Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nic Rawlence, Senior Lecturer in Ancient DNA, University of Otago

One species of iconic moa was almost wiped out during the last ice age, according to recently published research. But a small population survived in a modest patch of forest at the bottom of New Zealand’s South Island, and rapidly spread back up its east coast once the climate began to warm.

What we’re learning about this remarkable survival story has implications for the way we can help living species adapt to climate change, and how we conserve and restore what may be important future habitats.

Growing to around 80kg and up to 1.8 metres tall, the eastern moa was one of the smaller of the nine extinct moa species. It got its name because its fossil bones have been found in sand dunes, swamps, caves and middens all along the eastern parts of the South Island – Southland, Otago, Canterbury and Marlborough.

Eastern moa became extinct from over-hunting and habitat destruction by humans, and possibly predation by kurī (dogs) and kiore (rats). But were eastern moa populations thriving when people arrived, or were they already in trouble due to ancient climate change?

Refuge in the south

Between 29,000 and 19,000 years ago, New Zealand was in the grip of an ice age. Glaciers were much larger and more widespread than they are today, and the distribution of grasslands and forests changed as the climate became colder and drier.

Current climate change threatens the survival of many different species, and the same was true of climate change thousands of years ago. The fossil record hints that the ice age was bad news for eastern moa, as few eastern moa bones from this period have been discovered.

But a lack of fossils doesn’t necessarily mean a species was doing it tough. Perhaps they just avoided the caves and swamps where we might eventually discover their bones.

Read more:
How a change in climate wiped out the ‘Siberian unicorn’

To find out more, we sequenced DNA from dozens of eastern moa bones to see how their genetic diversity and population size changed over the past 30,000 years.

Large and healthy animal populations tend to have high genetic diversity, while low genetic diversity can be a sign that a population is in decline. We found eastern moa had very low genetic diversity immediately after the last ice age.

So eastern moa didn’t cope well with the ice age climate – but how did they manage to escape extinction? Our study provides a clue: their genetic diversity was highest in the very south of the South Island.

Preserving future habitats

During the ice age, grassland replaced wet podocarp forests in many areas. Those forests were the favourite habitat of eastern moa, possibly explaining why they struggled to survive.

Luckily for eastern moa, however, small pockets of forest survived in southern New Zealand during this time. While eastern moa disappeared from most of the country, our study suggests they clung on in remnant forest at the very south of the South Island.

Scientists have a special name for pockets of habitat where species can shelter and endure climate change – “refugia”.

Read more:
How the warming world could turn many plants and animals into climate refugees

Once the climate began to return to pre-ice age conditions, eastern moa were able to return to parts of the country they had formerly occupied. They bounced back so well that they were the most common moa in some parts of New Zealand at the time of Polynesian arrival.

Ancient DNA from fossils across the world has shown that refugia play an important role in allowing species to adapt to climate change. The story of eastern moa shows this is equally true in New Zealand.

Importantly, though, the eastern moa was affected differently to other moa, showing not all species are affected by climate change in the same way. Our study emphasises the need to conserve and restore a diverse range of habitats for the future, given the places where species are found today may be unsuitable for them in the very near future.

By ensuring that species can continue to find appropriate refugia, we may reduce the number that become extinct as a result of our global impacts on the climate.

Nic Rawlence receives funding from the Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund.

Kieren Mitchell receives funding from the Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund.

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

– ref. How did ancient moa survive the ice age – and what can they teach us about modern climate change? – https://theconversation.com/how-did-ancient-moa-survive-the-ice-age-and-what-can-they-teach-us-about-modern-climate-change-183350

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kim Goodwin, Teaching Specialist, The University of Melbourne

With the swearing in of a new arts minister, there is a unique opportunity to address some of the structural issues around pay and job precarity in the arts and build a more equitable and diverse sector.

After holding the shadow portfolios, it is expected Tony Burke will be sworn in as minister for the arts and minister for industrial relations: the first federal minister to hold the pairing of these two portfolios.

A member of parliament since 2004, Burke briefly held the arts portfolio in the Gillard/Rudd ministry before becoming opposition spokesperson in 2016. He became shadow minister for industrial relations in 2019.

Through his time in parliament, Burke has often showcased his passion for the arts on his social media accounts, and he even keeps a selection of guitars in his parliamentary office (where he is known to play with other politicians in a Labor caucus band).

Burke has also long advocated for addressing issues of insecure work and unreliable pay, claiming Labor would launch a senate inquiry into insecure work if elected.

The arts and cultural sector has the dubious title of being an industry leader in insecure work. And it is at the intersection of cultural and industrial relations policy where our new arts minister could dramatically reshape the sector.

A precarious sector

In the final days of the election campaign, the Biennale of Sydney faced criticism after advertising an unpaid internship position.

Offered in partnership with Google Arts and Culture, the position involved cataloguing responsibilities and the creation of original content over the course of three months – all for no pay.

The arts and cultural sector is no stranger to unpaid internships. With limited full-time and salaried positions available, many arts workers use internships and other forms of unpaid labour as a way of gaining a foothold in the industry.

Even once established, arts workers typically rely on a combination of short-term and gig-based work, often at extremely low rates of pay.

Read more:
The crisis of a career in culture: why sustaining a livelihood in the arts is so hard

Arts organisations are often built on a foundation of cheap or free labour. Faced with budget shortfalls and a lack of government support, many organisations have few options but to perpetuate the precarity of work in the sector.

This means taking advantage of workers who are desperate to gain industry experience and build professional networks.

The sector’s reliance on unpaid work has far-reaching consequences for its diversity. With unpaid work a key feature of the industry, arts workers who can’t afford to work for free are essentially forced out of the labour pool. This creates a sector that largely excludes anyone from a working-class background.

Over the past two years, the situation facing arts workers has reached a tipping point. Many artists and arts workers were excluded from receiving JobKeeper or other forms of pandemic support. This led to greater numbers of arts workers abandoning the sector in favour of more stable employment – and an increasingly narrow pool of workers who can afford to stay.

Read more:
The government says artists should be able to access JobKeeper payments. It’s not that simple

An industrial relations approach

As part of their election commitments, the new Labor government said they will again implement a national cultural policy. But it is within his other portfolio that Burke could have the greatest impact on the sector.

When launching Labor’s arts policy at Melbourne’s Esplanade Hotel on May 16, Burke acknowledged cultural policy isn’t just about the arts:

Arts isn’t simply about entertainment, leisure and hobbies. At its best it affects our education policy, our health policy, our trade, our relations around the world, our industrial relations approach and is a driver of economic growth.

The arts and cultural sector have loudly condemned the lack of economic support received over the past decade, as well as during the pandemic.

But arts organisations must also take responsibility for contributing to a labour market environment that exploits workers and creates barriers to workers from diverse socio-economic backgrounds, and Burke needs to hold these organisations to account.

Considering the inclusion of labour standards within grant agreements could establish a stronger culture of fair pair for all arts workers. Similarly, Burke could institute stronger regulations on the use of internships versus paid work.

Arts work is work and should be compensated accordingly.

The Biennale of Sydney states in the advertisement for its unpaid intern that “art should be accessible to all.” Our incoming arts minister can help to make this a reality, not just for audiences but for workers as well.

Read more:
Wages and women top Albanese’s IR agenda: the big question is how Labor keeps its promises

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

– ref. Tony Burke’s double ministry of arts and industrial relations could be just what the arts sector needs – https://theconversation.com/tony-burkes-double-ministry-of-arts-and-industrial-relations-could-be-just-what-the-arts-sector-needs-183623

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bronwyn Carlson, Professor, Indigenous Studies and Director of The Centre for Global Indigenous Futures, Macquarie University

This article contains mentions of the Stolen Generations, and policies using outdated and potentially offensive terminology when referring to First Nations people.

May 26 is National Sorry Day. On this day, we commemorate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who were forcibly removed from their families under government policies during the Assimilation era (officially 1910-70).

Those children stolen from their families have become known as the Stolen Generations. Many survivors have provided an account of the violence they endured and the ongoing pain they experience as they try to find their families. While some have managed to find their families, many have not. This has left an indelible pain that resonates in all aspects of their lives.

While this is a national day of commemoration, shamefully, it barely rates a mention in the media. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities however, never forget. How can we, when so many of our families have been impacted by this legacy?

The exact number of children who were removed may never be known. However, there are very few families who have been left unaffected. In some families, children from three or more generations were taken.

On this day, we acknowledge the ongoing grief and loss experienced by many individuals and families, and we recognise the pain and intergenerational trauma that continues.

Oppression and discrimination of past government policies

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been subject to various government policies that resulted in oppressive and discriminatory conditions. In what has been referred to as “The Killing Times” massacres of Aboriginal people occurred from 1788 to 1928. The survivors of this frontier violence were then subject to “protection” policies.

During this era, “protectors” were appointed, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations were segregated onto reserves, missions and government settlements.

This time of “protection” was not an era of benevolence. Beginning in the late 19th century, the “protection” era involved controlling every aspect of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s lives. This included forced confinement, institutionalisation and forcible child removals.

An official policy of assimilation was established in 1937. The policy was defined at the 1961 Native Welfare Conference of Federal and State Ministers in these terms:

The policy of assimilation means that all Aborigines (sic) and part-Aborigines (sic) are expected to attain the same manner of living as other Australians and to live as members of a single Australian community, enjoying the same rights and privileges, accepting the same customs and influenced by the same beliefs as other Australians.

But this was never the case. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people had no say on this policy, nor any freedom to decline it. The notion they were ever intended to enjoy the same rights and privileges as white folk is a lie.

National Sorry Day

The first National Sorry Day was held on May 26 1998, one year after the tabling of the report from the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families. The inquiry examined the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families and communities. A key recommendation of the report was that reparations be made.

Almost a decade after that, on February 13 2008, then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd delivered an apology to members of the Stolen Generations. This is often heralded as a historic day, and indeed it was important for people who had been impacted by being forcibly removed from their families to finally have a government tell the truth. Rudd, however, firmly stated the government had no intention to consider compensation.

While there is yet to be a national reparation scheme, various States and Territories have developed reparation strategies to provide monetary compensation to members of the Stolen Generations. Sadly, many members of the Stolen generations have passed before they could receive reparations and there is no mechanism to pay it forward to their families.

Read more:
New bill in NSW could prove crucial to helping reduce numbers of First Nations children in out-of-home care

“Sorry” means you don’t do it again

When Rudd delivered his apology 14 years ago, there were 9,070 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care in Australia. That number has since risen to about 18,900, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children now represent more than 41% of all children in out-of-home care.

Aboriginal journalist Allan Clarke has referred to the growing number of our children in out-of-home care as a terrible crisis that has continued since Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were first snatched from their families almost a century ago.

Commemorations such as Sorry Day serve as a permanent link between present and past generations – committing them to memory and assigning them with importance, meaning and purpose.

National Sorry Day commemorates not only the past but the continuity of injustice borne by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. All the “sorrys” in the world won’t provide justice, support or compensation for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who were forcibly removed from their families. Remembering this significant day is the least we can do.

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

– ref. National Sorry Day is a day to commemorate those taken. But ‘sorry’ is not enough – we need action – https://theconversation.com/national-sorry-day-is-a-day-to-commemorate-those-taken-but-sorry-is-not-enough-we-need-action-183618

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dietmar Müller, Professor of Geophysics, University of Sydney

For hundreds of millions of years, Earth’s climate has warmed and cooled with natural fluctuations in the level of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere. Over the past century, humans have pushed CO₂ levels to their highest in 2 million years – overtaking natural emissions – mostly by burning fossil fuels, causing ongoing global warming that may make parts of the globe uninhabitable.

What can be done? As Earth scientists, we look to how natural processes have recycled carbon from atmosphere to Earth and back in the past to find possible answers to this question.

Our new research published in Nature, shows how tectonic plates, volcanoes, eroding mountains and seabed sediment have controlled Earth’s climate in the geological past. Harnessing these processes may play a part in maintaining the “Goldilocks” climate our planet has enjoyed.

From hothouse to ice age

Hothouse and icehouse climates have existed in the geological past. The Cretaceous hothouse (which lasted from roughly 145 million to 66 million years ago) had atmospheric CO₂ levels above 1,000 parts per million, compared with around 420 today, and temperatures up to 10℃ higher than today.

But Earth’s climate began to cool around 50 million years ago during the Cenozoic Era, culminating in an icehouse climate in which temperatures dropped to roughly 7℃ cooler than today.

What kickstarted this dramatic change in global climate?

Our suspicion was that Earth’s tectonic plates were the culprit. To better understand how tectonic plates store, move and emit carbon, we built a computer model of the tectonic “carbon conveyor belt”.

The carbon conveyor belt

Tectonic processes release carbon into the atmosphere at mid-ocean ridges – where two plates are moving away from each other – allowing magma to rise to the surface and create new ocean crust.

At the same time, at ocean trenches – where two plates converge – plates are pulled down and recycled back into the deep Earth. On their way down they carry carbon back into the Earth’s interior, but also release some CO₂ via volcanic activity.

Our model shows that the Cretaceous hothouse climate was caused by very fast-moving tectonic plates, which dramatically increased CO₂ emissions from mid-ocean ridges.

In the transition to the Cenozoic icehouse climate tectonic plate movement slowed down and volcanic CO₂ emissions began to fall. But to our surprise, we discovered a more complex mechanism hidden in the conveyor belt system involving mountain building, continental erosion and burial of the remains of miscroscopic organisms on the seafloor.

The hidden cooling effect of slowing tectonic plates in the Cenozoic

Tectonic plates slow down due to collisions, which in turn leads to mountain building, such as the Himalayas and the Alps formed over the last 50 million years. This should have reduced volcanic CO₂ emissions but instead our carbon conveyor belt model revealed increased emissions.

We tracked their source to carbon-rich deep-sea sediments being pushed downwards to feed volcanoes, increasing CO₂ emissions and cancelling out the effect of slowing plates.

So what exactly was the mechanism responsible for the drop in atmospheric CO₂?

The answer lies in the mountains that were responsible for slowing down the plates in the first place and in carbon storage in the deep sea.

As soon as mountains form, they start being eroded. Rainwater containing CO₂ reacts with a range of mountain rocks, breaking them down. Rivers carry the dissolved minerals into the sea. Marine organisms then use the dissolved products to build their shells, which ultimately become a part of carbon-rich marine sediments.

As new mountain chains formed, more rocks were eroded, speeding up this process. Massive amounts of CO₂ were stored away, and the planet cooled, even though some of these sediments were subducted with their carbon degassing via arc volcanoes.

Rock weathering as a possible carbon dioxide removal technology

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says large-scale deployment of carbon dioxide removal methods is “unavoidable” if the world is to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.

Read more:
On top of drastic emissions cuts, IPCC finds large-scale CO₂ removal from air will be “essential” to meeting targets

The weathering of igneous rocks, especially rocks like basalt containing a mineral called olivine, is very efficient in reducing atmospheric CO₂. Spreading olivine on beaches could absorb up to a trillion tonnes of CO₂ from the atmosphere, according to some estimates.

The speed of current human-induced warming is such that reducing our carbon emissions very quickly is essential to avoid catastrophic global warming. But geological processes, with some human help, may also have their role in maintaining Earth’s “Goldilocks” climate.

This study was carried out by researchers from the University of Sydney’s EarthByte Group, The University of Western Australia, the University of Leeds and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich using GPlates open access modelling software. This was enabled by Australia’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) via AuScope and The Office of the Chief Scientist and Engineer, NSW Department of Industry.

Dietmar Müller receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Adriana Dutkiewicz receives funding from the Australian Research Council (FT190100829).

Andrew Merdith receives funding from MSCA-IF project 893615.

Christopher Gonzalez received funding from Australian Research Council.

Sabin Zahirovic receives funding from the Australian Research Council (DE210100084).

Tobias Keller previously received funding from the European Research Council and from the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Weronika Gorczyk receives funding from Australian Research Council and Minerals Research Institute Of Western Australia

Jo Condon is affiliated with AuScope, a federally funded and non-profit NCRIS organisation that supports the development of GPlates software used in the research described in this article.

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

– ref. How plate tectonics, mountains and deep-sea sediments have maintained Earth’s ‘Goldilocks’ climate – https://theconversation.com/how-plate-tectonics-mountains-and-deep-sea-sediments-have-maintained-earths-goldilocks-climate-183725

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hal Pawson, Professor of Housing Research and Policy, and Associate Director, City Futures Research Centre, UNSW Sydney

Plenty was said in the election campaign about the very real challenges faced by first home buyers and by homeowners already mortgaged to the hilt. But little comment focused on the cost-of-living predicament faced by low income renters.

Our new report, released today, reveals a social housing system critically stressed, with demand rapidly outpacing supply.

Many eligible applicants in need simply give up on ever being allocated a spot. Probably far more, knowing their faint hope of a tenancy offer, never even apply.

Read more:
Climate change hits low-income earners harder – and poor housing in hotter cities is a disastrous combination

Social housing system capacity cut by more than half

Rental stress is where a tenant’s housing costs leave not enough remaining income to cover basic household essentials.

This is estimated to affect two thirds of the low-income private tenant population – around a million households.

And across Australia, but especially in the regions, the past two years have seen rents rising at rates unseen in more than a decade.

However, this only compounds the much more longstanding trend of growing demand pressure at the lower end of the private rental market.

In part, this reflects a quarter-century of near-stagnation in social housing stock in Australia.

While the national population is now 41% higher than in 1996, social housing has expanded by just 3% over that period.

Effectively, social housing system capacity has been cut by more than half since the 1990s.

Just under 30,000 new applicants were granted a social housing tenancy, Australia-wide, in 2020-21.

As the most meaningful indicator of supply, that compares with 52,000 lettings in 1991 – a 42% reduction. But proportionate to national population, the latest figure is 61% down.

Indeed, the three years to 2021 saw overall social housing waiting list numbers rising by 16%, Australia-wide, to 164,000 households.

Nationally, the annual number of “new greatest need applications” (mainly people experiencing or at risk of homelessness) grew by 48% over this period, suggesting soaring demand.

As our research reveals, stress on the New South Wales social housing system is clearly intensifying. The proportion of total lettings to highest priority applicants increased from 41% to 60% in the six years to 2020-21.

This means longer wait times for income-eligible but non-priority social housing applicants.

In Queensland, meanwhile, waiting list numbers grew by 78% in the four years to June 2021 (to some 28,000 households). Average waiting times for registered applicants also increased by 83%.

High rates of ‘churn’

But despite recent increases, the longer-term trend of social housing waiting list numbers has remained largely flat. 2021 point-in-time registrations barely exceeded the number for 2006.

This is despite substantially increased housing need over this period as evidenced by trends in homelessness, rental stress and other indicators.

Our research reveals some likely explanations for this paradox.

Most importantly, social housing waiting lists now see high rates of “churn” – where many applicants register each year but many others exit lists without gaining a social housing tenancy.

Quantifying these processes, we draw on unpublished government statistics for New South Wales, where June 30 2021 waiting list applications totalled nearly 50,000.

Our evidence suggests that during 2020-21, over 6,000 registrations were cancelled or withdrawn. That’s in addition to the 12,000 registrations ending thanks to a social housing tenancy allocation.

In part, this pattern likely reflects the realisation by many non-priority applicants that the prospect of a tenancy offer is remote.

After all, for those needing a three bedroom property, the NSW government projects typical waiting times of more than a decade in most of its 25 Sydney letting areas.

Rigorous waiting list management is also implicated, with registrations deleted when an applicant (intentionally or otherwise) fails to reconfirm eligibility and interest.

Limiting social housing eligibility

Restricting eligibility to register for social housing is central to rationing; in particular, through income limits.

As highlighted in our report, there is great variation across the country in the maximum income allowed before you’re no longer eligible.

In most jurisdictions, the 2021 income limit for a single person was below the current minimum wage (assuming full-time employment).

Weekly income limits defined by the Queensland and West Australian governments (A$609 and $450 for single adults in 2021, respectively) have remained static or almost unchanged for more than a decade.

This has managed demand by effectively tightening applicant eligibility over time.

The rationing challenge

State and territory government staff face unenviable challenges in rationing a static or shrinking resource at a time of growing need.

The roots of this scenario can be traced back to the end of Australia’s routine national public housing construction program, which ran for 50 years until 1996, until its effective termination under the Howard government.

In certain states (notably Queensland and Victoria), recent post-COVID economic recovery pledges include significant new social housing construction investment funded by states themselves.

The incoming federal Labor government has also pledged a six year scheme to construct 30,000 new social and affordable rental homes.

Advocates will welcome these commitments. But to truly relieve low income housing stress, the national program needs to be expanded in scale and maintained long term.

Otherwise, the challenge faced by state and territory governments in rationing scarce social housing will become tougher still.

Read more:
The many faces of social housing – home to 1 in 10 Australians

Hal Pawson receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC), the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI), Launch Housing, and Crisis UK. This story is part of The Conversation’s Breaking the Cycle series, which is about escaping cycles of disadvantage. It is supported by a philanthropic grant from the Paul Ramsay Foundation.

– ref. Australia’s social housing system is critically stressed. Many eligible applicants simply give up – https://theconversation.com/australias-social-housing-system-is-critically-stressed-many-eligible-applicants-simply-give-up-183530

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicole Messina, Team Leader in the Infectious Diseases Research Group, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute; Honorary Fellow at The University of Melbourne Department of Paediatrics., Murdoch Children’s Research Institute

After virtually disappearing for two years, influenza is back and rapidly sweeping across Australia – and the world.

So far this year, there have been more than 15,000 flu cases in New South Wales alone, of which more than 12,000 were diagnosed since the start of May.

The Queensland government has announced free flu vaccinations and NSW is considering doing the same. Australian Medical Association president Omar Khorshid has urged the incoming federal government to provide free flu shots for all Australians.

Meanwhile, COVID cases continue to mount as colder weather sets in.

The good news is, we know the influenza vaccine can protect against the flu – and a growing body of international research suggests the flu jab might also protect against COVID.

A recent study of 30,774 health-care workers in Qatar found influenza vaccine could guard against COVID, particularly severe illness.

These promising results have implications not only for COVID, but also for future pandemics caused by newly emergent germs. However, there are some reasons for caution.

Read more:
Should I get the 2022 flu vaccine? And how effective is it?

New flu findings

The Qatar study, released online this month and yet to be independently verified, used data from more than 12,000 health-care workers who had a COVID test during the 2020 flu season.

The researchers compared influenza vaccination rates between the 576 health-care workers who got COVID, and a similar group of 2,000 health-care workers who had tested negative to COVID in the last three months of 2020.

Those who had an influenza vaccination at least two weeks before COVID testing were 30% less likely to have a positive COVID test and almost 90% less likely to develop severe or critical COVID, compared with those who hadn’t been recently vaccinated against flu.

This finding is consistent with similar retrospective studies from Brazil, Italy, Iran, the Netherlands and the United States, which have also shown protective effects of influenza vaccination against COVID.

Common to studies of people who work in the health field, there is the risk people in the study are health-conscious. It’s likely they are more inclined to follow COVID protection advice such as adhering to lockdowns, physical isolation and mask wearing. They are also more likely to get their influenza vaccination. This potential bias is reduced in the Qatar study by focusing only on health-care workers, however it can’t be ruled out as contributing to the findings.

There are two further considerations to the implications of this study. First, the health-care workers included in the study were young and not assessed to see if they had other health conditions. This means the effects seen in the study may not hold true for older people and those with other health issues – both of whom are at greater risk of severe COVID.

Second, the study used data collected before COVID vaccines and before COVID variants such as Omicron. This means the impact of the findings in the current global circumstances are unclear.

In the study, the average time for COVID testing after flu vaccination was six weeks. With the study using data only during a three-month period, it is unclear whether this protective effect of the flu vaccine against COVID might last beyond a few months.

Beneficial ‘off-target’ effects of vaccines

In the early months of the pandemic – while COVID vaccines were still in development – researchers were intensely interested in the possibility existing vaccines might provide some protection against SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID).

This is because of emerging evidence some vaccines can have additional beneficial effects, greater than just protecting against the infection they were originally designed for.

This bonus protection has mostly been linked to live-attenuated vaccines, made from a weakened forms of the germ or a related germ. For example, both the 100-year-old tuberculosis vaccine called Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) and measles vaccines have been shown to reduce infant deaths from any cause.

This protection is thought to be because these vaccines can kick-start the immune system so it protects the body more effectively from infectious diseases.

To understand more about the bonus protection of routine vaccines like these against COVID, multiple randomised controlled trials are under way.

One multinational clinical trial, called the BRACE trial, has enrolled almost 7,000 health-care workers to determine whether BCG vaccine reduces the incidence of symptomatic and severe COVID. So far, we have found BCG vaccination changes the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 in a way that could reduce severe COVID illness.

However, this trial is ongoing and we need to wait for the final results to determine whether this immune response translates into real-world protection against COVID.

Read more:
Cases are high and winter is coming. We need to stop ignoring COVID

Decreasing COVID’s inflammatory response?

For influenza vaccines, one plausible explanation for their protective effect against COVID is that influenza vaccination reduces the risk of having influenza and SARS-CoV-2 infection at the same time.

Co-infection with flu and COVID is associated with more severe disease. Prevention of this could reduce the severity of COVID. However, due to exceptionally low influenza rates in Qatar during the 2020 flu season, this is unlikely to explain the recent findings.

Like the BCG vaccine, influenza vaccines might decrease potentially harmful inflammatory immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection. Severe COVID has been linked to overactive inflammatory responses which can cause damage to tissues and result in severe symptoms. By reducing inflammation these routine vaccines might prevent related tissue damage.

Future protection

These promising results emerge as we grapple with growing COVID cases and the pandemic rolls on.

More research is needed to confirm what researchers are beginning to report. But the potential for existing vaccines, such as the flu jab and BCG, to provide protection against COVID gives rise to the possibility they could also help to protect against future pandemics.

However exciting these new results are, the best evidence remains that influenza vaccination protects us from the flu and COVID vaccination and boosters protect against COVID and severe illness.

Read more:
Flu, COVID and flurona: what we can and can’t expect this winter

Nicole Messina receives funding from the NHMRC.

The Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) leads the BRACE trial (for which Dr Nicole Messina is the BRACE trial Biosample and Laboratory Lead) across 36 sites in five countries. It is supported by the Victorian Government’s Operational Infrastructure Support Programme. The BRACE trial is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (INV‐017302), the Minderoo Foundation (COV‐001), Sarah and Lachlan Murdoch, the Royal Children’s Hospital Foundation (2020‐1263 BRACE Trial), Health Services Union NSW, the Peter Sowerby Foundation, the Ministry of Health Government of South Australia, the NAB Foundation, the Calvert‐Jones Foundation, the Modara Pines Charitable Foundation, the UHG Foundation Pty Ltd, Epworth Healthcare and individual donors.

– ref. As flu cases surge, vaccination may offer some bonus protection from COVID as well – https://theconversation.com/as-flu-cases-surge-vaccination-may-offer-some-bonus-protection-from-covid-as-well-183613

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nerilie Abram, Chief Investigator for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes; Deputy Director for the Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science, Australian National University

The 2022 federal election will go down in history as Australia’s climate change election.

Australians resoundingly voted for ambition on climate action, something which has been missing for a decade under a Coalition government, along with integrity and gender equality.

I am a climate scientist who has spent the last two decades studying how our climate is changing and sharing our increasingly urgent and frightening findings with the world.

This is my plea to our newly elected politicians.

Dear Mr Albanese,

Congratulations on becoming the 31st Prime Minister of Australia.

If you wanted a clear mandate that the people are ready for ambitious and immediate climate action, then Australian voters certainly delivered that last Saturday. And how could they not?

Climate change is already impacting every inhabited part of our planet. Over the past few years Australians have suffered devastating bushfires and killer heat, catastrophic off-the-charts flooding, damage along our coasts from relentlessly rising seas, and the drawn-out hardship of droughts.

I spend every day looking at the data that tells us each of those climate extremes will keep getting worse.

Every tonne of carbon dioxide that we emit adds to global warming. And every fraction of a degree of further warming will cause climate impacts to become more frequent and more intense.

So I implore you and the Labor Party to govern like every decision, and every year, matters. Because it really, really does.

You’ll have a chance to prove on the world stage that the Australian Government is serious about climate action at the international climate conference, COP27, in Egypt later this year. You’ve got some work to do, because COP26 last year was an embarrassment for our nation.

Read more:
‘The Australian way’: how Morrison trashed brand Australia at COP26

We took little more than a three-word slogan to the conference in Glasgow, and came away from those negotiations as a climate villain. The world is waiting for Australia to increase our 2030 commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions at COP27.

Labor’s plan to reduce Australia’s emissions by 43% by 2030 is a good start. Though it will still put us on track to contribute to more than 2℃ of global warming (roughly twice the warming level we’re currently at).

Fortunately, the international climate negotiations framework is designed for ratcheting up ambition over time. This means Australia can still increase our 2030 ambition further and do our fair share to limit warming to 1.5℃, which would be a much safer pathway.

To the Greens,

Well done on your record-high vote. Yours was a campaign with a climate policy aligned to the science of what’s needed from Australia to keep the 1.5℃ warming goal alive. I hope you’re able to push from inside the house and the senate to make that a reality.

The strength of the Greens vote in Queensland perhaps shouldn’t have been a surprise to me. Nowhere else in Australia would the difference between 1.5℃ and 2℃ of warming be more apparent.

Read more:
Why 2℃ of global warming is much worse for Australia than 1.5℃

Earlier this year I wrote the saddest research proposal I ever have. A decade ago I could not have imagined having to pen anything like it, but here we are.

I study climate change and its impacts using corals that have grown in the ocean for centuries. These ancient corals faithfully record natural and human-caused changes in the environment around them.

But now those very coral records I use to study the climate are being destroyed by climate change. My proposal is to call for an urgent international effort to recover valuable scientific samples from coral reefs before they’re lost forever.

Amid all of the bluster of this election campaign, the Great Barrier Reef quietly bleached for the fourth time in the last seven years. As scientists we knew to expect this – at 1.5℃ of warming 90% of reefs will have been lost, and at 2℃ the wondrous Great Barrier Reef as we know it today will no longer exist.

This most recent bleaching event hits me hard. Maybe it hit Queensland voters hard this time too?

I wish the elected Greens well as they work inside Parliament to do what’s needed to give the reef a fighting chance.

To the Teal Independents,

Thank you for putting yourselves forward. For seeing the political status quo was not working for the people, and having the courage and conviction to provide Australians with an alternative.

It is well recognised that women need to be at the heart of climate action and solutions. Globally, female representation in politics has been shown to lead to stronger climate policies and better conservation outcomes.

It makes me proud and hopeful to see the Australian people have elected so many strong, talented, independent women to our parliament.

To every member of our new parliament,

Its time to get to work. The federal government has squandered the last decade and made the job harder.

But fortunately, Australia’s state governments have made a start while federal government dallied. Australia’s states and territories adopted net-zero targets before the federal government, and together those commitments are estimated to represent defacto national emission reductions of around 37-42% by 2030.

Tackling the climate crisis is going to take a scale of ambition unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. But we have many solutions for decarbonising our energy and transport sectors ready to go. We will have to deploy these as quickly as possible to make the significant cuts to emissions needed this decade.

In future decades we will also need solutions that don’t yet exist. This includes technologies and enhanced nature-based solutions that will help us to draw carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere. These need to be underpinned by an investment in fundamental science today, so we can forge a pathway to those as-yet-unknown solutions.

People in Australia, and our neighbours in the Pacific, also need your help. Climate extremes are going to worsen and we need investment in the climate science and modelling capabilities to be able to improve adaptation decisions at the local scale.

To paraphrase our new Prime Minister, together you can end the climate wars and seize the abundant opportunities that Australia has to be a climate leader.

Good luck.

Read more:
The election showed Australia’s huge appetite for stronger climate action. What levers can the new government pull?

Nerilie Abram receives funding from the Australian Research Council (Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes; Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science) and the Department of Agriculture, Water and Environment (NESP2 climate hub).

– ref. I am a climate scientist – and this is my plea to our newly elected politicians – https://theconversation.com/i-am-a-climate-scientist-and-this-is-my-plea-to-our-newly-elected-politicians-183540

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Keating, Visiting Fellow, College of Business & Economics, Australian National University

The new government has inherited an extraordinarily difficult budget situation.

The budget deficit amounts to 3.5% of gross domestic product this financial year and it will be almost as high next financial year at 3.4%, after which the budget papers project deficits for the entire ten-year forecast period.

At the same time, the unemployment rate has fallen to 3.9% – the lowest in five decades. It is so low it is below the 4.25% the treasury believes is needed to stop inflation accelerating.

In other words, the economy is operating at full capacity and inflationary pressures are mounting, with businesses complaining about difficulties in finding labour and supplies.

Households and businesses are flush with cash saved during the pandemic and prepared to spend more.

A responsible budget would immediately wind back the deficit and get to surplus within two years. Without that kind of restraint, inflationary pressures will mount and interest rates will climb higher, hurting mortgagees and crimping growth.

Labor’s budget strategy

During the election campaign, Labor’s budget strategy was built around:

• minimising the number of its own expenditure proposals, so that next year they would add only a net A$1.1 billion to the estimated $77.9 billion deficit

• “quality” spending proposals, with Labor claiming its plan would “alleviate supply-side pressures by enhancing the productive capacity of the economy”

• a crackdown on multinational tax avoidance and achieving substantial savings by auditing the previous government’s “rorts, waste and mismanagement”

So far, so good. But it is extremely unlikely this strategy will be sufficient to restore budget balance, and impossible for it to restore it within two years.

For one thing, even though much of Labor’s proposed spending is worthwhile, it will add to aggregate demand (spending) in the economy in the same way as would bad or wasteful spending.

For another, even though some of Labor’s new expenditures on things such as a better-trained workforce and cheaper child care can be expected to accelerate economic growth, they are unlikely to lift the growth rate growth rate above that underpinning the treasury forecasts in the pre-election outlook.

These forecasts assume that “the underlying rate of growth in labour productivity will converge over a ten-year period to the average growth rate in labour productivity over the 30 years to 2018-19 of 1.5% per annum”.

But in the first six years of the Coalition government, pre-COVID, the annual rate of labour productivity growth averaged only 0.85%.

Furthermore, this slowdown is common to all developed economies. This means while Labor’s new programs can be expected to boost economic capacity, it is very unlikely they will lift growth above what the treasury already assumes.

Maybe an extra 4% of GDP

As important, essential services are struggling after years of under-funding.

Labor has recognised this in instances such as health, aged care, facilitating the reduction of carbon emissions, and national security, but its costings made insufficient allowance for the spending that will be required.

And more will be needed in other areas, such as higher education and research.

Overall, my rough guesstimate is that even after the savings to be had from the audit of the former government’s “rorts, waste and mismanagement”, the new government will still need to raise additional revenue equivalent to around 4% of GDP if it is to close the deficit and adequately fund essential services.

First, find out what’s needed…

Unfortunately, this extra revenue can’t be expected to come from economic growth for the reasons already given. It will have to come from raising more tax.

And that’s a problem. Australia has developed a culture where low taxation has been seen as an end in itself. For Labor to succeed, it needs to change the debate.

To this end, the new government has to quickly establish an expert committee (not a royal commission made up of lawyers) to conduct a fundamental public investigation of how much extra revenue is needed to guarantee the funding of the essential services that are underperforming and underfunded.

Read more:
A new dawn over stormy seas: how Labor should manage the economy

Instead of being constrained by some arbitrary taxation cap, the committee would develop a bottom-up estimate of how much in total is required to ensure the cost-effective provision of essential services.

In developing this bottom-up estimate, the committee would be supported by more specialist committees, such as the proposed committee to be chaired by the incoming minister for health. The eventual report would provide a carefully considered and expert assessment of how much extra spending is needed.

…then work out how to pay for it

It should also be noted that even if the extra revenue required amounted to as much as 4-5% of GDP, it would leave Australia more-lightly taxed than almost every other OECD country in Europe.

Following public consideration of that first inquiry, a second inquiry would establish how best to raise the additional revenue required. Again, the inquiry process, the evidence produced, and the final report, would be instrumental in achieving public support for the types of tax reform that were needed

These inquiries and what follows will inevitably take time – years not days.

Read more:
Stand by for the oddly designed Stage 3 tax cut that will send middle earners backwards and give high earners thousands

That means that some of what Labor wants to do will take time. Some will have to be part of Labor’s platform for a second term.

But the restoration of the budget balance is urgent. It could be accelerated if Labor grasped the nettle and rescinded the Stage 3 tax cuts it has agreed to.

These Stage 3 cuts cost $15.7 billion in their first year (2024-25), climbing to $37 billion per year in ten years’ time. Very few taxpayers will notice, because they are directed towards the 10% of taxpayers with incomes greater than $120,000.

Small targets can’t offer big services

Labor has been fearful of debating taxation ever since the 2019 election, presenting itself as a small target.

This means it has served up a contradiction. Australians have been promised the services they need without a tax setup that will pay for them.

In 2022 Australians voted for change. Albanese and Treasurer Chalmers need to build on that and change the debate around tax. Now is the right time to start.

It needs to get Australians to understand what American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes was getting at when he said taxes are what we pay for a civilised society.

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

– ref. Memo to Labor: you need more tax, working out how much more is urgent – https://theconversation.com/memo-to-labor-you-need-more-tax-working-out-how-much-more-is-urgent-183638

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cain Polidano, Senior Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne

Concerned that many people won’t have enough retirement savings even with compulsory superannuation, since 2003 the Australian government has had a scheme to encourage low and middle-income earners to voluntarily put more into superannuation.

The Superannuation Co-Contribution Scheme currently provides 50 cents for every dollar voluntarily contributed, up to A$1,000, by anyone earning less than $42,000. (There are tapered co-contributions for those with incomes up to $57,000.)

To date the scheme has cost more than $10 billion – or $12.7 billion in today’s dollars. Last financial year it paid out about $127 million. Over the next three years it is expected to cost $365 million.

So what is it achieving? Not much, it turns out.

Our analysis of taxation data since 2000 suggests the scheme has made little difference to lifting voluntary super contributions by low and middle-income earners.

Most significantly, our findings indicate the scheme does little more than provide a bonus to those who would have put money into super anyway.

Given the need to rein in public debt, the new Albanese government should consider discontinuing the co-contribution scheme as “low-hanging fruit” – an easy budget cutback that will harm few people.

Read more:
How to camouflage $150 billion in spending: call it ‘tax expenditure’

How we analysed the scheme

The co-contribution scheme was introduced 2003-04 by the Howard government as part of its “Better Superannuation System” reforms meant to encourage higher contributions.

Initially the co-contribution was dollar-for-dollar. In 2004-05 it was increased to $1.50 for every dollar. In 2009-10 the Rudd government reduced it to $1 and in 2012-13 the Gillard government cut it to 50 cents.

To evaluate the scheme, we used a data set from the Australian Taxation Office known as the Australian Longitudinal Information Files (ALife). This contains a 10% anonymised sample of Australian superannuation and tax records that currently goes back to 1991.

We analysed records from 2000 onwards, looking at the super contributions of anyone who earned less than $80,000 for at least one year between 1999-2000 and 2016-17.
This totalled 1.3 million individuals. Of these, 730,000 were eligible for a co-contribution in at least one year.

Before the scheme began, about 14.5% of those subsequently eligible for the co-contribution made voluntary contributions to superannuation.

Our analysis shows only marginal effects on the rate of voluntary contributions – even when the co-contribution rate was double or three times higher than it is now.

At a co-contribution rate of 50 cents on the dollar, the scheme has increased contributions by 1 percentage point.

At the previous rate of $1, the increase in super contributions was 1.5 percentage points. Even at the past rate of $1.50, it was just 3.5 percentage points.

In reading these estimates it’s important to note they aren’t simply percentage changes to the 14.5% contribution rate prior to the scheme. They are generated by an econometric model that has allowed us to measure changes in super contributions when people gain or lose eligibility for the co-contribution scheme, then compare those to changes in contributions of people whose eligibility did not change.

Who has benefited most?

The biggest increases in contributions were by high-income earners who happened to qualify in a particular year due to a temporary drop in income, as well by partnered women.

Those normally in the top 25% of income earners were four times more likely to take advantage of the scheme than those normally in the bottom 25%.

Women with partners were more than twice as likely to contribute as single women or men with partners, and four times more likely than single men. The likely explanation for this is that the scheme has been used by women with higher-earning partners.

The following chart shows these average effects across the life of the scheme.

Impacts on sub-group voluntary after-tax contribution rates

Strikingly, our analysis indicates those taking advantage of the scheme would have made slightly higher voluntary super contributions without any co-contribution.

The difference is slight – on average of $20 to $50 a year, depending on the co-contribution rate – but the whole point of the scheme is to encourage higher contributions, not provide a subsidy for people to contribute at the same (or a marginally lower) rate.

Read more:
Yes, women retire with less than men, but boosting compulsory super won’t help

Failing to make a difference here and overseas

These disappointing results from the scheme are in line with findings of similar schemes in the United States and Germany.

There are two possible reasons.

The first is that people may be unaware of the scheme. But we find no evidence for this. For example, our analysis indicates those who use tax agents – who are likely to be aware of the scheme and pass on such knowledge to their clients – are no more likely to use the scheme than those who do their own tax return.

The second reason is the more obvious one.

Most people on lower incomes don’t have spare cash to put into super. This is why increases have been minor even with a matching payments rate three times higher than now. If you don’t have the spare cash, it doesn’t make much difference a what rate the co-contribution is set.

Our findings cast serious doubt on the point of the superannuation co-contribution scheme. Despite its relative simplicity and generosity, it has done little to lift the retirement savings of low and middle-income Australians as intended.

The real beneficiaries of the scheme have been the small minority of eligible people who were already contributing. For them, this has been a windfall that has allowed them to reduce their personal contributions while still achieving their desired contribution levels.

Read more:
Retirement incomes review finds problems more super won’t solve

Cain Polidano receives funding from Australian Research Council.

Ha Vu receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Marc Chan receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Roger Wilkins receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Super co-contribution has cost $10 billion to help the wrong Australians – so let’s scrap it – https://theconversation.com/super-co-contribution-has-cost-10-billion-to-help-the-wrong-australians-so-lets-scrap-it-180680

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Tregear, Principal Fellow and Professor of Music, The University of Melbourne

Opera Australia has received outstanding reviews for its Melbourne season of Richard Wagner’s opera Lohengrin.

The casting of German singer Jonas Kaufmann in the title role has been universally praised. Kaufmann demonstrates to the hilt the kinds of vocal skill and dramatic artistry that have led him to be considered by many to be the greatest tenor in the world today.

The staging, however, has not been received so positively.

The opera is directed by Frenchman Olivier Py, in a co-production with the national opera of Belgium, the Théâtre Royale de la Monnaie in Brussels.

Wagner drew inspiration for Lohengrin from Wolfram von Eschenbach’s 13th century rendering of the legend of the Knight of the Swan, alongside actual events from the foundation years of the Holy Roman Empire around the 10th century.

In Cy’s rendering, however, we are presented with an apocalyptic post-World War II landscape where death reigns. Graffiti daubed on walls quotes from Paul Celan’s poem Todesfuge (1945). Other scenic interpolations are drawn from esoteric Nazi iconography – such the Celtic Cross and the Black Sun (Schwarze Sonne).

This is not unusual. Over the past 80 years or so, operas have increasingly been reframed to provide a vehicle for commentary: either on the composer and society that created them, or on our own times. The original plot and setting is something to be riffed off, rather than revered or reproduced.

In Europe, useful background and context for these interpretative overlays is usually provided to the audience through accompanying program essays.

In Australia, we seem to be missing out on such outreach.

The director’s opera

This kind of opera production is commonly known in opera circles as Regieoper, or director’s opera.

The most influential early practitioner was Richard Wagner’s grandson, Wieland Wagner (1917–1966). In the years immediately after the second world war, Wieland tried to distance his grandfather’s operas – and the festival theatre he built for them in Bayreuth, Germany – from their prominent appropriation by the vanquished Nazi regime.

Typically, he substituted the naturalistic settings of the original works with minimalist stagings that foregrounded their underlying psychological meanings.

Subsequent Regieoper directors have been more interested to draw our attention precisely to the historical and ethical fault lines in these (and other) operatic works. Such productions commonly ask the audience to reassess the value (and values) which may have been simply presumed in the opera’s original staging.

Melbourne-born director Barrie Kosky’s 2017 production of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is a celebrated recent example. Here the opera’s plot – based around a medieval music competiton – is re-framed to put aspects of the composer’s infamous antisemitism on trial.

Read more:
Why we must keep talking about Wagner and antisemitism

But such directorial interventions rely on the presumption that audiences are already aware of the history and context of the original.

In the case of a German opera-going public watching a German opera, this may be a reasonable assumption. In Australia, arguably, it is less so.

The importance of the program essay

In many other countries, helpful background information and context is offered to audiences in the accompanying program.

It seems folly to assume a Melbourne audience will instinctively be able to appreciate how an 1848 opera based on a German medieval fable might serve as a commentary on events from 1945.

When this Lohengrin opened at the Théâtre Royale it was accompanied by substantial program essays that detailed not only why the Lohengrin story first attracted the attention of its notoriously politically minded composer, but also why Py now saw fit to link the work to Germany’s more recent past.

No such explanatory material was found in the program supplied by Opera Australia.

An otherwise fine essay by Wagner scholar Heath Lees provided some general historical background, but it offers no bridge between the work and what the audience now sees on stage. No mention was made, either, of the remarkable first Australian performances of Lohengrin in Melbourne in 1877.

As much as the opportunity to witness Kaufmann’s vocal mastery might yet have been “enough to justify the price of the tickets”, Opera Australia does the art form no favours if it gives the impression it is first and foremost just a vehicle for a vocal superstar.

Ironically, such an impoverishment of theatrical, and indeed social, ambition for opera was a danger that Wagner himself famously rallied against.

An informed audience

Opera Australia should have enthusiastically seized the opportunity to educate its audience about why this production took the form it did. Its public role, after all, should not be just to entertain us, but also to inform and at times – as Regieoper seeks to do – challenge us.

By actively helping to set the scene, as it were, Opera Australia can also show how historic works like Lohengrin – nominally separated from our everyday lives by content, time or place – can still speak meaningfully to us, whether or not they are presented in a “traditional” or Regieoper garb.

Heritage art forms like opera ought to be able to sit comfortably alongside cutting-edge contemporary work as part of a fully rounded national culture but audiences should always be encouraged to understand and engage with that heritage critically.

Ultimately, encouraging a healthy and honest dialogue between our various pasts and our multifaceted present is one sure way we have to imagine a better future.

Read more:
How Australian opera lost the plot

Peter Tregear is chair of Melbourne-based not-for-profit chamber opera company IOpera.

– ref. The singing was great – but what was it about? Why opera companies should explain themselves better – https://theconversation.com/the-singing-was-great-but-what-was-it-about-why-opera-companies-should-explain-themselves-better-183133

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

Peter Dutton has declared there is more to him than his tough side, as he formally announces he will stand for the Liberal leadership.

Dutton, set to be unopposed when the Liberals meet next week, also included with his statement a testament from wife Kirilly, who described him as compassionate and witty, saying he hid a lot of his emotion from the public.

The former defence minister, who is from Queensland, portrayed himself as more complex that his hard-man public image. But he also said that in a prime minister, “you need someone who won’t buckle in hard times and will stand up for our country and I have proven that in the portfolios I’ve had”.

Although accepting there is no one else, Liberals are divided over the prospect of Dutton, from the right, as leader.

This reflects the differences within the party about whether, after being defeated by Labor and losing seats to a wave of teals, it should now tack right or left.

There is concern about the entrenched negativity towards Dutton in the public mind, shown in his low rating in polls, and the difficulty of selling him in Melbourne and Sydney.

The Liberals had expected that if they lost the election Josh Frydenberg would become leader, but he was defeated by teal independent Monique Ryan.

Former home affairs minister Karen Andrews said on Wednesday Dutton would be elected unopposed and predicted former environment minister Sussan Ley, from NSW, would be deputy.

Dutton’s bid to broaden his image echoes a similar attempt during his challenge to Malcolm Turnbull in 2018, when he welcomed the chance to “smile and maybe show a different side”.

In his statement Dutton highlighted that he came from the suburbs, as some in the party are arguing its future lies more in the suburbs than in the urban seats that have been lost in this election.

Dutton said his “work ethic is second to none and I have the skill and experience having served five leaders and have learnt from each. I have held portfolios in government and opposition, including: defence, home affairs, health, finance, assistant treasurer, sport and employment.”

He said he’d had “tough jobs – firstly as a policeman dealing with serious sexual assaults and murders, to home affairs minister where I deported drug traffickers and child sex offenders”.

But “most people have only seen that side of me.

“I hope now, in moving from such tough portfolios, the Australian public can see the rest of my character. The side my family, friends and colleagues see.

“The side my community sees where they have elected me eight times. I come from the suburbs and I have never changed my values or forgotten where I have come from.”

Dutton also indicated he accepted the Liberal party’s broad nature.

“We aren’t the Moderate Party. We aren’t the Conservative Party. We are Liberals. We are the Liberal Party.

“We believe in families – whatever their composition. Small and micro businesses. For aspirational hard working ‘forgotten people’ across the cities, suburbs, regions and in the bush.”

Dutton said he was raised by political mentors John Howard and Peter Costello.

“I was a minister under John and assistant treasurer under Peter.

“Things are going to be tough under Labor – higher interest rates, cost of living, inflation and electricity prices.

“Labor talked a big game on the economy. They now have to deliver and we will hold them to account.

“We will be a strong alternative at the next election with economic policies to help, not harm people. This will be in stark contrast to what we will get under Labor.”

Kirilly Dutton said her husband was “an amazing father and the kids adore him.

“He has a great sense of humour – very dry and witty but he also has an incredible compassion. Particularly when it comes to the protection of women and children.

“He hides a lot of his emotion from the public but he gets most upset at reports of children or women being sexually abused or harmed. It obviously stems from his time as a policeman working in that area but it’s also from being the eldest of five kids growing up in the suburbs.”

On Wednesday Dave Sharma, who lost Wentworth to “teal” candidate Allegra Spender, said people had been “almost visceral” in their reaction to Scott Morrison.

“They would say that he is too religious, didn’t like he carried coal into parliament, they didn’t believe his sincerity on climate change and didn’t like our handling of Brittany Higgins and Grace Tame,” Sharma said.

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

– ref. Dutton, set to become Liberal leader, wants people to see ‘the rest of my character’ – https://theconversation.com/dutton-set-to-become-liberal-leader-wants-people-to-see-the-rest-of-my-character-183838

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Erik Eklund, Professor of History, Federation University Australia

The recent federal election saw some close calls but few surprises in the regions, where wild electoral swings are rare.

But we should look closer at two regional seats that straddle the NSW/Victorian border: Eden-Monaro and Gippsland. Despite their geographic proximity, these two seats repeatedly return very different results.

Gippsland shows the risk for Labor of never seriously contesting a “safe” Nationals seat, while the example of Eden-Monaro shows it’s possible for Labor to win regional seats if enough resources and time are put in over the long term.

A bellweather seat and a ‘quiet’ regional

The New South Wales seat of Eden-Monaro takes in the far south coast, the Monaro region, and the town of Queanbeyan bordering the ACT.

It’s widely regarded as a bellwether seat because it is usually held by whichever party wins government. This election, sitting Labor member Kristy McBain was returned, with her primary vote up 4.4% and her two-party-preferred vote up by 7.8% to 58.7%.

The neighbouring seat of Gippsland, by contrast, is the typical”quiet” regional, being held by Nationals and their predecessors for more than 100 years.

Gippsland is next to Eden-Monaro on the southern side of the border from Mallacoota and Cann River in the east, through to the Latrobe Valley towns of Traralgon, Morwell and Churchill in the west. At the 2022 election, long-standing Nationals MP Darren Chester increased his primary vote by 1.3% and two-party-preferred vote by 4.4% to 71.1%.

How can we explain such differences across these neighbouring regional electorates?

Gippsland: home to a long-standing incumbent

Chester has been the member for Gippsland since 2008. This level of incumbency gives him a great advantage.

Major parties have increasingly run targeted seat campaigns funnelling resources and volunteers into metropolitan marginals. In other words, marginal city seats get all the love.

This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Safe seats are not contested and the incumbent is easily returned, often with an increased majority. This makes future efforts even less likely.

The last major campaign that saw a federal Labor leader visit the seat of Gippsland was Kevin Rudd’s visit before the Gippsland by-election in June 2008. At that time the seat was still within striking distance for Labor with only a 5.9% swing needed.

Eden-Monaro: a short drive from parliament

Eden-Monaro by contrast has a high profile and national standing. Parties want to win it, academics have often studied it and senior politicians are regular visitors.

Proximity to Canberra is a key factor: Eden-Monaro is just a short drive from parliament house.

In the early stages of Anthony Albanese’s leadership, he staked his reputation as a new opposition leader on a “captain’s pick” in Eden-Monaro – former Bega Valley Shire Mayor Kristy McBain.

The strategy paid off. McBain won a narrow victory at the July 2020 by-election.

Drilling down into specific booth votes in Eden-Monaro reveals further important differences.

Both Queanbeyan and the Latrobe Valley towns have a bloc of Labor voters. But while Labor wins decisively in most Queanbeyan booths, it barely outpolls the Nationals in the Valley, and in some cases comes in second. This is likely due to the privatisation and de-industrialisation in the energy sector, which affects jobs in that area.

Both electorates have a small though committed band of Greens who secure 6% to 10% of the vote, and another 10% goes to minor parties such as the United Australia Party and One Nation. But Labor’s capacity to remain competitive in the small rural towns of Eden-Monaro stands out.

Labor polled 43% of the primary vote at Bombala in the southern portion of Eden-Monaro, beating the main Liberal rival at 38%.

Just two hour’s drive south in Orbost, in the Gippsland electorate, Labor polled less than 16% of the primary vote. The incumbent Nationals won 58%.

This strong Labor vote in the small towns of Eden-Monaro hint at the continuation of a deeper tradition, which equated rural working people with the Labor interest.

This tradition is alive and well in Eden-Monaro, as former Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s poor 2020 reception in fire-ravaged Cobargo showed. (Incidentally, Cobargo returned a Labor vote of 38%, beating the main Liberal challenger at 29%.)

A tale of two electorates

So small town Eden-Monaro votes Labor while small town Gippsland votes National – even though they’re so geographically close. Why?

Incumbency in Gippsland has enabled the Nationals to oust Labor as the main party of small business owners and small town working class families.

Fewer resources and fewer high profile visits have shaped a long tradition of Labor underperformance, while the Nationals are buoyed and replenished by regular electoral success.

Chester’s performance in the lower house undoubtedly assists the state-wide Senate vote helping the Coalition secure at least two Senate quotas.

By not seriously contesting the safe regionals, Labor worsens its declining primary vote.

But the example of Eden-Monaro however shows this is not necessarily the case, and that a well resourced campaign over many elections could turn an otherwise safe Nationals seat.

Erik Eklund’s partner was the Labor candidate for Gippsland at the 2019 federal election, and he worked as a volunteer on her campaign.

– ref. Eden-Monaro and Gippsland are next-door neighbours: why is one seat safe and the other marginal? – https://theconversation.com/eden-monaro-and-gippsland-are-next-door-neighbours-why-is-one-seat-safe-and-the-other-marginal-183724

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin Moffitt, Associate Professor, Australian Catholic University

Many commentators tipped Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party (UAP) and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation to perform well this election by scooping up the “freedom” and anti-vax vote from voters angry about how the pandemic was handled.

But this wasn’t the case.

The parties did see a modest rise in their vote, but not enough to translate into significant electoral success. Neither party won any seats in the lower house.

UAP candidate Ralph Babet is likely to pick up Victoria’s sixth Senate seat – in part thanks to preferences from the Coalition, who put UAP second on their how to vote cards in the state. But this may be all Palmer gets for his obscene campaign spending.

UAP leader and former Liberal MP Craig Kelly lost his seat of Hughes, and Palmer failed in his bid for a Queensland Senate spot.

One Nation also failed to pick up any extra Senate seats. Pauline Hanson is projected to hold onto her Senate seat, only just, while Malcolm Roberts continues as a Senator having earned a six year term in the 2019 federal election.

As a populism researcher, I’ve taken a keen interest in these minor parties. Here’s why I think they did so badly.

Read more:
What actually is populism? And why does it have a bad reputation?

United Australia Party

UAP garnered about an extra 0.7% of the national primary lower house vote compared to 2019 (for a total of 4.1%), after spending an estimated A$70–$100 million. In Queensland the party has thus far secured just 4.3% of the Senate vote – and this is where Palmer himself was the lead Senate candidate.

While in 2019, the party didn’t have much of a platform outside of being anti-Bill Shorten, this wasn’t the case in 2022. They had visible policies on cost-of-living, such as housing affordability and investing Australian superannuation funds in Australian companies.

The party also tried to position itself as the voice of the “freedom” movement, opposing COVID lockdowns and vaccine mandates.

The fact that none of this seemed to resonate – particularly their interest rate policies – surprises me.

I expected the party’s populist, anti-major party, “freedom” agenda to resonate in some parts of the country. For example, many predicted UAP would poll well in the outer suburbs of Melbourne where there’s high levels of anti-lockdown and anti-Dan Andrews sentiment.

While it did poll better than it has before in some of these areas, it didn’t translate into electoral success, nor make much of a dint in preferences as it did last election.

One Nation

One Nation struggled despite fielding candidates in 149 of 151 House of Representatives seats.

The party’s national primary lower house vote increased a bit – up about 1.8% to 4.9% – but this was mostly because it ran in many more seats than last election.

Early in the Senate vote count it looked like Hanson might lose her Senate seat, but now she’s projected to just hold on.

She faced fierce competition from Palmer, former Queensland Premier Campbell Newman, and a relatively unknown minor party called Legalise Cannabis Australia. Hanson is very well known – particularly in Queensland – so it was also surprising to see her fighting for her political life against a little known party.

6 reasons why UAP and One Nation flopped

So why did both parties fail to perform as well as some thought they might? Here are some of the key reasons:

1. They were competing for the same small segment of the electorate. Both are populist right parties, they tried to brand themselves as the parties of the “freedom” movement, and likely took votes off each other in the process.

2. They were also competing for votes against the right wing of the Coalition, some of whose candidates share very similar views in terms of sentiments regarding immigration and vaccination mandates.

3. The wind has been taken out of the sails of the “freedom” movement. Since lockdowns finished and almost all COVID restrictions have been phased out, the cause is not as urgent. This freedom banner brought together disparate groups – spanning from the far-right to “wellness” and alternative health groups – but the links between the groups were always tenuous. Now the shared enemy of lockdowns has disappeared, there doesn’t seem to be social, class or political linkages holding them together. If this election was held last year – or even a few months ago – both parties might’ve had more success.

4. Populists often campaign against the “corruption” of the ruling classes. However, it was hard for UAP or One Nation to get much traction on this as almost every non-Coalition party or candidate – from Labor, to the Greens to the teal independents – was also campaigning on the same issue.

5. One Nation’s anti-immigration stance is one of its key policies. The fact that Australia had barely any immigration since the beginning of the pandemic made campaigning on the party’s bread-and-butter issue very difficult.

6. There’s been a lot of talk about parties using “microtargeting” in this election, but UAP’s strategy was the opposite. Their mass advertising and huge billboards were the modern equivalent to throwing a bunch of leaflets out of a moving plane. This election suggests this doesn’t work – you can’t just bombard people.

Read more:
Is this the end of the two-party system in Australia? The Greens, teals and others shock the major parties

None of this means we should write UAP or One Nation off for good. Hanson has proven herself a mainstay of Australian politics, and returned from the political wilderness before.

Meanwhile, Palmer has now contested three separate federal elections – each time, seemingly with a completely different platform. With his deep pockets, who knows whether or what he will run on in 2025.

This federal election, however, was not a “populist moment” for these parties. The real story in 2022 is not on the right, but on the other side of politics.

Benjamin Moffitt receives funding from the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Early Career Researcher Award funding scheme and from the Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation.

– ref. Clive Palmer and One Nation flopped at the election. What happened? – https://theconversation.com/clive-palmer-and-one-nation-flopped-at-the-election-what-happened-183722

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matt McDonald, Associate Professor of International Relations, The University of Queensland

Before the 2019 federal election, many people expected Australia would vote for faster climate action. That, of course, didn’t happen. But just three years later, the climate election arrived at last. The question is – what changed?

In short: Reality hit. Over the Morrison government’s term, the east coast was ravaged by the Black Summer of megafires. Then came the devastating floods. These disasters proved to us what scientists have long predicted: climate change isn’t a future threat, it’s here, now.

Since 2019, Australia has been under growing international pressure to do more on climate, given we have (correctly) been seen as a laggard. With Biden replacing Trump, our isolation became clear at the Glasgow summit. Polls showed the result: more and more Australians named climate change as an important issue.

Morrison shrugged off these concerns with a non-binding “goal” of net zero by 2050. As Saturday’s election showed, Australians saw through these half-hearted measures and voted accordingly.

Three years of public concern and international pressure

Unexpected wins by the Greens in flood-affected seats along the Brisbane river gave a snapshot of voter sentiment. But earlier images of disaster – pensioners on rooftops in Lismore, overwhelmed firefighters and dying koalas – were hard to shake for many across the country.

In many ways, this election was a perfect storm for the Coalition. Since 2019, the impatience of the international community with Australian delay tactics was clear. Our Pacific neighbours had been consistently critical of Australia’s fossil fuel protectionism, regardless of promises of new funding for the region and the so-called Pacific step-up. Scott Morrison’s speech to a nearly empty room at the climate summit at Glasgow made our isolation clear.

Read more:
If 80% of Australians care about climate action, why don’t they vote like it?

Joe Biden’s victory in the US meant Australians increasingly saw our government as holdouts at the back of the international pack.

These changes came through in growing public concern. Polling in 2021 showed a substantial majority of Australians supported stronger emissions reduction commitments and a commitment to net zero emissions by 2050. Similarly, a YouGov poll in late 2021 found a majority of voters in every Australian seat wanted stronger action on climate change from the government. More than a quarter of voters rated climate change as the most important issue in determining their vote.

A day late, a dollar short

Despite the pressure and clear signals from voters, the Coalition went to the 2022 election with the emissions reduction targets announced by former Prime Minister Tony Abbott in 2015. In addition, they had a non-binding ‘goal’ to reach net zero emissions by 2050, announced only after serious pressure and internal haggling.

The public was sceptical of this promise, due to efforts by segments of the Coalition to immediately walk this back. Outspoken Nationals senator Matt Canavan suggested on election eve the government would consider walking away from its own net zero commitment.

Read more:
The election shows the conservative culture war on climate change could be nearing its end

With Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce leading the internal opposition to net zero, there were concerns the Nationals could hold Australia to ransom on climate even after the election.

We can’t say it was all climate – but it was a key factor

For the Coalition, navigating climate change during the election campaign proved far more challenging than in 2019.

Crucially, they found themselves fighting on multiple fronts. In blue ribbon seats in Sydney and Melbourne the Coalition was confronted and in many cases, beaten, by well-resourced ‘teal’ candidates. These independents appealed to a traditionally conservative electorate concerned about climate change but less likely to switch to a left-leaning party. Liberal candidates in these electorates promised more action on climate, but not much beyond that.

The Greens seemed an easier target for the government. Even so, the concentrated support for the third party in inner-city areas meant attacks by the government didn’t hurt.

Labor’s targets were more ambitious than the Coalition’s, which put them ahead for middle of the road voters concerned about climate change. But stung by their 2019 defeat, Labor actually went to the election with less ambitious emissions reductions targets than they had at the previous election: a 43% reduction by 2030. This made them a smaller target than in 2019 and able to avoid a Coalition scare campaign on costs to jobs and the economy. This might have cost them in inner-city seats like Brisbane’s Griffith with strong Greens campaigns. But it allowed them to hold seats with strong mining constituencies, like Hunter in NSW.

For the Coalition, the changing facts on the ground made it much harder to even run a scare campaign on the costs of climate action. The anticipated declining market for fossil fuels, significant and well-publicised government subsidies for the fossil fuel sector, the plummeting cost of renewables and the ballooning costs of climate change impacts all undermined the power of the narrative that Australia had to choose between economy and jobs or climate action.

Young voters registered to vote in record numbers, while we saw formidable ground campaigns from the Greens and teal independents.

Does this spell the end of toxic climate politics?

If 2022 was the long-anticipated climate election, is it also the end of the toxic politics of climate change in Australia?

That depends on how the Coalition deals with the sting of this defeat. Will they seize the chance for a reset on climate? Or will we see a further shift to the right? Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce has already signalled the possibility of abandoning net zero. With moderate Liberal MPs now thin on the ground, there’s no guarantee of bipartisanship.

If the Coalition doubles down on climate delaying tactics, it would ensure its electoral irrelevance and make genuine climate action easier to achieve in Australia, one of the world’s last holdouts.

The Conversation’s #Settheagenda poll of more than 10,000 readers found more than 60% rated climate change as the top concern for them this election

Matt McDonald has received funding from the Australian Research Council and the Economic and Social Research Council (UK)

– ref. After many false dawns, Australians finally voted for stronger climate action. Here’s why this election was different – https://theconversation.com/after-many-false-dawns-australians-finally-voted-for-stronger-climate-action-heres-why-this-election-was-different-183645

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Griffin, Associate Professor, Infectious Diseases and Microbiology, The University of Queensland

We’ve all become familiar with virus mutations over the course of the pandemic, and can all probably list off the COVID variants including Alpha, Delta and Omicron. But now we’re hearing more and more about subvariants, as Omicron mutates into Omicron BA.2, Omicron BA.4, Omicron XE, and more.

We know the virus is mutating as it spreads, but when is a new mutation a new variant, and when is it a subvariant? And what happens when they combine?

Read more:
What’s the new Omicron XE variant and should I be worried?

First, what are mutations?

When cells reproduce, they use a set of genetic instructions (made of DNA or RNA) to replicate. But given this is happening at such a rapid rate, sometimes errors can occur.

These errors, or changes in the genetic code, are also called mutations.

In complex organisms such as humans, we are pretty good at finding and fixing these mistakes. But when these finding and fixing processes fail, we see diseases such as cancer arise.

When mistakes happen during the copying of the genetic material in viruses, most of them leave the genetic material too broken to go on replicating, and that virus doesn’t survive.

Read more:
Why are there so many new Omicron sub-variants, like BA.4 and BA.5? Will I be reinfected? Is the virus mutating faster?

Occasionally, by random chance, these errors can happen in a section of the code that allows the virus to survive, and in the process, changes occur in the virus.

When it’s in a part of the virus that determines how it behaves, it can change the properties of the virus.

It may change the severity of the disease it causes, our ability to diagnose the virus with our current tests, or even how well treatments work.

Since it was first reported in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019, there have been more than 520 million recorded cases of COVID worldwide (and probably many more unrecorded cases). That’s a lot of virus replication, and a lot of opportunities for these types of changes to occur.

One of the reasons we have heard so much about these types of changes is our access to genomic sequencing, to determine the genetic code of the virus. This has allowed us to find even small changes in the 30,000-letter code of the virus, essentially in real time.

When these changes are found, the new virus can be described in many ways, mostly depending on how different the genetic code and the resulting properties of the virus are from the parent virus from which it arose.

Some terms also essentially mean the same thing and can be used interchangeably, depending on what field someone works in. While there are many agreed terms that are commonly used, there are not simple universal definitions.

What are variants? Are they different to strains?

A variant is where the genetic code has changed due to a mutation, or a number of mutations. A variant, while different genetically, does not necessarily differ in its behaviour from the parent virus.

The virus that causes COVID is a single species of coronavirus named SARS-CoV-2. For many other viruses (and other organisms), there are multiple “strains” where there have been very significant changes not only in the genetic code, but also in the biological properties and behaviour of the virus. Similarly, all dogs are the same species but there are different breeds, which look and act very differently.

Some researchers would say that so far there has not been a type of SARS-CoV-2 found that differs sufficiently to meet this definition, hence, for now, there is only one strain.

Other researchers, however, have suggested the variants that have displayed different behaviours satisfy the definition of being different strains.

Others again say a new variant that becomes dominant in a population earns the right to be called a strain.

What about variants of ‘interest’ and ‘concern’?

To describe the impact of the genetic changes on the behaviour of the virus, there have been a range of different types of variants described.

In collaboration with expert networks, in late 2020, given the emergence of variants that posed an increased risk, the World Health Organization (WHO) characterised “variants of interest” and “variants of concern”.

According to these WHO definitions, a “variant of interest” is a variant with genetic changes that are known or predicted to affect important virus characteristics. These include transmissibility, disease severity, protection from immune responses, reduced ability to find with diagnostic tests, or reduced effect of treatment.

Read more:
Why the COVID-19 variants are so dangerous and how to stop them spreading

To become a variant of concern, a new variant must also have been identified to cause significant transmission and be thought to pose an emerging risk to public health.

Basically, once the potential concerning property that made it a variant of interest has been found to be the case, a variant of interest will then become known as a “variant of concern”.

What are subvariants?

Omicron has been shown to be more infectious than its predecessors, hence has spread swiftly worldwide. Given the resulting abundant opportunities to reproduce, Omicron has had the opportunity to acquire specific mutations of its own.

These have not been deemed significant enough to satisfy the definitions to call them new variants. However, they have had some slightly different properties.

For this reason they have been referred to as “subvariants”. Initially we saw BA.2 arise, which was found to be slightly more infectious than the original Omicron, BA.1

Read more:
BA.2 is like Omicron’s sister. Here’s what we know about it so far

What are recombinants?

There are now a large number of Omicron subvariants, including BA.4, BA.5 and BA.2.12.1. BA.4 was detected in January and is essentially a mixture of BA.1 and BA.3 with some new mutations, making it slightly more infectious than preceding subvariants.

When viruses reproduce inside host cells, they can randomly collect pieces from multiple strains or variants when they reproduce, if the host cell happens to contain both strains or variants.

Given this is basically forming a combination of both virus this process is called recombination. When this happens, the resulting “recombinant” can have properties of either or both viruses.

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

– ref. When is a COVID mutation a new variant, and when is it a subvariant? And what’s a recombinant? – https://theconversation.com/when-is-a-covid-mutation-a-new-variant-and-when-is-it-a-subvariant-and-whats-a-recombinant-182333

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tess Parker, Research Fellow, Monash University

From February to May 2022, many places in Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia have seen record-breaking daily and monthly rainfall. Repeated periods of persistent and intense rain have caused devastating and widespread floods.

In Queensland and New South Wales alone, the floods and storms caused an estimated AU$3.35 billion in insured losses, making these the costliest floods in Australia’s history and the fifth most costly natural disaster. More than 20 people lost their lives.

Read more:
The east coast rain seems endless. Where on Earth is all the water coming from?

Similar events have occurred around the Southern Hemisphere. Brazil was hit with heavy rain, flash flooding and landslides in February and March, killing more than 200 people. In April and May it was South Africa’s turn, as torrential downpours destroyed homes and infrastructure, resulting in some 400 deaths and US$1.5 billion in property damage.

Behind most of these intense rain events lies a particular combination of weather conditions: a “cut-off low” over the coast, pinned in place by a “blocking high” out to sea. This configuration itself is not uncommon, but this year’s repeated events and their high impact have been unusual.

What caused the extreme rainfall this year?

Outside the tropics, weather is mainly driven by what are called “Rossby waves” or “planetary waves”. These are wiggles in the jet stream, which is a band of strong winds the upper atmosphere that goes right around the globe.

When winds are displaced to the north or south by mountains or weather systems, they can push part of the jet stream out of its normal position. This undulation in the jet stream is a Rossby wave.

Rossby waves usually then move eastward, guided by the jet stream. Under the right conditions the waves can amplify and break, just like ocean waves at the shore.

When this happens, the breaking wave can form a region of high pressure air at ground level, which may stay in one place for some time. This high-pressure region can in turn cause other weather systems (such as low-pressure systems bearing rain) to stall over one location.

Stalled weather systems that stay put for a long time can lead to prolonged downpours, but also to lengthy heat waves.

Read more:
The North American heatwave shows we need to know how climate change will change our weather

During the flooding on the east coast of Australia, an amplifying Rossby wave formed a high-pressure system over the Tasman Sea, as well as a low-pressure region in the upper atmosphere known as a “cut-off low”.

This setup provided the two ingredients required for rain: a supply of moisture, in the form of easterly winds around the high carrying moist air from the ocean to the land; and a mechanism to lift that moisture, provided by the presence of the cut-off low. As the low moved between southern Queensland and northern New South Wales, so did the rain.

The same fingerprint was also seen during the floods in South Africa and Brazil. For the flood events in south-west Western Australia, the moist onshore flow was boosted by a low between the coast and the high to the west over the Indian Ocean.

What does climate change mean for these events?

One of the most difficult challenges for atmospheric scientists is understanding how global warming will change the weather at the regional scale.

Weather forecasts are a crucial tool for mitigating the effects of extreme weather, providing predictions of such events up to a week in advance. Accurate forecasts are vital to afford critical time for response mobilisation, such as warnings, evacuations and deployment of emergency services.

At present, the El Niño–Southern Oscillation, a measure of sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, is in the La Niña phase for the second year in a row. La Niña is associated with rainier-than-normal conditions over north-eastern Australia, south-eastern Africa and northern Brazil.

Read more:
Stalled weather: how stuck air pressure systems drive floods and heatwaves

In addition, global warming is likely to lead to more intense rainfall because warmer air can hold more moisture. However, we still have a lot to learn about where that rain is likely to fall, and how frequent and intense the rainfall is likely to be.

To understand how extreme weather like this year’s Southern Hemisphere deluges will change as the climate warms, we must understand the underlying physical processes responsible for their development.

At present, different climate models show different things about what climate change means for Rossby waves and wave breaking. The models don’t yet have high enough resolution to explicitly include some of the detailed physical processes related to rainfall, jet streams and Rossby waves.

While the models agree that climate change will alter the position and speed of the jet stream winds, they disagree about what will happen to Rossby waves. Investment in the research necessary to answer these questions is therefore imperative.

Tess Parker receives funding from the Australian Research Council through the Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes.

Michael Barnes receives funding from the Australian Research Council through the Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes.

– ref. Planetary waves, cut-off lows and blocking highs: what’s behind record floods across the Southern Hemisphere? – https://theconversation.com/planetary-waves-cut-off-lows-and-blocking-highs-whats-behind-record-floods-across-the-southern-hemisphere-183632

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

New treasurer Jim Chalmers has been in multiple briefings since Sunday, and the message he sends in this podcast is that he is not going to try to gild the economic lily with the Australian community.

He intends to deliver a “pretty blunt, pretty frank” assessment of Australia’s challenges in an economic statement to parliament soon after it returns in June or July.

Chalmers highlights two particularly “spiky” bits of Australia’s inflation problem that are under “extreme pressure” at the moment – power prices and the building industry as the cost of materials rise.

Ahead of his first budget planned for October, Chalmers reaffirms he is “highly unlikely” to be able to renew the temporary six-month cut in petrol excise when it expires in September.

If there was “more we can responsibly do, we will”, but people shouldn’t assume that the cost of living relief in the March budget will continue forever.

Meanwhile Chalmers and finance minister Katy Gallagher are already combing through the numbers to get savings from areas they identify as wasteful spending.

He also speaks about the employment summit planned for early in Labor’s term – which he wants to have a “broad focus” – and cautions against assuming the unemployment rate (at present 3.9%) will be “on a kind of a permanent downward trajectory” given rising interest rates and international uncertainly.

He raises the prospect of changes to the Reserve Bank’s mandate which at present encompasses full employment and price stability, saying that would a matter for an inquiry he promised in opposition and will shortly set up.

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

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Treasurer Jim Chalmers on the ‘spiky’ parts of Australia’s inflation problem – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-treasurer-jim-chalmers-on-the-spiky-parts-of-australias-inflation-problem-183813

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Imogene Smith, Casual academic, provisional psychologist and Doctor of Psychology (Clinical) candidate, Deakin University

For many dads, having a child is unplanned. What happens next can vary. One man said:

We broke up and she called me soon after to tell me she was pregnant […] she just asked me if I wanted to be in our baby’s life and I accepted without thinking twice.

Another said:

I wanted to have an abortion, since we weren’t ready, but it wasn’t my choice, it was hers […] but the resentment was there for a long time.

These two comments came from tens of thousands of posts on the social media site Reddit we analysed as part of our research into men’s experiences of unplanned pregnancy.

Read more:
We studied 100 years of Australian fatherhood. Here’s how today’s dads differ from their grandfathers

Unplanned pregnancies are common

Having an unplanned child is more common than you might think. In Australia 40% of pregnancies are mis-timed, unexpected or unwanted. That’s an estimate comparable with rates worldwide.

Most research on the impact of unplanned pregnancies focuses on mothers. We wanted to know about the experiences of dads. So we turned to two forums specifically for new and expecting dads on Reddit.

We “scraped” tens of thousands of posts, spanning a year, then applied an innovative machine learning technique to group the data into meaningful topics. This allowed us to identify themes in the men’s online discussions.

Read more:
Machine learning is changing our culture. Try this text-altering tool to see how

Here’s what we found

Our research showed men who reluctantly or unexpectedly became fathers experienced a complex range of emotions and reactions. Many needed support.

The dads in our study posted to Reddit using pseudonyms. So they were free to be honest and raw as they shared their emotions on a topic many consider taboo.

Some were “filled with regret”, “sadness”, “guilt” and hopelessness of a “never-ending, soul-crushing grind”. Some lacked bonds with their infants, one feeling “like the tin man without a heart”.

One man said:

I keep on having really bad breakdown episodes. There are days when I just sit and cry thinking how miserable my life has become.

Unplanned fatherhood and postnatal depression

Earlier research shows it’s common for dads to have short periods of negative thoughts after their baby is born. Feelings of loss about their previous life are common.

However, persistent negative and intense emotions may indicate depression and anxiety at this time.

In fact, unintended fatherhood is linked to an increased risk of a man having postnatal depression.

Paternal depression is, in turn, linked to a higher risk of depression in their partners and more behavioural problems in their children.

Read more:
Dads get postnatal depression too

Let’s debunk some myths

Like earlier research, ours debunks the myth that men do not seek help when in need. Men sought and received advice and support from other dads about everything from night feeds and nappies to reassurance that what they were feeling was normal.

Studies show peer support, often online, can be a foot-in-the-door for men who feel uncomfortable disclosing vulnerability. This is particularly important for a taboo subject such as unwanted parenthood.

In our study, not all men were distressed. Some reported feeling happy “but freaking out” and simultaneously “scared, hopeful, excited, terrified”.

Sharing experiences allowed these fathers to validate and normalise the full spectrum of their emotions and sometimes re-frame a sense of hopelessness.

Men told each other “you are not alone”, “I felt the same”, “it does get better” and “it’s not as bad as people say”.

Read more:
Children’s well-being goes hand in hand with their dads’ mental health

How to reduce the stigma

In this study and our earlier research men said they were concerned that not wanting children would be seen as abnormal.

We hope our work raises awareness that desire for children is not universal. We can do more to normalise and destigmatise varied narratives that represent how people feel about parenthood.

When it comes to family planning, a first step is to include men in discussions about reproductive health before they become fathers and are expecting a child.

Pre-conception planning with health professionals involves becoming physically and psychologically ready for parenthood and is important for mothers, fathers and, ultimately, their offspring.

Once the baby is born, it is important dads have access to support. Family and health-care systems are mainly focused on mothers and infants, and could be better equipped, resourced and trained to detect fathers at risk of mental health problems. Father-inclusive practice is beneficial to fathers, mothers and children.

When things go right

When fathers have access to the right help at the right time, it can make all the difference. One man said:

I ended up going to a psychiatrist after a suicide attempt. It did some good, it faced me with my own immaturity. May I suggest trying it? Everybody is different, but it seriously helped in my case.

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

Jacqui Macdonald is convener of the Australian Fatherhood Research Consortium.

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

– ref. Surprise! How men react when becoming a dad isn’t part of the plan – https://theconversation.com/surprise-how-men-react-when-becoming-a-dad-isnt-part-of-the-plan-182141

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carolyn Hill, Teaching Fellow, Environmental Planning, University of Waikato

A minor culture war has broken out over Auckland’s urban identity since Auckland Council responded to the government’s new housing rules: on one side, defenders of “special character” areas of historic housing; on the other, advocates for higher-density development with fewer constraints.

The debate can be heated, as people identify with their city in different ways and want different outcomes for its future.

To recap, the recently passed Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Act seeks to ease the housing crisis by setting “medium-density residential standards” (MDRS) across all of Aotearoa’s major cities. This allows three storeys and three dwellings per site in all residential areas – except where councils can demonstrate “qualifying matters” apply.

In response, Auckland Council has identified “special character” as a qualifying matter that would shield parts of the city from MDRS intensification. But it also reduced special character coverage by about 25% to carve out room for inner-suburban intensification.

A key line of argument against reducing special character protection involves the importance of Auckland’s old housing neighbourhoods – with their Victorian and Edwardian villas and bungalows – to the city’s “identity”.

Appeals to collective identity can pack a pretty powerful punch when it comes to influencing urban decision-making, so they need to scrutinised whenever they’re asserted.

Identity politics

The preservation of our cities’ built form is not a politically neutral remembrance of yesteryear for future generations. Just as history is written by the victors, decisions about what is important to collective identity have always been made by those with the power to decide.

It’s worth remembering that Auckland’s first formal protection of historic places in the 1950s occurred in the same decade as the Crown seized the last papakāinga (Māori housing on ancestral land) of Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei at Ōkahu Bay, part of preparations for a visit from the queen.

Read more:
Using valuable inner-city land for car parking? In a housing crisis, that just doesn’t add up

Buildings like Mission Bay’s Melanesian Mission were preserved and Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei’s remaining ancestral homes were demolished for closely related reasons – preserving “historical interest and natural beauty” on the one hand, and removing “an eyesore” on the other.

Two decades later, as Auckland Council first created zoning controls to protect “areas of special character”, Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei protesters were occupying Takaparawhau/Bastion Point to oppose the Crown’s plans to develop high-income housing on their remnant rohe (tribal district).

While it may be convenient to hold these two legacies separately, it’s an important reminder that buildings have the power to reinforce dominant expressions of identity – and to silence others.

New kinds of heritage

Uneven power is nothing new for Māori in Aotearoa’s cities, and it increasingly plays a role in intergenerational tension as young adults excluded from home ownership – or even an affordable place to rent – challenge the entitlement of those invested in the status quo.

It’s telling that young adults are commonly identifying what used to be called “historic” houses as “colonial” houses, a deliberate word shift from neutral to political. It’s also a recognition that built form, like identity itself, does not have a fixed meaning.

Read more:
Wellington’s older houses don’t deserve blanket protection — but 6-storey buildings aren’t always the answer

Auckland’s population is getting younger and more culturally diverse. These trends present an opportunity for new ways of making a future heritage for the city. Cultures, communities and different age groups need be celebrated by more than just festivals, arts and sports. They must be built into new neighbourhoods that can permanently house and home them.

This is already happening in projects such as Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei’s Kāinga Tuatahi residential development on tribal land, and COHAUS, a high-density co-housing development in Grey Lynn. Special character may be a part of Tāmaki Makaurau’s identity, but it’s time for other versions of urban life to be recognised too.

What identity are we celebrating?

After all, what are now considered special character areas largely began as part of Auckland’s “ordinary” story – places on the tramlines where people built a house, put down roots, aspired to a stable and prosperous future.

According to Auckland Council, their built character “shows past social values, influences, fashions and philosophies that have shaped Auckland over time”. What they now most obviously highlight, however, is Auckland’s divide between rich and poor.

Read more:
How a bias towards built heritage threatens the protection of cultural landscapes in New Zealand

It’s no coincidence special character suburbs are some of Tāmaki Makaurau’s most expensive, commanding a price premium precisely because of the expectation their historical look and feel will be retained.

Also, because of its emphasis on pre-1940s housing, the “special character” designation is almost entirely absent from the city’s poorer areas.

According to the council, special character areas “have importance to people beyond those who live there” due to the role they play in illustrating the history of the city. That may be true, but it’s also important to acknowledge that urban areas are overwhelmingly experienced by those who live there, not by those passing through.

Read more:
Auckland is the world’s ‘most liveable city’? Many Māori might disagree

A city for all

While historic residential neighbourhoods may be part of the city’s broad identity, it is the residents of special character areas who really get to experience their qualities. The good tree cover, proximity to the central business district, high-quality outdoor spaces and access to public transport are in stark contrast to other parts of Tāmaki Makaurau.

And yet most of the densification burden will be directed into communities already lacking nature, amenity and infrastructure.

The next two decades will decide Auckland’s future identity. The council’s response to the government’s new directives go some way to opening up new possibilities, but more will be needed to stop social and spatial fragmentation being baked into its character.

Making space, in both the decision-making and the built environment, for radical priorities – housing people, transport reform, reforesting urban spaces – will be essential in forging an identity that brings meaning and security for more people who call Tāmaki Makaurau home.

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

– ref. Whose ‘identity’ are we preserving in Auckland’s special character housing areas? – https://theconversation.com/whose-identity-are-we-preserving-in-aucklands-special-character-housing-areas-183207

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Aaron J. Snoswell, Post-doctoral Research Fellow, Computational Law & AI Accountability, Queensland University of Technology

The first serious accident involving a self-driving car in Australia occurred in March this year. A pedestrian suffered life-threatening injuries when hit by a Tesla Model 3 in “autopilot” mode.

In the US, the highway safety regulator is investigating a series of accidents where Teslas on autopilot crashed into first-responder vehicles with flashing lights during traffic stops.

The decision-making processes of “self-driving” cars are often opaque and unpredictable (even to their manufacturers), so it can be hard to determine who should be held accountable for incidents such as these. However, the growing field of “explainable AI” may help provide some answers.

Read more:
Who (or what) is behind the wheel? The regulatory challenges of driverless cars

Who is responsible when self-driving cars crash?

While self-driving cars are new, they are still machines made and sold by manufacturers. When they cause harm, we should ask whether the manufacturer (or software developer) has met their safety responsibilities.

Modern negligence law comes from the famous case of Donoghue v Stevenson, where a woman discovered a decomposing snail in her bottle of ginger beer. The manufacturer was found negligent, not because he was expected to directly predict or control the behaviour of snails, but because his bottling process was unsafe.

By this logic, manufacturers and developers of AI-based systems like self-driving cars may not be able to foresee and control everything the “autonomous” system does, but they can take measures to reduce risks. If their risk management, testing, audits and monitoring practices are not good enough, they should be held accountable.

How much risk management is enough?

The difficult question will be “How much care and how much risk management is enough?” In complex software, it is impossible to test for every bug in advance. How will developers and manufacturers know when to stop?

Fortunately, courts, regulators and technical standards bodies have experience in setting standards of care and responsibility for risky but useful activities.

Standards could be very exacting, like the European Union’s draft AI regulation, which requires risks to be reduced “as far as possible” without regard to cost. Or they may be more like Australian negligence law, which permits less stringent management for less likely or less severe risks, or where risk management would reduce the overall benefit of the risky activity.

Legal cases will be complicated by AI opacity

Once we have a clear standard for risks, we need a way to enforce it. One approach could be to give a regulator powers to impose penalties (as the ACCC does in competition cases, for example).

Individuals harmed by AI systems must also be able to sue. In cases involving self-driving cars, lawsuits against manufacturers will be particularly important.

However, for such lawsuits to be effective, courts will need to understand in detail the processes and technical parameters of the AI systems.

Manufacturers often prefer not to reveal such details for commercial reasons. But courts already have procedures to balance commercial interests with an appropriate amount of disclosure to facilitate litigation.

A greater challenge may arise when AI systems themselves are opaque “black boxes”. For example, Tesla’s autopilot functionality relies on “deep neural networks”, a popular type of AI system in which even the developers can never be entirely sure how or why it arrives at a given outcome.

‘Explainable AI’ to the rescue?

Opening the black box of modern AI systems is the focus of a new wave of computer science and humanities scholars: the so-called “explainable AI” movement.

The goal is to help developers and end users understand how AI systems make decisions, either by changing how the systems are built or by generating explanations after the fact.

In a classic example, an AI system mistakenly classifies a picture of a husky as a wolf. An “explainable AI” method reveals the system focused on snow in the background of the image, rather than the animal in the foreground.

How this might be used in a lawsuit will depend on various factors, including the specific AI technology and the harm caused. A key concern will be how much access the injured party is given to the AI system.

The Trivago case

Our new research analysing an important recent Australian court case provides an encouraging glimpse of what this could look like.

In April 2022, the Federal Court penalised global hotel booking company Trivago $44.7 million for misleading customers about hotel room rates on its website and in TV advertising, after a case brought on by competition watchdog the ACCC. A critical question was how Trivago’s complex ranking algorithm chose the top ranked offer for hotel rooms.

The Federal Court set up rules for evidence discovery with safeguards to protect Trivago’s intellectual property, and both the ACCC and Trivago called expert witnesses to provide evidence explaining how Trivago’s AI system worked.

Even without full access to Trivago’s system, the ACCC’s expert witness was able to produce compelling evidence that the system’s behaviour was not consistent with Trivago’s claim of giving customers the “best price”.

This shows how technical experts and lawyers together can overcome AI opacity in court cases. However, the process requires close collaboration and deep technical expertise, and will likely be expensive.

Regulators can take steps now to streamline things in the future, such as requiring AI companies to adequately document their systems.

The road ahead

Vehicles with various degrees of automation are becoming more common, and fully autonomous taxis and buses are being tested both in Australia and overseas.

Keeping our roads as safe as possible will require close collaboration between AI and legal experts, and regulators, manufacturers, insurers, and users will all have roles to play.

Read more:
‘Self-driving’ cars are still a long way off. Here are three reasons why

Aaron J. Snoswell’s research is funded by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (CE200100005). Aaron was also an author or contributor to an academic article referenced here.

Henry Fraser’s research is funded by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (CE200100005). Henry was also an author of an academic article referenced here.

Rhyle Simcock receives research support through a higher degree scholarship funded by the Digital Media Research Centre. Rhyle was also an author or contributor to an academic article referenced here.

– ref. When self-driving cars crash, who’s responsible? Courts and insurers need to know what’s inside the ‘black box’ – https://theconversation.com/when-self-driving-cars-crash-whos-responsible-courts-and-insurers-need-to-know-whats-inside-the-black-box-180334

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

The nightly television news coverage of the 2022 federal election was among the most juvenile and uninformative in 50 years.

Given that about 61% of Australians get their news from television in an average week, this matters.

The pattern was set early on: unimaginative, slavish PR-stunt footage of the leaders, combined with young go-getters in the travelling media packs trying to make a name for themselves with gotcha questions.

Read more:
As News Corp goes ‘rogue’ on election coverage, what price will Australian democracy pay?

It is a pattern that has been developing for a long time, and for which editorial leadership in Australia’s main newsrooms is responsible – leadership of my own generation included.

More than 30 years ago, it became obvious to editorial executives that having their senior political correspondents travelling with the leaders was a waste of time and resources.

Instead, the senior correspondents were encouraged to base themselves in Canberra and to be selective about where and when they went on the road.

They attended campaign launches and major set-pieces such as leaders’ debates or National Press Club appearances, but otherwise they focused on analysing issues and trends as they emerged.

Relatively junior staff took their places “on the bus”.

The reason it became a waste of time and precious resources to keep the senior people on the bus was that the party apparatchiks and campaign managers imposed increasingly limited access to the leaders, and increasingly absurd secrecy about the travel schedule.

It got to the point where the itinerary for the day would be slipped under journalists’ hotel doors in the early hours of the morning.

In these ways, the parties became able to exert a high degree of control over the media coverage. It is very difficult to prepare questions to put to the leaders if you have no idea where you will be the next day, what the leaders will be doing, or what opportunity you will get to ask a question.

As a result, journalists and camera crews have become hostage to the party machines – news takers rather than news makers.

They find themselves trailing around factories, building sites, hospitals, playgrounds, shooting footage of the most banal but politically self-serving kind: helmets and hi-vis vests; Scott Morrison as a welder, pastry cook, hairdresser or whatever else he is dressed up as; Albanese having an earnest cup of tea with an elderly voter or bent over some unsuspecting child at a daycare centre.

Then comes the fleeting stand-up media conference, often outdoors against random background noise.

Ten metres away and robbed of any meaningful preparation, the reporters shout questions that may or may not have anything to do with what they have just seen or with any issue of the remotest relevance to voter concerns.

Was there a question about climate change, corruption or gender equality at any of those stand-ups? Fitting such questions into the scenario controlled by the party machines is next to impossible.

So the stage is set for the gotcha question.

They have their place, as the one to Albanese in the first week about the unemployment level showed. It revealed him as astonishingly ill-prepared, but as John Howard said that night: “So what?”

Read more:
View from The Hill: Albanese trips, Morrison claims ignorance of huge payout in Tudge affair

After that, Albanese was peppered with them, and seemed quite unable to muster anything like Adam Bandt’s classic response when confronted with something similar: “Google it, mate.”

But as Howard implied, it told us nothing about Albanese’s capabilities as a potential prime minister.

His confidence strong once he had won the prime ministership, Albanese asserted himself in the face of the media pack: “You will not get the call earlier if you yell. Day one. Let’s get that clear.”

This unedifying routine affects all news coverage, but television journalists suffer from it the most. The exigencies of television news bulletin production leave them little scope for persistent questioning and little time to prepare their scripts. It is all about grabs and pictures.

Newspaper journalists at least have the luxury of a little more time to prepare their print-edition stories, even if they have to file quickly for their online editions.

What can editorial executives do in the face of this?

For one thing, they do not have to run the tiresome, cliched footage of politicians doing stunts. Shoot it by all means, but there is no need to use it unless something newsworthy happens.

For another, they need to do a lot more to brief their junior staff on the bus about questions that might constructively inform the audience.

Take the unemployment figures. The outgoing prime minister and treasurer were understandably proud of the 3.9% unemployment figure that came out in the last week of the campaign.

But this statistic is in part an artefact of the participation rate. When people are so discouraged they stop looking for work, the unemployment rate looks better. So why not a question to the prime minister or treasurer about the participation rate? Or about under-employment?

Relatively inexperienced reporters being herded and hustled on the ground need not only guidance but also support in the form of necessary background information.

More strategically, it is time to call a halt to arrangements that co-opt the media into acting as a publicity arm for the two main parties.

The new reality is that there are three main forces in Australian politics: Labor, the Liberal-National Coalition and the Greens/Independents. Each attracted roughly one-third of the primary vote at the 2022 election.

This means the media will be paying more attention to the third force than they traditionally have, and so gives the media more leverage in dealing with the two main parties, which no longer have the power of a duopoly.

The media should insist on receiving travel schedules in reasonable time, on having media conferences held in settings where the exchange can be conducted civilly, and where there is time for the leaders to be subjected to questions of substance, including follow-up questions.

As the COVID-19 media conferences showed, these can elicit useful information because journalists are, on the whole, not piranhas but intelligent people keen to do right by the public.

It is not they, as individuals, who are to blame for the appalling television coverage we have seen over the past six weeks but the whole reality-distorting machinery in which they are caught up.

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

– ref. How the ‘reality-distorting machinery’ of the federal election campaign delivered sub-par journalism – https://theconversation.com/how-the-reality-distorting-machinery-of-the-federal-election-campaign-delivered-sub-par-journalism-183629

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Holden, Clinical Associate Professor, University of Sydney

It’s a common scenario: you decide to go out for dinner and fancy something different. So, you look to online reviews to help you make your dining choice.

If you trust a review of a restaurant and then it doesn’t reach your expectations, it’s probably not a huge deal. But should we feel as comfortable about testimonials about health-care services?

These are commonplace in other countries, and the law banning positive reviews of medical services is about to change here in Australia.

Removing the ban

Much of Australia’s health-care workforce is regulated by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA). The agency’s registration scheme is broad, including medical doctors, dental practitioners, nurses and midwives, as well as many others.

The scheme is set out by nationally consistent law, enacted in each state and territory, commonly referred to as the National Law.

A recent bill tabled in the Queensland Parliament will change the National Law. One of the amendments is the removal of the current ban on regulated health services advertising using positive testimonials from patients.

Testimonials already exist in health-care

Despite the current ban, a quick search on Google reveals there are lots of reviews about a huge variety of health-care services already, apparently written by patients and carers.

The current regulations around health-care advertising don’t prevent patients from independently voicing their opinions and feelings about the care they’ve received. But health providers are banned from using testimonials to advertise on platforms that they control, such as a practice website or social media page.

Furthermore, there are health practitioners who use testimonials to advertise already; they either don’t know about the regulations or choose not to follow them.

Another reason lifting the ban makes sense is that AHPRA simply doesn’t have the resources to monitor all health-care advertising in Australia. It relies on complaints from the public or other health practitioners to notify against advertising that breaches the current standards.

Along with AHPRA holding practitioners who are flagged as doing the wrong thing to account, health businesses misusing testimonials may also face regulatory action.

In 2020, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission fined review and booking website HealthEngine $2.9 million for publishing misleading patient reviews and ratings.

But in a digitally interconnected world, online testimonials from other jurisdictions such as the United Kingdom and the United States, where health-care testimonials are not as strictly regulated, are easily accessed by Australian consumers. So enforcement is hugely challenging.

Read more:
Googling for a new dentist or therapist? Here’s how to look past the glowing testimonials

‘Word of mouth’ might not be that powerful

The prevailing marketing wisdom is that testimonials are powerful persuaders. Our research was the first to examine how health consumers might engage with testimonials to make decisions about what services to access. We asked more than 1,500 health consumers about the ways they used health advertising and testimonials.

We found that while participants found testimonials helpful, there was concern about their reliability in the context of health care. Only a small number of participants felt they could spot a “fake” review.

Previous research suggests online testimonials help consumers save time in decision-making.

Our study also found most participants felt health-care comparison websites were trustworthy sources of information and reviews of services.

Is removing the ban a bad idea?

Despite the intention of the National Law being to protect the public, the 2014 review of the National Scheme found a wide range of stakeholders did not support the outright ban on testimonials in health advertising. Many said this prohibition meant consumers couldn’t comment much on their health-care experiences.

It could be argued testimonials about health services are an important instrument in the democratisation of health care. Patients are empowered to access the experiences of other consumers and share their feelings about their own care.

When we examined the attitudes of private dentists to commercial practices like advertising, many felt such engagement could promote equality between patients and professionals.

This might be true in part, but advertising is fundamentally designed to sell. When it comes to advertising health care, we might value the potential for marketing to provide education on what services might be available – but we should be careful people are not sold care they don’t really want or need.

Read more:
Dr Google probably isn’t the worst place to get your health advice

The potential for misleading reviews

In short, we probably don’t need to be more concerned about “word of mouth” health reviews than we are now – even if the law changes.

It is clear testimonials in any sector can be misleading. And we also know some members of the public will struggle to assess the legitimacy of health-care reviews and testimonials.

Consumers should be able to use testimonials to inform themselves about health services, but no one should rely on them exclusively. Health consumers should also be guided by other sources of information, such as advice from a trusted health practitioner, to help inform their decision-making process. There is also nothing inherently unscrupulous about a health-care provider using a sincere testimonial or review to spread the word about the care they offer.

But ultimately, if something seems too good to be true, it possibly is. Health-care consumers should feel empowered to research their options without feeling they are being oversold care that might not be right for them.

Alexander Holden has received funding from the Australian Skeptics supporting research into health advertising. He has also received research funding from the Dental Council of NSW and NSW Health.

Alexander is a Director of the Australian Dental Association NSW Branch, Filling the Gap and the Australasian College of Legal Medicine.

– ref. Soon Australian doctors will be allowed to advertise with patient testimonials – but beware the hype – https://theconversation.com/soon-australian-doctors-will-be-allowed-to-advertise-with-patient-testimonials-but-beware-the-hype-183126

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Hornsey, Professor, University of Queensland Business School, The University of Queensland

Former Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s shock loss to an independent running on a climate action platform wasn’t a fluke event. “Teal” independents have ousted five of Frydenberg’s colleagues, all harvesting votes from conservative heartland and all calling for more action on climate change.

Amid the wreckage, Frydenberg was asked whether the Liberals needed to rethink their policies on climate change. His response – that he didn’t believe Australia had been “well served by the culture wars on climate change” – deserves analysis.

Who started the culture war on climate change? And are we nearing its demise? Our research, published this month, provides some clues.

We found that approximately a third of Australians – predominantly conservatives – maintain that climate change is not caused by human activity, but rather by natural environmental fluctuations.

Crucially, however, we also found signs the conservative position against climate science has weakened over time. The election results reinforce this message, with a projection of six teal independents nationwide and two new Green seats in Queensland.

As such, this election may well be remembered as the first cracks in the dam wall of conservative-led climate scepticism.

How climate science became political

Historically, science has been excluded from “left” and “right” political culture wars. Science, it was agreed, was best left to the scientists.

For example, shortly after definitive evidence emerged that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were eroding the ozone layer, an international treaty committed to phasing them out. The response was swift and apolitical: in the 1980s you couldn’t tell how someone voted from knowing their stance on CFCs.

Unfortunately, this can’t be said for climate science. In 1965, there was enough scientific buzz about the dangers of carbon emissions that US President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered a message to Congress sounding the alarm.

Read more:
The big teal steal: independent candidates rock the Liberal vote

But the seeds of climate culture wars were sown soon after. With the ear of senior politicians – and supported by think tanks and private corporations – a campaign of misinformation was started that came straight from the Big Tobacco playbook: to convince people to do nothing in the face of impending danger, you need to convince them the science is not yet in.

The campaign to scramble the science on climate change was remarkably effective: in the 2000s, 97% of climate scientists agreed about anthropogenic climate change, but people incorrectly believed scientists were divided on the issue. A scientific conclusion had been effectively positioned as a “debate”.

Originally, this had little to do with conservatism. In the early 1990s, educated Republicans saw more scientific consensus around climate change than Democrats. But this pattern has since dramatically reversed.

Climate mitigation became perceived by conservative elites as ideologically toxic – a Big Government response designed to regulate industry and the freedoms of individuals. Among the Right, politicians, think tanks, and media all started to coach other conservatives how to think about climate change.

The consequence was that a scientific issue became a political issue. Researchers investigating the predictors of climate scepticism found political allegiance blew everything else out of the water: more important than people’s personal experience of extreme weather events, their levels of education, or even their science literacy.

Read more:
The teals and Greens will turn up the heat on Labor’s climate policy. Here’s what to expect

Australia and the climate divide

In the early 2010s, the culture wars on climate science in Australia escalated dramatically.

It became routine for conservative politicians to question climate science (former Prime Minister Tony Abbott famously proclaimed climate science as “absolute crap” in 2009) and one-third of mainstream newspaper articles were climate sceptical.

We recently analysed 25 polls conducted by Essential Research over ten years, collecting representative data on Australians’ beliefs about climate change.

We found scepticism levels were staggeringly high by international standards. Over the last 10 years, about four in ten Australians either said climate change isn’t driven by human activities, or that they “don’t know” what’s causing it. Most of these people were conservatives.

But scepticism has tailed down from the high-water mark in 2013, and particularly among conservatives. Our data suggest the trigger for this change was the string of record-breaking annual global temperatures since 2015.

Read more:
Climate wars, carbon taxes and toppled leaders: the 30-year history of Australia’s climate response, in brief

Climate scepticism isn’t inherently conservative

As the Liberal party and conservative voters ponder what happens next, it’s worth remembering that rejection of climate science is not an inherently conservative position. International data suggest the link between conservatism and climate scepticism is largely an issue for the US and Australia.

In most countries there is no reliable relationship. Indeed, in the UK it was the conservatives who led the phasing out of coal in their country.

Pro-climate conservative leaders around the world – such as Malcolm Turnbull, Arnold Schwarzenegger and John Kasich – remind us that mitigating climate change is something that dovetails with conservative values: protecting traditional ways of life, maintaining national security and independence, and catalysing green jobs and innovation.

The success of the teal independents highlights that many conservative Australians want climate action. The election result could pressure the Liberal party into deleting climate science from the culture wars.

This will not be easy. Australia is the world’s leading exporter of coal, and in the past inaction on climate change has been an effective wedge issue to harvest traditionally left-leaning, blue-collar votes.

But extracting climate policy from the culture wars would be game-changing in terms of our ability to unite in the face of the climate crisis, and conservatives are the ones most equipped to do so.

As the Liberals reflect on the loss of a generation of future leaders in blue ribbon seats, they may just decide that now is the time.

Read more:
The election showed Australia’s huge appetite for stronger climate action. What levers can the new government pull?

Matthew Hornsey receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

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

– ref. The election shows the conservative culture war on climate change could be nearing its end – https://theconversation.com/the-election-shows-the-conservative-culture-war-on-climate-change-could-be-nearing-its-end-183450

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Holloway, Senior Research DECRA Fellow, Institute for Learning Sciences and Teacher Education, Australian Catholic University

During the 2022 federal election campaign, schools barely rated a mention.

While the Labor government’s cabinet will not be finalised until next week, we expect Tanya Plibersek to become education minister. She will have plenty to do.

The education sector presents the new government with several pressing challenges. These range from teacher shortages to concerns about school funding and student and teacher safety and well-being.

Here are some of the good, the bad, and the missing from Labor’s existing plans.

The good

With COVID still circulating widely, health experts say there is more to be done to ensure students and teachers are safe in schools.

To answer this call, Labor has promised A$440 million for new ventilation systems and open-air learning spaces, as well as support for mental health services. This is a good start.

Read more:
‘It’s almost like a second home’: why students want schools to do more about mental health

Labor will also spend $6 million on a digital licence for school students. As Plibersek explained, “this is the pen licence for the digital age”, helping kids stay safe and use the internet wisely. There will also be a program for secondary students to think more critically online.

Schools and parents are likely to embrace this initiative, especially given how much virtual and in-person learning have become intertwined during the pandemic. However, some computer experts say it needs greater funding to be effective.

Labor’s proposal also focuses on individual student privacy and safety, which some experts claim oversimplifies the issue.

There is mounting concern about the increased involvement of private ed-tech companies in education. A recent analysis found that data collected through Google Classroom, for example, can be used for improving other Google products. As these actors play an increasingly important role in schools, the government has a responsibility to make sure private involvement is held to account and monitored closely.

The bad

The greatest emergency in education right now is the growing teacher shortage across Australia.

Teachers are leaving the profession in record numbers, with no end in sight for when this might turn around. Monash University education researcher Amanda Heffernan and colleagues recently surveyed 2,444 Australian primary and secondary school teachers, and found a staggering 59% said they intended to leave the profession.

Read more:
COVID and schools: Australia is about to feel the full brunt of its teacher shortage

Labor campaigned on this awareness but offered a solution that many experts warn is misguided. The plan is to offer high-achievers (based on ATAR scores over 80) $10,000 per year of study to do an education degree. Students who commit to remote teaching will be offered $12,000 per year.

Labor is right to acknowledge this looming crisis, and to consider financial supplements as a potential remedy. However, the proposal fundamentally misunderstands the reasons teachers are leaving in droves.

Their narrow focus on recruitment fails to address the unbearable workloads, poor working conditions and excessive testing that created the problem in the first place. Teachers are feeling demoralised, exhausted and undervalued, which has only been exacerbated by increased responsibilities during COVID.

Since the time of the announcement, no education expert or major teacher organisation has publicly praised this initiative, which is quite telling. If Labor ignores the root causes of declining retention numbers, and fails to establish a long-term and meaningful recruitment strategy, this problem will continue to worsen over the coming years.

What’s missing?

Labor has been surprisingly quiet on the issue of school funding, despite this being one of its major priorities in the past.

Concern about inequitable funding between government and non-government schools continues to be a hot topic for education experts and parents alike. Earlier this year, public school advocacy group Save our Schools analysed ten years of funding data. It found funding for public schools increased by $703 per student, while Catholic and independent schools increased by $3,338 per student.

Now with concerns over “learning loss” from COVID, these disparities are even more troubling. Therefore, it is disappointing Labor hasn’t more forcefully addressed the need for greater equity of funding and resources across the various school sectors.

However, with the Greens potentially having more influence in federal parliament, this issue may receive more attention. The Greens campaigned on fully funding the Gonski recommendations with a promise of $49 billion for public schools.

What now?

There are other important issues glossed over in Labor’s education plans, which also boil down to equity.

At the top of this list is the need to redress the historically under-resourced schools that primarily serve Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. Similarly, schools are becoming more segregated based on students’ relative advantage. This means disadvantaged students are concentrated in disadvantaged schools, which has big implications for students’ achievement and a “fair go”.

Read more:
3 big issues in higher education demand the new government’s attention

Having Labor education ministers at the federal and most of the state levels might mean greater policy coherence overall. However, I would be reluctant to predict a complete ceasefire over some contentious matters, such as the ongoing curriculum wars.

Jessica Holloway receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Almost 60% of teachers say they want out. What is Labor going to do for an exhausted school sector? – https://theconversation.com/almost-60-of-teachers-say-they-want-out-what-is-labor-going-to-do-for-an-exhausted-school-sector-183452

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elaine Nash, PhD Candidate, University of South Australia

There are many reasons to employ people living with intellectual disability. Most obvious is that it’s the right thing to do – it helps promote social justice, diversity, corporate social responsibility, and equal opportunity.

Even so, data released in 2020 (the latest available) show just 53.4% of people with disability are in the labour force, compared with 84.1% of people without disability.

The situation is worse for people living with intellectual disability; only 32% of this group are employed.

People living with intellectual disability are ready, willing and able to work.

What employers often don’t realise is that hiring from this oft-neglected segment of the workforce can also bring benefits for business.

Read more:
‘Don’t shove us off like we’re rubbish’: what people with intellectual disability told us about their local community

Resilience, perseverance and positive outlook

The recent Australian television documentary series, Employable Me, highlighted the employment difficulties faced by people living with a disability.

It’s hard not to admire the incredible resilience, perseverance and positive outlook of this group.

Despite these qualities, people living with intellectual disability who want to work face barriers such as:

• employer attitudes
• stigma
• preconceived beliefs
• discriminatory work practices and
• a limited knowledge of their capabilities.

It’s true employers may need to make workplace adjustments to accommodate these employees’ needs, such as:

• communicating in pictures rather than words (for example, using signage with symbols to indicate who and what goes where)
• breaking tasks down into simple steps
• specialised training for workers living with an intellectual disability, as well as supervisors and co-workers.

Yes, these changes may represent an initial cost. But research shows the profound benefits of hiring people living with intellectual disabilities, which can include:

• improvements in profitability
• greater cost-effectiveness
• lower employee turnover
• high rates of employee retention, reliability, punctuality, loyalty, and
• benefits to the company image.

The organisations highlighted in such studies include retail organisations, the military, small and medium enterprises, professional services and landscaping.

To achieve such results though, requires employee support, changes to work procedures, flexibility in supervision, and – perhaps most importantly – an open mind.

‘A massive waste of human resource’

People living with intellectual disability can and do make a significant contributions at work when given the opportunity.

Many tend to be employed part-time, and in segregated settings – often in Australian disability enterprises or what used to be called “sheltered workshops”.

One of us (Elaine Nash) has been researching the business benefits of employing people living with intellectual disability. The (yet to be published) research has involved interviews with policy makers, leaders, disability advocates, managers, employers, and staff.

One interview was with Professor Richard Bruggemann, a disability advocate and last year’s South Australia Senior Australian of the year. He described the low labour force participation rate of people living with an intellectual disability as “a massive waste of human resource”. He said:

People living with intellectual disability are ready, willing, and able to make a difference to organisations beyond the traditional sheltered workshop setting. All they need is an opportunity to do so.

Bruggemann’s observations are supported by international research about workers living with intellectual disability. Many studies have called for a whole-of-government approach to boost employment rates in this cohort.

Making it happen

Employing people living with intellectual disability won’t always be suitable.

It is not a silver bullet for corporate success, higher efficiency, or greater profits. But in some settings, it may help address problems that have been concerning employers.

As Simon Rowberry, CEO of Barkuma (a not-for-profit that supports people with disability) told us in an interview:

There are costs and benefits in any employment decision. Incorporating workers living with intellectual disability into your workforce is no different. Preparation, understanding what the upsides as well as the downsides are, and a need to be flexible are non-negotiables.

Perhaps the most critical success factor is a genuine desire to make it happen. Where there’s a will, there’s usually a way.

Read more:
Employable Me has struck a chord but will it change employers’ attitudes to disability?

Elaine Nash used to work with Professor Richard Bruggemann when he was CEO of Intellectual Disability Services Council (IDSC). This story is part of The Conversation’s Breaking the Cycle series, which is about escaping cycles of disadvantage. It is supported by a philanthropic grant from the Paul Ramsay Foundation.

Basil Tucker received funding from Accounting and Finance Association Australian and New Zealand (AFAANZ) for this project.

– ref. Low staff turnover, high loyalty and productivity gains: the business benefits of hiring people with intellectual disability – https://theconversation.com/low-staff-turnover-high-loyalty-and-productivity-gains-the-business-benefits-of-hiring-people-with-intellectual-disability-180587

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Debra Dudek, Associate professor, School of Arts and Humanities, Edith Cowan University

Australian writer and director Renée Webster’s new film How to Please a Woman turns much of what we think we know about sexual desire – especially for older women – on its head.

How to Please a Woman features 50-something Gina (Sally Phillips), who hasn’t had sex with her husband (Cameron Daddo) in over a year because he is no longer interested in sexual relations – with her or anyone.

Gina’s main source of intimacy comes from the regular beach swims she has with a group of three women (Tasma Walton, Caroline Brazier, and Hayley McElhinney) and their changing-room conversations that cover everything from peeing on jellyfish stings to the multipurpose use of coconut oil, including as a natural lubricant.

When Gina’s friends rent a stripper (Alexander England) to dance for her on her birthday (a much more intimate present that the two $50 bills she receives from her husband), and he offers to do anything for her (“Anything?” “Totally …”) she asks him to clean her house.

Realising the pleasure she experienced having her house cleaned by a shirtless, handsome man, Gina starts her own male cleaning business and her swimming crew become her first clients.

But they want more than their houses cleaned.

The sexual desire of women over 50

One of the strengths of this film is the sensitive way it represents the different desires of individual women. After all, the title of the film is How to Please a
Woman not How to Please Women.

For Gina to ensure her clients receive the pleasure they want, she meets individually with them and writes down their preferences. One woman wants to take it slow and start with gin and tonic. Another woman does not want her breasts touched. A third woman wants a very specific orgasm: she does not want just any orgasm that sneaks up on you, but one you ease up to and pull away from, ease up to and pull away from until total annihilation. Another client says that after several bookings with men she is starting to feel all kinds of things, so she wants to book a session with a woman.

It is rare to see in popular culture a range of mostly older women being frank about what gives them sexual pleasure and to see how their desire become more adventurous and diverse. Sadly, the sexual desire of women over 50 is often unrepresented, misrepresented, and/or shown as comedic.

Read more:
Grace and Frankie is the longest running series on Netflix – and a show for women who don’t see themselves on television

The socially transmitted disease of ageism

According to Foley, Kope & Sugrue,

The greatest barrier to a woman’s sexuality in midlife is the socially transmitted disease of ageism.

Older women are represented as asexual and past it. They are “cougars” or ageing femme fatales, like Blanche Du Bois in Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire, who set a tone for generations as a figure of fun whose desires are twisted, ridiculed, and ultimately punished.

Older age is by far the largest developmental human period plagued by misconceptions and stereotypes, kept alive by incessant jokes.

And no gender absorbs these jokes more than the female. Sexiness is equated with youth, and older women and their sexuality are made invisible. When older women are represented in popular media, their sexuality is often not shown or is aligned with deviance, such as in the relationship between Darlene and Wyatt in Netflix’s highly-acclaimed Ozark.

Depictions in media trivialising desirous or sexually active older women, or women who seek sex outside of loving and steady relationships as abnormal, contribute to negative stereotypes and to judgemental attitudes about older sexuality.

And just like that…

Fortunately, we are starting to see the lives of women over 50 appear more positively in stories on television, recent examples including And Just Like That the reboot of Sex and the City, and the hugely popular Netflix comedy series Grace and Frankie – and in films like It’s Complicated and Girl’s Trip.

Read more:
Frank, unapologetic, and female-oriented: the cultural legacy of Sex and the City, and the lure of the reboot

The tone of these stories plays more for laughs, though, while How to Please a Woman balances between comedy and drama. As director Renée Webster says,

The best comedy comes from truth and a little bit of pain.

How to Please a Woman shows older women’s sexual desire as respectful and tender for both women and men, even though it is set within a comedy.

But the women aren’t being laughed at, they’re the ones laughing. This depiction seems new and significant. Stories impact and inspire relationships and images about ageing and sexuality influence individual behaviour.

Webster herself says she is “starting to get unsolicited texts of my friends’ husbands vacuuming the carpet and hearing from people that they took something home from the movie, and it opened up some new conversations for them.”

Female sexuality is seen as part of a rich fabric of women’s lives, not its single orgasmic culmination. As Steve (Erik Thomson) says in the film while eating a croissant, “one is never enough.”

Debra Dudek receives funding from the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Projects funding scheme (project DP190102435). The views expressed herein are those of this author and are not necessarily those of the Australian Government or the Australian Research Council.

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

– ref. ‘I want an orgasm but not just any orgasm’: How To Please A Woman shifts the way we depict the sexuality of older women – https://theconversation.com/i-want-an-orgasm-but-not-just-any-orgasm-how-to-please-a-woman-shifts-the-way-we-depict-the-sexuality-of-older-women-183129

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jane Kelsey, Professor of Law, University of Auckland

The uncertainty over whether Jacinda Ardern might land a White House meeting and photo opportunity with US President Joe Biden was perhaps fitting, given the lack of clarity about one of their main topics of discussion.

On Monday in Tokyo Biden launched his Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF). He was flanked by the three other leaders from the “Quad” alliance: Japan, India and Australia, whose new prime minister, Anthony Albanese, was speedily sworn in so he could reach Tokyo in time.

Ardern joined by video and plans to discuss the IPEF directly with Biden in Washington next week, White House COVID rules permitting. But despite the high-profile launch, the IPEF remains an enigma, a high-level idea in search of substance.

We know it has four pillars: trade, supply chain resiliency, clean energy and decarbonisation, and tax and anti-corruption. We also know 13 countries have signed up: the Quad plus New Zealand, Brunei, Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

The next few months will be spent scoping the framework – something you’d expect might happen before countries opt in. But the lack of substance doesn’t matter for now. The launch was symbolic, applauding US re-engagement with the Asia-Pacific (now rebranded Indo-Pacific) region.

That was the easy part. Actually bringing the IPEF to fruition faces major hurdles.

US versus China

Most commentators have homed in on the geopolitical conundrum. The Indo-Pacific Strategy issued by the White House in February complained that:

[China] is combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological might as it pursues a sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific and seeks to become the world’s most influential power.

The US views the IPEF as the vehicle to reassert its economic primacy. And Australia and Japan are fully on board.

The IPEF gives Albanese an early opportunity to dispel election campaign suggestions he is soft on China, while distinguishing himself from his predecessor Scott Morrison’s belligerence as trade tensions with China escalated.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is more cautious, especially about China. Biden’s announcement was reportedly rewritten to launch “collective discussions towards future negotiations”, which leaves India’s options open.

Read more:
New drives to counter China come with a major risk: throwing fuel on the Indo-Pacific arms race

NZ’s China tightrope

Aotearoa New Zealand has a bigger dilemma. For years successive governments have sat on the fence, assuming they could divorce the country’s economic dependency on China from strategic alliances that were increasingly anti-China.

That dependency is now overwhelming, making the IPEF’s overtly anti-China strategy a real economic liability.

Read more:
ANZUS without NZ? Why the new security pact between Australia, the UK and US might not be all it seems

To have credibility, the US also needs broader buy-in from the region. Seven of the ten ASEAN countries have agreed to participate. But these are early days. Few will want to jeopardise their relationship with China for nothing tangible in return.

US unions have already targeted Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam for their poor human rights and labour records. They are hardly likely to accept US demands that they accept “gold standard” labour laws.

Domestic US politics

The second hurdle is US domestic politics. There is no question the IPEF will put “America first”. But internal US consultations reveal a battle between two camps on what this means.

The Democrats’ core labour and environment base has been promised a new trade model that prioritises workers, the environment and domestic communities ahead of US corporate profits.

They’re rallying behind US Trade Representative Katherine Tai who is responsible for the trade pillar of the IPEF. Its broad scope includes the digital economy and emerging technology, labour commitments, the environment, trade facilitation, transparency and good regulatory practices, and corporate accountability.

These are all chapters in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), including the super-sensitive issue of cross-border data flows and data localisation. But Tai’s trade mandate excludes the domestically volatile issues of market access for goods, including agriculture, which is what most countries, including New Zealand, really want.

Corporate agendas

The US corporate lobby, on the other hand, wants to revive the tariff-cutting agenda of the TPPA, which Tai rejects as a 20th-century model that is not fit for purpose.

And corporate America wants to secure strong rules to protect Big Tech from new regulation, something that falls within Tai’s “trade” mandate. They seek a champion in Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, who oversees the other three pillars.

During this week’s White House briefing on the IPEF, Tai made the administration’s priorities crystal clear. While traditional stakeholders have to be part of the solution, she said, they will be

ensuring that other stakeholders, like our workers, like our environmental organisations, the ones who are the smartest about climate and the policy solutions that we need, that they have premier seats at the table and that they will be influencing and shaping the policies that we create.

Read more:
With a new Australian government and foreign minister comes fresh hope for Australia-China relations

Is the IPEF worth it?

Of course, the IPEF may never be concluded. It has no bipartisan support in the US. Even if the Biden administration has the best of intentions, it cannot give an assurance that future administrations will maintain improved environmental and labour standards in the US or honour commitments to other countries taking part in IPEF.

The Biden White House wants to avoid putting the deal to a vote in Congress. But once it drags into the next presidential election cycle it risks falling into the abyss behind the TPPA.

Realistically, the IPEF is a “pig in a poke”. Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia need to take a deep breath and realistically assess the opportunities and threats from such an arrangement.

That means assessing it next to pressing challenges like the climate emergency, lessons from the pandemic, successive global financial crises, the largely unregulated private power of Big Tech, geopolitical rivalries in a multi-polar world, New Zealand’s obligations to Māori under Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and more.

Then they must weigh up the options: stand aside from the negotiations, pursue alternative arrangements, or establish a clear, public negotiating mandate that would truly maximise the nations’ interests for the century ahead.

Professor Kelsey was a prominent critical commentator on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.

– ref. New Zealand has just joined an overtly anti-China alliance – are the economic risks worth it? – https://theconversation.com/new-zealand-has-just-joined-an-overtly-anti-china-alliance-are-the-economic-risks-worth-it-183716

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

The QUAD summit in Tokyo has praised Australia raising its ambition on climate change, after Anthony Albanese told fellow leaders his government would do more to assist Pacific countries address it.

Albanese stressed Australia’s revised climate policy during the meeting, attended by US president Joe Biden, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan. Albanese was there just a day after being sworn in.

The Joint Leaders’ Statement said: “We welcome the new Australian Government’s commitment to stronger action on climate change, including through passing legislation to achieve net zero by 2050 and lodging a new, ambitious Nationally Determined Contribution”.

In his opening remarks to the meeting, Albanese said the change of government would not change Australia’s commitment to the QUAD.

But he differentiated the new government on the climate issue.

“The region is looking to us to work with them and to lead by example. That’s why my government will take ambitious action on climate change and increase our support to partners in the region as they work to address it, including with new finance, ” he said. (Labor announced in the election campaign that it would boost aid to the Pacific.)

“We will act in recognition that climate change is the main economic and security challenge for the island countries of the Pacific.

“Under my government, Australia will set a new target to reduce emissions by 43% cent by 2030, putting us on track for net zero by 2050.”

Albanese said the government would bring “more energy and resources to securing our region as we enter a new and more complex phase in the Pacific’s strategic environment.

“And we will continue to stand with you, our like-minded friends. And collectively, we will continue to stand up for each other. We will stand firm on our values and our beliefs.”

Speaking at a news conference later, Albanese emphasised climate change as a security issue and in the context of China’s seeking more influence in the Pacific.

“I share the view that this is a national security issue. Climate change is not just about the environment. It’s about the shape of our economies, but also our national security going forward.”

Albanese also said climate change was the main topic discussed when he and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson spoke on Monday. “He welcomed, very much welcomed, the fact that we will have stronger action on climate change, including with a higher 2030 target.”

He and Johnson also discuss the AUKUS agreement, which Labor supports.

Albanese said he looked forward to hosting the QUAD leaders in Australia for their meeting next year.

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

– ref. QUAD praises Albanese government’s higher ambition on climate – https://theconversation.com/quad-praises-albanese-governments-higher-ambition-on-climate-183743

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

As well as her interviews with politicians and experts, Politics with Michelle Grattan includes “Word from The Hill”, where she discusses the news with members of The Conversation politics team.

In this podcast Michelle and politics + society editor Amanda Dunn canvass new Prime Minster Anthony Albanese’s climate pitch to the QUAD, China’s reaction to the Labor government, and what the election defeat has done to the Coalition.

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

– ref. Word from The Hill: Biden impressed by Albanese’s energy (even if the Liberals weren’t) – https://theconversation.com/word-from-the-hill-biden-impressed-by-albaneses-energy-even-if-the-liberals-werent-183727

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin Clark, Deputy Engagement Editor, The Conversation

Politics can be slow-moving, until all of a sudden it isn’t. As political scientist Simon Jackman says in today’s episode of Below the Line, “politics is very non-linear. You get these steady, secular trends in voter sentiment, and then you’ll have that breakthrough election where that will convert into seats”.

2022 was that breakthrough election. The Liberal party was turfed out, not just from government but also from many of its blue-ribbon seats, and we saw a historic wave of climate-focused candidates elected from outside the major parties.

In this episode of Below the Line, our expert panel dissects the results of this surprising federal election, from Anthony Albanese’s victory, to the breakthrough of independents and the Queensland Greens, and Scott Morrison “bulldozing” his way to the worst Liberal result since the second world war.

Our regular panellists recorded this final episode live at La Trobe University, which we are releasing in two parts. Part one focuses on the election results and their fallout, while the concluding edition of our limited-edition podcast series will examine the policy consequences going forward for the new federal parliament.

Our political experts also critique the media’s coverage of the campaign in light of the historic results. Host and former ABC Radio host Jon Faine believes the national broadcaster’s coverage was “below standard”, while he agrees with Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan’s criticisms of the unprofessional conduct of the national press gallery. Andrea Carson also calls out News Corp’s partisan coverage, the media’s “gotcha” questions, and their belated focus on women, while Simon Jackman and Anika Gauja take issue with their “presidentialised” approach that focused too much on the parties’ respective leaders.

Below the Line is a limited-edition election podcast brought to you by The Conversation and La Trobe University. It is produced by Courtney Carthy and Benjamin Clark.

To become one of more than 190,000 people who get The Conversation’s journalism by experts delivered straight to their inbox, subscribe today.

Disclosures: Simon Jackman is a consultant on polling data for the Climate 200 network of independent candidates.

Image credit: Dean Lewins/AAP

– ref. Below the Line: Has Australia’s political landscape changed forever? – podcast – https://theconversation.com/below-the-line-has-australias-political-landscape-changed-forever-podcast-183730

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By D. Bondy Valdovinos Kaye, Lecturer, Queensland University of Technology

On Sunday, popular American singer songwriter Halsey shared a video on TikTok with tinny music in the background, the on-screen text reading:

Basically I have a song that I love that I wanna release ASAP but my record label won’t let me. I’ve been in this industry for 8 years and I’ve sold over 165 million records. And my record company is saying that I can’t release it unless they can fake a viral moment on TikTok. Everything is marketing. And they are doing this to basically every artist these days. I just wanna release music, man. And I deserve better tbh. I’m tired.

The 30-second video did what Halsey’s label wanted – though probably not how they wanted. It gained over 8 million views in 24 hours and sparked massive interest among fans, TikTok users and industry observers.

Comments on the video were divided between those expressing support for Halsey’s predicament and indignation at the record label, and those who saw the post as the actual marketing scheme the label wanted all along.

In a second video shared two hours later, Halsey pushed back against accusations of fake outrage with a recording of someone speaking off screen, ostensibly a label representative, explaining how the viral TikTok campaign would need to play out for the song to get scheduled for release.

Throughout the explanation, Halsey stares despondently into the middle distance before finally saying “I hate this. It just sucks.”

Whether staged or not, the fact that these two videos went viral so quickly shows people are willing to believe a major artist would be so frustrated with their label forcing them to “do TikTok” that they decided to expose their label on TikTok.

Like MTV or top 40 hits radio stations before it, TikTok is where popular music lives right now. Labels understand that.

To them, the allure of TikTok is that musical content can go viral quickly, offering the potential to save millions on other types of marketing campaigns.

Read more:
Love it or hate it, TikTok is changing the music industry

An uneasy relationship

Halsey is not the first high profile artist to vent about this on TikTok.

In his first video posted last month, American singer songwriter, Gavin DeGraw shared a parody version of his 2003 hit, singing “I Don’t Want to Be on TikTok but my label told me that I have to.”

Just last week, English singer-songwriter FKA Twigs claimed her label was not only making her create and post TikTok videos but they wanted her to post videos multiple times a day.

In some cases artists do seem to enjoy being on TikTok.

Lizzo regularly shares memes, vlogs and recipe videos on TikTok, and heavily promoted her most recent release It’s About Damn Time. She even participated in a dance challenge for the song choreographed by another TikTok creator.

Going viral on TikTok can be a double-edged sword for musical artists. It can catapult them to unprecedented visibility in markets around the world, but the content making them famous could be the video, not the music.

In 2019, Australian singer Inoxia went “accidentally viral” when a passer-by recorded her performing on the street and uploaded it to TikTok. The street-performer-turned-TikTok sensation was offered deals that seemed too good to be true and told by her manager she’d need to become more of a content creator to maintain her success.

Her passion was singing, not making videos to post on social media. Ultimately, she returned to busking on the street.

Is all publicity good publicity?

Halsey’s self-described “TikTok tantrum” tests the shock advertising theory that any and all publicity is good publicity for brands.

Star power is an effective bargaining tool to create change for artists who command it.

For independent artists without the same leverage, a viral venting video could be the very thing they need to ditch their label and share their music on their own – provided they aren’t locked into the kind of exclusive record deal that has become standard in the music industry over the past decade.

Fake or genuine, Halsey’s video shows fans and artists are willing to have a conversation about how labels exert influence over artists when it comes to marketing, the nature of obligations artists contractually owe to their labels and the power artists wield to push back against labels if they feel they are being treated unfairly.

Viral rants on TikTok are not going to become the new normal for selling songs, just like video never actually killed the radio star. Label executives watching this unfold are likely more nervous about their own artists publicly airing grievances online than they are excited about a new trend in viral music marketing.

Regardless, as long as audiences continue discovering new music on TikTok, labels will continue searching for new ways to promote their music to the top of the feed.

The core job of the artist – making music – remains the same. Only now the video needs to go viral.

Read more:
Adele has successfully asked Spotify to remove ‘shuffle’ from albums. Here’s why that’s important for musicians

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

– ref. Halsey’s record label won’t release a new song until it goes viral on TikTok. Is this the future of the music industry? – https://theconversation.com/halseys-record-label-wont-release-a-new-song-until-it-goes-viral-on-tiktok-is-this-the-future-of-the-music-industry-183720

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Crowley, Adjunct Associate Professor, Public and Environmental Policy, University of Tasmania

During Saturday’s election, 31.5% of the voters deserted the major parties, with a swag of female teal independents tipping Liberal MPs out of their heartland urban seats.

By contrast, the underestimated Greens had a sensational election, surprising many pundits with the strength of their support.

Even though their lower house vote increased by just 1.5% overall, their concentrated support saw the Greens gain two, potentially three, seats in Brisbane. Their traditional strength in the Senate is set to grow, potentially to an all time high of 12 senators. That would give them the balance of power.

So, how did the Greens do it? A combination of good timing and hard work. The climate election arrived at last, Scott Morrison was deeply unpopular, and the third party of Australian politics harnessed support it had been quietly building for years, especially in conservative-leaning Queensland. The only surprise is that many of us weren’t paying attention.

How did the Greens do it?

The Greens have hit a new high-water mark in the lower house with 11.9% of the vote. While good, it’s barely better than their 2010 best of 11.76%. Even so, because of the concentration of their support, their leader Adam Bandt will likely be joined by two other Greens in the lower house and possibly one more.

Read more:
The big teal steal: independent candidates rock the Liberal vote

If Labor is unable to secure a majority, the Greens will likely support minority government. Australia’s only other Greenslide election was in 2010, when the Greens shared the balance of power in the lower house, and held it in the Senate. They were on board then with Labor’s reformist agenda and smoothed the passage of its bills.

As a result, the minority government was our most productive government in recent years.

Playing to party strengths

Are these results a shock? Not really. The party has played to its strengths by targeting specific seats at least since 2010, when they had the biggest swings to their party across the country. That was when 85% of us wanted climate action, before the climate wars set us back a decade.

Every election since has been about growing the Green vote across the country whilst expanding their inner-city strongholds, with very specific targeting of seats like Melbourne (Adam Bandt’s safe seat), Kooyong, Goldstein, Sydney, MacKellar, Warringah, Brisbane, Curtin and Grayndler.

In March 2021, the Greens released their election strategy in a largely neglected but extremely clear press release. They identified nine priority lower house seats, three additional Senate seats, and the balance of power in both houses as party goals. Notably, their campaigning efforts only overlapped the teal independents in the seat of Kooyong.

It looks like they’ll win the three Queensland seats of Ryan, Griffith and Brisbane from, respectively, the Liberals, Liberal National Party and Labor. Adam Bandt is now confident the Greens are “on the march” in the sunshine state. That’s quite a turnaround from 2019, where Queensland proved critical to Morrison’s miracle victory.

From the ground up

Crucially, Green politics is built from the ground up, beginning with participation at local council level and in state parliaments.

In 2020, the party won two state seats, following their gain of a seat on Brisbane City Council, and have continued to build on that momentum into this election with sophisticated grass roots campaigning.

This is a long term effort. In the seat of Ryan, for example, which takes in much of Brisbane’s leafy west and hinterland, the Greens have been slowly building up strength since reaching just under 19% in 2010. On Saturday, Elizabeth Watson-Brown wrested Ryan from the LNP with a primary vote of 31.1% and a two-party-preferred vote of 53.2%.

Traditionally, the Greens have posed more of a threat to Labor. While they have done most damage to the Liberals this election, Labor knows that it is not immune to this rising third force. Adam Bandt’s seat was solidly Labor for over one hundred years.

A Green mandate

Gaining the balance of power in either or both houses would give the Greens greater leverage to introduce parts of their agenda. The election result was clearly a mandate for strengthened climate action, and they will seek that immediately.

What could this look like? Think of the key achievements of the Gillard minority Labor government, which included Green initiatives such as clean energy legislation, carbon pricing and the establishment of the Climate Change Authority, Renewable Energy Agency and Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

Read more:
Is this the end of the two-party system in Australia? The Greens, teals and others shock the major parties

In 2022, Greens preferences to Labor across the country proved vital in unseating Liberal MPs. Despite Labor’s traditional discomfort with Green incursions into “their” seats, this trend is here to stay. Labor will have to deal with it. The Greens back much of the teal independents’ agenda of climate action and political integrity, making them collectively a powerful crossbench for change.

In his post election speech, Bandt made clear what he wants: a principled, stable Labor government, with an end to coal and gas, a just transition for displaced workers, and investment in climate resilience.

By neglecting environmental issues and failing to adequately tackle Australia’s growing inequality, both major parties have created the political space which Green politics fills.

Over the last decade, as climate-linked crises have intensified, public concern has soared. The economic cost of this neglect is already in the billions and climbing.

The Greens and teal independents will likely seek to end fossil fuel subsidies and to ban fossil industry donations to political parties. Had the political parties kept a distance from corrosive fossil fuel influence in the first place, they would not find Greens and teals replacing them.

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

– ref. Good timing and hard work: behind the election’s ‘Greenslide’ – https://theconversation.com/good-timing-and-hard-work-behind-the-elections-greenslide-183719

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rita Matulionyte, Senior Lecturer in Law, Macquarie University

Mastercard’s “smile to pay” system, announced last week, is supposed to save time for customers at checkouts. It is being trialled in Brazil, with future pilots planned for the Middle East and Asia.

The company argues touch-less technology will help speed up transaction times, shorten lines in shops, heighten security and improve hygiene in businesses. But it raises concerns relating to customer privacy, data storage, crime risk and bias.

How will it work?

Mastercard’s biometric checkout system will provide customers facial recognition-based payments, by linking the biometric authentication systems of a number of third-party companies with Mastercard’s own payment systems.

A Mastercard spokesperson told The Conversation it had already partnered with NEC, Payface, Aurus, Fujitsu Limited, PopID and PayByFace, with more providers to be named.

They said “providers need to go through independent laboratory certification against the program criteria to be considered” – but details of these criteria aren’t yet publicly available.

According to media reports, customers will have to install an app which will take their picture and payment information. This information will be saved and stored on the third-party provider’s servers.

At the checkout, the customer’s face will be matched with the stored data. And once their identity is verified, funds will be deducted automatically. The “wave” option is a bit of a trick: as the customer watches the camera while waving, the camera still scans their face – not their hand.

Similar authentication technologies are used on smartphones (face ID) and in many airports around the world, including “smartgates” in Australia.

China started using biometrics-based checkout technology back in 2017. But Mastercard is among the first to launch such a system in Western markets – competing with the “pay with your palm” system used at cashier-less Amazon Go and Whole Foods brick and mortars in the United States.

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What we don’t know

Much about the precise functioning of Mastercard’s system isn’t clear. How accurate will the facial recognition be? Who will have access to the databases of biometric data?

A Mastercard spokesperson told The Conversation customers’ data would be stored with the relevant biometric service provider in encrypted form, and removed when the customer “indicates they want to end their enrolment”. But how will the removal of data be enforced if Mastercard itself can’t access it?

Obviously, privacy protection is a major concern, especially when there are many potential third-party providers involved.

On the bright side, Mastercard’s customers will have a choice as to whether or not they use the biometrics checkout system. However, it will be at retailers’ discretion whether they offer it, or whether they offer it exclusively as the only payment option.

Similar face-recognition technologies used in airports, and by police, often offer no choice.

We can assume Mastercard and the biometrics provider with whom they partner will require customer consent, as per most privacy laws. But will customers know what they are consenting to?

Ultimately, the biometric service providers Mastercard teams up with will decide how they use the data, for how long, where they store it, and who can access it. Mastercard will merely decide what providers are “good enough” to be accepted as partners, and the minimum standards they must adhere to.

Customers who want the convenience of this checkout service will have to consent to all the related data and privacy terms. And as reports have noted, there is potential for Mastercard to integrate the feature with loyalty schemes and make personalised recommendations based on purchases.

Read more:
Fingerprint login should be a secure defence for our data, but most of us don’t use it properly

Accuracy is a problem

While the accuracy of face recognition technologies has previously been challenged, the current best facial authentication algorithms have an error of just 0.08%, according to tests by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. In some countries, even banks have become comfortable relying on it to log users into their accounts.

Yet we can’t know how accurate the technologies used in Mastercard’s biometric checkout system will be. The algorithms underpinning a technology can work almost perfectly when trailed in a lab, but perform poorly in real life settings, where lighting, angles and other parameters are varied.

Bias is another problem

In a 2019 study, NIST found that out of 189 facial recognition algorithms, the majority were biased. Specifically, they were less accurate on people from racial and ethnic minorities.

Even if the technology has improved in the past few years, it’s not foolproof. And we don’t know the extent to which Mastercard’s system has overcome this challenge.

If the software fails to recognise a customer at the check out, they might end up disappointed, or even become irate – which would completely undo any promise of speed or convenience.

But if the technology misidentifies a person (for instance, John is recognised as Peter – or twins are confused for each other), then money could be taken from the wrong person’s account. How would such a situation be dealt with?

Is the technology secure?

We often hear about software and databases being hacked, even in cases of supposedly very “secure” organisations. Despite Mastercard’s efforts to ensure security, there’s no guarantee the third-party providers’ databases – with potentially millions of people’s biometric data – won’t be hacked.

In the wrong hands, this data could lead to identity theft, which is one of the fastest growing types of crime, and financial fraud.

Do we want it?

Mastercard suggests 74% of customers are in favour of using such technology, referencing a stat from its own study – also used by business partner Idemia (a company that sells biometric identification products).

But the report cited is vague and brief. Other studies show entirely different results. For example, this study suggests 69% of customers aren’t comfortable with face recognition tech being used in retail settings. And this one shows only 16% trust such tech.

Also, if consumers knew the risks the technology poses, the number of those willing to use it might drop even lower.

Rita Matulionyte receives funding from Lithuanian Research Council for the research project ‘Government Use of Facial Recognition Technologies: Legal Challenges and Possible Solutions’ (2021-2023). She is affiliated with Australian Society for Computers and Law (AUSCL).

– ref. Pay ‘with a smile or a wave’: why Mastercard’s new face recognition payment system raises concerns – https://theconversation.com/pay-with-a-smile-or-a-wave-why-mastercards-new-face-recognition-payment-system-raises-concerns-183447