Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Ryan, Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University

The presumed death of 57-year-old Paul Millachip in an apparently fatal shark bite incident near Perth on November 6 is a traumatising reminder that while shark bites are rare, they can have tragic consequences.

Despite the understandably huge media attention these incidents generate, there has been little scientific insight into how and why they happen.

Sharks in general, and white sharks in particular, have long been described as “mindless killers” and “man-eaters”.

But our recent research confirms that some bites on humans may be the result of mistaken identity, whereby the sharks mistake humans for their natural prey based on visual similarities.

Sharks have an impressive array of senses, but vision is thought to be particularly important for prey detection in white sharks. For example, they can attack seal-shaped decoys at the surface of the water even though these decoys lack other sensory cues such as scent.

The visual world of a white shark varies substantially from that of our own. White sharks are likely colourblind and rely on brightness, essentially experiencing their world in shades of grey. Their eyesight is also much less acute than ours – in fact, it’s probably more akin to the blurry images a human would see underwater without a mask or goggles.

The mistaken identity theory

Bites on surfers have often been explained by the fact that, seen from underneath, a paddling surfer looks a lot like a seal. But this presumed similarity has only previously been assessed based on human vision, using underwater photographs to compare their silhouettes.

Recent developments in our understanding of sharks’ vision have now made it possible to examine the mistaken identity theory from the shark’s perspective, using a virtual system that generates “shark’s-eye” images.

In our study, published last month, we and our colleagues in Australia, South Africa and the United Kingdom compared video footage of seals and of humans swimming and paddling surfboards, to predict what a young white shark sees when looking up from below.

We specifically studied juvenile white sharks – between of 2m and 2.5m in length – because data from New South Wales suggests they are more common in the surf zone and are disproportionately involved in bites on humans. This might be because juvenile sharks are more likely to make mistakes as they switch to hunting larger prey such as seals.

Our results showed it was impossible for the virtual visual system to distinguish swimming or paddling humans from seals. This suggests both activities pose a risk, and that the greater occurrence of bites on surfers might be linked to the times and locations of when and where people surf.

Our analysis suggests the “mistaken identity” theory is indeed plausible, from a visual perspective at least. But sharks can also detect prey using other sensory systems, such as smell, sound, touch and detection of electrical fields.

Read more:
Why do shark bites seem to be more deadly in Australia than elsewhere?

While it seems unlikely every bite on a human by a white shark is a case of mistaken identity, it is certainly a possibility in cases where the human is on the surface and the shark approaches from below.

However, the mistaken identity theory cannot explain all shark bites and other factors, such as curiosity, hunger or aggression are likely to also explains some shark bites.

Can this knowledge help protect us?

As summer arrives and COVID restrictions lift, more Australians will head to the beach over the coming months, increasing the chances they might come into close proximity with a shark. Often, people may not even realise a shark is close by. But the past weekend gave us a reminder that shark encounters can also tragically result in serious injury or death.

Understanding why shark bites happen is a good first step towards helping reduce the risk. Our research has inspired the design of non-invasive, vision-based shark mitigation devices that are currently being tested, and which change the shape of the silhouette.

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

We still have a lot to learn about how sharks experience their world, and therefore what measures will most effectively reduce the risks of a shark bite. There is a plethora of devices being developed or commercially available, but only a few of them have been scientifically tested, and even fewer – such as the devices made by Ocean Guardian that create an electrical field to ward off sharks – have been found to genuinely reduce the risk of being bitten.

Laura Ryan receives funding from State and Federal government agencies and non-governmental organisations.

Charlie Huveneers receives funding from State and Federal government agencies, private donors, and non-governmental organisations.

– ref. White sharks can easily mistake swimmers or surfers for seals. Our research aims to reduce the risk – https://theconversation.com/white-sharks-can-easily-mistake-swimmers-or-surfers-for-seals-our-research-aims-to-reduce-the-risk-171440

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Walker, Vice-chancellor’s fellow, La Trobe University

History is weighing heavily on a hotel in the western suburbs of Beijing this week, as the 300 members of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party chart a course for China’s next five-year political cycle.

Not least of the tasks before the ruling Communist elite will be to endorse the consolidation of Xi Jinping’s position as China’s most powerful leader, certainly since Deng Xiaoping and possibly since Mao Zedong himself.

Those deliberations will be rubber-stamped at the 20th National Party Congress to be held next year.

Over the next few days, world attention will turn towards Xi’s anointing, and resolutions of this sixth plenary session of the 19th Central Committee. China scholars, intelligence analysts and diplomatic representatives will scrutinise every last word that emanates from Beijing’s propaganda machine.

History is being etched in these deliberations, which will ripple beyond China’s borders. It is hard to exaggerate the significance of these few days in Beijing, in which issues like China’s mission to achieve Taiwan’s reunification with the mainland will be canvassed.

Read more:
China’s global diplomatic approach is shifting, and Australia would do well to pay attention to it

In this centenary year of the founding of the party in Shanghai in 1921, the sixth plenum will rank with three other critical moments in Communist Party history.

These three moments include two sixth plenums. In the first in 1945, Mao vanquished his party opponents to become sole leader. In the second in 1981, Deng removed the ideological debris of the destructive Mao era.

The other event of particular importance in Communist Party history is the third plenum of the 11th Central Committee in 1978. In that year, a recently rehabilitated Deng re-emerged to take control of his party and his country and ultimately shift the world away from a hitherto American-dominated axis.

Both the 1945 and 1981 plenums were enshrined in historical documents that served a political purpose.

In Mao’s case, the aim was to remove and sideline his political opponents. In Deng’s, he used the 1981 sixth plenum to bury the excesses of Maoism in an historical document. It resolved that Mao had made serious mistakes, but recognised his achievements.

So historical documentation has long been a weapon of choice for Chinese Communist Party leaders seeking to impose their will on a party and a country.

In 2021, a contemporary historical reckoning will dwell not so much on the past but on the future in the world’s most populous country, second-largest economy and rival to US power and influence.

In 1945, Mao’s “coup” against his party opponents largely went unnoticed in a world consumed by the last days of the second world war. In 1981, Deng’s artful burying of Maoism, while not jettisoning Mao’s revolutionary contribution, garnered world attention. But this manoeuvre was not seen as a harbinger of what has proved an extraordinary leap forward in China’s economic development.

In 1981, not even the most committed Sinophiles were predicting that within a generation China would upset a global status quo and transform itself from a development backwater to one that challenged the West on many different fronts.

Sixth plenums of central committees are aimed at building consensus and clearing the decks of outstanding differences before party congresses. Xi may appear all-powerful to the outside world, but internal party disputation, manoeuvring and infighting is part and parcel of the world’s largest political organisation, with some 95 million members.

Much comment has attached to the fact Xi has not travelled outside China since 2020. It’s seen as a possible indication that he is not entirely confident of his grip on power.

However, it is more likely that, apart from the constraints on travel in a pandemic, China’s leader will have used his time to prepare for this sixth plenum, in what will have been an exhaustive process of consultation and consensus-building.

Having buried a requirement that would have prevented him serving a third five-year term as China’s new emperor, Xi is no doubt leaving little to chance in his continuing efforts to consolidate his rule and root out potential naysayers.

His anti-corruption campaign early in his tenure, and more recently his moves against Chinese billionaires like Alibaba’s Jack Ma as part of efforts to close the gap between rich and poor, are part of this process.

Read more:
Understanding Chinese President Xi’s anti-corruption campaign

Xi’s “common prosperity” drive is central to his efforts to distinguish his era from the past. This includes Deng’s unleashing of Chinese entrepreneurial instincts with such sayings as “to get rich is glorious” and “it doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice”.

In this latest period, Xi is facing a different set of challenges from his inspirational predecessor. In Deng’s case, his mission was to foster the creative energies of a country that had been subjected to a rolling series of disasters, culminating in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of 1966-76.

In Xi’s case, his challenges are perhaps no less than Deng’s in transforming China from an export-led low-wage economy to one driven by its vast consumer market.

These challenges have been exposed in recent months by the near-collapse of Evergrande, China’s biggest property developer, the precariousness of others in the same space, and power generation shortages and blackouts.

On top of all of this, China’s economy has been slowing in a manner that will be concerning Beijing central planners; although the point is well made that the country’s economic growth should be regarded as a multiple of a much larger economy these days than in the past when double-digit growth rates were the norm.

Read more:
Will the Evergrande crisis doom China’s grandiose, big-spending football dreams?

Central Committee delegates are unlikely to dwell this week on the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of 1978. But its shadow will extend over deliberations in the sense that China would not have moved as far and as fast as it has without that event’s endorsement of a process of “reform and opening”.

It was at the third plenum that Deng and his supporters weaponised the phrase “seek truth from facts” to face down Maoist holdouts who were standing in the way of a process of economic liberalisation and opening to the outside world.

Four decades later, Xi will seek to build on that process by championing his “common prosperity” theme, which itself owes much to Deng’s aim of building a “moderately prosperous” China.

The phrase “common prosperity”, given weight by Xi in the October 16 edition of the party theoretical Qiushi Journal, will colour the resolutions of the sixth plenum.

In that contribution, Xi provided more than a hint that he plans to be around for quite some time. He set 2035 as a target for the realisation of his efforts to correct China’s income inequality and achieve his goal of providing more equal access to basic services.

That benchmark date, 2035, is two further five-year cycles of the National Party Congress. In 2035, Xi would be 82, having ruled China for 20 years.

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

– ref. China’s sixth plenum will consolidate Xi Jinping’s power and chart the country’s ambitions for the next 5 years – https://theconversation.com/chinas-sixth-plenum-will-consolidate-xi-jinpings-power-and-chart-the-countrys-ambitions-for-the-next-5-years-171395

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Naomi Strout, Researcher, Midwife, Nurse, UNSW Microbiome Research Centre, UNSW

Researchers in the UK recently discovered a rapid test that checks the vaginal microbiome and can detect risks of preterm birth. Usually, tests to check the microbiome are complicated and it takes a long time to get a result.

Up to 50% of preterm births are associated with microbial causes and preterm birth is the most common cause of death in children under 5. So, a rapid test that can return results within minutes could make a world of difference for patients and families.

This groundbreaking research sheds further light on how the vaginal microbiome works and what it can tell someone about the health of their body and their baby.

Read more:
Group B strep and having a baby: what pregnant women need to know

Not just for guts

The microbiome is a buzz word that has popped up a lot lately – and yes, most people associate it with gut health.

In fact, microbiome is the term used when describing all of the DNA content of our microbiota – the trillions of “bugs” that live as a community in us and on us (including our gut, mouth, urine, skin and yes, vagina). These microorganisms include bacteria, viruses and fungi.

Without our microbiome, our bodies would not function correctly. Our microbiome has been shown to impact our immune development, disease defences and our behaviour and mental health. Research shows intergenerational and matrilineal inheritance patterns of birth microbiota. In other words, we inherit the microbiome of our mothers and grandmothers at birth.

While large studies investigating our gut and mouth microbiome and links with health and disease are well established, the science behind the vaginal microbiome is still in its infancy. One of the first papers showing distinct microbial changes throughout the trimesters of pregnancy was only published in 2012. But there is a growing emphasis on how a person’s vaginal microbiome can impact reproductive and public health.

What makes the vaginal microbiome different?

The vaginal microbiome is complex and fascinating. Its dynamics differ significantly between non-pregnant and pregnant states, and over the course of our lifespan – from birth, through to puberty, and beyond menopause.

Ethnicity, socioeconomic status, menstrual cycle, and sexual partners all impact on the microbiota present in your vagina.

Dominated by Lactobacillus species (usually L. crispatus, L. iners, L. jensenii or L. gasseri), the vaginal microbiome has long regarded “healthy” or “normal” in people of European ancestry. But now we understand healthy non-pregnant African-American and Hispanic people have a non-Lactobacillus-dominated microbiome.

States of play

The vaginal microbiome needs to be looked at in two contexts – non-pregnant, and pregnant. When a person is not pregnant, their “normal” vaginal microbiome should be highly diverse and dynamic, fluctuating with their normal hormonal cycle and lifestyle. Once they fall pregnant, these fluctuations should stabilise and overall diversity of the vaginal microbiome should decrease.

Sometimes, the microbiome loses stability and becomes out of balance – this is called dysbiosis. When the vaginal microbiome is out of balance, people may notice inflammation, itch, malodour, discharge or redness.

Some may be familiar with the uncomfortable feeling of a candida (yeast) infection or have encountered the fishy smell commonly caused by bacterial vaginosis. But it’s not just these conditions that come from an imbalanced microbiome.

There is evidence to suggest this can also affect the ability to fall pregnant, pregnancy well-being (such as the potential to develop gestational diabetes or pre-eclampsia) and result in preterm labour and birth.

Read more:
Coronavirus while pregnant or giving birth: here’s what you need to know

How can I keep my vaginal microbiome healthy?

There are strategies to improve the health of one’s microbiome – but a magic pill isn’t the answer. Your microbiome is unique and there is no one-size-fits-all approach.

The best way to ensure a healthy microbiome is by eating well, drinking lots of water, exercising regularly and refraining from smoking and alcohol. Minimising stress and maintaining good general hygiene are also essential. But do not douche – this can negatively effect the makeup of your vaginal microbiome! The vagina is considered a “self-cleaning oven”.

There isn’t a lot of high quality evidence on the benefits of probiotics to improve you vaginal microbiome. One paper suggests changes are only present during dosing schedules, and disappear when the person ceases the medication. This indicates the probiotic does not colonise the vaginal microbiome and stick around long term.

Read more:
Your vagina cleans itself: why vagina cleaning fads are unnecessary and harmful

Rapid testing on the way

The new research could lead to a convenient, bedside test for preterm birth risk. This would enable clinicians to make faster and more targeted decisions on treatment options, resulting in better outcomes for both mum and bub.

Researchers point out rapid testing might also be useful in other clinical scenarios, but this is yet to be tested. Ultimately, this is new technology, and the focus of a clinical trial – there is still a way to go before we see rapid testing in Australian hospitals or other healthcare settings.

UNSW’s Microbiome Research Centre is recruiting people actively planning a pregnancy, to determine if their preconception microbiome might influence pregnancy and birth outcomes. If we can determine whether your microbiome is dysbiotic before you even fall pregnant, we could transform maternal and child health worldwide.

Naomi Strout works for UNSW’s Microbiome Reseach Centre. She has received funding from the MRFF to conduct The MothersBabies Study.

Mathew Leonardi receives funding from the MRFF, Australian Women and Children’s Foundation, AbbVie. He is working with the UNSW’s Microbiome Research Centre.

– ref. Just don’t douche – what your vaginal biome can tell you about your health and pregnancy – https://theconversation.com/just-dont-douche-what-your-vaginal-biome-can-tell-you-about-your-health-and-pregnancy-170859

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ellie Martus, Lecturer in Public Policy, Centre for Governance and Public Policy, Griffith University

Former US president Barack Obama took specific aim at Russia at the Glasgow COP26 climate talks this week. According to Obama, the fact Russian President Vladimir Putin (as well as Chinese President Xi Jinping) declined to attend the conference reflects “a dangerous absence of urgency, a willingness to maintain the status quo” on climate action.

As the world’s fourth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases and one of the world’s top coal, oil, and gas producers and exporters, Russia is a key player in international climate action. Decarbonisation of carbon-intensive economies like Russia is crucial to reaching global emissions targets.

But like Australia, Russia is seen as an international climate laggard, and must overcome significant resistance to genuine climate policy reform at home.

Despite vastly different political systems, we can draw interesting parallels between Russia and Australia on the climate front.

Read more:
To reach net zero, we must decarbonise shipping. But two big problems are getting in the way

Russia’s international participation on climate

In a surprise announcement two weeks out from COP26, Putin said Russia will aim to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. But his decision not to attend COP26 dealt a blow to the summit’s prospects of success.

Russia has long been a reluctant participant in international climate change negotiations. It refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol until 2004, then failed to sign up for Kyoto’s second commitment period. Similarly, Russia signed the Paris Agreement in 2016, but delayed its final decision on ratification until late 2019.

That’s despite a long tradition of Russian climate science research dating back to the Soviet period.

In the end, ratifying the Paris Agreement was an easy political win, given how weak Russia’s commitments under the agreement are.

Russia’s updated NDC (nationally determined contribution, meaning the action it will take to meet its climate commitments) was submitted in November 2020. It sets an emissions reduction target of 70% relative to 1990 levels by 2030.

The target sounds ambitious but the nation’s economic decline in the 1990s, and subsequent fall in greenhouse gas emissions, means it’s easily achievable. This target also leverages the capacity of Russia’s forests to absorb CO₂, though many scientists dispute the extent of this.

So what explains Russia’s limited commitments to date? The domestic politics surrounding climate change offer clues.

Domestic climate politics and obstacles to reform

Domestic politics on climate change in Russia are fiercely contested, with key individuals and groups competing for influence. These debates occur mostly at an elite level, with little space given to civil society actors.

Attempts to strengthen domestic climate policy in the past have been met with strong opposition from powerful economic interests.

The coal industry remains one of the most significant obstacles to reform. At a time when a growing number of countries are committed to phasing out coal, Russia is actively seeking to expand its industry. The coal industry has close links with key government ministries, including the powerful ministry for energy. The industry has successfully lobbied for subsidies and state support.

Coal politics in Russia are made more complex by the heavy dependence on coal for employment and heating in certain regions, such as the Kuzbass in Siberia. Attempts to wind down the industry would meet significant opposition from locals and regional elites.

Oil and gas companies are moving ahead with their plans to expand into the Arctic, with a warming climate making the region more accessible. Revenues from oil and gas exports make up a significant portion of Russia’s budget, so its highly unlikely Russia will give this up anytime soon.

Putin’s own position on climate has been ambiguous. He and other members of the elite often portray Russia as a global climate leader and “ecological donor” due to its vast forest resources.

However, Russia’s limited policy commitments to date make such statements little more than symbolic.

Recent political shifts

More recently however, we’ve seen some important developments which suggest a shift may be occurring.

A pro-climate lobby is emerging around the ministry for economic development and other government actors. They take a pragmatic view of climate change and acknowledge the economic cost to Russia of doing nothing.

International pressures are also mounting.

The EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (which puts a carbon price on certain imports) has many in the Russian government concerned, given the significant impact anticipated for key Russian exports. Some in government have also questioned the long-term viability of coal given global decarbonisation trends.

Two of Russia’s major state owned corporations, Rosatom and Gazprom, are at the forefront of an attempt to reposition Russia as a renewable energy superpower, centred on the expanding hydrogen and nuclear industries. Both provide Russia with potential to generate significant export revenues.

Support for a more active stance on climate has also come from some of Russia’s largest private companies. Groups such as EN+ and Rusal have made their own net-zero by 2050 commitments, keen to demonstrate their climate credentials to environmentally sensitive international markets.

This newfound momentum has led to a number of important policy developments, culminating in the net-zero by 2060 announcement. So while the obstacles remain huge, there has been a discernible shift in Russia’s approach to climate change.

What can Australia learn?

Both Australia and Russia are regarded as climate laggards and face increased international criticism over their lack of policy ambition.

Both have elements of strong resistance to climate action at a domestic level, particularly in the coal industry. But both also have corporate players acting to reduce emissions in spite of government policy inaction.

While much attention has been focused on net zero targets, little detail has been given by either country about how these will be achieved. And neither Russia nor Australia’s net zero commitments say anything about exported emissions.

Ambitious declarations mean nothing if they’re not backed by serious policy reform. Promises aside, significant work needs to be done in both nations to address the gap between vague, high-level commitments and concrete, implementable policies.

Read more:
Scott Morrison is hiding behind future technologies, when we should just deploy what already exists

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

– ref. Can climate laggards change? Russia, like Australia, first needs to overcome significant domestic resistance – https://theconversation.com/can-climate-laggards-change-russia-like-australia-first-needs-to-overcome-significant-domestic-resistance-170461

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Coghlan, Senior Research Fellow in Digital Ethics, Centre for AI and Digital Ethics, School of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne

Universities are increasingly using computer programs to supervise university students sitting their exams. Is this the future of testing?

Due to the pandemic, institutions worldwide have rapidly adopted exam software like Examplify, ExamSoft and ProctorU.

Proctoring technology allows exam-takers to be monitored off-campus. They can sit exams in their homes, instead of a person having to watch them in a traditional exam room. Some programs simply enable a person to supervise students remotely.

More sophisticated, automated proctoring software hijacks the student’s computer to block and monitor suspicious activity. These programs often use artificial intelligence (AI) to scrutinise exam conduct.

Our recent research paper explored the ethics of automated proctoring. We found the promise of the software alluring, but it carries substantial risks.

Read more:
Online exam monitoring is now common in Australian universities — but is it here to stay?

Some educational institutions claim proctoring technologies are needed to prevent cheating. Some other institutions and students are concerned about hidden dangers.

Indeed, students have launched protests, petitions and lawsuits. They condemn online proctoring as discriminatory and intrusive, with overtones of Big Brother. Some proctoring companies have responded with attempts to stifle protest, which include suing their critics.

What does the software do?

Automated proctoring programs offer tools for examiners to prevent cheating. The programs can capture system information, block web access and analyse keyboard strokes. They can also commandeer computer cameras and microphones to record exam-takers and their surroundings.

Some programs use AI to “flag” suspicious behaviour. Facial recognition algorithms check to make sure the student is still seated and no one else has entered the room. The programs also identify whispering, atypical typing, unusual movements and other behaviours that could suggest cheating.

After the program “flags” an incident, examiners can investigate further by viewing stored video and audio and questioning the student.

Why use proctoring software?

Automated proctoring software purports to reduce cheating in remotely administered exams — a necessity during the pandemic. Fair exams protect the value of qualifications and signal that academic honesty matters. They are a key part of certification requirements for professional fields like medicine and law.

Cheating is unfair to honest students. If left unchecked, it increases incentives for these students to cheat.

The companies selling proctoring software claim their tools prevent cheating and improve exam fairness for everyone — but our work calls that into question.

So what are the problems?

Security

We evaluated the software and found simple technical tricks can bypass many of the anti-cheating protections. This finding suggests the tools may provide only limited benefits.

Requiring students to install software with such powerful control over a computer is a security risk. In some cases the software surreptitiously remains even after students uninstall it.

Access

Some students may lack access to the right devices and the fast internet connections the software requires. This leads to technical issues that cause stress and disadvantage. In one incident, 41% of students experienced technical problems.

Privacy

Online proctoring creates privacy issues. Video capture means examiners can see into students’ homes and scrutinise their faces without being noticed. Such intimate monitoring, which is recorded for potential repeat viewings, distinguishes it from traditional in-person exam supervision.

Fairness and bias

Proctoring software raises significant fairness concerns. Facial recognition algorithms in the software we evaluated are not always accurate.

A forthcoming paper by one of us found the algorithms used by the major US-based manufacturers do not identify darker-skinned faces as accurately as lighter-skinned faces. The resulting hidden discrimination may add to societal biases. Others have reported similar concerns in proctoring software and in facial recognition technology generally.

Read more:
Why facial recognition algorithms can’t be perfectly fair

Also of concern, the proctoring algorithms may falsely flag atypical eye or head movements in exam-takers. This could lead to unwarranted suspicions about students who are not neuro-typical or who have idiosyncratic exam-sitting styles. Even without automated proctoring, exams are already stressful events that affect our behaviour.

Investigating baseless suspicions

Educational institutions can often choose which automated functions to use or reject. Proctoring companies may insist AI-generated “flags” are not proof of academic dishonesty but only reasons to investigate possible cheating at the institution’s discretion.

However, merely investigating and questioning a student can itself be unfair and traumatic when based on spurious machine-generated suspicions.

Surveillance culture

Finally, automated exam monitoring may set a broader precedent. Public concerns about surveillance and automated decision-making are growing. We should be cautious when introducing potentially harmful technologies, especially when these are imposed without our genuine consent.

Read more:
Online exam monitoring can invade privacy and erode trust at universities

Where to from here?

It’s important to find ways to fairly administer exams remotely. We will not always be able to replace exams with other assessments.

Nonetheless, institutions using automated proctoring software need to be accountable. This means being transparent with students about how the technology works and what can happen to student data.

Examiners could also offer meaningful alternatives such as in-person exam-sitting options. Offering alternatives is fundamental to informed consent.

While proctoring tools seemingly offer a panacea, institutions must carefully weigh the risks inherent in the technology.

Simon Coghlan receives funding from the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network.

Jeannie Marie Paterson receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australian Communication Consumers Action Network.

Shaanan Cohney receives funding from the Algorand Foundation.

Tim Miller receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Defence Science and Technology Group.

– ref. Unis are using artificial intelligence to keep students sitting exams honest. But this creates its own problems – https://theconversation.com/unis-are-using-artificial-intelligence-to-keep-students-sitting-exams-honest-but-this-creates-its-own-problems-170708

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Victoria Stead, Senior Research Fellow, Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University

I met Elisabeth the day she learned she was being sent back to Vanuatu.

She had arrived in Shepparton, in north-central Victoria, two months earlier. She was meant to stay for six months, working in a packing shed as part of the Seasonal Worker Programme, which provides temporary visas to workers from nine Pacific Island countries and Timor-Leste (East Timor).

But her employer had decided she wasn’t productive enough. So Elisabeth’s contract had been cancelled. She had hoped to save a few thousand dollars from her time in Australia, enough to buy a small plot of land on which to build a house and transform her family’s life. Instead she was taking back a plastic shopping bag with chocolate Easter eggs she had bought that afternoon at the supermarket in a nearby town.

Read more:
If Australia cares about Pacific nations, we should also invest in their care givers

More that 80% of workers in Australia’s horticultural industry industry are migrants on temporary work visas (or undocumented). The Seasonal Worker Programme
is often regarded as one of the better pathways to this work.

It is, for example, more highly regulated than the larger (pre-pandemic) Working Holiday Maker scheme, which provides the industry with backpackers. In 2020-21 it provided about 12,000 of the roughly 80,000 strong (formally employed) seasonal workforce.

But the regulations are a double-edged sword, also working as mechanisms of control.

Unlike the Working Holiday Maker scheme, Seasonal Worker Programme visas are typically arranged by labour-hire companies, who recruit and then place workers on client farms. Under the condition of the visa, workers can only work for that employer. Employers in turn are obliged to provide things like accommodation. But this can be become an opportunity to exploitation, through overcharging workers for rent.

If the employer is dissatisfied with a worker, as in Elisabeth’s case, they can be sent home, or refused a place in subsequent years. But if the worker is dissatisfied with the employer, it’s even worse.

Tying workers to their employers stymies their capacity to act in the face of poor conditions. Backpackers who find themselves being underpaid or exploited at least have the option of leaving. Those in the Seasonal Worker Programme can’t do the same.

Campaign against ‘absconding’

This is the context for the federal government’s concerns about seasonal workers “absconding” – a word more typically associated with escaping from custody.

Government figures provided to media outlets suggest 1,181 workers absconded in the past financial year, up on 225 the year before.

A campaign warning visa holders not to leave their designated employer and seek work elsewhere warns of consequences including visa cancellation; not being allowed to work in Australia again (“this may include your family and community members”), and bringing “shame to your family’s reputation”.

It’s a characteristically patronising and insulting message that ignores – and abdicates responsibility for – the conditions that drive SWP workers to abscond.

During the pandemic, vulnerabilities for workers have intensified. The experience of Anne, another worker from Vanuatu, is illustrative.

When COVID-19 hit in March 2020, Anne was working in a fruit-packing shed in regional Victoria. This was her sixth placement. She had been due to go back to Vanuatu in July, but had her visa extended under special COVID-19 provisions.

This was not lucrative for her, though. When I spoke to her in October last year she working on a farm in NSW. Her labour-hire agency had placed her there (with no input from her). Crossing the state border, she spent two weeks in quarantine, during which time she had to cover her living costs, eating into the savings she was hoped to take back to her family. Isolated and missing her children, she felt desperate about how little money she had been able to save.

Shifting responsiblity

There are indeed, as the government campaign states, unscrupulous labour contractors spreading misinformation and encouraging people to abscond, particularly under these pandemic circumstances.

But this is not the case of a few bad apples. It is the very conditions of horticultural labour that produce vulnerability and insecurity, and drive absconding. Nor are Pacific workers who do abscond dupes; they are people navigating circumstances that often leave them with no good choices.

The government’s campaign obscures these things. It instead places responsibility on Pacific workers themselves.

This moralising and patronising discourse is consistent with an established pattern of Australian engagement with the Pacific. Think, for example, of then Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack’s 2019 dismissal of Pacific Island nation’s concerns about climate change. “They’ll continue to survive,” he said, “because many of their workers come here and pick our fruit.”

Meaningful reforms

Undocumented workers provide as much as one-third of Australia’s national seasonal horticultural workforce. A visa amnesty – something advocates have long called for and a handful of federal National Party MPs have already endorsed – would support and protect these communities.

Beyond this, the Fair Work Commission’s decision last week to guarantee farm workers a minimum wage is a good step in improving working conditions. But there’s more to be done.

Read more:
Closing the loophole: a minimum wage for Australia’s farm workers is long overdue

All workers on seasonal visas need a right to return in subsequent seasons. This would enable them to complain about mistreatment with less fear of being punished.

They also deserve to make their own choices about accommodation and other living conditions. There needs to be capacity to move between employers, and meaningful consequences to hold labour-hire contractors to account for mistreatment. There should also be pathways to permanent residency, as there are for other temporary migration visas.

Migrant workers are critical to Australia’s farming sector and food security. What is shameful are the conditions leading so many to abscond.

Victoria Stead receives funding from the Australian Research Council (grant DE180101224).

– ref. Australia needs better working conditions, not shaming, for Pacific Islander farm workers – https://theconversation.com/australia-needs-better-working-conditions-not-shaming-for-pacific-islander-farm-workers-171404

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

Review: Preppers, created by Nakkiah Lui and Gabriel Dowrick, ABC TV

A sophisticated multi-layered critique of colonialism, capitalism and patriarchy with an all-star Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cast (along with some well-known non-Indigenous personalities playing an assortment of “allies”), Preppers is hilarious.

Trying to navigate being the only Indigenous person on an all-white TV morning show, Wake up Australia, and dealing with daily microaggressions, Charlie (Nakkiah Lui) finds herself suffering feelings of inadequacy and soothing herself with self-help affirmations.

Then, after a series of unfortunate events, she wakes to find herself at a doomsday preppers hold out known as “Eden 2”. The six-part series then unfolds in an isolated camp where power relations shift as everyone prepares for the end of the world.

The core cast of seven is led by a group of brilliant Blak actors: Lui is joined by Jack Charles, Meyne Wyatt, Ursula Yovich and Aaron McGrath, with non-Indigenous actors Eryn Jean Norvill and Chum Ehelepola rounding out the preppers.

Many other wonderful actors move in and out of the series, including Miranda Tapsell, Luke Carroll and Christine Anu, as it tackles some big issues such as colonial violence, frontier wars, inter-generational trauma and the politics of identity.

But it does this all in the great Aussie tradition of taking the piss: making fun of the things that are absurd, risible, offensive and hurtful.

A story of allyship

Much has been written on the topic of allyship with Indigenous people, particularly the danger that, in seeking “ally” status one is really seeking to position oneself as the “good white person”.

If white allies are motivated solely by a desire to be seen as a “good person”, there is a danger they might remain ignorant of or indifferent to larger structures of power. Preppers explores this complexity in a way that will make us all laugh, while also revealing how allyship operates to silence or take from Indigenous people.

In one episode, the group is accidentally locked in the bunker. Jayden (Aaron McGrath) calls on Kirby (Eryn Jean Norvill) to be sacrificed before they run out of air. As Jayden describes it, this would be “the ultimate display of white allyship”.

Kirby, not very happy to comply, responds by stating she should survive to go on and tell the story.

“We don’t need another white person to tell a Black story,” says Jayden.

Becoming an ally is no simple or straightforward matter. Instead, it requires constant reflection on your social position, and remaining accountable to those with whom you are “allied” – but you probably won’t be called to self-sacrifice to ensure enough air is left in your doomsday bunker.

In true Hollywood end-of-days fashion, the group turns on itself. Kirby declares Charlie (Lui) will be the one to die.

Charlie’s reward will be becoming the namesake for a future child of born again Christians Lionel (New Zealand-Sri Lankan actor Chum Ehelepola) and Kelly (Ursula Yovich). Not the first or the second child but one of the later ones, Kelly notes.

An annual day of honour will also be bestowed upon Charlie – “a day of mourning and dancing and stuff”. Thankfully, they are saved by the arrival of Charlie’s mum, Marie (Christine Anu).

Tough truths through comedy

Preppers unpacks what we think we know – and what has been taught to us as truth – about colonisation. In one scene, bones are found. The preppers suspect the bones could be those of an Aboriginal person killed during the frontier wars.

The truth of these atrocities is questioned by some members of the group. “Don’t they teach you that in school?”, Jayden asks.

“We used to make boomerangs out of Popsicle sticks, does that count?”, asks Lionel.

The resident Elder, Monty (Jack Charles), reveals he may have some records of local frontier wars and quips “that is the thing with you white fellas. You deny it but you wrote it down”.

Describing frontier violence as an apocalypse, Monty shows the group a series of slides of colonial soldiers and settlers killing Aboriginal people, declaring they were “led by a cruel man, a real dog. He shot, burnt, beat, hung local Aboriginal people”.

Even though Preppers is a comedy, the show provides a deep reading often left out of recollections of colonial violence. Indigenous people were not just passive victims of the heinous crimes. They were people who fought for their lives and Country.

“They ambushed this colonial dog and his men, stole their weapons and turned the guns back on them. The Blackfullas had their revenge”, says Monty.

Blackfulla deadly

From Charlie, whose anxiety manifests into uncontrollable flatulence, to a Black Bear Grylls-alpha-male-wannabe (Guy, played by Meyne Wyatt), to a pair of amorous born again Christians practising abstinence, Preppers includes brilliant performances from all in the cast.

Preppers embodies the true definition of Blak humour in all its intricacies, and the unique ways Indigenous comedy can address the complexities of everyday life of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in contemporary Australia.

The series is, to quote a line in one of the episodes, “like deadly, like Blackfulla deadly, not like gammin [fake or pretend]” – a must watch!

Preppers is on ABC from November 10.

Read more:
What’s so funny about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander humour?

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

– ref. Preppers is a deep reading of colonial violence – and a hilarious, must-watch Aussie TV comedy – https://theconversation.com/preppers-is-a-deep-reading-of-colonial-violence-and-a-hilarious-must-watch-aussie-tv-comedy-170100

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Heyward, Head of Initial Teacher Education, University of Auckland

The news that all staff members at a small King Country school were still unvaccinated a week out from the government’s November 15 mandatory deadline underlines how challenging the weeks ahead might be.

Next Monday marks the day teachers will need to have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine if they want to continue to work with students in a face-to-face learning environment.

It will also be the day educational leaders find out with some certainty who their vaccine-hesitant colleagues are, and when the career pathways of many committed educators will come to a crossroads.

With it looking likely some schools will face significant staff shortages, the teaching profession now has to seriously wrestle with how to demonstrate the value of manaakitanga to all colleagues, including the unvaccinated.

The code of responsibility

As a fully registered teacher (as well as an academic) I will be free to teach in New Zealand schools, alert levels allowing, because I am double vaccinated. But I know that is not the case for some of my very talented and committed colleagues who have refused the Pfizer jab.

I can only imagine the professional identity crises these colleagues must be experiencing.

I’m thinking of those teachers who sincerely believe they are honouring their commitment to society – espoused in the Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand (TCANZ) Code of Professional Responsibility – by standing up for the human rights of New Zealanders to bodily autonomy.

Read more:
To be truly ethical, vaccine mandates must be about more than just lifting jab rates

I’m thinking of those teachers who passionately believe they are honouring their commitment to society by displaying the ethical integrity to stand up to a power they believe is misleading the public.

I’m thinking of those teachers who believe they are “walking the talk” of a critically reflective practitioner by refusing to be vaccinated.

And I’m thinking of my own commitment to those teachers as my professional colleagues, notwithstanding my fundamental disagreement with their anti-vaccination beliefs.

Teaching as an ethical activity

The TCANZ guiding document for teachers – Our Code, Our Standards – outlines the ethical commitments of all teachers. The council recognises that for the code to be “owned”, the professional commitments should not be seen as a list of prescribed rules.

Rather, it is a set of agreed aspirations that encourage collaborative conversations between practitioners about the ethical nature of their work.

There is no doubt the vaccine mandate will demand some of the most ethically challenging conversations teachers from both vaccination camps will have in their professional careers.

Read more:
Are employers and workers at odds over NZ’s workplace vaccine mandates? Our research suggests they might be

However, that’s no reason to shy away from collegial awkwardness. One of New Zealand’s pre-eminent educational thinkers, the late Ivan Snook, believed teaching is an innately ethical activity as it involves close personal relationships, not least between colleagues.

Snook also provides us with some wise guidance on how we might go about these challenging discussions. He addresses the fundamental tension teachers face when trying to persuade others to take a on a point of view they believe is demonstrably rational.

Snook frames this tension as the “conflicting obligations to respect the learner’s state of mind and also move her towards a more adequate understanding and a more enlightened practice”.

An ethic of care

As colleagues in discussion with those who disagree with us on the vaccine mandate, we must be ready to respect the ethical integrity of alternative viewpoints, while providing rational alternatives based on reputable scientific evidence.

Nor should we decry those who distrust authority. As Snook argues, a major task of educators is to help others come to understand the importance, and limitations, of all authorities.

It is my hope that over the next few months we will see the code truly become “our code” as it guides vaccinated and unvaccinated teachers to have these respectful conversations about what it is to be a critically reflective, ethical teacher in a society in the grip of a global pandemic.

Read more:
Protesting during a pandemic: New Zealand’s balancing act between a long tradition of protests and COVID rules

But if the code is to guide teachers through these difficult conversations it needs to be used with care. If it’s simply a weapon of entrenched positions there is nothing to be gained.

Educational philosopher Nel Noddings said conversations of this complexity need to happen within an “ethic of care” that is sensitive to the relationships in which we must all continue to live.

In the spirit of whanaungatanga, I encourage my vaccinated and unvaccinated colleagues to be courageous and use the code to discuss the vaccine mandate within such an ethic of care.

Let us decide together what that is, and what it means to be an ethical teacher in Aotearoa New Zealand in this watershed moment for our profession.

I have publicly commented on the development and implementation of the Teaching Council Document ‘Our Codes, Our Standards’ in the media.

– ref. How do NZ’s vaccinated teachers have those hard conversations with their anti-vax colleagues? – https://theconversation.com/how-do-nzs-vaccinated-teachers-have-those-hard-conversations-with-their-anti-vax-colleagues-171474

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

Prime Minister Scott Morrison will on Wednesday announce $500 million towards a new $1 billion fund to promote investment in Australian companies to develop low-emissions technologies.

But the government will use the legislation for the fund to try to wedge Labor.

The $500 million will be provided to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, with the legislative package including the expansion of the remit of the CEFC to enable it to invest in carbon capture and storage (CCS).

The CEFC can invest in a broad range of low-emissions technologies, with the only exceptions being nuclear and CCS. The government has previously tried to remove the barrier to the CEFC investing in CCS but has been frustrated by the Senate.

By linking the $500 million to the expansion of the CEFC’s investment remit, the government believes it will put pressure on Labor, which opposed the wider brief for the corporation.

While the government’s legislation would remove the prohibition relating to CCS, there would be no change to the nuclear prohibition.

The government regards CCS, which is controversial and as yet unproven at scale, as a priority technology under its Technology Investment Roadmap.

The proposed fund is the latest in a round of announcements this week as Morrison campaigns on his technology-based energy policy for net-zero by 2050.

Read more:
Word from The Hill: Scott Morrison has decided electric cars won’t threaten Aussie weekends

But Tuesday’s unveiling of his policy to encourage the take-up of electric vehicles – with $178 million for modest initiatives but no subsidies to assist purchasers – ran into immediate flak, with strong criticisms from experts and the opposition, who said it was totally inadequate.

NSW Environment Minister Matt Kean made it clear the Morrison government should be doing a great deal more.

He said he would like to see it directly support electric vehicles so they would be cheaper for families and businesses. A number of taxes and charges could be waived.

The federal government should also invest more heavily in in electric vehicle charging infrastructure, he told the ABC on Tuesday night.

But Kean said the biggest thing the federal government could do was deal with the issue of fuel standards – Australia had some of the worst fuel standards in the world, worse than China or India.

NSW on Wednesday will announce support for the fleet industry to purchase electric vehicles.

At a news conference on Tuesday Morrison was confronted by reporters over his 2019 trenchant attacks on Labor’s electric vehicle policy, which he said would “end the weekend”. Despite the quotes, Morrison denied he had campaigned against EVs at the election.

“I didn’t. That is just a Labor lie. I was against Bill Shorten’s mandate policy, trying to tell people what to do with their lives, what cars they were supposed to drive and where they could drive.”

The proposed “low emissions technology commercialisation fund” would include $500 million from private sector investors.

Morrison says in a statement the fund would back Australian early stage companies to develop new technologies.

Emissions reduction minister Angus Taylor says it would “address a gap in the Australian market, where currently small, complex, technology-focussed start-ups can be considered to be too risky to finance”.

The investments would be in the form of equity, not grants or loans.

Read more:
As the world surges ahead on electric vehicle policy, the Morrison government’s new strategy leaves Australia idling in the garage

The latest initiative brings the government’s public investment commitments to low emissions technologies by 2030 to more than $21 billion.

The government will introduce legislation to establish the fund – expected to earn a positive return for taxpayers – in this term of parliament.

The government’s list of example of potential areas for the fund’s investments include:

• direct air capture of CO₂ and permanent storage underground
• materials or techniques with the potential to reduce emissions in the production in steel and aluminium
• soil carbon measurement technologies
• livestock feed technologies to reduce methane emissions from cattle
• improvements to solar panels
• lighter and smaller battery cases
• software developments to improve the operational efficiency of a variety of low-emissions technologies in all sectors of the economy.

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

– ref. Morrison to link $500 million for new technologies to easing way for carbon capture and storage – https://theconversation.com/morrison-to-link-500-million-for-new-technologies-to-easing-way-for-carbon-capture-and-storage-171528

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicole Lee, Professor at the National Drug Research Institute (Melbourne), Curtin University

As part of a Halloween-inspired campaign, the Australian Federal Police has released a series of ill-advised memes attempting to highlight the “lesser-known impacts” of illicit drug use.

The campaign demonstrates a skewed and overly simplistic understanding of drug problems. It’s superficial, inaccurate and demonises people who use drugs.

People who use drugs are depicted as spine-chilling zombies that “bankroll criminals who enslave women and destroy the environment”. Cocaine use is linked to infertility, jokingly exclaiming “get off the junk to protect your junk”. People who use heroin are blamed for increasing insurance premiums.

Arguably the worst of the memes is a computer generated image, manufactured by the AFP’s Forensics Facial Recognition team, claiming to be “before” and “after” methamphetamine use. It seems to be inspired by the infamous American “Faces of Meth” and Montana Meth Project campaigns, which have been widely criticised as ineffective, inaccurate and highly stigmatising. In fact, they may have increased risk of use.

Concerned community organisations are calling on the AFP to remove the posts.

Here’s what the AFP campaign gets wrong.

Scare campaigns and distorted ‘facts’ don’t reduce use or harms

The AFP campaign uses confronting imagery and distorted and exaggerated claims in an attempt to scare people from using drugs.

Decades of evidence show scare tactics don’t work. And mass media campaigns aren’t very effective in reducing illicit drug use.

The overwhelming majority of the 16.4% of Australians who currently use illicit drugs do so occasionally and without harmful consequences. So when they see exaggerated images or messages trying to make drugs seem more dangerous or risky than they are, they switch off.

Scare tactics have been shown to make drugs seem more alluring, increasing the risk of use, not decreasing it. Some may see it as a challenge, it can increase awareness of specific drugs, and sometimes young people are attracted to activities that are forbidden.

It’s best to stick to the facts

Most people who use methamphetamine don’t look like the “Faces of Meth” images. The typical person who uses methamphetamine is in their 20s, and they use the powdered form of the drug (commonly referred to as “speed”) just once or twice a year.

There are multiple and very complex reasons why people’s appearance might change when they use drugs over a long period. Most of them aren’t to do with the drug itself but are related to a range of other social factors, like poor diet, lack of access to health care and mental health problems that often predate the drug use.

The “Faces of Meth” are really the faces of poverty, trauma and exclusion.

The belief that bugs are crawling under your skin can occur with methamphetamine-related psychosis. But it isn’t very common, and people with other forms of psychosis, unrelated to drug use, also sometimes experience this delusion.

The role of cocaine use on male fertility still isn’t clear.

The link between drug use and crime isn’t straightforward. Most people who use illicit drugs don’t commit crimes, other than the drug use itself.

Even among people who are dependent on drugs, risk of offending actually increases when they can’t access treatment.

Treatment reduces criminal behaviour. For every A$1 spent on drug treatment, the community saves $7 in other costs. This includes a reduction in the costs to society related to crime.

Demonising people increases problems

Even if you have a moral objection to drug use, making simplistic links between drug use and physical appearance, offending and other behaviours does nothing to stop people using.

The campaign tagline, “have a conscience”, suggests people who use drugs are morally corrupt. This makes the problem worse by increasing stigma.

Stigma is one of the biggest barriers to seeking help for drug problems. It delays help-seeking and increases the risk of dropout from treatment.

Any public messaging about drugs should follow well-established guidelines for reporting on drug-related issues, including those from Mindframe and AOD Media Watch.

Blaming individuals for structural problems doesn’t reduce use or harms

The AFP’s cocaine post tries to link individual drug use to large scale structural problems, like organised crime and the global drug trade.

This ignores the key underlying causes of organised crime, which are linked to the massive profits made possible by the prohibition of drugs. If drugs were regulated, it could significantly reduce the black market and generate revenue for more treatment.

Drugs are more harmful because they’re illegal. They’re manufactured in backyard labs with no quality or dose control.

This is why most experts support drug law reform, such as decriminalisation or legalisation. Public support for legalisation of drugs has been increasing, with more people now supporting the legalisation of cannabis than opposing it.

Some argue that with the massive amount of money spent on drug law enforcement (66% of the entire spend on drugs) and the very small long-term impact on the drug market, we need a different approach.

What does work?

What works in preventing uptake is providing good factual information about drugs from an early age, including evidence-based school drug education.

Harm reduction strategies, like needle and syringe programs and medically supervised injecting facilities, reduce harms from drug use. Often these activities also reduce use, although this isn’t their main aim.

Treatment is effective in reducing drug use and harms.

There has been a significant shift in Australia and internationally to viewing drug use as a health and human rights issue rather than a criminal justice issue.

Law enforcement should stick to policing. Drug prevention and harm reduction are specialised areas of health science, and public health isn’t served by the AFP acting outside its area of expertise.

Getting help

If you’re worried about your own or someone else’s use of alcohol or other drugs call the National Alcohol and other Drug Hotline on 1800 250 015, free from anywhere in Australia.

You can also chat online with a counsellor at Alcohol & Drug Counselling Online, join an online support group at SMART Recovery, or talk to your GP about seeing a psychologist or counsellor. You may be able to access support via telehealth.

Nicole Lee works as a consultant in the alcohol and other drug sector and a psychologist in private practice. She has previously been awarded funding from Australian and state governments, NHMRC and other bodies for evaluation and research into drug prevention and treatment. She is a member of the Australian National Advisory Council on Alcohol and other Drugs (ANACAD) and the Board of Directors of Hello Sunday Morning and The Loop Australia.

Jarryd Bartle works as a consultant in the alcohol and other drug sector

– ref. The police’s new scare campaign won’t stop people from using drugs. But it will increase stigma – https://theconversation.com/the-polices-new-scare-campaign-wont-stop-people-from-using-drugs-but-it-will-increase-stigma-171303

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

At the risk of being political – and politics is important, it will determine how we are governed for the next three years – economic conditions could scarcely be better for a government seeking re-election.

The economic things that matter most to most people are, in my view:

• jobs – if employment is climbing rather than falling, most people are not at much risk of losing their job

• economic growth and wages growth – if things are getting better rather than worse, even in small ways, people feel better about the future

• the ability to buy a home – if it is getting hard, even for other people or for their children, they are concerned about what the future will become

• mortgage rates – as long as rates stay low they know their own personal budget won’t go out of whack

Other things are said to matter, but I am less than convinced;
among them the state of the federal budget (whether it is “back in the black”), tax cuts (once granted they are forgotten – Julia Gillard gave back more than the carbon tax and wasn’t thanked for it) and esoteric concepts such as government debt.

Jobs aplenty

Earlier this year, just before the eastern states went into lockdown, more of Australia’s population was employed than ever before, more hours were worked than ever before and more jobs were on offer than ever before.

Total hours worked fell during the lockdown months. But in those states without long lockdowns (those other than NSW, Victoria and the ACT) hours worked kept climbing to still-higher all-time highs. It’s an indication of what’s likely in NSW and Victoria now their lockdowns are over, something the Reserve Bank says it can already see happening in NSW.

The proportion of those working who say they’re underemployed (working fewer hours than they want) dived to an eight-year low before the mid-year lockdowns.

Read more:
Just 4.5% during lockdowns? The unemployment rate is now meaningless

I haven’t mentioned the unemployment rate (officially 4.6%) because at the moment the rate can’t be taken seriously.

It is that low mainly because to be counted as unemployed you need to be actively looking for work, and many workers stood down during the lockdowns and available to work were not searching, and also because of an oddity in the way the Bureau of Statistics counts non-resident workers.

Regardless, absent any lockdowns, in practical terms it is set to be easier to keep and find a job than it has been for a long time going into an election.

Wage growth climbing

Last year’s recession brought with it a collapse in wage growth as employers froze or cut wages, something that’s now being unwound as the economy picks up, albeit, as the Reserve Bank notes with apparent disapproval, “weighed down by more muted public sector wages growth”.

The bank’s latest forecasts, released on Friday, have wage growth climbing from 1.7% to almost 3% over the next two years, which will be the fastest growth in a decade.

Actual and forecast wages growth

Three per cent is still lower than the wage growth we had come to expect before it fell off a cliff with the end of the 2010s resources boom, and it’s still lower than the Reserve Bank needs to sustainably meet its inflation target.

But it holds out the prospect of an improvement at a time when private sector wages are already improving, which is what matters for the way people feel.

Forecasts have consequences

Economic growth – the catch-all measure for what’s happening in the economy – is set to climb out of the lockdown slump and accelerate throughout next year before settling back to the 2-3% that was common before the recession.

It also won’t be good enough, but it will be moving in the right direction, and accelerating strongly next May, at the time we are likely to be asked to vote.

These forecasts matter because similar ones (prepared by the Treasury instead of the Reserve Bank) will underpin the economic statement or budget released before the election and the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook released by departmental secretaries without political input during the campaign.

They will become the accepted narrative.

Easier home price growth

After soaring a frightening 21% in the past year to barely affordable highs, there’s every chance home prices will ease off. On Melbourne Cup Tuesday, the Reserve Bank withdrew its support for the near-zero three year bond rate that banks had been using to fund ultra-cheap fixed rate mortgages.

It’s no longer possible to get a three-year fixed rate mortgage for less than 2%.

A few weeks early the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority instructed lenders to refuse mortgages to borrowers who couldn’t withstand an increase in mortgage rates of three percentage points (such as an increase from 3% to 6%).

APRA expects the instruction to cut the maximum that can be borrowed by 5%. By election day price rises might have slowed or stopped.

And low rates for some time yet

Higher variable mortgage rates would unsettle Australians (even though many are finding it easier to make their payments than they have in years).

The good news is that on Friday the Reserve Bank nominated 2024 as the year it expects to begin to lift the record-low cash rate that sets the price of variable rate mortgages.

2024 is half a political cycle away.

Even if the first hike comes sooner (and financial markets expect it to come sooner) it won’t be imminent at the time we will be asked to vote.

All sorts of things determine election outcomes.

The economy is only one. But right now, next year’s economy is looking good.

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

– ref. Economically, 2022 looks like an ideal time for a government to land re-election – https://theconversation.com/economically-2022-looks-like-an-ideal-time-for-a-government-to-land-re-election-171406

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

As well as Michelle Grattan’s usual interviews with experts and politicians about the news of the day, Politics with Michelle Grattan now includes “Word from The Hill”, where all things political will be discussed with members of The Conversation’s politics team.

Scott Morrison is gearing up for the election in the first half of 2022. As the country emerges from COVID constraints, the PM is trying to make up for lost time on the ground, travelling in NSW and Victoria this week. He’s selling some of the nitty gritty of his emissions reduction policy, including a plan to encourage the take up of electric cars.

But in Melbourne he was confronted by his own embarrassing quotes from 2019, when he laid into Labor’s policy on these vehicles, claiming they would “end the weekend” and that people who lived in apartments would have to dangle an extension cord out of their windows to charge their cars.

Michelle and Amanda also canvass the latest developments in the allegations, involving federal MPs, of branch stacking activities in the Victorian Liberal and Labor parties, and the slow grind in the quest for a federal integrity commission.

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

– ref. Word from The Hill: Scott Morrison has decided electric cars won’t threaten Aussie weekends – https://theconversation.com/word-from-the-hill-scott-morrison-has-decided-electric-cars-wont-threaten-aussie-weekends-171493

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan N Williams, Associate Investigator, ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, UNSW

We know quite a lot about the past 200 years of history in Parramatta. Located in Sydney’s geographical centre, on the Parramatta River, it was the first township to be established outside Sydney Cove’s penal colony after the First Fleet arrived at Port Jackson in 1788.

Parramatta became the breadbasket of the early European colony, with land clearing and farming dispossessing the Darug people of the Cumberland Plain. This formed the focus of Aboriginal resistance, culminating in the 1797 Battle of Parramatta led by the great freedom fighter Pemulwuy.

Parramatta’s European history is evident to those who wander through it today — with the remains of old buildings and signs of historical events on almost every corner.

But what about before 1788?

Parramatta has seen intensified development in recent years. High-rise buildings, light rail, road upgrades and landscaping have all impacted the remaining archaeological record of both its deep history and more recent colonial past.

New South Wales’s current state planning laws require each new development to have an archaeological investigation conducted before it proceeds. The aim is to identify archaeological evidence before development starts, and make sure it is managed appropriately.

Where sites are of high cultural or scientific significance, there is an emphasis on protection. Otherwise, the evidence is recorded and recovered before development proceeds. There have been more than 40 such studies in the past 15 or so years.

In our article published today we review these studies to provide a definitive understanding of their results, and reiterate the importance of Parramatta’s culturally significant deep-time history.

14,000 years of Indigenous history

Paramatta’s urban centre has grown upon a more than 3-metre-thick layer of sand. This sand began to be deposited by the Parramatta River 50,000-60,000 years ago as a result of massive floods and other extreme environmental conditions. It continued to be deposited sporadically until about 5,000 years ago.

It’s estimated about 800,000 tonnes of sand were deposited across two kilometres of the CBD, where it is still found today. This is all the more impressive when you consider the Parramatta River is fed by only a relatively small catchment upstream.

This sand was blown around during the last Ice Age (or the “Last Glacial Maximum”) between 20,000 and 30,000 years ago. Ultimately this reworking resulted in a sand sheet of about 70 hectares, or roughly 100 football fields. Unfortunately, our study found some 29% of these deposits have been destroyed through development over the past 15 years or so.

This sand body has been in place since the First Nations people arrived on the continent 50,000 (or more) years ago. It retains an amazing archive of evidence that reveals their use of the landscape in deep time, and also records major climatic changes.

Read more:
When did Aboriginal people first arrive in Australia?

So far, our earliest evidence for Aboriginal people in the Sydney region is from along the Hawkesbury-Nepean River around 36,000 years ago.

While the Parramatta sand sheet does provide glimmers of evidence for people using it back then, our analyses show they mostly visited this part of the Parramatta River after the Ice Age, which is supported by layers of artefacts in the area dated to this time.

Moving with the tide

Specifically, our paper explores three archaeological projects on the sand sheet at George Street, Hassall and Wigram Streets, and in the grounds of the Bayanami School. All of these sites show increased human use at a time of significant sea-level change.

About 14,000 years ago, the large ice sheets that characterised the glacial period began to melt rapidly. By 9,000 years ago, the sea level in Australia went from 125 metres below current levels to current levels.

This inundation of more than 2 million square kilometres drove people off the continental shelf all around Australia, including from the Sydney Basin. We find fewer sites in Sydney, or indeed the entire southeast corner of Australia, that date to before this sea-level rise.

Read more:
Australia’s coastal living is at risk from sea level rise, but it’s happened before

A previous study of one of these key archaeological sites showed people were highly mobile as a result of this sea-level rise beginning 14,000 years ago.
One stone artefact dated to 14,000 years ago was sourced from the Megalong Valley, west of the Blue Mountains, 70km from Parramatta. Most earlier artefacts were sourced from the Hawkesbury River gravels, about 40km away.

Then, over the past 10,000 years, we see a massive increase in local site use and visitation. People used a different stone material for artefacts sourced widely from across the Cumberland Plain
(western Sydney), reflecting greater local knowledge of stone resources, longer occupations and likely different trade and exchange networks.

A range of tools have also been found, including grindstones, axe-heads, backed artefacts (such as spear barbs), hearths with heat retainers and heat-treated raw materials — all of which indicate repeated residence over long periods.

Similarly, parts of the sand body with more artefacts also show evidence of camping sites which have retained their structure, demonstrating repeated use. One rare finding at the corner of Charles and George Streets was a pierced shark tooth that was probably used as a hair decoration.

Our analysis fills an important gap in the Indigenous past of one of the oldest townships in Australia. It reinforces the importance of undertaking heritage assessments in areas which are thought to already be “disturbed”.

It also provides a timely reminder these archaeological and cultural landscapes are finite, and are being lost at an unprecedented rate.

Read more:
The last ice age tells us why we need to care about a 2℃ change in temperature

Alan N Williams is an associate director and the National Technical Leader, Aboriginal heritage for EMM Consulting Pty Ltd, an international employee owned company specialising in environmental investigation and assessment

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

– ref. We revisited Parramatta’s archaeological past to reveal the deep-time history of the heart of Sydney – https://theconversation.com/we-revisited-parramattas-archaeological-past-to-reveal-the-deep-time-history-of-the-heart-of-sydney-169827

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Scott Burnett, Research assistant, Massey University

As world leaders continue negotiations at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, several agreements reached so far have acknowledged the connection between climate change and the global loss of biodiversity.

Half a world away, we might feel somewhat smug. Almost a third of Aotearoa New Zealand is protected as conservation land, but we nevertheless have the highest number of threatened species worldwide, with 79% of birds, bats, reptiles and frogs at risk of or threatened with extinction.

The threat to wildlife is entirely due to human impacts, including the introduction of mammal predators and land-use practices that threaten Indigenous biodiversity.

Despite more than 40,000 people in 600 community conservation groups working throughout the country, these efforts and gains are tenuous, not yet arresting the decline in biodiversity.

Surveys show New Zealanders are increasingly aware of the state of our environment, but knowledge on its own does not spur action.

We suggest mātauranga Māori, a traditional system of understanding the natural world, could help take people from awareness to action.

Te Mana o te Taiao is New Zealand’s national biodiversity strategy and lays out conservation priorities for the next three decades. It promotes the braiding of Western science and mātauranga Māori and emphasises a focus on people as much as the environment.

Regular surveys show a marked shift in public perception of the state of New Zealand’s environment. Twenty years ago, a majority believed the environment was in good health, but today, most people believe it is in poor health.

The survey also asks if respondents had participated in environmental advocacy or volunteer work, but the percentage of people who have has remained steady over two decades.

Read more:
Why Indigenous knowledge should be an essential part of how we govern the world’s oceans

From awareness to action

People feel increasingly disconnected from the natural world for a few key reasons, including:

• a rise of individualism and the erosion of community

• distraction by technology and entertainment

• increasing urbanisation and inequality leading to an “extinction of experience”

• poorer urban populations with fewer opportunities to connect with nature.

Awareness alone does not spur action, but research shows people who feel more connected with nature have a stronger sense of environmental responsibility.

If we wish to ensure the survival of our Indigenous biodiversity, we need to ask how we get from awareness to action. Indigenous peoples have played a strong role in conserving biodiversity over many centuries, and mātauranga Māori could hold some answers.

Read more:
Indigenous knowledge and the persistence of the ‘wilderness’ myth

There are three main strands to how mātauranga Māori can turn knowledge into action.

1. Ecological science has increased our understanding of the inter-connectedness of ecosystems and has brought us closer to a mātauranga Māori concept of human relationships with the natural world. Within this concept, if the environment is not in good health, people can’t be in good health either. Seeing ourselves as inter-connected and inter-dependent with the natural world engenders reciprocity and care for the natural world.

2. By embedding values and beliefs into facts, knowledge becomes more memorable, meaningful and relatable. This helps people to form an identity of belonging within the natural world and a connection to place. We are far more likely to care for a place if we feel a connection to it.

3. Awareness of our inter-connections and dependence on the natural world helps us see the dissonance between stewardship and practices that threaten other species.

Community conservation as the answer

Community conservation groups could play a central role in achieving New Zealand’s national biodiversity strategy through use of mātauranga Māori concepts.

Ecosanctuaries like Zealandia already provide opportunities to connect with the natural world, through education and volunteering. There are more than 80 sanctuaries throughout the country, providing opportunities for people to acquaint themselves with the natural world and become involved in conservation activities.

Ecosanctuaries demonstrate environmental restoration is possible and conservation is everyone’s responsibility, not just the role of the state. They effectively build a constituency for conservation within the community.

Zealandia identifies its role as an enabler of transformation in the way people engage with the natural world. Their 20-year strategy emphasises mātauranga Māori and inspiring change through shared passion.

The biodiversity strategy is fundamentally about people […] the task that we have in front of us is fundamentally about changing the way people value the natural world.

Māori continually straddle two worlds, navigating the Māori world view and the Tauiwi (Western) world. Non-Māori rarely step into the Māori world, and its unfamiliarity can cause discomfort.

Incorporating mātauranga Māori should not mean appropriating knowledge from Māori or glossing over legitimate Māori grievances. Instead, being able to hold two world views can be likened to gaining binocular vision – people discern more depth and detail than by seeing the world through a single lens.

To maintain and improve our biodiversity, we need to practise conservation everywhere rather than only in conservation spaces. Embracing mātauranga Māori concepts could help New Zealanders to develop an identity of ecological belonging to become better kaitiaki (guardians) of our biodiversity.

This article is based on a presentation given at a Sanctuaries of New Zealand workshop earlier this year on the theme of iwi and conservation.

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

– ref. How Māori knowledge could help New Zealanders turn their concern for the environment into action – https://theconversation.com/how-maori-knowledge-could-help-new-zealanders-turn-their-concern-for-the-environment-into-action-168831

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Betty Barkha, PhD Candidate, Monash University

The Glasgow climate change conference is in its second week, with Tuesday November 9 dedicated to recognising gender equality, and the empowerment of women and girls in climate policy and action.

Gender inequality means women and girls will experience climate change in unique and different ways. They are more likely to die in extreme weather events than men. And as climate change brings about forced migration, loss of housing and income, they are vulnerable to gender-based violence.

Child marriage is a common coping mechanism for many families facing climate stress. For example, in 2016 a 15-year-old girl in Mozambique was married in exchange for 2,000 Mozambican Metical (approximately A$42) to forestall her family’s climate-induced poverty.

There is also strong evidence regarding the impact of climate change on girls’ education. In particular, it will exacerbate the already existing barriers girls face. These include learning disruptions due to inadequate funds for school fees, as well as food, water and menstrual hygiene products. During natural disasters girls experience an increase in care work and disruptions due to forced displacement or migration.

Read more:
COVID is forcing millions of girls out of school in South-east Asia and the Pacific

The Malala Fund estimates the climate events of 2021 will prevent at least 4 million girls from completing their education. Similarly, a new report from NGO Plan International shows if current trends continue, by 2025 climate change will be a contributing factor in preventing at least 12.5 million girls each year from completing their education. The report states:

Even though girls are significantly impacted by climate change, they are also powerful agents of change, capable of strengthening a country’s response to climate change.

Why education for girls is crucial

In describing the COP26 summit as “a two-week long celebration of business as usual and blah, blah, blah,” activist Greta Thunberg summed up the attitude of many young people protesting around the world. That is, political leaders are protecting their own interests at the expense of future generations.

The growing youth activism is acknowledgement this damaged planet is theirs to inherit and fix. Young people in our region will endure an increase in severe weather events, a rise in food insecurity, challenges to their health from poorer air quality and pollution, and the impact of species’ extinction and biodiversity change.

In the face of these challenges, education for all young people is crucial. But in particular, education, empowerment and leadership of girls and young women is the key to climate resilience.

Project Drawdown, a global research project which identifies and assesses solutions to climate change, notes that education

shores up resilience and equips girls and women to face the impacts of climate change. They can be more effective stewards of food, soil, trees, and water, even as nature’s cycles change.

Education for girls can be a pathway for fighting the climate crisis in three key ways:

1. education in both the sciences and social sciences is necessary to address climate change. Girls’ participation in these fields will drive innovation in green technologies as well as a social approach to resilience built on equality

2. formal education can build on women and girls’ existing community-based knowledge regarding disaster risk reduction and help them respond to climate emergencies

3. education creates pathways to more independent decision-making for women and girls around work, family planning and community engagement. It also creates opportunities for leadership and participation in formal decision-making.

Girls and young women are already leading the way in climate responses in the region. For example, 17-year-old Anjali Sharma led a landmark class action – with seven other teenagers – in the Australian Federal Court against Australia’s environment minister Sussan Ley. The group was seeking an injunction to prevent Ley approving a coal mine expansion, arguing it would contribute to climate change which endangers their future.

Read more:
These Aussie teens have launched a landmark climate case against the government. Win or lose, it’ll make a difference

The Malala Fund also iterates the importance of investing in girls’ education in the fight against climate change. It argues such investment increases social resilience and strengthens adaption and mitigation efforts.

Australia can do more

The Plan International report shows that in 2019, Australia spent A$516 million of its official development assistance on projects which targeted action against climate change.

That represents just 25% of Australia’s development assistance, putting Australia in 12th place among the OECD’s 30 development committee donors.

Plan International’s report also shows climate education is absent in Australia’s recent development policies and education strategies. For instance, Australia’s Partnerships for Recovery: Australia’s COVID-19 Development Response’ policy — launched in May 2020 — fails to mention climate change among the three pillars of Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Read more:
Ever wondered what our curriculum teaches kids about climate change? The answer is ‘not much’

Young people are demanding change from those in power, organising in their communities to educate one another, engaging in activities to protect the environment and adapt to its changes, and demanding to be heard.

Australia must be more ambitious in ensuring youth and young women are prepared for the challenges ahead. By prioritising girls’ education in its funding and partnerships for regional development, Australia can promote gender equitable climate leadership.

Political leaders have a responsibility not only to engage and respond to young people, but also to build their capacity to face climate change, now and in the future.

Betty Barkha is currently the co-chair of the International Women’s Development Agency (IWDA) and serves as an advisor to FRIDA Young Feminist Fund and the Global Resilience Fund.

Katrina Lee-Koo has engaged in research partnerships with the World YWCA, Plan International Australia and the International Women’s Development Agency on issues designed to advocate for the inclusion of young women and girls in global issues.

– ref. COP26: why education for girls is crucial in the fight against climate change – https://theconversation.com/cop26-why-education-for-girls-is-crucial-in-the-fight-against-climate-change-171394

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Baka, Adjunct Fellow, Olympic Scholar and Co-Director of the Olympic Research Network, Institute for Health and Sport, Victoria University

Beijing is about to become the first city to host both a winter and summer Olympics. However, this comes amid growing calls to boycott Beijing 2022, with critics labelling them the “Genocide Games”.

With less than 100 days to go, athletes, politicians and human rights activists are among those who want to see the games cancelled or boycotted for human rights reasons. The playbooks – outlining how the games will run – have just been released, but will the games go ahead as planned?

Boycott calls

The Tokyo games and the concerns around COVID distracted people from the 2022 Winter Olympics for the better part of 2021.

But recently discontent with the Beijing games going ahead has reemerged in a major way. NBA basketballer and outspoken human rights advocate Enes Kanter is one of the latest high-profile voices to call for a boycott.

A group of US senators is also calling for a diplomatic boycott, which would entail world leaders refusing to attend the games.

This comes on top of calls from the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China – including more than 100 MPs from 19 countries – for Beijing to be stripped of the games. The United Kingdom foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, has said it is “unlikely” he will attend.

‘Using the Games’

Concerns about Beijing hosting the games coalesce around severe human rights abuses. These are longstanding, and played into China losing the hosting rights to Sydney in 2000 (although they did host the summer games in 2008).

As a coalition of 200 global campaign groups wrote in September:

At least two million Muslims – including Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and Uzbeks – are locked in “re-education camps” […] The situation in occupied Tibet has dramatically deteriorated and in 2021 […] In Hong Kong […] freedom and democracy are under attack, and youth activists are being rounded up and imprisoned en masse. In mainland China, the Chinese authorities routinely disappear government critics […] At the same time, Beijing has intensified its decades-long tactics of geopolitical bullying and intimidation of democratic Taiwan.

Human Rights Watch says the Chinese government is using the games to “hide their abuses and to imply that the world approves”.

Historical precedents

There is a precedence for not going ahead with an Olympic Games, despite the huge level of organisation and planning involved. The most recent example was the delay to the Tokyo games over the coronavirus pandemic.

The summer games have been cancelled on three occasions due to war – 1916 (Berlin), 1940 (Tokyo), and 1944 (London), while the winter games were cancelled twice – 1940 (Sapporo) and 1944 (Cortina D’Ampezzo).

Under different circumstances, the citizens of Colorado voted to withhold funding for the 1976 Denver Winter games and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) subsequently awarded them to Innsbruck. This followed a public backlash against the ecological and economic costs of running the games.

Take the games away?

The IOC could conceivably strip the games from Beijing and give it to another city – although realistically (and logistically) it is probably too late to do this. Any relocated games would logically have to go to a recent host city such as PyeongChang (2018) or Vancouver (2010), since they have the infrastructure and experience. There could also be an opportunity to postpone the games until 2023.

But the IOC will do its utmost not to cancel, move or have a widespread boycott of the 2022 games. It needs to protect its bottom line and prestige. Officially, the IOC is also at pains to keep politics out of the games. As president Thomas Bach says:

The Olympic Games are not about politics. The International Olympic Committee, as a civil, non-governmental organisation is strictly politically neutral at all times.

If it took the games away, China would then likely withdraw from the Olympics – as it did from 1956 to 1984. This would have a huge impact on the Olympic movement, as China has finished in the top four in the past seven summer games and sitting sixth on the all-time medal tally for the summer and winter games.

A political boycott?

But beyond the IOC, there can still be significant boycotts of the Beijing games.

The United States hotly debated a boycott in the lead up to the 1936 Berlin Olympics in Nazi Germany, while a “counter-Olympics” was planned for Barcelona (it was overtaken by the Spanish Civil War).

Six Olympic boycotts in 1956 (Melbourne), 1964 (Tokyo), 1976 (Montreal), 1980 (Moscow), 1984 (Los Angeles) and 1988 (Seoul) saw the games proceed with reduced participation. The reasons for these boycotts included war, invasions and apartheid.

Read more:
How to protest China’s human rights violations without boycotting the 2022 Olympics

There have not been any boycotts of previous Winter Olympics. But a boycott could prove very powerful. The winter games are not as “global” as the summer event. Most of the athletes and medal winners come from a small list of affluent western nations, such as the United States, Germany, Norway and Canada. So, if they were to collectively support a boycott, it could seriously undermine the competition and force IOC action.

However, most national Olympic committees, especially those in western democracies, are independent bodies and could ignore a government-led boycott. This is what happened with the Moscow games (1980) when Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser supported the US-led boycott but the Australian Olympic Committee allowed its athletes to compete.

What about business boycotts?

Despite heavy lobbying by human rights groups, Olympic sponsors such as Coca Cola, Samsung and Toyota are trying to ignore the politics.

Major sponsors have not made any statements so far about changing their hefty investments (estimated to be about a US$110 billion) linked to the Beijing games. Meanwhile, a broadcast boycott, which would also be very powerful, also seems unlikely.

Athlete protests

As the games get underway, athlete activism could surface. Former Canadian Olympian and scholar Bruce Kidd has made a plea for athletes not to boycott the games and instead be allowed to protest without contravening the IOC Charter.

It is fair to assume neither China nor the IOC will encourage overt athlete protests over China’s human rights record.

However, the rules preventing political protests from Olympic athletes were relaxed slightly ahead of the Tokyo games. This means athletes can “express their views” as long as they do not do so during competition or official ceremonies and do not do so against particular countries.

As we head towards the opening ceremony on February 4, all indications are these games will take place. But Beijing 2022 is on track to be one of the most politically-charged games ever.

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

– ref. As the Beijing Winter Olympics countdown begins, calls to boycott the ‘Genocide Games’ grow – https://theconversation.com/as-the-beijing-winter-olympics-countdown-begins-calls-to-boycott-the-genocide-games-grow-147352

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jake Whitehead, Tritum E-Mobility Fellow & Advance Queensland Industry Research Fellow, The University of Queensland

The Morrison government will today announce its long-awaited electric vehicle strategy, coinciding with COP26 climate change talks underway in Glasgow. The new policy contains some welcome new funding, but is largely notable for what it omits.

In a welcome move, the government has allocated an additional A$250 million for electric vehicles, primarily aimed at charging infrastructure. But unlike every leading electric vehicle market globally, the plan delivers no financial or tax support to help Australian motorists make the switch to a cleaner car.

And the government has failed to explain how the policy will help Australia achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, just as it failed to do when releasing its economy-wide emissions reduction plan last month.

It’s encouraging to see the Morrison government move past its claim of a few years ago that electric vehicles would “end the weekend”. But the new plan is not the national electric vehicle strategy Australia deserves, and badly needs.

Falling short

Transport produces almost 20% of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions – 60% of which is from cars. And the rate of transport emissions is fast increasing.

The government says the policy, titled the Future Fuels and Vehicles Strategy, will lead to 30% of all new car sales being electric by 2030 – which would mean 1.7 million electric cars on Australian roads.

But in 2019, government modelling predicted electric vehicles would comprise 27% of new sales by 2030. So the new measures announced will lead only to a 3% increase in what would have happened anyway.

At COP26 last week, Australia signed a global agreement to make electric vehicles the “new normal” by 2030. One in three cars being electric vehicles hardly meets this goal.

Most concerningly, the government’s plan is inconsistent with global targets to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. The United States, for example, is aiming for at least 50% electric vehicle sales by 2030.

Oddly, it appears the government would prefer Australian motorists remain dependent on expensive, foreign fuel for transport. Its investment in July of $260 million to increase diesel reserves – notably more than the new electric vehicle funding – supports this theory.

Read more:
Clean, green machines: the truth about electric vehicle emissions

Australia’s token effort

Globally, about 5% of all new cars sold are electric and this is rapidly increasing. Yet in Australia, the figure is about 1%.

So what measures does the new strategy contain to shift the needle? In two words, not much. It includes:

• $250 million to support public charging infrastructure, fleet infrastructure, vehicle trials and smart charging infrastructure in households

• continued low-interest financing support for fleets via the Clean Energy Finance Corporation

• an overdue update to the Green Vehicle Guide.

It’s better than nothing. But the government has claimed electric vehicles will deliver around 15% of national emission reductions required by 2050. It’s hard to see how the measures released today will get us there.

The government has also claimed high international demand for electric vehicles could constrain global supply and slow deployment in Australia.

But as carmakers have pointed out, they have little reason to send new, cheaper electric models to Australia because it lacks the policies to stimulate electric vehicle demand.

Read more:
The US jumps on board the electric vehicle revolution, leaving Australia in the dust

The plan Australia deserves

The Morrison government must go back to the drawing board and produce a national electric vehicle strategy consistent with global climate efforts.

That would mean aiming for at least half of new car sales being electric by 2030, and 100% by 2035. This translates to about one million electric vehicles sold in Australia by 2027 and at least 2.5 million by 2030.

It’s a massive increase from the 30,000 or so electric vehicles sold over the past five years, and at least 50% higher than what’s forecast under today’s strategy.

Australia can learn much from overseas jurisdictions on how to boost electric vehicle sales. Until electric vehicle targets are met, the following state and federal policies are needed:

• increase supply by introducing a national sales mandate for electric vehicles, and penalise manufacturers that don’t meet them

• reduce upfront costs by making electric vehicles exempt from GST, stamp duty and registration fees (as is done in Norway)

• support fleet adoption by making electric vehicles exempt from fringe benefits tax

• fund infrastructure by committing to support the rollout of 100,000 public charging points by 2027 (in line with the European Union’s target.

• Penalise states that go it alone on taxing electric vehicle usage. Instead, focus on road charges that address Australia’s multi-billion dollar city congestion problem rather than unfairly taxing rural and regional electric vehicle drivers due to the longer distances they have to drive.

Read more:
Here’s why electric cars have plenty of grunt, oomph and torque

Why Australia must act

The benefits of electric vehicles go far beyond tackling climate change.

We estimate Australians spend more than A$30 billion each year on imported fuel. This alone should be enough to spur governments to support electric vehicle adoption and keep this money in Australia.

Recent analysis by the Australian Conservation Foundation also found maintaining the current approach to transport emissions could cost Australia up to A$865 billion between 2022 and 2050.

Aside from greenhouse gas emissions, the costs were attributed to air, noise and water pollution. But better zero-emission transport policies could enable Australia to reduce these costs by up to A$492 billion.

Clearly, electric vehicles deliver a net economic benefit, even after accounting for the cost of incentives and loss of fuel tax revenue.

As the rest of the world charges ahead, the Morrison government’s new strategy looks ever more foolish.

Read more:
Wrong way, go back: a proposed new tax on electric vehicles is a bad idea

Dr Jake Whitehead is the Tritium e-Mobility Fellow at the Dow Centre for Sustainable Engineering Innovation at The University of Queensland, holds an Advance Queensland Industry Research Fellowship focussed on how electric vehicles can deliver co-benefits to the energy sector, is a Member of the International Electric Vehicle Policy Council, is a Lead Author of the AR6 Transport Chapter for The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and Director of Transmobility Consulting. He has previously received government funding for several sustainable transport projects, including research on both hydrogen and electric vehicles. His UQ position is not funded by Tritium, and he does not recieve any income from the company. His position is named in recognition of the advanced manufacturing company being founded by former engineering graduates at The University of Queensland.

Kai Li Lim is the inaugural St Baker E-Mobility Research Fellow at The University of Queensland’s Dow Centre for Sustainable Engineering Innovation. His position is endowed through the St Baker Energy Innovation Fund, but he does not receive any income from any of its portfolio companies.

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

– ref. As the world surges ahead on electric vehicle policy, the Morrison government’s new strategy leaves Australia idling in the garage – https://theconversation.com/as-the-world-surges-ahead-on-electric-vehicle-policy-the-morrison-governments-new-strategy-leaves-australia-idling-in-the-garage-169824

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Podger, Honorary Professor of Public Policy, Australian National University

Australia may be leading the world in measures to protect public interest journalism from the threats arising from media restructuring and news aggregators such as Google and Facebook, but it has yet to properly address the related need for firm professional standards.

At the moment the Australian Press Council deals with complaints about the print and online content of the newspapers, magazines and journals that fund it.

Among those publishers are the two biggest: Nine and News Corp.

Other big publishers are not or cannot be members, among them Guardian Australia, The Conversation and the ABC.

A separate Independent Media Council deals with complaints against newspapers operated by Seven-West media, which funds it. The Independent Council handles about 30 complaints a year, whereas the Press Council handles more than 1,000.

Complaints against the news content of licensed radio and television stations are handled by the government’s Australian Communications and Media Authority.

There have been attempts to lift standards

It is nearly a decade since

• the government’s Finkelstein Review recommended a government-funded statutory body take over the role and functions of the Australian Press Council and the news-related functions of the Communications and Media Authority

• the government’s subsequent Convergence Review recommended an industry-led body with some government funding to oversee journalistic standards for news and comment regardless of the platform on which it is posted

Neither recommendation was implemented, though the threat of government regulation did lead to significant reforms to the Press Council on which I served between 2012 and 2021.

The reforms the Council Chair Julian Disney drove strengthened its independence from the organisations that funded it, and its ability to not only to consider complaints but also to review its general principles, develop new standards and guidelines and to establish education and promotion activities.

Read more:
10 years after Finkelstein, media accountability has gone backwards

Publisher members agreed to double their fees and to enter into contracts requiring them to give four years’ notice should they leave. A more rigorous approach was introduced for handling complaints with adjudications being made by panels of members representing the pubic and journalists only.

The government is inching towards more

The government has raised the possibility of trying again, its green paper last year on broadcasting promising to “implement a staged program of reform towards ‘platform neutral’ media regulation”.

The legislation that set up this year’s mandatory bargaining code with platforms including Facebook edged down this path by requiring news organisations that wanted to use the code to pass a “professional standards test”.

But the test required little more than that they be subject to one of the existing bodies or have internal standards.

At best the requirement is weak. At worst it might deepen fragmentation.

Another step is the Code of Practice on Disinformation and Misinformation issued by the Digital Industry Group Inc in February in response to a discussion paper issued by the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

Despite its title, the code focuses only on disinformation not “misinformation and news quality” and “empowering users to identify the quality of news and information” as asked for by the authority.

Read more:
Press Council chief fires parting shot at News Corp

Last year’s green paper also suggested the establishment of a Public Interest News Gathering (PING) Trust which would issue grants funded by proceeds from the sale of broadcast spectrum.

There is also a parliamentary inquiry into media diversity which is yet to report.

Meantime, the Press Council has had to freeze its fees in response to the financial positions of the publishers that fund it. It is financially dependent on just two big ones. News Corp alone provides more than half of its revenue.

The journalists union, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, gave notice of its intention to withdraw from the Council.

It said “despite media convergence being a lived reality for journalists and the public for a decade, the regulatory framework had failed to keep up to date”.

Here’s how better regulation could work

The Council has its critics, whether related to slowness in handling complaints (a legitimate concern) or seeming insufficiently independent or insufficiently (or overly) critical of the work it examines. But its work is important.

One way a platform-neutral regulatory framework could work would be to separate the media into three categories, applying different standards to each:

• The vast majority of individuals and organisations who communicate publicly, exercising their freedom of speech limited only by the laws of defamation and anti-discrimination etc.

• Non-government organisations providing public interest journalism, expected to meet professional standards including “accuracy, fairness and balance”

• government-funded media organisations such as the ABC and SBS, expected not only to be “accurate, fair and balanced” but also politically neutral overall in their news coverage

Radio and television broadcasters licensed to use spectrum could be included in the second category, though some might argue they should have the higher standards of the third category.

The obvious starting point for the second category is to replace or restructure the Press Council.

The ambit of the new or expanded body would include the news and current affairs responsibilities of the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

That way Nine would have its television stations regulated in the same way as its newspapers.

There was a good reason for rejecting the Finkelstein inquiry’s idea of a government-funded statutory authority to replace the council: self-regulation is more consistent with press freedom.

But government funding is almost certainly needed (on top of industry funding) if the council or a body like it is able to do its job properly.

Using spectrum revenue for funding as is proposed for the PING Trust would be one way to providing government funding without government interference.

Read more:
The TV networks holding back the future

Regulating digital publishing is more difficult because much of it is international, although there is a strong case for some form of independent oversight of algorithms to limit the risk of social harm.

One thing that could be done in Australia is for digital platforms and publishers to voluntarily adopt an improved version of the Digital Industry Group’s code.

Users would be able to better assess the quality of information on platforms or sites if they knew whether the source was a member of the Press Council or its replacement and how they could take part in its complaints-handling processes.

Andrew Podger is affiliated with the Australian Press Council. I was a Public Member of the Press Council until July 2021 (mentioned in the article), and I still occasionally sit on its adjudication panels.

– ref. Australian journalism needs more than better protection, it needs better standards – https://theconversation.com/australian-journalism-needs-more-than-better-protection-it-needs-better-standards-171117

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Priyadarshi Chowdhury, Postdoctoral research fellow, Monash University

Most people know that the land masses on which we all live represent just 30% of Earth’s surface, and the rest is covered by oceans.

The emergence of the continents was a pivotal moment in the history of life on Earth, not least because they are the humble abode of most humans. But it’s still not clear exactly when these continental landmasses first appeared on Earth, and what tectonic processes built them.

Our research, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, estimates the age of rocks from the most ancient continental fragments (called cratons) in India, Australia and South Africa. The sand that created these rocks would once have formed some of the world’s first beaches.

We conclude that the first large continents were making their way above sea level around 3 billion years ago – much earlier than the 2.5 billion years estimated by previous research.

A 3-billion-year-old beach

When continents rise above the oceans they start to erode. Wind and rain break rocks down into grains of sand, which are transported downstream by rivers and accumulate along coastlines to form beaches.

These processes, which we can observe in action during a trip to the beach today, have been operating for billions of years. By scouring the rock record for signs of ancient beach deposits, geologists can study episodes of continent formation that happened in the distant past.

The Singhbhum craton, an ancient piece of continental crust that makes up the eastern parts of the Indian subcontinent, contains several formations of ancient sandstone. These layers were originally formed from sand deposited in beaches, estuaries and rivers, which was then buried and compressed into rock.

We determined the age of these deposits by studying microscopic grains of a mineral called zircon, which is preserved within these sandstones. This mineral contains tiny amounts of uranium, which very slowly turns into lead via radioactive decay. This allows us to estimate the age of these zircon grains, using a technique called uranium-lead dating, which is well suited to dating very old rocks.

The zircon grains reveal that the Singhbhum sandstones were deposited around 3 billion years ago, making them some of the oldest beach deposits in the world. This also suggests a continental landmass had emerged in what is now India by at least 3 billion years ago.

Interestingly, sedimentary rocks of roughly this age are also present in the oldest cratons of Australia (the Pilbara and Yilgarn cratons) and South Africa (the Kaapvaal Craton), suggesting multiple continental landmasses may have emerged around the globe at this time.

Read more:
What’s Australia made of? Geologically, it depends on the state you’re in

Rise above it

How did rocky continents manage to rise above the oceans? A unique feature of continents is their thick, buoyant crust, which allows them to float on top of Earth’s mantle, just like a cork in water. Like icebergs, the top of continents with thick crust (typically more than 45km thick) sticks out above the water, whereas continental blocks with crusts thinner than about 40km remain submerged.

So if the secret of the continents’ rise is due to their thickness, we need to understand how and why they began to grow thicker in the first place.

Most ancient continents, including the Singhbhum Craton, are made of granites, which formed through the melting of pre-existing rocks at the base of the crust. In our research, we found the granites in the Singhbhum Craton formed at increasingly greater depths between about 3.5 billion and 3 billion years ago, implying the crust was becoming thicker during this time window.

Because granites are one of the least dense types of rock, the ancient crust of the Singhbhum Craton would have become progressively more buoyant as it grew thicker. We calculate that by around 3 billion years ago, the continental crust of the Singhbhum Craton had grown to be about 50km thick, making it buoyant enough to begin rising above sea level.

The rise of continents had a profound influence on the climate, atmosphere and oceans of the early Earth. And the erosion of these continents would have provided chemical nutrients to coastal environments in which early photosynthetic life was flourishing, leading to a boom in oxygen production and ultimately helping to create the oxygen-rich atmosphere in which we thrive today.

Read more:
The floor is lava: after 1.5 billion years in flux, here’s how a new, stronger crust set the stage for life on Earth

Erosion of the early continents would have also helped in sequestering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, leading to global cooling of the early Earth. Indeed, the earliest glacial deposits also happen to appear in the geological record around 3 billion years ago, shortly after the first continents emerged from the oceans.

Priyadarshi Chowdhury receives funding from Australian Research Council Grant No FL160100168.

Jack Mulder receives funding from Australian Research Council grant FL160100168

Oliver Nebel receives funding from the Australian Research Council Grant No DP180100580.

Peter Cawood receives funding from Australian Research Council grant FL160100168

– ref. Land ahoy: study shows the first continents bobbed to the surface more than 3 billion years ago – https://theconversation.com/land-ahoy-study-shows-the-first-continents-bobbed-to-the-surface-more-than-3-billion-years-ago-171391

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Safiullah Taye, Researcher and Academic, Deakin University

The fall of the Afghanistan government to the Taliban has presented the world with some stark choices. In recent weeks, the international community has raised alarm about the rapidly escalating humanitarian emergency in the country, calling for an influx of aid to reach millions of Afghans ahead of the winter.

In the meantime, the new Taliban regime has systematically disenfranchised the Afghan people and severely restricted their fundamental human rights – most notably those of women and girls to education.

In the short term, the failure of the Taliban and the international community to respond adequately to the country’s urgent humanitarian needs is likely to lead to famine.

Already, the UN estimates nearly half the country’s population – or about 23 million people – is facing acute hunger in the coming months. And 3.2 million children under the age of five are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition by the end of the year.

However, the long-term needs of the country cannot be so easily disentangled from these more acute concerns.

The international community must find a way to address the humanitarian emergency without emboldening the Taliban or neglecting its appalling human rights record. The threats of ethnic cleansing and gender apartheid are real – and will be just as detrimental to the future of the civilian population of Afghanistan.

Mounting humanitarian emergency

Afghanistan was facing a major humanitarian crisis before the Taliban took control in August. Nearly half the population was living below the national poverty line last year. This was due to a combination of years of insurgent violence, a severe drought in parts of the country and the disruptions caused by the pandemic.

Read more:
How ethnic and religious divides in Afghanistan are contributing to violence against minorities

The crisis was accelerated by the fall of the government to the Taliban. Afghanistan’s foreign assets – amounting to nearly US$9.5 billion (A$12.8 billion) – were immediately frozen in the United States. This led to a near-complete breakdown of the country’s financial and public sectors.

According to the International Monetary Fund, the country’s economy is expected to contract by 30% this year, further plunging people into poverty. The UN estimates 97% of Afghans could fall into poverty by mid-2022.

Concerns over allowing the Taliban to distribute aid

The Taliban has demanded recognition by the international community and the unfreezing of Afghanistan’s financial reserves held in the United States.

The European Union has also cut off its development funding to the country, while the IMF suspended access to more than US$400 million (A$540 million) in funds and the World Bank froze its disbursements of US$800 million (A$1.08 billion) in pledged aid this year.

Even with Afghanistan on the precipice of a humanitarian disaster, there are major concerns about whether emergency aid could be distributed in a transparent and impartial manner without strengthening the Taliban’s repressive and exclusionary regime.

Contrary to its earlier promises of forming an “inclusive” government, the Taliban’s all-male caretaker cabinet is dominated by hardline and radical factions. The leader of the Haqqani militant network, Sirajuddin Haqqani, is the new minister of interior, while his uncle, Khalil Haqqani, is the minister for Afghan refugees.

As such, the IMF warns any funds going to Afghanistan may be used to finance terrorism and launder money.

The Taliban’s blatant disregard for human rights also calls into question its ability to distribute aid fairly.

The group’s aims for gender segregation, for instance, have effectively pushed women out of the workforce. Except for some essential roles in primary education and health care, most women have been forced out of public sector jobs, depriving countless families of their income. Millions of Afghan girls have also been banned from attending schools and universities.

These policies are affecting the most marginalised sections of society, which are also the most likely to be in greatest need of humanitarian assistance.

The Taliban’s severe restrictions on female aid workers have also limited the reach of aid to women across much of the country.

Furthermore, the Taliban is engaging in mass land grabs by forcibly evicting members of the Hazara minority from their homes and farms. Human Rights Watch says other people associated with the former government have also been targeted as a form of “collective punishment”.

Read more:
With catastrophe looming, the world cannot turn its back on Afghanistan’s children

Many observers have raised alarms that these incidents of mass dispossession, as well as gruesome attacks on the minority group by the local affiliate of the Islamic State, may amount to genocide.

There are also multiple reports of summary executions and torture of groups and individuals who supported the previous government across Afghanistan. In Panjshir province, where the Taliban faced fierce resistance, for instance, the group is accused of killing and torturing civilians.

What can be done to help?

In the short term, it is vital international donors respond to the humanitarian crisis by immediately providing life-saving support ahead of the long and cold winter. But the world must do this without offering the Taliban the recognition and legitimacy it desires, or allowing the group to directly control the funds.

The G20 countries are currently exploring ways to do this. It would require an agreement with the Taliban to allow aid to be delivered without going through the group’s direct authority, although it remains unclear how this would work.

As Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said last month,

It’s very hard to see how one can help the Afghan people […] without some sort of involvement of the Taliban government.

While Taliban cooperation is necessary for delivering some emergency aid, donor countries and institutions must understand the limits of aid as a leverage in encouraging moderation.

UNICEF has negotiated an agreement with the Taliban in which the UN agency pays teachers’ salaries directly, without the funds going through Taliban-controlled institutions. If successful, this can potentially offer a model for other sectors to replicate, such as health and agriculture.

For the delivery of humanitarian assistance, donors and NGOs can also use many existing community networks. The European Union has pledged 1 billion euros (A$1.5 billion) in immediate aid to Afghanistan, with about half to be channelled through international organisations working in the country.

Read more:
What did billions in aid to Afghanistan accomplish? 5 questions answered

Western countries have made clear that any influx of cash would not lead to recognition of the Taliban government.

While the diplomatic recognition of states under international law is not always conditioned on the respect for human rights, the Taliban must not be allowed to use the humanitarian emergency as a bargaining chip to achieve international recognition.

In the absence of a genuine commitment by the Taliban to address the growing international concerns, the world must engage with the group on purely pragmatic and humanitarian grounds, without extending formal recognition.

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

– ref. Can the world avert mass starvation in Afghanistan without emboldening the Taliban? – https://theconversation.com/can-the-world-avert-mass-starvation-in-afghanistan-without-emboldening-the-taliban-170709

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kylie Quinn, Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow, School of Health and Biomedical Sciences, RMIT University

The past 20 months has seen an explosion of vaccine development, with COVID vaccine testing and rollout happening at an unprecedented pace in the face of a global pandemic. There have been absolute triumphs – the fact we have multiple safe, effective vaccines is remarkable – but there have also been challenges.

We’ve seen storage and delivery issues, vaccine hesitancy, breakthrough infections and the beginnings of waning immunity.

Vaccine innovators around the world have these challenges in their sights. They are already working on the next generation of COVID vaccines.

Read more:
COVID vaccines for 5 to 11 year olds are inching closer. Here’s what we know so far

Tweaking current vaccines

After hundreds of millions of doses, we have a good handle on how current vaccines are performing and where they can be improved. As more data is gathered, a modified dose, time between doses, and/or using different vaccines together in mix-and-match strategies may become the preferred approach.

We could also improve vaccines that aren’t performing at their best.

Inactivated vaccines have been used in many parts of the world but their early protection has waned, particularly in older people, with the World Health Organisation now recommending a third dose.

One way to improve this could be to add an adjuvant – something that fires up the immune system. One such vaccine, called Valneva, has early results that suggest including an adjuvant improves immunity.

Making vaccination easier

As we have seen, vaccinating large numbers of people is not easy. Innovations to make this easier will be welcome.

Needle-free approaches would be ideal. One approach, known as a nanopatch vaccine, coats the vaccine onto tiny spikes on a small patch.

The patch is applied to the skin and the spikes deliver the vaccine to a dense barrier of immune cells sitting just under the top layers of our skin. A nanopatch COVID vaccine developed by Vaxxas and researchers in Queensland has been shown to trigger strong immune responses in animal models, with trials underway in humans.

Another approach, known as an intranasal vaccine, sprays a vaccine up the nose. This would be easier to deliver and it could also build immunity in the right location in our body.

The coronavirus infects us through the lining of the nose, mouth, throat and lungs – a type of sticky tissue that lines body cavities and some organs called mucosa.

Currently, COVID vaccines are delivered into our arm muscle and build antibody levels in our blood and tissue, with some antibody spilling out into the mucosa. Delivering the vaccine directly to the mucosa might be a better approach for preventing COVID infection. This is being trialled with a number of vaccines, including the AstraZeneca vaccine.

If yearly COVID boosters are recommended for some or even all of the population, it would be easier to deliver them together with the yearly flu vaccine. These “multipathogen” vaccines are being tested with current flu vaccine or even new types of flu vaccine.

More durable immunity

With two doses of the current vaccines, immunity is seen to decline and poor responses are seen in certain groups such as the severely immune-compromised and older people. COVID vaccines that can induce more durable immunity, more consistently across vulnerable populations would be a major innovation.

This could require completely new vaccines. Protein subunit vaccines – which use purified protein from the surface of the virus as a target – are still working their way through approvals around the world.

One example is the Novavax vaccine, but there are a large number of other protein subunit vaccines also development that often use new adjuvants – again, the vaccine ingredient that fires up your immune system. These new adjuvants could support more durable immunity but this remains to be tested.

Read more:
Australians will soon receive COVID booster vaccines. Why do we need them, and how effective are they?

Protection against future variants

We can also update the current vaccines by changing their target. All current COVID vaccines use a target from the original strain of the coronavirus to train the immune system.

This is okay for vaccinating against the Delta strain, as this new virus still looks pretty similar to the original virus to your immune system. But new viruses could emerge that the immune system struggles to recognise.

We could simply use a new target from a new virus. Some vaccines have been updated to target the Beta strain, which is relatively hard for our immune system to recognise. Trials are being run with these Beta-targeted vaccines as a dry run, to make sure that we can update vaccines if we need to.

A more ambitious approach would be to focus the immune response on a target/s common to all coronaviruses. This “pan-coronavirus” vaccine would hopefully provide protection from all or most coronaviruses. Again, early data from animal models are promising.

Working out if vaccines are working

An important innovation for COVID vaccines would be an immune correlate.

An immune correlate is something that can be measured in an immune response to indicate if someone will be protected against infection or not. For rubella and hepatitis B virus, we measure the amount of antibody targeting these viruses in our blood. If antibody is absent or too low, a booster dose of the vaccine is recommended.

An immune correlate for COVID could similarly allow us to identify people that need a booster.

Some researchers, including Australian teams, are sorting through data from around the world to see if there is something we can measure in our immune response to use as a correlate for COVID.

Research around the world is driving us towards the next generation of COVID vaccines. Innovations for COVID vaccines will lead to better vaccines for other infections too – those that currently afflict humanity and those that are yet to emerge.

Kylie Quinn receives funding from the Rebecca L. Cooper Foundation, CASS Foundation and the Medical Research Future Fund.

– ref. Nose sprays, needle-free patches, durable immunity: towards the next generation of COVID vaccines – https://theconversation.com/nose-sprays-needle-free-patches-durable-immunity-towards-the-next-generation-of-covid-vaccines-170861

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kim Rasmussen, Deputy Dean and Associate Dean, Research, Faculty of Engineering, University of Sydney

Australia has been slow to join the global shift towards decarbonisation and lower emissions. Now, ready or not, the world is on the verge of a climate action crescendo. Australia can choose what to do next: act meaningfully and with determination; dither and have its hand forced; or, at worst, face punishing measures such as tariffs.

Despite our lumbering start, we are in a fortunate position. We do not need to start from scratch to green our economy and participate wholly in the decarbonisation revolution. While Australia debates “where to from here” as world leaders come together for COP26 in Glasgow, university researchers have long been heads down developing the very research, talent and technology we’ll need for this transformation.

Read more:
Scott Morrison is hiding behind future technologies, when we should just deploy what already exists

With the right mix of industry and government support, these university-developed resources will allow us to pivot to a decarbonised economy. Australia can emerge as a green export and research and development leader.

Across engineering and science, we’re witnessing a research and technology explosion. The once unimaginable is being made possible. We are seeing advances in many fields, including:

• renewable and low-emission technologies

• energy generation, utilisation and storage

• electrification and network hybridisation

• power fuels, including hydrogen.

With our abundant natural and mineral resources and agricultural industry, these are all areas in which Australia can and should lead to become a research and development exporter. Aside from helping to transition our economy and lower emissions, this would attract further overseas talent and investment.

Australia has an untapped opportunity to switch from being an exporter of carbon fuels to an exporter of green fuels. We can do this by converting solar and wind energy to stored energy like hydrogen. For domestic consumption, there is a wider range of energy-storage options including batteries and Snowy 2.0.

Read more:
Australia’s clean hydrogen revolution is a path to prosperity – but it must be powered by renewable energy

Federal support for developing a green fuel export industry is growing slowly. However, industry and financial consortia have been investing rapidly in green technologies and plants.

Scale of challenge demands collaboration

Tackling climate change requires a collective approach. That’s because it affects every sector and part of society.

Universities were once considered somewhat siloed. Now they are working more closely with other institutions. Formerly disparate areas of expertise are being connected to develop research and technology to tackle and adapt to climate change.

Examples of collaboration range from historians and engineers working together to better understand how climate change led to the demise of Angkor through to using data analytics to better understand the impacts of the resource sector on the environment. Increased collaboration between disciplines and institutes makes universities an attractive resource and “one-stop shop” for companies looking to decarbonise or expand their offerings to compete in the green economy.

Read more:
How universities and professions are preparing to meet the climate challenge

Campuses too are being transformed into high-impact, industrial research hubs. They are gearing up for greater industry collaboration, testing and rapid prototyping.

These campus facilities include state-of-the-art infrastructure, ranging from nano technology and foundries to advanced manufacturing and microanalysis. They are helping to develop scalable and translatable research for both large existing companies and start-ups.

Research is already paying off

Universities are also increasingly commercialising their research and technology. In the process, they are developing companies with the potential to rewrite Australia’s climate change fate.

One such company is agri-robotics start-up Agerris. It’s commercialising technology developed over the past 15 years from the University of Sydney’s Australian Centre for Field Robotics, a source of several successful start-ups. Agerris’s robotics solutions to optimise farming have the potential to control emissions in agriculture and related areas including forestation and oceanography.

Another example is zinc-bromide battery developer Gelion. This spin-off from the University of Sydney Nano Institute is disrupting the solar energy industry with its safe, cost-effective products.

Snowy Mountains Hydro, while one of the most ambitious feats of engineering ever achieved, should not remain our nation’s industrial magnum opus. It’s vital Australia embarks on an ambitious plan to lower emissions and decarbonise our economy. If we want the next big thing, we can bet universities are already developing the thinking and technology behind it.

Read more:
Climate change is the most important mission for universities of the 21st century

All academics know that often the best students are the ones who work diligently and consistently over a long period. Others may wait until the last minute, with some bright, creative minds somehow always pulling through with distinction.

We are now at the 11th hour. Let’s hope Australia is that precocious student who can pull it all off in the nick of time.

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

– ref. How can Australia get cracking on emissions? The know-how we need is in our universities – https://theconversation.com/how-can-australia-get-cracking-on-emissions-the-know-how-we-need-is-in-our-universities-170374

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

After demonising Labor’s policy on electric cars before the 2019 election, the federal government has put electric vehicles at the centre of a “future fuels and vehicles strategy” that Prime Minister Scott Morrison will release on Tuesday.

The policy puts another A$178 million into the government’s future fuels fund, bringing it to $250 million, for investment to encourage low emissions vehicles.

The expanded fund will focus on four areas of investment: public electric vehicle charging and hydrogen refuelling infrastructure; heavy and long-distance vehicle technologies; commercial fleets, and household smart charging.

The government estimates its strategy will result in more than $500 million combined private and public co-investment for the uptake of future fuels and involve the creation of more than 2600 new jobs.

But the policy is minimalist, ruling out consumer subsidies and concessions or mandating a phase out of new petrol and diesel-powered vehicles.

In 2019 Morrison was scathing about the ALP electric vehicle policy – which set a target of 50% of all new car sales being electric vehicles by 2030.

While saying the government didn’t have a problem with electric vehicles per se, Morrison in 2019 claimed “Bill Shorten wants to end the weekend when it comes to his policy on electric vehicles where you’ve got Australians who love being out there in their four-wheel drives”.

Morrison says in his Tuesday announcement with emissions reduction minister Angus Taylor, “Australians love their family sedan, farmers rely on their trusted ute and our economy counts on trucks and trains to deliver goods from coast to coast.

Read more:
COP26: here’s what it would take to end coal power worldwide

“We will not be forcing Australians out of the car they want to drive or penalising those who can least afford it through bans or taxes. Instead, the strategy will work to drive down the cost of low and zero emission vehicles, and enhance consumer choice.

“We will do this by creating the right environment for industry co-investment.”

Sales of new technology vehicles are increasing quickly: battery electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles were a record 8,688 sales in the first half of this year, representing 1.57% of the total light vehicle market. This compared to 6,900 in 2020.

But the rise is coming off a low base. About 1% of new vehicles sold in Australia are electric – which lags behind the global average of 5%.

The government policy says by 2030 battery electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles are projected to make up 30% of annual new passenger and light commercial vehicle sales. This would translate into more than 1.7 million battery electric and plug-in vehicles on Australian roads by 2030.

The government says it will promote and bring forward priority market reforms to state and territory ministers “to ensure the electricity grid is EV-ready”.

In its electric vehicle policy released earlier this year Labor promised to deliver a discount to cut the cost of non-luxury electric cars and install community batteries. Its policy was costed at $400 million over several years.

The government says that in its consultation process there were some calls for subsidies or tax concessions to reduce the price difference between conventional and low emission vehicles. But, it argues, “reducing the total cost of ownership through subsidies would not represent value for the taxpayer, particularly as industry is rapidly working through technological developments to make battery electric vehicles cheaper.

Read more:
Scott Morrison is hiding behind future technologies, when we should just deploy what already exists

“The Australian Taxation Office will investigate issuing updated guidance for businesses on the tax measures of low emission vehicles to provide clarity for fleet purchasing.”

The government’s position on subsidies is at odds with industry experts, who say the measure is important to encourage motorists to make the switch to clean vehicles.

An exclusive poll of 62 of Australia’s preeminent economists, published by The Conversation in June, found they overwhelmingly backed subsidies for all-electric vehicles and for public charging stations.

The majority also backed setting a date to ban the import of traditionally-powered cars – a move adopted by many other nations including China, the United Kingdom and France.

Back from Glasgow and out on the campaign trail this week, Morrison is promoting aspects of his net zero by 2050 technology policy. On Monday he was in Newcastle announcing a $1.5 million grant through the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) as part of a study to to assess the feasibility of a green hydrogen hub at the Port of Newcastle.

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

– ref. Scott Morrison spruiks electric vehicles – but rules out subsidies and an end-date for petrol cars – https://theconversation.com/scott-morrison-spruiks-electric-vehicles-but-rules-out-subsidies-and-an-end-date-for-petrol-cars-171429

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alison Hutton, Professor , University of Newcastle

A fatal crowd surge during a performance by US rapper Travis Scott on Friday night has become one of the deadliest live music incidents in recent years. Crowd crushes during the Houston show, which was part of the Astroworld Music Festival, led to eight deaths and dozens of injuries.

The incident is still being investigated, with criminal investigations also underway. How does such catastrophe emerge in a space where people are supposed to be enjoying themselves?

I have been working in the area of crowd safety for several years. My expertise focuses on ways of boosting safety at large events such as Schoolies, outdoor music festivals and sporting tournaments. Based on reports, it seems several factors — compounded by mismanagement — led to an environment that was not conducive to what we call “cooperative crowding”.

Read more:
Friday essay: the sound of fear

An unsettled start

In a successfully managed event, organisers will create an atmosphere in which people are relaxed and feel part of a collective. Reports of early pushing and shoving at Scott’s show are a bad sign.

Adding to this, several witnesses reported they were unable to persuade event organisers to take action once the disaster was unfolding. It may be the music was too loud, although such details won’t be known until investigations finish.

According to the New York Times and several other outlets, Scott’s show continued for 40 minutes after city officials reported on the “mass casualty event” — with the show finishing just half an hour earlier than planned.

It’s all about event control

Event managers will often turn the lights up, or play music with a slower tempo, to help tame a rowdy audience. Lighting conditions and music are both important psychosocial considerations.

In fact, there are several ways organisers and performers on stage can attempt to settle a crowd — even among audiences of high-intensity musical acts.

For instance, German heavy-metal band Rammstein can attract intense and sometimes aggressive crowds. When the band played the 2011 Big Day Out festival in Sydney, managers put on a pyrotechnic display and ambient music between sets to helps shift and control the crowd’s mood.

It’s about knowing your audience and the environment they are likely to create. The genre will determine the demographic and the expectation of the crowd’s behaviour. If it’s expected a particular show will attract a high-energy demographic, this needs to be prepared for in advance. Effective crowd control is preemptive, not reactive.

At music festivals, the acts in the lineup can also have a direct influence on the audience’s behaviour. Festival-goers can be persuaded to participate in activities and behaviours at the performer(s) request, abandoning safety restrictions put in place by event management.

As such, performers can create a calming environment through their interaction with the audience and have a positive influence on the crowd.

What measures are in place?

Despite widespread coverage of the Astroworld incident, the reality is that deadly crowd crushes are not common. Australia’s most recent crowd-related music festival fatality was during a Limp Bizkit performance, during the Big Day Out event in 2001.

On the whole, event managers put a lot of work into making sure crowds are looked after. Investment in crowd care can come through venue “chill-out spaces”, and granting different levels of access such as ground level versus stalls, or VIP seating. This is because events both in Australia and internationally are heavily legislated.

On-the-ground security guards matter a lot, as they help ensure the crowd is sufficiently spread out and safe. The layout and design of the venue is also crucial, and the space should be able to handle the expected number of attendees.

The 2010 Love Parade disaster in Germany is one example of a chaotic crowd crush in which there were several systemic issues. The events communications system went down and there was only only one entry and exit – a catastrophic situation that culminated in 21 deaths in a crush inside a tunnel.

Closer to home, in 2016 attendees at the Falls Festival had to rush from one stage to another, which resulted in about 80 people being injured, including 20 hospital admissions.

On the other hand, there are plenty of well-organised events that manage to accommodate hundreds of thousands of people, such as the Glastonbury festival.

What can I do in this situation?

As concerts and shows start to resume, you may wonder how you can stay safe in a volatile crowd. The reality is, there is not much someone can do if they find themselves stuck deep in a dense mosh pit which is out of control, and the risk in this scenario is great.

The best way to avoid danger is to stay on the fringes, well away from the most congested sections of the crowd. If you have concert plans, ask yourself: what kind of people might I expect? Will people be drinking? Will it be family-friendly? Common sense will go a long way.

If, despite your planning, you find yourself in a crowd situation where you don’t feel safe, you should immediately report to security if you can. If you’re near the stage, you might also be able to get the performer’s attention. The performer has lot of power and, as several incidents in the past have shown us, they can shut things down until the crowd starts to cooperate.

Read more:
Computing the chances of Olympic crowd chaos

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

– ref. Astroworld tragedy: here’s how music festival organisers can stop big crowds turning deadly – https://theconversation.com/astroworld-tragedy-heres-how-music-festival-organisers-can-stop-big-crowds-turning-deadly-171397

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Morris, Research scientist, University of Sydney

One of the most well-known findings in the economic study of happiness is that, on average, happiness increases with income, but at a certain point diminishing returns set in.

In other words, money can only buy a fixed level of happiness, after which extra income and wealth doesn’t make much difference. Presumably after this point, happiness depends on other things, such as health, leisure time, quality of friendships and close family.

Our new study, published in October, found the income level required to be happy in Australia has been increasing and moving out of reach of most Australians.

The happiness of increasing numbers of Australians has become more dependent on income than ever this millennium.

Read more:
Can money buy happiness?

Happiness increases with income, to a point

Nobel prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman first described the change point where extra income begins to matter less for happiness. He found this change point in the United States was US$75,000 in 2008.

This was substantially more than the US median income of $52,000 in the same year.

The difference revealed an unacknowledged inequity in the distribution of well-being in the US economy. The happiness of the poorest majority of the US population (68%) was tied to marginal changes in income, while that of a richer minority (32%) wasn’t.

Read more:
The paradox of happiness: the more you chase it the more elusive it becomes

But what about fairer, more egalitarian countries with a strong middle-class, like Australia? Since the start of the millennium, Australia has enjoyed a growing household real income and stable levels of income inequality, better than the US and on par with the OECD average.

And the average level of life-satisfaction in Australia has been reliably higher than the OECD average, as well as the US.

In terms of real income, income inequality and overall life satisfaction, Australia has a stable and solid record.

However, life satisfaction isn’t the same as happiness.

What did we study?

We used data from the influential Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, provided by the Melbourne Institute.

This data show Australia’s average happiness has been declining since 2009.

The annual HILDA survey asks Australians to recall how often they felt happy, joyful, sad, tired or depressed in the last month, in each year since 2001.

The frequency of these feelings is quite different from a single rating of how satisfied you are with your life.

In our study, we combined each person’s frequencies into a single happiness score to see how it changed between 2001 and 2019 in relation to household income.

When people were asked to consider how often they experienced different emotions in the past month, rather than how satisfied they are with their life in general, the average happiness score peaked in 2009 and has declined every year since 2012.

What did we find?

The change point at which the happiness of most Australians no longer strongly depends on income has almost doubled from A$43,000 to A$74,000.

At the same time, the median income has lingered at less than A$50,000 per year since 2009.

The number of Australians on an income below this change point has increased from around 60% to 74%.

These changes have taken place after adjusting for inflation and cost-of-living increases.

So what does this trend over time mean?

Our work shows someone living in the average Australian household earning A$50,000 in 2001 and the equivalent amount in 2019 (adjusted for inflation) has become much less happy over the past two decades.

On the other hand, the happiness of people living in a wealthier household (for example, $80,000 per household) has been largely preserved.

Over the first two decades of this millennium, more and more Australians’ happiness has become dependent on their income, despite high life satisfaction ratings and stable income inequality across households.

These measures of economic well-being and equity, typically published by economic wonks and government policy-makers, aren’t revealing potentially important changes in the underlying marginal return on income across the Australian economy.

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

Income by itself doesn’t explain a large proportion of the variance in happiness, only around 5% (ranging between 1.6% to 14.8% in our study). But it’s still concerning because across the entire population these small changes can be expected to accumulate.

Australians’ happiness is becoming more sensitive to income as the change point has increased. At the same time, incomes are stagnating and happiness levels are declining, which is likely to drive further inequities in well-being between the rich and poor in Australia.

As Australia heads into a post-COVID world and deals with the economic after-effects of the pandemic, our government and its advisers need to pay attention to more than GDP and growth, and ask whether the distribution of well-being and happiness is improving for everyone.

Nick Glozier receives funding from the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course (Project ID CE200100025).

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

– ref. Why happiness is becoming more expensive and out of reach for many Australians – https://theconversation.com/why-happiness-is-becoming-more-expensive-and-out-of-reach-for-many-australians-170877

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ari Mattes, Lecturer in Communications and Media, University of Notre Dame Australia

Review: Burning, directed by Eva Orner.

The word “crisis” comes from the Greek krinein, which means to decide. You’re stuck in the middle of a burning fire: you need to decide whether you are going to stay and perish; whether you are going to fight to put it out; or whether you are going to leave and let it burn.

Burning, Eva Orner’s new documentary, is about the climate crisis, and the Australian government’s decision to (metaphorically) let the fires burn.

It is quite explicit in its claims, and this makes it effective as a kind of cinematic essay. It carefully presents – via the words of interviewee Greg Mullins, former New South Wales fire commissioner – the history of bushfires in Australia.

While acknowledging, as the refrain goes, there have always been fires in Australia, the film presents evidence and analysis showing fires have massively worsened in recent years in frequency and severity in line with the forecasts of climate scientists regarding global warming.

Burning goes on to argue the 2019-2020 “Black Summer” bushfires, its ostensible subject, could have been headed off by a well-conceived response to global warming.

Read more:
A staggering 1.8 million hectares burned in ‘high-severity’ fires during Australia’s Black Summer

Past and present

Through a series of talking head interviews, Burning convincingly argues the severity of the devastation of the Black Summer bushfires is largely the fault of the Morrison government (and preceding conservative governments) in refusing to recognise climate change is real, and to enact policies addressing this.

Mullins’ commentary is joined by, among others, scientist Tim Flannery, young activist Daisy Jeffrey, writer Bruce Pascoe and residents affected by the bushfires who talk about the devastation their communities faced.

Through meticulously curated and assembled archival footage, we also hear from a list of the usual suspects: Tony Abbott, Malcolm Roberts, Barnaby Joyce, Alan Jones, and of course, Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

The film is careful to tie this back to much earlier conservative discourse, with an interview with Alexander Downer in which he contests the reality of global warming.

It also – again, convincingly – demonstrates the role of the Murdoch media in propagating climate change denialism, with snippets from Sky News as recent as 2020 casting doubt on the reality of global warming.

The film is at pains to point out this is not only historical, but current – we see Morrison recently bagging out electric cars (“It’s not gonna tow your trailer. It’s not going to tow your boat. It’s not going to get you out to your favourite camping spot with your family.”) and proselytising about the future role of gas in Australia’s economy.

Too polished

It’s a very well-made documentary, full of stunning images of Australian geography and flora and fauna – beautiful bokeh, slow tracking shots around leaves, etc – interspersed with dramatic meteorological charts, and some shocking footage of the bushfires burning across the country.

It is, I would suggest, the slickest film about climate change since An Inconvenient Truth (2006), and, like that film, its polish plays against it as a documentary film experience.

Read more:
Ten years on: how Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth made its mark

This is the annoying thing about the film: it’s so right at the level of content, but formally it falls short. Apart from a few select moments – harrowing images of charred animals, a koala trying to escape a fire, and a devastating interview with a young mother whose baby was born prematurely with a dying placenta because of smoke inhalation – the actual material centred on the bushfires is peculiarly uninvolving.

We watch interviews with Cobargo residents that, given the subject, seem surprisingly run of the mill.

It’s like the film mentions the smoke, but doesn’t capture its eerie apocalyptic quality. It mentions the intense heartbreak and brutality of the fires for towns like Cobargo, but doesn’t put us in the middle of it. It tells us things more than it makes us feel things, and this is seldom beneficial in the medium.

Read more:
Fires review: new ABC drama helps teach important lessons about the realities of bushfires in Australia

Even much of the footage captured by residents seems strangely contained by the film, with what surely was a surreal, infernal nightmare presented instead in a thoroughly digestible, middlebrow fashion.

Burning clearly examines climate change as a political weapon in Australia – and leaves no doubt about the connections between global warming and the recent bushfires. The message of the film is spot on, the logic of its argument faultless.

There are striking moments – footage of dead animals; listening to Daisy Jeffrey; Bruce Pascoe’s closing words about the stewardship of the land. And yet it doesn’t work as well as it could as a piece of cinema. It lacks the edge of eco docos like Wild Things (2020) partly because it’s too slick.

Read more:
Film review: Wild Things packs passionate climate activism into an overly polite documentary

We want a hot and sweaty, intense film from within the belly of the bushfires and the horrors of Australian climate policy – instead we get a polished and well-mannered one.

It is a really good, well-made doco essay – primed for streaming (produced for Amazon, this is probably its primary intended medium, so it’s no surprise it isn’t very cinematic).

Its material is compelling – it certainly stokes our indignation – but it is unlikely to teach a climate change believer anything they don’t already know, and a sceptic won’t watch or listen to it anyway.

Burning is at Sydney Film Festival until Monday November 8 and will be streaming on Amazon Prime from November 26.

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

– ref. Burning is the slickest film about climate change since An Inconvenient Truth – and that’s its problem – https://theconversation.com/burning-is-the-slickest-film-about-climate-change-since-an-inconvenient-truth-and-thats-its-problem-171385

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Geoff Hanmer, Honorary Professional Fellow, Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, University of Technology Sydney

Students have returned to school in New South Wales and Victoria after weeks of lockdowns. Along with vaccination and masks, experts have flagged good ventilation as one of the key factors in reducing the probability of COVID infection in schools.

COVID is rarely transmitted outside. The US Centers for Disease Control in the US say the chance of transmission outside is much less than being inside a building. Some have estimated the risk of transmission outside is as low as 0.1% of the risk inside.

The risk of transmission reduces as the amount of fresh air ventilation increases. This is why adequate ventilation is a crucial factor in mitigating transmission risk, and why governments are encouraging people to meet and eat outside.

On October 12, NSW Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said:

Parents can be assured that everything is being done to ensure schools are safe for students […]

But hundreds of schools and day care centres in NSW have recorded a positive case since face-to-face learning resumed a few weeks ago. In Victoria, more than 400 schools have recorded a positive case. This suggests that mitigation measures are not working as well as they could.

Field measurements taken by my colleagues and I show some naturally ventilated classrooms and staff rooms in NSW and Victoria will be low risk on most days. But others will be high risk on any day without the operation of a HEPA air purifier to remove virus particles if an infected person is present.

But without adequate monitoring of air quality, schools will not know what kinds of measures they need to take.

The important of measuring air quality

People breathe out carbon dioxide (CO2). This means the amount of CO2 in a room compared to outside air gives a good guide to the room’s level of ventilation. CO2 in outside air is about 400 parts per million (ppm) and a well-ventilated room will be no more than 800 ppm.

CO2 concentration can be measured using a CO2 meter. An adequate CO2 meter can be purchased for less than $100. (Most devices with a non dispersive infra-red sensor will be accurate enough to measure ventilation levels.)

Governments in Victoria and NSW have announced a number of initiatives to improve ventilation and make air purifiers available.

Read more:
From vaccination to ventilation: 5 ways to keep kids safe from COVID when schools reopen

In September, Victoria announced a $190 million program to improve ventilation in government and low fee, non-government schools. The program included the roll out of 51,000 air purifiers during term 4, ventilation monitoring using CO2 meters and $25,000 grants for each school to fund the construction of shade structures to facilitate outdoor learning.

Around the same time, the NSW government announced a review of ventilation in 2,200 schools in the public system prior to the return of students. It also announced it would provide 10,000 air purifiers to schools in need.

Since then, the NSW education department ad minister have been actively dissuading parent groups from checking CO2 levels or buying air purifiers. Mitchell told Parliament on October 19 that parents did not need to buy purifiers. She said:

We will be buying the purifiers that we need for classrooms, based on what is needed, based on what the evidence shows us.

But safe ventilation in naturally ventilated school rooms can only be established by CO2 monitoring on site, preferably in real time, as changes in occupancy, weather conditions and wind speed can drastically impact ventilation.

Windows in most classrooms aren’t enough

Under the National Construction Code (NCC), buildings can be either naturally ventilated or mechanically ventilated. Nearly all schools in Australia are naturally ventilated with only 40 of the 2,200 government schools in NSW relying on mechanical ventilation.

To comply with the code’s natural ventilation provisions, a room must be provided with:

[…] a ventilating area not less than 5% of the floor area of the room required to be ventilated […]

The term “ventilating area” is in practice taken to mean the area of the window pane that can be opened, not the actual area of the opening. For example, an awning window opens outwards with a top hinge.

Its bottom and side openings are often substantially blocked by the surrounding wall and window sill. In a 65 square metre classroom, four awning windows complying with the NCC will have a maximum opening area of 0.932 sq m – far less than the 3.25 sq m that a literal reading of the NCC might imply.

Double hung sash windows (that can be opened by sliding the window up) or horizontally sliding windows in the same classroom will in many cases deliver only 0.450 sq m of open area. This is because another requirement of the NCC often restricts window openings to a maximum of 125 mm to stop children falling out, or getting their head stuck in the opening.

Schools need CO2 monitors

On October 7, Schools Infrastructure NSW issued a report by consultants providing an assessment of ventilation in NSW classrooms based on a “worst case” model of a 65 sq m naturally ventilated classroom.

The model predicts that between 1.733 sq m and up to 2.802 sq m of open area will be required to provide adequate ventilation. Unfortunately, most classrooms will only provide between 0.450 and 0.932 sq m of open window area, significantly less than the model predicts will be required.

Instead of proving classroom ventilation in NSW is adequate, the model suggests that it isn’t.

Read more:
Australian children are learning in classrooms with very poor air quality

Because the NSW government doesn’t appear to have used CO2 monitors to measure air quality, it is impossible to determine which of the 56,000 occupied rooms in government schools will need to be equipped with one of the 10,000 air purifiers that have been procured.

OzSAGE, an organisation of scientists providing independent advice to the government, advises that:

• CO2 reading below 800 ppm indicates a low risk of infection

• CO2 reading between 800 ppm to 1,500 ppm indicates a moderate risk of infection. Improvements should be made where practicable to increase ventilation, by opening more windows, encouraging cross ventilation, the flow of air from one side of a building to the other or operating an HEPA air purifier that will remove virus particles from the air

• CO2 reading above 1,500 ppm indicates a high risk of infection. Immediate improvements must be made to increase ventilation or air purifiers must be operational. If this is not possible, the activity should be promptly relocated.

Without CO2 monitors and with a flawed ventilation model, there is no evidence that all school spaces in NSW are safe. Either the government needs to promptly provide every school with a CO2 monitor or parent and community groups should buy their own.

Professor Geoff Hanmer is a member of OzSAGE and the chair of the ventilation group. He has reviewed and tested products produced by a number of manufacturers of air monitoring, ventilation and air purification devices including Aranet, Renson, Honeywell, Kaiterra, Samsung and Radic8. This work has been solely to establish the performance of equipment. Geoff Hanmer has no commercial or financial interest in any companies manufacturing or supplying any of this equipment.

– ref. Schools need to know classrooms’ air quality to protect against COVID. But governments aren’t measuring it properly – https://theconversation.com/schools-need-to-know-classrooms-air-quality-to-protect-against-covid-but-governments-arent-measuring-it-properly-171107

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter van Duyn, Maritime Logistics Expert, Centre for Supply Chain and Logistics (CSCL), Deakin University

Shipping, which transports 90% of the world’s trade, contributes nearly 3% of global emissions – a little more than the carbon footprint of Germany. If gone unchecked, this share could increase to 17% by 2050 as the world’s GDP keeps growing.

Curbing shipping emissions has been a hot topic at the international climate summit in Glasgow, with 14 nations signing a declaration last week to bring shipping emissions down to net zero by 2050.

On Saturday, shipping industry heavyweights and senior government representatives met to iron out details of this lofty promise, ahead of the key transportation talks at COP26. Important differences emerged in whether market or regulatory rules will be most effective to push the industry towards net zero.

Shipping and aviation are notoriously difficult industries to decarbonise. They require vast amounts of fuel for international travel, and the questions of which country is responsible for emissions makes reaching agreements a mammoth and glacial task.

Growing momentum

Shipping’s total emissions are set to increase this year for the first time since the global financial crisis of 2008.

If left unregulated, shipping and aviation will be responsible for almost 40% of all carbon dioxide emissions in 2050, according to a study published by the European Parliament.

With so much at stake, we’re finally starting to see change, with businesses (and their customers) placing more emphasis on shipping’s contribution to climate change. In October this year, nine big companies – including Amazon, Ikea, and Unilever – pledged to move their cargo only on ships using zero-carbon fuel by 2040.

What’s more, three of the world’s largest container shipping lines – Maersk, CMA CGM, and MSC – are actively pursuing the use of alternative fuels and aim to be net-zero compliant by 2050 or before.

A lack of technology

Most ship engines use a low-grade, carbon-heavy fuel oil, which creates significant air pollution. So some shipowners are moving to build new ships or convert existing ships to run on liquefied natural gas (LNG) instead.

While this presents a 25% reduction in CO₂ emissions compared to the current low-grade fuel, LNG still releases methane into the atmosphere – a heat-trapping gas roughly 30 times more potent than CO₂.

This points to a big problem getting in the way of decarbonising shipping: zero-carbon technologies that can be applied at scale to large ocean-going ships do not yet exist.

Read more:
Shipping emissions must fall by a third by 2030 and reach zero before 2050 – new research

Commercially viable technologies that create alternative, zero-emissions fuels, such as hydrogen and ammonia, are still in development by ship engine manufacturers.

A significant challenge is the requirement for vast fuel storage on board ships, and replenishing these fuels in port, especially after long voyages. Battery power using renewable sources can only be used on short voyages such as ferries or on coastal trips.

Nuclear propulsion has also been considered, but there are associated risks and it doesn’t have the support of the general public.

Global disunity

In October, shipping was under fire from United Nations Secretary General Antonio de Guterres, who accused the industry of not doing enough to stop global warming. So, is he right?

One of the difficulties in cutting emissions in shipping is that it’s hard to decide which country the emissions should be assigned to.

Should it be based on where the ship’s fuel is sold, where a ship is registered, or the origins or destinations of the ship’s cargo? Each option would lead to radically different emissions responsibilities and associated costs for individual countries.

Read more:
Cargo ships are emitting boatloads of carbon, and nobody wants to take the blame

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) is the UN body that addresses emissions from ships engaged in international trade. It’s currently coordinating measures to curb maritime emissions among its more than 170 member states. And each state has competing interests.

In April 2018, the IMO set a goal of halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 from 2008 levels. This has been met with fierce criticism from environmental organisations, who call it weak and unambitious.

This target falls well short of the net-zero by 2050 target declared by nations last week at COP26. The declaration was led by Denmark and includes the US. Notably, it was not signed by countries with big maritime shipping sectors, such as Japan and Greece.

The IMO has agreed, after collecting more data, to revisit their target in 2023. Given growing public interest in climate change and large companies demanding zero emissions in shipping their goods, I believe it’s likely the IMO will bolster its target, and start working towards net-zero emissions by 2050.

So what needs to happen now?

At Saturday’s conference, it became clear most shipowners present were in favour using the market to solve the emissions problem, and suggested using a carbon price.

This echoes the calls of trade groups, representing more than 90% of the world’s merchant fleet. They have asked the IMO to prioritise a carbon tax for the industry to encourage shipowners to invest in alternative fuel technologies.

On the other hand, the representative for Japanese shipowners was in favour of letting politicians come up with the rules, saying the shipping industry would comply with them.

And shipowners that recently invested in ships fuelled by LNG were, understandably, advocating its use, saying no zero-carbon alternative fuels are currently available, and are still a long way off.

Read more:
Ships moved more than 11 billion tonnes of our stuff around the globe last year, and it’s killing the climate. This week is a chance to change

But before we can make any real headway to decarbonise shipping, we must have global unity. It is imperative more member states get on board with the net zero by 2050 declaration.

The IMO needs to set international standards around who’s responsible for emissions. Countries with large shipping fleets such as Japan and Greece need to come on board to expedite the process. IMO resolutions take years to develop and even longer to be ratified by its member countries.

A well-funded research and development program, which the industry has agreed to pay for within a global regulatory framework, needs to commence immediately under the supervision of the IMO.

The heightened interest we’re seeing across the supply chains and at COP26 is an important opportunity for the shipping industry to be on the front foot, and reduce their emissions sooner rather than later.

This story is part of The Conversation’s coverage of COP26, the Glasgow climate conference, by experts from around the world.

Amid a rising tide of climate news and stories, The Conversation is here to clear the air and make sure you get information you can trust. Read more.

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

– ref. To reach net zero, we must decarbonise shipping. But two big problems are getting in the way – https://theconversation.com/to-reach-net-zero-we-must-decarbonise-shipping-but-two-big-problems-are-getting-in-the-way-170464

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Donne Potter, Professor, Research Centre for Hauora and Health, Massey University

Despite New Zealand’s national cervical screening programme (NCSP), Māori women are more than twice as likely as European women to be diagnosed with, and die from, cervical cancer.

Similarly, the screening programme has not been equitable for Pasifika and Asian women. Like Māori women, Pasifika women have lower screening rates and higher rates of cervical cancer incidence and mortality than European women. Asian women also have lower screening rates but lower incidence and similar mortality to European women.

Women who don’t access the screening programme are often referred to as “hard-to-reach” or “disengaged” but, in reality, the inequities are a systems issue. These groups are under-served and suffer the majority of cases of cervical cancer.

Our study explored whether self-testing would help the least-served groups. We show self-testing, particularly at home, raises screening rates among women who have never or rarely accessed the screening programme and experience the most barriers.

Clear preference for home testing

This is the first evaluation of the effectiveness of mailed self-testing kits for cervical cancer screening in Aotearoa New Zealand.

We invited Māori, Pasifika and Asian women between the ages of 30 and 69, who had never been screened or were more than five years overdue, to take part in a community-based, randomised controlled trial with three different tracks.

Our aim was to assess whether two invitation methods for self-testing improved screening participation over usual care (the third track). Women were either invited to take a self-test at their usual general practice or were mailed a kit to take a self-test at home.

We compared participation rates with the usual care process of an invitation to come to the GP clinic for collection of a standard Pap smear.

Read more:
Self-collected cervical screening is a great way to prevent cervical cancer. How can we get more people doing it?

There were 3,553 women in the study. Although the absolute level of participation was modest, we showed that participation was statistically significantly higher for self-testing at home, compared to the usual Pap smear at the GP clinic.

Māori were 9.7 times more likely to agree to self-test at home. For Pasifika women, participation was six times more likely; for Asian women it was 5.1 times more likely.

Self-testing at the clinic was preferred, respectively 4.1, 3.3 and 1.6 times over the Pap smear. Overall, our results show access to screening at home is much preferred over other options.

A brief history of cervical cancer screening

Our understanding of cervical cancer goes back to the 1928 discovery by George Papanicolaou (hence Pap smear) of profound abnormalities in cervical cells. He realised this could be used as a method of early cancer diagnosis.

The process was subsequently refined in the 1950s after which the Pap smear was increasingly used for screening and early diagnosis.

By the 1970s, there was clear circumstantial evidence that cervical cancer was caused by a sexually transmitted agent, which was later identified as the human papillomavirus (HPV). This has allowed two crucial developments in the control of cervical cancer: effective vaccines with increasing coverage against high-risk HPVs and reliable screening using a vaginal swab.

Read more:
HPV vaccine cuts cervical cancer cases by almost 90% – but one in ten girls still haven’t been vaccinated

From 2015, and increasingly around the world, vaginal samples (collected using a swab by women themselves or by healthcare professionals) have been used to identify the presence of HPVs with a high degree of reliability.

This screening approach does not need to involve any other person and has a number of advantages over a standard clinically obtained Pap smear. It allows collection at home and caters to those who prefer greater privacy or have less time. It is empowering because it places health management in a woman’s own hands.

This is an exact parallel with self-collected swabs for sexually transmitted infections (STIs), which are well accepted as standard of care. Self-testing for cervical cancer screening is increasingly available around the world.

The accuracy of HPV self-testing is similar to professionally taken samples and it improves participation. However, most studies have not targeted Indigenous or ethnic minority women. They remain under-served essentially everywhere.

How to ensure equity

Aotearoa New Zealand already has extensive experience with free mail-out screening for bowel cancer. Giving women the opportunity to self-test at home at no cost will result in the greatest impact toward improving equity of access to cervical cancer screening.

However, the National Cervical Screening Programme indicated that self-testing at home is not an option in their initial rollout of screening based on the detection of human papillomavirus (HPV), the leading cause of cervical cancer.

This will be a serious missed opportunity to improve equity. The key to achieving equity is for all women to access screening, including those who may agree only to testing at home.

John Donne Potter received funding from the Health Research Council of New Zealand for this work.

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

– ref. Cervical cancer screening in New Zealand: self-testing at home will improve equity of outcomes for non-European women – https://theconversation.com/cervical-cancer-screening-in-new-zealand-self-testing-at-home-will-improve-equity-of-outcomes-for-non-european-women-169628