Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gemma Carey, Professor, UNSW Sydney

Newly released Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data show people living in poverty or disadvantage are three times more likely to die from COVID than the wealthy.

This statistic is alarming, but it gets worse when we begin to look more closely at particular communities.

ABS data show the rate of death from COVID for people living in Australia who were born overseas was almost three times more than those born in Australia when standardised for age (6.8 deaths per 100,000 vs 2.3 deaths).

The rate of death from COVID for people living in Australia from the Middle East was over 12 times that of people born in Australia (29.3 people per 100,000).

These statistics are damning. They tell us you’re more likely to survive COVID if you were born here, grew up speaking and reading English, are educated, and earn a good income.

They undermine the idea that Australia has good quality universal health care that has been accessible during the pandemic.

Poverty makes you sick

Most health problems, and the care needed to address them, follow what we call “the social gradient”.

This term is shorthand for the idea that those with the most resources – be it money or education – have better health and get better treatment than those with fewer resources.

In short, poverty makes you sick. It does this by limiting your access to services and supports, through money or other factors such as the type of job you work.

People at the “lower end” of the social gradient also tend to receive poorer quality health care.

Unfortunately, this social gradient is now clear in the data on Australian COVID deaths.

For example, some people from Middle Eastern countries and other migrant or refugee communities have poorer employment conditions, such as janitorial jobs in hospitals. These jobs expose people to COVID, who then bring the virus home. They have also needed to keep working in these high risk jobs throughout the pandemic so they can afford basic living costs like food and rent.

There are also major barriers to medical care for, and information about, COVID for particular communities. During the Delta variant wave in Victoria and New South Wales, we saw this result in people from refugee and migrant backgrounds dying at home before receiving any medical care for COVID.

Authorities attributed this to a reluctance to seek health care. This reluctance can stem from a lack of culturally and linguistically appropriate health care communication and services.

Read more:
Using military language and presence might not be the best approach to COVID and public health

Many people also distrust authorities, including the police and army, due to experiences in people’s home countries. Being scared of authorities is a legitimate fear when you have come from a country where authorities may kill you.

This has been exacerbated by governments in Australia choosing to “police” the pandemic. Large fines were threatened to people who broke COVID public health orders.

This fear of fines and authorities likely contributed to a reluctance to seek medical care, and in turn more deaths. And messaging around authoritarian approaches to those who break COVID health orders are likely to have exacerbated this.

Many have also been excluded from government support.

Australian governments and health services have been failing parts of our community, from those with low incomes to people from non-English speaking backgrounds.

What can we do right now?

There are a range of actions we can take to rectify the high rates of death amongst refugee and migrant communities.

Policy wise, the federal government could extend access to Medicare and social safety net support for people experiencing issues with temporary visas, such as asylum seekers living in the community who are appealing a decision on a visa application, and are not eligible for Medicare. Adding specific Medicare items for refugees and migrants may also encourage more culturally and linguisticaly inclusive medical care in the health system.

These changes would help provide more affordable, accessible and inclusive health care, particularly for asylum seekers and refugees dealing with visa issues, and help prevent loss of life.

Governments should also involve refugee and migrant communities in the development and implementation of actions to reduce COVID deaths. Communities know what they need in a crisis – we need to find new ways of listening. A top-down, middle class response to a pandemic will create services and supports that only work for the middle class.

It’s vital we look to the evidence of what may best help refugee and migrant communities reduce the risk of infection, involve them meaningfully in this process, and sharpen our focus on making life in Australia fairer, more inclusive and, hopefully, safer for all.

What has to happen next?

Currently, there are major gaps in understanding what may best support refugee and migrant communities to reduce the risk of infection and harm from COVID.

More research is needed. However that research needs to be led by peers in communities and be easy to access and participate in. In other words, we cannot repeat the mistake of creating approaches that work for just the middle class.

Best practice tells us multiple forms of research are required, and in culturally and linguistically inclusive ways.

Read more:
The real challenge to COVID-19 vaccination rates isn’t hesitancy — it’s equal access for Māori and Pacific people

Survey-based research must be conducted in hospitals, health centres and other clinical environments to understand how barriers to medical care and information for COVID can be addressed to better meet the needs of people from refugee and migrant communities. The research could identify more culturally inclusive ways of managing vaccinations, testing and recovery from virus symptoms.

This must be backed up by in-depth research to explore the experiences of a diverse range of communities. Just as disadvantaged groups are not all alike, neither are refugee and migrant communities (despite being commonly lumped under the term “culturally and linguisticaly diverse”).

Communities who are recently arrived or longer settled – all from different countries – have different needs.

We need more listening, and less punitive approaches.

Ben O’Mara has previously received funding from VicHealth, the Department of Heath and Ageing and the Australian and New Zealand School of Government. O’Mara also works as an Adjunct Fellow at Swinburne University and he is the Information Resources Manager at Motor Neurone Disease Australia.

Gemma Carey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Australia is failing marginalised people, and it shows in COVID death rates – https://theconversation.com/australia-is-failing-marginalised-people-and-it-shows-in-covid-death-rates-177224

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By K M Shahunja, PhD candidate, The University of Queensland

One in every nine people in Australia has asthma. It is a health burden for many children, and expensive for families because of medication, hospital and out-of-hospital expenses.

The pandemic has added further stress and extra testing measures to check respiratory symptoms. COVID infection can co-exist with asthma and, although research shows allergic asthma does not increase the risk of COVID infection and death, keeping asthma symptoms under control remains important.

At home, tobacco smoke, pollen, mould, dust, pet dander and harmful gases can initiate or worsen asthma symptoms. Our recent study – a review and analysis of Australian research – identifies the most significant culprits. Passive smoking, synthetic pillows or quilts, and gas heating in your house are the most frequently identified triggers for the highest rates of asthma in the home. Preventing these common household environmental factors could better control asthma.

Read more:
We expected people with asthma to fare worse during COVID. Turns out they’ve had a break

Nasties in the home

Prior research reports various environmental factors can trigger asthma symptoms. But the relevant factors and the size of the effect varies widely in different countries and populations. Knowing the most common environmental triggers that can initiate asthma symptoms in Australia can help us tailor prevention strategies.

We examined the evidence based on the research conducted in Australia to determine significant family environmental factors associated with asthma. We looked at 56 studies that involved 137,840 people in Australia. The combined data confirm passive smoking, synthetic bedding and gas heating in households are significant triggering factors for asthma symptoms. These household features are noted in more homes where people have asthma and need more asthma treatment.

Being around smokers, such as at home or in the workplace is the most commonly reported indoor exposure for people with asthma. Breathing in smoke disrupts normal lung and immune system development and causes airway irritation. This can lead to asthma symptoms and other lung diseases. The main sources of secondhand smoke in Australia were identified as smoking by a parent or other family member at home and by colleagues in the workplace. Children were the main victims of secondhand smoke, exposed to their parents’ smoking – especially mothers – at home.

Read more:
We boosted babies’ immune systems and it protected them from serious lung infections: new research

Bedding and heating

The second most commonly reported household trigger was bedding from unnatural fibres, such as microfibre, nylon or acrylic materials. Synthetic bedding items have higher house dust mite allergen levels than feather-bedding items.

They also increase exposure to volatile organic chemicals. These are gases emitted from certain solids and liquids found in many household products. These gases can accumulate in higher concentrations inside and cause health problems.

Synthetic pillows are also more likely to trap cat and dog allergens than feather pillows. The firmer weave of feather pillows makes them a more protective barrier to allergens that could otherwise lead to respiratory irritation. Households of children prone to asthma or allergies should pay extra attention to the bedding they choose.

Finally, both flued and unflued gas heaters can emit nitrogen dioxide gas that can irritate the respiratory tract and trigger asthma symptoms. It’s better to get rid of gas heaters or heating systems, if possible, in households where asthma is an issue.

Read more:
Gas cooking is associated with worsening asthma in kids. But proper ventilation helps

Asthma risks we can control

Our research shows the importance of emphasising prevention of some common family environmental factors to prevent asthma symptoms. These factors may remain less acknowledged despite their notorious effect on asthma.

The scientific evidence that shows active tobacco smoking is detrimental for asthma control is well understood by the general public. But people may be less aware of the effect of passive smoking on asthma.

There is also scope to build awareness around gas heaters and synthetic bedding as asthma triggers. These environmental factors lurking in homes should be better communicated to families who could be affected, especially in a country where asthma is a major public health problem. Elimination of these factors may help control asthma symptoms and reduce COVID testing during the pandemic.

Read more:
Air pollution: over three billion people breathe harmful air inside their own homes

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Passive smoking, synthetic bedding and gas heating in homes show the strongest links to asthma – https://theconversation.com/passive-smoking-synthetic-bedding-and-gas-heating-in-homes-show-the-strongest-links-to-asthma-176677

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melissa Starling, Postdoctoral researcher, University of Sydney

The recent ABC TV series Muster Dogs has brought into sharp focus the incredible skills of our working stock dogs.

It’s not just their sensitivity to livestock movement that makes them so good at what they do.

They are also agile endurance athletes that can work long hours in very hot conditions. During peak times, working kelpies have been recorded travelling over 60km just in one work day.

There are dog breeds all over the world that have been selectively bred over many generations to work with stock. That selective breeding has shaped them to be best suited to the specific environment they work in and the style of work they are required to do.

If you’re interested in the history, traits and skills of these amazing dogs – and perhaps have wondered about owning one yourself – here’s what you need to know.

Read more:
How hot is too hot? Here’s how to tell if your dog is suffering during the summer heat

Shaped for Australian conditions

The Australian Working Kelpie was shaped for Australian conditions to use what’s known as a “strong-eyed style” of herding, which is to adopt a low posture and use eye-stalking (keeping its eyes fixed on the livestock) to track the herd’s movement. The Border collie also uses this style.

They control the movement of the herd with exquisite sensitivity with their overall presence.

Their behaviour includes that characteristic stalking posture with head and body low, and quiet, controlled steps.

This is how a predator would approach a herd of prey animals if it were hunting.

The strong-eyed herding dog stalks, stares, holds position, and rushes; it is not just where they are that controls the herd, but what they are doing.

Most other herding breeds have a looser style of herding, where they work with their heads up and use their body position to influence the movement of the herd.

Herding dogs that use eye-stalking also often work the front of the herd, turning it towards the handler. The looser style herding dogs tend to drive the herd from the rear.

Bred for bravery

Australian Working Kelpies were developed from British farm collies in the late 1800’s.

Some claim there is dingo infused in the breed to add resilience, but this remains subject to debate.

Signals of selection in the Australian Working Kelpie DNA suggest one very important trait is the ability to withstand prickly terrain; a working dog that cannot ignore burrs and spines to continue working is of little use to the farmer.

Other traits prized by the handlers are bravery and a level head. In other words, a dog that doesn’t panic under pressure.

Unlike many other herding breeds, the Kelpie is often asked to work independently from the handler and to think for itself.

Owning a working dog

Working breeds can be very rewarding canine companions for people that don’t have stock for them to work. But prospective owners need to understand the selective breeding that makes these dogs so good at herding can also make them a handful in a suburban setting.

They are of course extremely active; most need a few hours of high intensity exercise a day just to keep them from destroying the home and yard when they are young.

They are also highly alert and often extremely aroused by movement. The faster and more chaotic the movement, the more powerfully they are drawn to control that movement as they would a herd.

This can make playing with kids, ball games, bikes and skateboards, and even encountering other dogs in the dog park a real challenge.

Working breeds also sometimes have a tendency to rush in and bark at an object that is bothering them, just as they would rush and bark at cattle looking to break away from the herd.

Some good lessons for owners

The television program Muster Dogs presented some core messages applicable to any pet dog, as well as working dogs that are pets at home. These include:

1. Early exposure

Ensuring puppies have positive experiences with stimuli they’ll encounter often in life early is crucial. They must be taught to accept activities they need to be tolerant of, and be comfortable with handling and restraining themselves.

2. Responsiveness

The owner must build strong foundations in the areas of coming when called, staying close while off leash, and maintaining a connection with the handler even around distractions.

3. Impulse control

This is particularly important for working dogs keen to participate in exciting activities. In fact, all dogs can benefit from learning to control their impulses and not chase, jump up, or use their mouth every time the urge takes them.

It takes a special kind of dog to be able to face animals 20 or more times their size that can easily cause them serious damage.

To do it all day in the hot and rough terrain of inland Australia takes a dog with a tremendous desire to work.

This should never be forgotten by those of us living in more comfortable environments when we think we want a working dog to accompany us through our suburban lives.

Read more:
At home with your dog? 3 ways to connect and lift your spirits

Melissa Starling owns an animal behaviour consulting business called Creature Teacher.

Claire Wade has previously received funding from the Working Kelpie Council of Australia. She is affiliated with the Royal NSW Canine Health and Welfare Charity.

– ref. A strong-eyed style: what makes Australian muster dogs unique – https://theconversation.com/a-strong-eyed-style-what-makes-australian-muster-dogs-unique-177143

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Wardlaw, Research Associate, University of Tasmania

Southern Tasmania’s tall eucalyptus forests are exceptionally good at taking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and converting it into wood.

For many years, we have believed these forests had a reasonable buffer of safety from climate change, due to the cool, moist environment.

Unfortunately, my research published today shows these forests are closer to the edge than we had hoped. I found during heatwaves, these forests switch from taking in carbon to pumping it back out.

That’s not good news, given heatwaves are only expected to increase as the world heats up. While we work to slash emissions, we need to explore ways to make these vital forests more resilient.

From carbon dioxide in to carbon out

It’s well established from forest sampling that moist, cool environments like southern Tasmania provide ideal growing conditions for tall eucalypt forests.

We had believed these types of forests would have a buffer against the worst effects of climate change to come, and perhaps even benefit from limited warming.

But this is no longer the case.

I monitored what happened to a messmate stringybark (Eucalyptus obliqua) forest during a three week heatwave in November 2017. Under these conditions, the forest became a net source of carbon dioxide, with each hectare releasing close to 10 tonnes of the greenhouse gas over that period.

A year earlier during more normal conditions, the forest was a net sink for carbon dioxide, taking in around 3.5 tonnes per hectare.

How can we know this? The forest I studied is at the Warra Supersite in the upper reaches of the Huon Valley, one of 16 intensive ecosystem monitoring field stations making up Australia’s Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network.

Instruments mounted on an 80-metre-tall tower at Warra give us great insight into how the forest is behaving. We can measure how much, and how quickly, carbon dioxide, water and energy shuttle between the forest and the atmosphere.

Read more:
Australian forests will store less carbon as climate change worsens and severe fires become more common

So what actually happened in the forest during the hot spell? Two crucial things.

The first was that the forest breathed out more carbon dioxide. This was expected, because living cells in all air-breathing lifeforms (yes, this includes trees)
respire more as temperatures warm.

But the second was very unexpected. The forest’s ability to photosynthesise fell, meaning less solar energy was converted to sugars. This took place while the trees were transpiring (releasing water vapour) rapidly.

Until now, we’ve seen falls in photosynthesis output in heatwaves because the trees are trying to limit their water loss. They can do this by closing their pores on their leaves (stomata). When a tree closes its stomata, it makes it harder for carbon dioxide in air to enter the leaves and fuel the photosynthesis process.

By contrast, this heatwave saw trees releasing water and producing less food at the same time.

So what’s going on? In short, the temperatures were simply too hot for the forests in southern Tasmania. Every forest has an ideal temperature to get the best results from photosynthesis. We now know this temperature in Australia is linked to the historic climate of the local area.

That means the trees at Warra require lower temperatures to optimally feed themselves, compared to most other Australian forests.

During the 2017 heatwave, the temperatures soared well outside the forest’s comfort zone. In the hottest part of the day, the forest was no longer able to make enough food to feed itself.

Outside the forest’s comfort zone

For now, the forest at Warra is still intact. After the heatwave, the messmate stringybark forest quickly recovered its ability to feed itself, and became a carbon sink again.

But as the world warms, these forests will be pushed outside their comfort zones more and more. They can only endure so many of these kinds of heatwaves. If they keep coming, there will be a tipping point beyond which the forest can no longer recover.

What then? We can see a disturbing glimpse when we look at Tasmania’s oceans, which are a marine heatwave hotspot. Fully 95% of Tasmania’s giant kelp forests are now gone, killed off by temperatures beyond their ability to tolerate.

It is no exaggeration to say that the rapid increase in temperatures are the most serious threat to the health of tall eucalypt forests I’ve encountered during 40 years of studying forest health and threats in Tasmania.

Unlike the kelp forests, our tall eucalyptus forests have not yet hit their tipping point. We still have time to lessen the risk global heating poses.

Read more:
Can selective breeding of ‘super kelp’ save our cold water reefs from hotter seas?

There is already work under way to test promising new methods for making future forests better able to cope with the new climate they find themselves in.

These techniques include climate adjusted provenancing, where forest managers sow seeds of local species collected from areas at the hotter end of their range. Another being tried for giant kelp is finding individual plants with better heat tolerance and breeding them.

Our eucalyptus forests will need our help, more and more. The better engaged and informed we are about the risks to forests we long thought were highly resilient, the likelier we will be to be able to preserve them.

One way we could do this is by making our monitoring data publicly accessible in real time, so we can grasp the strain our forests are under as the world warms.

Tim Wardlaw is affiliated with the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network.

– ref. In heatwave conditions, Tasmania’s tall eucalypt forests no longer absorb carbon – https://theconversation.com/in-heatwave-conditions-tasmanias-tall-eucalypt-forests-no-longer-absorb-carbon-176979

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brock Bastian, Professor, Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne

Have you looked at the international rankings of the world’s happiest countries lately?

Measuring a country’s subjective levels of happiness has become something of an international sport. People look with interest (and a little jealousy) to nations such as Denmark, which consistently tops the world happiness rankings.

It has also led to Danish practices such as the “hygge” lifestyle gaining popularity elsewhere. If only we could add more cosiness to our lives, perhaps we would be as happy as the Danish!

But is living in one of the worlds happiest nations all it’s cracked up to be? What happens if you struggle to find or maintain happiness in a sea of (supposedly) happy people?

In our new research, published in Scientific Reports, we found that in countries which rank the highest in national happiness, people are also more likely to experience poor well-being due to the societal pressure to be happy.

So living in happier countries may be good for many. But for some, it can end up feeling like too much to live up to, and have the opposite effect.

Broadening our search

For several years, my colleagues and I have been researching the social pressure people may feel to experience positive emotions and avoid negative ones.

This pressure is also communicated to us through channels such as social media, self-help books and advertising. Eventually people develop a sense of what kinds of emotion are valued (or not valued) by those around them.

Read more:
So many in the West are depressed because they’re expected not to be

In an ironic twist, our past research has shown that the more people experience pressure to feel happy and not sad, the more they tend to experience depression.

While this previous research has mostly focused on people living in Australia or the United States, we were curious about how these effects might also be evident in other countries.

For our latest study we surveyed 7,443 people from 40 countries on their emotional well-being, satisfaction with life (cognitive well-being) and mood complaints (clinical well-being). We then weighed this against their perception of social pressure to feel positive.

What we found confirmed our previous findings. Worldwide, when people report feeling pressure to experience happiness and avoid sadness, they tend to experience deficits in mental health.

That is, they experience lower satisfaction with their lives, more negative emotion, less positive emotion and higher levels of depression, anxiety and stress.

Interestingly, our global sample allowed us to go beyond our prior work and examine whether there were differences in this relationship across countries. Are there some countries in which this relationship is especially strong? And if so, why might that be?

Not a uniform problem

To investigate this, we obtained data for each of the 40 counties from the World Happiness Index, collected by the Gallup World Poll. This index is based on the subjective happiness ratings of large-scale nationally representative samples.

It allowed us to determine how the overall happiness of a nation, and therefore the social pressure on individuals to be happy, might influence individuals’ well-being.

We found the relationship did indeed change, and was stronger in countries that ranked more highly on the World Happiness Index. That is, in countries such as Denmark, the social pressure some people felt to be happy was especially predictive of poor mental health.

That’s not to say on average people are not happier in those countries – apparently they are – but that for those who already feel a great deal of pressure to keep their chin up, living in happier nations can lead to poorer well-being.

Why might this be the case? We reasoned that being surrounded by a sea of happy faces may aggravate the effects of already feeling socially pressured to be happy.

Of course, signs of others’ happiness are not limited to the explicit expression of happiness, but are also evident in other more subtle cues, such as having more social contact or engaging in pleasurable activities. These signals tend to be stronger in happier countries, ratcheting up the effects of social expectations.

In these countries, feeling happy can easily be viewed as the expected norm. This adds to the social pressure people feel to adhere to this norm, and exacerbates the fallout for those who fail to achieve it.

What’s the solution?

So what can we do? At a personal level, feeling and expressing happiness is a good thing. But as other research has found, it’s sometimes good to be sensitive about how our expression of positive emotion may affect others.

While it’s good to bring happiness and positivity to our interactions, it’s also good to know when to tone it down – and avoid alienating those who may not share our joy in the moment.

More broadly, perhaps it’s time to rethink how we measure national well-being. We already know that flourishing in life isn’t just about positive emotion, but also about responding well to negative emotion, finding value in discomfort, and focusing on other factors such as meaning and interpersonal connection.

Perhaps it’s time to rank countries not only by how happy they are, but how safe and open they are to the full range of human experiences.

Read more:
How to avoid ‘toxic positivity’ and take the less direct route to happiness

Brock Bastian receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Research finds countries that focus the most on happiness can end up making people feel worse – https://theconversation.com/research-finds-countries-that-focus-the-most-on-happiness-can-end-up-making-people-feel-worse-177323

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sara Alidoust, Lecturer in Planning, The University of Queensland

The severe lack of affordable housing is hurting Australians right across the community – from young renters, to families seeking to buy and older people needing a stable home.

The number of Australians over 55 who are homeless jumped by 28% between the 2011 and 2016 censuses.

An increasing lack of affordable housing is forcing some older people to take unconventional approaches to finding a home. One of these is house-sitting.

My new research published in Australian Geographer, looks at how this works – and how it doesn’t – for this often-vulnerable group.

What is house-sitting?

In exchange for free accommodation, house-sitters take care of the house (and garden and pets), while the owner is away. House-sitting episodes can be as short as one day to more than three years.

House-sitters use different methods to find a potential house-sitting property. Most rely on house-sitting websites and specific Facebook groups. Some people also find house-sitting opportunities through referrals and repeat bookings.

Our study

In the first analysis of its kind, a colleague and I interviewed 20 Australians between 53 and 78, who had been house-sitting for more than a year.

Read more:
‘I tell everyone I love being on my own, but I hate it’: what older Australians want you to know about loneliness

Half our interviewees had permanent housing (either rental or owned) and were mainly casual house-sitters. The remaining were house-sitting full-time and had no permanent address.

We asked people about their experiences as older house-sitters and the impact of this type of housing on their well-being.

A temporary relief from rental stress

Almost half of the house-sitters we interviewed reported financial issues, such as unemployment, unstable or low-paid jobs and unaffordable housing as the main reason for starting house-sitting. Relationship breakdown that left people without a secure housing was the second most common reason.

They told us house-sitting provided temporary relief from the high and unrelenting costs of paying rent. As one interviewee noted:

It [house-sitting] is pretty essential, where would we live otherwise? So, we did rent for a little while, but money is an issue, because I am not earning enough yet to be paying rent […] [It] just happens to be a really good solution to the situation that we happen to be in.

In turn, this freed up funds to spend on other things, such as their health and social life.

My husband gets his pension this year. So, [if we house-sit] it means that we will actually have an income, which means in theory we might actually save some money.

Less common reasons for starting house-sitting included free accommodation for travelling and spending time with animals.

‘Gorgeous pets’

Apart from saving money, interviewees described multiple benefits of house-sitting. The majority referred to the opportunity to travel and experience different places.

Participants also appreciated the opportunity to live in pleasant houses and meet new people. They liked the freedom, variety and “getting rid of unnecessary stuff”.

As one interviewee noted:

we were able to live in some beautiful homes and with gorgeous pets.

But not feeling secure

However, house-sitting, was not seen as a long-term option. Interviewees were concerned about the lack of security and increasing health needs as they aged.

Well, for short stays and holidays this [house-sitting] is viable, but for long-term you need to have plan B and C. As you see when COVID struck, it affected many people and some are staying in their cars even.

Most sitters also found the temporary, short-term nature of house-sitting made it difficult to engage in the local community and develop a sense of belonging.

You might make temporary friends, but then you move on and leave the community.

Constant moving around also makes it hard to acquire local knowledge, which is particularly important in unforeseen circumstances, such as natural disasters. As one interviewee explained:

It was quite scary in the bushfire […] when suddenly you need to know […] where to go, where’s the evacuation centre […] If I was at home in my own place, I might be talking to friends or neighbours and making decisions together but […] the loneliness becomes obvious when something like that happens.

Lack of transparency

A further issue is the power imbalance. House-sitters have few, if any rights – home owners have ultimate control over their properties. House-sitters referred to a range of challenges because of the lack of clear agreement between parties.

Read more:
What sort of housing do older Australians want and where do they want to live?

These included disputes over the cost of housing repairs and disagreement on the property status when departing, such as how clean the house and how tidy garden should be.

Unexpected changes or cancellation of the house-sitting schedules by owners also contributed to feelings of insecurity and distress among older house-sitters.

Making house-sitting more stable

House-sitting may not yet be a widespread practice, but it is growing. As it gains more prominence, we need transparent policies to specify the rights and entitlements of owners and sitters and address the inherent power imbalance.

We also need to investigate ways of making house-sitting a more secure proposition for people in the longer-term.

And to prioritise informed discussions about secure housing options for people as they age.

This work was supported by The School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of Queensland.

– ref. ‘Where would we live otherwise?’: the rise of house-sitting among older Australians – https://theconversation.com/where-would-we-live-otherwise-the-rise-of-house-sitting-among-older-australians-173984

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephanie Wong, Lecturer/Research Fellow in Psychology, Flinders University

Many of us will have experienced some unexpected honesty from the older people in our lives. Whether it’s grandma telling you your outfit is unflattering or grandpa saying he doesn’t like the meal you’ve prepared, we often explain it away by saying “Oh, don’t mind grandpa, he’s just lost his filter”.

But do we really have a “filter”, and do we lose it as we get older?

What do we mean when we say ‘filter’?

When someone has no “filter”, it means they say things without thinking about their audience. They may blurt out something rude, inappropriate, or unkind, without considering the likely consequences.

“Filters” are an important part of our everyday social interactions. A brief Monday morning chat with your boss is more complex than it may seem. For example, you might stop yourself from telling them they smell awful after their morning bike ride into the office and should’ve showered before your meeting. You might consider telling them about the fungal infection you discovered on your toenail over the weekend but decide against it. Of course, what you do or do not say also depends on how well you know them and what’s considered socially acceptable in your workplace.

Your “filter” relies on cognitive processes such as inhibitory control, which stops you from saying the first thing that pops into your mind. It also relies on social cognition, which refers to the ability to understand and predict other people’s behaviours, thoughts, and intentions. This helps us to recognise what behaviour is appropriate in a particular social setting and to adapt our behaviour based on this.

The prefrontal cortex, which is located within the frontal lobes of our brains, acts as our “filter”, helping us say and do things in a socially appropriate way. When this part of the brain isn’t functioning properly, we might act as though we’ve lost our “filter”.

Read more:
Five common myths about the ageing brain and body

What happens to our ‘filter’ as we age?

As we get older, our brains start to shrink. This is a normal part of the ageing process known as brain atrophy. It affects how well our brain cells can communicate with one another. Importantly, brain atrophy doesn’t happen to all areas of the brain at once. It is particularly noticeable in the frontal lobes.

Researchers have linked age-related shrinking in the frontal lobes with declines in inhibitory control and social cognition. Studies have also found older adults respond differently to socially awkward situations than younger adults.

For example, older adults have more difficulty recognising when someone’s said something embarrassing or tactless, and show poorer understanding of sarcasm.

So as we get older, normal ageing processes in our brains may make it much easier for things to slip out through our “filters”.

Read more:
What’s happening in our bodies as we age?

What if it’s more than just a few slip-ups?

In some rare cases, losing your “filter” can be a sign of something more serious, such as damage to the frontal lobes due to a brain injury or stroke, or a neurodegenerative condition such as frontotemporal dementia.

People with frontotemporal dementia present with striking changes in their personality and social behaviour. This could involve losing their normal inhibitions, disregarding social conventions and other socially inappropriate or embarrassing behaviour.

However, these changes are completely out of character and are typically accompanied by other symptoms such as rigidity, loss of empathy, apathy, difficulties with reasoning and judgement, overeating or unusual food preferences and declines in self-care and personal hygiene.

Read more:
Explainer: how is frontotemporal dementia different and what are the warning signs?

What other things could be at play?

Aside from changes in the brain that impact inhibitory control and social cognition, it could simply be that as we get older, we care less about what others think.

Compared to younger adults, older adults are less self-conscious, reporting fewer experiences of emotions such as shame, guilt, and embarrassment. They also have higher overall levels of happiness and life satisfaction.

Perhaps we learn to let go of our “filters” and embrace the social awkwardness as we get older. Perhaps grandpa really didn’t like your cooking, and feels secure enough to tell you.

So, what does this mean for those of us who seem to be losing our “filter”?

Based on what we know about the brain and ageing, blurting out a remark without thinking isn’t necessarily something to be alarmed about. And if you’re on the receiving end, try not to take it too personally. If these remarks seem out of character or extreme, however, consider raising this with other family members or a doctor.

Stephanie Wong receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council.

Hannah Keage does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Do we really ‘lose our filter’ as we age? – https://theconversation.com/do-we-really-lose-our-filter-as-we-age-176248

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melanie Baak, Senior Lecturer, UniSA Education Futures, University of South Australia

After August 2012, the Australian government introduced “deterrence policies” for asylum seekers who arrive here by boat. Part of this is keeping them on temporary visas and giving them almost no feasible pathway to permanent residency.

Many linger in detention centres, while others who may be in community detention still face constraints on their freedoms. Many live below the poverty line and suffer significant mental health issues. They are also locked out of many education opportunities.

Temporary visas for asylum seekers include:

• temporary protection visas (TPV), granted for three years. Holders can work, access Medicare and some social security payments

• safe haven enterprise visas (SHEV). These are granted for five years and require holders to work or study in a part of regional Australia. At the end of five years, SHEV holders may apply for a permanent visa

• bridging visas (BV). Holders can live in the community but don’t receive housing support and have limited other supports.

One of the possible pathways to transition from a SHEV to a permanent visa is having been enrolled in full-time study in a designated regional area for at least three and a half years. This makes education a crucial pathway to staying in Australia, as well as to employment.

Read more:
Asylum seekers left ‘desperate’ and ‘helpless’ when they try to find work in Australia

Education also provides opportunities to learn and develop English, interact with the broader community and develop skills and qualifications.

But asylum seekers have no way of paying the international fees required to study at a university, and those still at school can’t stay there after they turn 18. There are no known cases of people successfully meeting the criteria to transition from a SHEV to a permanent visa.

How asylum seeker students are locked out

We are conducting an ongoing study which investigates how schools foster resilience in refugee students.

All children aged under 18 on temporary visas can go to school. But once they turn 18, they can no longer get government-funded schooling, even if they have not finished school.

A school leader told us that once students turned 18

[…] The department would not fund them. If the school wanted to keep them it would be at the school’s cost and we’d have to write a very compelling statement about why they should stay.

This particular school advocated for the around 20 students who were affected, and they were able to stay at the school. But new students aged over 18 were not allowed to enrol.

Read more:
Refugee students struggle with displacement and trauma. Here are 3 ways schools can help them belong

For other schools in our study without the knowledge and ability to advocate, students had to leave high school. Beyond being deprived of the opportunity to finish school, it is even more difficult for students on temporary visas to attend university.

A recent publication by Deakin University contains a case study of Hadi, a student from Afghanistan on a temporary visa. Hadi says:

[…] the fear of not being able to study at university would always keep me up at night. My teachers were also concerned because I was categorised as an international student and I was not eligible for a government funded place at university.

The exact number of students impacted by these preventative policies is not known. But those who gain admission to a university would have to pay around $30-40,000 per year. This is unaffordable for them.

A school finance officer from a school participating in our study said:

[Students on protection visas] come to us for education. We want to do our bit and then they finish with us and they achieve an ATAR that’s got value for a university. And then the university says well we can’t take you unless we treat you like an international student. They just can’t do that.

What universities are doing

Twenty-five Australian universities and one other higher education provider offer scholarships for students on temporary visas. These generally cover the tuition fee and some universities provide a stipend. There are about 15 universities without such scholarships.

Deakin University, for example, provides a Deakin Sanctuary Scholarship to successful applicants holding a TPV, SHEV or relevant BV. This covers 100% of tuition fees and provides recipients with $6,000 per year towards study expenses.

The University of Adelaide provides an annual Refugee and Humanitarian Scholarship to TPV, SHEV or relevant BV holders. This also covers 100% of tuition fees and gives recipients a one-off $2,500 payment.

Scholarship holders at University of Adelaide are restricted in the undergraduate programs they can undertake and cannot pursue degrees such as medicine, dentistry, occupational therapies, as well as double or combined degrees.

A South Australian school principal in our study told us these scholarships weren’t easy to get:

When they get to the end of school you sometimes watch that fall apart a little because their options are very limited beyond school. They can’t afford university. We hear talk of scholarships but trying to navigate that system is almost impossible and unless you’re a 95-plus student you probably won’t get one of those scholarships.

There are success stories from these scholarship programs, such as Farzaneh Dehghani who graduated as a civil engineer from RMIT and subsequently got a job in her field – but the competition for a limited number of scholarships is high.

What needs to be done

Two simple measures would improve this situation.

Governments in other countries offer access to higher education for students on temporary protection or asylum visas. In Scotland, asylum-seeking students under 25 are who have lived there for at least three years are treated as “home” students. This means they access higher education for free.

In Germany, asylum-seeking students have the same rights to access higher education as local students and can apply for exemptions to university fees.

Read more:
How people seeking asylum in Australia access higher education, and the enormous barriers they face

Given the relatively small number of students on temporary visas in Australia and the significant equity benefits of providing scholarships – such as improved settlement outcomes, pathways into employment and opportunities for pathways to permanent visas – all Australian higher education providers should be making such provisions.

Ultimately, Australians can help asylum-seeker students gain access to university by pressuring governments to scrap the punitive and arbitrary visa system which ignores the well-being of young people and dehumanises them for political ends.

Melanie Baak receives funding from the Australian Research Council (LP170100145), Department of Education (Qld), Department for Education (SA), Catholic Education South Australia.

Bruce Johnson receives funding from the Australian Research Council (LP170100145), Department of Education (Qld), Department for Education (SA), Catholic Education South Australia. He is also a member of the Australian Research Council’s College of Experts.

Joel Windle does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Education is a human right, but for most asylum seekers in Australia, university is an impossible dream – https://theconversation.com/education-is-a-human-right-but-for-most-asylum-seekers-in-australia-university-is-an-impossible-dream-174881

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW Sydney

Thursday brought news that Australia’s official unemployment rate in January remained at a historically low 4.2%. In parliament, Prime Minister Scott Morrision boasted of the nation being on track to achieve a rate “with a 3 in front of it” this year.

It’s entirely possible the unemployment rate will drop further. The Reserve Bank of Australia’s central forecast is 3.75% by the end of 2022. Some economists have suggested it could be driven down below 3%.

With economic management is a key issue at any election, it is clear the state of the labour market will be a big part of the Coalitions re-election narrative.

But the story on wages is not impressive.

Real wages (that is, wages adjusted for inflation) have not grown strongly in recent years. From 2013 to 2018 they grew at 0.5%, compared with 0.8% from 2008 to 2012, and 1% from 2001 to 2007.

Australia is not alone in this respect. Growth in real wages has been sluggish since 2013 in many advanced economies. For the average American worker they haven’t budged in 40 years.

Annual growth in real wages

There are many reasons for this. Labour-saving technologies are reducing demand for all sorts of human workers, from truck drivers and cashiers to junior lawyers and accountants. Globalisation and international trade have increased competition for less-skilled labour.

What economists call “skill-biased technical change” – new technologies requiring workers to have more skills – has increased wage inequality. The question is what to do about all of this.

Market forces prevail

The first-order policy response should be recognition that a tighter labour market than in the past is now needed to drive wages growth. That is, to get wages up we need to get unemployment down even further – and keep it there.

There is some resistance to this idea.

One argument is that Australia’s labour market isn’t all that competitive – that it’s full of all sorts of regulatory institutions such as the award system and enterprise bargaining that obscure or even break the relationship between unemployment and wages growth.

Read more:
Why there’s no magic jobless rate to increase Australians’ wages

This has never been a persuasive argument. At most these institutions mean there will be lags in adjustment – with the Fair Work Commission reviewing awards once a year and enterprise agreements typically negotiated every three years.

Yet even these lags are less important than they used to be, now the percentage of private-sector workers covered by enterprise agreements is just 10.9% compared with nearly a quarter in 2010.

What governments can and can’t do

The reality is that the majority of Australian workers have their pay determined by market forces, mediated by individual agreements. Supply and demand in the labour market is the key determinant of wage outcomes.

Understanding this helps frame what governments can and can’t do about wages.

They certainly can enact policies that drive unemployment down and hence wages up. On this count the Morrison government gets high marks and deserves due credit.

Read more:
Vital Signs: wages growth desultory, unemployment stunning

They can also help provide workers with better skills, which lead to higher wages. One of the central lessons from economics is that people basically get paid for their skills.

Australia’s major political parties could do a much better job of formulating a comprehensive education and training policy.

On the Labor side, announcing a few new apprenticeships is fine but really just tinkering. On the Liberal side, whining about postmodernism isn’t going to provide students with more human capital.

Governments could also encourage schemes to give workers a stake in the profits of the enterprises they work for – through employee share ownership or worker ownership schemes. Rosalind Dixon and I have proposed a “shadow equity” scheme as one way to implement this.

What governments can’t do is turn back the tide of globalisation and pretend automation won’t continue to replace or reduce demand for human labour.

It is futile, for example, to seek to resurrect Austrlia’s car manufacturing industry. Sure, let’s talk about developing new manufacturing industries, such as in battery technology, but a 1970s-style industry policy won’t bring back the jobs.

Read more:
An unemployment rate below 4% is possible. But for how long?

To get wages growth moving again we need lower unemployment, and to ensure it stays low. That won’t happen effectively by just mandating higher wages. It will happen by ensuring workers have the skills the market values, and by keeping macroeconomic policy settings tuned for low unemployment.

Richard Holden is President of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.

– ref. Vital Signs: Unemployment steady at 4.2%, but it will need to go lower still to lift wages – https://theconversation.com/vital-signs-unemployment-steady-at-4-2-but-it-will-need-to-go-lower-still-to-lift-wages-177218

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

If you were to believe the Morrison government, you’d think Anthony Albanese as prime minister would sell out Australia’s interests to China, give criminals a break, and perhaps sneak in a death tax.

You’d question whether this man, who held senior positions in the Labor years, including briefly being deputy PM, could run a competent government. Because, you see, he didn’t have an economic or national security portfolio.

Scott Morrison is determined to do what Malcolm Turnbull refused to do in the 2016 election – run a ferocious, no-holds-barred negative campaign to try to trash his opponent.

The trouble with being a small target, which has been Albanese’s strategy all this term but especially recently, is that your opponent will still seek to turn you into a big target, indeed a scary risk to the nation.

The government’s campaign over the past fortnight’s parliamentary sitting has been full of gross exaggeration and, on the issue of policy on China, it has been outrageous and irresponsible. It’s a mark of Morrison’s desperation, and it carries risks of backfiring.

The question remains, however, whether the assault will be effective. Or will the government just harm itself by going over the top?

We’ve seen many scare campaigns through the years that have had little regard for the truth. Labor’s “Mediscare” claims in 2016 about an alleged Coalition threat to Medicare was potent, despite lacking substance. But the Morrison government’s effort is among the most brazen.

Without a compelling positive agenda of its own, the government believes – or hopes – that Albanese, who is still not well defined in the public’s mind, is potentially a soft target in the two key policy areas where the Coalition usually has an advantage – national security and economics.

It has gambled that in our fast-moving media cycle it can get away with extraordinary claims, helped by sections of the media.

But in its national security attack on Labor, the government this week ran into some heavy counter fire it would not have expected, from impeccable sources. The current and a former chief of ASIO weighed in against the Coalition’s crude attempt to wedge Labor over China.

The saga started when Defence Minister Peter Dutton declared last week that “the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese government” had picked Albanese as “their candidate” in the coming election.

Dutton led with his chin, saying he was reflecting on what had been reported and commented on by the ASIO director-general, Mike Burgess.

Burgess, in his “Annual Threat Assessment” speech the previous evening, had said ASIO recently disrupted “a foreign interference plot in the lead-up to an election in Australia”. He didn’t name the country or the jurisdiction. Burgess related how a wealthy “puppeteer” had hired an employee to identify potential target candidates.

This week Morrison dipped back into the China well.

On Wednesday, he told parliament the Chinese government “have picked their horse” (Albanese) and labelled Labor’s deputy leader, Richard Marles, a “Manchurian candidate” for remarks Marles made some years ago. (“Manchurian candidate” is a reference from a political thriller to someone brainwashed and manipulated by an enemy power.)

The stakes were raised for the government when, in a rare TV appearance on Wednesday night, Burgess made it clear he was less than impressed with ASIO, which was “apolitical”, being drawn into political infighting.

Then on Thursday the government received a massive whack from Dennis Richardson, who is not only a former ASIO head but also a former secretary of the defence and foreign affairs departments and was Australia’s ambassador in Washington.

Richardson denounced the government’s “attempt to create an artificial division where one in practice does not exist”, saying that only served “the interests of one country. And that’s China.”

Read more:
Elections are rarely decided by security and defence issues, but China could make 2022 different

He described the tactic as “grubby beyond belief”.

Morrison was not put off, later that day saying Albanese “is the Chinese government’s pick at this election”.

The government’s sledges against Albanese on the economic and law-and-order fronts were less spectacular but equally stretched.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg last week delved into the archives, back to when Albanese, as a Labor Party official from the left in the early 1990s, moved a motion at a conference calling for consideration of an inheritance tax. From this, Frydenberg asserted, “he stands for death duties”.

In promoting legislation to make it easier to deport visa holders convicted of serious crimes, Morrison accused Albanese of being “clearly on the side of criminals”.

In defensive tactics, Albanese has been extremely surefooted.

Thus, after Burgess’s revelation about foreign interference, the opposition leader immediately contacted him and was able to report that ASIO has no problem with any of Labor’s federal candidates.

As Morrison attacked Labor’s credentials on national security, Albanese tabled a letter from the PM last year thanking him for supporting the government on the AUKUS agreement.

Albanese met the “scare” around his one-time backing for an inheritance tax three decades ago with ridicule, waving around an economics essay he’d written four decades ago.

Efforts by the government to wedge Labor on the visa legislation and legislation on guns fell in a heap. The opposition waved the bills through the House of Representatives with little prospect of them being considered in the Senate before the election.

The government’s effort last week to wedge Labor on the religious discrimination legislation ended with it being wedged by its own rebel backbenchers.

Albanese has covered off every angle that’s come up.

For instance, on Thursday he told parliament in a personal explanation that he had consulted Burgess before attending the opening of the Chau Chak Wing Museum at Sydney University in 2020. He added that he had obtained Burgess’s permission to say this to parliament.

Earlier this week a Labor senator named, under parliamentary privilege, businessman and political donor Chau as the “puppeteer” referred to in the Burgess speech, something Burgess declined to be drawn on.

In his statement to parliament, Albanese said he did “regularly consult with our national security agencies, because I take their role seriously as leader of the opposition”.

However neat Albanese’s moves, however reprehensible the government’s, Labor doesn’t fool itself. Morrison and his ministers have sown the seeds for a national security scare, and it’s too early to know whether they will germinate.

What we do know is that the Chinese government must be enjoying this spectacle immensely.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Morrison has sown the seeds for a scare campaign, and Albanese doesn’t know whether they’ll grow – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-morrison-has-sown-the-seeds-for-a-scare-campaign-and-albanese-doesnt-know-whether-theyll-grow-177368

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

If you were to believe the Morrison government, you’d think Anthony Albanese as prime minister would sell out Australia’s interests to China, give criminals a break, and perhaps sneak in a death tax.

You’d question whether this man, who held senior positions in the Labor years, including briefly being deputy PM, could run a competent government. Because, you see, he didn’t have an economic or national security portfolio.

Scott Morrison is determined to do what Malcolm Turnbull refused to do in the 2016 election – run a ferocious, no-holds-barred negative campaign to try to trash his opponent.

The trouble with being a small target, which has been Albanese’s strategy all this term but especially recently, is that your opponent will still seek to turn you into a big target, indeed a scary risk to the nation.

The government’s campaign over the past fortnight’s parliamentary sitting has been full of gross exaggeration and, on the issue of policy on China, it has been outrageous and irresponsible. It’s a mark of Morrison’s desperation, and it carries risks of backfiring.

The question remains, however, whether the assault will be effective. Or will the government just harm itself by going over the top?

We’ve seen many scare campaigns through the years that have had little regard for the truth. Labor’s “Mediscare” claims in 2016 about an alleged Coalition threat to Medicare was potent, despite lacking substance. But the Morrison government’s effort is among the most brazen.

Without a compelling positive agenda of its own, the government believes – or hopes – that Albanese, who is still not well defined in the public’s mind, is potentially a soft target in the two key policy areas where the Coalition usually has an advantage – national security and economics.

It has gambled that in our fast-moving media cycle it can get away with extraordinary claims, helped by sections of the media.

But in its national security attack on Labor, the government this week ran into some heavy counter fire it would not have expected, from impeccable sources. The current and a former chief of ASIO weighed in against the Coalition’s crude attempt to wedge Labor over China.

The saga started when Defence Minister Peter Dutton declared last week that “the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese government” had picked Albanese as “their candidate” in the coming election.

Dutton led with his chin, saying he was reflecting on what had been reported and commented on by the ASIO director-general, Mike Burgess.

Burgess, in his “Annual Threat Assessment” speech the previous evening, had said ASIO recently disrupted “a foreign interference plot in the lead-up to an election in Australia”. He didn’t name the country or the jurisdiction. Burgess related how a wealthy “puppeteer” had hired an employee to identify potential target candidates.

This week Morrison dipped back into the China well.

On Wednesday, he told parliament the Chinese government “have picked their horse” (Albanese) and labelled Labor’s deputy leader, Richard Marles, a “Manchurian candidate” for remarks Marles made some years ago. (“Manchurian candidate” is a reference from a political thriller to someone brainwashed and manipulated by an enemy power.)

The stakes were raised for the government when, in a rare TV appearance on Wednesday night, Burgess made it clear he was less than impressed with ASIO, which was “apolitical”, being drawn into political infighting.

Then on Thursday the government received a massive whack from Dennis Richardson, who is not only a former ASIO head but also a former secretary of the defence and foreign affairs departments and was Australia’s ambassador in Washington.

Richardson denounced the government’s “attempt to create an artificial division where one in practice does not exist”, saying that only served “the interests of one country. And that’s China.”

Read more:
Elections are rarely decided by security and defence issues, but China could make 2022 different

He described the tactic as “grubby beyond belief”.

Morrison was not put off, later that day saying Albanese “is the Chinese government’s pick at this election”.

The government’s sledges against Albanese on the economic and law-and-order fronts were less spectacular but equally stretched.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg last week delved into the archives, back to when Albanese, as a Labor Party official from the left in the early 1990s, moved a motion at a conference calling for consideration of an inheritance tax. From this, Frydenberg asserted, “he stands for death duties”.

In promoting legislation to make it easier to deport visa holders convicted of serious crimes, Morrison accused Albanese of being “clearly on the side of criminals”.

In defensive tactics, Albanese has been extremely surefooted.

Thus, after Burgess’s revelation about foreign interference, the opposition leader immediately contacted him and was able to report that ASIO has no problem with any of Labor’s federal candidates.

As Morrison attacked Labor’s credentials on national security, Albanese tabled a letter from the PM last year thanking him for supporting the government on the AUKUS agreement.

Albanese met the “scare” around his one-time backing for an inheritance tax three decades ago with ridicule, waving around an economics essay he’d written four decades ago.

Efforts by the government to wedge Labor on the visa legislation and legislation on guns fell in a heap. The opposition waved the bills through the House of Representatives with little prospect of them being considered in the Senate before the election.

The government’s effort last week to wedge Labor on the religious discrimination legislation ended with it being wedged by its own rebel backbenchers.

Albanese has covered off every angle that’s come up.

For instance, on Thursday he told parliament in a personal explanation that he had consulted Burgess before attending the opening of the Chau Chak Wing Museum at Sydney University in 2020. He added that he had obtained Burgess’s permission to say this to parliament.

Earlier this week a Labor senator named, under parliamentary privilege, businessman and political donor Chau as the “puppeteer” referred to in the Burgess speech, something Burgess declined to be drawn on.

In his statement to parliament, Albanese said he did “regularly consult with our national security agencies, because I take their role seriously as leader of the opposition”.

However neat Albanese’s moves, however reprehensible the government’s, Labor doesn’t fool itself. Morrison and his ministers have sown the seeds for a national security scare, and it’s too early to know whether they will germinate.

What we do know is that the Chinese government must be enjoying this spectacle immensely.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Morrison has sown the seeds for a negative campaign, and Albanese doesn’t know whether they’ll grow – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-morrison-has-sown-the-seeds-for-a-negative-campaign-and-albanese-doesnt-know-whether-theyll-grow-177368

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daryl McPhee, Associate Professor of Environmental Science, Bond University

The fatal shark attack off Sydney on Wednesday left the city shocked, and triggered questions from the horrified public. Why would a shark just grab a man from the water? And will it strike again?

The incident – Sydney’s first fatal shark attack since 1963 – has prompted debate on what to do next. Some people even took to social media to call for sharks to be culled.

This is a common community response following unprovoked shark attacks. But killing sharks is highly controversial. And as my research has shown, there are many non-lethal alternatives to protect beachgoers from sharks.

As authorities grapple with the best way to respond to this tragedy, it’s worth remembering all shark mitigation measures come with both merits and drawbacks – and none is a silver bullet.

Killing sharks is problematic

It’s unlikely authorities would ever be able to hunt down the specific shark involved in Wednesday’s fatality. As Macquarie University marine scientist Vanessa Pirotta has noted, sharks travel large distances and the animal is likely to be long gone.

Other times, members of the community call for an area-wide shark cull – and in rare cases a government will oblige.

In Western Australia in 2013, for example, the then Liberal government announced shark “kill zones” near beaches following a string of attacks. But the measure was scrapped after fierce opposition from the public and environment officials.

Read more:
Why we’re opposing Western Australia’s shark cull: scientists

Any increased effort to kill sharks is likely to face public and political opposition, for several reasons.

First, sharks pose a low risk to humans. It’s true that globally, the frequency of unprovoked shark bites has increased, due to factors such as more water users and changes in shark distribution and behaviour.

But the probability of an unprovoked shark bite remains low.

Second, public perception towards sharks is changing. Many people now realise the intrinsic value of sharks and their important role in marine ecosystems.

Given all this, we must keep pursuing non-lethal methods to protect swimmers and surfers from sharks while avoiding environmental damage.

Let’s look at such approaches in more detail.

Aerial surveys

Aerial surveys involve detecting sharks via a plane, helicopter or unmanned drone, or by people on land.

Their effectiveness can vary depending on how clear, calm or deep the water is, and on wind strength and shark behaviour.

An aircraft with human observers on board can survey a lot of coastline. But an aircraft can spend less than a minute on each beach, limiting the opportunity to locate a shark.

And research has shown even in reasonably clear water, overall rates of detection from planes and helicopters is low.

Drones cost less to operate than manned aircraft and are better for surveying a single location. However, battery constraints mean commercially available models can only stay airborne for a limited time.

In future, drones could be tethered to helium balloons or kites to allow for longer-term surveillance. But such technology is still at an early stage.

Surf patrol towers can help lifeguards detect sharks. But they must offer a vantage point more than 40 metres above sea level to be suitable for the task – a height well above that normally afforded by existing towers.

Nets and drumlines

Sharks can be detected by capturing then releasing them. These methods include deploying either mesh nets or “drumlines” – baited hooks that lure sharks.

Shark nets operate at more than 50 NSW beaches in the warmer months. The program releases all live sharks caught in nets, but more than 80% of large “target” sharks caught in the nets die.

Traditional drumlines, used extensively in Queensland, also historically kill a significant proportion of sharks.

New “SMART” drumlines are designed to kill fewer captured animals. The device issues an alert when an animal is caught, and a contractor unhooks and relocates it.

Over three years of SMART drumline trials in NSW, high levels of live shark releases were reported. But the method requires extra labour expense to ensure rapid response to a capture.

Area-based deterrents

Electrical shark deterrents have been investigated over many years. Research shows substantial promise, and Australia is making progress in commercialising the technology.

Scientists have investigated using acoustic deterrents such as orca calls and novel sounds to deter sharks. But such methods do not work on all shark species, and the impacts on other animals needs to be considered.

Physical barriers to exclude sharks from a particular area is a longstanding approach to protect bathers. Permanent swimming enclosures have worked in areas protected from exposed ocean conditions, such as Sydney Harbour.

But on ocean beaches, physical barriers must be designed to withstand constant wave energy, including extreme conditions. Previous attempted trials on NSW surf beaches failed as the gear either could not be installed, or was destroyed by the surf.

Read more:
Fatal shark attacks are at a record high. ‘Deterrent’ devices can help, but some may be nothing but snake oil

No quick fix

Wednesday’s fatal shark attack has understandably shaken the community and prompted heated debate. In all this, of course, we must remember that a human life has been lost.

Right now, talk of preventing future attacks will be of little comfort to the victim’s family and friends, eyewitnesses and first responders.

Looking further ahead, no system will ever deter or detect 100% of sharks. But risks can be reduced with well-considered approaches, suited to local conditions.

More research is needed into non-lethal strategies. The cost of various approaches is also an important consideration.

And no matter what system is used to protect beachgoers, it should be accompanied by efforts to educate the public about shark safety.

Tips include avoiding swimming or surfing in low light levels, avoiding beaches near estuaries after heavy rain and flooding, and avoiding places where stranded marine mammals are present – as the sites may attract sharks.

Read more:
Shark bites are rare. Here are 8 things to avoid to make them even rarer

Daryl McPhee has previously received funding from the NSW, Queensland and WA Governments to investigate unprovoked shark bite and mitigation responses. This article was based on the publication “A comparison of alternative systems to catch and kill for mitigating unprovoked shark bite on bathers or surfers at ocean beaches” in the journal Ocean and Coastal Management which was partly funded by the NSW DPI. Dr McPhee is not currently in receipt of any research or other funding associated with the sharks and shark-human interactions.

– ref. Sydney shark attack triggers calls for a cull – but let’s take a deep breath and look at the evidence – https://theconversation.com/sydney-shark-attack-triggers-calls-for-a-cull-but-lets-take-a-deep-breath-and-look-at-the-evidence-177357

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Collins, Laureate Professor in Nutrition and Dietetics, University of Newcastle

In the 1970s, low-carb diets were all the rage. The Dr Atkin’s Diet Revolution book claimed carbohydrate restriction was a “high calorie way to stay thin forever”.

Carbohydrates are found in breads, cereals and other grains, fruit, vegetables and milk. They’re also in ultra-processed fast foods, cakes, chips and soft drinks.

These days, low-carb diets are promoted as a weight-loss solution, to beat heart disease and as better for diabetes. But how do these claims match up with the latest research?

Read more:
Health Check: what’s the best diet for weight loss?

A new review of the evidence found long-term low-carb dieters lost just under a kilo more weight than other dieters. However the review concluded there was no evidence low-carb diets have any additional health benefits.

In fact, if you’re on a low-carb diet, you’ll need to pay closer attention to what you eat to make sure you get enough essential vitamins, minerals, dietary fibre and other phytonutrients.

What did the reviewers investigate?

The Cochrane review included 61 randomised controlled trials (the highest level of evidence) with almost 7,000 adults with excess body weight. About 1,800 had type 2 diabetes. People in the healthy weight range were not included.

The reviewers compared weight-loss diets that varied in carbohydrate content:

1. lower carbohydrate diets. This included very low-carb or ketogenic diets (less than 50g of carbs a day or less than 10% of your total energy from carbs) and low-carb diets (50-150g of carbs per a day, or less than 45% of total energy from carbs)

2. “balanced” carbohydrate diets (150+ grams of carbs a day, or 45-65% of your total energy from carbs).

What did they find?

The reviewers found that among adults with excess body weight (but who didn’t have type 2 diabetes), those following lower-carb diets for 3-8.5 months lost, on average, one kilogram more weight than those on balanced carb diets.

However, when they ensured restrictions in energy intake were the same in both groups, by providing the food or meal plans, the difference was about half a kilogram.

In longer-term weight-loss interventions lasting one to two years, the average difference in weight-loss between those on low-carb versus balanced carb diets was just under one kilogram.

The average weight lost by groups on any weight-reducing diet varied greatly across the trials from less than one kilogram in some, up to about 13kg in others.

The studies in adults with type 2 diabetes found greater initial weight loss on low-carb diets compared to balanced carb diets: 1.3kg over three to six months. However, in longer interventions that lasted between one to two years, there was no difference.

In the small group of studies that included a maintenance period at the end of the weight-loss intervention, there were no differences in weight-loss in adults either with or without type 2 diabetes.

There were no significant differences in other health measures, including blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar control or risk of constipation. And they found no important clinical differences in results based on the extent of participants’ carb restriction.

Overall, the review shows that whether you prefer a lower carb or a balanced carb eating pattern, both can work for weight loss.

Read more:
Do ketogenic diets help you lose weight?

Nutrients to monitor on a low-carb diet

Carbohydrate is a macronutrient. Your body uses it to produce energy to fuel your muscles, brain, lungs and other vital processes.

Healthy foods with carbs – breads, cereals and other grains, fruit, vegetables and milk – are packed with other important nutrients, especially dietary fibre, thiamine, calcium and folate.

Without careful planning, a low-carb diet could also be lower in these nutrients. So how can you ensure you’re consuming enough? Here’s what to look out for – and some lower- and higher-carb options.

Dietary fibre is needed to keep your bowel function regular and promote growth of healthy bacteria in your colon.

Lower carb sources: spinach, fresh and frozen mixed berries, almonds, cauliflower

Higher carb sources: wholegrain bread, apples, chick peas, sweet potato.

Thiamin or vitamin B1 is needed to supply energy to your body’s tissues and is used to metabolise carbohydrates.

Lower carb sources: trout, tuna, sunflower seeds, beef, yeast extracts

Higher carb sources: brown rice, black beans, wholemeal bread, yoghurt.

Read more:
Phytonutrients can boost your health. Here are 4 and where to find them (including in your next cup of coffee)

Calcium is needed for strong bones.

Lower cab sources: hard cheese, canned salmon with small bones, almonds, firm tofu

Higher carb sources: yoghurt, milk, soft cheese.

Folate is essential for growth and is used to manufacture DNA, your genetic code. Adequate intakes are especially important for women, as folate is needed to prevent neural tube defects in infants during pregnancy.

Lower carb sources: green leafy vegetables, avocado, broccoli, peanuts

Higher carb sources: wholemeal bread (Australian bread-making flour is fortified with folic acid), fortified wholegrain cereals, brown rice, oranges.

Ultimately, if you love carbs and want to lose weight, you can. Plan to lower your kilojoule and carb intake by not eating ultra-processed, energy-dense, nutrient-poor (junk) foods, while still eating carbohydrates from healthy foods.

If you’d like to learn more about weight loss, you can enroll in our free online course The Science of Weight Loss – Dispelling Diet Myths which begins on February 23.

Clare Collins is a Laureate Professor in Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of Newcastle, NSW and a Hunter Medical Research Institute (HMRI) affiliated researcher . She is a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Leadership Fellow and has received research grants from NHMRC, ARC, MRFF, HMRI, Diabetes Australia, Heart Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, nib foundation, Rijk Zwaan Australia, WA Dept. Health, Meat and Livestock Australia, and Greater Charitable Foundation. She has consulted to SHINE Australia, Novo Nordisk, Quality Bakers, the Sax Institute, Dietitians Australia and the ABC. She was a team member conducting systematic reviews to inform the 2013 Australian Dietary Guidelines update and the Heart Foundation evidence reviews on meat and dietary patterns.

Erin Clarke is affiliated with the School of Health Sciences, College of Health, Medicine and Wellbeing, The University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia.

Rebecca Williams is affiliated with the School of Health Sciences, College of Health, Medicine and Wellbeing, at the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia.

– ref. Do low-carb diets help you lose weight? Here’s what the science says – https://theconversation.com/do-low-carb-diets-help-you-lose-weight-heres-what-the-science-says-176368

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sam Whiting, Lecturer – Creative Industries, University of South Australia

News the prominent live music venue The John Curtin Hotel is up for sale, with the current lease expiring at the end of this year, has been met with grief and outrage by the Melbourne music community.

In their announcement on social media, the long-term leaseholders of this much-loved venue said the building had been put up for sale by the estate of the recently deceased former owner and is expected to be sold to developers.

Built in the 1860s and originally trading as The Lygon Hotel, for decades the John Curtin Hotel has been a crucial space for Melbourne’s musicians and as a meeting place for activist, socialist and unionist traditions.

Buildings like this hold a special place in the unofficial heritage of our cities. Its loss would not only be a blow to Melbourne’s current arts and political scene, but also our shared cultural heritage.

This unofficial heritage function of the Curtin, curated by participants in its own cultural and political setting, is difficult to capture – and would be near impossible to reproduce if lost.

A political watering hole

Pushing through its heavy double doors from the noise of Lygon Street, punters at the John Curtin Hotel are immediately met with the smell of beer and the timber and leather of its iconic booths.

Posters of local punk bands are stuck alongside framed portraits of prominent Labor luminaries, including its titular wartime PM.

The sound of musicians thrashing onstage upstairs mixes with the soul and funk records spun by front bar DJs and the conversations of nearby union representatives, students and other activists.

The venue has a “lived-in” feeling: somewhere with character and history close to its working-class roots.

Sitting directly opposite the Victorian Trades Hall – established in 1859 and “the birthplace of organised labour in Australia” – the John Curtin Hotel represents an architectural style typical of inner-urban public houses in the late Victorian era.

In 1887, the Working Men’s College opened close to the hotel, offering night-classes to working class men. To this day, the venue continues to host students and academics from RMIT, serving as a melting pot for musical, intellectual and activist cultures.

Renamed after prime minister John Curtin in 1953, many ALP prime ministers and premiers have shared a pint there, most notably Bob Hawke who used the venue as a de facto office in his early career.

More recently, the Curtin hosted the after party for the “Yes” marriage equality campaign, which was driven by Trades Hall and culminated in a huge street-party between the two venues on the day of the result’s announcement.

A place for musicians to cut their teeth

Climbing the centre staircase to the Curtin’s upstairs bandroom, punters encounter the volume of the performance well before they can see the band.

Entering directly onto the venue’s dance floor in full view of the stage, the bandroom wraps around its stairwell: a wide, L-shaped room, with the stage at its top and the bar off to the side. The venue’s disco ball, DIY lighting and sweaty, dark atmosphere lend it an immediate appeal, and the space is a favourite among local musicians.

Band rooms like this are an important element of the live music circuit, and are hard to replace once gone. Current indie darlings Big Thief played here on their first Australian tour. Local acts like King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard cut their teeth at the venue.

One of the few dedicated music venues in Carlton, the Curtin Hotel is that rare small live music space that acts as stepping-stone for local and international up-and-comers, and a social hub for the local music scene.

How we capture cultural memories

Discussions have begun as to whether the Victorian state government, the unions, or a combination of both could step in and buy the freehold outright.

The Curtin Hotel represents much more than its current purpose as a music venue, eatery and drinking hole for those of Melbourne’s political left. Its heritage value lies not just in the building, but in what the building represents: the stories of those who have passed through its doors over the years, from students, musicians and academics, to trade unionists, activists and prime ministers.

The age of the building, its specific layout and modifications that have happened over the years, and its location create a unique character which can only truly be understood in person.

Buildings have a unique role to play in anchoring our cultural memories. As a tangible connection to the past – and a continuing focal point for the communities connected to the site today – the Curtin enables new stories to be told that are grounded in a sense of place.

Memories and histories will remain. New band rooms may emerge. But if the building is lost, the particular embodied experience of the Curtin and its layers of complex past will be lost, too.

Sam Whiting is a member of the ALP, and is currently involved with the Reset Arts and Culture collective (https://resetartsandculture.com/).

Catherine Strong does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The John Curtin Hotel is a home for Melbourne’s musicians, activists and unionists. Shutting it down is a loss for our cultural heritage – https://theconversation.com/the-john-curtin-hotel-is-a-home-for-melbournes-musicians-activists-and-unionists-shutting-it-down-is-a-loss-for-our-cultural-heritage-177313

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Briggs, Research Director, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney

In a major step forward for Australia’s clean energy transition, the country’s biggest coal-fired power station Eraring is set to close seven years early in 2025, Origin Energy announced this morning.

Eraring has been operating for 35 years in the central coast of New South Wales. Last year, it alone was responsible for around 2% of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions, based on calculations from electricity market and emissions data.

The fundamental reason for its early closure is the brutal impact the growth of renewable energy is having on the profitability of coal plants. Origin has announced it will be building a large, 700 megawatt battery on-site in its place to store renewable energy.

This announcement follows the acceleration of other major coal plant closures: Liddell power station is scheduled to close in 2023, Yallourn’s closure was brought forward to 2028, and only last week AGL Energy edged forwards the scheduled closure of two more coal plants.

This is a welcome step with transition planning by Origin – but also underlines the risks of Australia’s clean energy transition accelerating without a national plan for the exit of coal.

Why is this happening?

Old power stations are excellent sites for batteries due to their existing connections to transmission lines and lots of electricity capacity. This has also been announced for the closed Hazelwood and Wallerawang coal power stations.

Over the past 12 months, the market share of renewable energy has increased to over 30%. In particular, the rapid growth of rooftop solar and solar farms in the middle of the day has sent daytime wholesale electricity prices crashing.

To stay open, coal plants are using a variety of coping strategies. This includes cycling their output down on sunny days and ramping back up for higher prices as the sun sets and demand increases at the end of the day. However, this places stress on ageing plants and breakdowns are becoming more common.

Something has to give. Electricity market analysis last year found Eraring was the coal plant most exposed to the growth of renewable energy and likely to lose significant money by 2025 – so the writing was on the wall for Eraring.

As Origin CEO Frank Calabria, stated:

the reality is the economics of coal-fired power stations are being put under increasing, unsustainable pressure by cleaner and lower-cost generation, including solar, wind and batteries.

In announcing the closure, Origin also cited its commitment to net-zero emissions by 2050, and the recommendation of the International Energy Agency that advanced economies close coal plants by 2030.

What will happen to the market and workforce?

When the Hazelwood coal power station closed in 2017 with just a few months notice, power prices spiked for several years afterwards and many workers were unable to find alternative work.

Origin, however, has given three-years notice in accordance with electricity market rules brought in after the shockwaves from Hazelwood’s closure, and announced it will develop a transition plan for its workforce. This includes training, redeployment and prioritising site employees for long-term operational roles.

Origin presented figures showing the energy and capacity gap will be filled by a combination of new storage, Snowy 2.0, a new transmission line to move power between South Australia and NSW, and new renewable energy infrastructure scheduled for NSW.

Consequently, the impact on prices is likely to be modest compared to the Hazelwood closure.

Eraring’s closure may provide other coal plants some breathing space. Coal plant owners have effectively been playing a game of chicken, holding on and hoping another plant shuts to tighten supply and increase prices.

But as Origin’s figures illustrate, there’s a lot more renewable energy projects in the pipeline, and its figures don’t include the tremendous growth of rooftop solar, which last year saw over 3,000 megawatts installed.

So this is unlikely to be the last of the coal plant closures in our near future. Indeed, in the draft 2022 Integrated System Plan (a “roadmap” for the electricity system), the Australian Energy Market Operator projects as much as 60% of coal plant capacity could be gone by 2030.

We still don’t have an exit plan for coal

Even though coal plants are shutting up shop faster, Australia still doesn’t have an exit plan for coal. That’s unlikely to change, given neither major party is going to want to “own” the closures in an election year.

As a result, this pattern seems likely to continue: renewable energy will continue to grow as the cheapest form of electricity generation, governments will put in place policies to accelerate its growth, and it will be left to the market and asset owners to make decisions on closures without a policy framework. This is extremely risky.

Origin has done the right thing by giving three-years notice, committing to a transition plan for its workforce and investing in battery storage.

Read more:
The end of coal is coming 3 times faster than expected. Governments must accept it and urgently support a ‘just transition’

But energy market players don’t consider the penalties for not complying with notice requirements an effective deterrent, compared to the financial incentive to hang on and hope for a price uplift when other plants close.

This means we’re left relying on the owner’s goodwill, enlightened self-interest and fear of reputational damage to act responsibly.

Maybe Australia will muddle through like this. But without a plan, we’re at risk of a rush of closures in future years with disastrous impacts on electricity prices, regional economies and livelihoods in coal communities.

We need policy commitments

A variety of models for an orderly exit from coal have been proposed and national agreements have been negotiated to phase out coal in other nations such as Germany and Spain.

While the Australian Energy Market Operator has noted there are technical challenges in the clean energy transition, it considers they can be addressed. There’s no lack of alternative generation and storage to fill the energy gap from retiring coal plants.

Read more:
How Australia can phase out coal power while maintaining energy security

Just this week, the NSW government received expressions of interest from renewable energy and storage projects worth over A$100 billion. The government observed that this was equivalent to the electricity output of ten coal-fired power stations in the Hunter Valley Renewable Energy Zone.

Hopefully on the other side of the election there’ll be a political and policy commitment to an orderly exit from coal – a plan that can manage impacts on our electricity system and support coal power station workers through the inevitable transition.

The Institute for Sustainable Futures has received funding for research on projects related to coal transition including the Clean Energy Council (large-scale survey of renewable energy employment), Infrastructure Australia (electricity employment projections) and Global Compact Network/Westpac (implications of just transition for financial institutions and corporate sector).

– ref. Australia’s largest coal plant will close 7 years early – but there’s still no national plan for coal’s inevitable demise – https://theconversation.com/australias-largest-coal-plant-will-close-7-years-early-but-theres-still-no-national-plan-for-coals-inevitable-demise-177317

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gabrielle Appleby, Professor, UNSW Law School, UNSW Sydney

Next month we will see a significant shake-up in courts across Australia’s eastern seaboard. Three chief justices – Tom Bathurst, of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, Catherine Holmes, of the Supreme Court of Queensland, and Helen Murrell of the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory – are all due to retire.

To date, two replacements have been announced. Andrew Bell is to be sworn in as chief justice in NSW on March 5, followed by Lucy McCallum in the ACT on March 8. The announcement of the Queensland chief justice is imminent.

Read more:
No selection criteria, no transparency. Australia must reform the way it appoints judges

What is the role of a chief justice?

The appointment of a chief justice is always an important occasion. A chief justice is sometimes called the “first among equals”, referring to the fact that they don’t hold authority over other judges in the court.

But this doesn’t capture fully the role of the chief justice. Increasingly, eras in judicial history and decision-making are discussed by reference to their judicial leader. An example is the discussion of “the Mason court” and its decisions on Indigenous and constitutional rights during the 1990s.

This is in part a reflection of the key role a chief justice can play as an intellectual leader and in the creation of court culture. It also reflects that it is often the chief justice who speaks publicly for the court, including to the media. They will often respond to controversies involving the court, such as delay, misconduct or other shortcomings of judicial officers.

Chief justices also perform key administrative functions in the court. These include the allocation of cases, engaging with the government about court reform and budgets and, of course, consulting on judicial appointments.

How do we appoint chief justices?

Chief justices are appointed by the same process as other judges.

This means their appointment is at the discretion of the executive government. The cabinet acts on the advice of the attorney-general.

To appoint a judge to the High Court, the Commonwealth attorney-general must first consult with state attorneys-general. In the states and territories, there is no requirement for an attorney-general to consult before appointment.

In practice, though, the attorney-general would generally seek input from the head of jurisdiction (if appointing a new chief justice, that would be the outgoing chief justice), as well as professional bodies representing barristers and solicitors.

This remains the process at the Commonwealth level. It was also the approach adopted most recently in New South Wales.

Some jurisdictions have recently experimented with a more transparent appointment process. In Queensland, following the highly criticised appointment of Tim Carmody as chief justice in 2014 on the basis he was unsuited to be appointed to the position, the government adopted a Protocol for Judicial Appointments.

This includes an expression-of-interest process and a judicial appointments advisory panel. The panel provides the attorney-general with a shortlist of candidates. The shortlist must be based on six criteria set out by the Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration (AIJA):

1. intellectual capacity

2. personal qualities (including, for instance, integrity and independence of mind)

3. an ability to understand and deal fairly

4. authority and communication skills

5. efficiency

6. leadership and management skills, particularly in the court, but also relating to those external to the court such as the legal profession.

The Queensland protocol also requires the panel to consider “opportunities for promoting diversity in the judiciary”.

However, these experiments with more open appointment processes have rarely been secured through legislative or constitutional reform. This leaves them vulnerable to being shelved by future governments. Indeed, when the Abbott government came to power in 2013 it quietly abandoned a Labor-initiated federal reform of the late 2000s.

Whether a process for appointment is fluid and secret or transparent and consultative depends greatly on how governments understand the essential attributes of a “good” judge in a diverse democratic society.

What should a government look for in a chief justice?

Is there anything, then, that governments should be looking for specifically in a chief justice? We have written elsewhere that the chief justice has distinctive relationships with the government, the legislature, the media and the public, the profession and the academy. This means they are uniquely placed, and obliged, to protect and promote judicial values in the court they lead.

When well-established principles such as judicial independence and impartiality come under threat, from the government or elsewhere, the chief justice must defend them. A prominent recent example was when Victorian Chief Justice Marilyn Warren issued a public defence of the court in 2017 after federal government ministers attacked the impartiality of her court, particularly in criminal sentencing of terrorist offenders.

Chief justices can also advance emerging values, such as a commitment to robust accountability for judges who misbehave, or to increase diversity and transparency on the bench.

How can the process be improved?

The AIJA’s criteria for appointing a judge require chief justices to display various “authority and communication” and “leadership and management” skills. But does a chief justice require something more?

We say yes. They must be individuals who can provide intellectual leadership and contribute constructively to the collegiality of the court. These characteristics are no doubt important, but they will largely be met through the existing criteria.

Chief justices must also bring to the role an institutional sensitivity and a reform mindset that allows them to respond to and anticipate contemporary challenges to the court.

Recently, this has included the need for courts to respond quickly to the COVID-19 pandemic to maintain access to justice and uphold the open court principle. It has also included responding appropriately to public revelations, and administrative findings, of sexual harassment by judicial officers.

Read more:
Appointing Australia’s highest judges deserves proper scrutiny

In this respect, High Court Chief Justice Susan Kiefel has been widely commended for the personalised understanding she showed to those women who brought complaints of sexual harassment against former High Court judge Dyson Heydon. In response, she implemented an administrative inquiry into the conduct and a subsequent review of the judicial workplace, focusing particularly on the vulnerable position of judicial associates.

If a government is truly committed to the traditional and modern values of the court system, it should be seeking an individual who can defend the institution from unwarranted attacks, as well as recognise and respond to genuine criticism and shortfalls of the institution.

These attributes should not be left to chance, but should be set out and candidates’ experience considered against them. It is only in this way the judiciary will retain the confidence of the public.

Professor Gabrielle Appleby was a member of the Advisory Committee of the Australian Law Reform Commission Inquiry into Judicial Impartiality (2020-2021).

Associate Professor Heather Roberts receives funding from the Australian Research Council for a project titled ‘The Ideal Judge’, which examines changing expectations of judges and judging in Australia since federation. She was a member of the legal history committee that designed the legal history installation for the Supreme Court of the ACT.

– ref. Explainer: how are chief justices appointed and how can the process be improved? – https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-are-chief-justices-appointed-and-how-can-the-process-be-improved-177212

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul E. Griffiths, Professor of Philosophy, University of Sydney

Interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary and multidisciplinary are all nice buzzwords. But talk of “breaking down the barriers” is all too often a cover for breaking down academic disciplines to create administrative flexibility. This is a disaster in the making for both research and education.

This is why the proposal to abolish departments in the arts and social sciences at the University of Sydney met such a heated response. That response led to a substantial revision of the proposal.

Universities need to learn to recognise antidisciplinarity and avoid it. Running through the initial restructuring proposal was the idea that academic disciplines are “silos” that stand in the way of interdisciplinary research and teaching. This is a complete misunderstanding: strong disciplines are the essential foundation of interdisciplinarity.

What is interdisciplinarity?

Interdisciplinary research uses knowledge and skills from different disciplines to target a specific problem. Interdisciplinary teaching examines the same question from different disciplinary perspectives. If universities are to meet today’s challenges, whether that is climate change and extinction or reconciliation and closing the gap, they need to support interdisciplinary research and education.

I have the privilege of working in the University of Sydney’s Charles Perkins Centre. This interdisciplinary research centre was created because solving the problem of lifestyle diseases requires input not only from medicine and the biosciences, but also economics, political science, law, engineering and the humanities and creative arts.

Interdisciplinary teams, when assembled with insight and managed with skill, can achieve extraordinary results. But the foundations of those results are strong disciplines.

Read more:
Science in silos isn’t such a bad thing

An interdisciplinary team is not a group of people trained in “interdisciplinarity”. It’s a group of people who have deep knowledge and sound judgment in their disciplines.

I once worked with an international collaboration that was standardising how some biomolecules are named. I was not invited as an interdisciplinary scholar who knows a bit about molecular biology, but as an expert in the history and philosophy of biological classification. A key skill in an interdisciplinary team is knowing when to defer to other people’s disciplinary expertise. That is what they are there for.

What are the warning signs of antidisciplinarity?

Truly interdisciplinary work is likely to reach right across the university and beyond.

If an “interdisciplinary” initiative encourages people from the same administrative unit or “cost centre” to work together and even discourages involving people from another cost centre, that should set off alarm bells. It’s likely not an interdisciplinary initiative at all, but an effort to force intellectual activity into an ill-fitting administrative box. That is antidisciplinarity in action.

A discipline is much more than a particular stream of courses in the undergraduate syllabus, despite efforts to redefine it as such. A discipline is an international community of expertise.

A discipline is the group within which one expert can legitimately judge another expert’s work. A historian, an epidemiologist or a quantum theorist is best placed to judge whether work in history, epidemiology or quantum theory is good work. They can tell if a course covers the right material. They can also tell who is the most promising candidate for employment or for promotion.

If these day-to-day management decisions are not made by disciplinary experts, bullshit can flourish. That is why universities were traditionally organised into departments based on a discipline or tightly related disciplines like the different branches of physics.

Read more:
Book review: Open Minds explores how academic freedom and the public university are at risk

And what about educating students?

Interdisciplinary education is better described as multidisciplinary, since what it really does is expose students to multiple disciplinary perspectives.

In a truly interdisciplinary project each participant has a different perspective on the problem. They negotiate through these differences to a shared – and often highly innovative – approach. That is one reason interdisciplinary teams are so powerful.

But only the most advanced undergraduate students have started to develop a disciplinary mindset. They can learn to work in a group – an important skill – but they are not collaborating as discipline experts. We should not be training students to think that having “done your research”, as we now say, is a substitute for disciplinary expertise.

Read more:
A university course on pandemics: What we learned when 80 experts, 300 alumni and 600 students showed up

This does not mean disciplines are set in stone

Disciplines are continually evolving. The changing structure of knowledge itself drives this evolution. The administrative structures of universities must accommodate these changes or become obstacles to progress.

For example, retired biologists will remember departments of botany, zoology and microbiology, with a department of biochemistry somewhere else in the university. The molecular revolution in biology dissolved those divisions as the ideas and techniques of the life sciences became more broadly integrated.

But a university cannot create meaningful disciplines or interdisciplinary fields by creating administrative units. Back in 1900 it was common for philosophy and psychology to sit together in departments of “moral sciences” or “mental and moral philosophy”. If we did that today it would not create an exciting new synergy. It would just make life difficult for everyone involved – staff and students.

Like running a research team, running a university means knowing when to defer to discplinary expertise. Those actively involved in creating knowledge understand best what will create synergy and what will merely create confusion.

Disciplines are not the real problem

Administrative structures do frequently do stand in the way of interdisciplinary research and teaching. But the problem is not that people are fenced off in different disciplines. It is that they are fenced off in different cost centres, unable to collaborate because income would be “lost” to another part of the university.

Read more:
2 out of 3 members of university governing bodies have no professional expertise in the sector. There’s the making of a crisis

It would be convenient if every administrative unit was an interdisciplinary synergy, where everyone wants to collaborate and no-one wants to collaborate with a different cost centre. But wishing will not make it so.

It would be convenient if academics cared more about whether their research and teaching are profitable and a bit less about whether they are credible in their discipline. But unless research and teaching have credibility with disciplinary experts a university loses its social licence to operate.

Antidisciplinarity arises from an understandable frustration with these facts among those who must manage university budgets. But it’s a recipe for poor research and poor education.

Paul E. Griffiths receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the John Templeton Foundation

– ref. Why the ‘interdisciplinary’ push in universities is actually a dangerous antidisciplinary trend – https://theconversation.com/why-the-interdisciplinary-push-in-universities-is-actually-a-dangerous-antidisciplinary-trend-175511

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Aaron Simmons, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, University of New England

Are you one of the increasingly large number of people seeking to minimise the environmental damage wrought when producing the food you eat? If so, you might use the common “environmental footprint” method to decide what to buy.

Environmental footprints measure the environmental damage caused by a product throughout its life. For food, this includes the impacts of growing crops and livestock, and manufacturing the inputs required such as fertilisers. It can also include packaging and transport.

But unfortunately, environmental footprints often don’t tell the full story. When consumers switch to a food seen as more environmentally friendly, its production expands at the expense of other products. This has consequences that environmental footprints don’t take into account.

Environmental footprint calculators may promise to help consumers lead a greener life. But they may in fact encourage choices that don’t benefit – and may even harm – the environment.

A problematic assumption

We are experts in assessing the effectiveness of climate change mitigation for agricultural systems. We regularly provide policy advice to governments, United Nations bodies and other organisations.

The design of environmental footprint calculators is guided by international standards organisations and policymakers, including the European Union. The tool is commonly found on the websites of environmental groups, government agencies, companies and other organisations.

The calculators aim to guide consumer choice, by assessing the impacts of current production on the environment. But this is a problem.

It assumes the footprint of a product calculated today remains constant as production is scaled up or down, but this often doesn’t hold true. When demand for a product changes, this has knock-on effects on nature. It might mean more agricultural land is required, or river water is used to irrigate different crops.

Below, we examine three ways environmental footprints can provide a misleading picture of a product’s true impacts.

1. Land use

Agriculture makes a large contribution to greenhouse gas emissions – primarily due to animal belches but also the production and use of synthetic fertilisers.

Organic farming can help reduce agriculture emissions, primarily because it doesn’t use synthetic fertiliser. But some research suggests converting to organic farming production could also exacerbate greenhouse gas emissions.

One study in England and Wales examined what would happen if all food production was converted to organic. It found global greenhouse gas emissions from food production could increase by about 60%.

This was because organic systems produce lower yields, meaning more crop and livestock production would be needed overseas to make up the shortfall. Creating this agricultural land would mean clearing vegetation, which emits carbon dioxide when it decomposes.

And when grasslands are converted to cropland, soil organic carbon is also lost.
Enhanced soil carbon storage from organic farming offsets only a small part of the higher overseas emissions.

When considering the consequences of switching from one food to another, the type of agricultural land used is also important.

Read more:
Meat and masculinity: why some men just can’t stomach plant-based food

In Australia, about 325 million hectares of land is used to raise cattle to produce red meat. This land often can’t be used to grow crops because it’s too dry, steep, vegetated or rocky.

If consumers switch from red meat to plant-based diets, more land suitable for growing crops would be needed, either in Australia or overseas, to produce alternative proteins such as legumes or plant-based meats.

In Australia, existing arable land is already being used to supply crops to domestic and global markets. So new land would have to be made suitable for crops, either by cultivating grazing land or clearing forest. Alternatively, crop production could be increased by using more fertiliser or other inputs.

The emissions associated with these shifts are not included in carbon footprints of plant-based protein production.

2. Water

It’s commonly assumed that choosing a product with a smaller water footprint will increase the water in rivers and lakes which replenishes the environment. However, in Australia, policy and markets determine how water is used.

Irrigation water can be traded between users. If a water-intensive crop such as rice is no longer grown, the farmer will almost always either use the water to grow a different crop or trade it with another farmer. In such a scenario, no water is returned to the environment.

Similarly, a fall in red meat production may not necessarily increase water for the environment.

Farmers whose land adjoins a river or other water body are allowed to take water for livestock to drink. Fewer livestock would leave more water available in rivers, but research in Australia suggests this water would be extracted for domestic uses, especially in dry years.

3. Goods produced together

Many agricultural products are produced in conjunction with others. For example, a cow slaughtered for red meat will also produce hide, meat meal and tallow. Likewise, a sheep can produce wool when alive, then other products when slaughtered.

So if consumers eschewed red meat due to its high carbon footprint, the associated products would also need to be replaced – and this would have environmental impacts.

If synthetic materials replace wool or hides, for example, demand for oil will likely increase. Or if wool is replaced with bio-based products such as cotton or hemp, demand for cropland will increase.

Increasing milk production per cow – and thus keeping fewer cows – has been considered as a way to reduce livestock emissions. But research suggests it may not have the intended result.

Fewer cows would produce fewer calves, which are used to produce veal. The research found less veal would require more red meat to be produced elsewhere, meaning no overall reduction in emissions.

It is realistic to assume that more red meat would be required. While per capita beef consumption is declining in some Western countries, global demand for beef is projected to increase to 2030 as wealth in developing countries increases and global population grows.

Towards a healthier planet

We and other experts are increasingly trying to raise awareness of the simplistic nature of environmental footprints.

It’s important to recognise the limitations of current methods and create tools that fully assess the consequences of consumers’ decisions.

Developing these tools will be challenging, due to the many uncertainties involved, and will require substantial research investment.

But it will lead to better environmental policy, fewer unintended consequences and a healthier planet.

Read more:
Don’t drink milk? Here’s how to get enough calcium and other nutrients

Aaron Simmons is a Technical Specialist in Climate Change Mitigation with the NSW Department of Primary Industries, and a
an adjunct Senior Research Fellow with The University of New England. He receives funding from the Commonwealth government and rural research and development corporations.

Annette Cowie is a Senior Principal Research Scientist in the Climate Branch at the NSW Department of Primary Industries, and Adjunct Professor in the School of Environmental and Rural Science at the University of New England. She receives research funding from NSW and Commonwealth government programs and rural research and development corporations. She is a member of Soil Science Australia and an adviser to the Australia New Zealand Biochar Industry Group and the Land Degradation Neutrality Fund.

– ref. Environmental footprint calculators have one big flaw we need to talk about – https://theconversation.com/environmental-footprint-calculators-have-one-big-flaw-we-need-to-talk-about-166897

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

This week’s Newspoll, conducted February 9-12 from a sample of 1,526, gave Labor a 55-45 lead, a one-point gain for the Coalition since the late January Newspoll. Primary votes were 41% Labor (steady), 34% Coalition (steady), 8% Greens (down three), 3% One Nation (steady) and 14% for all Others (up three).

40% were satisfied with Scott Morrison’s performance (up one), and 56% were dissatisfied (down two), for a net approval of -16. Anthony Albanese’s net approval was down six to -6. Morrison increased his better PM lead from 43-41 to 43-38. Figures are from The Poll Bludger.

For most of this term, Newspolls have been published every three weeks, but this Newspoll was released a fortnight after the previous one. That suggests Newspoll will be fortnightly in the lead-up to the federal election.

The big story is the three-point drop in the Greens’ primary vote. It’s possible some Greens supporters are not enamoured with the Greens’ anti-Labor rhetoric
and so switched to Labor, and that the Greens are also losing support to climate independents.

If the Greens lost support to Labor, why isn’t Labor up? It’s possible Labor lost support to the Coalition, but the Coalition lost ground to vaccine-sceptical others like Clive Palmer’s UAP.

The overall Labor lead of 55-45 is still strong for Labor, but Essential last week
gave Labor just a one-point lead after preferences. Essential and Resolve, which have been the worst polls for Labor since late 2021, are likely to both be published next week.

NSW byelection updates: Willoughby could be close

After originally selecting the Greens as the Liberals’ two candidate opponent in Willoughby, the Electoral Commission has nearly finished re-doing this count as Liberal vs independent Larissa Penn.

Based on preference flows from polling places that have reported a Liberal vs Penn count, the ABC is estimating 51.7-48.3 to Liberal from the current primary votes. But postals have not yet been counted, and there are almost as many postals received to date as votes counted so far.

I suggested in Sunday’s article that, if more left-leaning voters were anxious about COVID, the postals could skew left. Postals almost always skew right in Australian elections, but far fewer people vote by post than at these byelections.

Read more:
Mixed NSW byelection results do not imply voters in a ‘baseball bat’ mood

In the other byelections, Labor’s two party share in Bega dropped from 57.1% on election night to 55.6%, still a 12.6% swing to Labor. In Strathfield, Labor rose from 54.4% to 55.7%, a 0.7% swing to them that was negative on election night. In Monaro, the Nationals were down from 55.0% to 54.9%, a 6.7% swing to Labor.

These changes from the election night figures mainly reflect the addition of pre-poll booths that were not counted on election night. Postal votes will not start being counted until Saturday.

Morgan poll: Frydenberg preferred as Liberal leader

A Morgan federal SMS poll, conducted February 14-15 from a sample of 1,080, had 38.5% of voters preferring Treasurer Josh Frydenberg as Liberal leader, 31% incumbent PM Scott Morrison and 12.5% Defence Minister Peter Dutton.

Coalition voters still had Morrison first with 40%, Frydenberg at 32.5% and Dutton 12.5%. Dutton had his highest ratings (22%), with the independent/other category, which would include One Nation.

Australian jobs report: little change in January despite COVID crisis

The ABS released the January Australian jobs report Thursday. Despite the massive COVID surge in early to mid-January, there was little change from December. Unemployment was steady at 4.2% and underemployment and participation both up 0.1% to 6.7% and 66.2% respectively. This ABC report focuses on the drop in hours worked, which are likely to rebound in February.

The 4.2% unemployment is tied with December as Australia’s lowest since August 2008, just before the global financial crisis. The employment population ratio – the percentage of eligible Australians employed – increased 0.1% to 63.4%, and is higher than at any prior point on the ABS chart in the past ten years.

Bad COVID outbreaks are having a diminishing impact on the overall economy; this was the case in the US in January too. While the jobs situation is good for the government, inflation is not so good.

WA poll: McGowan’s approval slumps to 64%

From the front page of Wednesday’s West Australian, a People’s Voice poll has WA Premier Mark McGowan at 64% approval, 25% disapproval (net +39).

While a 64% approval is very good by most standards, McGowan had a 91% approval rating in late 2020, with just 5% disapproving. His approval dropped to 77% in November 2021.

US Democrats gain in redistricting, but Biden’s ratings still poor

I wrote for The Poll Bludger Tuesday that redistricting of the 435 US federal House seats occurs once a decade after a Census. So far this cycle, Democrats are up 11, Republicans down three and competitive down eight. But Joe Biden has almost overtaken Donald Trump in having the worst net approval of any president at this stage of their term since approval polling began.

Also covered in this article: Boris Johnson remains UK Prime Minister despite the “PartyGate” scandal, the centre-left Socialists won a majority at the Portuguese election, and Emmanuel Macron likely to be re-elected at French presidential elections in April.

Adrian Beaumont does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. A bad Newspoll for the Greens; Willoughby NSW byelection could be close – https://theconversation.com/a-bad-newspoll-for-the-greens-willoughby-nsw-byelection-could-be-close-177055

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

Following years of discussions, support for a global treaty to stem the tide of plastic pollution is now widespread, with 75% of UN member states backing the idea.

Next week, countries will negotiate two competing resolutions in the lead-up to the UN Environment Assembly. Both resolutions call for the establishment of an intergovernmental negotiating committee to start work on a legally binding treaty.

The negotiations are a crucial moment for the New Zealand government. More than 750 groups — including civil society, Indigenous peoples, trade unions and youth groups — are calling for a binding treaty that captures the full life cycle of plastics.

New Zealand has so far only expressed general support for a plastics treaty, but has not co-sponsored either of the two resolutions. More than 300 scientists and research organisations are calling on all UN member states to accept nothing less than the key elements of the stronger Rwanda-Peru resolution.

Global production of plastics is set to double and marine plastic pollution is predicted to triple by 2040.

Both resolutions call for quick negotiations, a legally binding agreement, national action plans, technical support and innovations.

But there are fundamental differences between the Rwanda-Peru and Japan resolutions in terms of the mandate and overall vision.

Read more:
We need a legally binding treaty to make plastic pollution history

Solutions to match the severity of the plastic crisis

The Peru-Rwanda resolution is commensurate with the gravity of the plastic pollution crisis. It has the backing of more than 70 countries, including 27 from the European Union. It was the result of a consultative process and has widespread support among civil-society organisations.

Japan’s resolution has only three co-sponsors to date: Cambodia, Palau and Sri Lanka. It has been described as the “skin” of the Rwanda-Peru resolution “without the muscle” — a significantly diluted version.

The Rwanda-Peru resolution proposes a legally binding agreement which addresses the full life cycle of plastics. This covers the extraction of fossil fuels for the production of plastics, manufacture and consumption, end-of-life management and the safe retrieval of legacy plastics.

Read more:
Plastic is part of the carbon cycle and needs to be included in climate calculations

It sets out an open mandate for the intergovernmental negotiating committee. This means negotiators could work on a broad range of issues relevant to plastic pollution as discussions progress.

The Rwanda-Peru resolution also requires a scientific advisory committee to ensure all countries have free and open access to the latest science and best practice, financial support for developing countries and coordination with pre-existing international agreements.

Cleaning up ocean plastics is not enough

Japan’s resolution proposes a closed mandate which severely limits what diplomats can consider. This significantly undermines the ability of the intergovernmental negotiating committee to prepare an effective treaty.

This resolution refers to plastics’ “life cycle” but its text prioritises waste management interventions over preventative measures, while further limiting its scope to marine litter.

New Zealand’s government should support the key elements of the Rwanda-Peru resolution. It presents the absolute minimum needed to ensure the global community operates within the safe space of the planetary boundary for “novel entities”, including plastics.

Plastic pollution crosses borders and lasts for generations. This is an opportunity for New Zealand and other UN member states to meet their moral obligation to protect people from its wide range of impacts.

Plastics are threat multipliers. They can act together with other stressors, such as climate change and over-exploitation of marine resources, to cause far greater damage than if they occurred in isolation.

An effective treaty would dramatically reduce the volume of persistent toxic plastics released into the biosphere. Simultaneously, it would also reduce the impacts of escalating plastic pollution on the climate, human health, human rights and biodiversity.

Read more:
Plastic in the ocean kills more threatened albatrosses than we thought

The Ministry for the Environment says the New Zealand government supports a global treaty, but “the overall scope, level of ambition, and nature of commitments of a global agreement all remain subject to negotiations”.

If we are to realise a treaty with long-term and effective outcomes, New Zealand will need to negotiate hard for an agreement with a sufficiently wide scope and high ambition.

The international scientific community is clear. Efforts focusing only on waste management will not scale up to the crisis. The priority must be prevention and product redesign.

Turning off the tap at the point of production offers the largest reduction of plastic pollution. It often represents net savings to consumers and producers, while providing the best opportunity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The last thing we want is to come out of negotiations with a treaty that can only respond to waste management and marine litter. This would fail to address the source and impacts of rapidly increasing volumes of global plastic pollution.

Trisia Farrelly receives funding from the United Nations Environment Programme, the Environmental Investigation Agency, and Massey University. She is affiliated with Massey University, The Aotearoa Plastic Pollution Alliance, and the New Zealand Product Stewardship Council.

– ref. An international treaty to curb plastic pollution risks being watered down — New Zealand needs to take a stand – https://theconversation.com/an-international-treaty-to-curb-plastic-pollution-risks-being-watered-down-new-zealand-needs-to-take-a-stand-177130

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bridget Harris, Associate professor, Queensland University of Technology

Domestic and family violence perpetrators commonly use technology such as phones and other devices as a weapon to control and entrap victims and survivors, alongside other forms of abuse. This “digital coercive control” is not bound to a particular location and can follow targets anywhere, any time they access devices or digital media.

For women outside urban Australia, technology-enabled abuse can pose more risk than for those in cities. In research funded by the Australian Institute of Criminology, we spoke to 13 such women who have been subjected to digital coercive control to understand what it is like.

The disturbing side of technology

… you see a side of a phone that you probably wish you didn’t know about [Shelly]

The women reported that abusers used technology to harass and stalk. The majority experienced image-based sexual abuse (the creation and/or release of intimate images without consent) or recordings made of victims or survivors, overtly or covertly.

Some experienced doxxing (release of personal and identifiable information). Perpetrators in some cases impersonated real or fake people and initiated contact with women or their children. Authorised functions of phones and other devices and accounts were sometimes impaired, or unauthorised functions enabled.

I think you can feel a lot safer knowing they are not in proximity; they can’t hurt me. When it comes to technology it can – I guess you’re more hyper-vigilant because they can come any time and you can’t stop it. Even if you block someone, they find another way. They do; he always found other means to make contact with me. I never – I guess you never got to escape, which I hadn’t experienced before, because every other type of abuse I was able to – it ended at some point. [Kira]

It is different outside the cities

These behaviours have also been observed in urban settings in Australia. Also, like in cities, we found that violence persisted (and often increased) after separation.

However, women outside cities face higher barriers when seeking help and responding to family violence, and they can also be at greater risk.

Read more:
Technology-enabled abuse: how ‘safety by design’ can reduce stalking and domestic violence

Domestic violence agencies are further from women’s homes in non-urban areas, as we have observed in this study and in other work. Legal services can be limited and there are shortages in alternative and crisis accommodation.

Complicated financial arrangements and pressures may hinder women’s ability to exit violent relationships, such as where they work on farms or other small businesses and there may be few employment and educational opportunities in the region.

No anonymity

Numerous survivors spoke of the lack of anonymity in rural areas, so they and/or their abusers were more likely to be known when disclosing and reporting violence. This can be confronting, especially when perpetrators are well-known and well liked.

He is established – he knows people and he’s well liked … he’s in a boys’ club and knows lots of people … whereas I don’t. [Fiona]

This could be heightened for women with family and networks out of the region or overseas, culturally and linguistically diverse women, criminalised women, or those viewed as “different” outsiders.

Read more:
Migrant women are particularly vulnerable to technology-facilitated domestic abuse

As well as actively destroying women’s social networks, abusers would challenge women’s accounts of abuse and attempt to gather allies, as Claire explains:

He went around the streets telling people that I’m crazy … Because we’re in a small country town he was going in and out of shops … He affiliated himself with one of the local churches and got them on his side.

Isolation and fear

Abusers socially isolate women, and those in non-urban areas are often socially further from family, friends and support services than those urban areas. We found too, that some abusers sought to extend geographic isolation, by moving women to more remote locations.

Technology could provide channels to communicate with others and to seek assistance and support. Natalie had “a good amount of friends” and so would be “on the phone, or I’d be texting, and that was my outlet for a crazy situation”. However, some women felt this was not always possible when devices had been taken over or were monitored by abusers.

[I was] too scared to use it [technology]. I just couldn’t reach out to people … I didn’t want to use it just in case [Lola]

Fear loomed large in women’s accounts of digital coercive control. All those we spoke to had contact with police.

Some had positive encounters, most commonly with specialist (domestic and family violence liaison officers, who are less available in many rural areas) but more spoke of negative encounters. Women who were dissatisfied with police felt that officers were dismissive of digital coercive control.

‘Homicide flags’

We believe digital coercive control warrants attention. Coercive control, obsessive tendencies, stalking, and threats to kill or self-harm have all been noted as signals of fatal violence by death review teams.

The women we interviewed reported all these behaviours. Non-fatal strangulation is another “homicide flag” and was reported by 46% of our participants.

Firearm ownership and threats to use firearms also signal high risk. Firearm ownership is common on farms and in many rural areas.

An assault can become a homicide in rural areas, because of the sheer distance between the site of an attack and a hospital or medic.

It is imperative that we acknowledge and address how technology is used against survivors and the impact that technology-facilitated abuse has on women across landscapes. We must also recognise that women in rural locations face elevated risks, and that digital coercive control can provide evidence and signal risk of fatal violence.

Pseudonyms have been used for the women quoted in this article.

The National Sexual Assault, Family & Domestic Violence Counselling Line – 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for any Australian who has experienced, or is at risk of, family and domestic violence and/or sexual assault.

Bridget Harris receives funding from the Australian Research Council and has previously received funding from The eSafety Commissioner. This work was funded by the Australian Institute of Criminology. She has completed and ongoing grants funded by this organisation.

Delanie Woodlock has previously received funding from The eSafety Commissioner. This work was funded by the Australian Institute of Criminology. She has completed and ongoing grants funded by this organisation

– ref. ‘You can’t stop it’: in rural Australia, digital coercive control can be inescapable – https://theconversation.com/you-cant-stop-it-in-rural-australia-digital-coercive-control-can-be-inescapable-176980

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Danielle Chubb, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, Deakin University

As the major parties shift into election mode, the Morrison government is clearly placing defence and security issues at the centre of its campaign.

By depicting Labor as “weak” on China, Defence Minister Peter Dutton is hoping fears of China’s global ambitions will provide an electoral advantage to the Coalition.

What does history tell us about the role of defence and security issues in federal elections? And if these areas do become a major election issue, who benefits?

Australia’s security in past elections

National security has, of course, been a prominent feature of recent elections – think Tony Abbott’s “Stop the Boats” election slogan in 2013, or the “children overboard” affair under then-Prime Minister John Howard in 2001.

However, in both these cases, the issues were related to homeland security and asylum seekers, rather than Australia’s defence or foreign policies.

We have to go back to the elections in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War was a divisive issue, to find an example of defence figuring prominently in an election.

In 1966, at the height of public support for the Vietnam War, Harold Holt won a decisive victory for the incumbent Liberal/Country coalition, arguing Labor’s position on withdrawing troops from Vietnam would put the country’s security at risk.

Since then, debate around Australia’s defence and foreign affairs policies has been relatively muted. Australia’s withdrawal from Vietnam in 1972 marked the beginning of a long period of bipartisanship on security, with both parties viewing the US as the linchpin for Australian defence and foreign policy.

There’s also been little disagreement on the importance of the US to Australia in public opinion, as we explain in our new book looking at these trends from 1945 to the present day.

Both the Australian Election Study (AES) surveys and polls by the Lowy Institute have rarely recorded fewer than eight out of 10 voters believing the alliance with the US was either “very” or “fairly” important for Australia’s security. And the differences between supporters of the two major parties are negligible.

This could be explained by the fact that since the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, the public has seen relatively few external threats to Australia’s security.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq took place far away and were not regarded as a direct threat. To the extent the public has seen a threat, it has been through terrorism, with the 2002 Bali bombings being the most recent example.

Changing perceptions of China as a threat

The economic and military rise of China in recent years has changed the public’s threat calculation. This is at least partly due to a greater awareness of China’s belligerence towards Taiwan, its claims over the South China Sea and its embargoes on Australian goods, all of which have raised concerns about China’s potential to threaten Australian security.

Other factors, such as the tone of media coverage on China, may have also contributed to this changed threat perception.

Read more:
Australia would be wise not to pound ‘war drums’ over Taiwan with so much at stake

As a result, we have seen a measurable shift in the public debate about Chinese influence in Australia. Since 2015, this perceived threat has moved from being a relatively niche issue in the mainstream media, to a major one.

Usually, any changes in the public’s views towards other countries tend to take place over many years. However, when it comes to China, the shift has been dramatic.

The AES surveys show that in 1987, just before the Tiananmen Square massacre, only 3% of the public regarded China as “very likely” to pose a security threat to Australia. In 2019, this was 31%. We expect it to be even higher in this year’s AES survey.

Lowy’s polls also show the same rise in public concern about China. In the 2006 poll, 40% of Australians had “little trust” in China; in 2021, that figure more than doubled.

The 2021 Lowy poll also found that, for the first time, more people saw China as a security threat than an economic partner.

In the relatively stable world of public opinion towards security and foreign affairs, these are major changes with important political implications, not least for the upcoming federal election.

Which party stands to benefit?

The two major parties are generally regarded by the public as better able to handle some issues than others. According to our research, the Coalition is regarded as better on economic management, taxation and immigration; Labor is preferred on health, education and climate change.

The Coalition also had an advantage over Labor on national security the last time the AES asked about this issue in 2007. Voters preferred the Coalition’s defence and security policies over Labor’s by eight percentage points.

This advantage is likely to be much greater in 2022 compared to 2007. In times of threat, the public tends to view the government in power as more trustworthy on defence and security issues — the “rally around the flag” effect.

The Coalition government benefited from this at the beginning of the pandemic when it was seen as effectively handling a once-in-a-century health emergency. However, the slow vaccine roll-out and other problems have since eroded this advantage.

Read more:
As the Coalition plays up China fears ahead of an election, how might Albanese position himself?

Faced with defence and security as an election issue, Labor’s only option is to emphasise bipartisanship.

As such, Labor has made relatively few statements about the new AUKUS security pact with the US and UK, other than to register its in-principle support. Nor has Labor disagreed in any fundamental way with the government’s policy response to China’s trade embargoes against Australia.

While the Coalition leans into its perceived advantage on security issues, Labor’s best strategy is to try to shift the policy debate towards the issues on which it has a long-term advantage among voters, such as health, education and the environment. But its success in doing that may well depend on global events beyond the control of either of the major parties.

Ian McAllister receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Danielle Chubb does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Elections are rarely decided by security and defence issues, but China could make 2022 different – https://theconversation.com/elections-are-rarely-decided-by-security-and-defence-issues-but-china-could-make-2022-different-176973

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hannah Melville-Rea, Research Fellow, New York University

If emissions continue to accelerate, Western Sydney can expect to endure up to 46 days per year over 35℃ by 2090, a new analysis from the Australia Institute finds. This is a fivefold increase from the historical average of just under nine days of extreme heat per year.

Western Sydney, home to around 2.5 million people, is highly vulnerable to extreme heat and is 8-10℃ hotter than east Sydney during heatwaves. The region is too far inland to benefit from coastal breezes, and lacks the altitude of the neighbouring Blue Mountains.

The furthest inland suburbs, such as Penrith, are hottest. Indeed, in early January, 2020, Penrith was the hottest place on Earth, reaching a scorching high of 48.9℃.

However, such a dramatic rise in extreme heat days is not inevitable. If global warming is limited to 1.5℃ this century, in line with the Paris Agreement, Western Sydney will have fewer than 17 days of 35℃ per year by 2090. Emissions reduction and smart urban design are urgent measures to protect Western Sydney-siders from heat stress.

Heatwaves are deadly

In Australia, heat accounts for more deaths than all other natural disasters combined. If the power goes out, it’s much harder to mitigate the stress.

In January 2009, during the devastating heatwave that preceded the Black Saturday fires, Melbourne experienced a power outage on a 44℃ day, leaving some 500,000 people in the heat without electricity. The heatwave alone killed 374 people, and cost Melbourne an estimated A$800 million.

Read more:
The world endured 2 extra heatwave days per decade since 1950 – but the worst is yet to come

Heat also acutely affects worker productivity. The New South Wales treasury estimates that by 2061, the state could lose up to 2.7 million working days every year from reduced worker productivity in agriculture, construction, manufacturing and mining, due to heat.

However, under a low-emissions pathway, NSW estimates the loss in worker productivity could be limited to about 700,000 days. While this is still significant, it’s a quarter of cases compared to a high-emissions future.

To find out how climate change would affect Western Sydney, we analysed climate projections from the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO. We calculated temperature projections using a low-emissions scenario (where global warming is stopped at 1.5℃) and a high-emissions scenario (where global emissions continue unabated).

Examining 12 federal electorates that make up Western Sydney, we found the electorate of Lindsay, which includes the city of Penrith, will be most impacted. It can expect up to 58 days of 35℃ by 2090 under a high emissions scenario.

Who is impacted?

Western Sydney is uniquely prone to the “urban heat island” effect. The dense concrete and lack of green spaces absorbs and amplifies heat, raising temperatures to dangerous levels.

Residents without access to affordable air conditioning, with preexisting medical conditions or who work outdoors are most at risk of heat stress.

To understand the human impact of extreme heat, we partnered with extreme heat advocacy nonprofit Sweltering Cities. They conducted a targeted survey of Western Sydney in 2020, collecting insights from 682 respondents.

Gemma MacMillan is a single mum of a three-year-old boy, living in affordable housing in Ropes Cross. “In summer I have to keep my son Oliver inside as much as possible on hot days,” she says. “There’s no shade at all in my backyard.”

Gemma has lived in a house without air conditioning or ceiling fans. “In the past we’ve gone to stay with my ex-partner’s mum who has an air con, but now we’ve broken up and I worry about my son when it’s really hot.”

Even though retired chemist Rafael Perez has air conditioning, he says: “you’ve got to think of the cost. I’m not in a position to have it on all the time so I turn it off as soon as I can.”

In fact, despite Western Sydney having, on average, lower income levels, residents in areas such as Penrith are paying on average up to $100 per month more in electricity bills than those living closer to the coast.

Reflecting on his 22 years in the neighbourhood, Rafael says, “there used to be a lot more trees when I moved here, now there is a lot more concrete.”

What needs to change?

Reducing emissions is the difference between 1.5 months and 17 days of extreme heat per year in Western Sydney.

Thankfully, there is appetite for change. Earlier this month, for example, prominent cricketer Pat Cummins launched Cricketers for Climate in Penrith, a movement for Australian cricket clubs to achieve net-zero emissions over the next decade. The initiative highlights how the climate crisis threatens our ability to play sports, and positions athletes as advocates for climate action.

Additionally, the upcoming federal election could provide the policy window to increase climate ambition, as Western Sydney has a number of highly contested swing seats. According to the Sweltering Cities survey, 92.5% of Western Sydney residents say they want politicians and political parties to have policies on heat.

What do these policies look like? At the local level, we need to design our cities and homes to protect vulnerable members of the community. The NSW government recently announced a move to ban dark roofs. Lighter coloured roofs reflect heat, and can reduce indoor temperatures by 10℃ during heatwaves.

Read more:
Climate explained: how white roofs help to reflect the sun’s heat

Increasing green spaces, ensuring bus stops and parks are adequately shaded, and providing affordable access to air conditioning are also crucial steps to making Western Sydney safe.

Most importantly, preventing extreme heat requires a significant emissions reduction. Australia’s national target of a 26-28% emissions reduction from 2005 is consistent with warming of 4℃, if all other countries were to follow a similar level of ambition. At the state level, instead of planning new coal mines, NSW should accelerate its transition to renewable energy.

Hannah Melville-Rea is a researcher at the Australia Institute’s Climate & Energy Program.

– ref. Western Sydney will swelter through 46 days per year over 35°C by 2090, unless emissions drop significantly – https://theconversation.com/western-sydney-will-swelter-through-46-days-per-year-over-35-c-by-2090-unless-emissions-drop-significantly-177056

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Cairns, Lecturer in Education, Deakin University

Everyone has an opinion about what should go into history curriculum. Politicians are especially good at expressing theirs.

The acting federal education minister, Stuart Robert, has announced a delay in approving the revised Australian Curriculum until at least April. This means the ongoing debate about Australian history in the curriculum is likely to be dragged out to the eve of the next federal election. History curriculum is political but should not be used as a political plaything at election time.

The federal government and Western Australian government are concerned that the revised history curriculum is “very busy”. Robert said Western civilisation “is well and truly back in the curriculum, but it remains quite cluttered”.

Read more:
A ‘crowded curriculum’? Sure, it may be complex, but so is the world kids must engage with

This latest delay comes after the then education minister, Alan Tudge, last year rejected the first draft. Tudge called for “a positive, optimistic view of Australian history” and more content about Australia’s “Western heritage”.

The draft was the product of an independent review by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA).

Delay gives Coalition an election issue

The delay gives the Coalition the opportunity to control the debate and use history curriculum as a wedge issue in the lead-up to the election.

We saw the way historical narratives get split along political lines last year. Tudge argued for describing Anzac Day as “sacred” rather than “contested”. This was criticised by Labor’s shadow education minister, Tanya Plibersek, who spoke about the importance of not censoring history.

Read more:
The past is not sacred: the ‘history wars’ over Anzac

Signing off on the revised curriculum close to an election might be a good political tactic. A national history curriculum that promotes a more “patriotic” narrative would appeal to Coalition voters. It would also reinforce an ideological point of difference from Labor.

Around the world governments promote their preferred historical narratives to push their political agendas. And, of course, public discussion about the complexities of Australian and world history is important. So is debate about how and what young people study in history.

However, if these issues are used to divide voters, they are in danger of being simplified and reduced to political rhetoric. We know from past rounds of the “history wars” that the black armband versus white blindfold history approach has a dividing effect.

As Anna Clark notes in her latest book, Making Australian History:

“History can play a vital role in truth-telling and reconciliation […] Seeking justice, remembering and addressing this nation’s past is an ongoing and necessary condition of individual and collective healing.”

Expanding our collective historical understanding takes much more than a series of media moments.

‘Cluttered’ curriculum claim is overblown

Attempts to extend debate about “decluttering” history overlook the complexities of curriculum reform. Decisions do need to be made about what topics are included at each year level. However, we cannot apply a Marie Kondo approach to history and keep only the bits that “spark joy”.

The minister’s insistence that history content must be reduced further suggests a neater narrative is needed.

Historians help us to understand that the past is long, messy and requires special skills for interpreting it. For this reason, the approach taken in the Australian Curriculum places equal emphasis on the skills and knowledge students need to do historical inquiry.

One of the stated aims is to ensure students develop interest in and enjoyment of historical study. Another is to develop understanding of historical concepts: evidence, continuity and change, cause and effect, significance, perspectives, empathy and contestability.

Read more:
Teaching a ‘hatred’ of Australia? No, minister, here’s why a democracy has critical curriculum content

History curriculums provide maps for teachers and students to navigate a range of topics. Some topics get selected and some do not.

Even after the introduction of the national curriculum, research shows it still gets adapted at the state and territory level. Teachers in schools then interpret the curriculum in different ways. Local context is seen to be an important factor in selecting content and perspectives.

Therefore, not every point in the curriculum will get covered. So perhaps it does not matter if the history curriculum is “busy”.

Read more:
First, it’s not an instruction manual: 3 things education ministers need to know about the Australian Curriculum

We also know from research that students will make their own meanings of curriculum, regardless of how other people might want them to make sense of certain messages.

The government’s attitude to delaying the review process and now inviting “mums and dads to be involved” fails to acknowledge the process of a curriculum review. There was an extended consultation period in 2021. Teachers, subject experts, educational organisations and curriculum professionals have worked hard during that process to improve the existing curriculum.

The government will use the overdue publication of version 9.0 of the Australian Curriculum as an opportunity to stamp its authority on it. But decisions about history curriculum should not be a matter of political opinion.

Rebecca Cairns does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The national history curriculum should not be used and abused as an election issue – https://theconversation.com/the-national-history-curriculum-should-not-be-used-and-abused-as-an-election-issue-176783

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anna Howe, Honorary Professor, Department of Sociology, Macquarie University, Macquarie University

Nursing home residents confined to their rooms during COVID are like hypothetical tenants locked in their bedrooms by landlords – unable to take showers, able only to make only sandwiches for meals and cut off from visitors and socialising with fellow residents.

If it happened to tenants they would be entitled to stop paying rent, go to an appeals tribunal, or move out. But aged care residents have to keep paying.

The Commonwealth has instigated an investigation focusing on death among residents during COVID, but this narrow focus ignores the broader impacts of the pandemic on residents’ quality of life.

What do residents pay, and for what?

Residents in aged care homes pay what’s called a Basic Daily Fee. This is set at 85% of the single age pension to cover meals, laundry and other daily living services. It is currently $53.56 per day.

About half also pay for accommodation on a means tested basis, either as an upfront Refundable Accommodation Deposit (RAD) or a rent-like Daily Accommodation Payment (DAP).

The RAD is fully refundable 14 days after the resident leaves. The home lives off the interest. The average RAD is less than A$500,000. Some exceed $1 million.

Both the RAD and DAP are set by the provider, within Commonwealth guidelines.

Those entering residential care have increasingly opted to pay via the rent-style DAP rather than RAD.

Read more:
Aged care, death and taxes after the royal commission

This change appears to reflect increased awareness on the part of incoming residents and their families and advisers that the financial commitment of a RAD may not be the best option if the stay turns out to be shorter rather than longer.

The average length of stay is skewed by some very long stays. While the average stay is almost three years, the median (typical) stay is half as long. About 30% of residents leave within six months, mainly through death.

The Commonwealth pays an accommodation supplement to fully or partly cover the cost of providing accommodation to those who can’t afford either the full RAD or DAP.

Currently $59.49 per day, the supplement is a proxy for the average DAP.

All up $791.35 a week, but it’s hard to move

A resident paying the Basic Daily Fee and a Daily Accommodation Charge equal to the supplement pays $791.35 per week.

But for many residents confined to their rooms, the $374.92 per week Basic Daily Fee is for services no longer fully delivered.

For these residents a good deal of the Refundable Accommodation Deposit or Daily Accommodation Payments is for accommodation that cannot be fully used.

There’s an Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission they could complain to. But as each resident has an individual agreement with the provider, it would have to be done one-on-one, rather than collectively.

The ability to move has been limited at the best of times. Aside from the emotional upheaval involved, finding a vacancy, making financial arrangements and getting a refund of a RAD takes time.

The Commonwealth, providers and even the Council on the Ageing describe what we’ve got as a “consumer driven, market-based aged care system” yet consumers aren’t able to drive.

They lack bargaining power and individual complaints to the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission are few and far between. No advocates have so far talked of a class action.

A start would be to phase out Refundable Accommodation Deposits as recommended by aged care royal commissioner Lynelle Briggs in March 2021.

This would mean residents hadn’t effectively pre-paid their rent as a lump sum.

Read more:
1,100 Australian aged care homes are locked down due to COVID. What have we learnt from deaths in care?

In the short term, immediate action is needed to ensure no resident pays on-going fees for daily services they are not receiving or for accommodation they can only occupy and use in very restricted ways.

But requiring providers to repay and then forgo even part of these payments might hurt their liquidity, jeopardising their ability to continue to provide care.

Instead, the Commonwealth needs to urgently come up with compensation arrangements and ensure charges are applied only to services that are delivered.

Anna Howe is affiliated with Australian Labor Party

Have also received grants in the past, but not for about 15 years!,

– ref. Nursing home residents are paying $800 a week for services they are barely getting – https://theconversation.com/nursing-home-residents-are-paying-800-a-week-for-services-they-are-barely-getting-177138

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elisa deCourcy, Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow 2020-2023, Research School of Humanities and the Arts, Australian National University

In this new series, Remaking History, academics take a look at the ways they are recreating historical practices, and how this impacts their research today.

Cased daguerreotypes are among the oldest photographic images in Australian gallery, library and museum collections.

These tiny, pocket-sized photographs look quite foreign to us today. Their mirror-like surfaces make their subjects appear ethereal and other-worldly – but they are also sharp images often with incredible detail.

The daguerreotype was used internationally during the 1840s and for much of 1850s concurrently to the paper-based calotype and, later, the collodion-on-glass ambrotype.

The first photographs of First Nations people were taken with daguerreotype technology. And, the earliest colonial exhibitions of photography, in Adelaide, Kaurna Country in 1845 and Sydney, Gadigal Country, in 1848, were of daguerreotypes.

By the mid-1850s, there were daguerreotype studios in all colonial Australian capitals with many itinerant photographers travelling to offer daguerreotype portraits in regional centres.

The experience of early photography

My research is interested in the experience of early photography. What was it like to be photographed? How did the cumbersome technology and volatile chemistry influence the kinds of photographs made? What stories about the colonial past are represented in daguerreotypes we now have in public collections?

As humanities researchers, we traditionally look to diaries, letters, trade manuals, historic newspapers, solvency listings and, of course, photographs to answer these questions.

These sources provide us with an archival trace to the past – but they can only partially evoke the experience of early photography. It is hard to retrieve a comprehensive sense of the negotiations happening across the camera and photo chemistry.

To supplement and extend conventional research, I led a collaboration last year which made a series of seven daguerreotype portraits, following the 180-year-old process.

I wanted to understand the embodied nature of this early photographic experience.

My collaborators and I also used the project to think more carefully about conversations around colonisation, photography and collecting begun in the 1840s, and how these historic circumstances influence our understanding of the past and underpin historic collections today.

I invited people to participate in making the portraits on account of their professional and personal connection with early colonial Australian photography. I worked with historic processes photographer Craig Tuffin and, for one portrait, Kaurna First Nations artist James Tylor. Tylor’s practice spans historic and modern photographic technologies, and combines photography with carved, engraved and cast media.

Reactivating the daguerreotype process

To make a daguerreotype, the photographer takes a slim sheet of copper coated with a thin layer of silver. The silver surface is polished and then fumed in the dark with iodine and bromine, which makes the surface light sensitive.

After sensitisation, the photographer has about an hour before the chemistry on the plate begins to degrade. The plate is placed in a darkened carrier ready to be inserted into the back of a large box camera.

The sitters in historic photographs often appear sombre or stern. This affect comes less from a universal displeasure with being photographed and more from the concentration required not to move during the photograph and blur the image.

The exposure of a daguerreotype is a protracted moment. In the case of a portrait, the sitter must remain completely still for approximately 20 seconds, depending on light conditions.

We asked our contemporary sitters to hold their breath for the length of the exposure to lessen incidental movement in the upper body that unconsciously occurs when inhaling and exhaling.

The daguerreotype is developed (and its sensitivity to light stopped) with mercury vapour. The plate is heated and bathed in a gold-chloride solution to both enhance and protect the delicate image. Then, especially in cases of portraiture, the copper photographic plate is sandwiched behind a piece of glass and wedged into a leather case.

Lessons in the details

Following a historic process excavates knowledge known to early photographers, which has rarely survived in the archives.

Imperfections and mistakes are rarely preserved. In the mid 19th century, over-exposed plates were repolished to be used again. Plates where dust and debris upset chemical preparation were similarly repolished or discarded.

It is focused, sharp images, the ones that left the studio with patrons, which have made their way into our public collections.

In recreating this process, I learnt how the inevitable chemical failures and the cost of materials needed to be factored into the early photographer’s business model.

This investment and expenditure underpinned an itinerancy among early photographers in the Australian colonies, whose businesses’ survival was predicated on constant flow of new customers.

Historic daguerreotype sitters brought significant objects with them to the studio: books, letters from loved ones, cloaks, shields, heirlooms and even other daguerreotypes.

Sitters in this project brought with them objects to narrate their biographies as descendants of the subjects in historic daguerreotypes; as artists and curators who work with interpreting and responding to historic Australian photography; and as people whose families’ migration mirrored or deviated from migratory “highways” of the mid-19th century.

Buried stories

As a historian of photography, I learnt how the composure and investment of sitter, as much as the technical skill of the daguerreotype photographer, contributed to the success of the final image.

Daguerreotype photography was not a prescriptive exercise or passive undertaking on the part of the sitter. It was contingent on a two-way dialogue.

The colonial context in which historic daguerreotypes were made affected their custodianship, use and display – all of which resonated with the exploitative and damaging relationships of colonisation.

But the experience of photography in the studio was much more dynamic.

This contemporary series is a conversation with the past. It is an effort to portray and emphasise the nature of early photography where images were made in collaboration, and it is an effort to consider how those negotiations get muddied, buried and hidden in our archives.

The contemporary daguerreotypes were made at the School of Art and Design ANU and the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, and plates were prepared and developed at the ANU Research School of Physics. The series will be exhibited in Canberra and at a number of regional galleries over 2022-2023.

The contemporary daguerreotype series was funded by the Australian Research Council project ‘Capturing Foundational Australian Photography in a Globalising World’ DE200101322, and supported by the Research School of Humanities and the Research School of Physics at the Australian National University.

– ref. Remaking history: how recreating early daguerreotype photographs gave us a window to the past – https://theconversation.com/remaking-history-how-recreating-early-daguerreotype-photographs-gave-us-a-window-to-the-past-175913

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amy Maguire, Associate Professor in Human Rights and International Law, University of Newcastle

The Migration Amendment (Strengthening the Character Test) Bill will pass the House of Representatives by the end of this week. The bill would enhance the immigration minister’s powers to cancel the visas of people convicted of certain crimes.

This bill was debated and rejected twice previously, in 2019 and again in October 2021. This week, the government introduced it for a third time. Prime Minister Scott Morrison anticipated Labor would reject it again and accused the opposition of being “on the side of criminals”.

This time around, though, Labor has confirmed it will not oppose the bill in the House of Representatives.

The bill will now progress to a Senate inquiry or debate and then a vote in the Senate. This means it is highly unlikely to be passed into law before the upcoming election. The Senate has only two sitting days left, in budget week in late March.

What is the proposed legislation?

Under the Migration Act, Australia’s immigration minister has discretion and powers so broad they have been termed “God-like”. The act, first passed in 1958, has been amended multiple times since the Tampa crisis of 2001 to progressively enhance the Commonwealth’s capacity to pursue its border protection and related policies.

Read more:
Australian politics explainer: the MV Tampa and the transformation of asylum-seeker policy

In 2014, Morrison, who was then immigration minister, introduced amendments to section 501 of the Migration Act, which strengthened the minister’s capacity to refuse or cancel a visa on character grounds. The amendments also introduced mandatory visa cancellation in cases where non-citizens were sentenced to 12 months or more imprisonment, or convicted of sexual crimes involving a child.

The parliament passed those amendments, substantially boosting the minister’s already very broad discretion. This is clear in the dramatic increase in the number of visas cancelled under section 501 – from 76 cancellations in 2013-14 to 983 cancellations in 2015-16. This week, Morrison told Ben Fordham on 2GB radio the government has used these powers to expel 4,000 people from Australia since the last election.

The Migration Amendment (Strengthening the Character Test) Bill was drafted in 2018 to further tighten the character test. These latest proposed amendments confirm that a non-citizen would fail the character test if convicted of designated offences, including those

• involving violence or use of weapons
• punishable by imprisonment for two years
• involving violence in foreign countries that would constitute crimes if committed in Australia.

In other words, these amendments would enable the minister to expel someone convicted of a designated crime, even if they did not receive a custodial sentence.

The latest introduction of these proposed amendments was foreshadowed in October 2021. Immigration Minister Alex Hawke said the government would continue to push for the bill’s passage so it could protect Australians “from foreign criminals”.

Hawke says the amendments address a gap by ensuring visa cancellation in cases where people are convicted of crimes but receive a reduced sentence, for example following a guilty plea.

On 2GB this week, Morrison went further, claiming judges are deliberately handing down reduced sentences to ensure non-citizen offenders do not fail the character test. Hawke, on ABC Radio, also criticised lawyers for representing non-citizens accused of crimes:

Lawyers are part of the problem in this system. They go and represent some pretty serious criminals. These are not Australians. These are not people who should have a right to be in Australia.

These are quite striking attacks, particularly on the independence of the judiciary – a fundamental principle of the separation of powers. The government is claiming the amendments are required to limit the significance of sentencing in the visa outcomes of offenders. However, the vast weight of expertise, as offered to inquiries into these amendments, does not support their necessity.

At no stage in this debate has the government provided evidence that the claimed loophole in the law is actually preventing the deportation of violent non-citizen offenders.

Read more:
Why one man with ‘god-like’ powers decides if Novak Djokovic can stay or go

Why reintroduce this bill now?

The government is aware this bill is most unlikely to pass the Senate during this parliamentary term. The timing of the public and parliamentary debate, then, seems aimed at wedging Labor on national security.

Indeed, Morrison has accused Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese and Shadow Immigration Minister Kristina Keneally of wanting to keep convicted domestic violence offenders in the country “because the judge gave them a soft sentence”.

Morrison also told John Laws on 2GB that Labor was “soft” on keeping Australia safe:

You know, I don’t flinch on these things. But Labor, they baulk. They baulked on turning boats back. They baulked on the Pacific Solution. They baulked on all of these things. They baulked on defence spending. They baulk on all of these issues. They, they want to appease when it comes to China, the Chinese Government […]

Keneally rejected this characterisation. She said the minister’s powers are already broad enough to cancel the visa of anyone who is a risk to Australian society.

Why is Labor allowing the bill through the House?

When the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee examined the proposed character test amendments, the Labor senators on the committee issued a dissenting report. They opposed the passage of the bill in its drafted form. Until this week, Labor refused to support the bill, partly because it feared the further expansion of deportation powers would inflame tensions with New Zealand on that issue.

So, has Labor shifted course because it now supports the proposed bill? Labor Senator Murray Watt was asked on ABC’s Afternoon Briefing if he could see the bill passing into law:

We have said that we will support the legislation in the House so that it can get to the Senate and we can consider amendments the government is now making or talking about making… The reality is that the only reason this is coming out of the woodwork now is because government is desperate to find wedges; the government did this last week with the religious discrimination bill before it blew up in their face.

Keneally similarly referred to potential amendments at the Senate committee stage to explain the opposition’s about-face.

Labor’s approach echoes the strategy it recently took in relation to the Religious Discrimination Bill. Labor joined with Liberal defectors and crossbenchers to pass that bill in the House – with amendments. The government then chose to pull the bill from the Senate rather than seek to pass it with those changes.

In both cases, the opposition’s strategy seems clear – moving a bill through the house when it is unlikely to pass the Senate takes the sting out of public debates on religious freedom or national security.

But in legal terms, this approach fails to engage with the substance of the proposed legislation. The question remains as to why the immigration minister needs any greater power than he already holds.

Amy Maguire does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Government’s bid for an enhanced ‘character test’ is unnecessary – and unlikely to pass before the election anyway – https://theconversation.com/governments-bid-for-an-enhanced-character-test-is-unnecessary-and-unlikely-to-pass-before-the-election-anyway-177157

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Melatos, Associate Professor of Economics, University of Sydney

Private equity companies generally have a reputation for buying “distressed assets” at bargain prices, squeezing as much cash out of them while making them look as profitable as possible, then selling out for a huge profit.

But the takeover of Australia’s disgraced casino operator Crown Resorts by US private equity behemoth the Blackstone Group may be the best option available to Crown’s shareholders, the governments that benefit from gambling revenue, and the community that suffers the consequences of problem gambling.

The board of Crown Resorts has recommended Blackstone’s A$9 billion offer for total ownership, subject to approval from the federal Foreign Investment Review Board and state gaming regulators in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia.

The astonishing ethical and moral depths Crown plumbed in its pursuit of profit means that this may be one of those rare occasions where private equity’s financial and (particularly) non-financial engineering leads to a net positive outcome for the wider community.

An atypical private equity deal

Private equity companies raise money from private investors to buy undervalued and often distressed businesses to nurture back to commercial health before exiting at a profit.

Private ownership can be advantageous for a struggling company because it removes the regulatory and other distractions that come with being a listed public company. It means management can make decisions without worrying about short-term stock price fluctuations, for example.

Blackstone’s takeover of Crown Resorts is not a typical private equity transaction; Crown’s problems arose from moral, not financial, bankruptcy.

Notwithstanding the impact of the pandemic on casino profits – in particular the loss of foreign high-rollers – Crown has been consistently profitable. But its licences to continue to rake in those profits are under a cloud.

A NSW commission of inquiry (headed by former NSW Supreme Court judge Patricia Bergin) and a Victorian royal commission (headed by former Federal Court judge Ray Finkelstein) found Crown unfit to hold its Sydney and Melbourne casino licences. A Western Australian royal commission into the company’s fitness to hold its Perth casino licence is pending.

Illegal, dishonest, unethical, exploitative

The Victorian royal commission’s final report described Crown Melbourne’s management as disgraceful and its practices as variously illegal, dishonest, unethical and exploitative.

It lambasted senior executives for being “indifferent to their ethical, moral and sometimes legal obligations”, and the board for failing in its prime responsibility to ensure the company “satisfied its legal and regulatory obligations”.

This included facilitating the laundering of millions of dollars and ignoring its problem gambling obligations. Its claim to have a “world’s best approach to problem gambling”, Finkelstein said, could not “be further from the truth”.

Leer más:
Responsible gambling – a bright shining lie Crown Resorts and others can no longer hide behind

It is hard to imagine a more damning indictment.

Blackstone’s priority, therefore, will be to repair Crown’s many regulatory inadequacies, and deeply tarnished reputation, away from the gaze of shareholders, the media and investment bank analysts.

A rare opportunity

For Blackstone, Crown Resorts is a rare opportunity. Casino cash flows are irresistible to highly leveraged private equity investors. Casino company balance sheets dominated by valuable real estate assets are also a draw-card.

Blackstone has extensive experience in “flipping” hotels and casinos.

For example, it acquired the Hilton hotels empire in 2007 and exited 11 years later, making a $US14 billion profit. Last year it sold The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas for US$5.65 billion, seven years after buying it for US$1.8 billion. It is in the process of exiting its investment in Spanish gambling company CIRSA, which runs casinos and betting shops across Spain and Latin America.

Crown Resorts’ shareholders, meanwhile, are over a regulatory barrel.

The company’s licence to operate its brand-new Barangaroo casino is suspended. Its Victorian licence is on probation, with a requirement that Packer reduce his 37% stake (through his company Consolidated Press Holdings) to 5%.

Leer más:
How Sydney’s Barangaroo tower paved the way for a culture of closed-door deals

Existing casino operators would have been averse to tarnishing their reputations by buying into Crown, given its outstanding regulatory problems. Correcting its myriad problems can be expected to raise Crown’s costs (especially compliance costs) and cut its revenue (fewer high-roller junkets) – reducing its profitability and, hence, investor appeal.

If Blackstone can oversee Crown’s rehabilitation from regulatory pariah, it has the opportunity to profit from the ultimate corporate redemption story.

What happens next

Private equity outfits assist distressed companies by injecting the money required to turn things around and providing management expertise.

Crown doesn’t need money, so Blackstone’s main role will be rehabilitating its brand and corporate credentials with regulators and, hence, the investment community.

It can then be expected, after a polite interval, to sell Crown either to a global casino operator via a trade sale, or to public investors via a refloat on the Australian Stock Exchange.

One of the criticisms often made of private equity firms like Blackstone is that they aggressively (but legally) minimise their tax obligations. In the case of a casino, tax obligations should be harder to avoid since they are calculated on the basis of revenue received rather than reported profit. (That said, the Victorian Royal Commission did find Crown Resorts had avoided $200 million in tax, of which the company has since repaid $61.5 million).

But so long as Blackstone follows the rules, particularly those to do with policing problem gambling, there’s a chance it could serve shareholder interests while minimising the social harm casinos tend to visit on the communities in which they operate.

Mark Melatos is a member of the Reserve Bank of Australia’s Educators Advisory Panel and a member of the NSW Education Standards Authority’s HSC Standards Committee. He is also a volunteer for the Australian Conservation Foundation.

– ref. Crown Resorts has sunk so low that private equity is the best option – https://theconversation.com/crown-resorts-has-sunk-so-low-that-private-equity-is-the-best-option-177149

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brad Ridoutt, Principal Research Scientist, CSIRO Agriculture, CSIRO

People choose certain foods or change their diets for a range of reasons: to improve their health, lose weight, save money or due to concerns about sustainability or the way food is produced.

Consider the trend towards low-fat products in the 1980s and low-carb diets in the 1990s, and now, the rise in plant-based protein products and ready-to-eat meals.

But before you abandon your traditional food choices, it’s important to consider the nutritional trade-offs. If you’re replacing one food with another, are you still getting the vitamins, minerals and other nutrition you need?

In a recent paper, I sought to raise awareness of nutritional differences between foods by producing a new index specific to Australia. It aims to help Australians make better informed dietary choices and get the nutrients recommended for good health.

Nutrients: are we getting enough?

The Australian Bureau of Statistics publishes tables showing the usual intake of selected nutrients across the population. The tables also show the proportion of Australians whose usual nutrient intake is below what’s known as the “estimated average requirement”.

While Australian adults eat in diverse ways, they generally get enough of some nutrients regardless of their diets.

For example, most people seem to obtain adequate niacin (Vitamin B3) and phosphorus. And the tables suggest 97% of Australians get enough vitamin C.

However, inadequate intake of calcium, magnesium, vitamin B6 and zinc is common.

Around two-thirds of Australian adults consume less calcium than what’s recommended (which ranges from 840 to 1100 mg/day depending upon age). Worryingly, 90% of women aged over 50 don’t get enough calcium.

Inadequate zinc intake is most prevalent among Australian men – more than half aged over 50 consume below recommended levels.

So what about free sugars? These include added sugars and the sugar component of honey and fruit juices, but exclude natural sugars in intact fruit, vegetables and milk.

It’s recommended Australians limit free sugars to less than 10% of dietary energy intake. However, almost 50% of Australian adults exceed this recommended limit.

Read more:
Don’t drink milk? Here’s how to get enough calcium and other nutrients

Paying attention to under-consumed nutrients

Every food has a different nutrient composition. And as the Australian Dietary Guidelines show, we should eat a variety of foods to stay healthy.

We should pay particular attention to foods that are important sources of nutrients for which large numbers of Australians are not getting enough. If possible, Australians should seek to include more of these foods in their diet.

At the same time, foods with free sugars should be eaten only in moderation.

The new food index I produced seeks to help Australians achieve this. It provides an overall nutrient composition score tailored to the Australian dietary context.

The index includes eight vitamins (B1, B2, B3, B6, B12, Folate, A and C), eight minerals (calcium, phosphorus, zinc, iron, magnesium, iodine, selenium and molybdenum), along with protein and free sugars.

These 18 elements are weighted in proportion to the extent of inadequate or excessive intake in Australia. A higher score is better than a lower score.

So, the index scores foods highly if they are low in free sugars, and rich in the elements many Australians need more of – calcium, magnesium, vitamin B6, zinc and vitamin A.

Foods containing few nutrients but added sugar score very low. For example, a chocolate chip cookie weighing 35 grams scored 0.004 and a sugar-sweetened cola-flavoured beverage scored below zero.

Swapping foods may not achieve like-for-like

The index can be used to compare foods that might be considered substitutes in pursuit of a diet that’s healthier, more affordable or better for the environment.

In the case of dairy foods, 250ml of full cream milk scored 0.160, and reduced-fat milk almost as high at 0.157.

The index shows the potential nutritional trade-offs when choosing dairy alternatives. A 250ml serving of calcium-fortified oat beverage scored 0.093. Without calcium fortification, the score fell to 0.034.

Looking at meat, 100g of raw lean diced beef scored 0.142. An equivalent serving of plant-based burger made from pea protein, with many added vitamins and minerals, scored almost the same at 0.139. This shows plant-based alternatives are not necessarily less nutrient dense.

The index also shows the different nutritional needs of women and men. For example, the scores for two large eggs were higher for women (0.143) than men (0.094). This reflects, in part, the greater prevalence of inadequate iron intake among younger women.

Read more:
How Australia can boost the production of grains, while lowering its carbon footprint

Understanding trade-offs

To date, comprehensive nutritional information about foods eaten in Australia has been found only in databases used by scientists and nutrition professionals.

For the average consumer, packaging on unprocessed foods – such as fruits and vegetables, fresh meats and some cheese – doesn’t usually include nutrition information.

Consumers can consult the nutrition information panel when buying processed foods, but only some nutrients are shown.

I hope my research may prompt manufacturers produce more nutrient-dense foods or those formulated to meet the nutrient needs of a particular subgroup.

In future, I hope the index will also be translated into a user-friendly format or app that everyday Australians can consult, to ensure their changing food preferences result in a healthier choice.

Read more:
Meat and masculinity: why some men just can’t stomach plant-based food

Brad Ridoutt is a Principal Research Scientist with CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency. He has previously undertaken food system and nutritional research for a variety of private sector organizations and Australian government agencies. The research underpinning this article was partly funded by CSIRO and partly funded by Dairy Australia. Dairy Australia had no role in undertaking the study and the decision to publish research findings was made prior to funding and before the results were known. Dairy Australia had no role in the preparation of this article.

– ref. How to make your diet more sustainable, healthy or cheap – without giving up nutrients – https://theconversation.com/how-to-make-your-diet-more-sustainable-healthy-or-cheap-without-giving-up-nutrients-170522

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Meade, Senior Research Fellow, Auckland University of Technology

Many might choke at the suggestion Big Oil could play a key role in saving the climate. But, culpability for past actions aside, it is worth considering how fossil fuel interests might be recruited to combat global warming.

International commitments to achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 leave less than three decades to achieve monumental change. A healthy dose of pragmatism will be essential.

Allowing time for new technologies to emerge might not be enough. Consumers will be reluctant to switch from familiar fossil fuels to untried or inconvenient new technologies with limited infrastructure – even if they are cheaper.

By the same token, new fuel infrastructures will not become competitive unless they achieve scale, meaning existing infrastructures will enjoy scale-related cost advantages unless sufficient users migrate to the new technologies.

Breaking this cycle is as much an economic challenge as a technological one. Harnessing the massive infrastructure and resources of the fossil fuel industry could be one way to meet that challenge.

Accelerating net-zero targets

History shows the mass market adoption of new technologies is driven by their convenience and cost-effectiveness compared to what they replace. And large vested interests can be key to rolling out the required infrastructures.

For example, canals and railways in industrial revolution Britain were not built for ordinary travellers. They were sponsored by industrialists wanting more cost-effective transport options.

Read more:
COP26 leaves too many loopholes for the fossil fuel industry. Here are 5 of them

A recent study I authored on transitioning to net-zero emissions in transport and other sectors highlighted another (perhaps unexpected) solution: repurposing existing fossil fuel supply chains and infrastructures to supply low- or zero-emission fuels.

This could represent an affordable way to transition more rapidly to net-zero than by building entirely new infrastructures.

The hydrogen alternative

Central to any viable solution is certainty. For instance, vehicle buyers face the risk of choosing a new technology that fails to take off, or opting for one that is displaced by another.

Electric vehicles (EVs) are a case in point. At the turn of the 20th century they challenged both steam and fossil fuel vehicles (FFVs) in the race to replace the horse, until they were eclipsed by FFVs.

Read more:
For hydrogen to be truly ‘clean’ it must be made with renewables, not coal

Modern EVs have taken an early lead in replacing FFVs, despite a less-than-ideal environmental footprint. But major carmakers in Japan, Europe and China are actively exploring rival clean technologies, with hydrogen the most likely contender.

Hydrogen technology is perhaps as developed now as EVs were a decade ago, and is rapidly improving. It’s not inconceivable that EVs could be displaced, given the ability of hydrogen to fuel heavy transport, aviation and shipping.

Hydrogen might ultimately fuel all transport and much industry, affording it important scale advantages.

Adaptation and affordability

In practice, hydrogen would be transported in modified gas networks and likely distributed through new or existing petrol stations. It could be made using renewable electricity to split water, or from natural gas with carbon dioxide emissions from manufacturing captured and stored in depleted gas fields.

A recent Californian study predicts hydrogen produced using renewable electricity will reach price parity with existing fuels this decade.

Toyota and Hyundai have already released consumer hydrogen cars, and New Zealand recently imported its first hydrogen-powered truck. Hydrogen refuelling infrastructure is also emerging both locally and globally.

Promisingly, hydrogen combustion vehicles are already under development, raising the possibility of retro-fitting existing FFVs to run on hydrogen (just as FFVs were converted to run on natural gas after oil price shocks in the 1970s).

This could substantially reduce the cost of replacing New Zealand’s 3.5 million private vehicles with low-emissions alternatives – an unavoidable challenge in decarbonising transport.

Read more:
Electric cars won’t save the planet without a clean energy overhaul – they could increase pollution

Managed market solutions

Why would fossil fuel companies make the necessary clean energy investments? Because they see it as sufficiently profitable compared to the alternatives.

Rather than abandoning much of their existing assets and switching to electricity generation and distribution to profit from a transition to EVs, they could repurpose their considerable assets and resources to produce and distribute hydrogen (or some other clean fuel).

Fossil fuel companies could be assured of playing a key role in the transition if governments picked a winner among competing clean technologies – but this would be politically hazardous.

Read more:
Oil companies are thinking about a low-carbon future, but aren’t making big investments in it yet

Usefully, there is another approach that avoids those risks: franchise bidding – a much-used policy tool that replaces competition in markets with competition for markets.

Under this approach, governments would plan fossil fuel reductions over time, but auction a monopoly right to develop a clean energy alternative. That right would be time-limited and subject to performance standards and pricing oversight.

Creating a monopoly right allows economies of scale. Critically, vehicle manufacturers and buyers, fuel manufacturers and infrastructure investors can be confident they are not investing in the “wrong” technology – they all know the way forward.

Efficiency and equity

Furthermore, auctioning the monopoly right means governments avoid the political hazards of picking a winner. And proceeds from such an auction could be used to subsidise clean vehicle uptake or conversion of existing vehicles to clean fuels.

Finally, an auction can induce parties to participate when they might otherwise prefer no new technologies to emerge at all. Confronted with the prospect of owning a declining technology while a competitor enjoys the monopoly right to build the new one, winning the auction would look like the least-worst future.

Read more:
What Big Oil knew about climate change, in its own words

Fossil fuel companies should have a substantial head start in winning such an auction, given their highly developed infrastructures, massive balance sheets and skilled workforces.

They could also ensure a more orderly transition away from fossil fuels to clean ones, since they would manage the supply of both.

And whether fossil fuel companies or other clean energy suppliers win, by holding a franchise-bidding auction the net-zero transition in transport is achieved more quickly, efficiently and equitably.

Richard Meade is Principal Economist at Cognitus Economic Insight. Research funding for the study cited in this article was provided by companies owning electricity and/or natural gas distribution networks. The views expressed in that study, and in this article, are the author’s alone.

– ref. Harnessing the fossil fuel industry to combat climate change? It’s more than a pipe dream – https://theconversation.com/harnessing-the-fossil-fuel-industry-to-combat-climate-change-its-more-than-a-pipe-dream-177141