Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Somayeh Parvazian, Survey Methodologist, National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER)

The Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) unpack the lives of young Australians as they leave school, enter further study or the workforce and make the transition into adulthood.

The latest findings are now available for the group of young people who completed their first questionnaire back in 2009 at age 15. This group’s 11th and final survey shows young people are completing university at higher rates than ever before, while participation in apprenticeships and traineeships is taking a dive.

Read more: Most young people who do VET after school are in full-time work by the age of 25

The information collected from these groups of students, or “cohorts”, is used to better understand what helps or hinders this transition. This includes things like the effect of schools on year 12 completion, whether government benefits like Youth Allowance help students complete their studies, and the factors that help a young person find full-time work sooner.

Each cohort starts with about 14,000 students in the first survey, or “wave”. From the age of 15 to 25, they complete a 20-minute survey once a year to share what’s been happening in their lives. LSAY asks about their experiences at school, their post-school study and work, as well as their health and home life.

Six cohorts have taken part so far. The recent release of findings from the fifth cohort’s final survey is a milestone, with LSAY data now available across three decades. This means we can study generational changes in transition patterns.

To capture the many changing events or factors that affect young peoples’ transition, the survey has added questions about caring responsibilities, volunteering activities, participation in the gig economy, their personality traits and whether they have access to social support.

Read more: Students’ own low expectations can reinforce their disadvantage

Data dating back to the ’70s

LSAY is one of Australia’s biggest and longest-running panel surveys. More than 60,000 young people have been surveyed since 1995. It’s recognised as one of eight core longitudinal data assets in Australia.

The surveys grew out of the Youth in Transition (YIT) studies in the 1970s. The decade’s oil price shocks caused unemployment to soar, with young people hit the hardest. This created a need to better understand their school-to-work transition in the face of global technological and economic change.

Then came the Australian Longitudinal Surveys (ALS) and Australian Youth Surveys (AYS) in the 1980s. One of the more prominent pieces of research using these data found the aptitude of new teachers fell substantially as teacher pay declined compared to other salaries.

These three longitudinal studies were combined to create the LSAY program.

Read more: If you have a low ATAR, you could earn more doing a VET course than a uni degree – if you’re a man

Researchers mine LSAY for insights

More than 300 published research papers have used LSAY data. The report 25 years of LSAY: Research from the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth showcases some of the highlights.

LSAY research has shown working just a few hours a week while at school improves prospects of getting a full-time job. But working long hours has a slightly negative effect on school completion. The research also found females are better at balancing school and work than their male peers.

Research has also shown that students participating in school-based vocational education and training (VET) had higher rates of school completion, full-time employment and incomes in their first year after school than non-VET students with similar characteristics. Ex-VET students were also more likely to be in a job they liked as a career. These benefits were associated with school-based VET programs with a workplace learning component.

The Productivity Commission used LSAY data to investigate the demand-driven university system. Many disadvantaged students successfully attended university as a result of the expansion of the system. However, those with lower literacy and numeracy were more likely to drop out. The study recognised schools and universities need to do more to prepare and support students, and that university might not always be the best option.

Read more: More students are going to university than before, but those at risk of dropping out need more help

LSAY has been an important source of evidence for policy. National reviews and inquiries informed by LSAY data include the COAG Reform Council’s reporting on youth transitions (2009), the Bradley Review of Higher Education (2008) and the House of Representatives inquiry into combining school and work (2008-2009).

The recent Education Council Review of Senior Secondary Pathways, released in July, draws heavily on LSAY to establish how students can choose the best pathway for their transition from school.

LSAY has a high degree of comparability with international youth surveys. These include the Transition from Education to Employment (TREE) study in Switzerland, the Youth in Transition Survey (YITS) in Canada, the Education Longitudinal Study (ELS) and National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) in the United States, and Next Steps in the UK.

Most of these have a starting sample of about 9,000 individuals. Next Steps has 16,000. LSAY’s starting sample of 14,000 young Australians makes it one of the largest surveys of its kind in the world.

Tracking lives through the GFC and COVID-19

These datasets enable us to transform a snapshot of a person’s life into a moving picture. Compared with cross-sectional studies, these longitudinal datasets provide a much clearer picture by accounting for personalities, life events and pathways.

Combining a longitudinal study with cohort studies sheds more light on this picture by controlling for inter-generational differences, or crises such as wars, financial downturns or natural disasters.

For example, using data from four LSAY cohorts, one study found the well-being of those whose transitions occurred during the global financial crisis (GFC) was much worse on several measures, including standard of living, home life, career prospects, social life and independence.

The extraordinary challenges Australian youth face as a result of the coronavirus pandemic will be documented when the sixth LSAY cohort, now aged 20, complete their sixth survey in 2020 and further surveys in the years thereafter.

By providing a valuable resource to explore the longer-term effects of this crisis, LSAY continues to stand the test of time.

– ref. A 3-decade ‘moving picture’ of young Australians’ study, work and life, thanks to LSAY – https://theconversation.com/a-3-decade-moving-picture-of-young-australians-study-work-and-life-thanks-to-lsay-141134

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

In the early 1930s a 21-year-old undergraduate at the London School of Economics asked a great question during his summer research project: “if my economics professors are right that markets are an efficient way to allocate resources, then why do firms exist?”

To put it another way, why would an entrepreneur go to the effort of building a company and buying things “in house” rather than just buying them in the market?

That student, Ronald Coase, would go on to win a Nobel prize for his contribution to answering this question.

He suggested markets have the great virtue of the price mechanism, which communicate information about economic fundamentals (like what consumers value) and balances supply and demand. But there are “transaction costs”, and sometimes haggling in the market can be less efficient than, say, a manager simply telling her employees what she wants done.

These insights point to the fundamental problems with Austalia’s university sector in 2020.

We have about 40 “firms” that, as far as domestic undergraduates are concerned, don’t set their own prices, don’t set their own quantities (i.e. the number of students they accept) and are regulated not by the invisible hand of the market but the federal government’s Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency.

At the same time universities compete in an international marketplace for both students and staff.

This leads to the worst of all worlds. The sector has many of the downsides but none of the benefits of market competition. They are not in control of their own destiny.

The recent round of federal government reform attempts – encouraging students to pursue “job-ready” qualifications by slashing the price of courses such as mathematics, agriculture and nursing while doubling those such as humanities and communications – is incrementalism likely doomed to failure.

There is pressing need for more significant reform.

A crisis that was always coming

Perhaps the place to begin is to acknowledge that both the university sector and the government have legitimate gripes with the current funding model.

Universities can point to a host of perverse incentives – creating unintended negative consequences contrary to what was intended – embedded in the system. In particular, it has encouraged universities to chase full fee-paying international students to cross-subsidise Australian students.

The funding universities receive for domestic undergraduates is insufficient to provide them a world-class education. Research is also underfunded. This has left universities with no choice but to enrol large numbers of foreign students, paying market prices for their education.

The government argues universities might not be preparing students as well as they could for the job market – with too few graduating with the skills the economy demands and too many pursuing degrees in fields they are unlikely to find employment.

To all these points there are responses. I could tell you, for instance, that in nine years at UNSW Sydney I have seen the quality of undergraduates I teach get even better, not worse. But this back and forth rather misses the point.

Read more: Australian universities could lose $19 billion in the next 3 years. Our economy will suffer with them

Warning bells

COVID-19 has simply accelerated a crisis in university funding that was always coming.

There has always been the risk of the Chinese government simply turning off the tap. China has done so to other countries, such as Taiwan in 2017, when it halved the number of students permitted to study there to just 1,000.

In February 2018, Clive Hamilton and others warned about dependence on Chinese students after China issued a “Study Abroad Alert” about Australia being unsafe for Chinese students.

Read more: Without international students, Australia’s universities will downsize – and some might collapse altogether

Two major reforms needed

We need two things.

First, removing the perverse incentives of cross-subsidies in the system.

This will require domestic students paying more for their education through the HECS-HELP loan system. Our “Group of Eight” universities can’t keep charging a quarter of what institutions like Boston University or the University of California San Diego charge and deliver a world-class undergraduate experience. It will also require funding research properly, in part by linking universities and industry more closely.

Read more: Australia can do a better job of commercialising research – here’s how

Second, we need to allow and encourage universities to specialise more. Not every institution needs to be doing research in particle physics, for example. Indeed, not every university needs to being doing research at all.

Universities focusing more on their comparative advantage, in research or teaching, would enable research dollars to be better targeted.

Nor should we continue to insist that all universities charge the same price to students for the same subject matter. Students should be allowed to be the arbiters of what good education looks like, rather than an Excel spreadsheet in Canberra making that determination.

When we come out of COVID-19, economic growth will be at more of a premium than ever before, and harder to come by. Economists have long emphasised the crucial role of human capital and “ideas” developed through research in driving economic growth. We need a high-quality, well-functioning university sector.

Rather than bicker about incremental changes to the system, we need a grand bargain between universities and government that fundamentally reforms the sector. The future of young Australians, and our economy, depends on it.

– ref. Vital Signs: this university funding crisis was always coming – COVID-19 just accelerated it – https://theconversation.com/vital-signs-this-university-funding-crisis-was-always-coming-covid-19-just-accelerated-it-144365

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Linden, Sessional Lecturer, PhD (Management) Candidate, School of Management, RMIT University

In this recession, unlike in previous ones, governments have chosen to help pay salaries to keep workers in work rather than pay unemployment benefits when they laid off.

It means that the July unemployment rate revealed on Thursday was 7.5% instead of the 8.3% it would have been had those working zero hours but being paid by JobKeeper been counted as out of work.

This approach has kept employees and firms ready for work at a time when it is far from clear when things will improve.

Implicit in the deal was that firms in need of JobKeeper would behave as if they were in times of immense uncertainty and not pay big dividends to shareholders on the assumption that things were rosy.

It is early in the company reporting season but already there are signs that millions of dollars in increased dividends are being paid out by companies that received millions of dollars of JobKeeper.

As The Guardian’s Ben Butler puts it

what we are seeing is a transfer of millions of dollars from taxpayers – the community at large – to shareholders, some of whom are already quite rich

By supporting the wages of employees in companies at risk, the government freed up money the companies could use to pay shareholders increased dividends rather than fortify themselves against that risk.

It enabled them to shovel out of the door the money the government was shovelling in, leaving themselves no better prepared than before.

And they need to be prepared.

The last thing we need is big dividends

In April the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority wrote to banks and insurers asking them to “seriously consider deferring decisions on the appropriate level of dividends until the outlook is clearer”.

Even where they were confident they had the resources they needed, their dividends should be at a “materially reduced level”.

Perhaps precipitously, it relaxed the guidance on July 29, noting that uncertainty had “reduced somewhat”. A few days later Victoria went into Stage 4 lockdown.

Its new guideline was for banks to retain at least half of their earnings when making decisions on dividends, an instruction the Commonwealth Bank followed to the letter on Wednesday paying out 49.95% of its earnings as dividends.

That night on ABC’s The Business the bank’s chief executive Matt Comyn conceded the outlook was “highly uncertain”.

Earlier that day we learnt that the private sector wage index had stopped for the first time in its 27 year history.

A graph presented to Commonwealth Bank shareholders on Wednesday shows that almost all of the increase in deposits in its accounts comes from government benefits rather than wages and salaries.

Some 10% of all bank loan books are now made up of loans on which borrowers have been granted deferred payments.

Among small businesses, 17% of repayments have been deferred, a proportion set to climb from September as Job keeper subsidies are reduced and withdrawn.

In March the government gave companies temporary relief from rules that prevent them from trading while insolvent.

Read more: The last thing companies should be doing right now is paying dividends

For the moment the change has pushed insolvencies down to an all time low, creating an unknown amount of zombie companies not fully alive but not yet dead.

When the temporary relief expires (September, unless it is extended) there’s talk of an tidal wave of insolvencies.

It raises concerns that for now many companies are announcing dividends that shouldn’t and ordinarily wouldn’t be paid.

Some (not the Commonwealth Bank) are using JobKeeper to pay them.

Why dividends, now of all times?

There is a relationship between dividends, share prices and executive pay. Australian companies that pay out big dividends keep their share prices high.

Many Australians receiving dividend imputation cheques, including many retirees, hold shares because of them.

Without them, share prices would fall and executives would be denied their bonuses.

One way to ensure that there is money available for dividends is to rule out new investments that can’t achieve a high rate of return, meaning money can be paid out to shareholders instead.

Read more: High hurdle rates are holding back businesses, but perhaps they should be

Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe has complained that hurdle rates of 13% to 14% seem to be “hard-wired into the corporate culture in some companies” notwithstanding the record low rates at which they can obtain funds.

In January the head of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Rod Sims warned that unless companies lowered their hurdle rates they would “risk missing investment opportunities to foreign raiders”.

It’s something akin to an undeclared investment strike by corporate Australia, something akin to “heads, shareholders win; tails, employee, creditors and the rest of us lose”.

– ref. For some companies, JobKeeper has become DividendKeeper. They are paying out, even though the future looks awful – https://theconversation.com/for-some-companies-jobkeeper-has-become-dividendkeeper-they-are-paying-out-even-though-the-future-looks-awful-144289

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kevin John Brophy, Emeritus Professor of Creative writing, University of Melbourne

A friend is sending me documents needed to make me the executor of his will. He does not expect to die from this pandemic but he has enough weaknesses in his body to be fairly sure he would not survive the virus if it gets to him. He is not as old as I am but he is not young either. He is clear-sighted enough to know what he must do now: stay at home. He is also clear-sighted enough to admit into his thinking the common fact of death.

And common fact it is — about 160,000 Australians die in the course of each year —though every death is a particular death and no single death can be quite like another. From a certain distance, it looks as if we must all enter this darkness or this blinding light by the same gate when we die, and from that point of view our common destination is undeniable.

But from another point of view, the one taken in Kafka’s famous parable, Before the Law, each of us stands at a particular gate made for us, a gate no other person can go through. Making a similar point, “Death is a black camel that kneels at every person’s gate”, goes a Turkish proverb.

I am a little shocked by my friend’s matter-of-fact approach to the idea of his death; and I am comforted by his attitude as well. At least he is not leaving matters to bureaucrats or stolid workers who might think his death is much the same as all other deaths.

As a friend, I have always valued him for the no-nonsense realism he brings to bear on our lives, and for the creativity with which he has approached every experience of his life. I tell him I will be happy to sign the documents and, if needed, to act as his executor. He says it will be simple. He has everything in labelled boxes and files.

When I talk to another friend who is a doctor at a Melbourne hospital, she speaks of the bruise on her nose from wearing a tight mask all day every day, of the sweating inside her protective plastic garments, of washing and disinfecting her hands after taking off each item of protective clothing at the end of a shift.

She says she thinks it is only a matter of time before she will be infected with the virus. She is young and her chances of survival are high, she says. I am shocked all over again by the way she thinks — or must think if she is to continue to do this work.

Read more: When life is coming to a close: three common myths about dying

This fearful companion

Another day and there are nearly 2,000 people from aged care homes sick with the virus, and a record number of deaths reported for two days running. Grieving families are interviewed on television and on the radio.

I am living at home now with my death a definite shadow in my mind. I am 70, which makes me vulnerable. Many of us, I know, are in our homes with this fearful companion so full of its own patience and fierce focus.

One mercy is that I don’t have to be worrying about my parents, who both died three years ago after reaching their nineties. Their deaths followed the familiar pattern: a series of falls, an illness that brings pneumonia with it, a descent into morphine assisted sleep, then days of dragging in those last breaths as though they are being counted down.

But their deaths were particular too. My father was exhausted, I believe, and my mother was not ready to go. She fought through to those last breaths with all the fight she had in her.

In 1944 Carl Jung suffered a heart attack after breaking his foot, and was in a coma for three weeks. In a brief memoir of this experience, he describes floating out into near space where he could look down on the planet, then entering a light-filled rock that seemed to be a temple with a room inside where he was sure he would meet all the people who had been important to him, and where he would finally understand what kind of life he had lived.

At the entrance to this room, his doctor called him back to earth where there seemed to be a continuing need for his presence. He had to forego the experience of death, he wrote. He was 69 and he would live for another 17 years. For those who were caring for him, he might have looked like any patient in a coma and near death, but for him this was a particular moment of reckoning and even joyous anticipation.

Watching my parents die was its own shock after witnessing the deterioration in their bodies and minds as they aged, the reduction of their lives to a hospital bed, closed eyes, machines attached, the days-long struggle to breathe. It was almost unbearable to be near this and almost impossible to keep away as the time left became shorter.

Now in the time of this virus a painful new imposition bears down upon the families of the dying for they cannot even stand by the bed of a dying parent or grandparent or partner. The sadness of this immeasurable.

In an essay about death, called On Practice, Michel Montaigne mentioned that “practice is no help in the greatest task we have to perform: dying.”

In this matter we are all apprentices. But is there some way of breaking ourselves in for death, or must we always work and work to keep both death and the thought of death at bay?

Read more: Guide to the classics: Michel de Montaigne’s Essays

When my sister died of cancer at 49, I remember her patting our young daughter’s hand the day before she died, saying to her, “Don’t cry, I’ll be all right. I promise you I will be all right.”

At the time I thought she was in denial, or that perhaps she thought that she needed to protect us from the heavy presence of death.

But now I think she might have been looking past us and even past herself: we do die and it is all right — and every living thing that moves only moves under the condition of its coming death. She might have been seeing this well enough to embrace its truth. I don’t know.

‘A second, a minute, longer’

Today the sun was out, a low winter sun sparkling through the twisted branches of our back yard ornamental pear trees, and I could not resist going out into the sunshine to weed around the carrots and beetroot, and take up the last of the autumn leaves from under the parsley bushes. I felt lucky to have these few minutes with the warmth of the sun on the back of my neck.

I have been reading Svetlana Alexievich’s Chernobyl Prayer, and somewhere near the end she records the words of a physicist dying of cancer from the Chernobyl fallout. He said,

I thought I only had days, a very few days, left to live, and I desperately wanted not to die. I was suddenly seeing every leaf, bright colours, a bright sky, the vivid grey of tarmac, the cracks in it with ants clambering about in them. ‘No,’ I thought to myself, ‘I need to walk round them.’ I pitied them. I did not want them to die. The aroma of the forest made me feel dizzy. I perceived smell more vividly than colour. Light birch trees, ponderous firs. Was I never to see this anymore? I wanted to live a second, a minute longer!

This reaction is deeply understandable, and each of us shares this feeling, even if only faintly, every morning that we find we have the world in our world again — for perhaps a whole day. Each time I read that paragraph I misread “I desperately wanted not to die” as “I desperately wanted to die”.

This urge to stay at home is almost matched by the urge to be out in the world rubbing shoulders with crowds. The desire to save my own life is mixed somehow with a desire to have it over with. My misreading troubles me, but it keeps happening.

A woman I know who is 30 years old answers, when I ask her how she feels about the growing numbers of aged victims to this pandemic, that there need to be more public “death-positive” campaigns in order to make death a more natural part of life in our culture — to make of it something we need not fear so much or become so angry over.

Though she speaks as if death belongs to other kinds of being than her, she makes some good sense because this is the other side of our attitude to death. Sometimes I lie in bed and count the likely number of days I might have left to me, and it always seems both a lot and not enough. And then I forget what the number was because after all, how can there even be a world without me in it?

Some years ago our dear neighbour Anna said she had decided it was time for her to die. There was nothing else she wanted. We had watched her nurse her husband through dementia for a decade, we had many afternoon teas with her as she fussed over our children and showed us the latest thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle she was completing. She talked about the books she was reading. And then one day she was ready to go.

Not long after that I visited her, more or less unconscious in a hospital bed. My amazement at her decision to go. But now, as I inch closer to old age, I imagine I might be able to understand how her decision was as much a matter of the mind as the body.

An American news service has reported that across 24 hours one person every minute died in the United States from Covid-19. I am not sure how to understand this kind of counting. It conjures images of queues of bodies, of frantic funeral directors and grieving families. It speeds up the mind and produces in me a feeling of panic.

Every minute across each day of the year about seven babies are born in the USA. A lot happens in a minute across a whole nation. Numbers tell a certain kind of story, the heart tells another, but sometimes the numbers are aimed at the heart.

If not death-positive, then perhaps we could be death-realistic. Svetlana Alexievich talked to children in cancer wards. A dying child named Oxana spoke of what she desired: “When I die, don’t bury me in a graveyard. I’m afraid of cemeteries. There are only dead people there, and crows. Bury me in open countryside.”

It is possible to know we are afraid, and know at the same time that this fear is a fear up to the brink of death, and beyond that we can go with our imaginations into an open countryside.

I am afraid, as we all are. When my daughter asks what she should do with my ashes after I am gone, the fiction we play at is that I will care what happens to “my” ashes, that it will make a difference to me, and that “I” will still be somewhere when she makes that decision.

I can never compose a clear set of instructions for her, though I know that putting those ashes somewhere in nature, perhaps out on water or under a tree, would fit with an idea I have of how the journey is best completed.

Intense light

With a state of disaster formally declared and a curfew at night for all the citizens of our city, the word, “disaster”, might seem to mark an endpoint. But it has become the sign for a new beginning and a new campaign.

With these new plans in place, drastic though they are, the possibility opens for believing, perhaps naively, that there will be a time when death does not dominate our thinking, that the virus will be a memory of a time we negotiated, a dark passage of intense narrowness before coming out of it into an open countryside. Perhaps as faltering human beings we must live this way: repeatedly imagining in hope of further scenes of rebirth.

When we know as fully as it can be known that we are each on a sure way to our own particular death, perhaps then we are already in that open countryside. My partner Andrea and I walked in the sunshine today to a park where we met, briefly, with our son, who stood well away from us, all of us in masks.

We talked about everything that is small, inconsequential, funny and ordinary in our lives. Two of us will have birthdays under this extended lockdown. We did not mention death, but everything we said was bathed in its intense light.

Our duties

I receive emails offering support and good wishes from friends interstate and around the world for the six weeks of lockdown. There is a shift in attitude and mood away from blame and towards support. We have a difficult time ahead of us. The street falls still and silent at night. I have a list of books to read, old papers to go through and throw out, but before that I find I wake up ill.

When I ring a doctor friend for advice he tells me he is COVID-19 positive himself, contracted in one of Melbourne’s aged care homes, and is in quarantine at home for two weeks. So far, into day six, he is feeling not too bad. In anticipation of this he says he has been keeping fit, eating well, and taking zinc tablets. My friend advises me to go to an emergency ward at a nearby hospital, and I do, though with much nervousness.

I am the only person in the emergency waiting area when I arrive, and am soon inside with a nurse in a cubicle, having urine and blood tests. Everyone is in plastic, masked, and across the aisle from me there are three police officers guarding a prisoner with shackles at his ankles and one arm pinned by a padlock to a wide leather belt. All three police are masked and one wears bright orange ocean swimming goggles as well.

In the emergency centre, I feel that I am both in the midst of an unfolding crisis and present at a theatre-in-the-round performance. A woman in a wheelchair asks loudly what everyone’s name is and what their job is. When one man says he is the director of the emergency centre she laughs loud and long, as though she has somehow caught the biggest fish in the river and doesn’t believe it.

Someone asks her if she wants some lunch, and she announces that she is starving and could they make up a bacon and fried egg sandwich for her followed by a crunchy peanut butter sandwich.

I am released from the emergency ward with blood and urine samples left for analysis, but without being tested for COVID-19 because I showed no specific symptoms.

Read more: ‘I want to stare death in the eye’: why dying inspires so many writers and artists

My time in the hospital is a reminder to me of how far I am from the world now. A workplace, I realise afresh, can be dizzyingly busy, chaotic, packed with humanity and with unpredictable moments of basic care for fellow humans, of suffering, and those bizarre sights worthy of a circus or an opera. I have become so used to moving between two or three rooms at home and going outside only to go into the garden, that I am in a panic here in the hospital over doorknobs, sheets, chairs or curtains that I’m touching — and at the same time I feel that this closeness to others is what being alive is really about.

Returning home I have to keep reminding myself that it is in this quiet, almost passive way of living that I am doing something needed. It might be that this social isolation, one from another, is a plague response from the middle ages, but without it, we are told, modern hospitals, ventilators and ICUs will be overwhelmed. There is an intimate, human response needed to this virus. It forces an honesty upon us.

If this social isolation is now one of life’s duties, it goes along beside all the other duties, and among them is the fact that dying is one of our duties. This is an old thought, and perhaps a pagan thought.

Seneca the Younger wrote of this duty in the first century of the Christian era. Would it be too heartless to say that in the presence of so much death and illness we might now be capable of being driven into a new and eerie awareness of what it is like to be alive?

I can envy the vivid, raw consciousness of the man Alexievich quoted, the man who “desperately wanted not to die”, while feeling something desperately hopeless for him too. Perhaps a part of this being alive to dying is being able to hold and carry more than one feeling at once, and especially the contradictory feelings.

This morning Andrea called me to come and look at our second yellow poppy bursting out from her planter box in the back yard. It stands slender on its hairy stalk, its papery petals a shocking splash of colour against its perfect background, a winter sky.

– ref. Friday essay: on reckoning with the fact of one’s death – https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-on-reckoning-with-the-fact-of-ones-death-143822

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

The state of aged care preparation in the era of COVID is, it seems, in the eye of the beholder.

Vastly different claims emerged this week, when the royal commission examining the sector turned its attention to the handling of the pandemic.

According to senior counsel assisting the commission, Peter Rozen, QC, federal authorities had no COVID plan specifically for aged care, always potentially a major risk area. And, Rozen noted, compared with many countries, a very high proportion of Australia’s deaths have been residents of facilities.

The government disputes the lack-of-plan allegation and has a different take on the statistics.

Brendan Murphy, secretary of the health department and until recently Australia’s chief medical officer, appearing before the commission, insisted there had been proper planning, and said the death proportion reflected not a failure in aged care but the low number of fatalities in the general community.

If you were taking a bet on who most people would believe, Rozen would be short odds.

Morrison knows the government is highly vulnerable on the issue. Aged care is a federal responsibility. It affects millions of Australians, counting those with relatives in homes. People’s anger buttons are easily triggered when things go wrong.

Some around the government might like to discount Rozen’s attack as being what counsels-assisting do at royal commissions. But his claims were backed by witnesses, from highly-regarded geriatrician Joseph Ibrahim, of Monash University, to union officials with members on the front line.

They also resonated after the numerous first hand accounts in the media from families as the virus has ripped through well over a hundred facilities in Victoria. Currently, there are more than 1000 cases among residents and over 1000 among staff, linked to these homes.

Politicians have been congratulated during COVID for listening to experts, but according to Ibrahim there was not enough aged care expertise applied in the preparations to firewall the sector.

It’s hard if not impossible, anyway, to build adequate safeguards when the structure itself is so compromised, due to bad decisions and neglect over many years.

Read more: Royal Commission into Aged Care reminds Health Department Secretary Brendan Murphy it sets the rules

A sector operating with low paid, often short term, casuals who pick up work across facilities and often have inadequate English (complicating even basic training) was always inviting disaster.

Health minister Greg Hunt declared recently, after Dan Andrews said he wouldn’t want his mother to be in some of these places: “The idea that our carers, that our nurses are not providing that care, I think, is a dangerous statement to make. They are wonderful human beings and I won’t hear a word against them.”

This misses the point. No one doubts the commitment the majority of the carers have to their work. But the nature of the workforce brings dangers for residents.

Many facilities run on narrow financial margins. The rules allow them to keep their staffing to a minimum, in terms of numbers and skill.

Nor has regulatory oversight been adequate. Often it is families and the media that have exposed neglect and abuses. Morrison announced the royal commission in September 2018 a day before an ABC Four Corners investigation was to air.

The for-profit system emphasises the idea of facilities being “home-like”, which sounds great but can mean inadequate specialised care and challenges for inflection control.

The word “tragic” is thrown around too much by politicians and media. But what’s happened in aged care during COVID has indeed been a tragedy.

It’s just possible if the pandemic had come two years later, after next year’s final report of the royal commission had forced some reform, that fewer lives would have been lost. But even with the system as it is, the evidence indicates better planning could have saved lives.

That’s certainly Ibrahim’s view. In his precis of evidence, he argued “hundreds of residents will die prematurely because people failed to act”.

“We had enough knowledge to do better. We failed because when residents are treated as second class citizens there is an absence of accountability and consequences for those responsible for aged care in Australia,” he said.

There was “failure to provide the same health response to residential aged care that was delivered to the rest of Australia.”

The government has been playing catchup on aged care all through the pandemic. It had to put substantial money in to help with staffing; it was slow to acknowledge the importance of masks; it set up a co-ordinated response in Victoria belatedly; national cabinet only a week ago stepped up preparations in other parts of the country.

Morrison is now confronted at two levels: there must be root and branch reform after the royal commission, and his government is under immediate pressure over this week’s indictment.

The government’s tactic of inserting Murphy into the commission’s witness list was a miscalculation.

It seemed to assume the commission would defer to Murphy when he sought to make a statement to reject Rozen’s claims. But he was refused permission to commence with the statement (which he delivered at the end of the session) and all his appearance did was highlight the government’s sensitivity.

When he summed up the COVID hearings on Thursday, Rozen did not resile from his initial criticisms. He concluded the problems in aged care had been foreseeable; “not all that could be done was done”; and the challenge remained.

Picking up a recommendation from Ibrahim, Rozen urged an “age-care specific national co-ordinating body to advise government”. It would bring together expertise in aged care, infection control and emergency preparedness.

With such a body, “a national aged care plan for COVID could still be put in place,” Rozen said.

Read more: Government rejects Royal Commission’s claim of no aged care plan, as commission set to grill regulator

Although the advisory body is not a formal recommendation, commissioner Tony Pagone endorsed it among “practical things that perhaps should not wait.”

“The virus doesn’t wait and nor should the measures that need to be implemented to deal with the virus wait either”, Pagone said.

The government, which has previously signalled more assistance for aged care in the budget, should stop insisting it has done everything well and act immediately on this and some of the other suggestions made in the COVID hearings.

Morrison said this week in a Facebook message, “I want to assure that where there are shortcomings in these areas they’ll be acknowledged. And the lessons will be learned.”

The government likes to talk about wanting a reform agenda, but this should not be just an economic one. Aged care must be near the top of any serious “reform” to-do list, and vested interests should not be allowed to limit necessary changes.

In his end-of-year ministerial reshuffle, prompted by Mathias Cormann deciding to quit parliament, Morrison should elevate the aged care portfolio from the outer ministry to cabinet.

Having the post in cabinet would send a positive signal but, more importantly, it would encourage a wider range of ministerial eyes on an issue that’s been mishandled for as long as anyone can remember.

Veterans’ affairs is in cabinet, and most families would think aged care is just as worthy of a place.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Morrison government needs to improve, rather than defend, its poor COVID aged care performance – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-morrison-government-needs-to-improve-rather-than-defend-its-poor-covid-aged-care-performance-144447

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Welch, Senior lecturer, University of Auckland

Genetic surveillance — a technology that uses the genetic fingerprint of a virus to track its spread — is part of the public health response to New Zealand’s new COVID-19 community outbreak and could help pinpoint its source.

There are now 17 cases of community transmission, all in Auckland, and health officials are treating the group as a single cluster, with an expectation that case numbers will grow.

Ideally, we should be sequencing all positive test swabs, regardless of whether they are found at the border or in the community. The community cases could then be compared to all other cases to find a close match. This would suggest a likely chain of transmission, help with contact tracing and reveal the sequence of the outbreak.

But not all samples are currently sequenced. In total, New Zealand had 1225 confirmed cases of COVID-19, and about 700 of the positive samples have been sequenced.

I argue the Ministry of Health should now make genetic sequencing mandatory. Here’s why.

Tracking epidemics using genomes

Genetic surveillance of infectious diseases is a maturing technology that has played a major role in the effort to control the Ebola and Zika epidemics, and now the COVID-19 pandemic.

We can now obtain a complete viral genome quickly and cheaply to identify mutations that provide clues about transmission chains.

Cases that are part of the same transmission chain will have genomes that look very similar: they share the same mutations compared to a reference genome. Cases from different transmission chains have genomes with differing patterns of mutations.

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, does not have a particularly high mutation rate. It acquires mutations at about half the rate of seasonal influenza, but it mutates fast enough to leave a signal of where it has come from.

Read more: ‘Genomic fingerprinting’ helps us trace coronavirus outbreaks. What is it and how does it work?

This brings us to how this is helping in our efforts to control the current community outbreak.

There are four main theories about where the new cases could have come from:

Read more: Masking the outbreak: despite New Zealand’s growing COVID-19 cases, there are more ways to get back to elimination faster

The genomes of the new cases could identify the first scenario of a quarantine leak if we found a match between viral genomes from people in quarantine and in the new cluster. This relies on comprehensive sequencing of all cases in quarantine, but currently, there are still gaps.

Similarly, in the unlikely scenario of a transmission chain that has persisted since New Zealand’s first wave, we’d expect a match with one of the cases sequenced during the first outbreak, although the genomes would have diverged somewhat over that period of time.

The scenarios of transmission through goods or an undetected border case are more difficult to decipher using genomic methods. We would be looking to match the viral genome from the new local cases to one of more than 80,000 publicly available genomes that have been sampled worldwide. This would point to a country of origin but not necessarily distinguish between the scenarios.

Early results from sequencing of the first four cases from the new Auckland cluster suggest no link to a known (sequenced) New Zealand case, and the UK as the closest match. For now, this leaves all possibilities still open.

Ongoing surveillance

With widespread testing now underway, new cases will be identified in the community over the coming weeks. It is important that they are rapidly sequenced to determine whether they belong to the same transmission chain.

Genomic analysis will tell us whether we are dealing with a single or multiple clusters. Even the best contact tracing cannot be sure of the origin of an infection, and supplementing it with genomic data is crucial.

But genomic analysis is not limited to establishing transmission chains. It can also tell us about the overall size of an outbreak, which is directly related to the genomic diversity of the virus. We can also date events to establish when transmission started within a cluster, provided there is sufficient diversity in the cluster.

The genomes we have so far in New Zealand show a huge diversity of cases, with many introductions from around the globe. Indeed, the diversity of early samples largely reflects the diversity of the virus globally, with most cases that led to further transmission coming from North America and Australia in line with travel patterns to New Zealand.

Most introductions did not result in further community transmission. This shows how effective New Zealand’s first lockdown was, when transmission rates declined dramatically soon after level 3 and 4 measures were put in place.

Genomes were also used in real time during the first outbreak to help attribute cases to clusters. Retrospectively, this has shown that contact tracing was effective, with relatively few cases being wrongly attributed.

But genome analysis is neither foolproof nor a panacea. Sometimes positive samples are found that cannot be sequenced because they contain only a small amount of viral material. The rather slow rate of mutation of Sars-COV-2 means many cases are essentially carrying identical copies of the virus, even across different countries.

This greatly reduces our ability to attribute an infection to a particular outbreak. There are also real computational bottlenecks – data is generated faster than we can sensibly analyse it.

Despite these limitations, genomic surveillance gives us near real-time insights into the spread of COVID-19 that were not possible in any previous pandemic. That’s why I argue it’s time for the Ministry of Health to now make immediate genetic sequencing mandatory for all positive test swabs in New Zealand, not just some.

– ref. Why New Zealand needs to focus on genome sequencing to trace the source of its new COVID-19 outbreak – https://theconversation.com/why-new-zealand-needs-to-focus-on-genome-sequencing-to-trace-the-source-of-its-new-covid-19-outbreak-144402

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Welch, Senior lecturer, University of Auckland

Genetic surveillance — a technology that uses the genetic fingerprint of a virus to track its spread — is part of the public health response to New Zealand’s new COVID-19 community outbreak and could help pinpoint its source.

There are now 17 cases of community transmission, all in Auckland, and health officials are treating the group as a single cluster, with an expectation that case numbers will grow.

Ideally, we should be sequencing all positive test swabs, regardless of whether they are found at the border or in the community. The community cases could then be compared to all other cases to find a close match. This would suggest a likely chain of transmission, help with contact tracing and reveal the sequence of the outbreak.

But not all samples are currently sequenced. In total, New Zealand had 1225 confirmed cases of COVID-19, and about 700 of the positive samples have been sequenced.

I argue the Ministry of Health should now make genetic sequencing mandatory. Here’s why.

Tracking epidemics using genomes

Genetic surveillance of infectious diseases is a maturing technology that has played a major role in the effort to control the Ebola and Zika epidemics, and now the COVID-19 pandemic.

We can now obtain a complete viral genome quickly and cheaply to identify mutations that provide clues about transmission chains.

Cases that are part of the same transmission chain will have genomes that look very similar: they share the same mutations compared to a reference genome. Cases from different transmission chains have genomes with differing patterns of mutations.

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, does not have a particularly high mutation rate. It acquires mutations at about half the rate of seasonal influenza, but it mutates fast enough to leave a signal of where it has come from.

Read more: ‘Genomic fingerprinting’ helps us trace coronavirus outbreaks. What is it and how does it work?

This brings us to how this is helping in our efforts to control the current community outbreak.

There are four main theories about where the new cases could have come from:

Read more: Masking the outbreak: despite New Zealand’s growing COVID-19 cases, there are more ways to get back to elimination faster

The genomes of the new cases could identify the first scenario of a quarantine leak if we found a match between viral genomes from people in quarantine and in the new cluster. This relies on comprehensive sequencing of all cases in quarantine, but currently, there are still gaps.

Similarly, in the unlikely scenario of a transmission chain that has persisted since New Zealand’s first wave, we’d expect a match with one of the cases sequenced during the first outbreak, although the genomes would have diverged somewhat over that period of time.

The scenarios of transmission through goods or an undetected border case are more difficult to decipher using genomic methods. We would be looking to match the viral genome from the new local cases to one of more than 80,000 publicly available genomes that have been sampled worldwide. This would point to a country of origin but not necessarily distinguish between the scenarios.

Early results from sequencing of the first four cases from the new Auckland cluster suggest no link to a known (sequenced) New Zealand case, and the UK as the closest match. For now, this leaves all possibilities still open.

Ongoing surveillance

With widespread testing now underway, new cases will be identified in the community over the coming weeks. It is important that they are rapidly sequenced to determine whether they belong to the same transmission chain.

Genomic analysis will tell us whether we are dealing with a single or multiple clusters. Even the best contact tracing cannot be sure of the origin of an infection, and supplementing it with genomic data is crucial.

But genomic analysis is not limited to establishing transmission chains. It can also tell us about the overall size of an outbreak, which is directly related to the genomic diversity of the virus. We can also date events to establish when transmission started within a cluster, provided there is sufficient diversity in the cluster.

The genomes we have so far in New Zealand show a huge diversity of cases, with many introductions from around the globe. Indeed, the diversity of early samples largely reflects the diversity of the virus globally, with most cases that led to further transmission coming from North America and Australia in line with travel patterns to New Zealand.

Most introductions did not result in further community transmission. This shows how effective New Zealand’s first lockdown was, when transmission rates declined dramatically soon after level 3 and 4 measures were put in place.

Genomes were also used in real time during the first outbreak to help attribute cases to clusters. Retrospectively, this has shown that contact tracing was effective, with relatively few cases being wrongly attributed.

But genome analysis is neither foolproof nor a panacea. Sometimes positive samples are found that cannot be sequenced because they contain only a small amount of viral material. The rather slow rate of mutation of Sars-COV-2 means many cases are essentially carrying identical copies of the virus, even across different countries.

This greatly reduces our ability to attribute an infection to a particular outbreak. There are also real computational bottlenecks – data is generated faster than we can sensibly analyse it.

Despite these limitations, genomic surveillance gives us near real-time insights into the spread of COVID-19 that were not possible in any previous pandemic. That’s why I argue it’s time for the Ministry of Health to now make immediate genetic sequencing mandatory for all positive test swabs in New Zealand, not just some.

– ref. Why New Zealand needs to ramp up genome sequencing to trace the source of its new COVID-19 outbreak – https://theconversation.com/why-new-zealand-needs-to-ramp-up-genome-sequencing-to-trace-the-source-of-its-new-covid-19-outbreak-144402

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Camilla Nelson, Associate Professor in Media, University of Notre Dame Australia

The Australian poet Gwen Harwood used to submit poems to literary journals under both her own name and a male pseudonym, Walter Lehmann. Furious that the latter poems were more favourably received, in 1961, she sent two new sonnets to The Bulletin, penned by Lehmann, containing coded messages of abuse.

Her elaborate literary hoax became front-page news. But Donald Horne, the magazine’s editor, poured scorn on the female poet. “A genuine literary hoax would have some point to it,” he said.

In 2020, just in case this “point” is still not sufficiently clear, the Women’s Prize for Fiction has just marked its 25th anniversary by publishing 25 literary works by female authors with their real names on the cover for the first time.

Some of the books, like Middlemarch, written by Mary Ann Evans under the pen name George Eliot, are well-known, ranking among the greatest novels in English. Others have been dragged off dusty book shelves and placed in the spotlight once again.

Read more: Friday essay: George Eliot 200 years on – a scandalous life, a brilliant mind and a huge literary legacy

Mary Bright, writing as George Egerton, openly talks about women’s sexuality in Keynotes, published in 1893. Ann Petry, best known as the author of The Street, the first book by an African American woman to sell more than one million copies, appears as the author of Marie of the Cabin Club, her first published short story penned under the pseudonym Arnold Petri in 1939.

Also included is Violet Paget, whose ghost story A Phantom Lover, was published under her pen name Vernon Lee. And Amantine Aurore Dupin, whose Indiana is better known for being written under the pseudonym George Sand.

For these authors, using a pseudonym was not just about slipping their work past male publishers who did not think publishing was a place for a woman. It was also about more diffuse forms of gender prejudice.

Women writers – witheringly dubbed “lady novelists” in the 19th century – also worried that their work would be marginalised as “women’s writing”; as domestic, interior, “feminine” and personal, as opposed to “masculine” themes such as history, society and politics that are, according to social norms, deemed to be more serious and culturally significant.

As George Lewes, Mary Ann Evans’ friend and life partner, put it, “the object of anonymity was to get the book judged on its own merits, and not prejudged as the work of a woman”.

Read more: Friday essay: George Eliot 200 years on – a scandalous life, a brilliant mind and a huge literary legacy

“A bald-headed seer of the sterner sex”

In Australia, the Harwood hoax has often been relegated to the status of a literary curiosity, or mildly amusing cultural footnote. But Harwood was far from alone in feeling a sense of frustration with the male-dominated literary world.

In choosing a male pseudonym, Harwood joined the ranks of other bold and adventurous Australian women, such as Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin (1879–1954). Franklin’s male pseudonym has been given to Australia’s most illustrious literary award, but her work – including My Brilliant Career (1901) – has not been published under her real name. The Stella Prize, established in 2013, marked this omission.

Indeed, Stella explicitly asked her publisher to delete the word “Miss” and use the name “Miles” in the hope that her work would be better received as the work of a man. “I do not wish it to be known that I’m a young girl but desire to pose as a bald-headed seer of the sterner sex,” she said.

So too, Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson (1870–1946), also known as Mrs Robertson, is only recognisable to Australian readers under the pen name Henry Handel Richardson.

Ethel used the male pseudonym to publish her literary works – including the classic women’s coming of age story, The Getting of Wisdom (1910) – because she wanted to be taken seriously as a writer.

Ethel’s gender identity was kept a secret for many years. As late as 1940 she wrote that she had chosen a man’s name because,

There had been much talk in the press of that day about the ease with which a woman’s work could be distinguished from a man’s; and I wanted to try out the truth of the assertion.

The sexually ambiguous pen name M. Barnard Eldershaw was also used by 20th century Australian writers Marjorie Barnard and Florence Eldershaw who, working in the 1920s to 1950s, penned five novels together, including Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, as well as short stories, critical essays and a radio play.

There were, of course, Australian women in the late 19th century who published under their own names, and paid the penalty.

They included Rosa Praed, Ada Cambridge, and Tasma, the pen name of Jessie Couvreur. Many were denigrated as “lady novelists” whose “romances” were witheringly labelled derivative, commercial or frivolous. And it’s likely their names are no longer recognised, except by experts.

Rosa and Ada, Stella and Ethel, for some reason, do not sound as weighty or serious as Henry and Miles, or George and Vernon. But this will not change until Australian publishers take note. It’s time to republish these Australian women under their own names.

– ref. Reclaim Her Name: why we should free Australia’s female novelists from their male pseudonyms – https://theconversation.com/reclaim-her-name-why-we-should-free-australias-female-novelists-from-their-male-pseudonyms-144404

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Justine Shaw, Conservation Biologist, The University of Queensland

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a heavy toll on research in Australia. We surveyed 333 early and mid-career researchers in science, technical, engineering and medical (STEM) fields and found the impact on their productivity and mental health has been dire, with many considering leaving research altogether.

Survey says: it’s bad

In May, the Early and Mid Career Researcher (EMCR) Forum of the Australian Academy of Science conducted a national survey to understand the effects of COVID-19 restrictions such as lockdown and the transition to remote learning. We found the effects of COVID-19 have made existing problems worse, and are likely to have a long-lasting impact on careers and well-being.

Researchers across the country reported increased anxiety not only due to the pandemic, but also to the uncertainty in their employment situation resulting from loss of university revenue and calls for cuts to jobs and pay.

They also revealed their research has often had to take a back seat to heavier loads of teaching and administrative work, and other priorities such as caring for children.

Even short-term disruptions can have long-term impact

In scientific research, career success often depends on steadily accumulating performance indicators such as publications, citations, keynote addresses and awards.

COVID-19 restrictions make it harder for less established researchers to hit these targets. Missing them means lower chances of future funding, and ultimately less job stability.

Researchers with a longer track record of success will be less affected, because these impacts will be less visible.

Read more: Science prizes are still a boys’ club. Here’s how we can change that

Not all junior researchers are affected equally, either. The blows fall most heavily on casual and part-time workers who are paid via fixed-term research or teaching contracts; those who are primary carers (typically women); those who are in Australia on temporary work visas; and those who depend on their institution or employer to secure an income to support their families (as opposed to those who are paid via externally funded fellowships).

Broadly speaking, these impacts are consistent with how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting women in scientific fields. Impacts of COVID-19 on university budgets and federal research funding could lead to some of these most vulnerable researchers losing their employment.

There have been considerable efforts from the Australian Academy of Science, Science and Technology Australia, the Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council to increase the representation of minorities, and these are now at risk.

Early stability builds future security

Early and mid-career researchers are the engine of the research helping us navigate this unprecedented health crisis. In addition, each researcher is the product of 10-15 years of intensive post-secondary education and training, representing an investment (primarily by government) of at least A$500,000.

Read more: Raising the cost of a PhD

Just as importantly, each researcher is an individual with unique and irreplaceable experience and training.

In our survey many researchers commented that they no longer see a future in pursuing a research career in the short or long term. This is not only happening in Australia – countries around the world face the loss of a generation of scientists.

Supporting these researchers is essential to securing the present and future of Australia’s knowledge economy. A significant loss of research capacity and knowledge could take generations to recover from.

A generation at risk

Solutions to this crisis will require cooperation between employers, funding bodies, government and researchers themselves.

A sensible first step would be for funding bodies and employers to let researchers renegotiate what they can deliver, to account for COVID-19 disruptions. This will give researchers more certainty about how they will be assessed in this time.

In addition, there needs to be clear instruction on how to capture the career disruptions due to COVID-19 in applications and assessments.

Another change that could prevent the loss of thousands of jobs would be for JobKeeper payments to be extended to cover public universities.

The effect of losing an entire generation of Australian scientists, particularly one that has benefited from efforts to support women in STEM, will be astronomical.

Not only does Australia’s economy depend on a strong scientific workforce, but the pandemic has also shown these people are an essential asset in tackling global health disasters.

Although the federal government is encouraging tertiary enrolments in STEM degrees through its higher education package, the initiative is doomed to fail without early and mid-career researchers to drive teaching and research training. When the next pandemic strikes, we may not have the world-class scientists we need ready to swing into action.

– ref. Early and mid-career scientists face a bleak future in the wake of the pandemic – https://theconversation.com/early-and-mid-career-scientists-face-a-bleak-future-in-the-wake-of-the-pandemic-144350

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

The second wave of the pandemic in Victoria has pushed the post-COVID economic recovery further beyond the horizon. Among the challenges for the federal opposition are dealing itself into the debate and formulating alternative economic policies before the next election.

With speculation the budget may bring forward the next tranche of the legislated tax cuts, Labor is leaving the way open to give its support.

“We’ve said for some time that that’s something that the Government should consider. We’d have an open mind to that if they came to us with a proposal. They don’t yet have a specific proposal. We’ve had some smoke signals about it for some time now…” Jim Chalmers, Shadow Treasurer, tells The Conversation.

“If they came to us and said that they wanted to bring forward stage two of the legislated tax cuts, then we’d engage with them in a pretty constructive way. We’ve said that for some time.”

A high danger is Australia may come out the COVID recession as a more unequal society. Charmers says: “My big fear is that it will accelerate some of those trends that we were already worried about; inequality, but also social immobility.

“We are worried about a lost generation of workers, a discarded generation of people, who become disconnected from work and from society during this recession, who find it very hard to make their way back.

“When people ask what keeps us awake at night, really it’s the idea that this spike in unemployment turns into long-term unemployment, which becomes long-term disadvantage, which cascades through the generations and concentrates in areas like the one that I represent. That’s our big fear.”

At the moment, Chalmers is working in Brisbane, assisting with the campaigning for the October Queensland election, which he believes will be “extraordinarily tight”

“There’ll be different sub-elections around the place. Townsville will be a challenge for us. There’s some opportunities for us on the Gold Coast. It’ll be a real mixed bag. The big thing that we need to avoid is one of those minority governments. In this recession and into the recovery, we want to have a stable government like the one that Annastacia Palaszczuk is providing.”

TRANSCRIPT (edited for clarity)

MICHELLE GRATTAN: Jim Chalmers, we’re in an incredibly difficult and volatile time. How do you see the economy looking a year on?

JIM CHALMERS: I think you’re right, Michelle, that this is a really difficult time. Even just this week we heard that wages growth is the slowest it’s been for the 20-something years that we’ve kept these kind of statistics. We took another massive hit to consumer confidence, now back down to the levels it was at in April when people were extremely anxious. It is a very difficult time. Where we get to in a year’s time is pretty heavily reliant on a couple of uncertainties; when and whether we find a vaccine, and when and whether there are other outbreaks like we’ve seen in Victoria. But one thing I think is almost-certain, if not certain, is that the labour market will still be really weak in a year’s time. The Reserve Bank, the Government, and the private economists all think that we will have unacceptably high unemployment for longer, that we’ll have weakness in the labour market, and I think that that should be our biggest concern and our key focus.

MG: Now we’ve seen the Opposition being increasingly critical in various aspects of Government policy. Taking an overview however, do you think enough is being spent by the Federal Government or should there be more? And if you think it should be more, how much more?

JC: First of all on our criticism, as you describe it, of what the Government’s done, our overwhelming preference is for the Government to succeed. That’s the difference between our approach this time around and what the Liberals and Nationals did during the Global Financial Crisis. We want the Government to succeed. Our preference is that they get everything exactly right. But I think our responsibility is to point out where there’s been issues with the speed at which they’ve moved, or the coverage of JobKeeper, or what’s happening with the super early access, or what’s happening in aged care, or not having a comprehensive national scheme for paid pandemic leave. I think it’s our responsibility to point out where the Government could be doing better. I think it’s a matter of recognising that all of this money is borrowed money. We judge its effectiveness by what it means for jobs. We need to get maximum bang for buck. Our responsibility is to point out where that isn’t happening, and to try and get the Government to be as successful as possible in managing this recession.

MG: And what about the quantum? Is it enough?

JC: It remains to be seen Michelle. Certainly most people, including the Reserve Bank and others, have wound back their expectations for what’s happening in the economy. Only three weeks ago the Government said something like an additional 240,000 Australians will lose their jobs between now and Christmas. By last week that’d become almost 400,000. The expectation is that the economy is deteriorating. We’ve said all along that we need to be responsive to that. The Government’s policies need to be tailored to developments in the economy. If the economy is going to get much worse, then I think it’s highly likely the Government will need to do more. It doesn’t necessarily only have to be cash payments. There are other ways the Government should be supporting the economy and we think, for example, that a comprehensive jobs plan would be really important at this stage.

MG: Well, what would be the shape of that?

JC: We’ve put some ideas on the table. Think about this crisis in three stages. The first stage is responding to the immediate crisis, the triage part of things. That means JobKeeper, JobSeeker, and getting those right. The next phase is bolstering the recovery. We’ve said that the Government should be contemplating things like building more social and public housing because it’s labour intensive, and has a lasting benefit for the most vulnerable people in our society. Beyond that, in terms of creating new jobs and getting investment and employment going again, we’ve offered to work with the Government to settle energy policy so that businesses can invest with confidence again.

MG: In terms of the direct creation of jobs though, some of these alternatives you’re putting forward, or additions, are not going to be appropriate for people who’ve been thrown out of work in the service sector, are they?

JC: That’s a really important consideration, Michelle, because we need to be doing what we can to create jobs for people who’ve been displaced, as well as doing what we can to keep people in work. The caring economy needs to be a really important part of that consideration. We’re very concerned that in childcare, for example, that many workers were taken off JobKeeper too early given what we saw unfold in Victoria. That needs to be a key part of our considerations and a key part of the Government’s considerations. Those caring economy workers in aged care, disability care and child care are really important.

MG: Just in labour market terms, we’re hearing a lot in aged care at the moment about the fact that workers are not well trained, they’re not well paid, they have to take a number of casual jobs. How do you think a better workforce could be put together for that industry in the near-term, in say the next couple of years?

JC: I think we’ve known for some time now that there are issues in aged care. That’s why there’s a royal commission. That royal commission which hands down its final report early next year has made some interim recommendations about some of those issues that you identified, but others as well including physical and chemical restraints, getting younger people out of aged care, and also making sure that we do something about those homecare waiting lists. But the workforce issues in particular have been around for some time. My colleague Julie Collins and my other colleague Ged Kearney have been talking about this for some time. The issues have been obvious, but this crisis has really shone a light on them. We’ve not announced or proposed a specific policy yet here, but we are working our way through those issues like the Government is and we’ll do the right and responsible thing when the Government comes to the table with a plan.

MG: It’s a sort of microcosm, it’s a problem that can arise in various industries, isn’t it? Casualisation, people taking part-time jobs, training; all of those things can come together?

JC: Yeah. One of the key things we’ve learned from this crisis is really just how precarious people’s work lives are, just how insecure work is, how much underemployment there is, and how much we rely on basic things like sick leave. It’s really shone a light on those things. Some of us didn’t need reminding, but others did, that all of these things that have developed in the workforce over some time are costly, not just in crisis terms, but for so many people who were already living on the edge even before the virus turned up.

MG: Now obviously debt has become a second, third or fourth order issue in the current circumstances, but some economists would argue that it doesn’t really matter at all. Do you think there’s a limit to how much debt a country can comfortably live with in this situation?

JC: I think debt does matter, but in times like this it’s not the most important priority. The most important priority is supporting people and their jobs in particular. We’ve been consistent on that all the way from the Global Financial Crisis and again now. We recognise that when times are as grim as they are now, we’re in the first recession in three decades and the worst downturn since the Great Depression, that government needs to step in and do what it can. It needs to be responsible about that. It needs to be looking for maximum bang for buck. Spending needs to be effective. We measure that effectiveness by what it means for jobs. At some point the debt will have to be repaid so it does matter to that extent. There are costs in servicing debt. We’re heading towards one trillion dollars in gross debt, which is really quite stupendous in historical terms so it does matter, but the highest priority is jobs.

MG: At what point, what amount, or percentage of GDP would you become really concerned that we shouldn’t be exceeding?

JC: It’s already concerning. It’s $850 billion in the most recent update and heading towards a trillion. When it was at $100 billion and $200 billion the Government described it as a debt and deficit disaster. It’s now at some multiples of that. It’s concerning. It costs taxpayer money to service the debt. It will need to be repaid over time. We don’t want the most vulnerable people to repay that. In terms of nominating a percentage of GDP, I think the most important thing is that the Government steps in when things are dire like they are now, and does what’s right and responsible in terms of people’s jobs in particular. I agree with the point made really well by Deloitte Access Economics, which is that if you want to fix the budget, you have to fix the economy. That’s our priority.

MG: You mentioned vulnerable people. Labor, particularly before the last election, made inequality a big issue. Do you think that this crisis will leave us as a more unequal society?

JC: That’s certainly the fear that I have, Michelle. You hear a lot of people saying that the virus doesn’t discriminate, and in health terms anybody’s capable of catching it so it’s true to that extent. But in terms of the effects of this recession, I think it does discriminate. My big fear is that it will accelerate some of those trends that we were already worried about; inequality, but also social immobility. We are worried about a lost generation of workers, a discarded generation of people, who become disconnected from work and from society during this recession, who find it very hard to make their way back. When people ask what keeps us awake at night, really it’s the idea that this spike in unemployment turns into long-term unemployment, which becomes long-term disadvantage, which cascades through the generations and concentrates in areas like the one that I represent. That’s our big fear. That’s why we have to do whatever we responsibly can to step in and to do the right thing by people and their jobs now.

MG: Of course, one thing is the encouragement of business investment. The lack of business investment’s become a huge problem. The Government’s looking at an investment allowance. Labor took a version of this to the election. How effective is such an incentive when many businesses will just have no confidence about where things will be in a few months or a few years, and they don’t want to take any risks, even if they are given incentives?

JC: A couple of things about that, Michelle. You’re spot on to say that business investment is a problem. It’s been a problem for some years. Even last year, 2019, we had some very worrying trends in business investment. Some businesses are recovering. Some will recover faster than others. There will be an appetite in some parts of the economy for investment if we can get the incentives right. I think it’s important that we recognise that. The other really important point is this tax incentive. If the Government comes forward with something like what we proposed at the election, or some other version like what the BCA is proposing then we’ll have a look at that. We haven’t seen the details of that yet. But it shouldn’t be the only thing that the Government’s doing when it comes to incentivising business investment.

I spend a lot of time in the boardrooms of this country, Michelle. In almost every meeting I have, in one way or another, energy policy uncertainty comes up. A key reason why businesses haven’t been investing is because there’s been 19 different energy policies in the last seven years from the Government. People don’t know what the rules of the road are going to be, and they need that certainty. That’s why Anthony Albanese wrote to Scott Morrison to suggest that both of the big parties in the parliament work together to give business that certainty so they can get that cleaner and cheaper energy, lower their business costs, and get investing again. Investment equals jobs and it’s jobs that we need.

MG: There’s been a lot of talk recently about a push in favour of gas. What’s your view on that?

JC: Gas has a role to play, absolutely. It’s an important part of the energy mix. There’s a lot of investment that’s gone into gas around the country in recent years. For the foreseeable future we’ll have a mix of different energy sources. One of the things that we need to be able to do and that I’m convinced we can do is have cleaner and cheaper energy, including new sources of energy, without abandoning some of those traditional strengths that we’ve had and which have done so much during this recession to help underpin what economic activity there is.

MG: The superannuation debate is going to heat up soon. The Government has a report that’s been done into that. All the signs are that the Government would like to reverse or change the current law that will increase compulsory super from next year. Labor is very against any change. Firstly, would you guarantee that it would vote against such a change? And secondly, don’t those who say that compulsory super shouldn’t increase, have a case? Especially view of figures like those – we were talking about wages?

JC: We don’t support the freezing of the Superannuation Guarantee. We don’t support the unwinding of those gradual, legislated increases. There’s not a piece of legislation before us and typically we’d confirm our view on how we’d respond to that through the usual processes and in the usual ways that you’d be familiar with, but we certainly don’t support another freeze. One of the arguments as you rightly identify that the Government has been putting about even before this crisis is about wages. I mean, give me a break! Wages growth has been stagnant in this country for some time. Wages growth was especially stagnant after the last couple of times that the Government froze the Superannuation Guarantee. I don’t think that that argument holds much water. I’m really worried that there’s been an agenda here from our political opponents to undermine and diminished super, and that they’re using this Coronavirus crisis as an excuse to do that. They got that Retirement Income Review report some days ago now, a couple of weeks ago now. They still haven’t released it and I think that’s very troubling. We don’t want it to be a stalking horse for more attacks on super or more attacks on the pension. They should release the report and then we can engage with it.

MG: It’s not just the Government though, is it? The Grattan Institute, for example, is critical of the way that the super scheme is going?

JC: First of all, I have a lot of respect and regard for the Grattan Institute. But those particular conclusions come from some, in my view, unusual assumptions which led to them arriving at what they concluded in those reports. I’m not critical of them as an organisation, but we’re entitled to disagree with their conclusions. My view is that you don’t boost retirement incomes by winding back super. We don’t want “compulsory” taken out of compulsory superannuation. There are people in the Liberal Party, the National Party and elsewhere who want superannuation to be voluntary. They want the SG frozen. They want some of the other arrangements relaxed. We’re not in the cart for that. We’ve made that very clear and I can’t see that position changing.

MG: The Government has floated the idea of bringing forward the next stage of the legislated tax cuts. What would be Labor’s attitude if that happened in the budget?

JC: We’ve said for some time that that’s something that the Government should consider. We’d have an open mind to that if they came to us with a proposal. They don’t yet have a specific proposal. We’ve had some smoke signals about it for some time now. We do think that middle Australia needs cost of living support during this recession. It shouldn’t be the only thing that they contemplate. We need a more comprehensive plan, particularly for jobs. But if they came to us and said that they wanted to bring forward stage two of the legislated tax cuts, then we’d engage with them in a pretty constructive way. We’ve said that for some time.

MG: Now can I turn to the question of border closures? Obviously, it’s clear that borders need to be closed to Victorians at this point, but do you support closures when there are less reasons for them? For example, particularly, do you support WA maintaining its hard border? And how long do you think that we can live as a balkanized country?

JC: Obviously, it’s difficult to gauge that last part of your question, Michelle, but I think on the main, people have been pretty supportive of these border closures. What we’ve seen in Victoria really reminds us that whether it’s Mark McGowan, Annastacia Palaszczuk or others, they’ve been right to be cautious, careful, and conservative about returning to normal. In my home state of Queensland, if Annastacia Palaszczuk had listened to Josh Frydenberg and Scott Morrison and reopened the borders early, then that may have had catastrophic consequences for lives and jobs here in Queensland. I’m sure Mark McGowan feels the same way about those border closures that Clive Palmer has been trying to knock over in the west. Nobody pretends that having state borders closed is a good long-term thing but I think it’s proven necessary. For Premiers and Chief Ministers of either political persuasion, we’ve tried in the Opposition to be supportive of them when they take those decisions which are difficult and have consequences. When they take those decisions based on a careful consideration of the best available medical advice, then we try and back them in.

MG: A big part of your job is not just responding to day-to-day things but formulating policy that Labor will take to the election in the economic area. I wonder, how difficult is it in these circumstances to do that ahead of time? For example, before the 2016 and 2019 elections, Labor had policy out there way ahead of time. Do we now have to see policy formulated in a just-in-time approach?

JC: We’ll roll out policies in advance of the election. But one of the things that we have to recognise is that it’s harder than ever to assess what kind of situation we would inherit if we were to win government at the next opportunity. We don’t really know what condition the budget would be in or the economy, though we can work on the basis that unemployment will be a key focus of Labor’s policies. I think it is more difficult. We made a deliberate decision after the last election to take the time to get our policies right. That is harder in the current climate. We are focused in the near-term on dealing with this recession, recovering from it strongly, making sure that we can find new opportunities and new jobs for people. We don’t know when the election will be, or what the budget or the economy will look like then. To be frank with you, Michelle, that does make things more difficult.

MG: Labor has usually got big spending programs for health and education in particular. Will they have to take a backseat at this next election in terms of the money that you pledge for them?

JC: Health and education will always be key priorities for us. In terms of the size and nature of commitments that we might make there then that obviously remains to be seen. There’s more work to be done in those really important areas. There’s never been a time where public health has been more important than it is now. Making sure people are skilled up to take advantage of opportunities as they emerge in the recovery, that’s obviously key as well. They’re important policy areas. We need to recognise we can’t undo all of the damage overnight that’s been done over seven years of cuts in lots of these areas. They’ll be a priority. We’ll be responsible about it. We’ll have a discussion about it. We’ll announce our policies in due course.

MG: Scott Morrison has said that the National Cabinet, which has been working pretty effectively during the pandemic, has replaced the Council of Australian Governments, which of course operated under both Labor and Coalition governments. Would you expect a Labor Government to keep that structure of the National Cabinet and its attendant bodies?

JC: We’ll work our way through that, Michelle. I’m a long-term believer in the capacity of what used to be COAG as a forum for reform, especially economic reform. I think it has been diminished in recent years and during this crisis it has redeemed itself in the form of the National Cabinet. I think there have been good developments at the National Cabinet from leaders of both sides of politics and from right around Australia. That’s a good thing. We’ll learn from that. We’ll take the best of what we inherit and see if any other improvements could be made. Whether it’s called the National Cabinet, whether people meet via video, on the phone, or in person, those are some considerations. What really matters is what state, federal and local governments can do to work together to try and recover from this recession. I would be certain that under an Albanese Labor Government, that COAG or National Cabinet, whatever it’s called, will play a really important role. The parallel I’ll draw here is with the G20 meetings, which were so good at dealing with the Global Financial Crisis 10 years ago, and then lost their way a little bit in more normal times. We need to make sure that National Cabinet or COAG is as effective in normal times as it is in crisis times.

MG: Which of course is, by definition, difficult, isn’t it? Because crisis brings governments together.

JC: Yeah. As I said, it has performed relatively well. There have been some things that we would quibble with, and there have been outbreaks of disagreement from time-to-time, but overall it has worked relatively well. The real test will be how it works in 18 months’ time or three years’ time, and as the recovery gathers pace whether there’s still an appetite for cooperation, collaboration and reform.

MG: Do you think in general, the pandemic has shown that the Federation needs a major shake-up or has it shown that it can work effectively together when it has to?

JC: There have there been a lot of instances where two levels of government have worked together effectively, and we should acknowledge that. But at the same time, we’ve seen some of the finger-pointing which is not ideal. For example, aged care is a federal responsibility. From the Prime Minister down, the Government shouldn’t be trying to evade their responsibility for aged care. It’s been one of the most problematic areas. From time-to-time we have had federal ministers try and pretend that this is a Victorian State Government problem. It’s not. There are issues of accountability. Ideally, if you started to draw up the Federation from a blank sheet of paper, you wouldn’t have as many of the blurred lines of accountability, but aged care is very clear. We need to make sure that people are accountable and responsible for the areas that are in their remit.

MG: Now, you’re a Queenslander. There’s an election coming up in October. What have you been doing on the ground there to help your state colleagues? How’s it going? Is it an election all about the pandemic, or are there a whole lot of issues that we’re not hearing about down south?

JC: I think it’s primarily about the pandemic. One of the reasons why that has dominated the discussion is because there are very different views from the Premier and the Opposition Leader about things like border closures. Annastacia Palaszczuk has been resolute and she’s been right. That’s saved jobs and save lives here, frankly. That will be a key issue in the campaign, but there are other issues too. How we get the Queensland economy diverse enough and broad enough to be creating jobs and opportunities in the recovery will be a really important part of it as well. I’ve been spending a heap of time in regional Queensland with some of our state candidates. I just got back from a long road trip through out west, Central Queensland and the Fraser coast. Next week I’m off to Western Queensland and the Southern Downs, spending time with our candidates. One of the consequences of it being a bit more difficult to move around the country is it has given us the opportunity to spend more time out bush in Queensland, which I enjoy because you get a lot out of those conversations and we’ll continue to have them.

MG: How do think it’ll go?

JC: It’s going to be extraordinarily tight, I think. That’s because the State Government here only has a buffer of a couple of seats as it is. They won a seat last time in northern Brisbane which was an extraordinary outcome and we’ll be fighting hard to retain it, but it’s typically a very Liberal seat. There’ll be different sub-elections around the place. Townsville will be a challenge for us. There’s some opportunities for us on the Gold Coast. It’ll be a real mixed bag. The big thing that we need to avoid is one of those minority governments. In this recession and into the recovery, we want to have a stable government like the one that Annastacia Palaszczuk is providing.

MG: Finally, are you coming down to Canberra for the sitting that starts on the 24th? That means that if you do come, when you go back you’ve got to isolate for two weeks, which is a bit of a break in your political campaigning for the state.

JC: Yeah, we’re having that advice clarified, Michelle, to make sure that we properly understand what our responsibilities would be coming back into Queensland. My intention is –

MG: That’s what the State Government told me late last week.

JC: Yeah, I think that’s our intention. I think they’re providing some written advice to us. It may be that we have that now, but I haven’t seen it if we do. My intention is to be in Canberra. I think a lot of the issues are central to my portfolio work. But I’ll have to get that advice from the Queensland Government, and sit down and talk with the family about it to work out what’s best.

MG: So if you do have to isolate going back because of the Queensland border, you might not come?

JC: My preference is to come. My intention is to come. But I just want to see what the detail of that advice is and talk with Laura and the kids about what we can manage.

MG: Jim Chalmers, thanks very much for talking with us today. We may or may not see you in Canberra later in the month. That’s all for The Conversation’s politics podcast. Thank you to my producer Tom Glassey. We’ll be back with another interview soon. Goodbye for now.

Additional audio

A List of Ways to Die, Lee Rosevere, from Free Music Archive.

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Jim Chalmers on tax cuts, inequality, and the Queensland election – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-jim-chalmers-on-tax-cuts-inequality-and-the-queensland-election-144410

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle H Lim, Senior Lecturer and Clinical Psychologist, Swinburne University of Technology

The COVID-19 pandemic has drawn attention to loneliness in Australia.

This is especially so as Melburnians entered the strictest lockdown to date. Meanwhile, the rest of Australia braces for the possibility of a second wave and people are adapting to new habits and restrictions.

This has disrupted our social routines, and in many cases has reduced the number of people we interact with. This makes it harder to maintain meaningful social connections, resulting in loneliness.

But sometimes it can be difficult to tell if you’re feeling lonely or feeling something else. And many people are reluctant to admit they’re lonely for fear it makes them seem deficient in some way.

So what are the signs of loneliness? And how can we recognise these signs and therefore manage them?

Read more: Lonely in lockdown? You’re not alone. 1 in 2 Australians feel more lonely since coronavirus

I’m not lonely…

Loneliness is complex. Some people can feel lonely despite having extensive networks, while some others might not, even if they live alone. There are many factors behind this, and the COVID-19 pandemic is another significant one.

Social restrictions during the pandemic mean we are more reliant on existing relationships. People who enjoy brief but multiple social interactions in their daily routine, or simply like being around others, may now find it harder to keep loneliness at bay.

When researchers ask people whether they’re lonely, some deny or reject the idea. But when asked in a different way, like whether they want some company, some of those same people would say yes, they would like company.

This is because there’s a social stigma to loneliness. We often think it is somehow our own fault or that it reveals some personal shortcoming. Loneliness evokes a particularly vulnerable image, of someone living alone with no one around them.

One survey also found men are less likely to say they’re feeling lonely, although this research was published before COVID-19.

“Max”, aged 21, was interviewed as part of an upcoming project being done by Ending Loneliness Together, an organisation that addresses loneliness in Australia. He has experienced periods of loneliness, and said:

I think specifically for men, [they] lock themselves away because they don’t know how to verbalise that feeling. It demonstrates the real disparity in the way in which we expect our men to engage in their emotions.

Because of these misconceptions, many who are lonely will overlook their own emerging signs of loneliness in the hope these feelings will go away once they are around people. But seemingly logical solutions like making more friends or knowing more people may not help, if you perceive these relationships to be unhelpful, neutral, ambivalent, or even sources of conflict.

Nevertheless, ignoring growing levels of loneliness will increase our risk of developing poorer physical and mental health.

Signs you might be lonely

Loneliness is a normal signal to connect with others, so it’s unlikely you’ll be able to rid yourself completely of lonely feelings during this time. Instead, we should aim to manage our loneliness so it doesn’t become severely distressing.

More often than not, we might not be willing to admit even to ourselves that we’re feeling lonely. The COVID-19 pandemic may be a trigger, but there is a range of factors that can lead you to feel lonely, sometimes without even realising.

This can make it hard to be consciously aware of any loneliness you might be experiencing, particularly if the pandemic has left you feeling busier and more stressed than usual.

Here are some signs you might be feeling lonely. To a certain extent, you feel that:

• you are not “in tune” with others

• your relationships are not meaningful

• you do not belong

• you do not have a group of friends

• no one understands you

• you do not have shared interests with others

• there is no one you can turn to.

It’s important to remember, though, not all of these may relate to you and you may experience these in varying degrees.

How to manage your loneliness

Because of the complexity of loneliness, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. To find the best solution for you, reflect on your personal preferences, previous experience, and your capacity to reach out to your social networks.

During the pandemic, the solutions you select will differ depending on the social restrictions in your state. Even under the strictest social restrictions (in Melbourne), some of us have been fortunate to have a friend or a neighbour in our area with whom we can walk and chat while still adhering to public health directives. For others, getting in touch via Zoom or a phone call may be the only option.

For those who can, establishing shared goals or activities with friends, family, or colleagues can be helpful. These provide positive social support and facilitate a sense of achievement when meeting those goals. This might include setting self-care goals such as exercise, meditation, cooking, hobbies, or learning new skills. But equally, it’s not a sign of “failure” if you don’t do these things.

Friendships are good for our health, but making a new friend can be taxing for some people.

Instead, perhaps think about how you can work on existing relationships. Pick what feels right and is feasible for you. If improving the ties you already hold is all you can do, focus on this. And if you are reaching out to people outside your familiar network, it doesn’t have to be confronting. A simple hello is a small step towards more meaningful interactions in the future.

Social restrictions including isolation, quarantining, and social distancing are public health measures we’ve become acquainted with since the onset of COVID-19. Although these restrictions modify our social interactions physically, they don’t mean we can’t stay meaningfully connected to each other. This is why many prefer the alternative term “physical distancing”.

We can, and should, stay socially connected while being physically apart.

Read more: Loneliness is a social cancer, every bit as alarming as cancer itself

– ref. It’s hard to admit we’re lonely, even to ourselves. Here are the signs and how to manage them – https://theconversation.com/its-hard-to-admit-were-lonely-even-to-ourselves-here-are-the-signs-and-how-to-manage-them-143987

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Zoe Loh, Senior Research Scientist, CSIRO

COVID-19 has curtailed the activities of millions of people across the world and with it, greenhouse gas emissions. As climate scientists at the Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station, we are routinely asked: does this mean carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere have fallen?

The answer, disappointingly, is no. Throughout the pandemic, atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels continued to rise.

In fact, our measurements show more CO₂ accumulated in the atmosphere between January and July 2020 than during the same period in 2017 or 2018.

Emissions from last summer’s bushfires may have contributed to this. But there are several other reasons why COVID-19 has not brought CO₂ concentrations down at Cape Grim – let’s take a look at them.

Measuring the cleanest air in the world

Cape Grim is on the northwest tip of Tasmania. Scientists at the station, run by the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology, have monitored and studied the global atmosphere for the past 44 years.

The air we monitor is the cleanest in the world when it blows from the southwest, off the Southern Ocean. Measurements taken during these conditions are known as “baseline concentrations”, and represent the underlying level of carbon dioxide in the Southern Hemisphere’s atmosphere.

Read more: Forty years of measuring the world’s cleanest air reveals human fingerprints on the atmosphere

A drop in the CO₂ ocean

Emissions reductions due to COVID-19 started in China in January, and peaked globally in April. Our measurements show atmospheric CO₂ levels rose during that period. In January 2020, baseline CO₂ was 408.3 parts per million (ppm) at Cape Grim. By July that had risen to 410 ppm.

Since the station first began measurements in 1976, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have increased by 25%, as shown in the graph below. The slowdown in the rate of carbon emissions during the pandemic is a mere tug against this overall upward trend.

The CO₂ increase is due to the burning of fossil fuels for energy, and land use change such as deforestation which leaves fewer trees to absorb CO₂ from the air, and changes the uptake and release of carbon in the soils.

Atmospheric transport

Large air circulation patterns in the atmosphere spread gases such as CO₂ around the world, but this process takes time.

Most emissions reduction due to COVID-19 occurred in the Northern Hemisphere, because that’s where most of the world’s population lives. Direct measurements of CO₂ in cities where strict lockdown measures were imposed show emissions reductions of up to 75%. This would have reduced atmospheric CO₂ concentrations locally.

But it will take many months for this change to manifest in the Southern Hemisphere atmosphere – and by the time it does, the effect will be significantly diluted.

Natural ups and downs

Emissions reductions during COVID-19 are a tiny component of a very large carbon cycle. This cycle is so dynamic that even when the emissions slowdown is reflected in atmospheric CO₂ levels, the reduction will be well within the cycle’s natural ebb and flow.

Here’s why. Global carbon emissions have grown by about 1% a year over the past decade. This has triggered growth in atmospheric CO₂ levels of between 2 and 3 ppm per year in that time, as shown in the graph below. In fact, since our measurements began, CO₂ has accumulated more rapidly in the atmosphere with every passing decade, as emissions have grown.

But although CO₂ emissions have grown consistently, the resulting rate of accumulation in the atmosphere varies considerably each year. This is because roughly half of human emissions are mopped up by ecosystems and the oceans, and these processes change from year to year.

For example, in southeast Australia, last summer’s extensive and prolonged bushfires emitted unusually large amounts of CO₂, as well as changing the capacity of ecosystems to absorb it. And during strong El Niño events, reduced rainfall in some regions limits the productivity of grasslands and forests, so they take up less CO₂.

The graph below visualises this variability. It shows the baseline CO₂ concentrations for each year, relative to January 1. Note how the baseline level changes through a natural seasonal cycle, how that change varies from year to year and how much CO₂ has been added to the atmosphere by the end of the year.

The growth rate has been as much as 3 ppm per year. The black line represents 2020 and lines for the preceding five years are coloured. All show recent annual growth rates of about 2-3 ppm/year – a variability in the range of about 1 ppm/year.

Read more: Coronavirus is a ‘sliding doors’ moment. What we do now could change Earth’s trajectory

Research in May estimated that due to the COVID-19 lockdowns, global annual average emissions for 2020 would be between 4.2% and 7.5% lower than for 2019.

Let’s simplistically assume CO₂ concentration growth reduces by the same amount. There would be 0.08-0.23 ppm less CO₂ in the atmosphere by the end of 2020 than if no pandemic occurred. This variation is well within the natural 1 ppm/year annual variability in CO₂ growth.

The road ahead

It’s clear COVID-19 has not solved the climate change problem. But this fact helps us understand the magnitude of change required if we’re to stabilise the global climate system.

The central aim of the Paris climate agreement is to limit global warming to well below 2℃, and pursue efforts to keep it below 1.5℃. To achieve this, global CO₂ emissions must decline by 3% and 7% each year, respectively, until 2030, according to the United Nations Emissions Gap Report.

Thanks to COVID-19, we may achieve this reduction in 2020. But to lock in year-on-year emissions reductions that will be reflected in the atmosphere, we must act now to make deep, significant and permanent changes to global energy and economic systems.

The lead author, Zoe Loh, discusses the CO₂ record from Cape Grim in Fight for Planet A, showing now on the ABC.

Read more: Why there’s more greenhouse gas in the atmosphere than you may have realised

– ref. Carbon dioxide levels over Australia rose even after COVID-19 forced global emissions down. Here’s why – https://theconversation.com/carbon-dioxide-levels-over-australia-rose-even-after-covid-19-forced-global-emissions-down-heres-why-144119

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nick Wilson, Professor of Public Health, University of Otago

As New Zealand enters its second day at heightened alert levels to contain a community outbreak of COVID-19, we expect that it should only be a temporary setback.

Four cases with no direct links to border or quarantine facilities were confirmed late on Tuesday. On Thursday it was announced there were 13 new cases linked to those four people – meaning there are now 17 active community cases in New Zealand.

Given the control measures already in place and the willingness most people have shown to comply with restrictions, we believe New Zealand can get back to its elimination status.

But we suggest a number of additional measures to speed up progress, including an update of the current alert system to make the use of masks mandatory in indoor public spaces and to place tighter controls on venues with a high transmission risk, including bars, gyms, choirs and churches.

Read more: Churchgoers aren’t able to lift every voice and sing during the pandemic – here’s why that matters

Getting the outbreak back under control

The use of masks should be mandatory for all indoor public places at level 2 (which is currently in place across New Zealand) and this requirement should be added to a revised alert level system. The effectiveness of simple reuseable fabric masks can approach that of standard surgical masks.

Read more: How do I know if my mask actually works? What about the ‘candle test’?

We should also update advice on venues with a particularly high risk of transmission, including bars, nightclubs, gyms and choirs and church gatherings (anywhere people sing). Some of these places have been implicated in large outbreaks.

One Japanese study noted many COVID-19 clusters were associated with:

… heavy breathing in close proximity, such as singing at karaoke parties, cheering at clubs, having conversations in bars, and exercising in gymnasiums.

Similarly, there are studies on outbreaks associated with dance classes and a choir practice. The closure of such places could be built into alert level 2 – or perhaps a distinct alert level 1B where all other places remain open.

Even at higher alert levels, we should reassess school closures to reflect more nuanced evidence about risks and benefits at different ages. The aim should be to keep younger children in school wherever possible.

The information about physical distancing at schools on the Ministry of Education website is now outdated and needs revision. In particular, mask use should be universally adopted by secondary school-aged children, bringing them into line with recommendations for adults to prevent viral spread.

The new outbreak affects several work places in Auckland and better sick leave provisions are in discussion to ensure workers with mild illnesses and those waiting for test results don’t come to work. This support is particularly important for workers at the highest risk of infection: border workers, air crew and staff at managed isolation and quarantine facilities.

Further economic support packages will be necessary for people unable to work under level 3 restrictions.

Effective measures are already in place

The government’s rapid implementation of strong control measures is appropriate. This decisive approach allowed New Zealand to eliminate COVID-19 back in May. The country is now better prepared than earlier in the year in a number of ways because:

• we know that it is possible to eliminate the virus and there are inspiring examples from other jurisdictions (including Taiwan, most Australian states and territories, and Fiji)

• we have the logistics in place to carry out mass testing in the community

• the manual contact tracing system has improved, including better integration of regional public health units into a single national system

• we have genomic sequencing methods available to help identify the source of the outbreak

• and the Ministry of Health has adopted World Health Organization advice on the use of face masks.

All these measures, together with alert level 3 restrictions in the greater Auckland region, will help bring the outbreak under control. There is only a small risk these measures could fail and force New Zealand (or some regions of the country) to repeat a level 4 lockdown.

Necessary measures for the longer term

It is almost certain the current outbreak is due to a border-related event. This was the source of the large outbreak currently affecting the Australian state of Victoria and spilling over into New South Wales.

Read more: Yes, it looks like Victoria has passed the peak of its second wave. It probably did earlier than we think

Previous modelling work shows it can take several weeks for a case to be detected following a biosecurity breach. It has been suggested the virus may have entered New Zealand on refrigerated freight, but this source is much less likely than a failure with the quarantine system.

Given this outbreak, a thorough review of border and quarantine systems, including ports, is now necessary. After some concerning quarantine breaches, we now have a more robust system of border controls, including stricter testing regimes in managed isolation and quarantine facilities.

But further improvements will be needed, and this could include more regular testing of border and quarantine staff and the use of digital technologies to ensure staff keep appropriate distance from people in quarantine and to track their movements when off-duty (within privacy safeguards).

Improvements in contact tracing are ongoing. A CovidCard device is currently going through a trial in Rotorua, but the government should explore alternatives such as smartphone apps using the Apple/Google platform, as used in Ireland and Spain.

Phone data were used successfully in South Korea and New Zealand should evaluate this option, within appropriate privacy safeguards.

Finally, we need an update on the scope for COVID-19 surveillance through testing of wastewater. Several cities, including Paris, are exploring this. In New Zealand, researchers have detected the virus in wastewater, and this form of early detection of outbreaks would reduce the need for routine community testing.

– ref. Masking the outbreak: despite New Zealand’s growing COVID-19 cases, there are more ways to get back to elimination faster – https://theconversation.com/masking-the-outbreak-despite-new-zealands-growing-covid-19-cases-there-are-more-ways-to-get-back-to-elimination-faster-144356

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bain Munro Attwood, Professor of History, Monash University

The Conversation is running a series of explainers on key figures in Australian political history, looking at the way they changed the nature of debate, its impact then, and it relevance to politics today. You can read the rest of our pieces here. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and images of deceased people.

William Cooper is not a household name, but he should be. This Yorta Yorta elder is one of Australia’s most formative political leaders.

In the 1930s, he began a remarkable political campaign, pushing for Indigenous rights and recognition, nearly all of which have significant implications for Australian politics today.

Early life

Cooper was born on the junction of the Murray and Goulburn rivers in December 1860. He was profoundly influenced by his people, who had demanded and won a reservation of land in the 1880s, which they called Cumeroogunga.

Yorta Yorta people farmed Cumeroogunga into the 1900s, only to lose it and have their families and community broken up by repressive policies of the New South Wales Board for the Protection of Aborigines in the 1910s and 1920s.

Cooper escaped the most severe of state protection boards’ special laws at the time, which denied Aboriginal people basic rights such as freedom of movement, custody of their children and control over personal property.

But he knew the suffering the laws caused and still had a very hard life, denied the opportunities enjoyed by most non-Indigenous Australians. Apart from anything else, this meant he suffered enormous poverty.

Christian influence

Importantly, in his early life, Cooper also acquired the means to understand and fight against his people’s oppression. In his teens, he was taken under the wing of evangelical Christian missionaries, Daniel and Janet Matthews, at the Maloga mission on the banks of the Murray River.

Their teachings were fundamental to the political work Cooper would eventually undertake. They had a view of humanity that encompassed all people as God’s children, and so held the lives of Aboriginal people mattered, too. This provided a powerful antidote to the prevailing racial prejudice Cooper experienced and witnessed.

The Matthews saw God and religious principles as a higher order than government. And they provided a prophetic or predictive view of history that promised salvation for the Yorta Yorta, just as the Bible, especially the Book of Exodus, had promised to the persecuted and suffering Israelites.

Read more: Charles Perkins forced Australia to confront its racist past. His fight for justice continues today

It is understood Cooper spent much of 20s on and off missions and then earned a living working as a shearer, drover, horse-breaker and general rural labourer.

He was a member of the Shearers’ Union and Australian Workers’ Union. He also acted as a spokesman for Aboriginal workers in western New South Wales and central Victoria, having a “longing to help his people”. After returning to Cumeroogunga in his 60s, he moved to Melbourne, so he could get the age pension.

Petitioning the King

Now in his 70s, Cooper began a remarkable political campaign. This had several strands, many of which continue to have significance in Australian politics today.

First and foremost, in 1933 Cooper drew up a petition to King George V. With more than 1,800 signatures by the time it was presented to the federal government in 1937, the petition’s central demand was representation for Aboriginal people in the Commonwealth Parliament. This call for a federal MP who would be chosen by Aboriginal people was, if you like, a demand for a Voice to Parliament.

Read more: Constitutional recognition for Indigenous Australians must involve structural change, not mere symbolism

Cooper believed this was crucial, as government laws about Aboriginal people were made without any consideration of their opinions. He argued Indigenous perspectives differed markedly from those of white Australians – which Cooper called “thinking black”.

Cooper was heir to a tradition among Aboriginal people in New South Wales and Victoria that held they had a special relationship to the British king or queen. Certainly, Cooper believed Aboriginal people had a right to appeal to the British Crown on the grounds that it still had a responsibility for them because of duties it had undertaken to perform in the past.

Regrettably, prime minister Joseph Lyons did not pass the petition on to Buckingham Palace, and it has never been found in any archive. But in 2014, a copy finally reached Queen Elizabeth, after his grandson Boydie Turner travelled to London.

Equal rights and ‘uplift’

In 1936, Cooper founded the Australian Aborigines’ League, which he envisaged as an organisation to represent all Aboriginal people.

Under his leadership, the league developed a program to call for the rights and privileges that other Australian citizens enjoyed, while also seeking the “uplift” of Indigenous people, so they could overcome the disadvantages they suffered.

“Uplift” entailed a claim for special rights for Aboriginal people — to land, capital and other resources — that rested on their disadvantage, rather than their status as the country’s Indigenous or First peoples.

But in the course of demanding the rights of citizenship and “uplift”, Cooper repeatedly sought to draw attention to his ancestors’ prior ownership of the land and their subsequent dispossession, displacement and decimation.

He did so in order to remind white Australians of their obligations to Aboriginal people, incurred as a result of this history. As Cooper noted in 1938,

Surely the Commonwealth, which controls all that originally belonged to us, could make what would be a comparatively meagre allowance for us, by way of recompense.

To remind people of Australia’s black history, Cooper called for a “Day of Mourning” to mark Australia’s sesquicentenary in January 1938 and an “Aborigines’ Day” to be held in the nation’s churches every year on the Sunday closest to Australia Day.

Protest against Nazi persecution

Cooper and the League also rejected government policies advocating for the absorption of Aboriginal people into Australian society. Instead, he asserted a vision of Aboriginal people as a permanent and ongoing community in Australia. As he said in 1936,

all thought of breeding the half-caste white, and the desire that that be accomplished, is a creature of the white mind. The coloured person has no feeling of repugnance toward the full blood, and in fact, he feels more in common with the full blood than with the white.

Cooper and other members of the league identified very strongly as a persecuted racial minority and made common cause with others beyond Australia’s shores, including the Jewish people.

In the incident for which Cooper now seems to be best known by non-Indigenous Australians, in December 1938 he led a protest against Nazi persecution to the German Consulate in Melbourne.

Inspiring a new generation

Cooper’s life and work seem astoundingly relevant for today. But during his life his campaign for rights for Aborigines fell on deaf eyes as far as government was concerned.

As he lamented in 1937,

We asked [for] bread. We scarcely seem likely to get a stone.

Yet, by the time he passed away in March 1941, he had inspired a new generation of Aboriginal leaders, most notably his grand-nephew Doug Nicholls but also the Onus brothers, who became prominent in the struggle for Aboriginal rights in the immediate post-war period.

His notion of “thinking black” would in time also catch the imagination of yet another generation of Aboriginal leaders, such as Oodgeroo Noonuccal.

Most importantly, perhaps, Cooper is remembered above all else for his prescient call for an Aboriginal voice to Parliament.

Through this, and his fight to overcome Aboriginal disadvantage, he continues to speak to us today.

– ref. William Cooper: the Indigenous leader who petitioned the king, demanding a Voice to Parliament in the 1930s – https://theconversation.com/william-cooper-the-indigenous-leader-who-petitioned-the-king-demanding-a-voice-to-parliament-in-the-1930s-140056

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thomas McGee, PhD researcher, Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness, University of Melbourne

No child should be denied her rights because her parents are LGBTIQ+, and no family should have to endure the indignity we did.

These are the words of Roee and Adiel Kiviti, a same-sex married couple who recently won a legal challenge against the US Department of State for refusing to consider their daughter an American citizen.

Both men are US citizens, but their daughter was born in Canada through surrogacy. The State Department considers such children of same-sex couples to be “born out of wedlock”, irrespective of the marital status of the parents. For the Kivitis, this meant their daughter was denied the automatic citizenship normally granted to the children of US citizens.

This isn’t just a singular case. For many children born to same-sex couples through international surrogacy, there is a risk they could become stateless — unable to gain citizenship in the country where they were born, or their parents’ home countries.

Immigration Equality, an LGBTIQ+ immigrant rights organisation in the US, says there is a

new double standard for citizenship: one for the children of gay couples and one for the children of straight couples.

What does statelessness mean?

Statelessness is defined under international law as not being recognised as a citizen by any of the world’s 195 recognised states. According to the UN’s conservative estimate, there are some 12 million stateless people globally.

In practical terms, stateless people face many challenges due to their lack of citizenship. While these differ significantly from one context to the next, common experiences include the inability to access vital services (such as education and health care), move freely, own property and simply prove one’s identity.

Cases like the Kivitis’ daughter have brought high-profile attention to the risk of statelessness associated with LGBTIQ+ parenting situations.

Similar cases have been compiled by campaigners in Europe, where litigation is also underway.

An Irish-Polish lesbian couple, for instance, gave birth to a daughter through IVF in Spain in 2018. The girl, Sofia, is currently stateless because neither woman’s country will recognise her right to citizenship. Her Spanish citizenship is still pending.

And before international commercial surrogacy arrangements were banned in India and Thailand, the children of many same-sex couples born in these countries were at risk of statelessness.

However, statelessness is also a problem that LGBTIQ+ people themselves may face. My recently published research has identified scores of stateless LGBTIQ+ people around the world.

Read more: A year since the marriage equality vote, much has been gained – and there is still much to be done

Stateless LGBTIQ+ people face double marginalisation

Why do we hear so little about their experiences? Indeed, this was the question that motivated me to study the links between statelessness and sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics (relating to a person’s physical sexual anatomy).

Having worked on statelessness for the last decade, I have attended many conferences with little consideration given to LGBTIQ+ people. In contrast, much research has been conducted on the experiences of LGBTIQ+ refugees and asylum seekers.

As Eliana Rubashkyn, an intersex person from Colombia who experienced years of statelessness before receiving asylum and citizenship in New Zealand, explained to me:

Nobody talks about our case because we are taboo everywhere. Yet it is a chronic violation of human rights.

My research highlights that stateless LGBTIQ+ people often face a significant double marginalisation. They are discriminated because of their sexuality or gender expression, as well as their lack of documentation.

Read more: What does an asylum seeker have to do to prove their sexuality?

For example, one stateless queer man in Lebanon described fears of being arrested on grounds of public immorality (a common charge against the LGBTIQ+ community) and lacking the necessary paperwork to establish his identity. While he is not the only stateless person in his family (due to gender discrimination in Lebanese citizenship law), the risks are compounded in his case.

It goes without saying that being stateless can also make any problem I encounter due to my sexual orientation and gender identity much worse. And vice versa.

While no statistics are available, for some LGBTIQ+ people, discrimination is what caused them to become stateless in the first place.

They can lose their citizenship due to complex laws that do not recognise LGBTIQ+ marriages and relationships across countries. There is also a patchwork of different laws recognising sex and gender transitions, which can be especially problematic for trans and intersex individuals.

This was the case for Rubashkyn, who no longer resembled her passport photo following hormone treatment and became stranded in Hong Kong’s airport six years ago.

Desperate to prevent officials from deporting her back to Colombia, where she had suffered persecution, she ultimately renounced her Colombian citizenship, making herself stateless. She was later resettled in New Zealand and gained citizenship in 2018.

Asylum requests are often denied

Within asylum contexts, research shows both statelessness and LGBTIQ+ situations are often missed or misunderstood during the process of assessing claims for protection.

For instance, one transsexual interviewee from my research explained

the various intersecting elements of my narrative seemed to confuse the asylum officials who wanted to understand my experience through a singular lens. I tried to explain but they did not appear convinced.

The lack of attention paid to “rainbow statelessness” in the media and policy debates may further lead governments to question the credibility of statements made by stateless LGBTIQ+ asylum seekers.

This is why it’s critical to bring more attention to the links between statelessness and sexual orientation or gender identity.

Better understanding this intersection is necessary to improve laws and policies that discriminate against LGBTIQ+ people, and sometimes render them, or their children, stateless.

Read more: So much for Dutch tolerance: life as an LGBT asylum seeker in the Netherlands

– ref. ‘We are taboo everywhere’: how LGBTIQ+ people, and their children, become stateless – https://theconversation.com/we-are-taboo-everywhere-how-lgbtiq-people-and-their-children-become-stateless-141987

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Varela, Research Fellow, Tax and Transfer Policy Institute, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

Many economists think that earnings in super funds should be taxed at a relatively low rate, compared to labour earnings and other types of earnings such as interest and dividends.

This is reflected in tax policy around the world. Among members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, private pension plans (what we call super) have among the lowest tax rates of any savings instrument.

The Australian tax treatment of super aligns with this trend. But the Australian system is much more generous than other countries and very expensive.

In the past financial year the tax concessions on super fund earnings cost the government an estimated A$17.8 billion. The tax concession on employer super contributions cost $19.6 billion.

Do the benefits of these generous tax concessions justify their costs?

Our recent report on savings taxes suggests that they don’t, in large measure because they are poorly aimed at their intended objectives.

In order to understand just how poorly they are aimed, it is necessary to identify the arguments typically used to justify their existence.

Justification 1. The impact of tax compounds over time

The first (and by far most convincing) justification is that superannuation is typically held for a long period of time. Since income from superannuation is taxed annually, the impact of the tax compounds over time, similar to compound interest.

Lower tax rates can offset the increase in effective tax rates over time.

But in practice they are applied poorly because they apply equally, irrespective of whether the asset is held for a short or a long time.

Read more: Progressive in theory, regressive in practice: that’s how we tax income from savings

Ideally the concession would be the greatest for workers at the start of their careers.

They are the ones who hold super for the longest time, but the system actually awards the highest concessions to the high earners, who tend to be the oldest and closest to retirement.

Justification 2. Super tax concessions encourage saving

A second rationale for superannuation tax concessions is that they help ensure people save enough money for retirement.

This argument is less convincing, because there is relatively strong evidence suggesting that it is the compulsory nature of superannuation, rather than how it is taxed, that drives retirement savings.

In other words, if people are not saving enough for retirement, superannuation concessions are the wrong tool – increasing the compulsory percentage would be better.

Read more: Early access to super doesn’t justify higher compulsory contributions

Moreover, if increasing retirement savings is a goal of tax policy, it would be best achieved by charging the least to the people most likely to respond to tax rates.

Existing research suggests that low income people are among those most likely to respond to tax concessions. Yet at the moment the concessions are directed to high earners.

Justification 3. Super concessions take weight off the pension

A third argument is that super tax concessions reduce dependence on the age pension.

But super tax concessions only improve the government’s financial position if savings on the age pension are greater than the cost of the concessions.

It is a far from decided question.

There is a good deal of evidence suggesting that the amount placed in super has only a modest impact on the likelihood that the superannuant will claim a pension, and a relatively modest impact on the amount claimed.

Increased savings of almost any form will reduce dependence on the age pension to some extent because most savings, other than owner-occupied housing, are counted in the means test.

If the government wanted a stronger effect it could tighten the means test.

Alternatively, it could direct concessions toward those Australians most likely to receive an age pension.

At the moment the biggest concessions are directed to the Australians wealthy enough to be unlikely to receive the pension.

So how should we tax super?

In the long-run there’s a case for taxing the earnings from all types of savings at the same rate.

Short-run, super tax could be reformed by

• making all superannuation contributions out of post-tax income (potentially with an upfront subsidy, but a smaller one than currently exists)

• taxing earnings in the retirement phase in addition to the pre-retirement phase and using the resulting revenue to reduce the tax rate on all super earnings

• taxing super earnings at a lower annual rate for younger Australians to account for the fact that they hold super assets for a longer

• Removing “catch-up provisions” that allow older Australians to put in more at lower tax rates and lowering the annual concessional contributions cap

The savings made could help fund a reduction in personal income tax rates, greater government support payments, or a combination of both.

The government’s retirement income review has examined some of these questions. It was delivered to the treasurer late last month.

– ref. We need super, but we’re taxing it the wrong way round – https://theconversation.com/we-need-super-but-were-taxing-it-the-wrong-way-round-143421

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nick Wilson, Professor of Public Health, University of Otago

As New Zealand enters its second day at heightened alert levels to contain a community outbreak of COVID-19, we expect that it should only be a temporary setback.

Four cases with no direct links to border or quarantine facilities were confirmed late on Tuesday, and there are now four more probable community cases, including one student at an Auckland school.

Given the control measures already in place and the willingness most people have shown to comply with restrictions, we believe New Zealand can get back to its elimination status.

But we suggest a number of additional measures to speed up progress, including an update of the current alert system to make the use of masks mandatory in indoor public spaces and to place tighter controls on venues with a high transmission risk, including bars, gyms, choirs and churches.

Read more: Churchgoers aren’t able to lift every voice and sing during the pandemic – here’s why that matters

Getting the outbreak back under control

The use of masks should be mandatory for all indoor public places at level 2 (which is currently in place across New Zealand) and this requirement should be added to a revised alert level system. The effectiveness of simple reuseable fabric masks can approach that of standard surgical masks.

Read more: How do I know if my mask actually works? What about the ‘candle test’?

We should also update advice on venues with a particularly high risk of transmission, including bars, nightclubs, gyms and choirs and church gatherings (anywhere people sing). Some of these places have been implicated in large outbreaks.

One Japanese study noted many COVID-19 clusters were associated with:

… heavy breathing in close proximity, such as singing at karaoke parties, cheering at clubs, having conversations in bars, and exercising in gymnasiums.

Similarly, there are studies on outbreaks associated with dance classes and a choir practice. The closure of such places could be built into alert level 2 – or perhaps a distinct alert level 1B where all other places remain open.

Even at higher alert levels, we should reassess school closures to reflect more nuanced evidence about risks and benefits at different ages. The aim should be to keep younger children in school wherever possible.

The information about physical distancing at schools on the Ministry of Education website is now outdated and needs revision. In particular, mask use should be universally adopted by secondary school-aged children, bringing them into line with recommendations for adults to prevent viral spread.

The new outbreak affects several work places in Auckland and better sick leave provisions are in discussion to ensure workers with mild illnesses and those waiting for test results don’t come to work. This support is particularly important for workers at the highest risk of infection: border workers, air crew and staff at managed isolation and quarantine facilities.

Further economic support packages will be necessary for people unable to work under level 3 restrictions.

Effective measures are already in place

The government’s rapid implementation of strong control measures is appropriate. This decisive approach allowed New Zealand to eliminate COVID-19 back in May. The country is now better prepared than earlier in the year in a number of ways because:

• we know that it is possible to eliminate the virus and there are inspiring examples from other jurisdictions (including Taiwan, most Australian states and territories, and Fiji)

• we have the logistics in place to carry out mass testing in the community

• the manual contact tracing system has improved, including better integration of regional public health units into a single national system

• we have genomic sequencing methods available to help identify the source of the outbreak

• and the Ministry of Health has adopted World Health Organization advice on the use of face masks.

All these measures, together with alert level 3 restrictions in the greater Auckland region, will help bring the outbreak under control. There is only a small risk these measures could fail and force New Zealand (or some regions of the country) to repeat a level 4 lockdown.

Necessary measures for the longer term

It is almost certain the current outbreak is due to a border-related event. This was the source of the large outbreak currently affecting the Australian state of Victoria and spilling over into New South Wales.

Read more: Yes, it looks like Victoria has passed the peak of its second wave. It probably did earlier than we think

Previous modelling work shows it can take several weeks for a case to be detected following a biosecurity breach. It has been suggested the virus may have entered New Zealand on refrigerated freight, but this source is much less likely than a failure with the quarantine system.

Given this outbreak, a thorough review of border and quarantine systems, including ports, is now necessary. After some concerning quarantine breaches, we now have a more robust system of border controls, including stricter testing regimes in managed isolation and quarantine facilities.

But further improvements will be needed, and this could include more regular testing of border and quarantine staff and the use of digital technologies to ensure staff keep appropriate distance from people in quarantine and to track their movements when off-duty (within privacy safeguards).

Improvements in contact tracing are ongoing. A CovidCard device is currently going through a trial in Rotorua, but the government should explore alternatives such as smartphone apps using the Apple/Google platform, as used in Ireland and Spain.

Phone data were used successfully in South Korea and New Zealand should evaluate this option, within appropriate privacy safeguards.

Finally, we need an update on the scope for COVID-19 surveillance through testing of wastewater. Several cities, including Paris, are exploring this. In New Zealand, researchers have detected the virus in wastewater, and this form of early detection of outbreaks would reduce the need for routine community testing.

– ref. Masking the outbreak: how New Zealand could return to its COVID-19 elimination status even faster – https://theconversation.com/masking-the-outbreak-how-new-zealand-could-return-to-its-covid-19-elimination-status-even-faster-144356

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Turney, Professor, Earth Science and Climate Change, UNSW

Geological and archaeological records offer important insights into what seems to be an increasingly uncertain future.

The better we understand what conditions Earth has already experienced, the better we can predict (and potentially prevent) future threats.

But to do this effectively, we need an accurate way to date what happened in the past.

Our research, published today in the journal Radiocarbon, offers a way to do just that, through an updated method of calibrating the radiocarbon timescale.

An amazing tool for perusing the past

Radiocarbon dating has revolutionised our understanding of the past. It is nearly 80 years since Nobel Prize-winning US chemist Willard Libby first suggested minute amounts of a radioactive form of carbon are created in the upper atmosphere.

Libby correctly argued this newly formed radiocarbon (or C-14) rapidly converts to carbon dioxide, is taken up by plants during photosynthesis, and from there travels up through the food chain.

When organisms interact with their environment while alive, they have the same proportion of C-14 as their environment. Once they die they stop taking in new carbon.

Their level of C-14 then halves every 5,730 years due to radioactive decay. An organism that died yesterday will still have a high level of C-14, whereas one that died tens of thousands of years ago will not.

By measuring the level of C-14 in a specimen, we can deduce how long ago that organism died. Currently, with this method, we can date remains up to 60,000 years old.

Read more: Explainer: what is radiocarbon dating and how does it work?

A seven-year effort

If the level of C-14 in the atmosphere had always been constant, radiocarbon dating would be straightforward. But it hasn’t.

Changes in the carbon cycle, impinging cosmic radiation, the use of fossil fuels and 20th century nuclear testing have all caused large variations over time. Thus, all radiocarbon dates need to be adjusted (or calibrated) to be turned into accurate calendar ages.

Without this adjustment, dates could be out by up to 10-15%. This week we report a seven-year international effort to recalculate three radiocarbon calibration curves:

• IntCal20 (“20” to signify this year) for objects from the northern hemisphere
• SHCal20 for samples from the ocean-dominated southern hemisphere
• Marine20 for samples from the world’s oceans.

We constructed these updated curves by measuring a plethora of materials that record past radiocarbon levels, but which can also be dated by other methods.

Included in the archives are tree rings from ancient logs preserved in wetlands, cave stalagmites, corals from the continental shelf and sediments drilled from lake and ocean beds.

In total, the new curves are based on almost 15,000 radiocarbon measurements taken from objects up to 60,000 years old.

Advances in radiocarbon measurement using accelerator mass spectrometry mean the updated curves can use very small samples, such as single tree rings from just one year’s growth.

Reassessing old beliefs

The new radiocarbon calibration curves provide previously impossible precision and detail. As a result, they greatly improve our understanding of how Earth has evolved and how these changes impacted its inhabitants.

One example is the rate of environmental change at the end of the most recent ice age. As the world started to warm some 18,000 years ago, vast ice sheets covering Antarctica, North America (including Greenland) and Europe melted – returning huge volumes of fresh water to the oceans.

But the sea level didn’t rise at a consistent rate like the global temperature. Sometimes it was gradual and other times extremely rapid.

A prime location to detect past sea levels is the Sunda Shelf, a large platform of land that was once part of continental Southeast Asia.

One study published in 2000 showed mangrove plant remains found on the seabed recorded a catastrophic 16-metre sea level rise over several hundred years (about half a metre each decade). This event, known as Meltwater Pulse-1A, flooded the Sunda Shelf.

Our latest work has modified this story considerably. The new calibration curves reveal this extreme phase of sea level rise actually began 14,640 years ago and lasted just 160 years.

This equates to a staggering one-metre rise each decade – a sobering lesson for the future, considering the current much lower projected changes for the end of this century.

An extra half a millennium of art

Going further back in time, we also looked at some of the world’s oldest cave art in France’s Chauvet Cave, first discovered in 1994.

This cave contains hundreds of beautifully preserved paintings. They depict a European menagerie with long-extinct mammoths, cave lions and woolly rhinoceroses, captured in real-life scenes that provide a window into a lost world.

The Chauvet Cave reveals the artistic sophistication of our early ancestors in phenomenal detail.

With the new IntCal20 curve, our best estimate for the creation of the oldest radiocarbon-dated painting in the cave is now 36,500 years ago. This is almost 450 years older than previously thought.

These are just two of many more examples of the far-reaching impact our latest work will have.

As the new calibration curves are used to re-analyse ages of a host of archaeological and geological records, we can expect major shifts in our understanding of the planet’s past – and hopefully, a better forecast into its future.

Read more: Is that rock hashtag really the first evidence of Neanderthal art?

– ref. From cave art to climate chaos: how a new carbon dating timeline is changing our view of history – https://theconversation.com/from-cave-art-to-climate-chaos-how-a-new-carbon-dating-timeline-is-changing-our-view-of-history-143620

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Lindsey, Malcolm Smith Professor of Asian Law and Director of the Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society, University of Melbourne

Indonesia is still struggling to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. Its fatalities are the worst in Southeast Asia, but so far the most dire predictions have not come true.

And yet, the government appears even less focused on controlling the disease and more on reopening the country for business, including allowing tourists back to Bali. (There’s now talk of a travel bubble including Australia.) The government is clearly concerned the struggling economy could lead to more criticism of its handling of the crisis – and perhaps social unrest.

As of this week, Indonesia officially has more than 128,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus, with nearly 40,000 people undergoing treatment and more than 80,000 recovered. There are another 86,000 suspected cases.

So far, more than 5,800 people have died, 4.5% of confirmed cases. Cases have been rising by about 1,700 per day in August.

But these figures understate the real impact of the pandemic. Indonesia does not count probable cases in its deaths, even though the World Health Organisation recommends it. One civil society group that monitors the pandemic says there may have been more been more than 15,000 coronavirus-related deaths.

And a model developed in Singapore predicts 200,000 cases by the end of September.

Testing has improved, but rates are still too low

In fact, no one really knows how bad the situation is. But it is certain to be much worse than the official figures, because testing rates are so low.

Testing capacity has improved considerably, with 269 laboratories now running COVID-19 tests,, up from only 12 labs in mid-March.

But with daily tests per thousand people still extraordinarily low (0.05 this week), this country of 270 million is yet to reach even a million tests. By contrast, Australia has run close to 5 million tests.

More concerning still, the positivity rate on tests run in Indonesia is a very high 12.9%. In Australia, it is 0.4%.

Poor testing levels reflect a wider problem — low spending on health care during the pandemic, despite very poor pre-existing medical infrastructure and public health outcomes.

So far, at least 73 doctors and 55 nurses have died from the virus, largely due to a lack of personal protective equipment and adequate support at the start of the outbreak.

Medical residents, who are underpaid and work in poor conditions without standard workers’ rights, have been hit hard, with large numbers reportedly infected.

Read more: Indonesian hospitals at risk of being overwhelmed: 6 strategies to beat COVID-19

In June, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo finally called out the health ministry for lack of spending, saying it has a budget of A$7.1 billion, but had spent just 1.53% of that.

The controversial health minister, Terawan Agus Putranto, has now clearly been sidelined. After early bungles, his role was largely taken over by military figures appointed to the government’s COVID-19 taskforce.

Business is the top priority

Still, while things are bad, the horror scenario of a quarter of million dead — predicted by the University of Indonesia at the start of the outbreak — has not eventuated.

Only a little credit can go to the government for this. At best, it has muddled through, and some of its decisions seem plain crazy – for example, reopening Bali for tourism at a time when most of the world is trying to keep tourists out.

This happened domestically on July 31, with 4,000 Indonesians flying in after the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy paid Instagram influencers to visit. Bali now plans to open for foreign tourists in September.

Yes, Bali has relatively low infection rates and its tourism-dependent economy has basically collapsed, but surely avoiding the risk of a major outbreak should be the priority?

Visitors will be required to present a negative COVID-19 test result, but domestic tourists can get away with just a rapid antibody test. Given the unreliability of rapid tests, this is hardly sufficient protection against further spread.

The Bali decision reflects the clear pattern of the government’s approach to the pandemic — keep the economy ticking over by making business the top priority. This is understandable, to a point, because the economy was already in trouble even before the pandemic hit.

That might explain why Jokowi has been so anxious to keep people working, saying he doesn’t “know why people are getting worried lately”.

In fact, Jokowi seems to regard the pandemic as a golden opportunity for pro-business initiatives, with his government trying to push a massive omnibus bill through the legislature. This is mainly intended to make life much easier for big business, including the oligarchs who back him.

The bill would dump many workers’ rights, including severance payments and compensation for lay-offs. And the World Bank has pointed out the bill would also remove a range of important environmental protections.

Read more: Indonesia was in denial over coronavirus. Now it may be facing a looming disaster

Unfortunately, this pro-business approach hasn’t worked: the economy is now in dire straits. GDP growth slowed to 2.97% in the first quarter of 2020, and then contracted by 5.32% in the second quarter.

Jokowi believes the real problem is not his policies to contain the virus, but that the poor don’t follow government health guidelines.

Many disagree. In April, a group of small traders sued the government for mishandling the pandemic. Their claim was thrown out, but the sort of criticisms they made are now widespread on social media.

The government, probably concerned to avoid wider social unrest as the ranks of the jobless and poor grow, has come down hard on online critics, arresting dozens. Last week, it even threatened to sue one Twitter user just for saying a virus-sniffer dog would be more useful than the health minister.

Hoaxes and conspiracy theories

In the meantime, very little is being done about the wild proliferation online of COVID-19 hoaxes and conspiracy theories. Popular musicians, for example, have publicly backed bogus medical specialists and organised demonstrations to reject testing.

After authorities were attacked online for failing to do anything about hoaxes, the police finally pulled musician Erdian Aji Prihartanto (known as Anji) in for questioning this week over the herbal “cure” for coronavirus he discussed in a video with a so-called microbiology researcher.

But he is not the only one peddling dodgy cures — the government is part of the problem, too. The governor of Bali, for instance, advocated inhaling the steam of a local liquor known as arak, while the agriculture minister promoted eucalyptus amulets as a cure.

Will Jokowi’s alliances start to fray?

Despite the government’s perceptible nervousness, public dissatisfaction has not translated into serious political opposition.

Some Jokowi opponents recently declared a new group, the Action Coalition to Save Indonesia (Koalisi Aksi Menyelamatkan Indonesia, KAMI), but they are unlikely to achieve much against a government that has largely closed ranks.

Jokowi is lucky that after last year’s highly divisive elections, he was able to negotiate reconciliation among political elites to support his government before the pandemic hit.

Bringing leading opponents like rival presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto into cabinet and negotiating a political alliance that can dominate the legislature has put him in a good position. For now, at least, he looks set to sit this crisis out, regardless of his government’s sluggish and messy response to the pandemic.

Read more: With his new cabinet, Indonesia’s president Jokowi prioritises national stability over everything else

But 3.7 million Indonesians have lost their jobs so far, and total unemployed is expected to hit 10 million by the end of the year.

The poverty rate is also expected to increase to 9.7% by end of the year, pushing 1.3 million more people into poverty. In a worst-case scenario, 19.7 million will become poor.

If infections escalate, deaths increase significantly and mass public protests emerge, the cohesion among political elites might start to unravel. No wonder the government is jumpy about criticism of the policies that make its response to the pandemic the worst in the region.

– ref. Indonesia’s coronavirus fatalities are the highest in Southeast Asia. So, why is Jokowi rushing to get back to business? – https://theconversation.com/indonesias-coronavirus-fatalities-are-the-highest-in-southeast-asia-so-why-is-jokowi-rushing-to-get-back-to-business-144059

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Marschner, Professor of Biostatistics, NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre, University of Sydney

It’s hard to recall a time when we didn’t nervously await the announcement of Victoria’s daily COVID-19 case numbers each morning.

It was certainly disconcerting when the state recorded more than 700 new cases on two occasions not long ago.

And likewise, now that we’ve seen a few consecutive days of around 300-400 cases, it’s tempting to ask whether the peak of Victoria’s second wave is behind us.

The good news is, current daily case numbers do indicate we’ve passed the peak of the second wave. But I would suggest we actually reached the peak at the end of July, and the reported case numbers are only now catching up.

Daily case numbers versus new infections

Before we can answer the question of whether Victoria has passed the peak of its second wave, we need to be clear about what we’re asking. Although it’s natural to focus on the reported case numbers because they’re highly visible, the outbreak’s progress is in fact driven by the number of new infections.

COVID-19 infections can take up to two weeks to be diagnosed and appear in the official case count. This is because an infected person must first pass through an incubation period (the time between becoming infected and symptoms presenting), and then be tested and wait for their result.

On average, the process takes about one week, but it can vary substantially from person to person.

Read more: Two weeks of mandatory masks, but a record 725 new cases: why are Melbourne’s COVID-19 numbers so stubbornly high?

So today’s case numbers — rather than indicating new infections — actually reflect infections that occurred up to two weeks ago.

In other words, watching the case numbers doesn’t tell us the full story about the current spread of the virus. When asking whether we’ve passed the peak, we really need to focus on the peak in daily infections.

That’s where data analytics come in

We don’t know how many new infections occur each day because infections remain hidden until symptoms develop or there’s some other reason for a person to get tested.

But we do have a good idea of how long it takes for someone to progress from infection to symptoms, and then from symptoms to diagnosis by a positive test.

By combining the observed case numbers with a mathematical model for the progress from infection to diagnosis, we can then reconstruct the pattern of past infections that would have led to the case numbers. This is an epidemiological analysis method called back-projection.

This analysis is an estimate, not an observation. But we can use it to explore whether there’s any evidence infection numbers have peaked, and at what point.

Looking back to the first wave

Earlier in the outbreak I used this approach to evaluate the effectiveness of the government’s control measures. In a study looking at the first wave of infections across Australia, I showed that the timing of government restrictions matched almost exactly with the flattening and downturn of infection numbers.

This was despite the fact case numbers continued to rise after restrictions were introduced. In other words, the case numbers were hiding the good progress that was going on in the background.

Read more: Takeaway coffee allowed, but no wandering through Bunnings: here’s why Melbourne’s new business restrictions will reduce cases

By clamping down early, we probably avoided tens of thousands of infections nationally. A recent study published in the Medical Journal of Australia estimated Victoria’s control measures averted between 9,000 and 37,000 cases in July.

Returning to Victoria’s second wave

We can use the same data analytics approach to explore the progress of the recent restrictions in controlling Victoria’s second wave.

My reconstruction of Victoria’s infection numbers during the second wave, shown below, illustrates an early rise in infections during June. This rise likely accelerated in the first half of July, when new infections would have been increasing at a substantially greater rate than was evident in the daily case numbers.

This lag in the case numbers makes it plausible the recent flattening of daily cases is being driven by a much more pronounced decrease in the underlying infection numbers. This is what the reconstructed infection numbers are suggesting in the graph, which shows a peak in late July.

Again, this is an estimate rather than an observation, and the very recent infection numbers have considerable uncertainty. (This is because we work backwards with this analysis, and very few of the most recent infections will have shown up yet in the case numbers.)

Room for optimism, but not complacency

The lower case numbers in recent days suggest we’ve reached and passed the peak of Victoria’s second wave, and my analysis strengthens and supports this. It shows a peak and decline in new infections over the last couple of weeks.

If this is true there’s good reason to be optimistic the tough restrictions will drive the infection curve, and subsequently the case numbers, down even further.

But it’s sobering that my same analyses estimate Victoria has had about 2,000 more infections than case diagnoses. That’s an estimated 2,000 people who are infected but don’t yet know it.

So even if new infections have peaked, as we all hope, there’s plenty of potential for the curve to turn back up again if adherence to the restrictions wavers. Victorians have some reason to be optimistic that the peak has passed, but there’s no room for complacency.

Read more: Got a COVID-19 test in Victoria and still haven’t got your results? Here’s what may be happening — and what to do

– ref. Yes, it looks like Victoria has passed the peak of its second wave. It probably did earlier than we think – https://theconversation.com/yes-it-looks-like-victoria-has-passed-the-peak-of-its-second-wave-it-probably-did-earlier-than-we-think-144200

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Marshall, Academic, Landscape Architecture and Urban Ecology, University of Melbourne

Volcanic plains stretching from Melbourne’s west to the South Australian border were once home to native grasslands strewn with wildflowers and a vast diversity of animals. Today, this grassland ecosystem is critically endangered.

To protect the last remaining large-scale patch, the Victorian government proposed the “Western Grassland Reserve”. But in June, a damning Auditor General’s report revealed this plan has fallen flat.

Read more: EcoCheck: Victoria’s flower-strewn western plains could be swamped by development

With weeds choking the native grasses and many animals now locally extinct, the deteriorating reserve represents a failure of imagination.

Debate has raged about funding, timelines and bureaucratic processes. But what the debate is missing is a new vision, with funding and management models, for the Western Grassland Reserve, that recognises its deep culture and history, and its potential to be one of the great parks of the world.

Failing our flora and fauna

The Victorian government’s plan was to acquire 15,000 hectares of mostly farmland beyond Melbourne’s outer limit between 2010 and 2020. The money is coming from offsets, where developers are, in effect, charged a fee to be allowed to destroy federally protected remnant grassland within the urban growth boundary.

But the Auditor General’s report found a scant 10% of Western Grassland Reserve land has been purchased, with little offset money remaining for further purchases.

In addition, delays in purchasing land are costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars because of rising land prices. A predicted substantial downturn in development further exposes the flaws of a funding model inadequate to its conservation task.

Read more: Can we offset biodiversity losses?

We urgently need to investigate new funding and management models that embrace the reserve as a cultural landscape for people.

A quintessential Australian experience

As a patchwork of farms overlaid on traditional Wathaurong land, the Western Grassland Reserve could be shaped into one of the greatest large parks of the world – a cultural landscape capturing a quintessential Australian experience, speaking of Indigenous culture, our colonial past, and who we are today.

A well-designed reserve could show us the history of grassland pastoralism that gave rise to the saying “Australia rides on the sheep’s back”. It could immerse us in Dorothea MacKellar’s “land of sweeping plains”. It can give us back the immense flowered landscape that so stunned the explorer Thomas Mitchell, he coined the phrase “Australia Felix”, which means “happy Australia”.

And it could show us something of the profound knowledge Indigenous people hold. Few know this, but the Wurdi Youang stone circle near Little River – though as yet undated – may well be one of the oldest known astronomical structures in the world, far predating Stonehenge or the pyramids.

Imagine its potential

Imagine a picnic under a spreading gum beside an old farm dam. There’s a bluestone dairy repurposed to fine dining, a grand farmhouse for overnight stays, bike trails, and a series of regional playgrounds emphasising natureplay and adventure for all abilities.

With the right conservation, ephemeral wetlands and creeklines could be bursting with birdlife and ready to explore, and even working farms retained for school visits.

Nearby, at Mount Rothwell, a fenced conservation area contains almost extinct small marsupials – bandicoots, potoroos and apex predator quolls. These were once commonplace, and still a night visit is an unforgettable experience, yet one few Melburnians have enjoyed.

Innovation in management

Part of a bigger picture for the Western Grassland Reserve is a new management model beyond a poorly-funded Parks Victoria asset being managed solely for environmental values.

Options abound for innovation and leadership here. We can create a well-coordinated network of different management approaches and protection levels with traditional publicly owned national parks, conservation reserves, private land covenants, private protected areas and Indigenous protected areas.

Funding for management also needs rethinking. Market-driven models can ensure performance-based outcomes. For example, farmers can be paid to graze sustainably. And a new model leveraging resources and expertise could encourage the involvement of NGOs, traditional owners and community groups, species-specific teams, the Royal Botanic Gardens, with research input by universities.

Built-in commercial seed production, which is fundamental to restoring degraded areas, can kick-start the native seed industry in a win–win for commerce and the environment.

These sorts of alternative management and funding have been achieved in the south of France, within the Carmague and the stony plains of Le Crau. There, 10,000 hectares of grassland and wetland complexes are managed by broad alliance of NGOs and conservation agencies across defence land, national parks and private protected areas.

And in the USA, the largest tallgrass prairie in the country is managed by Kansas State University and the Nature Conservancy, with federal and philanthropic input. It also has an educational program that brings in more than 100 school and public events a year.

So what are we waiting for? The Great Ocean Road was built during the Great Depression, let the Western Grassland Reserve be a visionary project for these difficult times under COVID-19.

– ref. These historic grasslands are becoming a weed-choked waste. It could be one of the world’s great parks – https://theconversation.com/these-historic-grasslands-are-becoming-a-weed-choked-waste-it-could-be-one-of-the-worlds-great-parks-144208

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sally Larsen, PhD candidate, Education & Psychology, University of New England

Whether to hold a child back from starting school when they are first eligible is a question faced by many parents in Australia each year.

If you start a child at school too early, there’s a fear they may fall behind. But many working parents may wish to send their child to school as soon as they are eligible. Some data from NSW indicates children from more advantaged areas are held back more often than their less advantaged peers. And boys are more likely to be held back than girls.

We compared the NAPLAN reading and numeracy results of children who were held back with those who were sent to school when first eligible. Our results — published in the journal Child Development — suggest delayed school entry does not have a large or lasting influence on basic reading and maths skills in middle primary and lower secondary school.

Delaying school entry across Australia

School entry cut-off dates vary by state. In most Australian states children born between January and the cut-off date are allowed to begin school aged four. Or they can be held back for an extra year and begin school at five years old. In most states, students must be enrolled in school by the time they turn six.

The exceptions are Tasmania, where children must turn five by January 1 before entering school and Western Australia, where state education policy actively discourages holding children back. In WA parents must gain permission from education authorities before they can hold back their child from starting school.

In NSW, Victoria and Queensland, parents can make the decision to hold their child back without formal permission from school principals or state education departments.

The percentage of children held back from starting school when first eligible varies considerably across the country.

Holding some children back from school and sending others when first eligible means the age range in classrooms can be as much as 19 months between the youngest and oldest students.

Some international research shows children who are held back do better in academic tests in the early years of primary school — up to about Grade 3. There is also some evidence to show students held back are less likely to be rated as developmentally vulnerable by their teachers.

Read more: Which families delay sending their child to school, and why? We crunched the numbers

But other research shows no long-term academic advantage of being held back. Some Australian research found students who were younger in their grade cohorts were more motivated and engaged in early high school than their older peers.

In all, prior research has provided mixed evidence. Little largescale research has been conducted in Australia exploring the associations between delayed entry and academic outcomes in later grades. This is a gap we wanted to fill.

Our research on delayed entry

We were interested in finding out whether children who were held back from starting school performed better in NAPLAN tests in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. NAPLAN tests can tell us broadly how well children are going in reading and maths.

We compared the scores of 2,823 children in the reading and numeracy sections of NAPLAN tests at each grade.

We found students in Year 3 received slightly higher results in NAPLAN if they were held back, compared to their peers who were not. But this slight advantage reduced at Years 5 and 7. By Year 9 students who were held back did no better on NAPLAN tests than those sent when first eligible.

When we took into account individual differences in students’ ability to focus attention, there was no difference in achievement between students who were held back and those sent on time in any grade level.

Read more: Don’t blame the teacher: student results are (mostly) out of their hands

Even differences in age exceeding 12 months appear to make little difference to NAPLAN achievement later in school. The results also indicate individual differences in ability to focus may matter more for NAPLAN achievement than being held back a year.

What we didn’t look at

This research can tell us about averages but it can’t tell us about individual circumstances that might warrant holding a child back from school. Early childhood teachers may recommend children with developmental delays or notable difficulty with language or behaviour be held back for an additional year.

Parents may also take into account the social skills of children when making decisions about delayed entry. We did not investigate social or behavioural outcomes in this research so we cannot draw conclusions about the association between delayed school entry and these important skills.

But this research suggests that despite some initial advantages for children who are held back, all children – regardless of age at school entry – make consistent progress in their reading and numeracy skills from Grade 3 to Grade 9. And any initial advantages for delayed children are negligible by the middle of secondary school.

– ref. Should you hold your child back from starting school? Research shows it has little effect on their maths and reading skills – https://theconversation.com/should-you-hold-your-child-back-from-starting-school-research-shows-it-has-little-effect-on-their-maths-and-reading-skills-132874

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan Morris, Professor, Institute of Public Policy and Governance, University of Technology Sydney

Many international students in private rental housing in Sydney and Melbourne were struggling before COVID-19 hit. Our surveys of these students before and during the pandemic show it has made their already precarious situations much worse.

Of those with paid work when the pandemic began, six in ten lost their jobs. Many were struggling to pay rent and tuition fees.

Read more: Why coronavirus impacts are devastating for international students in private rental housing

Our new report is based on two surveys* of several thousand students. To track financial distress, we developed eight indicators from Australian Bureau of Statistics measures for the first survey in late 2019. We used these again for the second survey in mid-2020. The responses are shown below.

Since the lockdown, students’ responses showed:

• 29% of respondents had gone without meals (up from 22% prior to lockdown)

• 26% had pawned or sold something to obtain money (up from 12%)

• 23% had had trouble paying for electricity on time (up from 11%)

• 23% had asked community organisations for help (up from 4%).

Our 2019 survey showed about one in five international students in the private rental sector were already in precarious housing situations. The second survey revealed far more were living precariously because of deteriorating finances during the pandemic.

Read more: 90,000 foreign graduates are stuck in Australia without financial support: it’s a humanitarian and economic crisis in the making

This article also draws on 26 semi-structured interviews with students to share fresh insights into how they have coped as the pandemic unfolded in Sydney and Melbourne.

Incomes from work and family lost

The central financial issue has been loss of income during the pandemic. Just 15% of students who’d lost jobs had found a new one. Almost two-thirds (63%) of those who still had a job had had their hours cut, most by about 50%.

At the same time, financial support from families decreased for just over four in ten students. Only 12% said it had increased.

Before the pandemic, 50% of respondents reported an income below A$500 a week; after it began, 70% did.

Struggling to pay the rent

Six in ten respondents agreed paying the rent had become more difficult. Since the pandemic, 27% said they were unable to pay the full rent. One in five agreed or strongly agreed with the statement: “I feel I could become homeless.”

A VET student described the impact of losing her job on her finances:

I could really save some money in the month of February and March that really, you know, took me until the month of April. So, I was not really worried in April, but then as May started and nearly the middle of May, I was really worried about my account balance. I’d already given multiple calls to different organisations by then for any kind of support.

Half of our respondents reported trying to negotiate a rent reduction: 22% received a reduction and 31% received a reduction or a deferral. Almost half were unsuccessful. A university student from Melbourne outlined her failed attempt to reduce rent:

Yeah, we are worrying [about paying the rent] and like we emailed to our agency to make discount or something like that, but they said it’s hard for them, an agency and landlord too, because the landlord has a mortgage […] and everybody’s struggling and so for now they don’t have any discount […] so we are worried because before that, before this current thing [the pandemic], we had our part-time jobs and the three of us have now lost our jobs.

Read more: Tracking the rise of room sharing and overcrowding, and what it means for housing in Australia

A vocational education and training (VET) student from Sydney, who lost her job in March, described how she was treated when she couldn’t pay the full rent:

So I was not able to pay my full rent [… ]because of that they [the agent] were like, ‘Okay, don’t pay rent if you don’t have any money, we’ll understand.’ […] Then all of a sudden by mid-April they were like, ‘Hey, you have this much outstanding rent and you have to pay it immediately, otherwise the landlord is going to file the case to the tribunal.’ And I was shocked, and it was out of nowhere, and I told them, ‘You were the one who told me you didn’t have to pay rent if you don’t have it.‘

Studies and well-being suffer too

Students are struggling on several fronts. One student remarked:

Yeah, it’s crazy. It’s hard sometimes so that I’m not sleeping and then you have to do school work as well and then you have to think about these things like managing, talking to agents every day and negotiating and searching for jobs. There’s just a lot of things coming together.

Six in ten respondents agreed or strongly agreed financial stress was affecting their studies. Over half (54%) reported financial difficulties and 44% worried they might not be able to pay tuition fees.

I’ve also been trying to get fees reduction but every time it has always been like a negative response. So it has actually been pretty difficult […] especially with we’re not getting the same quality of education.

Just over a third (35%) worried they might have to leave Australia before completing their studies.

Respondents did not feel governments had supported them. State government support was rated good or excellent by 17%, and only 13% felt that way about federal government support.

One university student said:

In this current pandemic the Australian government has made it more clear that they don’t really care about the [international] students. I don’t know why is that. It’s pretty much heartbreaking considering the input of them in the Australian economy.

Read more: COVID-19 increases risk to international students’ mental health. Australia urgently needs to step up

Loneliness on the rise

Loneliness was already a significant problem and it has worsened during the pandemic. Just under a third of respondents said they felt lonely before the pandemic, but 63% felt lonelier since the pandemic.

A university student in Sydney said:

I think no one would even know if I had died in my room if it wasn’t for a month when my landlady would come and ask for rent. Other than that, no one would even know.

Our research is revealing just how precarious the lives of international students have become. Policymakers should heed the evidence and consider how to make Australia a better place to study.

* The first survey was distributed by 43 educational institutions (24 VET, ten universities, seven English language and two foundation course institutions) to their international students in late 2019. It received 7,084 responses. The second was distributed in June-July 2020 to 3,114 respondents of the first survey who had agreed to face-to-face interviews and to be recontacted. The second survey received 852 responses.

– ref. ‘No one would even know if I had died in my room’: coronavirus leaves international students in dire straits – https://theconversation.com/no-one-would-even-know-if-i-had-died-in-my-room-coronavirus-leaves-international-students-in-dire-straits-144128

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dallas Rogers, School of Architecture, Design and Planning, University of Sydney

Public housing estate redevelopments that displace residents to other suburbs are highly disruptive whereas projects that allow them to remain are suggested to be better.

We tested this assumption through two large, multi-year ethnographic studies with the residents of the Waterloo public housing estate in Sydney between 2010 and 2017.

Read more: Public housing ‘renewal’ likely to drive shift to private renters, not owners, in Sydney

Although they have not yet been physically moved from their homes, our research shows even the threat of being moved has already done significant damage to residents’ relationship with their homes and community.

One resident said this redevelopment:

[…] is slum clearance — we’re to be cleansed by living next to yuppies.

Waterloo urban renewal

The Waterloo estate is located 3km south of Sydney’s central business district. A redevelopment has been mooted since at least 2011.

In 2018, the estate was home to around 4,000 people in about 2,000 dwellings. A high proportion of residents were either elderly or spoke English as a second language.

The New South Wales government said in December 2015 the estate would be redeveloped to house 10,000 people, although the exact number is still to be determined.

Some housing will be affordable (5%) and social dwellings (30%). But the majority (65%) will be private market housing in keeping with the government’s controversial social mix redevelopment agenda.

The high land value of the area means the government can greatly increase the housing density on the site. This allows government to keep the existing public housing tenants in the suburb throughout and after the redevelopment.

Yet enormous upheaval will be required to transform the site.

The redeveloped site will be unrecognisable to existing residents as it will be dramatically altered to fit the extra buildings, people, businesses and a major transport hub.

One resident said:

[…] the Metro [station] and the redevelopment are not separate; this is just the beginning of a massive demolition.

Public housing tenants will be allocated a new dwelling on the site. But many suggest they will not be adequately compensated for the loss of their homes and community, which they see as distinct from a dwelling.

Another resident said:

[…] this is a unique place, there’s nowhere else like this […] We live together quite harmoniously compared to other places.

Public housing is still a home

The residents’ concerns about displacement are related to the radical transformation of their neighbourhood. Despite not being physically displaced to other areas, the physical, social and business landscape will be completely replaced.

As one resident said:

[…] the moment the first building is knocked down, this community will be nonexistent.

This experience of displacement is related not merely to the loss of a building that was home to them, but what the building stands for.

The symbolism of these public housing buildings is important for residents. The housing was purpose-built in a time of more government support for low-income workers or the more disadvantaged in society.

Many residents feel connected not just to the public housing buildings but to the more equitable society they represent. One resident said:

Matavai and Turanga [towers] are models of their kind; they embody a vision for society. We might lose their legacy [if they are demolished].

Density and social composition

The redevelopment will transform the urban design of the area too. Residents are concerned the neighbourhood will not be able to accommodate the higher density and larger population.

Many of the public open spaces that serve local residents will be reduced. This will radically change the social and recreational spaces that support many community activities and social networks.

These changes will transform the area’s social composition and economic dynamics. One resident said:

[…] there’s already little room enough. They’re going to squeeze thousands more in, there won’t be room for anything.

Commercial rent increases may drive out local businesses that currently serve local residents. Residents have already noted increases in food and drink prices in the new cafes that serve middle-class property owners, morgagees and private renters.

Some in the local Aboriginal community see the redevelopment as another step in the systematic dispossession of their land and violence against their people.

One Aboriginal resident said:

They are subsuming our community […] They’re bringing the ethnic cleansing down here to Waterloo […] Whatever happens in Redfern ripples across the country in other Aboriginal communities; this is so important as a place for all Aboriginal people.

Elderly residents are convinced they will not outlive the redevelopment. They fear they will live their final decades in tumultuous and uncertain circumstances.

From displacement to replacement

Public housing residents want government to renew their poorly maintained housing. But they want renewal without a complete restructuring of the social and economic fabric of their community and neighbourhood.

The influx of new residents will transform the existing community into a minority with little voice or influence in a neighbourhood dominated by private renters and home owners.

Read more: Public land is being sold exactly where thousands on the waiting list need housing

A different tenure mix is needed with a higher proportion of public, social and affordable housing.

By allowing public housing tenants to remain in place, the state government might hope to avoid the class conflicts inherent in state-led gentrification. Yet almost every facet of residents’ social and economic lives will be replaced through the redevelopment.

The upheaval of the low-income community and the subsuming of their space by middle- and upper-class households will be experienced as displacement by local residents, despite residents remaining in place.

– ref. Public housing renewal can make tenants feel displaced in their home, even before any work begins – https://theconversation.com/public-housing-renewal-can-make-tenants-feel-displaced-in-their-home-even-before-any-work-begins-142912

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Bell, Executive Director, The Conexus Institute; Associate Investigator, CEPAR, UNSW

The past financial year has been one of the most volatile on record for stock markets, yet almost every Australian super fund has delivered similar returns.

This not only demonstrates that super funds very rarely make large calls about when to buy and sell, it also gives an insight into what we should do when making our own investment decisions.

Back in mid-February stock indices in Australia and overseas were at all-time highs. As COVID-19 took effect stock markets collapsed about 40% in less than five weeks.

Then over the following three months amid massive injections of stimulus, both monetary and fiscal, many of those markets rallied by close to 40%.

A super fund prepared to trust its judgement on timing could have done very well indeed, selling “going underweight in shares” as the news of COVID hit, and then buying “going overweight” when the market hit bottom.

In fact, few did. The data insights firm Chant West reports that most so-called growth funds (exposed to growth assets such as shares) did much the same thing, recording a median loss of 0.6% over the year, gaining 6.4% in the seven months to the end of January and losing it in the five months that followed.

Why don’t super funds time markets?

Super funds are hesitant to aggressively time markets because it is both challenging and risky.

Even with the benefit of hindsight it is difficult to identify all the reasons why a market moved in a particular direction. It is harder in real time, when a judgement needs to be made about whether a movement will continue.

No single person or firm has access to all information, both public and private, and knows how to weigh each piece of information through time.

Read more: The S&P 500 nears its all-time high. Here’s why stock markets are defying economic reality

Some approaches to timing seem to work for a while and then stop working (a phenomenon known as regime change).

It is the same for investment managers: some have been lauded as successful only to subsequently fail.

Switching strategies is hard

It might sound counterintuitive, but it is especially hard for chief investment officers of super funds to switch strategies.

These days chief investment officers tend to perform executive rather than hands-on duties.

They can have responsibilities ranging from team management to communications. It is hard for them to get the time needed to bring together all the information they have access to, weigh it up and form a considered view.

Regardless, any view that the chief investment officer does form is likely to be diluted by the bureaucracy of the fund.

Sizeable market calls typically require approval by an investment committee or board, which can lead to a time-consuming, if healthy, debate and second thoughts.

And many super funds are wary of their peer group. They don’t want to take the risk of doing something different which might see them underperforming the funds with which they are compared.

Read more: No snapback: Reserve Bank no longer confident of quick bounce out of recession

Ultimately the sizing of any attempt at market timing is likely to be small. Super funds are big, and find it hard to move without moving prices.

It means that even being 5% underweight or overweight in something is a big call.

It’s even harder for us

Consumers find it even harder to time markets.

Institutions have better access to information and insights, and the people who run them generally have better qualifications and experience.

And we are misled about how consistently they can get it right.

Investment funds usually don’t mention the managers who under-perform, and the media loves winners.

Even Hollywood eulogises the winners: the movie The Big Short tells the story of three hedge funds who made huge profits during the global financial crisis.

Read more: Gambling on the stock market: are retail investors even playing to win?

What it doesn’t mention is that there were more than 10,000 hedge funds at the time and, while a small number made huge profits, thousands lost heavily and had to close.

If consumers are interested in trading, which can be fun and engaging as well as stressful, they need to be aware that, on average, they are no more successful than the super funds, and not particularly successful at timing switches of options within their funds, such as from “growth” to “conservative”.

Diaries can help

One way to get better is to keep a paper diary detailing potential positions and the reasons for them, all the time indicating why they should be any better than the positions taken by professionals.

It is critical to be aware of the potential for loss and the financial and psychological effect it can have, how exposed to those losses you are and what your plan is for when they turn up.

Meeting a financial advisor can be a good place to start.

– ref. Timing the share market is hard – just ask your super fund – https://theconversation.com/timing-the-share-market-is-hard-just-ask-your-super-fund-144202

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thomas Suddendorf, Professor, School of Psychology, The University of Queensland

Today, bags are everywhere — from cheap canvas ones at the supermarket to designer handbags costing up to US$2,000,000.

But archaeological evidence shows we have been using mobile containers — bags and other carrying devices — for tens of thousands of years.

Before sedentary life took root after the end of the last ice age (around 12,000-years-ago), people hunted, fished, and gathered everything they needed for day-to-day life.

Without bags, such a lifestyle would have meant only a couple of tools could be kept on the body at any one time. Anything else would have to be made when and where it was needed, or left at strategic locations.

With carrying devices, our ancestors could carry many tools and there was a benefit in making tools in advance — even those only used occasionally.

Consider the 5,300-year-old frozen man found in the Ötztal Alps in Tyrol, Italy, in 1991.

Ötzi carried dozens of tools in his quiver and string and birch bark baskets, including an axe, a bow-and-arrow, a dagger, medicinal fungi, and a fire-making kit. A pouch sewn to his belt contained small tools including a drill, an awl, and a scraper.

Carrying such tools was a major advantage in allowing humans to be prepared for unexpected events.

When did humans invent mobile containers?

We recently reviewed the archaeological record for the earliest signs of mobile container use in humans.

Indicators of baskets, nets, and pots reach back some 30,000 years, with containers made from wood and stalagmites made some 50,000-years-ago.

Earlier this year, a study reported a small piece of 3-ply cord made from inner bark fibres found at a Neanderthal site dated to between 41,000 and 52,000 years old. This could point to the creation of bags and the weaving of baskets.

Natural containers, such as shells, were used much earlier by both modern humans and Neanderthals: archaeological sites at Blombos Cave in South Africa and Qafzeh in Israel record the use of shells for holding red ochre more than 100,000-years-ago.

It is likely the origins of carrying devices are, in fact, much older than we have found evidence for. However, most materials used for making carrying devices – such as hides, barks, and fibres – decompose rapidly and leave no traces behind for us to find.

It is possible older containers will be eventually reported, especially when archaeologists pay more attention to them in their collections.

We suspect that without realising the critical importance of these tools to human evolution, and perhaps because of the association with gathering and “women’s work”, some evidence may have been overlooked.

What about the animals?

Marsupials have pouches to carry their offspring. Pelicans have throat sacks to carry fish to their young.

But do any animals make carrying devices?

Many species use tools, and a few even make tools, such as chimpanzees stripping twigs of a branch for termite fishing. But there is little to suggest these animals retain their tools for future problems, or they have invented carrying devices to keep these tools for a long period of time.

There are a few reports of animals independently using human-made containers, such as a crow transporting food with a cup. Humans have, of course, long attached containers to animals, making beasts of burden carry or pull loads.

The physical capacity to use such tools isn’t in question; just the mental capacity. There is little evidence of animals having the foresight required to recognise the usefulness of containers for future activities.

It has pockets!

The emergence of humans using mobile containers at least 100,000 years ago indicates people were increasingly thinking ahead and recognising the future utility of their tools.

This ability may be right at the heart of what it means to innovate.

Humans and other animals constantly solve problems. But once we recognise the potential of using a solution in the future we become motivated to retain and safeguard new tools. We may even be willing to invest time and effort refining those tools further – perhaps sharing them with our friends and family.

In this way, the appearance of mobile containers in the archaeological record can indicate a key cognitive shift in our ancestors: foresight began to drive tool innovation (including further containers) and the evolution of ever more sophisticated material cultures.

Today mobile containers are everywhere. Our clothes have pockets, we have suitcases for clothes, and trolleys for suitcases. We put suitcases in containers and containers on ships. Large mobile containers carry humans across water, through the air, and into space.

Mobile containers are so ubiquitous it is easy to overlook the fundamental importance of this basic invention.

These carrying devices allowed our forebears to have tools and resources at the ready wherever they went. The dramatic exploitation of this concept has allowed humans to create a world full of containers transporting endless amounts of stuff — big and small — to where we want it to go.

Without the invention of bags, we’d still be running in the woods with our hands full.

– ref. Got your bag? The critical place of mobile containers in human evolution – https://theconversation.com/got-your-bag-the-critical-place-of-mobile-containers-in-human-evolution-142712

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

The Royal Commission into Aged Care put the Secretary of the Federal Health Department, Brendan Murphy, firmly in his place when he tried to make an opening statement to attack claims by the senior counsel assisting the commission, Peter Rozen, QC.

Murphy, who became a nationally known figure when as Chief Medical Officer he appeared regularly at Scott Morrison’s news conferences, had not been due to give evidence at the commission’s sittings on COVID this week.

But after Rozen’s Monday statement the federal government, which is increasingly concerned at the criticism it is receiving over inadequate preparation for the pandemic in aged care facilities, asked to have him added to the panel of Commonwealth witnesses who appeared on Wednesday.

As questioning of the panel was about to start Murphy broke in, saying he wanted to make a statement in response to Rozen inaccurately claiming the Commonwealth had not planned for the outbreak in aged care and as a result there had been a high death rate.

But after a brief adjournment for consultations the commission denied his request, although he was allowed to make the statement at the session’s end. As commissioner Tony Pagone put it with the utmost politeness but equal firmness, “We are really in control of the procedure that we have and we just need to continue with that.”

On Wednesday Victoria announced a record 21 deaths from the previous 24 hours, 16 of them linked to aged care.

In a Facebook message Scott Morrison, expressing condolences, referred particularly to the need to protect the vulnerable elderly.

He also said pointedly: “I want to assure that where there are shortcomings in these areas they’ll be acknowledged. And the lessons will be learned.”

He warned there would be more “difficult news” in the days and weeks ahead.

Earlier on Wednesday professor Joseph Ibrahim, a specialist in geriatric medicine from Monash University, told the commission: “This is the worst disaster that is still unfolding before my eyes and it’s the worst in my entire career”.

He said hundreds of residents would die prematurely because people had failed to act.

“There’s a level of apathy, a lack of urgency. There’s an attitude of futility which leads to an absence of action.

“The reliance or promotion of advance care plans as a way to manage the pandemic and the focus on leaving residents in their setting I think is wrong and inappropriate. When I voiced my concerns, I have had comments saying that everything is under control, that I’m simply overreacting and causing panic,” Ibrahim said.

Early in the crisis Ibrahim made representations to state and federal bodies, and to Morrison, health minister Greg Hunt and aged care minister Richard Colbeck.

The tension was evident when the panel of Commonwealth officials gave evidence.

Michael Lye, the health department’s deputy secretary for ageing and aged care, unsuccessfully tried to divert to Murphy a question about Australia faring badly on aged care deaths compared to other countries. Rozen insisted Lye answer, saying sharply, “No, I don’t want professor Murphy to answer the question, Mr Lye. I’m asking you. You told us you were the senior most official with aged care responsibility within the Commonwealth department of health”.

In one embarrassing moment for the federal officials, Rozen drew attention to Murphy prompting Lye when the latter was struggling under the questioning.

Rozen told both Lye and Murphy, as they periodically veered into wider comments, to just answer his questions.

Quizzed about the apparent lateness of a July 13 decision to make masks compulsory for care providers in Victorian homes, Murphy admitted “in hindsight, you could have implemented that earlier”, agreeing it was “possible” it might have reduced the number of infections entering homes.

In his forcefully-delivered statement at the end of the session, Murphy declared: “We reject categorically that the Australian government failed to adequately plan and prepare” for COVID in aged care.

He also strongly rejected that there was anything pejorative in the fact people from aged care formed a high proportion of “an extraordinary low death rate in Australia”. “I would say the contrary is true.” He said across Australia’s aged care facilities 0.1% of residents had succumbed to COVID compared to 5% in the UK with many more not detected.

The fact that two thirds of Australia’s about 350 deaths were from aged care “is really a reflection of the extraordinarily low community death rate,” Murphy said.

Diana Asmar, Victorian secretary of the Health Workers Union, told the commission: “Our members right now feel like they’re on the bottom of the Titanic ship”. They did not have proper access to personal protective equipment, they were suffering from huge staffing pressures, and they were feeling neglected.

“The lack of communication, the lack of training, the lack of staffing and the lack of protection unfortunately has caused a huge concern in the aged care sector,” she said.

– ref. Royal Commission into Aged Care reminds Health Department Secretary Brendan Murphy it sets the rules – https://theconversation.com/royal-commission-into-aged-care-reminds-health-department-secretary-brendan-murphy-it-sets-the-rules-144385

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kylie Quinn, Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow, School of Health and Biomedical Sciences, RMIT University

On Tuesday, Vladimir Putin announced Russia was the first country to register a vaccine offering “sustainable immunity” against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

Developed by the Gamaleya Research Institute in Moscow, it’s been registered with the Russian Health Ministry and approved for emergency use only.

But there are concerns it will soon be rolled out across the Russian population, far beyond emergency use. This has prompted discussion about the “race” towards a COVID-19 vaccine.

While speed is important, ensuring a vaccine is effective and safe is much more critical. The consequences of doling out a potentially unsafe and ineffective vaccine could be wide-reaching.

Read more: Vaccine progress report: the projects bidding to win the race for a COVID-19 vaccine

Data about the trials has not been published

The Gamaleya Research Institute announced it registered a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine with the Russian Health Ministry, the local regulatory body that determines which medicines can be used in Russia. This vaccine is called “Sputnik V” and the Institute has indicated it’s approved for emergency use. An emergency use approval generally means a vaccine could be offered to people at very high risk of infection, such as health-care workers, but not the general civilian population.

The Institute had previously registered this vaccine for a Phase I/II trial (to assess safety and immune responses in humans), initially with just 38 people. Senior Russian officials said it induced a strong immune response and no “serious complications” in this trial. This isn’t too surprising, as published data from human clinical trials for other similar vaccines have shown strong immune responses and no serious complications.

However, the data from the trial of Sputnik V has not been published and there is no data that indicates the vaccine would actually protect, as Phase III studies (requiring thousands of volunteers to demonstrate efficacy and detect rare side-effects) haven’t been performed.

The Institute did announce a Phase III trial for Sputnik V will begin on August 12 in Russia and several other countries. However, many scientists (including Russian researchers) expressed concern the vaccine will soon be used in large civilian vaccination campaigns, which wouldn’t usually be the case with an approval for emergency use.

What are the risks

If we go back to the analogy of a “race”, we should stop thinking of vaccine development as the 100-metre sprint. Instead, think of it more like the pentathlon. In the pentathlon, each section the athlete completes contributes to their overall score and cannot be missed. If we try to run this race against COVID-19 without each section, we could end up with a vaccine which has not been properly tested, which could be unsafe and would be unethical. And then we all lose.

The risks of advancing into mass vaccination without proper testing are significant. If a vaccine is released but side-effects emerge, the consequences include both the health impacts and deterioration in trust from our community. If the vaccine does not protect individuals from infection, those who have been vaccinated could falsely believe they are protected.

Our system of methodical series of clinical trials has been designed, oftentimes with hard-won lessons, to avoid oversights and build essential data on safety, immunity and protection with vaccines.

As stated by the US Health and Human Services secretary, Alex Azar:

The point is not to be first with a vaccine. The point is to have a vaccine that is safe and effective for the American people and the people of the world.

Development takes time and we need to be realistic with our timelines and expectations.

Testing a vaccine is rigorous

When countries consider introducing a vaccine, the following information is examined:

• how safe is the vaccine?

• how well does the vaccine work?

• how serious is the disease the vaccine would prevent?

• how many people would get the disease if we did not have the vaccine?

This information is collected during each phase of the clinical trials (Phase I, II and III), with a particular focus on vaccine safety at each step. Developing this package of information can take years, but there have been cases when timelines were condensed.

For example, testing for an Ebola vaccine was condensed down to five years due to a critical need for a vaccine in the midst of ongoing epidemics. Regardless of this urgency, each clinical trial phase was still completed.

Phase III clinical trials are especially critical to assess safety in a large group of people, because certain rare side effects may not be identified in earlier, smaller trials. For example, if a vaccine-related side effect only occurred in one in every 10,000 people, the trial would have to enrol 60,000 volunteers to detect it.

In general, vaccines are more thoroughly tested than any other medicine. We administer vaccines to healthy people, so safety is the key priority, and we administer vaccines to large numbers of people, so rare side-effects must be identified.

What’s in this vaccine?

This type of vaccine is called a viral vector. With viral vectors, we trick our immune system with a bait-and-switch; we take a harmless virus, modify it so it can’t replicate, and include a target from the surface of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The vaccine looks like a dangerous virus to the immune system, so the immune response is relatively strong and targeted against SARS-CoV-2, but the virus can’t cause disease.

Sputnik V is unusual because it uses two different viral vectors, one after the other, in what we call a “prime boost”. The first is called Ad26, which is similar to a COVID-19 vaccine being developed by Johnson&Johnson, and the second is called Ad5, which is similar to a COVID-19 vaccine being developed by CanSino Biologics. This prime boost should generate a relatively strong immune response, but we don’t know for sure.

Viral vectors are also a relatively new technology. There have been a number of large clinical trials with viral vectors for HIV, Malaria, Tuberculosis and Ebola, but only one for Ebola has ever been approved for use in the general population.

Read more: The vaccine we’re testing in Australia is based on a flu shot. Here’s how it could work against coronavirus

– ref. Russia’s coronavirus vaccine hasn’t been fully tested. Doling it out risks side effects and false protection – https://theconversation.com/russias-coronavirus-vaccine-hasnt-been-fully-tested-doling-it-out-risks-side-effects-and-false-protection-144347