given us a new breath of life. We have since analysed and pondered on what are the most important things in life apart from money. We have strengthened our relationships with friends and family, worked together, laughed and enjoyed each other’s company.

These early research findings suggest customary systems are effectively supporting people’s resilience and well-being in the Pacific. A Pacific ethos of caring, respect, social and ecological custodianship and togetherness has softened the harsh blow of the COVID-19-induced economic slowdown.

– ref. Traditional skills help people on the tourism-deprived Pacific Islands survive the pandemic – https://theconversation.com/traditional-skills-help-people-on-the-tourism-deprived-pacific-islands-survive-the-pandemic-148987

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amelia Hyatt, Senior Researcher, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre

As you fire up your computer for a telehealth appointment, or prepare to walk in to see your doctor, you may be wondering whether to record your appointment. You might even think about doing it without asking permission first.

But recording without permission might be illegal depending on where you live, according to our latest research, published today.

And there may be repercussions for you and your health-care professional.

Read more: Video and phone consultations only scratch the surface of what telehealth has to offer

Why record a consultation?

When feeling unwell, or overwhelmed with a new diagnosis, it can be hard to take in and remember important health information your health-care practitioner provides.

Recording your appointments can help. It can help you recall and understand what you discussed. You can also share information about your diagnosis or ongoing care with family and friends.

Many health professionals support the idea of their patients recording their appointments.

Read more: Missed something the doctor said? Recording your appointments gives you a chance to go back

Can technology help?

In the past few years there has been increasing interest in using digital technology to help people record their health-care consultations.

In Australia, we developed the SecondEars smartphone app at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre to allow people diagnosed with cancer to record on their phone, with back-up copies sent directly to their health service for storage.

In the United States and Europe, health services and clinics are developing in-house recording software and technology.

Most smartphones also have basic recording software that lets you record with or without asking your health professional. And amid the boom in telehealth due to COVID-19, it’s worth remembering videoconferencing software (such as Zoom) also has built-in recording functions.

What happens if I record?

Imagine you are going to record without telling your doctor, nurse or other health-care professional, or plan on sharing the recording later with other people. What does the law say?

We found this differs in each part of Australia, depending on where you are when you create or share the recording. The law doesn’t differ by the type of recording; audio and video are treated the same.

In some jurisdictions (Victoria, Queensland, NT, NSW, ACT and Tasmania) patients don’t need permission to record their appointment with a doctor, nurse or other health professional if the recording is just for their own use. So, if you want to record to remember what the doctor told you about upcoming surgery or how to take your medicines, you can, even without asking first.

In SA and WA, you usually need the health professional’s consent before recording.

In these states, a person who makes a covert recording for their own use can even face a fine or prison term (for example, in SA, there are fines of up to A$15,000 or prison for up to three years).

Can I share the recording?

Sharing a recording with others — whether this is in person or online — is subject to other rules. The health professional’s consent is sometimes needed for this even if it wasn’t needed for the recording in the first place.

However, in Queensland, Tasmania, NSW, SA and the ACT, as long as the original recording was done within the rules, you don’t need to ask for consent to share it just with family or close friends.

Sharing it more widely is another matter. Only in NSW and SA can you do this without the health professional’s consent (as long as the original recording was lawful).

While the law is messy, we think the overall answer is clear. Even if you don’t need your health professional’s permission to record your consultation, it is best to tell them you want to.

What if I ask and the doctor says ‘no’?

Some health-care professionals and organisations might be concerned you might share recordings on social media, or use them as a basis for a complaint.

The indemnity insurer MIPS tells its doctors that if the idea of recording makes them uncomfortable, they have the option to decline it. But we argue saying “no” to a patient’s reasonable request to record the consultation might harm the doctor-patient relationship, by eroding patient trust and confidence.

If you want to record your medical appointment, it could be worth talking with your doctor about how the recording could help you take better care of your health, and telling them what you intend to do with it.

You could also point out that advice in the United Kingdom suggests recordings can actually support doctors where there are legal disputes.

In one US institution, doctors who let their consultations be recorded get a discount for their indemnity insurance, because of the reduced risk of being sued for malpractice. It makes sense, because when there’s a recording, there is less chance of a disagreement arising over who said what.

Iron out any concerns early

Even if making or sharing a recording doesn’t break the law, doing so without everyone’s knowledge risks harming your relationship with your health-care professional, especially if they find out about it later.

Ultimately, a constructive dialogue between you and your health-care professional should iron out concerns on both sides. While it might feel challenging — and depending on where you are, the law might not require you to — it is usually best to ask for consent, so there are no surprises.

– ref. Want to record your doctor’s appointment? Great idea, but first, check it’s legal – https://theconversation.com/want-to-record-your-doctors-appointment-great-idea-but-first-check-its-legal-147747

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Olaf Meynecke, Research Fellow in Marine Science, Griffith University

Environmental scientists see flora, fauna and phenomena the rest of us rarely do. In this new series, we’ve invited them to share their unique photos from the field.

The start of November marks the end of the whale season in the Southern Hemisphere. As summer approaches, whales that were breeding along the east and west coasts of Australia, Africa and South America will now swim further south to feed around Antarctica.

This annual cycle of whales coming and going has taken place for at least 10,000 years. But rising ocean temperatures from climate change are challenging this process, and my colleagues and I have already seen signs that humpback whales are changing their feeding, migration and breeding patterns to adapt.

Read more: Genome and satellite technology reveal recovery rates and impacts of climate change on southern right whales

As krill stocks decline and ocean circulation is set to change more drastically, climate change remains an unprecedented threat to whales. The challenge now is to forecast what will happen next to better protect them.

Losing krill is the biggest threat

I’m part of an international team of researchers trying to learn what the next 100 years might look like for humpback whales in the Southern Hemisphere, and how they’ll adapt to changing ocean conditions.

Whales depend on recurring environmental conditions and oceanographic features, such as temperature, circulation, changing seasons and biogeochemical (nutrient) cycles. In particular, these features influence the availability of krill in the Southern Ocean, their biggest food source.

Whales are particularly sensitive to this because they need enormous amounts of food to develop sufficient fat reserves to migrate, give birth and nurse a calf, as they don’t eat during this time.

In fact, models predict declines in krill from climate change could lead to local extinctions of whales by 2100. This includes Pacific populations of blue, fin and southern right whales, as well as fin and humpback whales in the Atlantic and Indian oceans.

Read more: Climate change threatens Antarctic krill and the sea life that depends on it

Still, when it comes to their migration and breeding cycles, recent studies have shown humpback whales can adapt with changes in ocean temperature and circulation at a remarkable level.

Whales can adapt to warming water, but at what cost?

In a long term study from the Northern Hemisphere, scientists found the arrival of humpback whales in some feeding grounds shifted by one day per year over a 27-year period in response to small fluctuations in ocean temperatures.

This led to a one-month shift in arrival time, but a big concern is whether they can continue to time their arrival with their prey in the future when the water gets warmer still.

Likewise, in breeding grounds near Hawaii, the number of mother and calf humpback whale sightings dropped by more than 75% between 2013 and 2018. This coincided with persistent warming in the Alaskan feeding grounds these whales had migrated from.

But humpback whales shifting their distribution and behaviour can cause unexpected human encounters, and cause new challenges that weren’t an issue previously.

Research from earlier this year found humpback whales switched to fish as their main prey when the sea surface temperature in the California current system increased in a heatwave. This has been leading to record numbers of entanglements with gear from coastal fisheries.

Read more: I measure whales with drones to find out if they’re fat enough to breed

And between 2013 and 2016, we documented hundreds of newborn humpback whales in subtropical and temperate shallow bays on the east coast of Australia, 1,000 kilometres further south from their traditional breeding areas off the Great Barrier Reef.

However, since these aren’t designated calving areas, the newborns aren’t well protected from getting tangled in shark nets or colliding with jet skis or cruise ships.

Protecting whales

The Whales and Climate Program is the largest project of its kind, combining hundreds of thousands of humpback whale sightings and advanced modelling techniques. Our aim is to advance whale conservation in response to climate change, and learn how it threatens their recovery after decades of over-exploitation by the whaling industry.

Each whale season between June and October, I sail out to the open ocean. This means I have unique opportunities to see and engage with whales, especially during the breeding season. The following photos show some of our breathtaking encounters, and can remind us of our marine ecosystem’s fragile beauty.

During one of our boat-based surveys on the Gold Coast, we encountered this acrobatic humpback whale calf, shown in the photos above. We counted 254 breaches in two hours, making it the record holder of most breaches in our 10 years of observation.

To check on whales’ health, we collect and study the air they exhale through their blow hole (“whale snot”), and measure their size at different times of the year. The photo above shows me tagging a whale with CATs suction cup tags, to collect data on short term changes in their movement patterns.

In regions where the whales adapt to ocean changes and, as such, move closer to shore for feeding and shift their breeding grounds, there’s a higher risk of entanglements and other human encounters. This is particularly concerning when they travel outside protected areas.

Look closely and you can see a newborn humpback, just one to three days old, resting on its mother’s head.

In the first days of life, baby humpback whales sink easily and aren’t able to stay on the water surface for long. They need their mothers’ support to stay on the surface to breathe.

Once they’ve gained enough fat from the mothers milk they become positively buoyant (meaning they can float), making it easier for them to breathe.

A final note — during one of our land-based whale surveys this year, a keen whale watcher approached us, and we helped him find the whales with our binoculars. I will never forget the joy in his face when he spotted them.

It’s a joy I hope many future generations can experience. To ensure this, we need to understand how we can best protect whales in a changing climate.

Read more: Photos from the field: capturing the grandeur and heartbreak of Tasmania’s giant trees

– ref. Photos from the field: these magnificent whales are adapting to warming water, but how much can they take? – https://theconversation.com/photos-from-the-field-these-magnificent-whales-are-adapting-to-warming-water-but-how-much-can-they-take-148329

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Zlatko Skrbis, Provost, Australian Catholic University

We have been following more than 2,000 Queenslanders from their adolescence into adulthood. The aim of the Our Lives study is to investigate how young people think about their future and how they master their trajectories in a world of rapid change and uncertainty.

In 2006, our research team began tracking more than 7,000 students who began high school in Queensland at the age of 13. Since then, the study has become the largest and longest of school leavers in Australia post the global financial crisis. The cohort turns 27 this year.

Every two years, we survey this cohort about their developing aspirations and experiences in work, study, housing, relationships and family. We also explore changes in their social attitudes and mental and physical health.

We did a special survey in June 2020 in response to COVID-19. We wanted to understand how the cohort had been affected since the previous survey six months earlier, in late 2019.

Among our findings are a sharp decline in mental health between 2019 and June 2020, especially among respondents living in urban areas and those without secure work. Marriage or de facto partnerships seem to be a buffer against sharper declines seen in young people who are single or living with housemates.

A decline in mental well-being

At the age of 22, in 2015, 82% of respondents described their mental health as excellent, very good or good. This fell to 70% at the age of 26 in 2019 — a drop of three percentage points per year.

But, only six months into the next year 2020 (in June), this figure had already fallen by a further four percentage points, to 66%. These data suggest changes in the young people’s lives during the COVID-19 pandemic have accelerated the existing downward trend in their mental well-being.

How different demographics have fared

Research has indicated women are more adversely affected than men by recessions, both economically and psychologically.

In line with this, the female participants in our study displayed significantly worse mental health during COVID than their male counterparts. The proportion of 27 year old males who described their mental health as excellent, very good or good in June 2020 was 70.5% compared to 63.5% for females.

Read more: Young women are hit doubly hard by recessions, especially this one

Young adults living in major city areas, where COVID cases have largely been concentrated, experienced a decline in mental health — from 68.7% in 2019 to 62.2% in 2020. But the proportion of those living in rural areas actually rose from 70.9% in 2019 to 72.2% in 2020.

By their mid-twenties, a major gap emerged in the well-being of people with and without secure work. In 2015, when participants were 22 years old, 82.4% with permanent, ongoing work rated their mental health good to excellent, compared to 68.5% in 2020. The results were 77.6% in 2015 for those who were unemployed compared to 54.1% in 2020.

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Emergency welfare measures, such as the JobKeeper wage subsidy and increase to JobSeeker, may have temporarily prevented this gap from widening.

One of Australia’s top mental health experts, Professor Ian Hickie, has argued an extension to JobKeeper and greater financial support for students in post-school education and training are critical for mitigating the predicted surge in youth mental illness.

What about relationships?

Security in young adults’ housing and relationships appears to provide a key buffer against the negative psychological impacts of COVID-19. Our data show young adults living out of home, or with a partner (married or de facto) report substantially better mental health in June 2020 than those who are single and living with parents.

Young people in who were living with housemates during the COVID-19 period experienced the sharpest decline in positive mental health.

Social distancing took its toll on the Our Lives cohort during the national restriction period, with 39% reporting feelings of loneliness or isolation. There were also signs of strain and conflict in the young people’s relationships with those in their household.

Around one-quarter of the sample reported a lack of personal space or alone time, while 16% reported experiencing greater tension and conflict in the household. These outcomes increased young adults’ chances of experiencing a major decline in mental health during the lockdown period.

However, the effects of stay-at-home restrictions were not inherently negative. For many young adults, restrictions provided more time for themselves (38%) and encouraged stronger relationships with partners or family (33%). These outcomes were associated with significantly lower chances of a decline in mental health.

It’s vital young people have good access to youth mental health services in the months ahead so their mental health doesn’t continue to drastically decline. This is particularly the case for young people who may be less able to turn to parents, partners or friends for help.

Research has consistently found young people with mental health issues are the least likely to seek out mental health information and access professional help when they need it.

Read more: As ‘lockdown fatigue’ sets in, the toll on mental health will require an urgent response

There is hope that the collective experience of social distancing during COVID-19 may have helped reduce some of the stigma associated with seeking help. If this is the case, we must seize the opportunity to learn from the experience of the young people in our cohort and the Australians they represent.

For mental health, go to Lifeline Australia on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636

– ref. We’ve been tracking young people’s mental health since 2006. COVID has accelerated a worrying decline – https://theconversation.com/weve-been-tracking-young-peoples-mental-health-since-2006-covid-has-accelerated-a-worrying-decline-147657

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gary Mortimer, Professor of Marketing and Consumer Behaviour, Queensland University of Technology

The COVID-19 pandemic delivered a body blow to CBD retailers, but it’s just the latest of their challenges in recent years. They were already under pressure from cautious consumer spending, intense competition from online retailing and the growth of suburban “mega-centres”.

Now, declining commuter foot traffic and an increase in people working from home present new challenges for CBD retailers. Lockdowns, changing work practices and the need for social distancing have left some of Australia’s largest city centres at times resembling ghost towns.

Read more: How COVID all but killed the Australian CBD

Even as restrictions lift and CBDs reopen, it will not be business as normal.

Stores will shrink

Retailers that depend heavily on discretionary spending, for items such as clothing, footwear and accessories, have been hit particularly hard.

The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show clothing, footwear and personal accessory retailing fell 10.5% in August 2020, in seasonally adjusted terms. Department stores were down 8.9%.

Interestingly, despite an average decline in spending of -0.2% between 2015 and 2020, research by McKinsey in 2019 found clothing and footwear retailers increased their selling space by almost 2%.

Clothing, footwear and department store retailers are now expected to “right-size” their selling space. McKinsey predicts a floor-space reduction of more than 10% between now and 2024.

Read more: Retail won’t snap back. 3 reasons why COVID has changed the way we shop, perhaps forever

CBD-based department stores have fared worse than those in the suburbs. The Myer Annual Report 2020, for example, highlights the impact of COVID restrictions on CBD store sales. Despite reopening all stores (except Melbourne) by May 27, CBD store sales fell 33%, whereas suburban store sales contracted by only 9%, in the final seven weeks of the financial year. Myer reports: “Low foot traffic in CBDs expected to continue for the foreseeable future.”

Online shopping is surging

As COVID shut down cities, Australian shoppers moved online in increasing numbers. The NAB Online Sales Index estimates Australian consumers spent around $39.2 billion in the 12 months to August 2020. Online shopping now accounts for 11.5% of total retail sales in Australia.

Research from Australia Post shows over 8.1 million households shopped online between March and August this year — 900,000 of them for the first time. In cities around Australia, foot traffic has become web traffic.

We can clearly see the impacts of this on physical retailers. A number of major retail chains have closed, including Toys ‘R’ Us, Roger David, Esprit, Ed Harry, TopShop and GAP over the past few years.

CBD workers shift away from commuting

As an increasing share of people work from home and fewer commute to city centres, the long-term future of CBD retailing looks bleak because of the fall in demand.

This shift in behaviour is likely to be substantial, as transport expert David Hensher recently observed:

The evidence reinforces the fact that as we move through and beyond the COVID-19 period, we can expect commuting activity to decline by an average of 25-30% as both employers and employees see value in a work-from-home plan.

The ongoing health and economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the required physical distancing measures will force many firms to introduce telework (working from home) on a large scale.

In Australia, it has been estimated 39% of all jobs in Australia — 41%of full-time and almost 35% of part-time – can be done from home.

Read more: Fancy an e-change? How people are escaping city congestion and living costs by working remotely

CBD retailing relies on workers and visitors who use public transport. An August 2020 Transurban report found 84% of daily train users (77% of bus users) in Melbourne said they had reduced their use. Many said they did not expect to return to daily use even after the pandemic. Similar numbers were reported in Sydney and Brisbane.

COVID restrictions and declining commuter traffic have also had big impacts on the food and beverage market. According to IBISWorld, Australian restaurant revenue has fallen by 25%, from almost A$20 billion in 2018-19 to just A$15 billion in 2019-20. Cafe owners are equally feeling the impact, with fewer commuters grabbing their morning coffee and fewer coffee meetings happening around town.

Back to the future

With both commercial and residential rents remaining relatively stable outside CBD zones, and more people choosing to work from home, we can expect to see a growth in “localism”.

Shopping mall owners have invested heavily in refurbishing and increasing the floor space of their centres to provide retail, hospitality, entertainment, leisure and recreation activities under one roof. Somewhat ironically, these refurbished malls have even appropriated design elements of traditional high streets.

With many more people working from home during the pandemic there has been something of a retail inversion with more people shopping locally. There are clear signs of a resurgence in local shopping villages and high street retailing. There even appears to be a corner store revival of sorts.

Read more: More than milk and bread: corner store revival can rebuild neighbourhood ties

CBD-based retail is at a crossroads, especially in Melbourne and Sydney. Despite restrictions being lifted, the data indicate CDBs may never return to the “bustling metropolises” they once were.

The precarious state of the national economy, government plans to reduce subsidy payments, more people working from home, shopping locally and online, all point to a bumpy road ahead for CBD retailers.

Major questions are being raised about the future character and function of the CBD and, ultimately, about the structure of Australian cities more broadly.

– ref. The suburbs are the future of post-COVID retail – https://theconversation.com/the-suburbs-are-the-future-of-post-covid-retail-148802

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachel Ong ViforJ, Professor of Economics, School of Economics, Finance and Property, Curtin University

COVID has shown us what’s possible when it comes to alleviating poverty.

For six months JobSeeker payments were doubled and then maintained at a level 50% above normal.

When the bonus finishes at year end it is likely to be permanently increased for the first time in almost 30 years.

Commonwealth rent assistance could do with the same sort of attention.

Rent assistance is at present added on to other payments such as the pension and JobSeeker and is inadequate, with on our calculations one-third of the people who get it remaining in housing stress even when assisted, while around 18% of the low-income private renters who need it were excluded because they don’t receive one of the government payments to which it is tied.

Productivity Commission calculations suggest the number of private renters in housing stress has doubled over the past two decades, largely because rent assistance has failed to increase in line with rents.

Rent assistance is much lower than it should be

The Australian Council of Social Service wants a 30% in increase in the maximum rate of rental assistance. The Grattan Institute has called for a 40% increase.

Even the Productivity Commission wants a 15% increase to restore what’s been lost over the past decade.

The maximum rates paid are $69.80 per week for single person and $92.68 for a couple with three children.

As any renter knows only too well, these amounts represent only a fraction of the present cost of renting in most parts of Australia.

It’s also badly targeted

Our study for the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute finds that (in 2017) an extraordinary 23.4% of the renters who received Commonwealth rent assistance weren’t in housing stress. At the same time 17.5% of the renters in housing stress didn’t receive Commonwealth rent assistance.

These calculations were made using the standard definition of housing stress for low income earners which is rent that exceeds 30% of gross income.

We examined three options to better match payments to housing stress:

• raising the maximum rate of Commonwealth rent assistance by 30%

• re-balancing the rent thresholds to address higher levels of housing stress among households with no children

• changing the eligibility criteria to pay rent assistance to low-income private renters facing rents exceeding 30% of their income whether or not they were on other benefits

We found the first and second options would almost halve housing stress, cutting it from 848,500 households to 506,400 and 544,900.

The third option – extending rent assistance to all low income private renters and limiting it only to those fitting the standard definition of low income housing stress – would cut the number of households able to claim to 477,000.

We could cut rental stress and save money

The first option would cost $1 billion per year, the second would save $938 million and the third would save $1.2 billion.

That’s right, the best option would save money and would most accurately target payments to need.

But there’s a problem. Australia’s Constitution appears not to empower the federal government to make stand-alone rent assistance payments, which is why Commonwealth rent assistance is always tied to another payment.

Read more: Australia’s housing system needs a big shake-up: here’s how we can crack this

To pay it to a wider group of low-income households, the Commonwealth government would need to either get a new source of constitutional power or to get state governments to administer it for them (as they do with first home owner grants).

And there are other potential hurdles.

Rent assistance acts as a de facto subsidy to community housing providers. Changes potentially affecting their tenants would need to be made carefully.

And there’s concern that increases in rent assistance will be captured by landlords in higher rents – much as appears to happen for first home owner grants.

Most landlords won’t pocket increased assistance

Our research found that in most areas and under most conditions this “subsidy capture” or rent inflation effect won’t be statistically significant.

The exception is disadvantaged areas, where our modelling suggests that a significant proportion of increases in rent assistance payments do flow through into rents, almost 33 cents in each rent assistance dollar.

This is likely caused by relatively unresponsive housing supply in low-value parts of the market. However, even in these areas the “capture” effect is smaller than in similar studies overseas.

This is probably because in Australia rent assistance is paid to tenants, rather than directly to landlords.

Despite these challenges, there are clear benefits to pursuing reform of Commonwealth rent assistance.

Indeed, it ought to be possible to both lift more Australians out of housing stress and save money.

The money saved should be diverted to supporting a broader housing affordability agenda that includes increased investment in public and community housing and tenancy law reform that improves security and other conditions.

This is especially important in more disadvantaged locations where private rental providers are less responsive.

– ref. $1 billion per year (or less) could halve rental housing stress – https://theconversation.com/1-billion-per-year-or-less-could-halve-rental-housing-stress-146397

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bruce Isaacs, Associate Professor, Film Studies, University of Sydney

How do filmmakers communicate big ideas on screen? In this video series, film scholar Bruce Isaacs analyses pivotal film scenes in detail. (Warning: this video contains violence and may be upsetting for some viewers.)

Hollywood has a century-long tradition of political narratives, such as Oliver Stone’s 1991 film JFK. So how do you create a concise political history in cinematic form?

It starts with a staccato drum tattoo and moves into a swelling string movement. The voices of leaders rise from the depths of the past as the director of Salvador, Platoon and Wall Street builds a complex mosaic of American history. The images and sounds masquerade as factual account — but this is anything but objective. It’s creative storytelling using historical bits and pieces as building blocks.

See more video analysis of great movie scenes here.

Thanks to Shelagh Stanton (Digital Media, University of Sydney) for editing and mixing the audio.

– ref. Close up: in JFK’s opening montage Oliver Stone gets creative with history – https://theconversation.com/close-up-in-jfks-opening-montage-oliver-stone-gets-creative-with-history-146920

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

In an election victory driven by her management of COVID, the dire second wave in Victoria likely helped Annastacia Pałaszczuk. Defending her tough border policy and her message about keeping Queenslanders safe, she had a real life example to illustrate what happens when the virus gets away.

Her win reinforced the accepted wisdom that this crisis favours incumbents – provided people think they are doing the right thing.

The Queensland outcome might at one level be galling for the federal government – which has been sniping at Pałaszczuk’s border policy for months – but at another it is also reassuring for Scott Morrison, who has so far managed the pandemic response well.

That said, Morrison has a rockier road to navigate to his election. The federal poll is a year and a half away, and (assuming the virus now stays under control) the challenge for him is economic, which will be complicated as he juggles withdrawing the current massive fiscal support without any disaster.

While some details of the Queensland result are yet to be finalised, Pałaszczuk is set for an increased majority, with Labor securing a swing towards it. For a government seeking a third term, and one which had been – pre-COVID – under criticism for its performance, this is a remarkable achievement.

Despite some pre-election speculation, and the plight of the tourist industry, Labor’s seats in the north of the state did not collapse.

The difficulties of the Queensland economy and its high unemployment did not translate into electoral damage for the government.

And nearly a week’s campaigning by the prime minister produced not the slightest sign of a Morrison “miracle” for the Liberal National Party. On the other side, the absence of Anthony Albanese could have been a bonus for Labor.

The Pałaszczuk government was helped by its opposition, with recent fighting between the LNP organisation and the parliamentary party. On the main issue of this COVID election, LNP leader Deb Frecklington could only say she too would follow the health advice. She may not have not been believed, given the attacks on the closed border coming from the conservative side.

Apart from the result, the big story of Saturday was the collapse of the One Nation vote. What was left of that vote favoured Labor via preferences, probably reflecting older voters’ COVID fears.

Pauline Hanson was low profile during the election; whether she can gear up her party when the federal contest comes remains to be seen. It’s clear how “all about Pauline” is Pauline Hanson’s One Nation – if she’s not going flat out, there’s nothing much there.

Just as the Victorian wave played into Pałaszczuk’s story line, so did the federal pressure on the premier. The smaller (in population) states are parochial: Palaszczuk benefitted by being seen pushing back against the “open up” brigade.

The benefit was in net terms – she lost skin when some hardline decisions hurt interstate families who needed health care or who wanted to visit sick relatives or to attend funerals.

Apart from the warm glow of a fraternal success, the Queensland result doesn’t bring a lot that’s positive for federal Labor.

For it, the message about incumbency is not encouraging.

The ALP also knows Queenslanders are quite comfortable with federal and state governments being of different stripes. The voters can judge who’s who, and just because they trust Pałaszczuk Labor doesn’t mean they are more likely to embrace Albanese Labor.

Morrison goes down well in Queensland when he’s campaigning for his own government.

Federal Labor must work out its detailed positions on key policies – climate, energy and resources – and more effectively sell its leader, before its fortunes can improve in that state.

Both will be difficult. Attempts to paper over the internal differences on climate and energy won’t cut it, but forging genuine agreement is a struggle.

Albanese is up against it when the times are suiting Morrison.

Post Saturday’s result, the premier has indicated Queensland’s border ban on people from greater Sydney and Victoria won’t be reviewed for another month. That would still leave time for Christmas reunions, but it could be a tight-run thing.

Health Minister Greg Hunt said on Sunday: “we’re now, I think, in a position where we would like to see New South Wales and Queensland be able as soon as possible to have free movement between the jurisdictions. And once everybody is comfortable that Victoria does have its contact tracing to gold standard levels, then I think we’ll see a single national bubble in due course.”

With Victoria on Sunday recording zero new cases and community transmission in Australia virtually stamped out, Australia is at this moment in an extraordinarily good place on the health front.

But with COVID rampaging again in Britain and many other countries, and the memory of the Victorian experience fresh, there can be no complacency.

– ref. View from The Hill: Victoria’s pain reinforced Pałaszczuk’s winning message – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-victorias-pain-reinforced-palaszczuks-winning-message-149244

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Salisbury, Research Assistant, School of Political Science & International Studies, The University of Queensland

Queensland’s state election was always going to deliver an outcome for the record books.

This was Australia’s first poll at state or federal level contested by two female leaders. It was also the first state general election conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Read more: Labor wins Queensland election, as Greens could win up to four seats

Counting continues after record numbers of pre-poll and postal votes, and a handful of seats remain in doubt. Regardless, the Labor government has been returned with what looks like an increased majority in a history-making third term for Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.

This shores up her political stocks in the continued battle with federal and state governments over border closures.

A tick of approval for Palaszczuk

The election campaign was run of the mill in many ways. It wasn’t so much dominated by the pandemic as framed by aspects of it, such as borders and plans for economic recovery.

But Queenslanders, by and large, appear to have given Palaszczuk’s government a tick of approval for its health and economic responses to coronavirus. Swings to the government were recorded in most parts of the state, with some surprising shifts towards Labor in areas like the Sunshine Coast.

The result reinforces the theory pandemic conditions favour incumbents and, similarly, the major parties. Western Australia’s Mark McGowan, who like Palaszczuk was a target of Coalition criticism over closed borders, will take heart ahead of a state election early next year.

However, this was not a straightforward repeat of recent election outcomes in the Northern Territory, ACT and New Zealand. Rather, this election panned out in ways particular to Queensland’s regional diversity, but still with ramifications for outside the state.

One Nation, Palmer barely register

The expected battleground over government-held marginal seats around Townsville and Cairns didn’t eventuate, with these seats holding firm against a concerted effort to get rid of Labor incumbents.

The LNP opposition’s pitch for a “crime crackdown” in the state’s north and plans for a youth curfew didn’t resonate, as at the last state election in 2017.

Read more: Queensland’s LNP wants a curfew for kids, but evidence suggests this won’t reduce crime

The headline story of the election was a dramatic collapse in the One Nation vote. The party nominated an unprecedented 90 candidates, yet leader Pauline Hanson was barely sighted during the campaign. What messages did emerge from Hanson’s camp — largely criticisms of COVID-19 measures — didn’t wash with an electorate seeking leadership and protection through the crisis.

Notably, Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party hardly registered, with about 0.6% of the popular vote. This follows another big spend on often misleading advertising. The electorate may have woken up to Palmer’s “spoiler” agenda, with his investment perhaps only resulting in a push for stricter truth in political advertising rules.

There are now realistic doubts over the ability of either Palmer or Hanson to recover electorally from these setbacks. For its efforts, One Nation did hold on to its sole seat in north Queensland. Katter’s Australian Party, likewise, retained its three northern seats.

The single biggest upset result — although widely expected —– came in South Brisbane, where Labor’s former Deputy Premier Jackie Trad lost the seat she’s held since 2012. A rise in Greens support in inner-Brisbane suburbs, as seen in other capital cities, was long viewed as a threat to Trad’s grip on the former Labor stronghold.

This result shows there are subtexts to this election result, and it is not all about the pandemic. For 30 years, Labor has often won state elections on its ability to hold onto “fortress Brisbane”. However, the party can’t take that position for granted now.

Even with the LNP’s continuing inability to bridge the Brisbane bulkhead, Labor can’t rest on its laurels after this win. Inner-Brisbane electorates like Cooper and McConnel will be next targets for the Greens, whose support at this election was concentrated in the capital where they now hold two seats.

On track to beat Beattie

Palaszczuk is now the most successful female leader in Australian history, as the first to win three elections. If she serves the full four-year term, she’ll be Labor’s second-longest serving premier in this state, surpassing Peter Beattie. Labor by then will have governed Queensland for 30 of the past 35 years.

Read more: Why this Queensland election is different — states are back at the forefront of political attention

This win cements the premier’s authority in her party, which is particularly important when it comes to relations between her administration and the federal government. Discussions over states border closures and other pandemic responses at the National Cabinet will be watched with renewed interest.

At the same time, the election result raises pressing questions for defeated Opposition Leader Deb Frecklington and the LNP. After recent inner-party turmoil agitating against Frecklington’s leadership, it’s expected there will be jostling for new party leadership.

As now seems ritual after state elections, calls are expected for the unsuccessful LNP to de-merge. The often uneasy marriage of Queensland’s Liberals and Nationals — apparently at risk of a lurch to the arch-conservative right — appears incapable of broadening its support in both the state’s capital and the far north simultaneously.

As the final results come in, they will continue to provide important lessons for both the federal Coalition, as well as federal Labor, in how best to appeal to Queensland’s varied constituency.

– ref. ‘Three-peat Palaszczuk’: why Queenslanders swung behind Labor in historic election – https://theconversation.com/three-peat-palaszczuk-why-queenslanders-swung-behind-labor-in-historic-election-149076