The recent opening of a golf course to the public in the inner north of Melbourne caused a flurry of excitement. Since then, thousands of visitors have explored the expanse of manicured rolling greens, fairways and rough. Under COVID restrictions that require Melbournians to stay within 5km of their homes, access to a very large and beautiful open space has provided welcome relief from the well-worn tracks up and down local creeks and around local ovals.
But beyond just exploring somewhere new, the meticulously crafted landscape of the Northcote public golf course offers a rare experience in Melbourne’s ever more densely developed inner suburbs.
The past six months of lockdowns have sparked many discussions about our cities and lifestyles. And the importance of local parks has come to the fore. There are issues of equity in access to parks, walkability, housing, and the measured health and well-being effects of being outdoors.
These target-driven discussions fit with the dominant planning methods of Australian cities. From walking times to tree cover targets, function has long dominated quality when defining urban open space. But this planning approach to open space significantly limits how parks are conceived.
Why the pressure on golf courses?
Now, as people swarm to urban parks and gardens in record numbers, we need to give open space the same status as other valued urban assets such as roads and rail. And we need to work out what government, the private sector, design professionals and the community can contribute to create better public open space over the next decade.
Returning to the Northcote golf course, a community group is lobbying for ongoing community access. It’s part of a wider discussion about the future of urban golf courses across Australia. In Sydney, the Inner West Council recently voted down a hotly debated plan to give over half the Marrickville golf course to public green space. In Brisbane, the Victoria Park Golf Course is being converted to public parkland.
This discussion masks the underlying issue of inadequate urban planning. Successive governments have failed to set aside enough open space to cater for population growth.
For decades, the planning of our cities has occurred through growth models that give priority to economic development. Missing are significant large parks – the modern equivalents of the much-loved colonial layers of the Domains in Sydney and Melbourne, Hyde Park, Royal Park or Kings Park – to offset this growth.
The issue of open space quality becomes even more pressing when we turn to the outer suburbs. Lacking access to bays and beaches, the outer suburbs no longer have the “Australian dream” of the quarter-acre block as a counterbalance. Houses are constructed gutter to gutter, cars crowd the front yards, and the local park is often a footy oval with a playground.
We need to challenge the binaries of competing values – public versus private, environment versus community – that structure our cities. Our parks should not emerge through a debate over the best use of limited green space: biodiversity, community gardens, bike paths, wetlands, sport facilities, playgrounds and dog walking. None of these agendas are wrong, but there is a limit to how much space can be shared.
There are, of course, many examples of councils wanting to add more open green space. But it is important to have larger-scale and longer-term perspectives that can operate independently of local and state politics.
Global examples of open-space governance reveal shifts towards alternative funding models and public-private relationships for delivering quality, not just quantity. For example, in New York, the NGO Design Trust for Public Space works across government, community groups and the private sector to guide public space development. In Australia, the appointment of a minister for public spaces in Sydney and the Living Melbourne strategy both acknowledge the importance of overarching spatial governance.
The private sector is responsible too. Enabling large and high-quality open space across our cities means reviewing our expectations of funding and exploring new models led by the private sector. This includes not just funding construction but finding cash for ongoing park maintenance.
COVID has highlighted why the scale of open space is important. It’s needed for maintaining distance between users but also for providing a sense of escape from increasing urban density, compounded by the many hours spent indoors.
It is widely recognised that an experience of nature is valuable for health and well-being. It’s now time to link this directly to a diversity of high-quality park experiences.
All parks have not been created equally. Let’s use this moment to determine a more ambitious future for our urban open spaces.
“Just be more confident, be more ambitious, be more like a man.”
These are the words of advice given over and over to women in a bid to close the career and earnings gaps between women and men.
From self-help books to confidence coaching, the message to “lean in” and show confidence in the workplace is pervasive, propelled by Facebook Executive Sheryl Sandberg through her worldwide Lean In movement:
Women are hindered by barriers that exist within ourselves. We hold ourselves back in ways both big and small, by lacking self-confidence, by not raising our hands, and by pulling back when we should be leaning in
The efforts are well intended, because women are persistently underrepresented in senior and leadership positions.
But where is the proof they work?
Repeated advice needn’t be right
As a labour economist, and a recipient of such advice throughout my own career, I wanted to find out.
So I used Australian survey data to investigate the link between confidence and job promotion for both men and women. The results have just been published in the Australian Journal of Labour Economics.
The nationally-representative Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey includes a measure of a person’s confidence to take on a challenge.
It is made up of hope for success which we measure by asking people how much they agree with statements such as
when confronted by a difficult problem, I prefer to start on it straight away
I like situations where I can find out how capable I am
I am attracted to tasks that allow me to test my abilities
And it is made up of fear of failure which is measured by a person’s agreement with statements such as
I start feeling anxious if I do not understand a problem immediately
In difficult situations where a lot depends on me, I am afraid of failing
I feel uneasy about undertaking a task if I am unsure of succeeding
More than 7,500 workers provided answers to these questions in the 2013 HILDA survey.
Confidence matters, with a catch
Using a statistical technique called Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition I investigated the link between their answers and whether or not they experienced a promotion in the following year.
After controlling for a range of factors, including the job opportunities on offer, I discovered higher hope for success was clearly linked to a higher likelihood of promotion.
But there was a catch: the link was only clear for men.
For women, there was no clear evidence stronger confidence enhanced job promotion prospects.
Put differently, “leaning in” provides no guarantee of a payoff for women.
Promotion rate for men and women by hope for success
Promotion probabilities are estimated for 2013 using hope for success responses. collected in 2012. Categories at the lower levels are grouped due to small sample sizes.Source: Author’s analysis using the HILDA Survey
Personality traits reveal further gender patterns.
Men who display boldness and charisma, reflected by high extraversion, also experience a stronger likelihood of promotion. As do men who display the attitude that whatever happens to them in life is a result of their own choices and efforts, a trait we call “locus of control”.
But again there is no link between any of these traits and the promotion prospects for women.
Collectively these findings point to a disturbing template for career success: be confident, be ambitious… and be male.
Be male and unafraid
This template for promotion also prescribes: don’t show fear of failure. Among managers, though not among workers as a whole, fear of failure is linked to weaker job promotion prospects — but more profoundly for men than women.
This echoes the way society penalises male leaders for revealing emotional weakness. Both men and women are hindered by gender norms.
So what’s the harm in confidence training?
For women, it could do more harm than good. In a culture that does not value such attributes among women, contravening expected patterns carries risks.
‘Fixing’ women is itself a problem
Imploring women to adopt behaviours that characterise successful men creates a culture that paints women as “deficient” and devalues diverse working styles.
“History isn’t kind to people who play God,” quips James Bond to supervillain Safin in the trailer for No Time to Die. The film’s release has been delayed yet again, to April 2021. It will mark Daniel Craig’s swansong as 007 and speculation continues as to who will be the next Bond. Will it be Idris Elba, Tom Hardy or perhaps a woman?
Bond has long been criticised for his sexist attitudes, with even Judi Dench’s M in GoldenEye (1995) dubbing him a “sexist, misogynist dinosaur” . But what if we view him through the prism of Greek mythology? Is Bond, in fact, a contemporary incarnation of Dionysus, the god of wine, pleasure and fertility?
In Greek mythology, the gods punish mortals for the sin of hubris. In our pop-culture pantheon, Bond is a deity.
Dionysus travelled throughout the ancient world, sometimes by boat in the Aegean islands, sometimes in a winged chariot. Bond also circumnavigates the globe, equally at home on yachts or in helicopters. But his chariot of choice is an Aston Martin.
Wherever Dionysus went he initiated his followers in the secrets of wine-making. Wherever Bond goes he initiates the mixologist in the secrets of making the perfect Vesper martini.
In Ian Fleming’s Diamonds are Forever (1956), Bond tells the bartender to combine three measures of Gordon’s gin, one of vodka and half a measure of Kina Lillet with a thick slice of lemon peel and poured into a deep champagne goblet. In Casino Royale (2006), he adds the martini must be shaken “until it’s ice cold.”
Dionysus and Bond were both experts in exactly how and when alcohol should be served.IMDB
Unlike mortals, Bond’s prodigious consumption of alcohol does him no harm, indeed he is hailed as “the best shot in the Secret Service.”
In a study of the novels published in the British Medical Journal in 2013, researchers estimated Bond consumed an average of 92 units of alcohol per week with a maximum daily intake peaking at 49.8 units.
There were days when Bond abstained — 12.5 out of a total 87.5 days — but mostly because he was being held prisoner.
Dionysus carries a thyrsus: a sacred pinecone-tipped staff wreathed in vines. The thyrus is a phallic symbol, sometimes displayed with a kantharos wine cup, denoting female sexuality.
The union of the two created a powerful representation of fertility and rebirth. Dionysus also turned his thyrsus into a dangerous weapon by secreting an iron tip in its point.
As a secret agent, Bond conceals his Walther PPK pistol in a hidden holster, but one of his most lethal weapons is disguised as a cigarette – a potent symbol of sexual union in cinema, where smoking a cigarette signifies the completion of copulation.
When facing Bond with a cigarette, secondhand smoke is the least of your worries.IMDB
In You Only Live Twice (1967) the villain makes the fatal mistake of allowing Bond “one last fag.” It turns out to be tipped with a rocket-propelled bullet, proving that cigarettes aren’t just lethal for smokers.
Gods of possession
Dionysus was deeply attractive to his female followers, Maenads, who would drink themselves into a frenzy to be possessed by the god. Likewise, Bond is pursued by a bevy of beautiful women — Pussy Galore, Plenty O’Toole and Honey Rider — panting to be possessed.
Bond – here Timothy Dalton in The Living Daylights (1987) – found himself surrounded by devoted women.IMDB
As with the Maenads, devotion to Bond comes with its perils. In Live and Let Die (1973), Bond girl, Solitaire loses her psychic powers after a close encounter of the passionate kind with Bond and becomes a target for heroin baron, Dr Kananga.
In Goldfinger (1964), Jill Masterton is punished by the eponymous villain for betraying him to Bond, dying of skin suffocation when he covers her in gold paint.
This puts a new spin on the Midas myth in which Dionysus granted the king’s wish to be blessed with the golden touch, only to discover that it is a curse making it impossible to eat or even embrace his daughter without turning her into metal.
Ecstasy and death
In ancient Greece, the number seven was sacred and composed of the number three (the heavenly male) and the number four (the heavenly female). Bond’s number in the secret service — Agent 007 — is thus the perfect number to represent a modern-day fertility god.
Pythagoreans believed three was male and four female – their unity in 007 makes perfect sense.IMDB
Like Dionysus who is depicted in a number of forms which range from an older, bearded god to a long-haired youth, Bond has appeared in a variety of guises from the debonair David Niven to the strapping Daniel Craig.
Yet regardless of his age and physique, Bond’s dual Dionysian nature brings either divine ecstasy in bed, or brutal death to his foes.
Dionysus almost dies before he is born but his father Zeus saves him. Later he returns from the dead after he is dismembered by the Titans.
Bond says, “You only live twice: once when you are born and once when you look death in the face.”
Like Dionysus, Bond is resurrected in Skyfall (2012) after he is accidentally shot by Moneypenny. The bullet penetrates his body causing him to fall off a train and into a waterfall where he sinks to the bottom. But Bond is immortal. He returns to save another day.
When it finally reaches cinemas, No Time to Die will be the last hurrah for Craig, but gods do not die. Bond will live on.
Three years ago everything felt so different. Our borders were open, no one knew what PPE stood for, and social distancing was something people did when they felt awkward at parties.
Jacinda Ardern had not long taken over leadership of the New Zealand Labour Party. Amid breathless talk of “stardust”, “Jacindamania” and “transformation”, she was busy hauling the party out of the polling doldrums towards 36.9% of the vote at the 2017 election — and the prime ministership.
Then a lot of things happened. A white supremacist murdered 51 of our people at two Christchurch mosques. Whakaari/White Island erupted, killing 21 and injuring more. And a global pandemic spread, leading to two extended periods of lockdown in New Zealand and a decision by Ardern to postpone the election from September 19 to October 17.
These three crises have defined Ardern’s first term in office. At least for now, a great many people are withholding judgement on her administration’s modest (at best) performance on reducing child poverty, replenishing the stock of public housing and shifting the dial on income and wealth inequality.
Instead, it is Ardern’s poise under pressure, calmness and ability not to rise to anything faintly resembling bait that has deeply resonated. As much as anything else, in times of crisis it has been her way with words that has registered: “They are us”, “The team of five million” and “Go hard and go early” are now part of the vernacular. Ardern’s language is one that New Zealanders intuitively understand.
Some of this may stem from Ardern’s understated background in what is colloquially described as the “real” New Zealand. It’s a misleading term, of course, because it implies there are parts of the country that are somehow not real.
But people know what it means: a modest upbringing in a small town, a bit of religion, some part-time work while at school. They hear these things in Ardern’s accent, and see them in her green Facebook sweatshirt. It makes her approachable — the nerdy kid you know would give you a hand with your homework if you needed it.
Authenticity and reassurance: Jacinda Ardern meets ambulance officers who helped those injured in the Whakaari/White Island volcano eruption.GettyImages
From transformation to recovery
This sense of authenticity goes at least some way to explaining why the prime minister and her party have polling figures to die for as they head into the final days of the election campaign.
Notwithstanding a second spell in lockdown, public confidence in the government’s handling of the COVID crisis remains high. As preferred prime minister, Ardern is streets ahead of her major rival, National’s Judith Collins. Despite some tightening in recent weeks, on present polling Labour is still within range of governing alone, something that has never happened under the country’s MMP electoral system.
Labour’s polling is just one thing setting this year’s election apart from the last one. The emotional climate is also strikingly different. Labour’s campaign slogan — Let’s Keep Moving — is just this side of beige. There are no big-ticket policy items to match 2017’s proposed capital gains tax, KiwiBuild or plans for light rail in Auckland. The rhetoric of transformation has been replaced by the language of recovery.
Yet transformation is not far off the mark, especially where Ardern herself is concerned. Three years ago she was the newly minted leader of her party and something of a political curiosity. Many doubted she had the ability to save her party from an electoral thrashing, let alone become prime minister.
Since then, she has become a mother, led the country through a series of crises, and made more hard calls and tough decisions than any New Zealand prime minister in recent memory. She has become a seasoned leader — and one of the most popular prime ministers in the nation’s history.
A slogan just this side of beige: Ardern speaks at the Labour Party election campaign launch in August.GettyImages
Pragmatism over ideology
Ardern’s personal trajectory mirrors — and to some degree has driven — a shift in the tone of New Zealand politics. Transformation is probably too strong a word for it, but something is happening and it is reflected in Ardern’s approach to leadership.
The prime minister appeals less to conviction than to disposition. Her approach resonates with people for whom politics is fundamentally relational rather than ideological.
Ardern is no ideologue. She gives people who don’t agree with her party’s policies permission to vote for her. It’s the kind of leadership that can change what counts as political common sense, and it appeals to a lot of people in times of stress and uncertainty.
Ardern’s pragmatism has led to accusations from the left that she has been insufficiently adventurous, that she has morphed from transformational candidate into conservative leader.
Exhibits A and B for the prosecution are Labour’s small-t tax policy and the response to the gendered employment effects of COVID: a disproportionate number of women have lost their jobs this year, but the bulk of the “shovel-ready” projects supported by the government as part of the COVID response are in industries in which women remain under-represented.
On the other hand, Ardern’s modus operandi is reassuring to those moderate, small-c conservatives who don’t do conviction politics but who do decide election outcomes in New Zealand. “Let’s keep moving” may not be all that uplifting, but it speaks to a pragmatism that lies deep in New Zealand’s sense of itself.
From Jacindamania to Aunty Jacinda
There’s a reason why Ardern has framed it as the COVID election — it legitimates a focus on leadership. One of the two major party leaders has led her party for just three months. The other has led the country through a series of crucibles. The polls indicate people know which one is which.
A focus on leadership also allows Ardern to dominate field position and play to her strengths. To the intense frustration of the opposition, the prime minister’s image is ubiquitous and her skills as a communicator on regular display.
And New Zealanders love a good underdog, especially if it’s us. We look out at the world and see more populous, powerful nations struggling, and take considerable pride in having kept the virus largely at bay. The prime minister and her administration are being given credit for allowing us to be the little country that could.
For all that the election may appear to be a foregone conclusion, there remains a lot to play for — much of it hinging on whether Labour will be in a position to govern alone once votes have been counted.
A second term, this one in command of a parliamentary majority, could well give full expression to Ardern’s centrist political instincts. But if Labour is forced (or chooses) to govern with the Greens (and/or even the Māori Party, assuming it wins at least one of the seven Māori electorates), the likelihood of a shunt to the left increases. There would be pressure on Ardern to move back towards the socialism of her youth.
Either way, it was inevitable that the “stardust” of Ardern’s meteoric rise would dissipate. But it may have been replaced by something more powerful.
Here in Aotearoa New Zealand the term “Aunty” is often used to denote a woman of influence, standing and authority. Adopted from Māori practice, it is a term of respect as much as one of kinship, and a means of expressing affection and affinity. On social media and out on the campaign trail, it’s “Aunty Jacinda” they’re talking about now.
National Party leader Judith Collins has described obesity as a weakness and says people should not “blame systems for personal choices”.
She was asked about her view on obesity during a radio interview yesterday and was today asked about that by media on the New Zealand election campaign trail.
Collins said people who were obese needed to take some personal responsibility.
When told that some had called her comments heartless, Collins said: “Do you know what is heartless? Is actually thinking someone else can cure these issues. We can all take personal responsibility and we all have to own up to our little weaknesses on these matters.
Those living in areas of socio-economic deprivation are also more likely to be obese than those living in the least deprived areas.
Obesity prevalence by ethnicity In addition, the statistics show the prevalence of obesity among adults differs by ethnicity, with 67 percent of Pacific, 48 percent of Māori, 29 percent of European/other and 14 percent of Asian adults obese.
About one in nine children aged two to 14 years old are obese.
Labour leader Jacinda Ardern was also asked about obesity today.
“I think on an issue like this, people are, we are all, products of our environment. You can’t deny that and so we do have to look at all the multiple factors that contribute to obesity issues in New Zealand.
“I think if you are so simplistic simply to call it an issue of personal responsibility, then it’s never going to be an issue that we collectively resolve.”
She thought it demonstrated that “under National we won’t see any progress on the issue”.
“If it’s just a view that they’ve got no role to play and that there’s no difference that government can make on these issues, then it does tell you that on one of the most significant health issues we have you’ll see nothing from the opposition on it.”
Peters on ‘tsunami of obesity’ New Zealand First leader Winston Peters was asked about the issue as well.
“There’s a tsunami of obesity problems coming down our track, it’s a critical matter and our health system faces a nightmare unless we get going right here and right now to do something about it.”
Asked if it was a matter of personal responsibility or external factors, he said: “It’s a combination – frequently it’s external factors, frequently it’s some people sadly [have] got two or three jobs – their chances of actually stopping to … follow good dining practices is not affordable. They are flat out with takeaway meals and what have you.
“We can all condemn them and say what we like but the reality is, they’ll have sadly truncated lives and many illnesses which are avoidable and I’d like to think that this country has a seriously practical dialogue about it rather than just condemning people.”
This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.
Scott Morrison has thrown his weight behind the embattled Gladys Berejiklian, ahead of Wednesday’s evidence to the Independent Commission Against Corruption from disgraced former MP Daryl Maguire, with whom she had a “close personal relationship” for five years.
Morrison said Berejiklian, who had been “a tremendous premier”, had his “absolute support”.
Maguire, former Liberal member for Wagga Wagga, is due to give evidence over two days.
Berejiklian was grilled for several hours on Monday at ICAC, which is investigating whether Maguire misused his parliamentary position for financial gain. Tapped phone conversations were played in which he talked to her about his efforts to broker deals for property developers, notably a sale of land owned by Louise Waterhouse near Badgerys Creek, from which he hoped to get a huge commission.
Berejiklian, who says she did nothing wrong and is not being investigated, told a news conference after her ICAC appearance that she had “stuffed up” her personal life.
She only severed her secret relationship with Maguire recently, despite his resignation from state parliament in 2018, after his property activities came to light in an earlier ICAC inquiry.
Morrison said Berejiklian had shown “a lot of courage” on Monday.
“But I also thought she showed a lot of humility, which is the Gladys I know.
“We’re all human. And particularly in those areas of our lives, and Gladys is an extremely private person, and a person of tremendous integrity. She’s a great friend. And I know she’s been getting many messages of support from her friends and colleagues and including from me … and Jenny.”
Morrison thanked state ministers “Dom Perrottet and Brad Hazzard and the whole team down there in the New South Wales government” for “getting in behind her.”
The last thing Morrison would want at the moment would be the removal of Berejiklian – he has repeatedly praised her government’s performance as the “gold standard” in handling the pandemic and highlighted NSW’s economic progress. So far there has been no sign of a move against her by colleagues and she has indicated her determination to tough out the scandal.
At ICAC on Tuesday Maggie Wang, a former business associate of Maguire, related what he had told her after his appearance at the earlier ICAC investigation. He had said words to the effect, “There’s been an unfortunate accident where my phones and iPad have been run over by a tractor”.
Victorian Education Minister, James Merlino, announced A$250 million on Wednesday for 4,100 tutors to be deployed across Victorian schools from the first term in 2021.
The vast majority of Victorian students spent much of terms two and three learning remotely — this is about half the school year. The government expects this money will support more than 200,000 students across the state who have been left behind during the remote learning period.
In announcing the package, the minister said about one in five students will need extra support. Our report (from the Grattan Institute) in June found a large cohort of disadvantaged students — especially those from the poorest families, with learning difficulties, or where languages other than English are spoken at home — will have fallen much further behind than their classmates during the school closures.
Our analysis shows disadvantaged students in Victoria are likely to have lost somewhere between two and six months of learning over the remote schooling period. The equity gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students grows at triple the rate during remote schooling.
These learning losses compound an existing equity problem in schools, and increase the risk of students disengaging.
The Victorian government’s funding is critical. Without it, schools would not have the resources needed to help students catch up. But the government needs to take several extra steps, including ensuring the quality of tutors, so this funding has its desired effect.
James Merlino’s promise to parents is: “If your child has fallen behind, we will bring them back up to speed”.
To bring these students up to speed, the package includes:
A$209.6 million for every government school (primary, secondary and specialist) to attract and employ 3,500 tutors across the 2021 school year, to deliver small group learning to students who need it
tutoring for small groups from one to five students
$30 million towards employing 600 tutors at non-government schools
$8.6 million towards schools working with families to lift student outcomes and re-engage students with learning.
The package not only benefits students, but also provides employment for young people and women who have been most impacted financially by the pandemic. The government estimates 80% of tutor roles will be filled by women.
Is it enough?
Tutoring is expensive, but can provide big benefits in quick time. Tutoring programs overseas have consistently proven beneficial, with some students gaining an additional three to five months of learning over just one to two terms of schooling.
If implemented well, this package would be enough to stem much of the predicted learning losses for disadvantaged students. But the Victorian government should take five extra steps to ensure it gets its money’s worth:
the initiative relies on teachers to correctly identify students who are struggling, and why. The government should ensure some of the money is spent on extra training for teachers who need it
successful tutoring depends on selecting high-quality, well-trained tutors. Schools can’t be expected to screen the quality of tutor recruits by themselves. The government should set the quality standards, and could commission a third party to ensure only the best tutors are hired
The government should give schools guidance on effective literacy and numeracy programs that involve small-group or one-on-one tuition. There are existing programs that, onevaluation, show they can have large impacts in specific areas such as maths, oral language skills or certain aspects of reading
the government should evaluate the impact of the catch-up tutoring to give insight on what works for a COVID response, but also to close the much larger existing equity gap for disadvantaged students long-term. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that must not be missed
the government should require accountability from schools on how the extra funds are spent. For example, schools should be expected to invest in tutoring where it is relevant, or to explain the nature of investments in other initiatives which the school believes are needed.
Victoria’s plan to find high-quality tutors from existing retired, casual, or student teachers is a good start. But if it proves difficult to find enough quality candidates from this pool, other options should be considered. University graduates from all disciplines and teaching assistants can have large benefits, as well as large tutoring providers.
The UK’s new national tutoring scheme has a lot of quality assurance built into it. For example, schools can either choose to employ a tutor directly who has been trained and screened, or use a tutor from a “quality assured” tutoring provider. Financial incentives encourage schools to choose tutoring providers that have demonstrated high evaluation standards.
What about other states?
Although remote schooling did not last as long in the other states and the territories, disadvantaged students would still benefit from a similar package — just a smaller one to Victoria’s.
Extra support should be available so students across Australia don’t slip through the cracks. Victoria’s tutoring announcement this week should become a model for all Australian states and territories.
“Blindsided” is a word originally derived from American football and means to be hit from a totally unexpected quarter by shocking information. Unsurprisingly, it’s a word used often with the flashy US president, Donald Trump.
Until this week, it was not a word the people of New South Wales associated with the modest, determined and workaholic Gladys Berejiklian. This is the premier who has enjoyed a public approval rating of between 59% and 70% for her handling of coronavirus.
‘Close personal relationship’
In an appearance before the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) on Monday, Berejiklian admitted to a “close personal relationship” with Daryl Maguire, the former Liberal member for Wagga Wagga who resigned from NSW Parliament in 2018.
Former Wagga MP Daryl Williams appeared also before ICAC in 2018.Erik Anderson/AAP
Two years ago, he was targeted by ICAC for allegations he was using his public office for personal gain through commissions for Sydney property projects. Since then, we have found out he may have been involved in a “cash for visas” scheme.
This was the person the premier had a “close personal relationship” with for five years until recently. Former Labor leader Bill Shorten said what many were thinking when he told Channel Nine:
She’s a smart lady who I think has been punching below her weight with perhaps a much more average guy.
A lightening strike
So, what transpired on Monday was like a lightning strike from a clear blue sky. This jolted people to hurried conclusions, including calls from NSW Labor leader Jodi McKay for the premier’s resignation to predictions her political future was doomed.
Gladys Berejiklian game evidence during the ICAC hearing into Daryl Maguire on Monday.Supplied/ICAC
Unless something more eventuates from the ICAC hearings — which will continue this week — we haven’t heard evidence of Berejiklian using her public position for some private gain.
At this stage, she is guilty of bad political judgement and bad personal judgement, the latter of which she shares with the rest of us on occasions.
Brand Gladys
The damage at this point is to her hitherto squeaky clean reputation. Berejiklian’s story had always been about hard work, as well as her immigrant family history.
We got some indication of her drive from a 2019 interview, when she spoke of her twin sister, who didn’t survive birth:
It was just luck that I came out first. Imagine if you had a twin; you came out first, they didn’t make it, I feel like I’ve got to justify my existence by sacrificing. So I don’t care if I’m not happy all the time. I feel like I’ve got to work hard.
Until this week, the premier has always been an intensely private person who even talked in media interviews of her dedication to a political career that came at the expense of a personal life and marriage. All fair enough.
Quick verdicts
However, the sudden revelations have catapulted many to quick verdicts about Berejiklian’s career prospects, while bringing out the armchair psychologist in us all.
We wonder about the secret life of this 50-year-old woman, who retains the air of the captain that she was at high school in North Ryde. She told no one about this relationship, not even her own, very close family.
So, this can’t help but make us ask: what other information is she not sharing?
Support from colleagues
At the moment, Berejiklian is being supported by her colleagues. As a member of the moderate faction, she is possibly under threat from the right of the party, but importantly, Treasurer Dominic Perrottet was by her side on Monday.
The NSW Premier will continue to face questions over her relationship with former MP Daryl Maguire.Dan Himbrechts/ AAP
This conservative faction leader backed the premier continuing in her job and with good reason. Any undermining of her leadership would threaten the current factional peace, publicly confirm there was something amiss with Berejiklian, and give the public the impression that the bad old days are back with revolving door premiers.
On Tuesday, Berejiklian apologised to the party room. So far, the public criticism is limited to MPs such as conservative backbencher, Matthew Mason-Cox, who has form as a rogue operator.
But Berjiklian’s image will not be same again
So, it gets back to Brand Gladys.
Until ICAC finds something more about her, she should survive this episode with the backing of her party, unless another surprise eventuates in the future.
But her rather perfect public image will never be the same.
Victoria’s contact tracing system has faced criticism in the past for being inefficient, with officials flying to NSW in September to learn from that state.
Comparisons are difficult in a pandemic because each outbreak has its own unique characteristics. That said, there are some key features that underpin the differing responses of NSW and Victoria when it comes to contact tracing.
Fundamentally, NSW’s system of decentralised local area health districts meant when the second wave hit, that state was able to draw on teams embedded in their local communities to manage contact tracing. These teams worked independently but also in concert under the mothership of NSW Health.
In Victoria, a legacy of cuts left the Department of Health and Human Services under-resourced and highly centralised, meaning there was a smaller base upon which to build the surge contact tracing capacity (with some contact tracers coming from interstate).
This was further challenged with the rapid rise in daily new cases, from 65 to 288 in one week alone in July. Systems had to be developed quickly to manage large quantities of data and feed it back to a central hub. The state had to “build the aeroplane while flying”.
Much has changed since then, and for the better. Some hard lessons have been learned along the way but the contact tracing system in Victoria is now very comprehensive and increasingly robust.
Melbourne’s Chadstone outbreak is a reminder of how quickly clusters can grow. But Victorians can be optimistic the state’s contact tracing has improved significantly in the last few months.James Ross/AAP
Community engagement and local knowledge might seem like buzzwords but in a pandemic, they’re vital to ring-fencing a cluster.
NSW’s system of devolved public health units and teams meant when local outbreaks occurred, locally embedded health workers were at an advantage. They’re already linked with local area health providers for testing, they already have relationships with community members and community leaders, and they know the physical layout of the area.
If you’re doing a contact tracing interview with someone and they’re talking about a key landmark at a certain time of day, you can visualise it and understand what it means in terms of risk.
What’s crucial is a nuanced understanding of local, social, and cultural factors that may facilitate spread or affect how people understand self-isolation and what’s being asked of them. It can also make a critical difference in encouraging people to come forward for testing.
It’s not just about making sure you have materials printed in the right language. It’s about understanding how people view the health system from their context. If you have people who come from a part of the world with a health system that operates differently to ours, they will bring that understanding with them.
If local health workers and contact tracers are already part of a community, they can bring that expert knowledge into the mix; they can make sure public health messaging is meaningful for local communities.
New South Wales’ decentralised public health teams know their local areas well, helping them conduct timely contact tracing.Dan HimBrechts/AAP
When NSW’s second wave came with the cases at the Crossroads Hotel, they were on high alert, with a system ready to jump on it and chase down every lead.
Victoria had to build its contact tracing capacity on the hop. That local knowledge had to be developed and integrated as they went, often when dealing with large and complex local clusters.
Since August, the Australian Department of Health has published the Common Operating Picture, which provides a weekly traffic light report of the coronavirus situation across Australia.
In the earlier part of the second wave, you can see Victoria gets an amber or red light for some elements relating to case notifications and outstanding case interviews — in other words, its system was under stress. That’s understandable; when an outbreak gets to a certain size, strain is inevitable.
It has been impressive to see Victoria’s more recent progression to green, meaning the system is coping well.
In fact, the contact tracing system in Victoria is now so comprehensive that in Kilmore the department trialled a system of tracing “close contacts of close contacts”. When a confirmed case is identified, the contact tracers track down that person’s close contacts (people with whom they’ve spent 15 minutes or more). They then also track down the close contacts of each of those close contacts.
It’s incredibly resource- and labour-intensive, but it’s also a game-changer that will allow outbreaks to be contained quickly. Hopefully, this will be the standard approach state-wide where the circumstances permit and, combined with good cooperation from the public in getting tested early, it’s likely to be very effective.
Victoria has also got better over time at naming exposure sites clearly (in earlier days it could be quite vague).
You can see the evolution of the system happening. What’s admirable in Victoria is they did set about rebuilding their response, including creating regional hubs, while case numbers were high.
Public co-operation matters
I have faith in the design of Victoria’s contact tracing system now, and Kilmore is showing us how it can be rolled out to good effect. Half the latest batch of contact tests results came back on Tuesday, all negative.
There will always be room for improvement and we will learn as we go.
NSW’s Crossroads Hotel outbreak showed the state’s public health team was set up and ready to conduct efficient contact tracing.James Gourley/AAP
Key to the system working is people cooperating with masks, hygiene and personal distancing, along with broader critical rules limiting home visits and not leaving home if unwell.
Most important is getting tested early, whether you have symptoms or have been at a known exposure site, do it and do it fast. This is how we limit the risk of spread, and reduce the risk families and immediate close contacts will even need to be isolated, much less deal with being infected.
People on the frontline are working incredibly hard within a system being rebuilt around them. They are engaging with people in the community who are frustrated and getting mixed messages.
It pays for all of us to remember the effectiveness of our public health system and Victoria’s public health response is down to the sum of people’s contributions. We all have a role to play.
A notable case is that of rapist Glenn Hartland. One victim who met him through the app, Paula, took her own life. Her parents are now calling on Tinder to take a stand to prevent similar future cases.
The ABC spoke to Tinder users who tried to report abuse to the company and received no response, or received an unhelpful one. Despite the immense harm dating apps can facilitate, Tinder has done little to improve user safety.
Way too slow to respond
While we don’t have much data for Australia, one US–based study found 57% of female online dating users had received a sexually explicit image or image they didn’t ask for.
It also showed women under 35 were twice as likely than male counterparts to be called an offensive name, or physically threatened, by someone they met on a dating app or website.
Earlier this year, the platform unveiled a suite of new safety features in a bid to protect users online and offline. These include photo verification and a “panic button” which alerts law enforcement when a user is in need of emergency assistance.
However, most of these features are still only available in the US — while Tinder operates in more than 190 countries. This isn’t good enough.
Also, it seems while Tinder happily takes responsibility for successful relationships formed through the service, it distances itself from users’ bad behaviour.
No simple fix
Currently in Australia, there are no substantial policy efforts to curb the prevalence of technology-facilitated abuse against women. The government recently closed consultations for a new Online Safety Act, but only future updates will reveal how beneficial this will be.
Nonetheless, some lawyers are bringing cases to extend legal liability to dating apps and other platforms.
The UK is looking at introducing a more general duty of care that might require platforms to do more to prevent harm. But such laws are controversial and still under development.
The UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women has also drawn attention to harms facilitated through digital tech, urging platforms to take a stronger stance in addressing harms they’re involved with. While such rules aren’t legally binding, they do point to mounting pressures.
Online abusers on Tinder have been reported blocking victims, thereby deleting all the conversation history and removing proof of the abuse.Shutterstock
However, it’s not always clear what we should expect platforms to do when they receive complaints.
Should a dating app immediately cancel someone’s account if they receive a complaint? Should they display a “warning” about that person to other users? Or should they act silently, down-ranking and refusing to match potentially violent users with other dates?
It’s hard to say whether such measures would be effective, or if they would comply with Australian defamation law, anti-discrimination law, or international human rights standards.
Ineffective design impacts people’s lives
Tinder’s app design directly influences how easily users can abuse and harass others. There are changes it (and many other platforms) should have made long ago to make their services safer, and make it clear abuse isn’t tolerated.
Some design challenges relate to user privacy. While Tinder itself doesn’t, many location-aware apps such as Happn, Snapchat and Instagram have settings that make it easy for users to stalk other users.
Some Tinder features are poorly thought out, too. For example, the ability to completely block someone is good for privacy and safety, but also deletes the entire conversation history — removing any trace (and proof) of abusive behaviour.
We’ve also seen cases where the very systems designed to reduce harm are used against the people they’re meant to protect. Abusive actors on Tinder and similar platforms can exploit “flagging” and “reporting” features to silence minorities.
In the past, content moderation policies have been applied in ways that discriminate against women and LGBTQI+ communities. One example is users flagging certain LGBTQ+ content as “adult” and to be removed, when similar heterosexual content isn’t.
One of the most worrying aspects of toxic/abusive online interactions is that many women may — even though they may feel uncomfortable, uneasy, or unsafe — ultimately dismiss them. For the most part, poor behaviour is now a “cliche” posted on popular social media pages as entertainment.
It could be such dismissals happen because the threat doesn’t seem imminently “serious”, or the woman doesn’t want to be viewed as “overreacting”. However, this ultimately trivialises and downplays the abuse.
Thus, Tinder isn’t alone in failing to protect women — our attitudes matter a lot as well.
All the major digital platforms have their work cut out to address the online harassment of women that has now become commonplace. Where they fail, we should all work to keep the pressure on them.
If you or someone you know needs help, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joanna Mendelssohn, Principal Fellow (Hon), Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, University of Melbourne
Review: Lindy Lee: Moon in a Dew Drop, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.
At a time when the rapidly heating earth seems to put the very future of humanity at risk, in an age when the world appears to be largely governed by clowns, criminals or those who are a combination of both, Lindy Lee’s art soothes the soul, restoring harmony.
Lindy Lee.Photo Saul Steed
Moon in a Dew Drop, curated by Elizabeth Ann Macgregor, does not show easy patterns or sweet sentiment. Rather it is an expression of tranquillity obtained as the result of hard struggle and rigorous self-examination.
Lee could be described as a typical Australian. She is the child of immigrant refugee parents. Her father came to Australia alone in 1947, before the Communist victory, but her mother was not allowed to follow for some years as our racist immigration policies strictly limited the number of Chinese people allowed to settle here.
Lee became an artist at a time when it was widely assumed that all art was made by men but by an accident of timing her professional career placed her in the vanguard of successful Australian artists who were neither ethnically European or male.
In a catalogue essay translated by Fiona He, the Chinese writer Shen Qilan notes that Lee’s art is a continual exploration of “‘Who am I?’ – the first and ultimate philosophical question”.
Lindy Lee, The Long Road of the River of Stars, 2015 from The Tyranny and Liberation of Distance, UV-cured pigment inkjet print, black mild steel, fire 109.6 x 117.6 x 3.2 cm overall.National Gallery of Australia, purchased 2018
When she was a child, Lee wondered at motes of dust caught in the sunlight. As an adult she is still driven by a sense of wonder in the world around her.
The exhibition arcs over the entire trajectory of Lee’s career, starting with early photocopies of Renaissance and Baroque works. As with most women of her generation, Lee had assumed all great artists were men until she visited Italy and saw the work of Artemisia Gentileschi. Here was an artist who painted women as heroes and whose favourite subject was the Biblical Judith, beheader of Holofernes.
After Lee returned to Australia she studied at the Sydney College of the Arts, at first using photocopies as an aide memoir. The process of photocopying entranced her as she began to see these copies as objects in their own right.
Lindy Lee, Untitled (After Jan van Eyck), 1985.Courtesy the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney and Singapore
The act of translation through art served as a metaphor for her experience as an Australian with an Asian background, seeing the world at a distance, turning “reality” into something else. From photocopies she turned to black pigmented beeswax, scraping back the European past to create an original present.
Cultural dislocation
In 1985, her painting, White Sacrament, a meditation on an El Greco painting of St Andrew, was purchased for the National Gallery of Australia. Lee was intrigued by the intensity of El Greco’s spirituality and the way this was reflected in his art. Her investigations into spirituality developed in tandem with a sense of cultural dislocation.
As with many Australians born of immigrant parents, Lee did not at first feel a connection to their country or culture. Later she came to understand that her preoccupation with photocopies was also a reflection of seeing herself as a replica, not the real thing, not a part of Australia. It could be argued that all her subsequent art is an exploration of the nature of reality, and a sense of time.
Her 2003 installation, Birth and Death, recreated for this exhibition, comprises 100 red, Chinese accordion books, printed with digitised images of members of her family, past and present, alive and dead. We are all a part of those who go before and who come after.
In 1995, Lee paid her first visit to China and realised that she was neither wholly Chinese nor completely Australian. Instead she continued to draw on both cultures for her understanding of self. The result was her installation, No Up, No Down, I Am the Ten Thousand Things.
Lindy Lee , No Up No Down I Am the Ten Thousand Things, 1995/2020.Courtesy the artist and Sutton Gallery, Melbourne
In a catalogue interview with Macgregor she describes this work as the result of being “released from the imprisonment of trying to find my identity as being either Chinese or Anglo or this or that”.
The title is a reference to the Zen philosopher, Dogen who said, “If you want to know your self, forget yourself and be actualised by the 10,000 things.”
In subsequent visits to China, Lee became intrigued by the Daoist tradition of flung ink calligraphy, where the artist allows fate to decide where the pigment falls. In recent years, she has begun to work with the UAP Foundry in Brisbane, making flung pieces out of drops of molten bronze.
The jewel-like fragments look as though they could never be the result of accident, but one of the highlights of the exhibition is the video installation showing Lee almost dancing as she flings down the hot metal as it turns into art.
Lindy Lee, Unnameable, 2017.Courtesy the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney and Singapore with the assistance of UAP
Moonlight Deities, an installation where light shines through multiple, circular holes making entrancing shadow patterns, was made especially for this exhibition, as was the sculpture Secret World of a Starlight Ember.
Lindy Lee, Secret World of a Starlight Ember.Ken Leanfore
In both works it is easy for the viewer to immerse themselves in the patterns of light, to move with the shadows, to consider themselves as parts of the never ending universe.
This world in which we find ourselves is but a speck in the enormity of the universe, and at the same time a revelation of wonder that we who are so small can be a part of a universe, so large.
Lee tells Macgregor the Buddhist story of the net of Indra, the infinite net, as a metaphor for what she is trying to say through her art.
It’s a Buddhist story. The universe is this infinite net and at each end of the ties of the net there is a jewel. The jewel is perfect and utterly singular, but its perfection, beauty and singularity comes from reflecting every other jewel in the universe.
Kevin Rudd’s petition to parliament for a royal commission into the dominance of the Murdoch media in Australia is entitled to be seen as more than an embittered ex-politician’s desire for revenge.
The fact is that in the three mature English-speaking democracies where Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation has a dominant presence – the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia – politics are deeply polarised and conducted with a toxicity and dishonesty that is harmful to the public good.
There are differences in degree, of course. Australia has not elected a reactionary extremist such as US President Donald Trump, nor found itself riven with political divisions of the kind shown up by the Brexit referendum. Neither has Australian political discourse descended to the depths of racism that have scarred politics in those two countries.
Australia has not seen its national leader equivocate over white supremacy, as Trump did after the Charlottesville protests of 2017. It has not seen a political campaign poster about immigration modelled on a Nazi poster on the same subject, as the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) produced during the Brexit referendum campaign.
Yet there is one fundamental similarity among the three countries that reflects the anti-democratic influence of the Murdoch media: in each country, political leaders see Murdoch as a decisive factor in electoral success.
He controls about two-thirds of Australia’s capital city daily newspaper circulation, owns The Times, The Sunday Times and mass-circulation The Sun in England, and Fox News, the most-watched cable TV service in the US.
A procession of Australian prime ministers or would-be prime ministers from Bob Hawke onwards, including Rudd, have openly and publicly paid court to Murdoch, on occasion travelling to the other side of the world to do so.
Successive leaders have paid court to Rupert Murdoch, including Kevin Rudd when he was prime minister.Dean Lewins/AAP
In the UK, Tony Blair travelled all the way to Hayman Island to obtain Murdoch’s blessing in the lead-up to the 1997 election. He obtained the blessing and won the election.
In episode three of the recent television documentary, The Murdoch Dynasty, Nigel Farage, who led UKIP in the Brexit referendum, said Murdoch’s support was crucial to the success of the “Leave” campaign.
In the same documentary, a Trump campaign insider from 2016 said Murdoch’s Fox News was indispensable to Trump’s success in that year’s US presidential election.
The benefit of a royal commission would be to lay bare the nature of the interactions between the elected politicians and the unelected Rupert Murdoch.
Details of the supplications, threats, deals, promises, attitudes and motives that are the stuff of these interactions would shed extraordinarily valuable light on a highly influential aspect of the way Australia’s democracy works.
It would enable the public to assess just how extensive Murdoch’s influence is, and what effect it has on public policy and electoral outcomes.
It’s highly improbable it would lead to greater diversity in media ownership. If it created a public clamour loud enough to make politicians think there were votes in it, then it might be possible one of the main parties would adopt media diversity as policy, and propose ways to achieve it.
News Corporation’s support was vital to the ‘Leave’ campaign in the Brexit vote.AAP/EPA/Neil Hall
However, history tells us this is extremely unlikely.
In Australia, both main parties have been complicit in creating the present state of affairs.
The Hawke-Keating government created the conditions that allowed Murdoch to take over the Herald and Weekly Times group, giving him Melbourne’s Herald Sun and daily newspaper monopolies in Brisbane, Adelaide and Hobart.
The Turnbull government made the situation worse in 2017 by abolishing rules about cross-ownership, market dominance and audience reach.
For another thing, the Australian public has shown an astonishing complacency and lack of interest in the health of the media. This has remained the case even as media freedom has been directly assaulted by a succession of laws since 2001 that criminalise journalism in the name of national security.
Perhaps the rush to sign the Rudd petition, which is credited with causing the parliamentary website to crash, indicates a change of attitude, or it might just be clicktivism.
Finally, Australian parliaments have shown little interest in, and less appetite for, fixing the problem.
In 1980, the Victorian government of Rupert Hamer established a committee of inquiry under the chairmanship of Sir John Norris, a retired Supreme Court judge, into the ownership and control of newspapers in Victoria.
The Norris report was presented in September 1981. It recommended an independent statutory authority be established to scrutinise proposed newspaper acquisitions, to ensure undue concentration of ownership would not result.
It aroused indignant opposition from the newspaper companies and went nowhere.
In 1992, the federal House of Representatives established a Select Committee on the Print Media to examine many of the same issues. It produced a report called News and Fair Facts, a laboured pun on “Fairfax”. It too disappeared without trace.
Even if Rudd gets his royal commission, its report risks going the same way, unless it probes deeply enough to tell us something important about the way Australian democracy works.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Beth Madsen, PhD Candidate (confirmed) and casual academic at the University of Queensland, The University of Queensland
The recent federal budget included A$39.8 million to expand the Clontarf Foundation’s Academy program for 12,500 Indigenous boys and young men.
The Clontarf Foundation aims to improve confidence in Indigenous young men, and help them finish school and find work.
A study conducted by one of us, Beth Madsen, (using data from the Australian government’s grants information system), has found the Clontarf Foundation received A$74,809,900 in federal grants between July 2014 and July 2019.
While Clontarf’s aim to support young men is important, it receives significantly more funding than other programs, including those that support young women.
What programs get funding?
Beth Madsen’s PhD study has been mapping funding to nine external service providers that aim to improve school attendance for Indigenous students across Australia. The nine programs each received federal grants of more than A$1 million between July 2014 and July 2019.
The programs received a total of $123,660,900 in funding for the same period. A program with the Clontarf Foundation, designed to work solely with Indigenous boys, was the top funded. The $74,809,900 in federal grants it received made up about 60% of the total funding across the nine programs.
Between 2014 and 2019, the federal government funded four programs (out of the nine studied) to work with young Indigenous women: the Girls Academy, run by Role Models and Leaders Australia ($12,100,000), the Stars Foundation ($16,324,000), the Shooting Stars Program, run by Glass Jar Australia ($8,800,000) and the Cairns Hockey Aspire to be Deadly Program ($3,124,000).
These programs combined received a total of $40,348,000 (around 33% of the total funding for the nine programs), a little more than half of what the Clontarf Foundation received. The remaining 7% of funding for these nine programs was for programs that work with both genders.
It’s important to note the Clontarf Foundation works with a larger number of young people than the four other programs combined. And some of the female-targeted programs have acknowledged their inspiration comes from the Clontarf Foundation’s reported successes.
Still, multiple programs must compete to attract grants to support Indigenous young women.
So, why are Indigenous boys’ programs receiving significantly higher funding than girls’ programs? Arguments Indigenous boys are being left behind in relation to school attendance and year 12 completion are not supported by the government’s own data.
According to the 2019 Closing the Gap report, school attendance for Indigenous girls is only 1.3% higher than attendance rates for Indigenous boys. The report also outlined only marginally more Indigenous young women (aged 20-24) are likely to have a Year 12 or equivalent qualification to their male peers — around a 3% difference.
Independent, Indigenous-led evaluation is crucial
Aside from the issue of the gender split of public funding, many have called for more comprehensive, transparent and easy-to-access data on how effectively public funded programs create positive outcomes over time. This evaluation should be independent and Indigenous-led.
there continues to be limited evidence about the effectiveness of many policies and programs designed to improve outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
A 2010 report on programs that aimed to improve school attendance and retention of Indigenous Australian students noted:
A review of the literature that evaluated which programs work to increase attendance or retention found that there were very few high-quality evaluations that had been conducted in this area.
Another study noted, in general, there was “a lack of rigour around the collection, reporting and evaluation of the value” of programs that aimed to improved outcomes of Indigenous students.
In short, many expert voices have called for greater monitoring and evaluation of publicly funded programs aimed at improving outcomes for Indigenous students.
There are endless possibilities for funding to be re-imagined to respond to local needs. Evidence, rigour and equity are crucial to ensuring funding is allocated to achieve the best results.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Turney, Professor of Earth Science and Climate Change, Director of Chronos 14Carbon-Cycle Facility, Director of PANGEA Research Centre, and UNSW Node Director of ARC Centre for Excellence in Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, UNSW
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.
Will the delay of the COP26 UN climate negotiations impact international action to decarbonise? Would catch-up talks help? Could the talks collapse because countries stopped paying their dues?
The 26th Conference of the Parties — better known as COP26 — is the United Nations climate change conference that was scheduled to be held in Glasgow, UK, during the first two weeks of November 2020.
But in April this year the COVID-19 pandemic led to the event being postponed, then later rescheduled to November 2021.
That’s a 12-month delay on a meeting of representatives from nearly 200 countries, including New Zealand, charged with monitoring and implementing the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
It will be crucial to make progress towards the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which aims to limit average global warming to 1.5-2℃ this century, relative to the 1890s (the so-called “preindustrial period”).
Preventing ‘Hothouse Earth’
The temperature target agreed in Paris was carefully chosen. Numerous scientific studies show an increase beyond 2℃ would activate self-reinforcing feedbacks in the climate system (such as a weakening of ocean and land carbon sinks). This would tip our planet into an extreme “Hothouse Earth” that could persist for millennia, regardless of what happens with future emissions.
To avoid this scenario, the legally binding UN agreement encourages all participating nations to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases as soon as possible.
As part of the Paris Agreement, developed countries agreed to provide, from 2020, US$100 billion to support developing countries to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
Unfortunately, the current trajectory of global emissions is on track to increase global average temperatures by more than 2℃ and possibly as much as 4℃, far exceeding the target set in Paris.
National representatives are expected to arrive in Glasgow next year with substantially strengthened plans to reduce emissions and meet their commitments to support developing countries.
The pandemic and emissions
There is no doubt the gathering of 30,000 delegates in Glasgow will come at a time of ongoing uncertainty about COVID-19 and the largest shock to the global economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The pandemic is a game changer but it’s not yet clear whether this is good or bad for reducing emissions.
Many of us have made substantial cuts to our travel and embraced remote work and online video chat, particularly at the height of the pandemic. Google and Apple data suggest more than half of the world’s population reduced their travel by more than half in April.
Unfortunately, greenhouse gas emissions have remained stubbornly high. Daily global carbon dioxide emissions fell by as much as 17% in early April. But as the world’s economy started to recover, emissions bounced back, according to the UN, with 2020 likely experiencing only a 4-7% decline in carbon dioxide relative to 2019.
The sobering reality is nations have a lot more work to do to decarbonise their economies. But for many national governments, the thorny question is how to achieve more ambitious emission targets while at the same time rebuilding economies battered by COVID-19.
Although the UN has a large financial shortfall of US$711 million (at the end of 2019) due to some nations failing to pay their annual dues — with the US, Brazil and Saudi Arabia the worst offenders — there is no suggestion of cancelling the COP26 meeting next year.
Catch-up talks have indeed been mooted but so far nothing has been publicly announced. That’s not to say there aren’t intensive negotiations and commitments being made in advance of the COP26 meeting in Glasgow. And there are some positive signs.
A pandemic recovery
As the world moves towards an economic recovery after the pandemic, some major economies are tilting towards a green stimulus and public commitments to reduce fossil fuel investments.
Arguably more ambitious is the proposed European Green Deal announced in late 2019. It aims to slash greenhouse gas emissions by half over the next decade and make Europe the first carbon-neutral continent.
To help achieve this, a carbon tax is proposed for imports into the European Union. This threatens to have far-reaching implications for European trading partners such as New Zealand and Australia.
These pronouncements will help boost the negotiations for more stringent cuts to emissions as delegates prepare for the COP26 meeting in Glasgow next year. This can only put more pressure on all nations to be more ambitious.
Attention will inevitably focus on the world’s largest historic emitter, the US, which is formally leaving the Paris Agreement on November 4 this year, the day after the 2020 presidential election.
So the COP26 won’t collapse, but the year’s delay to the meeting may give the world the breathing space it so desperately needs to realise the ambition of the Paris Agreement and avoid the worst of climate change.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kylie Quinn, Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow, School of Health and Biomedical Sciences, RMIT University
How are vaccines made to kill a virus? Layla, aged 7
Thanks Layla. This is a very important question, especially now, as scientists all around the world are working hard to develop a vaccine to protect us against the coronavirus. Actually, scientists are trying to find vaccines for many different diseases.
To understand how vaccines are made, we first need to understand how viruses make us sick, and how special cells in our bodies defend us against infections.
Viruses make us sick when they invade our cells. The way this works is kind of complicated — us scientists have to study for many years to fully understand it. But you can think of it like this.
Viruses can get inside our cells by using a special key that fits into a lock on the outside of our cells. Once inside, the virus hijacks the cell, forcing it to make more virus by turning cells into tiny virus factories.
Viruses use a special key to get inside our cells and start to make us sick.Palak Mehta, Author provided
This is stressful for our cells, which can make us start to feel sick. The virus made in the virus factories can spread the infection through our body, to make us even sicker.
It can also spread from our body to infect other people, and make them sick too.
Your immune system is your defence force
Your immune system is made up of immune cells — very special cells that live all throughout your body. Their job is to look out for any signs of an infection and defend all the other cells in your body when there is a threat.
There are many types of immune cells that work as a team to stop and even kill the virus. Two very important immune cells are B cells and T cells.
Our immune cells — T cells and B cells — can defend us against viruses.Palak Mehta, Author provided
B cells make a secret weapon called antibodies. Antibodies are tiny Y-shaped particles that are incredibly sticky — they stick all over the key on the virus so it no longer fits into the lock on our cells. This stops the virus from getting in and causing an infection.
If a virus does sneak past the B cells and get into our cells, T cells can deal with it — they are the ninjas of our immune system! They kill any cells that get infected to stop the virus from spreading within our body.
Our body comes across viruses — like the common cold, for example — every day, and they don’t always make us sick because our immune cells can protect us. But our immune cells are much better at their job if the virus is one they’ve seen before.
If we come across a new virus — like the coronavirus, for example — our immune cells can’t recognise it straight away. This gives the virus a chance to infect our cells and it can start to make us sick.
All vaccines contain a little piece of the virus, which our immune cells pick up and start to show to each other. Our B cells and T cells can then recognise that little piece of virus and remember it, sometimes for years.
Vaccines protect against viruses by teaching our immune cells what the virus looks like.Palak Mehta, Author provided
The next time we see that virus, our immune cells recognise it straight away and kick into action.
If our immune cells can act quickly enough, we won’t get sick, and our bodies won’t make more virus that could make other people sick.
So, we hope that answers your question Layla. Your immune system is a powerful defence force — it protects you every day from infections. But sometimes it needs a little help from a vaccine, especially with a new virus it hasn’t seen before.
Hello, curious kids! Have you got a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au
As the increasingly virulent anti-China rhetoric has made clear in recent months, China has not been very popular in countries like the US and Australia for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
But new research shows just how extensive China’s image problem is at the moment.
Recent surveys conducted by the Pew Research Centre show a majority of people in 14 advanced economies now hold an unfavourable view of China.
In nine of these countries, including the US, UK, Australia, South Korea and Germany, negative views of China have reached their highest level since Pew began polling in these countries more than a decade ago.
In Australia, 81% of respondents said they viewed China unfavourably, up 24 percentage points from last year, while in the UK, 74% had negative views of China, up 19 points.
Sweden (85%) and the Netherlands (73%) also showed dramatic spikes, rising more than 30 percentage points from 2017.
A more assertive diplomatic approach
Significantly, the survey suggests that perceptions of how China has handled the pandemic heavily influenced people’s views of the country.
As the pandemic has devastated economies and cost millions of lives around the world, it is understandable for people to feel resentment and anger towards China, regardless of whether it is reasonable or not.
Moreover, these unfavourable views might persist for some time, because it is human nature to remember negative things more strongly and in greater detail than positive things.
However, these negative views of China might not be solely attributable to its handling of the crisis.
China’s diplomats have also become increasingly assertive in response to questions about the origins of the virus, pushing back with a so-called “wolf warrior diplomacy”.
The Pew survey should be a warning call for the Chinese government to reflect on its foreign policy practices, especially if China envisages pursuing more of an international leadership role in a post-pandemic world.
There are three lessons Chinese diplomats might want to consider.
The first lesson is that good diplomacy is built on mutual respect. And China can earn respect from the world through persuasion — not coercion and propaganda.
For example, an open letter recently sent to Indian media by the Chinese embassy in New Delhi regarding their coverage of Taiwan backfired spectacularly, with India’s Ministry of External Affairs saying
there is a free media in India, that reports on issues that they see fit.
It is true some foreign media have biased and even distorted reports about China. But instead of trying to censor reports they see as biased, Chinese diplomats should instead make counterarguments, ideally in the same media outlets. Let the audience make a judgement call.
Empathy without strings attached
The second lesson is diplomacy should be based on empathy, especially during the pandemic or a similar humanitarian crises.
China has attempted to demonstrate empathy by providing much-needed humanitarian assistance to other countries in the past, but how China conveys the messaging around this makes a big difference.
It is undiplomatic and ridiculous, for instance, to solicit praise and compliments from foreign governments after providing assistance, which is precisely what some Chinese diplomats have done during the pandemic.
China’s diplomats would be wise to keep in mind that humility is a respected virtue in traditional Chinese culture. And in international relations, soft power is more effective if it comes without strings attached.
‘When they go low, we go high’
The third lesson is about the art of diplomacy, which is, in essence, about government-to-government relationships between countries. Diplomats need to know what they should do, and more importantly, what they should not do, in order to maintain good relations with other countries.
For example, the Chinese ambassador to Sweden, Gui Congyou, has attacked the local media and public figures frequently because, as he put it, they “have a habit of criticising, accusing and smearing China.”
Gui has been summoned to Sweden’s foreign ministry more than 40 times in two years and several parties have called for him to be expelled from Sweden.
And in Brazil, China’s embassy strongly protested when Brazilian congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, President Jair Bolsonaro’s son, blamed China for the pandemic on Twitter.
Ambassador Yang Wanming called it an “evil insult” and the embassy posited that Bolsonaro had contracted “a mental virus” while visiting the US.
China’s diplomats should understand that because of the differing political systems in other countries, it is sometimes normal for politicians and public figures to express controversial views concerning China.
How and when to respond is part of the art of diplomacy. Sometimes, a quiet, measured response is more effective than public tit-for-tat bickering.
This is not to suggest China should keep its head down when being bullied by other countries. A wise diplomat should know how to pick a fight with the right target at the right time. In addition, good diplomacy should be built on taking the moral high ground when possible.
Australian journalists were hosted at the Chinese ambassador’s residence for a press event last year, before relations deteriorated.Lukas Coch/AAP
Lessons for the West, too
These three lessons are not unique to China. The US image has also plummeted internationally due to the Trump administration’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Pew surveys show.
Australian diplomats might also find these lessons useful for repairing their country’s deteriorating relationship with China.
These days, a more sensible and even-keeled approach to diplomacy is what would be best for China, as well as the rest of the world — not more heated rhetoric.
An astronomical discovery is shedding new light on an exquisitely-formed star system in our own Milky Way galaxy, featuring two Wolf-Rayet stars. These stars are short-lived and consequently very rare, with only a few hundred confirmed among our galaxy’s one hundred billion or so stars.
Research published by our team in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society offers a closer look at not one, but two Wolf-Rayet stars, in a binary star system named Apep, about 8000 light years away from Earth.
Wolf-Rayets are often more than 20 times the mass of our sun. They’re fiercely hot, bright and can emit more radiation than a million normal stars. In fact, they’re so luminous they fly apart under their own glare — shedding huge amounts of mass through intense stellar winds and driving elements such as helium, oxygen and carbon into space.
Apep, named after the serpentine Egyptian god of chaos, was first announced by my team in 2018. With the new findings from a paper led by recent University of Sydney graduate from my group, Yinuo Han, we threw everything we had at the seemingly inexplicable physics driving this exotic peacock of the stellar kingdom.
Apep’s dance caught on camera
Finding any Wolf-Rayet star is a one-in-a-billion event, only possible because their extreme properties act as a beacon visible across the galaxy. In Apep, we find a pair of these rare stars nestled in an orbit, the only example of a binary Wolf-Rayet ever verified.
Their ferocious radiation drives the outer layers of the star off into space, where the material, particularly the carbon, is able to cool and condense into a plume of grains — forming a literal pillar of stardust.
In the case of the binary star Apep, however, as the two stars orbit one another, this dust gets twisted and sculpted into a vast glowing sooty tail. Both the geometric form and the motion of this dust encodes the physics of the star’s orbit, as well as the speed of winds.
Using high-resolution imaging techniques, we revealed the form of the glowing plume. By returning to Apep for three consecutive years, subtle differences could be seen in the motion of the dust tail.
Despite the vast distance over which we observed the system, the incredible power of modern telescopes and imaging technologies allowed us to capture Apep’s dance.
A potential first for our Milky Way?
Analysing these data, we produced and a model that matches Apep’s intricate spiral geometry in amazing detail. However the increasing clarity of the imagery only served to double down on the underlying enigma enshrouding the system.
Flouting rules that generally govern other wind-driven dust plumes, Apep’s dust tail seemed to float along at its own slow pace, in open defiance to the the extreme winds that should be driving it. This was hard to fathom, as Wolf-Rayet winds are more than a billion times more powerful than our own solar wind.
Wolf-Rayet stars have some of the strongest known winds in the galaxy.European Southern Observatory, CC BY
After double-checking for possible errors, we were forced to accept the dust spiral was, indeed, expanding four times slower than the measured stellar winds. And so, we were confronted with something unheard of in other Wolf-Rayet double star systems; something requiring new physics to understand.
The only explanation that remained was that Apep’s plume was somehow sheltered within its own, more gentle wind. This two-speed model of wind is is theoretically possible if the star that launches the wind has a peculiar property: rapid rotation.
If it’s spinning very fast on its axis, it’s possible this could launch a slow wind in one direction, say around the equator, while maintaining a fast wind closer to the poles.
This opens the door into a realm of fascinating physics that has only been glimpsed by astronomers before.
Burn bright, live fast, die young
Wolf-Rayet stars are, by definition, at the end of their life cycle. In perhaps only a few tens of thousands of years — nobody knows exactly when —they’re destined to explode as supernova, releasing a titanic amount of energy and matter into the galaxy and leaving a remnant black hole or neutron star.
It’s here the critical issue of the star’s rapid rotation comes to centre stage. A normal supernova carries few impacts and consequences beyond its immediate stellar neighbourhood. But when the precursor star is a rapid rotator, this can tip the physics into a different domain entirely: that of a gamma-ray burst.
Here, bursts of raw fury erupt from the rotational poles with such violence they are visible clean across the observable universe.
Being extremely rare, gamma-ray bursts have never been observed in our galaxy. Calculations imply a direct strike from such an intense burst of radiation, even at a considerable distance off in the deeps of the galaxy, could have real consequences for life here on Earth.
It might cause a range of problems, such as ozone depletion and acid rain. Some studies argue such a strike may have caused the Ordovician–Silurian extinction event in the fossil record — the second-largest (percentage wise) of Earth’s five major extinction events.
Fortunately for us, in the case of Apep, we’re definitely not in the firing line. If a gamma-ray strike were to be generated, it would be pointed harmlessly off in a direction away from Earth.
If the link to a gamma-ray burst progenitor can be firmly established, this would capture an elusive phenomena formerly only known at cosmological distances. Either way, the future for studies of this system are bright indeed.
University of Sydney undergraduate unlocked Yinuo Han conducted research on Apep, a Wolf-Rayet binary star system 8000 light years from Earth. Credit: Yinuo Han.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joanna Mendelssohn, Principal Fellow (Hon), Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, University of Melbourne
Review: Lindy Lee: Moon in a Dew Drop, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.
At a time when the rapidly heating earth seems to put the very future of humanity at risk, in an age when the world appears to be largely governed by clowns, criminals or those who are a combination of both, Lindy Lee’s art soothes the soul, restoring harmony.
Lindy Lee.Photo Saul Steed
Moon in a Dew Drop, curated by Elizabeth Ann Macgregor, does not show easy patterns or sweet sentiment. Rather it is an expression of tranquillity obtained as the result of hard struggle and rigorous self-examination.
Lee could be described as a typical Australian. She is the child of immigrant refugee parents. Her father came to Australia alone in 1947, before the Communist victory, but her mother was not allowed to follow for some years as our racist immigration policies strictly limited the number of Chinese people allowed to settle here.
Lee became an artist at a time when it was widely assumed that all art was made by men but by an accident of timing her professional career placed her in the vanguard of successful Australian artists who were neither ethnically European or male.
In a catalogue essay translated by Fiona He, the Chinese writer Shen Qilan notes that Lee’s art is a continual exploration of “‘Who am I?’ – the first and ultimate philosophical question”.
Lindy Lee, The Long Road of the River of Stars, 2015 from The Tyranny and Liberation of Distance, UV-cured pigment inkjet print, black mild steel, fire 109.6 x 117.6 x 3.2 cm overall.National Gallery of Australia, purchased 2018
When she was a child, Lee wondered at motes of dust caught in the sunlight. As an adult she is still driven by a sense of wonder in the world around her.
The exhibition arcs over the entire trajectory of Lee’s career, starting with early photocopies of Renaissance and Baroque works. As with most women of her generation, Lee had assumed all great artists were men until she visited Italy and saw the work of Artemisia Gentileschi. Here was an artist who painted women as heroes and whose favourite subject was the Biblical Judith, beheader of Holofernes.
After Lee returned to Australia she studied at the Sydney College of the Arts, at first using photocopies as an aide memoir. The process of photocopying entranced her as she began to see these copies as objects in their own right.
Lindy Lee, Untitled (After Jan van Eyck), 1985.Courtesy the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney and Singapore
The act of translation through art served as a metaphor for her experience as an Australian with an Asian background, seeing the world at a distance, turning “reality” into something else. From photocopies she turned to black pigmented beeswax, scraping back the European past to create an original present.
Cultural dislocation
In 1985, her painting, White Sacrament, a meditation on an El Greco painting of St Andrew, was purchased for the National Gallery of Australia. Lee was intrigued by the intensity of El Greco’s spirituality and the way this was reflected in his art. Her investigations into spirituality developed in tandem with a sense of cultural dislocation.
As with many Australians born of immigrant parents, Lee did not at first feel a connection to their country or culture. Later she came to understand that her preoccupation with photocopies was also a reflection of seeing herself as a replica, not the real thing, not a part of Australia. It could be argued that all her subsequent art is an exploration of the nature of reality, and a sense of time.
Her 2003 installation, Birth and Death, recreated for this exhibition, comprises 100 red, Chinese accordion books, printed with digitised images of members of her family, past and present, alive and dead. We are all a part of those who go before and who come after.
In 1995, Lee paid her first visit to China and realised that she was neither wholly Chinese nor completely Australian. Instead she continued to draw on both cultures for her understanding of self. The result was her installation, No Up, No Down, I Am the Ten Thousand Things.
Lindy Lee , No Up No Down I Am the Ten Thousand Things, 1995/2020.Courtesy the artist and Sutton Gallery, Melbourne
In a catalogue interview with Macgregor she describes this work as the result of being “released from the imprisonment of trying to find my identity as being either Chinese or Anglo or this or that”.
The title is a reference to the Zen philosopher, Dogen who said, “If you want to know your self, forget yourself and be actualised by the 10,000 things.”
In subsequent visits to China, Lee became intrigued by the Daoist tradition of flung ink calligraphy, where the artist allows fate to decide where the pigment falls. In recent years, she has begun to work with the UAP Foundry in Brisbane, making flung pieces out of drops of molten bronze.
The jewel-like fragments look as though they could never be the result of accident, but one of the highlights of the exhibition is the video installation showing Lee almost dancing as she flings down the hot metal as it turns into art.
Lindy Lee, Unnameable, 2017.Courtesy the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney and Singapore with the assistance of UAP
Moonlight Deities, an installation where light shines through multiple, circular holes making entrancing shadow patterns, was made especially for this exhibition, as was the sculpture Secret World of a Starlight Ember.
Lindy Lee, Secret World of a Starlight Ember.Ken Leanfore
In both works it is easy for the viewer to immerse themselves in the patterns of light, to move with the shadows, to consider themselves as parts of the never ending universe.
This world in which we find ourselves is but a speck in the enormity of the universe, and at the same time a revelation of wonder that we who are so small can be a part of a universe, so large.
Lee tells Macgregor the Buddhist story of the net of Indra, the infinite net, as a metaphor for what she is trying to say through her art.
It’s a Buddhist story. The universe is this infinite net and at each end of the ties of the net there is a jewel. The jewel is perfect and utterly singular, but its perfection, beauty and singularity comes from reflecting every other jewel in the universe.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra
More than ever before, auctions shape the economy.
Sites such as eBay have made them an everyday transaction. The placement of every Google ad is priced by an instantaneous mini-auction. Governments use them to allocate radio spectrum and to run emissions trading schemes.
The 2020 Nobel Prize in economics has been awarded to two Americans, Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson, for their work in analysing auctions and how to make them more efficient.
The two professors are close collaborators. They both work at Stanford University in California and also live on the same street.
The economics prize is not one of the original categories endowed from Alfred Nobel’s will. Its formal name is the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel. The winners are selected by the same Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences that awards the prizes for physics and chemistry.
Milgrom and Wilson work in various areas of economics (notably game theory) but are best known for their work in market design. Milgrom was awarded his PhD from Stanford in 1978, where he was one of Wilson’s students.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has emphasised that Milgrom and Wilson have won the award for both their theoretical work and its practical application in auctions.
This is not the first time the economic prize has gone to theory relevant to auctions. William Vickrey and James Mirrlees won in 1996 for their work on incentives.
The 2017 winner, behavioural economist Richard Thaler, has also brought attention to the phenomenon at the heart of the work for which Milgrom and Wilson have been awarded – known as “the winner’s curse”.
The winner’s curse arises from people bidding for something whose value is unknown at the time but will be agreed later. Economists call this a “common value” auction.
An example might be the right to mine for gold in a certain location. If no gold is found, the right will turn out to be worthless. If there is a lot of gold, it will be valuable.
Different bidders may have different opinions about how much gold is in the site. The more optimistic they are, the more they will be willing to bid. The most optimistic bid will win.
But the true value is likely to turn out much closer to the average rather than the highest valuation. So winning bidders are likely to overpay.
Common versus private values
Wilson’s work has shown the fear of the winner’s curse leads rational bidders to bid less than their own valuation.
Greater uncertainty, or the belief some participants have more information than others, will make bidders even more cautious. Their final price will therefore be lower.
Milgrom built on this to examine the case of auctions where there is not only a common value but also a private value that differs between bidders.
An example would be a house. A quiet, safe and convenient location is likely to be a common value. But features such as a pool or a large garden might be valued very differently, as some buyers see them only as a chore.
This will give rise to different private values.
The design of the auction matters
The most common type of auction is an “English auction”, where the auctioneer starts with a low price and it is bid up until only one bidder is left.
There are also “Dutch auctions”, where the auctioneer starts with a high price and lowers it until someone buys.
Economists had assumed the format of the auction would make no difference to the outcome. But Milgrom showed the problem of the winner’s curse is greater in the Dutch auction, because bidders do not learn anything from watching other bidders drop out.
The final price is therefore likely to be lower in a Dutch auction.
More than merely academic
How have such insights helped society?
Simultaneous auctions make more money.
For one thing, Milgrom and Wilson developed a complex form of auction – the “simultaneous multiple round auction”. This allows bidding for more than one thing at the same time and allows repeated bids.
It is useful, for example, if a company wants to bid for a licence in one area only if it can also have the licence in another area.
If the auctions were held sequentially, the uncertainty about winning the second auction would depress bids in the first auction.
This gives governments more money to spend on public services such as health and education.
Economists are often derided as “academic scribblers”. This year’s Nobel economics prize is a clear example of economists having practical outcomes in the public interest.
As the national flag – Fiji’s “noble banner blue” – flew over the celebrations at the weekend marking the 50th anniversary of Independence, it’s worth remembering just how close Voreqe Bainimarama and Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum came five years ago to getting rid of it altogether.
The display photo is of one of the 23 designs that emerged from a national competition in 2015 to choose a new flag and happens to have been the Attorney-General’s personal choice.
What is it? Well may you ask because it is far from immediately obvious.
It’s a Medinilla waterhousei – to give it its formal botanical name – commonly known in Fiji as the tagimoucia – the famous species of flowering plant in the family Melastomataceae that is endemic to the highland rainforest on the island of Taveuni.
The alternative Fiji flag design preferred by the Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum. Image: Grubsheet Feejee
It is uniquely Fijian in that it doesn’t grow anywhere else. And it’s what Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum originally wanted depicted on a new flag to replace the “noble banner blue” that has flown over Fiji for half a century since Independence Day, October 10, 1970.
In the year between February 2015 and February 2016, millions of dollars and many thousands of man hours went into making the AG’s wish a reality.
As the government’s communications adviser, I witnessed that effort at first hand. And can provide a fresh insight into the abortive attempt to jettison our national symbol and impose a new one without any consultation with the Fijian people at all.
The 23 flag redesign finalists. Image: Grubsheet Feejee
Not part of the party platform Changing the flag was not part of the FijiFirst Party’s platform leading up the election on September 17, 2014 that returned Fiji to parliamentary rule. There was no mention of it in the FijiFirst manifesto and it wasn’t canvassed at all in the dozens of speeches I wrote for the Prime Minister leading up to the election. Yet just five months later came the official announcement – which I also wrote – of the proposed flag change and a national competition to find a suitable replacement.
It was a deliberate ploy by the Attorney General not to take the flag change to a popular vote because he knew it would be lost. There was no constituency whatsoever in Fiji pressing for a flag change. In Australia and New Zealand, there have long been organisations and lobby groups specifically dedicated to removing the so called “colonial symbol” of the Union Flag but not in Fiji. So where did the impetus for the flag change come from? The answer is perhaps the most astonishing of the many instances in which Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum has imposed his will on the country. Because he specifically told me that it was to please his father.
Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum and Sayed Abdul Khaiyum … a pledge to change the flag to “remove its colonial symbols”. Image: Grubsheet Feejee
The AG revealed to me when the flag change proposal was announced that he had promised his father, Sayed Abdul Khaiyum – who received a 50th Independence anniversary medal last week – that he would change the flag to “remove its colonial symbols” before his father died.
So incredibly, it was one man’s vanity and the power he wields that almost cost the Fijian people their most precious national symbol.
When I say the premise for the flag change was astonishing, it does not reflect the full range of my emotions at the time – including dismay and indignation – when the AG instructed me to sell it to the Fijian people through the Prime Minister’s speeches and statements.
I have precisely the same rights as the AG as a Fijian citizen by birth. But here he was telling me that he was unilaterally changing my own national symbol and that of every other Fijian to please his father.
And without asking me or anyone else whether that was OK with us. Of all the chronic highhandedness and disregard for due process that has come to characterise the FijiFirst government, this certainly took the keke.
Little choice but to carry out wishes Yet at the time, I had little choice but to carry out his wishes. I did not feel inclined to resign because I suspected even then – rightly as it turned out – that eventually the flag change proposal would fail.
No one man can tell an entire nation that their national symbol is invalid just because he says so. Yet this was the arrogance of Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum.
Voreqe Bainimarama … Queen’s man once. Image: Grubsheet Feejee
To this day, I have never understood why the Prime Minister went along with the AG’s proposal. A portrait of Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh still hangs above Voreqe Bainimarama’s office desk in Suva.
And in an interview with me for The Australian in May, 2009, he identified himself as a “Queen’s man”. He even said he would like to see the Queen restored as Queen of Fiji and for the country to again become a monarchy after Sitiveni Rabuka declared a republic in 1987.
“I’m still loyal to the Queen. Many people are in Fiji. One of the things I’d like to do is see her restored as our monarch, to be Queen of Fiji again”, he said. Yet in 2012, Voreqe Bainimarama’s government abolished the official Queen’s Birthday holiday in Fijiand replaced the Queen’s image on Fiji’s banknotes and coins – moves also instigated by the AG.
And in 2015, the Prime Minister took it further, again acceding to the AG’s wishes by agreeing to change the flag that had flown over Fiji for 45 years.
Why? Apart from the obvious inference of no longer being the Queen’s man but the AG’s man, I have never heard a private explanation from the PM for his change of attitude. But I certainly heard plenty from him publicly because I wrote those utterances at the AG’s instigation.
Duly approved messaging They were cleared by him – as all the PM’s speeches are – and Voreqe Bainimarama duly read out the approved messaging. It was all about Fijians ridding themselves of outdated colonial symbols and embracing “a flag that represents who we are today, rather than our past, and that we can fly proudly as we fulfil our vision to become a modern nation state”.
Right from the start, the AG was keen on the tagimoucia to be the new national symbol. He was drawing his inspiration from the Canadian flag and the maple leaf that replaced the Union Flag on Canada’s national symbol.
But also right from the start, it was obvious to everyone but him that the tagimoucia did not have the same visual impact as the maple leaf. But, of course, It went into the mix anyway because it was the AG’s choice, joining the 22 other designs that emerged from a national competition that eventually drew more than 1400 entries.
The “noble blue banner” of Fiji … universally loved. Image: Grubsheet Feejee
The Fijian people may not have had a say on the issue of whether the flag should be changed in the first place. But once they saw the inevitability of that change being railroaded through, many decided that they should at least try to influence the outcome.
The problem was that none of the final designs was sufficiently strong enough to capture the public imagination. They all tended to look like corporate logos for a shipping line.
And the AG’s preferred choice was especially underwhelming. One of the members of the National Flag Committee described it as akin to a used sanitary pad – an observation that may have been lacking in taste but was uncomfortably accurate.
The National Flag Committee was headed by Iliesa Delana, the Para-Olympic Gold Medallist and then Assistant Minister for Youth and Sports and included such community luminaries as Shaenaz Voss from Fiji Airways, the businessman, Dinesh Patel , the then PR consultant and now National Federation Party MP, Lenora Qereqeretabua, and the artist Craig Marlow.
Guided by a technical adviser Assisting them as technical adviser was a genial American by the name of Ted Kaye– a vexillologist or flag expert from Oregon, who volunteered his services for free and only billed his travelling expenses.
Ted Kaye … vexillologist. Image: Grubsheet Feejee
Ted Kaye saw it as his role merely to guide the other members of the panel on the essentials of flag design and insisted that the ultimate choice be Fijian. He later expressed the view that it had been a mistake to present the public with so many choices.
But the essential problem was that none of the designs captured the public imagination. If Fiji was to replace the “noble banner blue”, that design needed to be better than the existing flag and none of them were.
Which was why the desperately-needed excitement factor that might lead to a new symbol being embraced was altogether absent.
The AG and his father detest the current flag because they see on it the symbols of the colonial power, Britain, and both detest the British establishment. During my time in Fiji, the British High Commission made repeated attempts to get the AG to visit the UK but he would always find a reason not to do so.
This is despite the fact that Britons of Indian descent hold senior positions in the British government. Yet time has not dimmed the resentment of Empire on the part of Aiyaz and Sayed Khaiyum, not only Britain’s actions on the Subcontinent during the colonial era but in Fiji.
Ratu Sukuna … “British stooge”. Image: Grubsheet Feejee
However much they may be revered in national life, the AG detests Fijian leaders such as Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna and Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, who he regards as stooges of the British who retarded Fiji’s development.
Not hard to identify motive So it isn’t hard to identify motive in the AG’s desire for a flag change. The issue is whether it is justified. And whether one man – or two men, if you include the Prime Minister – have the right to impose a flag change without consulting the people at all.
I detected no sense of awareness on their part of the irony of returning Fiji to parliamentary democracy in 2014 after nearly eight years of dictatorship and then telling the Fijian people the following year that they would lose their existing national symbol whether they liked it or not.
They had no mandate whatsoever to do it.
At no stage was any thought given to holding a referendum on the issue because they knew they would lose. Which is precisely what happened in Australia and New Zealand when the people were actually consulted.
No change to the flags of either nation and the “Union Jack” still on both, even when they look so similar that the Aussie and Kiwi flags are often confused in a way that Fiji’s can never be because of the distinctive “Fiji blue”.
“Corporate logos” … in place of a real flag. Image: Grubsheet Feejee
If Australians and New Zealanders don’t want to change their flags to remove their colonial symbols, why would Fijians? The Fijian people weren’t consulted back in 1987 about whether we supported an end to the monarchy and the switch to a republic. It was merely imposed on us after Sitiveni Rabuka’s coups.
The Fijian people weren’t consulted about removing the Queen’s image from the currency in 2012. And in 2015, the Fijian people weren’t consulted when Voreqe Bainimarama and Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum unilaterally decided to impose a new flag.
Events conspired against flag issue Yet unfortunately for them – though fortunately for the broad mass of the Fijian people – events conspired against them. The lack of inspiration generated by the 23 flag finalists was already causing mutterings behind the scenes.
When the Prime Minister began to be lobbied heavily by those around him to abandon the idea, he at first acknowledged that not everyone was happy with the designs on offer and said others would be considered.
But then two things happened that sank the flag change altogether.
On February 20 2016, Cyclone Winston slammed into Fiji with winds of more than 300 km/h, killing 44 people and causing damage equal to one third of the country’s GDP. Set against the suffering of Winston, spending any more money on changing the flag was a wasteful extravagance that even the PM and AG recognised.
But then came another more potent factor. The outpouring of national pride that began with Iliesa Delana’s 2012 Para-Olympic gold medal win – with the existing flag at the centre of it all – escalated dramatically when Fiji won its first Olympic gold medal in Rio de Janeiro in August 2016.
Suddenly the “noble banner blue” was everywhere – flown, borne aloft and worn in a manner that conclusively proved its pride of place in the affections of most Fijians. And for the moment at least, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum’s promise to his father to get rid of the hated Union Jack was over.
Olympic joy for Fiji. Image: Grubsheet Feejee
Six days after the Olympic victory for Fiji’s Rugby Sevens team, I wrote the following statement for the PM, approved by the AG: “It has been deeply moving to witness the way Fijians have rallied around the national flag as our rugby sevens team brought home Olympic gold.
“It has been apparent to the Government since February (because of the cost of Winston) that the flag should not be changed for the foreseeable future”, the statement read.
Decision seen merely as a setback Yet even then, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum saw the decision as merely a setback and to this day, harbours the same ambition to push a flag change through.
In 2018, he specifically asked me “do you think we can revisit the flag issue for the 50th Independence anniversary?” I laughed it off with a “don’t go there” and the AG said nothing more.
Yet defenders of the “noble banner blue” need to be ready to take up the fight again at the first sign that the AG attempts to again railroad through a change. The steady decline in the FijiFirst government’s electoral fortunes makes it less likely that he will try again but it’s not for a lack of enthusiasm on his part. His promise to his father remains unfulfilled.
The “noble banner blue” … Fiji’s national flag. Image: Grubsheet Feejee
As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Independence, it’s worth thinking about why Fijians love their flag so much. I personally think that in the case of the Union Jack and other colonial symbols on the shield like the British “leopard”, Fijians don’t see these as foreign symbols.
It is OUR flag, Fiji’s flag, not the flag of Great Britain. And with most of the country having grown up with nothing else, let alone never having experienced life in Fiji as a British colony, there’s a sense of collective ownership of the “noble banner blue” that transcends everything else.
These are not symbols of colonial oppression but links with our history – to Fiji’s past. Which also makes them part of our present and which most Fijians want to preserve.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in Suva in 2018. Image: Grubsheet Feejee
In my experience, anti-British sentiment in Fiji is the preserve of a minority of Fijians of Indian descent – and of a certain generation – who undoubtedly suffered from the racial discrimination and petty apartheid of the colonial era in the 1950s and 60s. These scars are real and cannot be dismissed lightly.
Not the collective experience But it is not the collective experience of most Fijians and especially the iTaukei, who generally have warm feelings towards Britain, its symbols and the Royal Family, not least because unlike indigenous people elsewhere, they were not dispossessed.
I had wondered how the country would generally respond to the visit to Fiji in 2018 of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. It had been many years since a royal visit. Yet in the event, it was a great success and demonstrated the continuing warm feelings of Fijians towards the Crown.
Plus, of course, the global culture of celebrity that infects young Fijians as much as anyone else.
It all raises an intriguing question. Given what Voreqe Bainimarama said in the interview with me in 2009 about wanting Queen Elizabeth to be Queen of Fiji again, would the monarchy have been restored by the FijiFirst government if it wasn’t for the jaundiced attitude of Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum and his astonishing hold over the PM? Perhaps.
50th anniversary invitation … stalled by covid. Image: Grubsheet Feejee
The visit of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle had been such a success that plans were underway for Charles, Prince of Wales, to be in Fiji this weekend for the 50th anniversary celebrations. I had taken it upon myself to make repeated representations to the British in recent years to have Charles and Camilla present, the Prime Minister had issued a formal invitation when he met the Prince in London and plans for the visit were proceeding until the Covid-19 pandemic put a stop to it, as it has most other things.
Prince Charles with Ratu Mara. Image: Grubsheet Feejee
The symbolism of the Queen’s son in Albert Park on Saturday precisely 50 years to the minute after he stood there in brilliant sunshine on the morning of October 10, 1970 and handed Fiji its instruments of Independence would have been unforgettable.
It would have been history coming full circle not only for Fiji but for the heir to the throne – the direct descendent of Queen Victoria, to whom the chiefs of Fiji ceded Fiji in 1874, present not only for Independence in 1970 but for the fiftieth anniversary of the Fijian nation half a century later. Alas. One of history’s missed opportunities.
Tessa McKenzie … designed the Fiji flag. Image: Grubsheet Fiji
Yet there’s someone else who will be in Albert Park on Saturday who I urge everyone present to acclaim. In the lead-up to Independence in 1970, Tessa McKenzie and a man named Robi Wilcox jointly won the national competition for the design of Fiji’s post-Independence flag, incorporating the Union Jack, the shield from the official Coat of Arms and its distinctive sky blue background.
Tessa is now in her mid 80s but still lives in Suva and is still going strong – among other things, a prolific letter writer to the Fiji Times and a staunch defender of the flag she designed. She is a living national treasure and it was wonderful to see her honoured this week among the first group of recipients of the 50th anniversary Independence medal.
So when you see the flag flown, spare a thought for Tessa, the elderly lady in the crowd who deserves to be up there with any queen or princess in the nation’s affections – a living link not only to our past but part of our present and future, like the symbol of our nationhood she devised.
Grubsheet Feejee is the blogsite of Graham Davis, an award-winning journalist turned communications consultant who was the Fiji government’s principal communications adviser for six years from 2012 to 2018 and continued to work on Fiji’s global climate and oceans campaign up until the end of the decade. Other articles here.
To navigate our way through the world, we constantly make choices. While we’ve all made our fair share of regrettable ones, most of us eventually learn from these – and we generally take this ability for granted.
For some people suffering from illnesses such as schizophrenia and substance use disorder – previously referred to as “substance abuse” – making the right choices can be extremely difficult.
In fact, many mental illnesses feature problems with cognition (thinking and comprehension), including depression and bipolar disorder. Decision-making ability varies in healthy people, too, sometimes as a consequence of differences in genetics.
What’s happening in the brains of these people that puts them on unequal footing to the rest of us?
Even simple decisions are complex
It’s important to note in day-to-day situations, there’s often no distinctly “right” or “wrong” choice to be made. However, some choices do result in healthier or more productive outcomes for us and those around us.
Our brains carry out a suite of complex processes when making decisions. And there are four important factors in each decision we make: value, motivation, action and strategy.
When choosing between two options, say A and B, we first need to understand which choice will be more rewarding, or provide more value. Our personal motivation to attain this reward then acts to bias which option we choose, or whether we make a choice at all.
Understanding what action is required to obtain A, or B, is also important. Combining all this information, we try to understand which strategy will maximise our rewards. And this lets us improve our decision-making ability over time.
There are multiple decision-making processes in the brain that help determine the choices we make.James P. Kesby
Interrupted connections
We refer to our personal history and past experiences to guide our future choices. But mental disorders often cause problems in the decision-making process.
Research shows people with schizophrenia can have trouble understanding the relationship between their actions and the outcomes. This means they might keep selecting A, even if they know it’s no longer as valuable as B.
They’re also more willing to adopt strategies based on less information, in other words “jump to conclusions”, about outcomes.
Substance use disorder, particularly with stimulants such as methamphetamine or cocaine, often leads to people getting stuck when certain outcomes change.
For example, if we reversed all the street lights so red meant “go” and green meant “stop” without telling anyone, most people would get an initial shock but would eventually alter their behaviour.
People with stimulant dependence, however, would take longer to learn to stop on the green light – even if they kept getting into car accidents. This is because excessive stimulant use impacts regions in the brain that are crucial to adapting to changing environments.
The human brain contains multiple circuits (like pathways) and chemical messengers called “neurotransmitters”. These are responsible for guiding the processes discussed above.
The decision-making circuits commonly associated with schizophrenia and substance use disorder include areas of the “cortex” – the outer part of our brain important for complex thought (especially the frontal lobe) – that “talk” to hub areas such as the “striatum”. The striatum lets us select and then initiate an action to achieve a specific goal.
Different cortical areas are used to compute different processes in the brain. The prefrontal cortex helps us understand when a strategy needed for success changes. So, if we replaced all the traffic lights with sirens, the prefrontal cortex would help us realise this and adjust.
When the anticipated outcome of a choice changes (such as if A was better, but then suddenly B became better), the orbitofrontal cortex helps us identify this. Similarly, the striatum is key for anticipating what an outcome will be and when we will get the reward.
The cortex is the wrinkly layer that covers our brain. The striatum sits underneath the cortex, in the forebrain.Shutterstock
Dopamine helps make your choices a reality
Extensive research efforts have found the brains of people experiencing schizophrenia function differently in multiple areas. It’s believed this could contribute to decision-making problems.
For the psychotic symptoms observed in schizophrenia (such as hallucinations and delusions), alterations in the neurotransmitter dopamine are important. Dopamine is a chemical in the brain that’s key for anticipating rewards, making decisions and controlling the physical actions necessary to act on our choices.
In our research, we’ve argued increases in dopamine in the striatum may cause problems with how the brain integrates information from the cortex, resulting in decision-making difficulties. However, this may only be the case in some individuals.
Stimulants also cause excessive dopamine release. They can alter the balance between goal-directed behaviours, which are flexible and respond to environmental changes – and habits, which are automatic and hard to break.
Usually, when we learn something new our brain keeps adapting and incorporating new information. But this is slow and cognitively demanding. Substance dependence can accelerate a person’s progression to habitual behaviour, wherein a set strategy or response become ingrained.
This then makes it hard to stop seeking drugs, even if the individual no longer finds them enjoyable.
Unfortunately, problems with cognitive ability are hard to treat. There are no medications for schizophrenia or stimulant dependence shown to reliably improve cognition. This is a consequence of the human brain’s complexity.
That said, there are ways we can all improve our memory and decision-making, which may also help those with mental illnesses causing cognition problems.
For instance, cognitive remediation therapy is a behavioural approach that trains the brain to respond to certain situations better. For people with schizophrenia, it may improve visual memory and perhaps more complex decision-making.
Not being able to navigate decisions day-to-day is one of the most debilitating aspects of disorders that impact cognition. This leads to difficulties in maintaining work, keeping friends and leading a fulfilling life.
We need more research to understand how different brains make different decisions. Hopefully then we can improve the lives of those living with mental illness.
I first met Judith Collins in a media green room somewhere in Auckland midway through 2015. She is renowned for her ambition and dogged determination. But meeting her in person, I found her engaging, funny and very direct.
She is also from my own home province, Waikato, which has a long history of producing influential political women (Dorothy Jelicich, Marilyn Waring, Margaret Wilson, Helen Clark and Jacinda Ardern, to name just a few). When she heard I taught a first-year politics class she volunteered immediately to come and give a lecture.
I took her up on that in October the same year, and she proved to be an entertaining guest. She shared with her audience of 300-plus her views on National as a party of pragmatism rather than ideology, and why any media attention is better than none. She was asked about her leadership ambitions — and was diplomatically coy.
By then, Collins had been exonerated by a government inquiry into allegations, based on a leaked email from blogger Cameron Slater, that she had sought to undermine the director of the Serious Fraud Office.
She returned to cabinet, but it was a period of her political life she refers to in her recent memoir as the “whole awful Worst of Times”. After six years as a high-profile minister of police, corrections, veterans affairs, justice, ACC and ethnic affairs, all the while in pursuit of an economic portfolio, Collins had been forced to resign from the front bench three weeks out from the 2014 election.
Until that point she had been touted as one of those most likely to succeed John Key. While it would take six more years before Collins won the leadership of the National Party, she never gave up. The subtitle of her book sums it up: Memoir of a Political Survivor.
Collins has put her name forward for the leadership several times since Key’s resignation, but could never win over enough caucus colleagues. This year was different. Todd Muller’s unexpected resignation as National leader just 53 days after his own coup against Simon Bridges presented Collins with a wide open window of opportunity to finally take charge.
National may have been turned to her in desperation, but several pundits have since argued she should have been made leader much earlier.
Former National Party leader Don Brash supported and mentored Judith Collins.GettyImages
Divisive but decisive
Collins was first elected to parliament in 2002, the year of National’s nadir — the party received just 21% of the vote, resulting in a net loss of 12 seats. Its support had fragmented — centre-right voters had shifted to ACT, New Zealand First and United Future. With Helen Clark’s Labour Party at a 41% high, Collins was one of only five new National MPs to enter the 47th parliament.
Two of those five new MPs were Don Brash and John Key, who both went on to become National Party leaders ahead of Collins. Unsurprisingly, both were influential in her career, albeit in opposite ways.
Collins recounts Brash’s political style and intellect with warmth and respect. Brash holds a PhD in economics from the Australian National University, has worked for the World Bank, and was New Zealand’s Reserve Bank governor for 14 years from 1988 — overlapping with the ascendancy of neoliberalism in New Zealand.
As leader of the National Party, it was clear Brash supported Collins’s aspirations, giving her portfolios that matched her expertise. He even invited her to a dinner with Milton Friedman, at which she learnt the political leader the famous economist most admired was Margaret Thatcher.
Collins praised Brash’s Orewa speech, in which he had condemned the “dangerous drift towards racial separatism” and the “entrenched Treaty grievance industry”. Divisive in the eyes of many, Collins saw it as an example of the decisive leadership that ultimately led to Brash bringing National voters “home” in 2005.
National didn’t win, but increased its presence in parliament by 21 MPs (48 compared to Labour’s 50), with ACT, NZ First and United Future losing 18 seats between them.
Prime Minister John Key appoints Judith Collins minister of corrections in 2015, reinstating her to cabinet after she resigned in 2014.GettyImages
Surviving the Key years
By contrast, the relationship between Collins and Key appears to have been less than rewarding. She argues Key had come into politics with a very clear agenda of being prime minister and nothing would get in his way.
One political reporter had tipped Collins as most likely to be Key’s deputy in advance of the 2008 election, but this did not happen. Nor was she promoted in Key’s first cabinet.
Describing the annus horribilis that was 2014 in her memoir, it is evident she felt let down by Key’s lack of support in quelling the Oravida and “dirty politics” controversies that year.
More broadly, Key’s political strategy sat at odds with Collins’s political intuition. In 2008, he was intent on pulling the party more towards the centre, but Collins was sceptical of the argument that winning elections meant winning over median voters.
Citing the success of Thatcher, she believed shoring up the base and delivering to that base mattered more. For Collins, centrism is an excuse to do nothing and stand for nothing.
Judith Collins campaigning hard in Hawkes Bay a fortnight out from the general election.GettyImages
Winning back the base
It came as no surprise that Collins titled her memoir Pull No Punches. Her style during the 2020 election campaign has reflected the pleasure she gets from flexing her parliamentary debating skills, which she says “requires quick wit […] an ability to think on one’s feet”.
She was rewarded with positive verdicts after the first two televised leaders’ debates, where her retorts and interjections were sometimes fierce, other times flippant. She clearly enjoys being in charge and unrestrained by broader collective responsibility (a point she also made about her time as a newspaper columnist during her sojourn on the backbench).
Her formative political years reveal that decisiveness in a leader is a quality she values, even if it offends. She is probably further to the right than some in National might prefer, but in this she has not wavered over time. Her maiden speech and her memoir demonstrate a disdain for what she calls the “lazy gene” and a welfare system that “funded women to have multiple children”.
In a sense, her political ethos is a mix of old-school pragmatic National conservatism and a dose of ideological neoliberalism.
She has never been shy about her desire to be a good electorate MP, to make a difference, to be in power and to climb to the top of the political ladder. The polls suggest Collins will succeed in winning back a chunk of the base that began to desert National with the onset of COVID-19. Attracting centre voters, however, may prove elusive.
That is unlikely to worry Collins. She is rebuilding National’s support and is determined her political career as leader will not end on October 18 2020. There are others, including touted future leader Christopher Luxon, who might disagree — ultimately the decision will not be hers. But it may be too soon to write her off. When Collins calls herself a political survivor, she means it.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Euzebiusz Jamrozik, Infectious Disease Ethics Fellow, Ethox & Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities, Univeristy of Oxford. Adjunct, Monash University
Researchers are considering using “human challenge studies” to accelerate COVID-19 vaccine research and development. This would involve giving an experimental vaccine to healthy volunteers, then deliberately exposing them to the virus to see whether they’re protected from infection.
Challenge studies can also allow scientists to monitor the progress of infectious diseases from the moment they begin, and to study infection and immunity more closely than other types of research.
These studies can answer scientific questions in a short time. They recruit small numbers of participants — up to around 100 volunteers per study — usually young, healthy adults.
However, deliberate infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, involves risks to volunteers.
How do these studies differ from standard, larger studies?
Standard “field” trials for some COVID-19 vaccine candidates have already begun. Each aims to recruit at least 10,000 people. Usually, half or two-thirds receive the experimental vaccine and the rest might receive a placebo or a vaccine against another disease.
Participants then go about their daily lives. Scientists observe whether those who received the COVID-19 vaccine are less frequently infected with the virus than the other group, allowing them to determine how effective the vaccine is.
Human challenge studies involve fewer participants than standard field trials.Shutterstock
In large epidemics, field trials can quickly reveal whether a vaccine works. But proof may be delayed when there’s less community transmission, for example due to local public health measures.
If current field trials identify a highly effective vaccine, there might be less need for human challenge trials. However, if the first vaccines fail, or turn out to be only moderately effective, challenge studies could be used to select the next most promising candidates for future field trials.
First, scientists need to prepare a strain of SARS-CoV-2 in the laboratory to administer to volunteers. The strain needs to be similar to the virus circulating in the community.
There’s also a need for special research facilities with health-care support and capacity to isolate participants.
Volunteers may have to remain in these facilities for 2–3 weeks to be closely monitored, and so they are not released into the community while they may be infectious.
Such studies have been used to develop vaccines against malaria, typhoid and cholera. They have also provided unique insights into immunity to influenza and “common cold” coronaviruses.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) convened two advisory groups, in which we were involved, to consider COVID-19 human challenge studies. One focused on ethics, the other on scientific and technical aspects.
The ethics group identified eight criteria proposed challenge studies would need to meet before going ahead.
These included the need for researchers to consult and engage with the general public before, during, and after the trials. There would also need to be careful independent expert review, and demonstration that expected benefits are likely to outweigh risks.
Relevant risks might be especially hard to predict for SARS-CoV-2, partly because it’s a new pathogen.
While young, healthy people generally fare better with COVID-19 than older adults with pre-existing conditions, there are exceptions. For example, a multisystem inflammatory syndrome has been reported in rare cases among previously healthy adults after they contracted COVID-19.
Members of WHO’s science group agreed on a number of technical requirements for COVID-19 challenge studies to maximise volunteers’ safety and prevent wider spread of infection.
These included recruiting only healthy young adults, conducting the studies under strict biosafety procedures (for example, isolating participants), giving the virus via the nose to mimic natural infection, and carefully increasing the dose of the virus.
Only young adults without underlying health conditions could volunteer for these studies.Shutterstock
However, the experts were split on other issues, such as whether:
challenge studies would actually accelerate vaccine approval
results in young healthy adults would demonstrate whether or not a vaccine works for older people
challenge trials should begin before a proven and highly effective treatment for COVID-19 becomes available.
What next?
To design an ethically acceptable challenge study, it’s important to minimise the risks to study volunteers, research staff, and the wider community.
In the future, there may be additional ways scientists can reduce the risks. They may be able to better identify those at lowest risk of severe infection, develop a weakened strain of the virus, or have a highly effective treatment on hand to use if needed.
In the meantime, scientists could obtain results relevant to COVID-19 by conducting less risky challenge studies with other viruses.
For example, challenge studies with “common cold” coronaviruses, which are being considered in Australia, could teach us about the types of immune responses that protect us against coronavirus diseases.
Research eventuating in safe and effective vaccines for COVID-19 could save many lives. However, whether the benefits of challenge studies in the current pandemic outweigh the risks depends on many factors.
We must carefully consider proposals for these studies in light of the current state of science and vaccine development, and update our evaluations as new data emerge.
During crises and disasters, alcohol and other drug use oftenchanges. But the changes are not straightforward and impacts may be different for different groups of people.
There doesn’t seem to have been significant overall increases or decreases in alcohol or other drug use during the COVID-19 pandemic, but some groups are at increased risk. And access to treatment is more limited for those who need it.
It’s a complex picture
There’s a bit of data around, but the picture is still not quite clear. As researchers from the Centre for Alcohol Policy Research at La Trobe University have argued in an editorial published today, we need more research to understand the influence of the pandemic on use.
There were some early indicators of increases in Australians’ alcohol consumption as the pandemic hit, possibly related to increased stress. But that effect seemed to reduce as we settled into the new normal.
And in April, a study by the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education found that most people who had stockpiled alcohol reported drinking more. Also around the same time, Australian Bureau of Statistics data showed more people had increased their drinking (14.4%) than had decreased it (9.5%).
By May, the Australian National University found more people had decreased their drinking (27%) than had increased it (20%). The Global Drug Survey between May and June found similar results among the mostly young people who responded.
However, alcohol use seemed to increase among some groups, possibly those who are more vulnerable to harms.
In both the ABS and ANU studies, more women had increased their drinking than decreased it, which seemed to be related to higher stress linked to increased responsibilities at home.
There have also been indicators that family violence has increased during this time. Alcohol and other drug use is a risk factor for family violence.
We need more data about heavy drug use
Since the onset of the pandemic, two studies found cannabis use had increased but other drug use had decreased or was stable. The respondents were mostly young, used for recreational purposes and were not dependent nor did they have serious problems.
Reductions in use of drugs like MDMA and cocaine, which are associated with festivals and parties, are not surprising since these large events have been restricted for months.
Two studies suggested cannabis use was on the rise, but we still need more and better data on how the pandemic has impacted heavy users.Shutterstock
Most of the research hasn’t involved people who are heavy or dependent users, so we don’t know much about changes in use in these groups.
One study of people who inject drugs (who tend to use more regularly) reported some changes to availability and purity of some drugs, and small changes in use, but again some people increased and some decreased their use.
With physical distancing and lockdowns, it’s likely more people used alone or with fewer people. This means if anything goes wrong, help is further away.
Telehealth for drug treatment?
A survey of treatment services found that among services that reported changes in demand, most had an increase. Most services also reported that mental health problems, family violence and financial stress had all increased among people who use their services. These factors can make treatment more complex.
COVID-19 restrictions have changed the way many services offer treatment. Most residential rehabilitation services have reduced the number of places available so they can ensure physical distancing.
Many treatment services are reporting increased demand.Shutterstock
Before COVID-19 there were already long waiting lists for residential rehabilitation, so with more than 70% of services reporting reduced capacity, people may have found it harder to access residential treatment.
Non-residential services (like counselling or day programs) haven’t significantly reduced the number of people they see, and most have partially or fully moved to telehealth.
As a result, around 35% of services said fewer people missed appointments. This might be due to the easier access telehealth provides, including the reduced travel time.
However, around 25% of services said more people missed appointments. Anecdotal interviews suggest some of this might be due to difficulty transitioning to online appointments. One person said: “I know they are on Zoom but I don’t know how to use it”.
These adaptations are more complex than they appear. The time and effort required for services to make significant changes takes time away from providing treatment.
The move to telehealth is a significant one, requiring additional hardware and software, training of staff, and help for people who use the service to work out how to use the technology. Things like ensuring confidentiality can be more difficult when someone is receiving counselling at home with family around, for example.
Piecemeal funding for treatment services
The alcohol and other drug sector was already significantly under-resourced and struggling to meet existing demand before COVID-19.
In April, federal health minister Greg Hunt announced A$6 million in funding for alcohol and other drug services. Just over half of this was allocated to three organisations to increase online access to support services. The rest went to information and awareness campaigns. But no funds were set aside for existing treatment services to make COVID-19 related changes to their services.
Various state governments have allocated some funding to support alcohol and other drug services to adjust to COVID-19:
Tasmania released a total of A$450,000 to help services transition to telehealth
Western Australia allocated a total of A$350,000 for specialist alcohol and other drug services to maintain services amid the pandemic
Victoria and South Australia announced additional support to help people access medication treatment.
Further funding is needed to ensure services can continue to provide COVID-safe services.
It’s important for people who use alcohol and other drugs, and for the public, that alcohol and other drug treatment is well-supported to continue to operate during these changes. We know treatment is cost-effective, reduces crime and increases participation in the community. For every dollar invested in drug treatment, $7 is saved to the community.
Getting help
If you’re worried about your own or someone else’s alcohol or other drug use, you can get help by phoning the National Alcohol and Other Drug Hotline on 1800 250 015.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dominique McCollum Coy, Doctoral Researcher, Behaviour Change Graduate Research Industry Partnership (GRIP), Monash Sustainable Development Institute, Monash University
In the town of Goulburn in southern New South Wales, an energy revolution is brewing. The community has come together to build its own 4,000-panel solar farm – everyday citizens are invited to buy shares in the venture and reap the rewards.
Goulburn is not alone: community-owned energy is an idea whose time has come. About 100 community energy groups operate across Australia – their projects at various levels of development – up from 25 groups in 2015.
The concept is gaining political attention, too. Independent MP for the federal Victorian seat of Indi, Helen Haines, in August moved a motion in parliament, calling on the Morrison government to support community energy, including establishing a new government agency. The bill is backed by fellow independent Zali Steggall.
At its core, community energy rests on the belief that everyday people should have power over how their energy is generated – including its environmental and social impacts. Big corporations should not control our energy systems, nor should they reap all the profits. So let’s take a look at how community energy works.
Projects such as the ACT’s Mount Majura solar farm allow citizens to take control of their energy needs.Steve Bittinger/Flickr
What is community energy?
Australia’s first community-owned renewable energy project, Hepburn Wind, started generating power in June 2011. Since then, many more communities across Australia have banded together to manage their own solar, wind, micro-grid and efficiency projects.
The Goulburn project will be built in the Hume electorate of federal energy minister Angus Taylor, about 3km from the town centre. Earlier this year it received a A$2.1 million state grant, under the Regional Community Energy Fund.
Investors can reportedly buy A$400 shares, each covering the cost of a solar panel and the infrastructure needed for grid connection.
Hepburn Wind and the Goulburn Solar Farm, for example, involve a community investment model in which local groups develop a project, then seek investors from the community to fund it.
This might involve forming a cooperative, or selling shares in the venture. The community organisation may take responsibility for delivering the project – including design, installation, and management – or may outsource this to an external company.
A second model involves raising money through donations, either via crowd-sourcing platforms or traditional means. The money is usually spent on installing a sustainable energy system at a local premises. For example in north-east Victoria, a First Nations-owned renewable energy project will deliver solar power to the office of a state government agency.
The third type of project involves a group of households coming together to find a renewable energy solution, such as bulk-buying solar energy.
Hepburn Wind is Australia’s oldest community energy project.
What are the benefits?
Community-owned renewable energy projects are a great way for everyday people to get involved in the transition to a low-carbon future. The benefits include:
the creation of funds to reinvest in other community projects. For example in Scotland, dividends from renewables developments have been invested in electric public transport and local skills development
community building, in which towns develop a stronger identity, participate in communal activities and make collective decisions about their future.
Empowering the community
The energy transformation is not just about moving from fossil fuels to renewables. It’s also about changing who is responsible for, and benefits from, our energy system.
Inevitably, those in power, such as existing energy generators and their political supporters, will resist such change.
We’ve seen this play out in Australia, which has triggered more than a decade of climate policy inaction. More recently, the Morrison government has pushed ahead with a plan for a “gas-fired” economic recovery, despite the harm this will cause to our emissions reduction efforts. These developments are clearly at odds with community support for action on climate change.
Traditionally, communities are often shut out of decision making on energy projects, including renewables. Communities often become dependent on both local political representation to voice their views, and the capacity of energy network operators to work with them.
In community energy projects, locals are involved from the ground up.Flickr
Communities must be empowered to take part in planning, and have ownership of projects. Our research, soon to be published, shows such empowerment involves helping communities develop the capacity and power to meet their own energy goals. This means developing new skills, working together and becoming equal decision makers.
Governments are central to this by helping communities deliver projects. The Victorian government’s Community Power Hubs are a good example. At three “hubs” – in Ballarat, Bendigo and the Latrobe Valley – various types of energy projects were implemented. Each sought to build local knowledge of, and participation in, community energy, and ensured the benefits stayed in the region.
Looking ahead
Australia’s growing community energy movement shows us what’s possible, but it needs more government support, especially at the federal level. Helen Haines’ proposal is a very good start.
The energy transformation will require massive investment, and most projects will be built in regional communities.
Empowering community energy is the ideal way to provide some of that investment, build stronger rural economies and ensure the benefits of the energy transformation are shared by all.
We are increasingly becoming digital bystanders, continually monitoring our different palm-and-TV-sized screens. From dawn to dusk and even in moments of insomnia we turn to digitally communicated news and social media. In the world of education, from primary school to university and beyond, we have realised digital learning is not only an option for learning, but is fast becoming the main option.
Consider this vignette: during the COVID-19 pandemic a family are living in a big city where access to stable digital streams and affordable data bundles is not a problem. Confined to long periods of school learning now moved online, one of the parents asked their daughter about her experience. She says:
It is boring and I learn almost nothing. Teachers give a lot of instructions with little explanation.
She had became a digital bystander. The teacher struggled to engage with all students, and few experienced rich interactions with the teacher.
In the digital world it is not simply about learning the skills (digital self-help manuals and videos are plentiful). Many teachers and professors still argue that a face-to-face experience is more authentic than digitally mediated learning.
The growth of MOOCs (massive online open courses) in recent years has challenged this view. These have gained traction as both free educational offerings and significant business opportunities based on short courses.
Time for a change of mindset
So how do we accommodate this changing digital world? Historically, when railway travel arrived, looking at the world through a window as it sped by was an unnerving experience. So, too, was the fear of being part of or witnessing a railway accident. It took people time to catch up and change their mindsets.
The same is true of digitally driven change in education. We cannot take time out from change. What is required is “reflection in action”, as Donald Schon put it, to work out how to adjust to changes.
When we consider our vignette, how can we win the hearts and minds of students and teachers to ensure they both perceive and experience learning online as meaningful and transformative? Is this a question of challenging the traditional mindset described above?
By exploring the ways in which face-to-face learning is translated into online learning, we can start to identify a series of approaches on a spectrum from simple technological substitution to more radical redefinitions of teaching. In this model of substitution, augmentation, modification and redefinition, we tend to find many educators remain firmly rooted in using technology to replace what they already do in the classroom. As a result, the human essence of the teaching experience is lost when mediated via a digital interface.
An example here might be the distribution of electronic classnotes to replace the course textbook. The result is a learning setting that’s clunky compared to the day-to-day user experience of the internet. The mismatch exemplified here in the transition from the physical classroom to online is often not well managed.
A learner’s experiences of the digital education space can be dramatically different to the seamless and frictionless user experiences of a social internet. Within a paradigm of replacement versus reinvention, we have a natural gap between the experiences of teachers and students.
Students are used to a seamless, easy-to-use and engaging online experience, which online education often fails to match.Jacob Lund/Shutterstock
A need for inclusive design for online
Neither better access to technology nor more training to use digital systems will bridge this gap. This is a design gap. In recognising this, the solution becomes more straightforward – there is an absolute need to “design for online”, as Cathy Stone persuasively argues.
But this design cannot be the sole responsibility of the teacher. We need to bring together multiple perspectives and skills, including those of teachers, students and technologists, to co-design learning experiences.
No longer is the teacher the sole voice of authority. All contribute: the teacher skilled in curriculum, the student understanding what it means to be supported and motivated to learn, and the technologist sharing modes of digital delivery.
There are then no digital bystanders – all have agency as designers. As Herbert A. Simon once said, anyone who is engaged in “changing existing situations into preferred ones” is a designer.
There is no global template for designing for online learning. Each time we come together – the teacher, student, technologist – we form a new community with a shared discourse. This is a reflective and democratic space that allows us to act with consideration and respect for the skills and knowledge of others.
With historical hindsight, we will do well to reconsider what the railway journey offered: the ability to visually reflect upon and design a personal world without leaving the carriage. With the digital production of teaching and learning, we too are now called upon to reflect upon and design a world of learning without leaving our seat in front of a digital screen.
The record A$8.5 million fine imposed on iSelect in Australia for false and misleading conduct confirms the appalling state of the commercial price-comparison market.
The company promises to help consumers save money by cutting through the confusing pricing structures in energy, home insurance, credit cards and phone plans, among other markets.
But between November 2016 and December 2018, iSelect has admitted it misled customers shopping for the cheapest electricity deal. It claimed it recommended the most suitable or competitive plan, based on comparing all plans offered by its retail partners. This was not the case.
“In fact, about 38% of people who compared electricity plans with iSelect at that time may have found a cheaper plan if they had shopped around or used the government’s comparison site,” said the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission’s chairman, Rod Sims, last week.
Commercial arrangements with partner retailers restricted the number of plans retailers could upload, so the plans iSelect recommended were not necessarily the most suitable or competitive.
The company has also admitted it failed to adequately disclose cheaper plans were only available via its call centre, not through its online service. As well, it underestimated the price of plans recommended to almost 5,000 consumers (though in error, rather than deliberately).
This is not the first time iSelect has run afoul of the consumer watchdog. In 2007 the ACCC took it to task over misleading representations about the range of health insurance policies it compared.
The penalty it is now paying for false and misleading conduct in the energy-comparison market points to a systemic problem requiring regulation.
How commissions can corrupt
Failures in the price-comparison market have been clear for years.
In January 2019 I compared the offers of Australia’s two biggest energy providers (Origin Energy and Energy Australia) made through the commercial comparison sites, with those available to customers directly from the retailers themselves.
That analysis was made possible by new rules requiring all electricity retailers in New South Wales, southeast Queensland and South Australia to publish every offer available to new customers on the Australian Energy Regulator’s Energy Made Easy price comparison website.
What I found: offers from Origin Energy and Energy Australia through commercial price-comparison sites were 5-12% higher.
The problem, as I wrote at the time, is that commercial comparison sites make their money from commissions (or referral fees) for every new customer steered a retailer’s way.
But providing better deals to consumers may bite the hand that feeds: retailers can be expected to be willing to pay higher commissions for customers that pay higher prices. Commercial comparison sites therefore have an incentive to provide the appearance – but not necessarily the reality – of a competitive market.
The consumer watchdog’s investigation and the Federal Court’s decision suggests this speculation was well-founded.
Price-comparison websites promise to untangle the plethora of deals and find you the best one. The evidence shows that’s not necessarily so.Shutterstock
Savings not being realised
In research published in May, my colleague Kelly Burns and I have found more evidence of questionable consumer benefits.
We analysed more than 47,000 electricity bills voluntarily uploaded by Victorians to the state government’s price-comparison website between July and December 2018.
Customers that switched retailers in the previous 12 months reduced their bills, on average, by just 4% compared to customers that didn’t switch. Had they found the cheapeast available deals when they switched, they could have reduced their bills on average by a further 21%.
Though we don’t know what percentage of those switchers consulted a commercial price comparison website, it’s reasonable to assume many would have, with the actual benefits less than promised, and missing many of the best deals in the market.
We also found that consumers, even if correctly advised on the best deal available at the time, may be better off in the long run with a different deal. This is a particular challenge for price comparison.
Nor does the price-comparison market do a good job rating attributes such as consistency, customer service and environmental performance, which switchers may also value as factors alongside price.
Commission-based price comparison need not be problematic. It is the most common form of price comparison in Australia and elsewhere. But we suggest a mandatory code of practice for price comparison would go a long way to fixing the evident problems.
Price comparison websites can play a useful role if consumers can be confident they deliver on what they promise. This means their advice should be accurate, unbiased and comprehensive. Most importantly, they should be clear about how retailers reward them if customers act on their recommendations.
As the consumer watchdog noted last week, it recommended a mandatory code of practice in its review of the electricity industry in 2018. Maybe now governments will act.
In the meantime, take the ACCC’s advice and use the publicly-funded price comparison websites in addition or instead.
The budget plan to scrap Australia’s decade-old responsible lending obligations warrants detailed examination.
It is hard to see how the stated reasons for easing what’s asked of banks and other lenders make much sense, and the timing is strange.
Introduced in 2009, the responsible lending obligations made it illegal to offer credit that was unsuitable for a consumer based on their needs and capacity to make payments.
“Now more than ever,” he said, it had become important there were “no unnecessary barriers” to the flow of credit to households and business.
But, if well designed, responsible lending obligations ought to be largely irrelevant to responsible lenders. They take account of needs and capacity to repay anyway.
The standards don’t hurt responsible lending
Their merit lies in restraining “bad apples” and preventing the good ones from letting loan standards slip and permitting lax management to allow bad practices.
The Hayne Royal Commission into the financial services industry chastised banks and others for misconduct when it came to lending. The banks say they have listened and implemented better practices.
They probably have, which should mean the minimum standards embodied in responsible lending obligations make little difference to them.
Another of Hayne’s recommendations, that would have outlawed conflicted remuneration for mortgage brokers, was rejected by the government in favour of a best interests obligation along the lines of the responsible lending obligations for lenders that it wants to remove.
The timing is odd
The timing of the responsible lending obligations decision is hard to justify.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission spent much of 2019 consulting on a review of its responsible lending guidelines and released a new version in December.
Wagyu and Shiraz needn’t rule out a loan.
Then in June it lost an appeal in the long-running “Wagyu and Shiraz” case in which it attempted to prosecute Westpac for relying on general borrower expense benchmarks.
If anything, that should have somewhat settled bank concerns that the responsible lending obligations required too much of them.
Banks such as Westpac are no longer required to rely on detailed examination of an applicant’s past expenditure levels when assessing whether payments can be met.
In the words of Justice Perram of the Federal Court, “I may eat Wagyu beef everyday washed down with the finest shiraz but, if I really want my new home, I can make do on much more modest fare”.
Instead banks will be able to focus on whether applicants are willing to forgo discretionary spending (on things such as school fees) in order to obtain the loan size required for buying an otherwise unaffordable house.
The change will put some of the onus of assessing loan suitability back on the borrower, which is what the Treasurer says he wants.
They ought to be becoming less burdensome
It might be that the responsible lending obligations impose excessive assessment costs on the banks. And the extra work for applicants to provide the required information might dissuade them from applying.
But with the recent introduction of open banking allowing banks to access applicants’ data with their permission, and “fintechs” developing products to cost-effectively mine that data, it seems likely that loan assessment costs (including meeting responsible lending obligations) are likely to decline.
If costs are the issue, why change the rules in the midst of a cost-reducing revolution?
And they ought to have stopped bad loans
Another argument has been that abolishing responsible lending obligations will facilitate growth in lending.
Maybe – but not permanently without increasing unsuitable lending. Responsible lending obligations may slow the approval process but could only have reduced the level of loans on issue if one or both of two conditions apply:
the information-supply requirements (gathering of which should help applicants understand their borrowing capacity) have dissuaded potential applicants, meaning removing them would allow more poorly-informed borrowers to take out loans
the obligations have led to banks lending less to unsuitable borrowers, meaning removing them will encourage more lending to unsuitable borrowers
Another argument, that the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority can police and enforce good lending behaviour ignores the fact that APRA’s remit relates to credit risk and safety of the banks.
It has no mandate for (nor expertise in) considering whether borrowers will be put into financial hardship by loan obligations.
A child’s toy may seem like an unlikely candidate for the classical concert hall. Around the world, however, thousands of musicians gather every year for festivals, conferences and concerts dedicated to the toy piano.
Exploring its sound, range, and playing technique, these composers and performers congregate to talk about latest developments in toy piano music and perform new pieces.
Along with many festivals in the US and Germany, Italy and Korea have both held their first toy piano festival in recent years.
Pop artists such as Bruno Mars and groups such as Coldplay have brought a larger audience to what was once considered a niche and experimental use of the instrument. Search “toy piano” or “tiny piano” on Twitter or Facebook and you’ll find countless posts featuring performers and composers using or discussing the instrument.
Toy pianos, despite being designed and marketed to children and families, have been used for decades to write everything from concertos to pop songs.
French composer Yann Tiersen used one prominently in his score to the 2001 film Amélie to represent the title character’s inner child.
Neil Diamond’s song, Shilo, is one of the earliest pop songs to feature toy piano (you can hear it in the bridge at about the 2:28 mark here).
And John Cage’s 1940s suite for toy piano, where he took all the seriousness of writing for the piano and put a playful spin on it, came at a crucial moment in the mid-20th century; hard borders of the musical arts, which reached a limit of seriousness in the 1920s and 1930s, had started to break down.
This mixing of traditional “high music” with artefacts that might be considered juvenile, populist, naff, or domestic, was becoming more common — and more exciting.
Play and experimentation
Toy pianos typically have a range of 12-36 keys, roughly one quarter the range of a full piano (though there are smaller and larger examples, too).
These acoustic instruments are made from a wood or plastic frame. They produce a bell-like sound when a small hammer hits a tube or flat piece of metal inside.
Unlike a typical piano, toy pianos are rarely tuned to perfection and can sound a bit off to the ear but many can’t help but be charmed by their tiny size, variety of colours and quirky inconsistent plonking.
With its history and connection to ideas of childhood, this instrument is commonly used to musically convey a sense of innocence and nostalgia.
Traditionally, art music composition can be very prescriptive and confined. The traditional conservatorium or university composition class teaches the rules of writing — what you can and cannot do with an instrument — but something about the toy piano invites play and experimentation.
Every toy piano is different
Unlike many instruments used for composing, the toy piano is not standardised around the world.
There are dozens of makers who use different techniques and different materials giving every toy piano a unique sound, range, and register. This makes writing music for the piano a bit random — but for many of us, therein lies the fun.
If you write a piece of music for the toy piano and if a performer in another part of the world has enough keys on their instrument, they can play your piece in their own special way. It’s like a singer using their own unique voice to cover a song.
A melody played on three different toy pianos. Composed and performed by Paul Smith. Paul Smith, CC BY-NC442 KB(download)
The composer gives up some control, which contrasts sharply with romantic and and modernist-era ideas that positioned the composer as a genius whose works should never be altered.
Many composers end up collecting toy pianos, which gives them a variety of sounds to play with. Australian composer Elena Kats-Chernin became known as the toy piano lady at a Sydney toy store after buying eight in a row. I’m up to a modest five and am resisting buying my sixth.
Toy piano specialists are becoming more common as performers and composers in demand.
Italian specialist Antonietta Loffredo has performed several times in Australia and released many recordings with the Australian art music label Wirripang. You can hear her recordings of works by Australian composers on Spotify here.
Margaret Leng Tan, a toy instrument virtuoso with many commissions and dedications to her name, was due to perform with toy piano at the Sydney Opera House this year but the concert was postponed due to COVID-19.
I remain wholeheartedly intrigued by the toy piano’s magical overtones, hypnotic charm, and not least, its off-key poignancy. In the words of author John David Morley, “Sound combed from the keys of a stairway ascending faintly into sleep”. My composer-friends were similarly beguiled and driven to frenzied heights of creativity by this modest little instrument.
Escaping a rigid world
Artists are always looking for new ways to challenge and surprise audiences. What is and isn’t accepted on the concert stage is constantly shifting and the rise of the toy piano suggests that we are ready to welcome new sounds and new instruments into the relatively closed world of classical music.
To many composers, the toy piano offers more than a symbolic representation of childhood — it provides an exciting escape from the strict and rigid world of formal contemporary art music.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has admitted having a secret intimate relationship with disgraced former MP Daryl Maguire, which she only ended recently, despite his being forced to quit state parliament in 2018.
Berejiklian’s explosive appearance on Monday at the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption saw her personal life embarrassingly exposed, her political reputation thrown under a cloud, and her future put on the line.
ICAC, which is investigating whether Maguire sought to monetise his position as an MP between 2012 and 2018, heard damaging taped phones conversations between him and Berejiklian in which he spoke extensively of his lobbying on behalf of developers. He also talked about his concerns over his huge debts, which he said amounted to $1.5 million.
Maguire, who was a parliamentary secretary and member for Wagga Wagga, was forced to quit in 2018 after an earlier ICAC inquiry, which heard recordings of him seeking payment to help broker a deal with a Chinese property developer. This prompted a byelection that the Berejiklian government lost to an independent.
The premier’s colleagues and observers of NSW politics are gobsmacked at the revelation of Berejiklian’s “close personal relationship” with Maguire. There had been no whisper until her disclosure of it on Monday morning.
The relationship began in 2015 and lasted until after she gave evidence privately to ICAC in August.
After her evidence, Berejiklian told a news conference late Monday: “I stuffed up in my personal life”. But she said she wouldn’t consider resigning from her position because she had done nothing wrong.
She said she had trusted Maguire, whom she had known for 15 years, but she had not told her family or friends of their relationship because it didn’t have “sufficient status”.
Berejiklian said she had sacked Maguire from the Liberal party and engaged others to press him to leave parliament. But she hadn’t broken with him earlier because he was “in a very dark place”. “I didn’t feel that I could stop being his friend during that time, rightly or wrongly, on compassionate grounds.”
She told reporters she always applied the “highest level of integrity” in doing her public job.
The phone taps indicated Maguire was considering whether to resign at the 2019 election if he was in a financial position to do so. Berejiklian admitted to the hearing that she had thought if that happened, they could be in a position to make their relationship public.
In one of their phone conversations, Berejiklian said to Maguire: “You will always be my numero uno.” She told the hearing this showed “in my personal life I placed importance on how I felt about him”.
Berejiklian repeatedly stressed to the hearing she had taken no interest in Maguire’s financial affairs or his business activities, although he constantly referred to them in the phone conversations.
She said he was always talking about deals, but they then fell through. She always thought Maguire had made the appropriate disclosures.
On one occasion, she flagged to him that her chief of staff planned to call him to tell him a minister visiting China would raise a business matter Maguire was involved in.
In some calls she sounded anxious to distance herself from the details.
In one phone conversation, Maguire referred to “my little friend” and said, “you know my little friend?” Berejiklian replied, “Not really. I don’t need to know.”
In relation to a deal involving land owned by Louise Waterhouse, from the racing family, near Badgerys Creek, Maguire asked if she had received an email from Waterhouse. When she said no, he said, “You will, she’ll send you an email. She’s really pissed off now, you know, about the airport. They’re all passing the buck.”
In September 2017 he told her, “It looks like we finally got the Badgerys Creek stuff done … I’ll make enough money to pay off my debts, which will be good.” He added, “Can you believe it, in one sale?”
In a subsequent conversation about the deal, Berejiklian said, “I don’t need to know about that bit.”
The hearing went into private session twice to listen to tapes which were considered too private to be played publicly.
Berejiklian stressed to ICAC she would never compromise her public position: “I would never turn a blind eye to any responsibility that I had to any wrongdoing that I saw.”
She emphasised she was an independent woman with her own finances. “Anybody else’s finances would be completely immaterial to me,” she said.
He colleagues are standing by her, at least at the moment. The NSW Opposition said she should resign. Maguire gives evidence on Tuesday.
In this new covid-19 world, environmental and climate crisis defenders are developing new ways to cope and operate under the pandemic constraints.
Groups as diverse as the local branch of the global environmental campaigner Greenpeace Pacific, Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA), the Green Party in French Polynesia and Greenpeace New Zealand have found solutions.
They have followed in the traditions of the Fiji-based Pacific Climate Warriors – part of the global 350 movement – who have drawn attention to environment and climate crisis issues with colourful and dramatic protests.
Climate Warriors coined the phrase: “We are not drowning, we are fighting.”
The Pacific faces mounting climate change issues, environmental degradation, rapidly rising sea-levels, massive king tides with the salty sea affecting arable land, coral acidification, pollution and – just to make matters worse – wildlife poaching as the plundering of the region’s fisheries goes unabated.
“Climate change could produce 8 million refugees in the Pacific Islands alone, along with 75 million in the Asia-Pacific region within the next four decades [has] warned a report by aid agency Oxfam Australia,” wrote the Pacific Media Centre’s director Professor David Robie in Dreadlocks a decade ago signalling the dire need even then for environmental defenders to pick up the pace.
Greenpeace head of Pacific Auimatagi Joseph Sapati Moeono-Kolio realises that need and is thankful that most parts of Pacific are being largely spared from the covid-19 pandemic that has raged across the world, leaving his organisation free to pursue its green goals.
“Fortunately, many island nations in the Pacific are free of covid-19. As a result, Pacific climate leaders are able to continue our moral and ethical fight for climate justice,” says the Samoan climate change campaigner.
“We are doing so by leading the world in transitioning to renewable energy – in fact Samoa is on track for 100 percent renewables by 2025.
Greenpeace Pacific’s Auimatagi Joseph Sapati Moeono-Kolio … “the transition to renewables, as an important pillar of climate action, has stepped up.” Image: Greenpeace Pacific
“So, while covid-19 has slowed several things down, the transition to renewables, as an important pillar of climate action, has stepped up.”
Climate change on back burner The pandemic has forced leading climate change advocates of the Small Island Developing States (SIDS), such as Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama, who was president of the 2017 Conference of the Parties COP23 to push the issue onto the back burner.
Pacific Island climate frontline states such as Kiribati, Tuvalu, Tokelau and Marshall Islands along with Fiji, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea (Carteret Islands) and the Federated States of Micronesia require a champion for their cause. However, the pandemic has put paid to that, as Auimatagi points out.
“Because of covid-19 our global advocacy moments to elevate the voices of Pacific leaders demanding climate action are limited,” says Auimatagi.
“We are also working on a documentary called Finding Hope: Samoa, where we will meet with people from all walks of life and share their truth of what is happening in their villages as oceans rise and warm.
“With covid-19 and climate change combined, we are seeing dual impacts such as in Vanuatu during the most recent cyclone – Harold in April 2020.
“Communities and families were all social distancing and then the cyclone hit so they needed to decide whether to stay apart at home or take shelter in emergency refuge centres,” he says.
From that occurrence emerges the real and immediate threat of making climate change of secondary importance despite an increase in adverse climate events.
Greenpeace NZ’s Nick Young … “there is a threat that while the world is focused on covid-19, that climate action takes a back seat.” Image: Greenpeace
Working hard for the Pacific “Pacific communities are among the first to feel the full impacts of climate change, and there is a threat that while the world is focused on covid-19, that climate action takes a back seat,” says Nick Young of Greenpeace New Zealand.
“Greenpeace internationally is working hard to make sure that isn’t the case.
“The covid-19 recovery also offers a unique opportunity in this regard as billions are spent to stimulate economies around the world and Greenpeace in New Zealand and elsewhere in the world is pushing for a Green Covid-19 Recovery that invests in climate resilience.”
Greenpeace initiatives and campaigns as environmental defenders are still continuing, albeit at a slower pace than usual.
“All of the core Greenpeace campaigns around transforming agriculture and energy, protecting the oceans and shifting away from single-use plastics remain active,” Young says.
However, it is more than the pollution that is a concern with the ocean. Auimatagi talks about this.
Ocean poaching problem “Ocean poaching is ongoing, carried out by the Chinese and Japanese flagged vessels. While Samoa has one of the smallest Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), places like Micronesia and Kiribati are much harder to enforce as they have much larger EEZs.”
As Jacky Bryant, president of the Green Party in French Polynesia points out: “The 5 million km/2 of the EEZ (Exclusive and Economic Zone) are open to all kinds of abuse by foreign ships and is under surveillance by only one ship belonging to the French state.
“From time to time we have a fishing vessel that gets stranded on the reef carrying tonnes of fish, some legal, some illegal.”
Jacky Bryant of Tahiti’s Greens … economic zone “open to all kinds of abuse by foreign ships”. Image: Heiura Les Verts
Last month, the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) continued its coordination and commitment to regional fisheries surveillance operation.
The 17-nation organisation is based in Honiara, Solomon Islands and its members comprise: Australia, Cook Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
The FFA is charged with protecting Pacific fisheries from poaching among other cooperative activities.
It has recently completed its “Operation Island Chief” (August 24-September 4), conducting surveillance over the EEZs of Cook Islands, Niue, Samoa, Tonga and Tuvalu this year.
Challenging pandemic times FFA’s Director-General Dr Manu Tupou-Roosen says: “During these challenging times with the focus of the world on the pandemic, we welcome the commitment and cooperation demonstrated across the region to deter illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing in our waters.”
That concerns Greenpeace as well. Young says: “Illegal and unregulated fishing is still an issue in many places, and certainly in the Pacific.
“It threatens ocean life as well as the resilience of Pacific communities who rely on the oceans for their food and way of life.”
The FFA Regional Fisheries Surveillance Centre (RFSC) team, supported by three officers from the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force (RSIPF), had an increased focus on intelligence gathering and analysis, providing targeted information before and during the operation in order to support surveillance activities by member countries,” the FFA said in a statement.
Aerial surveillance of the nations of the EEZ was provided by New Zealand, Australia, USA and France, assisting the fragile small island developing states in protecting them from poaching or overfishing.
In addition to that the cooperation goes as far as working together to prevent covid-19 from being transmitted in the fisheries operations allowing them to continue contributing Pacific Island economies.
“It is crucial for fisheries to continue operating at this time, providing much-needed income to support the economic recovery as well as to enhance contribution to the food security of our people,” says Dr Manu Tupou-Roosen.
Pollution and climate change still major Greenpeace Pacific’s Auimatagi says that other than poaching, pollution and climate change remain major issues in the Pacific.
“While marine wildlife poaching is, of course, a big issue, the biggest polluter is one of our nearest neighbours. Australia digs up, burns and exports climate destruction to the whole world in the form of coal.
“Climate change is the number one issue on all fronts, including the environment as it is a threat multiplier. The impacts of climate change such as rising sea levels and warming oceans make the impacts of cyclones and ocean wildlife poaching more severe and more difficult to manage.”
Not so in Tahiti as Bryant explains, where covid-19 has taken hold on that part of the Pacific paradise.
Covid-19 cases in French Polynesia (population 280,000) have now reached more than 2700 cases – including territorial President Edouard Fritch and 10 deaths, and Bryant say this crisis has pushed climate change and environmental issues into a secondary status.
“Attacks to our natural environment such as the exploitation of the biodiversity, our cars’ carbon emissions (Papeete has 120,000 cars but luckily, we are an island with regular easterlies) are of governmental responsibilities,” says Bryant.
“There is no clear scrutiny of the climatic effects on the town planning code for example; no compulsory measures for double glazing; using solar panels is not mandatory and the same for photovoltaic, not even for experimental purposes on an urban area.
No environmental friendly designing “There are no projects towards designing more environmentally friendly interisland means of transport in order to anticipate any energy crisis with petrol, for example. We carry on training our youth for the combustion engine,” he adds.
While Bryant laments the lack of action in Tahiti, the Greenpeace organisation remains committed to making a better, environmentally safer world.
“We have pushed for a green covid-19 recovery that puts people and nature first, and we are calling for the replacement of current industrial agriculture system with regenerative farming methods – where we farm in harmony with nature and don’t use synthetic nitrogen fertiliser,” says Young.
“Regenerative farming involves growing a large diversity of crops, plants and animals. Synthetic inputs like nitrogen fertiliser are replaced with practices that mimic natural systems to access nutrients, water and pest control required for growth.
“Replace unnecessary single-use products like plastic drink bottles with reusable and refillable options, including glass. Plastic bags, and bottles are just the tip of the iceberg,
“All of the core Greenpeace campaigns around transforming agriculture and energy, protecting the oceans and shifting away from single-use plastics remain active,” he says.
The last word on the issue comes from the Samoan who has been a strong activist for a greener world, Auimatagi Moeono-Kolio.
“When it comes to the environment, Pacific Islanders are always vigilant no matter what is happening in the outside world: It’s a question of means and resources and geopolitics, it’s a very complicated web.”
This is the fifth of a series of articles by the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch as part of an environmental project funded by the Internews’ Earth Journalism Network (EJN) Asia-Pacific initiative.
This week’s Newspoll, conducted October 8–10 from a sample of 1,527 voters, gave the Coalition a 52–48% lead over Labor in the two-party preferred question, a one-point gain for the Coalition since the previous Newspoll three weeks ago.
Primary votes were 44% Coalition (up one), 34% Labor (steady), 11% Greens (down one) and 3% One Nation (steady).
Prime Minister Scott Morrison remained very popular: 65% were satisfied with his performance and 31% were dissatisfied, for a net approval of +34. These figures are unchanged from the last poll.
Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese’s net approval slid three percentage points to -4. His net approval is down six points since late August. Morrison led as better PM by 57-28% (compared to 59-27% three weeks ago).
Newspoll asks three questions after each budget: whether the budget was good or bad for the economy, whether it was good or bad for you personally, and whether the opposition would have delivered a better budget.
On the economy, 42% said the budget was good and 20% bad. When it came to people’s personal fortunes, 26% said they would be better off after the budget, compared to 23% who said worse off. By 49-33%, respondents said Labor would not have delivered a better budget.
Analyst Kevin Bonham tweeted a graph showing this budget performed well compared to historical budgets. The 16-point deficit for the question of whether Labor would have delivered a better budget is the worst for an opposition since 2009.
The one-point gain for the Coalition on people’s voting intentions is also consistent with a well-received budget.
Australian state polls: Victoria and WA
A Victorian Morgan SMS poll, conducted September 29-30 from a sample of 2,220 voters, gave Labor a 51.5-48.5% lead over the Coalition, unchanged from mid-September.
Primary votes were 39% Labor (up two), 39.5% Coalition (up one) and 10% Greens (down two). Morgan’s SMS polls have been unreliable in the past.
In a forced choice, Premier Daniel Andrews had a 61-39% approval rating, down from 70-30% in early September.
Three weeks ago, Newspoll gave Andrews a 62-35% approval rating (compared to 57-37% in late July).
An Utting Research poll of five Western Australian marginal seats showed an average swing to Labor of 16%. In Liberal leader Liza Harvey’s Scarborough seat, the result was 66-34% to Labor.
Labor had a big victory at the March 2017 state election, and this poll suggests a Liberal wipe-out at the next election, due in March 2021.
Biden’s national lead over Trump exceeds ten points
In the FiveThirtyEight national poll aggregate, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden now leads President Donald Trump by 10.4% (52.2–41.9%). It’s somewhat closer in the key swing states, with Biden leading by 8.0% in Michigan, 7.3% in Pennsylvania, 7.2% in Wisconsin, 4.5% in Florida and 3.9% in Arizona.
Since my article about Trump’s coronavirus infection and the first presidential debate, Biden’s national lead has increased by 1.4%.
With Pennsylvania and Wisconsin now polling very closely, both can be seen as “tipping point” states. Previously, Pennsylvania had been better for Trump than Wisconsin.
The gap in Trump’s favour between the national vote and the tipping-point states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania has increased from 2.4% to 3.2%. If Trump were within five points nationally, this election would be highly competitive. But this difference isn’t going to matter with Biden up ten points nationally.
CNN analyst Harry Enten says Biden is polling better than any challenger against an incumbent president since 1936, when scientific polling started.
US polls include undecided voters, so it is hard for candidates to reach 50%. In 2016, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton never reached that mark in polls, and Trump was able to win far more of the late deciders.
The FiveThirtyEight forecast gives Trump a 14% chance to win, down from 17% last week. Trump has just a 6% chance to win the popular vote.
The Senate forecast gives Democrats a 72% chance to win the Senate, up from 70% last Wednesday. The most likely Senate outcome is still a narrow 51-49 Democratic majority.
Help with living costs while studying and extra support for mental health are two areas Pacific tertiary students want given more attention with the New Zealand general election.
The last two national budgets have committed $107.6 million to help Pacific communities over the next 30 years, but tertiary students say there are urgent needs that must be addressed.
“The first one is mental health and well-being,” according to Leilani Vae’au, while for Ali Leota “one thing for sure is introducing a universal education income”.
Vae’au is at Wellington’s Victoria University working towards a bachelor degree in political science, international relations and religious studies.
She is also on the university’s Pasifika student council.
The 20-year-old is not eligible for student allowance to help with living expenses because her parents earn over the threshold. Student allowance begins to drop once parents earn beyond $56,888.52 a year before tax. If parents jointly earn $98,653.52 or more the student is ineligible.
‘Three younger siblings’ “But I have three younger siblings under me who depend on that and other family members who depend on my parents,” Vae’au explained.
“And I can’t get that aid so that I don’t have to work all the shifts I work to be able to study and focus on that because of the fact my parents make money to support my family.”
Instead, she meets her living costs working multiple office shifts, which she balances with full-time study, student council commitments and a busy home life.
During the Level 4 lockdown she was relieved to keep her job, but from home when her bedroom became her office, living room and study. The lines blurred between study, work and family life.
“Over covid, I didn’t have the opportunity to compartmentalise my house which has six people living in it and a hundred different Zoom calls going on at the same time.”
Vae’au found the inability to separate these aspects of life particularly challenging.
“As a child of the Pacific or as a child in a multi-generational home, as the eldest child as well, there are lot of factors that were still impacting mental health-wise and just stability-wise in the home environment.”
University difficult to navigate Fellow Vic student Rosina Buchanan is a self-described “queer non-binary person of colour with a disability”.
The Bachelor of Health student has found university difficult to navigate without adequate mental health support and would like to see greater equity when meeting the challenges campus life presents.
“Because I would encounter quite a bit of ableism, elitism, classism, homophobia, being misgendered, racism, and that is definitely a lot of barriers to being able to thrive.”
For Ali Leota, the national president of the Pacific student body Tauira Pasifika, financial support is key.
“One thing for sure is introducing a universal education income” he said, challenging the government to help provide a hand up to provide Pasifika students with a level playing field.
“The public health major would like to see student allowance eligibility reconfigured in a way that’s fairer to Pacific families, as the parental income threshold doesn’t adequately take into account the number of dependants.
“And coming from a big family, we’re kind of victims of that,” Leota says.
Universal education income “So therefore, implementing a universal education income is a way to pave the way forward to making tertiary education accessible and fit for purpose for our Pacific learners.”
Post-graduate students should also be included in the ‘universal education income’ according to Leota, who pointed out the incumbent government had failed to reinstate their financial backing which he said was a barrier to Pasifika achieving masters and doctoral success.
It is also a barrier to Pasifika moving into academia.
“Do they go to work or do they continue to study?” Leota says.
“Of course nine times out of 10 our Pasifika students will opt to work to go and help support families but a universal education income will enable our students to climb up the ladder and make our tertiary spaces a space where we feel like we’re welcomed.”
Leota says Pasifika people are underrepresented in academia, even in Pacific studies, and pointed to studies by Dr Sereana Naepi and Dr Tara McAllister who asked Why isn’t my professor Pasifika?
Auckland university student Shaneel Lal … more support isn needed for Pacific student bodies which in turn provide support for students. Image: RNZ
More student body support University of Auckland law student Shaneel Lal says they can help address it immediately by offering more support to Pacific student bodies which in turn provide support to students.
Lal’s family moved from Fiji when he was 14 and he attended Auckland’s Ōtāhuhu College where his hard work was recognised, being named school Dux. The Youth Parliament 2019 MP who represented Jenny Salesa said he had difficulty transitioning from the strong Pasifika and Māori-dominated culture of high school to the University of Auckland.
“I went from a very collectivist community to a very individualist community where I went from being a person to a number, and nothing really prepares a young Pacific person for that transition.”
The 20-year-old said he was overwhelmed with the culture shock at the time and dropped out. Although he is back at university, he would like more attention paid by tertiary institutions to learning priorities and styles from this part of the world.
“For example, Māori communities are underpinned by the fundamental principles of whanaungatanga and we have similar concepts in our Pacific communities that we exist as a community,” said Lal.
“That is missing at university. University is about competing rather than collaborating and working together.”
While Labour has released a five-point action plan to improve things for Pacific students, including “to respond to unmet needs, with an initial focus on needs arising from the covid-19 pandemic”, other parties lack university specific education policy for Pasifika.
This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.
Many Melburnians have despaired in recent days as it became clear the next step on its roadmap out of lockdown will be taken a bit later than originally planned, or in smaller steps.
That’s because Victoria is unlikely to meet the threshold needed to clear a key hurdle in the roadmap: a 14-day state-wide average of less than five new daily cases (and less than five cases with an unknown source in the last 14 days).
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said on Monday the 14-day rolling average for metropolitan Melbourne was 9.9; for regional Victoria, the figure is 0.4.
The focus, for some time, has been on new daily case numbers. But what if we are looking at the wrong figure?
I’d argue that a useful alternative number we should focus more closely on is the average number of cases “under investigation” over the last 14 days. And on this measure, I think Melbourne is ready to move to step 3 in the roadmap out of lockdown, allowing Melburnians in general a greater degree of freedom, while still empowering authorities to ring-fence localised outbreaks.
Instead of looking at total new case count each day, we should take out the cases linked to a known source within the first 24 hours, because those people are already likely in isolation.
The focus should instead be on the cases still “under investigation”, which includes some that may turn out to be linked to a known source but also a smaller number of what authorities call “mystery cases” (where the source of infection is never identified).
The vast majority of cases now are linked to a known outbreak; this suggests a good understanding of the “shape” of the outbreak, and good control. The number of “under investigation” cases each day has been low.
Step 3 of the roadmap out of lockdown for metropolitan Melbourne.Vic Gov
In fact, if you look only at the “under investigation” cases, it is already at about five a day on average, over the past 14 days.
I think it’s time to look at that number instead, as it is a useful measure of our capacity to contain and control spread. Many of the cases that do turn out to be linked may also already be in isolation, so it is still conservative, but the number highlights the cases where there is still some work to do. If the number of “under investigation” cases remains low, on average, we should be safe to move to step 3 of the plan to emerge from lockdown.
For metropolitan Melbourne, step 3 would mean no restrictions on leaving home, public gatherings of up to ten people, visitors allowed at home from one other household (up to a maximum of five people), and all hospitality and retail open (subject to some important rules).
If the 14 day average of daily new “under investigation” cases is about five, and we are keeping mystery cases under one a day, we should be ready move to step 3 in the roadmap.
If there are any remaining concerns about wider transmission, then I would suggest possibly delaying the introduction of visitors into the home for a week or two until these remaining outbreaks are brought under control.
Concentrated responses
We have demonstrated we can contain outbreaks. Clusters have been well managed in places like Kilmore and Colac that were not under the kind of tight restrictions Melburnians now live under.
The Victorian health system is at a point now where it has the resources to have a much more rapid and comprehensive response to individual cases and clusters than it did in the past.
Victoria may have struggled earlier but we are now at a point where our response is world class.JAMES ROSS/AAP
That puts us in a strong position to actually move away from widespread restrictions for large swathes of the population as an integral part of our outbreak control.
We can now focus on a more concentrated response, to ring-fence cases and clusters rapidly and close them down — even when the broader population is allowed greater movement. The faster contacts of a positive case (and the contact’s own contacts) are isolated, the smaller the cluster is when it is contained as people are more likely to be in isolation before they are infectious. It is then less important how extensively people in other parts of the city or state are moving around.
The goal of reaching a 14-day state-wide average of less than five new daily cases is a noble one but it is conservative.
Victoria may have struggled earlier but we are now at a point where our response tactics are world class. We should be more comfortable relying on this responsiveness now built into the system.
The virus is really now focused within essential workers in certain workplaces and and in their families. It is not as though it is spread evenly and widely across the Melbourne citizenry.
We also have moved to a focus on virus surveillance in workplaces (where we know the risk is higher) to monitor virus levels within the community, and other early warning systems that allow us to move away from blanket approaches applied to the whole Melbourne population in both outbreak detection and response.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jacinthe Flore, Vice-Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Social and Global Studies Centre, RMIT University
The arts industry is among the most devastated by the pandemic. Artists and arts workers often rely on casual, project-based or fixed-term contracts, and COVID-19 restrictions have left many with little or no income. This has affected the mental health of many working in the arts.
In August, we set out to learn more about the impact of the arts shutdown on workers’ emotional and mental health. While statistics might present data on the scale of lost work or income, qualitative accounts of people’s personal experiences are revealing. So far 28 Victorian performers, writers, teachers, and those in technical or support roles, have provided detailed responses.
Emerging themes include how the pandemic has made unsteady work even more precarious; how community and identity are interrelated; how online performances and connections are far from a cure-all; and, ultimately, workers are on the verge of giving up on their artistic dreams.
Insecurity is standard — the pandemic made it worse
Australian arts workers are familiar with the precarity of creative work. But the pandemic challenges this “normal uncertainty”.
With suddenly empty schedules and an interruption to seasonal work patterns, arts workers have lost the structures and routines that provided rhythm — and mental stability — to their lives. As a stage manager commented:
The performing arts and events are defined by constant, tangible deadlines. All of the structures in my life are built around the presence of this pressure. To have it suddenly and totally removed threw my entire world into disarray.
Creative community and identity are tied to mental health
Mental health challenges are linked to collective, not just individual, experiences. One production manager told us:
Watching all my fellow artists … descend into depression has taken its toll on me … For my own mental health, I have had to funnel certain exposure to the outside world and social media.
Physical restrictions isolated participants from supportive peers. A production technician from the LGBTI community shared:
Being separated from the community that loves and supports me has definitely compounded what I’m feeling.
Some Sydney shows, like artist Giselle Stanborough’s at Carriageworks, have resumed but Victorian stages remain bare.AAP Image/Mick Tsikas
Some had shifted their creative work, teaching and performances online. Others struggled to make their live events digital. One theatre performer distinguished between these modes:
It is important to me that (theatre) remains what it is: live. I have taught and developed shows online, all through Zoom. It has been challenging but gets easier over time.
While some performers and artists were adept enough to shift their practice online and work from home, workers in technical or administrative roles were often left out of this transition.
However, some technical workers have used online resources to further develop skills in their field of expertise with the expectation of returning to work.
While numerous respondents described productive ways of working or taking a break during the restrictions, many also felt hopeless. Participants said they were worried about their skills “becoming rusty” or being “past (their) prime”. They oscillated between feeling hopeless and resigned to the devastating impact of the pandemic.
Feeling powerless to control what was happening in their lives and communities contributed to poor mental health. One respondent, who worked as a teacher, performer and music producer said:
These feelings have become more pronounced since the second lockdown … feeling a strong disconnection from community (creative or otherwise) … I feel despair over the state of the arts sector and how this will impact the rest of society.
Living with uncertainty and loss of hope, arts workers are waiting to see what happens next. A visual artist wrote:
I expect to see the damage in the next year as some things return to normal, while other parts of life will be damaged forever.
Repairing the already suffering arts industry is an opportunity to boost the creative and economic “health” of the sector, but also the mental health of those who work in it.
‘We have a battle ahead. We need to make sure we take everyone along on this path.’ Reach out for help if needed.
The survey is still open to respondents and will close on 26 October. We hope it will be the first stage in a larger project to capture the experiences of arts and creative sector workers beyond Victoria.
If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.
Just days after Victorian Premier Dan Andrews signalled the state won’t be ready for a major loosening of COVID-19 restrictions next week as planned, a legal challenge is expected to be filed in the High Court to force the government to act more quickly.
The Age reports prominent Melbourne hotelier Julian Gerner is launching the challenge against Melbourne’s strict lockdown and has hired leading barristers Bret Walker SC and Michael Wyles QC to represent him.
Gerner argues the restrictions on people’s movements beyond five kilometres from their homes, as well as the need to have a permit to travel to work, are a disproportionate response to the coronavirus threat and violate the implied freedom of movement in the Constitution to undertake personal, family, recreational and commercial endeavours.
This is a bold argument. The High Court has never accepted the Constitution protects freedom of movement within states.
How does this case differ from Clive Palmer’s case?
Clive Palmer is currently challenging Western Australia’s tough border closure, arguing it contravenes section 92 of the Constitution, which says
trade, commerce and intercourse among the states … shall be absolutely free.
Palmer is challenging restrictions on movement across state boundaries on the basis of an express provision of the Constitution.
By contrast, Gerner is challenging restrictions on movement within a single state on the basis of an implication he says can be found in the Constitution, rather than on any express provision.
Palmer’s case is due to be heard in the High Court in early November.Dave Hunt/AAP
Laws are considered invalid if they contradict the express terms of the Constitution such as these. But laws can also be ruled invalid if they impede the functioning of systems set up by the Constitution. This is how “implied” freedoms arise.
The most prominent example is the implied freedom of political communication. There is nothing in the Constitution saying expressly that Australians have freedom of political communication.
But the Constitution does expressly say parliamentarians must be “chosen by the people”.
This guarantee is vital because it provides for an implied freedom of expression on matters relating to politics and government. If this freedom didn’t exist, then the people would not be able to freely choose their parliamentarians.
Using this logic, the High Court has ruled restrictions on the freedom of political communication are invalid because they impede the functioning of the political system set up by the Constitution.
What has the High Court said about freedom of movement?
Freedom of movement for the purposes of freedom of political communication — for example, to take part in a protest — would be protected by the Constitution, as part of the implied freedom of political communication.
However, Gerner seems to be arguing the Constitution protects freedom of movement more generally.
Individual justices have agreed with this idea in the past. In the 1970s and ‘80s, High Court Justice Lionel Murphy said in a number of cases he believed the Constitution guarantees freedom of movement generally.
For example, Murphy said in a 1986 case that freedom of movement “in and between every part” of Australia is fundamental to a democratic society and necessary for the operation of the federal government and state constitutions. Murphy also said that freedom of movement is
a necessary corollary of the concept of the Commonwealth of Australia.
Justice Mary Gaudron said something similar in a 1992 case:
The notion of a free society governed in accordance with the principles of representative parliamentary democracy may entail freedom of movement.
However, a majority of the High Court has never accepted there is an implied freedom of movement in the Constitution.
Police have cracked down on anti-lockdown protests in recent weeks.Erik Anderson/AAP
What happens next?
Two hurdles need to be overcome for Gerner’s challenge to succeed.
First, he would need to persuade the High Court the Constitution really does protect freedom of movement generally. This won’t be easy.
Second, he needs to persuade the High Court the Melbourne lockdown is a disproportionate limitation on freedom of movement. This may require a separate hearing in a lower court to hear expert public health evidence about what is necessary to protect public health.
This kind of separate hearing happened in Palmer’s WA border closure case. This will take some time.
There is also the possibility the Victorian government will relax the lockdown just before any High Court hearing starts.
This is what happened after a legal challenge was filed with the Victorian Supreme Court arguing Melbourne’s curfew was imposed without following the correct legal procedure.
The government abolished the curfew the day before the case was due to start. Its lawyers showed up to court arguing the case should not go ahead because the issue was now merely hypothetical.
While it is not beyond the realm of possibility, Gerner faces formidable obstacles to succeed with his challenge. I wouldn’t be holding my breath the High Court declares the existence of an implied freedom of movement anytime soon.
The West Papua Council of Churches wants an end to what it says is the re-militarisation of the region.
It wrote to Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo and also asked him to follow through on his commitment to meet with Papuan pro-referendum groups.
The churches said they were writing because of the escalation in violence in recent weeks, including the repressive response to peaceful protests rejecting any extension of Special Autonomy, and the killing of a Papuan pastor, Reverend Yeremia Zanambani, two weeks ago in Intan Jaya regency.
The death of the pastor has been blamed by churches on the Indonesian military, although the military initially denied it.
However, according to the churches, the remilitarisation that has occurred in the region over the past year is aimed at turning Papua into a military operations area, with the military taking control of the natural resources on a large scale.
The churches documented how Indonesia strove in the 1960s to destroy Papuan culture and said an apartheid ideology was applied to Papuans with the people subjugated.
They said the President, as Indonesia’s supreme military commander, along with the member countries of the UN’s Human Rights Council, needed to resolve the issue of Papua peacefully through negotiations.
This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.
Face masks are part of our daily lives during the pandemic. Many are made from plastics and designed to be used just once, which means thousands of tonnes of extra waste going to landfill.
Masks may help stop the spread of the coronavirus. But according to one estimate, if everyone in the United Kingdom used a single-use mask each day for a year, it would create 66,000 tonnes of contaminated waste and 57,000 tonnes of plastic packaging.
Evidence also suggests masks may be a source of harmful microplastic fibres on land and in waterways and litter.
So let’s look at how face masks might be designed to cause minimal harm to the environment, while still doing their job – and which type is best for you.
N95 masks are used in hospital settings.Shutterstock
Circular thinking
China is the world’s biggest face mask manufacturer. Its daily output of face masks reportedly reached 116 million units in February this year. That creates a big waste management problem around the world.
One way to address this is to adopt “circular design” principles. This thinking seeks to reduce waste and pollution through product design, keep products and materials in use, and regenerate natural systems.
When it comes to face masks, the three common types are cloth, surgical and N95. N95 masks offer the highest level of protection, blocking about 95% of airborne particles. Cloth masks are designed to be used more than once, while surgical and N-95 masks are usually intended for single use.
Face masks may consist of one or more layers, each with different functions:
an outermost layer, designed to repel liquids such as water
the innermost layer, which absorbs moisture and allows comfort and breathability
a non-absorbent middle layer, to filter particles.
Surgical masks are generally intended as single-use items.BrendanThorne/AAP
Each type of mask is made of different materials and used in varying settings:
– N95 masks: These are designed to protect the wearer from 95% of airborne particles and are largely worn by health workers. N95 masks are designed to fit closely to the face and are usually worn only once. N95 masks comprise:
a strap (polyisoprene)
staples (steel)
nose foam (polyurethane)
nose clip (aluminum)
filter (polypropylene)
valve diaphragm (polyisoprene).
– Surgical masks: These are designed to protect sterile environments from the wearer, acting as barrier to droplets or aerosols. Generally intended as single-use items, they comprise mostly polypropylene between two layers of non-woven fabric.
– Cloth masks: These types of masks are worn by the general public. Some are homemade from fabric scraps or old clothing. They may be wholly reusable, or partially reusable with replaceable filters that must be disposed of.
These masks typically comprise an outer layer of polyester or polypropylene (or in some cases, cotton), and an inner layer designed for breathability and comfort – usually cotton or a cotton-polyester blend.
Research suggests cloth masks are less effective at filtering particles than medical masks, but may may give some protection if well-fitted and properly designed. Health advice is available to help guide their use.
Many cloth masks are handmade, and can be reused.Shutterstock
Designing for a healthier environment
It’s important to note that any attempt to redesign face masks must ensure they offer adequate protection to the wearer. Where masks are used in a medical setting, design changes must also meet official standards such as barrier efficiency, breathing capacity and fire resistance.
With this in mind, reducing the environmental harm caused by masks could be done in several ways:
– Design with more reusable parts
Evidence suggests reusable cloth masks perform almost as well as single-use masks, but without the associated waste. Once life cycle assessment conducted in the UK found masks that could be washed and reused were the best option for the environment. Reusable masks with replaceable filters were the second-best option.
The study also found having a higher number of masks in rotation to allow for machine washing was better for the environment than manual washing.
– Make masks easier to dispose of or recyle
In high-risk settings such as hospitals and clinics, the reuse of masks may not be possible or desirable, meaning they must be disposed of. In medical settings, there are systems in place for disposal of such protective gear, which usually involves segregation and incineration.
But the general public must dispose of masks themselves. Because masks usually comprise different materials, this can be complicated. For example, recovering the components of a N-95 mask for recycling would involve putting the straps, nose foam, filter and valve in one bin and the metal staples and nose clip in another. And some recyclers may see mask recycling as a health risk. These difficulties mean masks often end up in landfill.
Masks would be easier to recycle if the were made of fewer materials and were easy to disassemble.
– Use biodegradable materials
For single-use items, placing synthetics with biodegradable materials would be a first step in circular design thinking.
The abaca plant, a relative of the banana tree, offers one potential option. Its leaf fibre reportedly repels water better than traditional face masks, is as strong as polymer and decomposes within two months. Most abaca is currently produced in the Philippines.
Recycling of face masks can be complicated.Shutterstock
Which mask should you choose?
From a purely environmental perspective, research suggests owning multiple reusable face masks, and machine-washing them together, is the best option. Using filters with reusable face masks is a second-best option.
But when choosing a mask, consider where you will wear it. Unless cloth masks are shown to be as effective as other masks, health-care workers should not use them. But they may be suitable in low-risk everyday settings.
In the longer term, governments and manufacturers must make every effort to design masks that will not harm the planet – and consumers should demand this. Face masks will probably be ubiquitous on our streets for months to come. But once the pandemic is over, the environmental legacy may last for decades, if not centuries.
