Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elise Schubert, Pharmacist and PhD Candidate, University of Sydney

On Thursday, health minister Greg Hunt announced Australia’s drug regulator had provisionally approved two new medicines for the treatment of COVID.

These are Lagevrio, made by American pharmaceutical company Merck Sharpe & Dohme, and Paxlovid, by Pfizer.

With the number of hospitalisations and deaths due to the virus continuing to rise, the approval of these drugs comes at a good time.

The federal government has purchased a combined 800,000 courses of the pills, and said the drugs will initially be prioritised for the elderly and other high risk groups.

Both companies say their drugs will work against the Omicron variant, though this is based on preliminary lab-based research.

What are they and how do they work?

Merck’s Lagevrio (generic name: molnupiravir) is an antiviral drug that causes errors to be copied into the COVID virus whenever it replicates. This makes the virus less effective in causing disease.

Read more:
Take-at-home COVID drug molnupiravir may be on its way — but vaccination is still our first line of defence

Pfizer’s Paxlovid is a two tablet combination of a new drug called nirmatrelvir, and a drug already used to treat HIV called ritonavir.

Nirmatrelvir stops the function of a key protein the virus needs to replicate itself, while ritonavir is there to stop the body from breaking down nirmatrelvir.

According to clinical trial data, Lagevrio and Paxlovid are useful in reducing viral load, the severity of COVID symptoms, and thus, the number of people hospitalised and/or dying from the virus.

Many of Omicron’s concerning mutations are on the “spike protein”, which is what the coronavirus uses to enter our cells. So one reason these drugs are still expected to be effective against variants like Omicron is they don’t target the spike protein.

Are these medications effective against Omicron?

This week Pfizer published a media release detailing preliminary results suggesting Paxlovid is still effective against the Omicron variant.

The results of two laboratory studies by Pfizer researchers and released as pre-prints (yet to be reviewed by other scientists) shows that the nirmatrelvir can interrupt viral replication across all COVID variants of concern.

One independent lab-based study released online as a pre-print looked at both Pfizer and Merck’s drugs.

It found the key drug in Pfizer’s Paxlovid, nirmatrelvir, is still active against its protein target in Omicron, and can still reduce overall viral load.

The study also found Merck’s Lagevrio showed activity against Omicron. The president of Merck Research Laboratories said the company is very confident Lagevrio will be effective against Omicron.

It’s important to note this research was undetaken in a lab, so we’re still yet to see data on how effective it is in people with Omicron under real world conditions. With both drugs approved in the United States and United Kingdom earlier than Australia, it’s likely we’ll see in-person outcomes data on the effectiveness and safety of these drugs in the near future.

In clinical trials, before Omicron emerged, Paxlovid reduced the risk of hospitalisation and death by 88% in high-risk patients, and Lagevrio by 31%.

What are the side effects?

It’s important to note no medicine is perfectly safe and side effect free.

From clinical trials so far, we know fewer than 7% of patients taking Lagevrio experienced a serious side effect. Commonly reported were diarrhoea, nausea, and dizziness.

Different side effects were observed with Paxlovid, such as vomiting, diarrhoea, and headache, and fewer than 2% of patients in the trials experienced a serious side effect.

The risk of side effects with Paxlovid can be higher if patients are also taking other medicines at the same time. The list of medications that shouldn’t be taken with Paxlovid includes some anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory and cardiovascular medications, and even some herbal medicines such as St John’s Wort.

Am I eligible for these treatments?

Vulnerable people such as the elderly and aged care residents will be prioritised for access to the medication.

The government hasn’t stated when it expects other groups of people may be able to get the medicines, possibly due to the limited number of courses the government has purchased and because of supply difficulties being experienced in other countries.

Lagevrio and Paxlovid are both oral tablets which may mean you’ll be able take these at home, rather than spending time in hospital.

For both drugs, the tablets must be commenced as soon as possible and within five days of the first symptoms for them to be of any use.

Both medicines have also only been approved for use in adults. There’s no clinical trial data on the safety of Lagevrio or Paxlovid in children so we don’t know how effective and safe they would be in this age group.

There’s also uncertainty as to the potential impact either medicine may have on pregnancy and breastfeeding, so the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) advises patients avoid these medicines in these circumstances. The TGA also recommends avoiding becoming pregnant soon after the use of either medicine.

How and where can you get them?

We don’t yet know whether people can obtain a prescription from any general practitioner or whether only specific doctors will be able to prescribe them (for example, geriatric specialists).

The government says the first deliveries of these medicines will arrive “over the coming weeks”.

The health minister also said both medicines will be free for patients.

Despite the promising treatment opportunity these drugs provide in the fight against COVID, vaccination will still remain the front line of defence against the virus.

Elise Schubert is a registered pharmacist and a PhD Candidate receiving scholarship from the University of Sydney and Canngea Pty Ltd.

Associate Professor Kellie Charles is a Director of the Board of the Australasian Society of Clinical and Experimental Pharmacologists and Toxicologists (ASCEPT). She has previously held research grants and provided research advice to Johnson and Johnson (unrelated to the products discussed here).

Associate Professor Wheate in the past has received funding from the ACT Cancer Council, Tenovus Scotland, Medical Research Scotland, Scottish Crucible, and the Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance. He is Fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute and a member of the Australasian Pharmaceutical Science Association. Nial is the science director of Canngea Pty Ltd, chief scientific officer of Vairea Skincare LLC, a board director of the Australian Medicinal Cannabis Association, and a Standards Australia panel member for sunscreen agents.

– ref. Australia approves two new medicines in the fight against COVID. How can you get them and are they effective against Omicron? – https://theconversation.com/australia-approves-two-new-medicines-in-the-fight-against-covid-how-can-you-get-them-and-are-they-effective-against-omicron-175321

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Maguire-Rosier, Honorary Associate, Department of Theatre and Performance Studies, School of Literature, Art, and Media, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sydney

Review: Yung Lung, choreographed by Antony Hamilton, Chunky Move

The word “yung”, according to the urban language dictionary, variously means “dope” or “cool” as popularised in the Chico area of California, a “legend” or (my favourite) a “lowercase god”.

The lung of course is a vital organ, but also metonymic for an open space in the city where dwellers may breathe fresh air.

In turn, then, the term “yung lung” might refer to a rebel’s breath – or their sanctuary.

A grand orchestral overture announces people standing like action figures atop a grotesque monster’s head-shaped rock. Oozing anarchy, the group is styled with bleached, shaved or braided hair and skintight clothing flashing neon yellow.

The aesthetic summons that of Mad Max or The Bad Batch.

A virtual sunrise on a dozen TV monitors, displayed outwards in a panopticon-like circle surrounding the rock, accompanies the string instruments and the defiant looks on the performers’ faces.

As the bodies start to travel around the rock, we circle it too, as if two packs of wolves – cautiously suspicious, slightly hesitant but mostly curious.

Music becomes operatic and the image of gladiators at the Colosseum appears as a woman at the rock’s zenith raises her arm gloriously. Other arms stretch outwards and the figures climb, hang, swing and pose, physically domineering. Fierce facial expressions scare an absent enemy and posturing bodies overemphasise their musculature.

Shared aliveness

Chunky Move’s radical immersive experience, choreographed and directed by Antony Hamilton, is a dance manifesto that borrows from Black and Queer clubbing to expose – and make fun of – today’s existential crises.

The work’s visceral effort reasserts a shared aliveness in the here and now.

The standout element is Chiara Kickdrum’s thrashing soundscape, inviting the audience into a trance. Light by Bosco Shaw, video by Kris Moyes, Hamilton and Nickolas Moloney, costumes by P.A.M. and set design by Callum Morton work solidly together to produce surreal scenes that unfurl in the heart of the space.

But it is the fervent performance of the cast emboldened by the soundscape and punctuated by vogue and waacking who render the rave mesmerising and wondrously odd.

The mood shifts slightly when a young woman hugs herself. Another hangs suspended upside down like an infant from monkey bars in a park playground. I see now a Mardi Gras float travelling down Sydney’s Oxford Street in late summer as a slender man with a ponytail places one hand on hip looking down at the crowd, mouth ever so slightly ajar, sexually titillating.

The virtual sun repeated on the monitors has nearly set, and I notice a rainbow lightshow behind.

A woman crushes her face into a scowl and sticks out her tongue as if the star of a death metal band. We are her fans, but also the system that criticises her for glamorising violence.

Clearly, the group wants to captivate us.

My attention snaps back to the images flickering on screen. Burning cigarettes. A cityscape. Volcanic lava. The book title Devolution of Mankind. The solar system. Japanese animé. Military activities. Green palm trees against blue sky. A dead dog on a beach stared at by young boys. Later, on every second screen, Ned Kelly full body shot in the bush. Pop-art depictions of the Kremlin, unfamiliar yet quintessentially Andy Warhol. A blackout.

On screen, human heads mutate. On the rock, bodies pick up pace, glued to the sculpture like insects in formation. A thumping beat cuts the air in sharp bursts, speeding up the tempo and movement. Bodies bounce with hip-hop gestures. In sync, two women explicitly sign “eat my dick”.

Video recalls my gaze. The furious onslaught of images reveals otherwise non-memorable scenes from cult pop culture. One pair flashing to and fro, however, stings: a duet of sorts between a heavily pixelated quadruped robot Spot and a headshot of a Black man – is it Martin Luther King? The images flicker back and forth, passing by too quickly to tell. I am acutely aware of the lure of the screen, accentuating the liveness of bodies in space. And aggressive drums storming the space now seem like gunshots.

Read more:
Is ‘Spot’ a good dog? Why we’re right to worry about unleashing robot quadrupeds

The presence of the live performers is heightened by the mediatised spectacle; the relationship between the two is key to the concept, integrity and rigour of this artwork. And this is in spite of their competing for dominance from one moment to the next.

The slanted text disappearing into the universe at the beginning of every Star Wars movie, “Since the beginning…” gives way to the thought of science fiction creating reality. Are the dancers trying to sell us this violent world? These spoiled images, decomposed like off fruit? Dancers hold neon poles, baby blue just like Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber. “Jupiter” reads the label graffitied on one dancer’s trouser leg. Poles now burn red like Darth Vader’s lightsaber, one raised under a dancer’s eyes like a child with a torch telling a ghost story in a circle of friends.

Dancers exit like robots streaked through the crowd. And a final question flurries through my mind: “or was the Black face George Floyd?”

Yung Lung is at Carriageworks for Sydney Festival until January 23, then at the Substation in Melbourne from February 1 to 12.

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

– ref. When humans compete with television, Yung Lung proves the liveness of bodies wins out – https://theconversation.com/when-humans-compete-with-television-yung-lung-proves-the-liveness-of-bodies-wins-out-173986

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Edmund Wedam Kanmiki, PhD Candidate, The University of Queensland

School holidays can be a special time for extended families to gather. Children may see their grandparents at seasonal gatherings or as part of childcare arrangements to help working parents. New research suggests the biology, environment and the food they share contributes to children’s future health.

According to the World Health Organization, 39 million children under five years are overweight. Some 25% of Australian children and adolescents are overweight or obese.

How parents contribute to their offspring’s obesity risk is well established but the link between grandparents and grandchildren has been less clear. Our systematic review of studies involving more than 200,000 people around the world confirms obesity is transmitted across multiple generations of families. We still need to figure out why and how to break this cycle.

Read more:
4 ways to get your kids off the couch these summer holidays

Setting up for a lifetime of health issues

Obesity among children and adolescents is associated with developing health problems. These include high blood pressure, cholesterol imbalance, insulin resistance, diabetes mellitus, accelerated growth and maturity, orthopaedic difficulties, psychosocial problems, increased risk of heart disease and premature mortality.

We examined the current global evidence on the association between grandparents who are overweight or obese and the healthy weight status of their grandchildren. We looked at 25 studies that involved 238,771 people from 17 countries. The combined data confirms obesity is transmitted multigenerationally – not just from parent to child but also from grandparent to grandchild.

We found children whose grandparents are obese or overweight are almost twice as likely to be obese or overweight compared to those whose grandparents are “normal” weight.

Read more:
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Nature and nurture?

Further research is needed into how children’s obesity status is influenced by their grandparents but there are likely two pathways at work. The influence could be indirect via parents’ genes or occur directly through the roles played by grandparents in children’s upbringing.

Let’s start with biological factors. Both egg and sperm cells contain molecules that respond to the nutritional intake of parents. This means traits that are susceptible to high weight gain can be passed on from grandparents to parents and then to their grandchildren. And evidence shows genetics, environmental factors, lifestyle and eating habits all play key roles in predisposing individuals to obesity.

What we eat and feed our family members can lead to the expression of certain genetic traits (a term referred to as epigenetics) which can then be transferred to successive generations. Due to shared familial, genetic, and environmental factors, obesity tends to aggregate within immediate families and studies have consistently reported an intergenerational transmission of obesity from parents to children.

Food intake can also influence health and biology across multiple generations. In Sweden, a study reported adequate food for paternal grandparents at ten years of age reduced heart disease and diabetes and increased longevity among their grandchildren.

Food and family

So, grandparents’ weight status and choices about what and how much is eaten in their home could influence their grandchildren’s weight directly or via the children’s parents. These influences may be greater or less significant depending on the role grandparents play as primary care givers or in shared living arrangements. According to the recent Australia’s Seniors’ survey, one in every four Australian grandparents provides primary care to their grandchildren.

Grandparents’ role as caregivers significantly affects children’s healthy eating knowledge, attitude, and behaviours. This might be seen in the meals shared, recipes passed down or special treats for loved ones. Such habits can add to childhood obesity risks, above and beyond genetic factors.

Read more:
More than one in four Aussie kids are overweight or obese: we’re failing them, and we need a plan

Working on prevention

Our research shows the importance of including grandparents in obesity prevention strategies. In addition to parents, grandparents could be oriented to provide guidance on responsible feeding, recognising hunger and fullness, setting limits, offering healthy foods and using repeated exposure to promote acceptance. They can help encourage regular exercise and discourage coercive feeding practices on their grandchildren.

While our study shows a multigenerational link in the transmission of obesity, most of the available evidence comes from high-income countries – predominantly America and European countries. More studies, especially from low-income countries, would be helpful.

Further investigation into the effect of grandparents on grandchildren’s obesity across different races and ethnicities is also needed. Grandparents have varied social and cultural roles in the upbringing of their grandchildren around the world. More data could help design effective obesity prevention programs that recognise the vital importance of grandparents.

Edmund Wedam Kanmiki 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.

Abdullah Mamun receives funding from NHMRC, ARC, Queensland Health, and Health and Wellbeing Queensland.

Yaqoot Fatima received funding from NHMRC, MRFF, Western Queensland Primary Health Network, Tropical Australian Academic Health Centre, Queensland Health, and Health and Wellbeing Queensland. She is a member of the Indigenous Sleep Health Working Party of the Australasian Sleep Association.

– ref. Kids whose grandparents are overweight are almost twice as likely to struggle with obesity – https://theconversation.com/kids-whose-grandparents-are-overweight-are-almost-twice-as-likely-to-struggle-with-obesity-173739

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Speck, Professorial Fellow (Honorary), The University of Melbourne

In the past ten days Australia has lost two important artworld figures. Both were senior artists working in Adelaide but with a reach extending far beyond the city or the nation.

Celebrated feminist artist, Ann Newmarch OAM, born June 9 1945, passed away on Thursday January 13 2022.

Hossein Valamanesh AM, born March 2 1949, died suddenly on January 15, just weeks before he and his partner Angela Valamanesh are due to exhibit their work in the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art – Free/State at the Art Gallery of South Australia.

Although they work in mostly different genres, a similar sense of restraint imbues the work of each, and both artists are equally celebrated.

Vale Ann Newmarch

The life and career of Newmarch was marked by political activism, and her energy in steering community projects such as the anti-rape mural Reclaim the Night (1980) and the Prospect Mural Group’s postcolonial History of Australia (1982).

In 1969, she joined the staff of the South Australian School of Art, and while continuing in the tradition of a long line of women lecturers, her appointment was different. She ushered in the optimism and “voice” second-wave feminism gave women artists and over three decades she mentored female students who in turn have had brilliant careers.

In 1974, Newmarch was a founding member of the politically-active Progressive Art Movement (PAM) and, in 1976, of Adelaide’s Women’s Art Movement. In each she pushed the boundaries of the print medium to develop an accessible art form. In PAM, along with Mandy Martin, Newmarch produced political posters in her Prospect studio advocating for change such as a nationalised car industry and Australian Independence.

As an artist and mother of three young children in the 1970s and 1980s, her work across all media areas epitomises second-wave feminism’s mantra “the personal is political”. Her Three months of interrupted work, shown in WAMs ground-breaking 1977 exhibition, The Women’s Show, best describes the juggling act of domestic labour, motherhood and working as an artist.

Her children became her subjects, along with pressing social issues such as damage to the landscape from atomic testing and uranium mining as in Maralinga: poisoned rations (1988).

Later in life, she confronted the invisibility of ageing women in a powerful series Risking 50 (1995).

Newmarch’s 1978 print Women hold up half the sky!, the title a riff on Mao Zedong’s famous phrase, was the only Australian work selected for the all-important 2007 Los Angeles exhibition WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution. It featured again in the National Gallery of Australia’s 2021 exhibition Know My Name.

Read more:
Beauty and audacity: Know My Name presents a new, female story of Australian art

Her work is held by all major public and private collections, and she was the first woman artist honoured by a major retrospective at the Art Gallery of South Australia in 1997. She was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia for her services to the Arts in 1989.

Colleagues have taken to social media with the words:

Rest in Power Ann Newmarch: one of the great Australian second-wave feminist artists.

Vale Hossein Valamanesh

Hossein Valamanesh, was born in Iran and educated at the School of Art in Tehran, and immigrated to Australia in 1973.

From his initial base in Perth, he travelled to remote Aboriginal communities in 1974 where his brush with an ancient culture resonated with his age-old Persian heritage. He relocated to Adelaide the following year, and attended the South Australian School of Art.

By 1997, he synthesised his connection to place in Longing belonging by lighting a campfire on Persian rug placed in the Australian bush. The charred burnt circle of the rug stands testament to his dual identities.

Valamanesh’s work is known and loved for its spare aesthetic sensibility, parred back form and poetic visual imagery. His materials are frequently found natural materials: ochres, sands, stones and leaves, branches and twigs animated by a Sufi philosophy exploring the ineffable and the impermanent underpinned by Persian poetry.

A shadow of the human form is an enduring theme, as in his wall piece Untitled (1995) consisting in a folded shirt made from lotus leaves set against a Sufi love poem painted in the shape of human shadow (when viewed diagonally). Beneath the philosophy, mathematics is inevitably at play in his work.

Over five decades, in sculpture, painting, installation and video (recently with his son Nassiem at Buxton Contemporary) Valamanesh’s work explores the paradoxes of selfhood, existence and being. Collaborative work with his wife Angela Valamenesh includes several public art commissions including the Fourteen pieces (2005) outside the South Australian Museum, referencing the vertebrae of an extinct marine reptile in the museum’s collection.

Hossein’s work is held in national and international collections and he was a prolific international exhibitor, with his work currently on show in a major solo exhibition Puisque tout passe (This Will Also Pass), at the Institut des Cultures d’Islam in Paris.

His numerous awards include an Order of Australia (with Angela) in 2010 for outstanding artistic practice, and he too was a generous mentor of young artists. His contemplative work will live on, he has been described as “a finder of beautiful things in a world that hides them well”.

Catherine Speck received ARC funding to research Australian art exhibitions.

– ref. Australian art has lost two of its greats. Vale Ann Newmarch and Hossein Valamanesh – https://theconversation.com/australian-art-has-lost-two-of-its-greats-vale-ann-newmarch-and-hossein-valamanesh-175435

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Karen Scott, Professor in Law, University of Canterbury

Since the catastrophic volcanic eruption on January 16, Tonga has been largely cut off from the world due to a break in the undersea cable that links Tonga with Fiji (and from there with the world). A complete fix may take weeks.

Aside from the distress and inconvenience this is causing, Tonga’s predicament demonstrates a more general vulnerability of our global communication system.

Over 95% of the world’s data travels along the 436 submarine cables – around 1.3 million kilometres long in total – that connect all continents except Antarctica. These cables carry data integral to the internet, communication, and financial and defence systems worldwide.

There are natural hazards, as the Tonga eruption so graphically demonstrated. But the greatest threat to submarine cables is from fishing. Despite the cables being clearly marked on maritime charts, about 70% of damage is caused accidentally by gear such as trawl nets, dredges, long lines and fish aggregation devices.

But there is also concern that the cables are increasingly vulnerable to terrorism and cyberwarfare by private and state actors. As the head of the UK’s armed forces warned very recently:

Russian submarine activity is threatening underwater cables that are crucial to communication systems around the world.

An outdated convention

Given their fundamental importance to modern global communication, then, it would be natural to assume the international rules protecting submarine cables have been revised to respond to new technology and new challenges.

Not so. The international legal regime for protecting and managing submarine cables has remained largely unchanged since 1884 when the Convention for the Protection of Submarine Telegraph Cables was adopted. It remains in force today, with 36 party states (including New Zealand and Australia, which acceded in 1888 and 1901 respectively).

Read more:
Why the volcanic eruption in Tonga was so violent, and what to expect next

The convention makes it an offence to break or damage a submarine cable, wilfully or by culpable negligence (unless such action is necessary to save life). It also provides that only the state within which a vessel is registered (the “flag state”) can take action against its vessels and those on board.

If the owner of a cable breaks or damages another cable when laying or repairing their own, they must bear the cost of repairing the breakage or damage. Vessel owners who sacrifice an anchor, net or other fishing gear to avoid damaging a cable can receive compensation from the owner of the cable.

Who controls a cable?

These provisions go back to not long after the first international submarine communication cable was laid between Britain and France in 1850 – it was destroyed by a French fishing vessel within 24 hours.

By 1858, the age of submarine cables and international communication had begun with the laying of the first transatlantic cable connecting Britain and the US, although it failed after about a month and was replaced in 1866.

In 1902, the so-called “All Red” route linked New Zealand and Australia with Vancouver through the Pacific Ocean and on to Europe through the Trans-Canada and Atlantic lines.

In 1986, the first fibre optic cable was laid between the UK and Belgium, beginning the modern revolution in global communication.

Read more:
The Tonga volcanic eruption has revealed the vulnerabilities in our global telecommunication system

The 19th-century principles governing undersea cables have since been incorporated into the modern law of the sea, codified by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), ratified by 168 nations.

Under UNCLOS all states have a right to lay cables and pipelines on the seabed and continental shelf up to the 12 nautical mile limit. To run a cable to shore through another state’s territorial sea, a state needs the permission of the coastal state.

But beyond the territorial sea, the power of the coastal state to prevent or impose conditions on where a cable is laid is extremely limited. The 1884 convention rules relating to offences and liability have been incorporated into UNCLOS with minimal amendment.

Time for modern laws

There are a number of problems with the current rules. First, outside of the territorial sea, the only state that can take action against a vessel that breaks a cable is the vessel’s own flag state.

While some flag states are responsible and have adopted appropriate legislation – as New Zealand has done with the Submarine Cables and Pipelines Protection Act 1996 – many others have not.

Moreover, the state with an interest in the cable – through ownership or because the cable ultimately connects to its shore – is normally not able take action against a vessel damaging the cable.

Read more:
Undersea internet cables connect Pacific islands to the world. But geopolitical tension is tugging at the wires

Generally, the law does not address issues such as physical separation between different cables or their distance from other undersea activities such as mining. Nor does it cover maintaining consistent information on maritime charts, or co-ordination between industries and states.

The International Cable Protection Committee, a private organisation comprising 180 state and commercial members representing 97% of the world’s submarine telecom cables, issued a voluntary guide to best practice in 2021 that addressed some of these issues – but is this enough?

Given the potentially catastrophic impact on communications, the economy and defence of losing major cables to accident or nefarious activity, the answer is arguably no. The rules, largely unchanged since 1884, need modernising.

Karen Scott 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. Laws governing undersea cables have hardly changed since 1884 – Tonga is a reminder they need modernising – https://theconversation.com/laws-governing-undersea-cables-have-hardly-changed-since-1884-tonga-is-a-reminder-they-need-modernising-175312

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Hronis, Clinical Psychologist, University of Technology Sydney

If you’ve ever tried to make new friends as an adult, you’ll probably see why loneliness is at an all-time high. Making new friends feels just plain hard.

In school, making friends can be as simple as going on the monkey bars together. But as adults, making, developing and maintaining friendships can be much more difficult.

This matters, because we need friends. And while old friends are golden, nothing stays the same forever. Old friends move away, or have their time taken up by child-rearing or their careers. Without action, loneliness can quietly grow around you. It’s worth taking seriously, because evidence now suggests chronic loneliness can be lethal – the equivalent impact of 15 cigarettes a day on mortality rates.

It’s not just you, either. In many countries, loneliness is at epidemic proportions. And that was before COVID-19 made it much harder for us to see our friends.

The challenge of trust

Before COVID, around a third of Australians reported feeling at least one episode of loneliness. Since COVID brought widespread disruption to our work and social lives, loneliness has soared. Surveys now find over half (54%) of Australians report experiencing greater loneliness since the start of the pandemic.

As we reach for a new COVID-normal, it’s worth taking stock of your friendships – and assess whether you feel your social life is fine, or could use a little help.

When researchers interviewed adults about making friends in a recent study, the most important challenge cited was a lack of trust. That is, people found it harder to put their trust in someone new and fully invest in them as a friend compared to when they were younger.

Read more:
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Perhaps that’s why many people try to keep their circle of old friends as long as possible, given the trust they may have built up over many years.

Who found it harder? Women were more likely than men to say they didn’t make new friends easily because they struggled to trust others.

So what is it about adulthood? Well, as adults, we have greater self-awareness than children. While that is often a positive, it also means we’re more aware of the risks of being judged by others, of not being liked, of being rejected, and of being hurt. Or perhaps it just means we’ve been through high school and our 20s.

If we’ve had previous rejections as friends or suffered a breach of trust, we may find it harder to be trusting of others in the future. To trust a new friend means opening ourselves up and being vulnerable, just as we do in relationships.

Friendships need time

After the trust issue comes time. “Lack of time” was the second-most common reason people gave after “lack of trust” when asked why they found it hard to make friends as adults.

This won’t be news to many of us. When we have demanding work schedules, very involved family lives or a combination of the two, our time for investing in friendships drops. Even when we meet a promising new friend, it can be hard to carve out time to invest in it. This is a bigger problem for older adults, given most people find their obligations increase with age.

Read more:
It’s hard to admit we’re lonely, even to ourselves. Here are the signs and how to manage them

How long does it actually take to make friends? It shouldn’t surprise us that closer friendships take longer to build than casual acquaintances. US researchers have tried to quantify this, estimating it takes roughly 50 hours of shared contact to move from acquaintances to casual friends. To be a close friend? More than 200 hours.

What’s more, the hours you spend together need to be quality. While you may well put in the time with work colleagues, professional interactions don’t count for much. To develop a new friendship, you need personal connection. It doesn’t have to be an intimate conversation to strengthen a friendship. Casual check-ins and joking around can be just as important.

There are many other barriers stopping us from having the friendships we want. This can include having an introverted personality, health barriers, personal insecurities, or maintaining a formal facade and not allowing potential friends in.

Older people are more likely to cite illness and disability as a barrier to socialising, while younger adults are more likely to be stopped by introversion and fears of rejection.

How can we get better at making friends as adults?

It’s entirely possible to overcome these barriers as adults and build meaningful, long-lasting friendships. We don’t have to accept loneliness as inevitable. And while you might think everyone else is having a great social life, remember loneliness is widespread.

So how do you do it?

Build friendships for ten minutes a day

You don’t have to be climbing mountains or bonding intensely over a shared hobby to solidify a new friendship. If you put in ten minutes a day, you can maintain existing friendships and build new ones. Send a text, forward a meme, add to the group chat or give someone a quick call. Don’t get caught up on how much effort, energy and time goes into building friendships. Ten minutes a day may be all you need.

Make the most of any quality time

When you do get to properly spend time with a friend or acquaintance, make the most of it. Avoid distractions if possible, keep Instagram for the couch at home, and be present with your new friend.

Lean into your vulnerability

We’re often scared by the idea of being vulnerable. I think we should embrace it. Remember you are in control of how much you trust and how much you open up. If you struggle with trust, consider sharing personal information slowly, rather than all at once.

Yes, there is a risk in being vulnerable – but there is also the potential to connect on a meaningful level with another person who may very well become a good friend. And that is a fine reward.

Anastasia Hronis 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 do we find making new friends so hard as adults? – https://theconversation.com/why-do-we-find-making-new-friends-so-hard-as-adults-171740

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sascha-Dominik (Dov) Bachmann, Professor in Law and Co-Convener National Security Hub (University of Canberra), University of Canberra

A geopolitical earthquake could begin within weeks. As a string of bilateral crisis talks predictably falter, further military aggression by Russia against Ukraine seems all too probable.

If this comes to pass, the shock waves will likely be fast, wide and highly disruptive, potentially activating “tripwires” in the global security environment far beyond the edge of Europe.

Aotearoa New Zealand’s geographical distance will be no defence against the rolling consequences of a protracted crisis involving great powers and their allies. Yet there has been relatively little discussion in New Zealand about these threats.

This leaves the country at risk of being blindsided by events in an increasingly polarised world. New Zealand’s enviably peaceful and prosperous way of life depends on secure maritime trade routes, reasonable market conditions and a stable global security order.

The Ukraine situation carries the real risk of snowballing into a crisis on many fronts, shaking that stability in the process.

While speculation is always risky, there are real indications that trouble is coming. So it is worth mapping a range of scenarios that could emerge if Ukraine becomes a test of wills involving multiple major powers – and what this could mean for Aotearoa.

A chain reaction

Moscow surely knew its ultimatums to NATO were only ever going to be rejected; there is little room left for successful negotiation. If Russia opts to invade, it will happen sooner rather than later, eliciting an instant punitive response from the West.

Russia has already warned of “grave consequences” if Washington makes good on its threats of unprecedented, far-reaching sanctions that could even include expelling Russia from the SWIFT banking system.

Read more:
Russia-Ukraine tensions: power posturing or trouble on the home front for Putin?

In reply, the Kremlin would almost certainly further weaponise energy supplies to European nations, including de facto EU leader Germany.

A war in Ukraine and the need to counter Russia’s aggression would, without doubt, affect the global COVID-19 economic recovery. For example, Europe derives around 40% of its natural gas from Russia. Disruptions in energy flows would magnify destabilisation far beyond the borders of Europe.

In turn, this would shake financial markets and supply chains, raising the prospect of increased inflationary pressure in an already COVID-battered world economy. The closure of the SWIFT banking system for any transactions with Russia, as well as trade sanctions, will only add to this economic disruption.

A widening crisis

As a nation that derives much of its prosperity from exports and relies on the stable functioning of the global trade system, Aotearoa New Zealand would clearly be affected by this. But if the standoff between Russia and the US persists, matters could get much worse.

To punish Biden, Moscow – and/or Beijing as Russia’s current security partner – may well use its sway over Tehran to dampen the prospects of a nuclear deal with Iran. The Biden administration has hoped to secure such a deal, but Russia has arguably never even wanted it, despite pretensions otherwise.

Read more:
Explainer: what is ‘hybrid warfare’ and what is meant by the ‘grey zone’?

This could precipitate a wider international security crisis across multiple domains, altering the strategic calculations of key Middle Eastern states.

The US would then face a fresh set of dilemmas, weakening its hand as it tries to manage the tensions between allies that such a situation would create. And a protracted stress test for the US-led security alliance would present a tempting opportunity for China to exploit.

If US allies vacillate over Ukraine, China may use the moment to escalate non-military aggression against Taiwan, or increase its provocative posturing in the South China Sea. This would increase the challenges for the global rule-based order.

Impact on the Indo-Pacific region

New Zealanders are resilient and may be able to weather the ripple effects of one or more of the above. But if crisis spreads to the Indo-Pacific, another layer of pressure will be added.

A drawn out naval exchange in either location would potentially disrupt shipping and the flow of much of the world’s manufactured goods, delivering yet another blow to societies vulnerable to market turbulence.

And a direct invasion of Taiwan – unlikely but not unthinkable in the near term – would alter the strategic architecture of the region permanently.

Read more:
Russia and the West are at a stalemate over Ukraine. Is Putin’s endgame now war?

While this risk may seem remote, it is not a paranoid projection: Kremlin think tanks, such as Russtrat, have boasted of Sino-Russian capacity for overwhelming Washington and its allies through multiple-front confrontation.

And there is evidence already of concerted cyber and information operations from Moscow and Beijing against Western targets, ranging from cyber attacks to information warfare aimed at undermining democratic societies’ trust in their institutions and leaders.

Forewarned is forearmed

Of course, none of this may happen. The purpose of this article is to call for greater awareness and debate concerning these geopolitical challenges to a liberal democracy and its way of life.

Aotearoa New Zealand occupies a strategically important space in the Indo-Pacific region, set to be the key theatre of 21st century great power competition. The threat of an increasingly militarised South Pacific looms, as do the economic and security risks of a falling out with China, as New Zealand’s foreign minister has warned.

Collective resilience is only possible when citizens are reasonably aware of a threat well in advance of it reaching a critical state. By contrast, a limited public conversation about future risk is a virtual invitation for trouble.

A forewarned, empowered citizenry will be better placed to face the future, and more likely to deal with its challenges rationally. So, whether or not the situation in Ukraine is resolved, we should turn up the volume on this conversation.

The author acknowledges the assistance of Emanuel Stoakes, affiliate researcher with the National Security Hub at the University of Canberra, in the preparation and writing of this article.

Sascha-Dominik (Dov) Bachmann has received and is receiving funding from the Australian Department of Defence for research regarding grey zone and information operations targeting Australia. He is a Research Fellow with the Security Institute for Governance and Leadership in Africa, Faculty of Military Science, Stellenbosch University.

– ref. Ukraine might be far away, but a security crisis in Europe can still threaten Aotearoa New Zealand – https://theconversation.com/ukraine-might-be-far-away-but-a-security-crisis-in-europe-can-still-threaten-aotearoa-new-zealand-175310

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Doctor of Botany, The University of Melbourne

Most of us are captivated by the thought of a “living fossil”, which is any organism that appeared millions of years ago in the fossil record and survives today, relatively unchanged.

The maidenhair tree, Ginkgo biloba, ticks all the boxes of this definition. The genus Ginkgo is well known in China and Japan where it has special significance in Buddhism and Confucianism, and first became known to European botanists in the late 1600s.

Today, ancient ginkgo fossils can be found all over the world, some of which are almost 300 million years old – a time when dinosaurs roamed the planet. Let’s delve further into what makes this species so remarkable: from its ability to survive nuclear bombs, to its vomit-smelling seeds, to it’s beautiful autumn display.

Hardy survivors

The ancestral ginkgo evolved so long ago it spread across the super continent Pangaea and was present in both the northern component (Laurasia) and the southern part (Gondwana, which included Australia) when the continents fragmented.

As a result there are fossils, Ginkgo australis, from the cretaceous period about 65-140 million years ago in the Koonwarra Fish Fossil beds near Leongatha, Victoria. There are also much more recent (about 20 million years old) fossils from Tasmania.

Ginkgo biloba has an intriguing appearance. It can grow up to 35 metres tall with a spreading canopy, and its leaves are a wonderful fan shape, often with a little cleft or notch.

As you might imagine for a genus dating back almost 300 million years, the maidenhair tree is both hardy and resilient, tolerating a wide range of soil and climatic conditions.

The tree is known to be very long-lived and some specimens at temple sites are thought to be over 1,000 years old which, in part, explains the mystique associated with the species.

They have a lignotuber – a modified stem at the base of the trunk containing lots of buds – which allows for sprouting at ground level and multiple stems. The lignotuber allows for rapid recovery from serious environmental stresses such as fire and defoliation.

Read more:
Tree ferns are older than dinosaurs. And that’s not even the most interesting thing about them

In fact, six trees not only survived the bombing of Hiroshima, but recovered quickly, are healthy and growing still. Their survival showed the resilience of the ginkgo and the trees became an important symbol that recovery from disaster was, indeed, possible.

Australians can empathise with this as the vibrant re-sprouting of trees after bushfires often plays a similar symbolic role.

Stinky seeds and dinosaur food

Things continue to get interesting when you consider there are separate male and female trees; a relatively rare feature in modern trees. The male reproductive structures have mobile sperm that swim to the ovule for fertilisation, which is considered a primitive or ancient characteristic.

If fertilisation occurs, the female tree produces a seed that resembles a fruit. The seed’s soft fleshy layer is malodorous, with people often describing it as being revolting or smelling of human vomit.

A pair of female maidenhair trees was planted outside the entrance to the Old Geology building at the University of Melbourne in the 1920s. Since then, staff and students have had to use the side entrance when trees held seeds. This will probably continue for decades to come.

Likewise, I know of a couple of female trees that were planted outside the entrance to a major bank branch in Hawthorn, Victoria. It was considered karma by disgruntled customers, until their sudden removal by a desperate manager.

The male tree doesn’t smell but produces pollen, which has been known to cause allergies, so be wary of which sex you plant and where you plant them.

The seed’s strong scent has been linked to its dispersal, as many animals are drawn to strong, even rancid smelling fruits. There’s little evidence as to which animals or birds eat ginkgo seeds today, but there has been speculation the seeds may have been eaten by dinosaurs.

Read more:
Friday essay: trees have many stories to tell. Is this our last chance to read them?

Ginkgos coexisted with dinosaurs for millions of years. It’s easy to imagine a huge herbivorous dinosaur munching on tall maidenhair trees. Sadly, there’s no evidence of gingko seeds in fossilised dinosaur droppings. But for those who are captivated by the connection of a living fossil and dinosaurs, perhaps that fossil is still to be found.

Ginkgo for gardeners

Ginkgo biloba has been cultivated for more than 3,000 years, and so whether it grows naturally in the wild is uncertain. Even in China, it grows most often in homes and temples, and there’s very little genetic diversity within the plants suggesting they’ve been grown from cuttings.

The tree has been so widely planted it now occurs in major cities and botanic gardens around the world. In Australia, many of us live within a few kilometres of a recent planting.

Many of the ginkgo trees planted in urban landscapes are males grown from cuttings. But there are different cultivars available from nurseries, with some being all female varieties that are highly prized for their brilliant yellow autumnal colour.

Apart from allergenic pollen and vile smelling seeds, Ginkgo biloba can have another very annoying or perhaps frustrating habit for gardeners. Young plants can grow very tall before their side branches begin to grow and develop. This form of growth, called bolting, is considered an adaptation to stressed environments, but it’s little consolation when you’ve been growing a gingko for 20 years, it’s over 6m tall and still looks like a bean pole.

You have to be patient with slow-growing, long-lived trees, but they’re worth the wait! They rarely, if ever, have pest or disease problems, they are hardy and, despite being cultivated in Europe and North America for centuries, have never become weedy.

Read more:
Running out of things to do in isolation? Get back in the garden with these ideas from 4 experts

They may well be described as living fossils, but they are in fact a resilient genus of modern plants that can cope with whatever the environment has thrown at them for over 300 million years.

They are the epitome of great survivors and I would not be betting against their chances of surviving for millennia to come.

Gregory Moore 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. Dinosaur food and Hiroshima bomb survivors: maidenhair trees are ‘living fossils’ and your new favourite plant – https://theconversation.com/dinosaur-food-and-hiroshima-bomb-survivors-maidenhair-trees-are-living-fossils-and-your-new-favourite-plant-164630

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

Given how much COVID-19 is dominating Australians’ lives, our governments should be telling us everything they know about infections, hospitalisations and deaths. So why aren’t they?

Full disclosure is important for public health, and also for public confidence in government and our leadership.

An example of what not to do comes from NSW, Australia’s most populous state, where daily updates are delivered by government health officials, sometimes with the premier or health minister in attendance, sometimes not.

The information provided at these events is also inconsistent.

For example, Tuesday’s briefing this week delivered by NSW chief health officer Kerry Chant reported the deaths of 36 people – 22 men and 14 women. She provided age breakdowns and said “33 were vaccinated” but “only a handful, four, had had their boosters”.

All this – and more – is important information that should be public. We need comprehensive data to know how the hospital system and emergency services are coping, and about risks based on factors such as age and vaccination status.

But these daily briefings have been rather hit and miss.

Some days we have been told about the vaccination status of those who died. On January 2, for example, Chant mentioned the two people who died had both received shots. On January 5 she didn’t mention the vaccination status of the eight deaths she reported. The January 10 update, given by NSW’s director of health protection, Jeremy McAnulty, didn’t provide it either.

Even on the best days we still don’t know as much as we should.
What is mentioned and what is omitted is all over the place. Information about sewage surveillance? No problem. Information about whether people died in hospital, a nursing home, or at home? Good luck.

It’s like health-information bingo: “Number 8, garden gate, we’ll tell it straight. Number 25, duck and dive.”

Cheap talk and noisy information

When is it reasonable for those with information to obscure it?

In general, decision theory says decisions are best made with all the relevant information. But there are – at least in principle – some exceptions. One involves strategic considerations. Another involves imperfect cognitive ability on the part of decision makers.

The first exception has to with “cheap talk” – which in game theory is defined as direct and costless communication among players.

In economic models of cheap talk there is an expert (who is informed about what right thing to do) and a decision maker (who is not informed but makes the decision). If the expert and the decision maker have the same goals it makes sense for the expert to share all their information.

Read more:
You can’t fix it if you can’t see it: how the ABS became our secret weapon

However, a classic paper in game theory – by American economists Vincent Crawford and Joel Sobel, published in 1982 – showed that an expert with a different agenda has an incentive to “noise up” the information they give to sway the decision maker.

In the case of the NSW government’s daily briefings, think of this dynamic as playing out not between health experts and politicians, but between government officials (politicians and bureaucrats) and the voters – who will decide the outcome of the next election.

One can certainly imagine a wedge between what government officials and the public want.

The public wants to be told the truth. But the NSW government might want the public to focus on information leading to certain behaviour. Perhaps it wants to encourage people to get out and spend money. Or perhaps it wants to speed up the rate at which people are getting their booster shots.

Choice overload

There is a second good explanation for not providing complete information: too much information can be counterproductive.

People suffer from “choice overload”. They have difficulty processing all the information they have in front of them and do better with fewer choices.

The classic study demonstrating this involved an experiment using jam by psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper. They set up a jam-tasting booth in a Californian grocery store. The display of jams to sample was rotated hourly between a set of six and a set of 24 flavours.

The key results were that shoppers were more likely to stop at the booth with the 24-flavour selection (60% of passers-by, compared with 40% when the booth had six flavours). But they scarcely sampled more jams (an average of 1.5 compared with 1.38 for the six-sample range), and just 3% subsequently bought a jar of jam, compared with 30% who stopped at the six-jam booth.

Read more:
Does choice overload you? It depends on your personality – take the test

Perhaps the NSW government thinks we will all get overwhelmed with knowing whether people died of COVID-19 at home or in hospital.

We need to know where people are dying

Neither of these reasons strike me as very good explanations for “noising up” information about COVID-19.

Where people are when they die, in particular, is valuable information. It tells us if people are getting to hospital when very sick with COVID-19, or not getting admitted for some reason. Suppose many people dying of COVID-19 are not in hospital or do so relatively shortly after arriving. This would raise important questions.

Is it because the disease strikes quickly? Is it because the ambulance system is overloaded? Is it because people are being turned away from hospital because of stress on the system? Is it because people over a certain age are typically not being admitted to the intensive care unit?

If this all sounds rather speculative, it is. Without the relevant information being disclosed to public all we can do is speculate.

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

– ref. Vital Signs: disclosure please, we shouldn’t be playing bingo with COVID statistics – https://theconversation.com/vital-signs-disclosure-please-we-shouldnt-be-playing-bingo-with-covid-statistics-175230

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

It sounded a touch desperate – Prime Minister Scott Morrison imploring backpackers to “come on down” to Australia, as the Omicron crisis escalated.

“Enjoy a holiday here”, said the one-time managing director of Tourism Australia, and “at the same time join our workforce and help us”. The backpacker flow is slow, so there’ll be a $3 million advertising campaign (minus Lara Bingle) to lure them, and they’ll get a rebate on their visas if they come soon.

People were quick to see the irony – while Morrison was spruiking working holidays, travel advice in the US was updated to say “avoid travel to Australia”.

“Come on down” wasn’t Morrison’s only trite line. Another was that “we must respect” Omicron. This accompanies his insistence we shouldn’t “fear” it, part of the pitch for a “balanced” response to the pandemic’s latest ogre.

There’s a lot of fear on the loose. Fear in the health sector about coping in the coming weeks. Families’ fear for relatives shut away in aged care homes. Fear in some businesses that shortages of workers or customers or both could kill them.

And then there are the people feeling vulnerable to the disease itself, even if it is mild in a majority of cases.

Morrison says he and the government understand the frustration of Australians going through this disrupted summer. Polling reflects feelings well beyond frustration. Nine’s Resolve poll, published this week, had the Coalition’s primary vote (34%) falling behind Labor’s (35%).

Apart from unforeseen events, the PM’s future will be a gamble on voter volatility. They’re in a very grumpy mood now. But where will they be in May?

To exacerbate his troubles, as he fights his way through the coming hazardous months, Morrison is surrounded by a team that looks far from match-fit, once you get beyond Treasurer Josh Frydenberg.

Frydenberg has returned to the fray after his bout of COVID; Morrison will have to depend on him for much of the heavy lifting, beyond crafting the budget.

Key to the Coalition’s re-election campaign will be a massive attack on Anthony Albanese. But where are the effective attack dogs to back up the leader?

Mathias Cormann, now watching the unfolding Australian drama from the luxury of his OECD job in Paris, was regularly deployed to land punches; his replacement, Simon Birmingham, is diligent without Cormann’s impact.

In canine terms, Barnaby Joyce is of a breed that poses risk to their owners. He may or may not hold up the Nationals’ regional vote but could be costing the Coalition support in the cities, where independent candidates make much of declaring their Liberal opponents “vote with Barnaby”.

Peter Dutton, who still carries a leadership baton, is a classic head kicker but seems to be keeping his own head down. He is expected, however, to step up his activity soon and will be central to the national security theme in the government’s election campaign.

On climate policy, Angus Taylor, a poor communicator, will need to be wary of miscuing in trying to demolish Labor’s policy. The Coalition won’t get away with exaggerations like 2019.

Given Morrison’s vulnerability among female voters, the PM also needs ministers who can mount a convincing case on women’s policy. But Minister for Women Marise Payne hasn’t shown herself up to the task – she hates venturing into the media, and is tied up with her main portfolio of foreign affairs. There is no Julie Bishop in the ranks.

As Morrison tries to pressure states to open their schools on time and keep them open, Education Minister Alan Tudge remains sidelined while an inquiry examines an allegation (which he denies) from a former staffer and ex-lover that he was violent towards her (kicking her out of bed). There’s no official word on the report’s timing. If Tudge isn’t definitively cleared, Morrison will have yet another problem.

In the vital health area, the hyperactive Greg Hunt will run hard to the finishing line. But he’s retiring, leaving the pertinent question of who’d be his successor in a re-elected Morrison government.

Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly this week described what that person, or Labor’s Mark Butler if there’s a change of government, can expect to face.

“I think [in] winter we will see more COVID. That’s been the case in every winter so far in all parts of the world. Whether that will be Omicron for people that have not yet got it during this wave or another variant, I can’t tell that.

“What I do know, though, is we’re almost certainly going to have a flu season this year as well in winter. And flu and coronavirus together, as has been seen in several countries in the northern hemisphere right now, is a challenge.”

Meanwhile, Morrison, having waved the populist flag by dispatching the unvaccinated Novak Djokovic, is undermined by homegrown vaccine rebels in his ranks.

This week he denounced the views of the Nationals’ George Christensen, who said parents should not have their children vaccinated, and Christensen has been forced to stand down from a parliamentary committee.

With a February parliamentary sitting looming, who knows whether Christensen will play up in the House? Certainly the two Coalition senators, Alex Antic and Gerard Rennick, who late last year boycotted votes on government legislation because Morrison wouldn’t try to override state vaccine mandates, remain defiant.

The fortnight February session will be brief but brutal. There’ll be Senate estimates hearings, always full of grenades. In the lower house, it will be hard for Labor to “lose” question times.

In the middle of the fortnight, on February 12, will be a “super Saturday” – four state byelections in NSW. These results will have significant fallout for the mood federally.

The seats are Willoughby (Liberal, 21%), Strathfield (Labor, 5%), Bega (Liberal, 6.9%) and Monaro (Nationals, 11.6%). All have high-profile departees – respectively, Gladys Berejiklian, Jodi McKay (former Labor leader), Andrew Constance (former state minister now running federally) and John Barilaro (former Nationals leader).

The NSW government has been hand-in-glove with Morrison in wanting to “push through” the Omicron crisis with everything as open as possible.

Super Saturday will be a referendum on NSW leader Dominic Perrottet’s handling of Omicron, a test of whether COVID management is turning from an electoral positive to a negative. It will also be an indirect judgement on Morrison’s handling of it too – or at least it will be seen as such.

While Super Saturday will be an important real-time barometer before the May federal election, it won’t be the last. South Australia goes to the polls on March 19, with the Liberal government on the ropes as it struggles with COVID and the fallout from scandals.

A big Super Saturday swing against the NSW government would send deep shock waves through the federal Coalition, which (on conventional wisdom) needs to make gains in that state to survive. If a bad result in SA brought a double hit, the mood in the Morrison ranks would be extremely bleak.

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

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Scott Morrison’s ministerial team looks far from match-fit – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-scott-morrisons-ministerial-team-looks-far-from-match-fit-175343

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Morgan Brigg, Associate Professor, Peace and Conflict Studies, The University of Queensland

After decades of calls, a patchwork of treaty processes are being developed across Australia. However, without a history of treaty-making or treaty law in Australia, serious questions arise about the best approach.

Getting treaties right is crucial for First Nations peoples’ well-being and for building a reflective, assured, and confident nation. This is urgent work, and yet the best way forward might involve working in longer time frames than is usual in policy reform.

Taking time with these processes is important because developing meaningful treaties requires negotiating political authority between Indigenous peoples and Australian governments, and the balance of power and resources between them.

Indigenous peoples have political authority going into treaty processes as the original peoples governing this continent for tens of thousands of years. However putting this authority into action is challenging because white Australian political forms and processes are pervasive.

In addition, many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have been systematically disconnected from their sources of authority and each other. This can make for challenging issues surrounding Indigenous representation in treaty processes.

Read more:
A short history of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy – an indelible reminder of unceded sovereignty

Queensland’s approach

Victoria is acknowledged for being the first Australian state to begin developing a treaty, having passed the first legal framework for treaty negotiations. A treaty process has progressed relatively quickly since then.

Queensland began a “pathway” to treaty process in 2019. The Queensland government’s announcement of an open ended process as part of NAIDOC week was generally well-received at the time, but was no guarantee of success.

The Eminent Panel and the Treaty Advancement Committee have carefully listened to voices of First Nations communities and managed the complex politics involved with these consultations. The Queensland government has responded positively with a key next step to include the establishment of a “Treaty Institute” to invest in the state being treaty-ready over a ten year period.

Sustaining the Queensland approach

While the Queensland treaty process has thus far proceeded well, it stands at a crossroads as backroom negotiations to give shape to the Treaty Institute continue. Previous collaborative work in Indigenous-settler relations in Queensland suggests sustaining a meaningful treaty process requires following these three principles:

• the Treaty Institute needs to be as separate from government as possible and affirm the distinct political authority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples

• the Treaty Institute should focus on engaging with and supporting Indigenous peoples and their place-based forms of political authority, including to re-establish peer-to-peer treaties among Indigenous nations. (Existing Indigenous organisations have a role to play in this process but fresh, creative, and demanding work is also required)

• the governance and work of the Treaty Institute must be inclusive, recognising men’s and women’s law and their respective leadership as well as including the views of people of diverse ages, genders, sexualities, and abilities.

Navigating political authority and power

Developing meaningful treaties with First Nations peoples requires at least partly remedying the dominance of white Australian political forms and power. If this is not done it is not possible to negotiate political authority of First Nations peoples and Australian governments and the power relations between them.

Australian governments exercise sovereignty and have an abundance of power and resources, but they struggle with legitimacy and thus authority within treaty processes. As Professor of Law Irene Watson asks, “by what lawful authority do you … dispossess us?”

White Australia needs to grapple with the legitimacy of its claims to authority, including addressing past injustices and imbalance of power and resources in treaty processes.

Queensland’s proposed process allows time for the Queensland government to recognise Indigenous political authority while nurturing trust in the treaty process within Queensland’s diverse political communities.

The process is also broadly aligned with many First Nations peoples because of an affinity with continuity, a careful approach to change, and regard for protocol borne of tens of thousands of years of governing this continent. Additional time in these processes also allows space from immediate pressures of negotiating with government.

Most importantly, the proposed Treaty Institute provides Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples the necessary time and resources to consider how to preserve and strengthen Indigenous ideas and institutions in Australian policy and decision-making processes.

This can enable the pursuit of placed-based approaches to decision-making that draw on respective First Nations’ Countries.

Read more:
Australia has a heritage conservation problem. Can farming and Aboriginal heritage protection co-exist?

As Australia’s treaty deliberations continue to develop, we will begin to see advantages and disadvantages of different approaches.

For now, the comparatively slower approach in Queensland looks to address fundamental challenges which could potentially be overlooked in a more rushed process.

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

– ref. Queensland’s ‘Path to Treaty’ has some lessons for the rest of Australia – https://theconversation.com/queenslands-path-to-treaty-has-some-lessons-for-the-rest-of-australia-174464

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Wellings, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, Monash University

Boris Johnson’s time as the United Kingdom’s prime minister is under immediate threat. Johnson, who likes a classical analogy, will know that civil servant Sue Grey’s imminent report into the “Partygate” scandal is the bureaucratic equivalent of the Sword of Damocles hanging over his head.

Johnson has been gravely damaged by the revelations of recent weeks that he attended gatherings and parties his own government had banned during the COVID lockdown of 2020, while some Britons’ loved ones died alone.

Significantly, pressure on Johnson is mounting from within his own party. During an acrimonious prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, David Davis, a former Tory minister and arch-Brexiteer, told Johnson “in the name of God, go!”

Yet, for all the public anger about Johnson’s lack of leadership during the pandemic and inability to grasp the need for full contrition about “Partygate”, his weakened position actually has a lot more to do with the aftershocks of Brexit in three major ways.

Fear of a crumbling ‘Red Wall’

The first is the extent to which Brexit contributed to Johnson’s election victory in December 2019.

The commanding majority he secured in that election – a major political achievement – enabled Britain to withdraw from the European Union. Much of this success was attributed to a swing in support from so-called “Red Wall” constituencies in the north and Midlands parts of England, which had a history of voting Labour and switched their allegiance to the Conservatives.

Read more:
Boris Johnson polling is now so bad that it makes sense for Conservative MPs to get rid of him

The twin sources of this historic switch were believed to be a desire to complete Brexit and a hostility towards Labour’s left-wing leader Jeremy Corbyn.

The problem for Johnson is the perception, among the new cohort of Conservative MPs elected in the “Red Wall” constituencies, that their newfound support among voters may be fragile.

With Brexit now done and Corbyn no longer Labour leader, many are asking themselves whether these voters will now revert back to Labour. The fear of an embarrassingly short parliamentary career may be convincing many to consider giving Johnson the push.

A ‘technopopulist’ who could bring the party down

The second Brexit-related weakness concerns Johnson’s style of leadership itself and the part this played in the Conservatives’ 2019 election win.

This style has been described by political scientists Chris Bickerton and Carlo Invernizzi Accetti as “technopopulism”. That is to say Johnson is a leader who both appears to reject “normal” politics, while at the same time professing an unorthodox competence to get things – like Brexit – done.

This was a major part of his appeal to Conservatives who elected him party leader in 2019 and voters who made him prime minster later that year.

Yet, this now leaves him vulnerable. There’s a big question many Conservatives may be asking themselves: was the 2019 election Johnson’s victory, or the party’s more broadly?

If they feel it was Johnson’s victory, they could decide to eject him before he permanently contaminates the Conservative brand ahead of local elections in May and a general election two years from now.

Johnson’s populist nod and wink that “I am with them but not of them” could now come back to bite as Conservative politicians decide whether to amputate the Johnsonian rot to save the Conservative body.

Read more:
Boris Johnson’s big election victory: academics on what it means for the UK and Brexit

In doing so, they will be in tune with public opinion. Johnson’s chaotic leadership style was always linked with a sense of self-advancement. If this was visible to some during Brexit, it became even more evident during the pandemic.

During 2020, the Conservative leadership invoked the second world war “Spirit of the Blitz” to make it through the darkest days of the pandemic.

From the perspective of 2022 and the “Partygate” scandal, another wartime analogy looks more apt – “lions led by donkeys”. This is a popular memory of the first world war in which stoical British soldiers were led to their deaths by incompetent commanders.

Brexit is only half-baked

Lastly, Johnson’s position has been weakened because, despite the rhetoric, Brexit is only half-done.

Johnson is a famous over-promiser. He told parliament in 2017 that Brexit meant Britain could have its cake and eat it. The reality is the Brexit cake is half-baked (in both senses of the word).

For one, the status of Northern Ireland as a full part of the UK is still in the balance because the EU-UK border question has yet to be resolved.

Read more:
State of Stormont: can Northern Ireland trust in Truss?

Second, it is hard to see what material benefit Brexit has brought the UK. Admittedly, the pandemic has clouded the ability to make firm judgements about the UK economy. However, it is hard to imagine, amid all the shortages of food and truck drivers, that a free-trade agreement with Australia is giving UK citizens much more than they had when Britain was part of the EU.

This means true believers in Brexit might like someone like Foreign Secretary Liz Truss as PM to fully realise what they perceive as the real benefits of the decision to leave the EU.

Who might replace Johnson?

Truss, currently in Australia for the annual Australia-UK ministerial meetings, is probably considering her position, along with other potential contenders to replace Johnson: Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, Home Secretary Priti Patel, Health Secretary Sajid Javid, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi and former Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who was defeated by Johnson in the 2019 Conservative leadership contest.

Former Conservative MP Enoch Powell, hero of the Conservative right and a vociferous critic of the UK’s entry into the European Economic Community in the 1970s, once said all political lives end in failure.

Johnson’s downfall would be a case of the revolution eating itself. The irony is the man who promised to get Brexit done, may well get done in by Brexit.

Ben Wellings 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. Boris Johnson and ‘Partygate’: he who lives by the Brexit sword, dies by the Brexit sword – https://theconversation.com/boris-johnson-and-partygate-he-who-lives-by-the-brexit-sword-dies-by-the-brexit-sword-175323

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth J Edwards, Senior Lecturer in Education, The University of Queensland

There’s just over a week to go before term one starts across the country – except in Queensland which has pushed back the start of the school year. We are yet to see states and territory plans for how to open schools safely, and to minimise the inevitable Omicron-induced teacher shortages, but one thing is clear: even with plans in place, schools will continue to experience disruptions in 2022.

As such, they will bear the consequences for the mental health of their staff and students.

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

We investigated what schools have done during the pandemic to help support and maintain the well-being of their students and staff. We reviewed studies world-wide on the initiatives they used and listened to 25 experts – school leaders, teachers and school psychologists and counsellors – from public, independent, primary and secondary schools across Australia. Most participants (80%) were from Queensland schools and all had experienced school disruptions during the pandemic.

We pulled out seven steps schools can take to mitigate mental ill health during COVID-related disruptions and help staff, students and the school community deal with uncertainty.

1. Have clearly outlined plans for certain events

School staff need a clear protocol for what to do when certain events occur, so all staff are on the same page.

For example, what happens if the school closes for face-to-face teaching (fully or partially)? What roles will each staff member play? What happens when a child or teacher gets very sick or even dies?

These guidance documents must be easily accessible and every staff member must know where to look.

One teacher whose school had such plans in place told us:

we had excellent protocols […] it was great to just get that folder off the shelf and go.

2. Help staff maintain their own well-being and emotionally support students

Schools must provide staff with the skills they need to have difficult conversations with students, identify those at risk, and incorporate some psychological and emotional strategies into their teaching practice.

Our interviewees described such professional development being part of their weekly after-school staff meetings (sometimes termed learning lounges). They recommended many of these meetings could focus on self-care and provide opportunities for teachers to share their experiences of stress and how to deal with it.

This time could also be used to give teachers strategies to manage their own well-being. One study we looked at examined the effectiveness of a reframing intervention to build resilience and reduce burnout in teachers in Israel. Teachers would identify their stressful thoughts and then find evidence for opposing these thoughts. Teachers reported increased resilience and improved well-being relative to the control group who reported greater burnout.

Read more:
Is learning more important than well-being? Teachers told us how COVID highlighted ethical dilemmas at school

School psychologists and counsellors and other professionals could also share strategies with teachers for how to incorporate mindfulness techniques into classes.

And they can help teachers have difficult conversations with kids. It is normal for students to feel worried or sad after loss of any kind. In the initial stages, they need to have a conversation with a familiar person who can empathise with their worry and grief. Teachers who know a student well can be helped on how to have these early conversations and refer the student for further support when needed.

3. Be patient with students who may need time to adjust

Children and young people benefit from a secure school environment and familiar routines, but returning to school after a disruption requires flexibility.

Schools and teachers must understand it won’t be possible to get back to normal right away, so be patient with all students and their unique responses. Students may have had different COVID-related experiences and where one student takes disruption in their stride, another might need more support and time to adjust.

Read more:
A familiar place among the chaos: how schools can help students cope after the bushfires

4. Incorporate mindfulness and calming techniques into classes

Incorporating activities to teach self-calming, emotion regulation, and other coping skills into regular class time can help. Mindfulness has been shown to be particularly effective for reducing anxiety, depression and stress in 14-18 year olds.

A review of numerous studies recommends 35 minute group mindfulness sessions, twice a week for eight weeks (including basic stress management education, yoga, and breathing and relaxation techniques) delivered by trained teachers as part of typical classroom routine. There are also free smartphone apps tailored to young people that offer mindfulness and other exercises.

One teacher we interviewed told us “a pandemic feels like you’re out of control”, and recommended “normalising that […] using mindfulness, gratitude and going for walks.”

A study of teenagers in China found listening to daily mindfulness increased students’ resilience and emotional intelligence. In another study, primary school students in Canada received two forms of online art therapy which showed a reduction in their anxiety.

Read more:
A place to get away from it all: 5 ways school libraries support student well-being

5. Put together a team to address school community’s concerns

Principals (or a senior leader) should be available for teachers and parents to express their concerns to.

The school can bring together a leadership team of school psychologists/counsellors, chaplains, health nurses and other support people to share the burden of addressing them.

Regular communication is also important. Anxiety will be high and keeping the school community regularly informed of any changes or protocols will go some way to calming the sense of uncertainty.

One school leader told us:

It’s really important to communicate regularly and the same message over and over again to everybody.

6. Have a support system in place for teachers

We found an effective way to help support teachers is to have a buddy system so teachers can support each other.

Another way is to make sure the leadership team checks in with all the staff members regularly. As one school leader told us:

we had a group list of […] every single staff member and we made a commitment that we would ring each one of those people once a week.

Read more:
Teachers are expected to put on a brave face and ignore their emotions. We need to talk about it

7. Identify and keep an eye on students at risk

Watch for signs when a student is not coping in the weeks and months following a disruption. Young people don’t always ask for help, but their behaviours can be a sign when something is wrong.

For example, a younger child might say they have a tummy ache, become aggressive, or disinterested in the things they usually enjoy. An adolescent might be moody, irritable, say negative things about themselves, and isolate from friends. If you see students whose behaviour is telling you they are having mental-health issues, refer them to specialised services.

Read more:
More children are self-harming since the start of the pandemic. Here’s what parents and teachers can do to help

The authors would like to thank Professor Annemaree Carroll from The University of Queensland for her involvement in all aspects of the project.

Elizabeth J Edwards received funding from Queensland Department of Education under the Education Horizon Grant scheme.

Marilyn Campbell received funding from Queensland Department of Education under the Education Horizon Grant scheme.

– ref. Schools can expect a year of disruption. Here are 7 ways they can help support the well-being of students and staff – https://theconversation.com/schools-can-expect-a-year-of-disruption-here-are-7-ways-they-can-help-support-the-well-being-of-students-and-staff-174886

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Leeder, Emeritus Professor, Menzies Centre for Health Policy, University of Sydney

Public hospitals – never with much spare capacity – have been severely stressed by the latest COVID wave.

The current Omicron outbreak has loaded even heavier demands on hospital beds, both for those who need oxygen and for the severely ill in intensive care wards, as well as those who cannot be cared for at home or in an aged-care facility.

Shortages of beds and hospital equipment are matched by staffing problems as front-line workers catch COVID, are contacts of cases, or are emotionally and physically exhausted.

Staff are angry having to provide intensive care beds for people who choose not to be vaccinated and then get seriously ill.

Intensive care nurses in Sydney began strike action outside Westmead Hospital on Wednesday to protest dangerous work conditions and low staffing levels.

Many of our hospitals were not equipped to face an enemy like COVID.

Now, three emergency measures will help us muddle through the crisis, caused in part by the removal of public health controls just before the social festive season which commentators have referred to as “letting it rip”.

The combined effects of these short-term measures should enable us to cope with the pressures of increased numbers of patients requiring care.

But the sheer number of cases of Omicron, even if is milder than the Delta variant and assuming case numbers decline, will test these arrangements to the limit.

Read more:
From COVID control to chaos – what now for Australia? Two pathways lie before us

1. Reinforcing the front line

In Victoria, a “Code Brown” has been implemented across the hospital system.

It means staff of major city and regional public hospitals may have their leave cancelled and be allocated to work where needs are greatest. Non-urgent care may be postponed.

It’s designed to allow the hospitals to compensate for thousands more patients and several thousand fewer staff, off work because of COVID.

This is the first time the code has been used statewide.

It’s designed to respond to an emergency, such as a road accident, bushfire or other natural disaster.

2. Recruiting the private sector

The federal government has agreed private hospitals should work with public hospitals to care for COVID patients.

During the pandemic, most COVID patients have been treated in the public sector.

Health minister Greg Hunt said this week up to 57,000 nurses and thousands of support staff from private hospitals would be available to work in public hospitals.

This contingency plan was enacted in 2020 and held in reserve. Now it’s needed because of short staffing in the public sector because of the load and absenteeism of staff.

The details – including wages – would be left to the states to determine.

This move should ease the pressure on public hospitals. But a nurse or other health worker from a private hospital working in a public hospital environment encounters yet more stress. It’s rather like moving between countries – language and customs vary, and in the strict, protocol-driven environment of the modern hospital, these differences can be dangerous.

The workers to be drawn from the private sector were not idle before the call-up. It is not clear who, if anyone, will do the work these people did previously in the private sector, which provides much elective surgery. Further delays and cancellations of surgery may result.

Read more:
We’re two frontline COVID doctors. Here’s what we see as case numbers rise

3. Elective surgeries postponed

Elective surgery – that is, non-urgent surgery – will be reduced in public hospitals across many parts of the country, if not completely cancelled. This includes hip and knee replacements and surgery for many problems other than emergencies.

This action has been taken at several stress points in the past two years.

For those people depending on Medicare and public hospitals for hip surgery, for example, this will mean further delays.

There’s much to be learned from the experience in all sectors of the health enterprise – hospitals, general practice, public health, and health service management – from the successes and mistakes in how we’ve managed COVID.

When the COVID war is over, it will be time for forensic soul searching to enable us to build a modern and better health system.

We have done well, but not as well as we might.

Stephen Leeder 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. Omicron is overwhelming Australia’s hospital system. 3 emergency measures aim to ease the burden – https://theconversation.com/omicron-is-overwhelming-australias-hospital-system-3-emergency-measures-aim-to-ease-the-burden-175233

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dominic O’Sullivan, Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences, Auckland University of Technology and Professor of Political Science, Charles Sturt University

Last month, the Australian government published the Indigenous Voice co-design final report. It’s the latest step in the debate about how Australia should and shouldn’t recognise a distinctive Indigenous presence in public life.

Some of the report’s recommendations, which the government accepts, will help policy-making to work better for Indigenous people. But they don’t go far enough to meet international human rights norms by supporting self-determination as a right that belongs to Indigenous peoples as much as to anybody else.

Read more:
From dispossession to massacres, the Yoo-rrook Justice Commission sets a new standard for truth-telling

What is self-determination and why is it so important?

Self-determination is the right to exercise authority over one’s own affairs and to participate fairly in public decision-making. It encompasses the right to make decisions about things like health, education, natural resource management and economic development. It doesn’t stop the state’s right to govern. But as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights puts it, the state’s right to govern doesn’t override an obligation to recognise that:

All peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.

The Voice co-design report is limited in the opportunities it provides for Australia to meet these obligations. Furthermore, it doesn’t give effect to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which says:

Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and strengthen their distinct political, legal, economic, social and cultural institutions, while retaining their right to participate fully, if they so choose, in the political, economic, social and cultural life of the state.

Read more:
Most Australians support First Nations Voice to parliament: survey

The Uluru Statement from the Heart

One limitation is the local and regional bodies will be referred to as “Indigenous”, not “First Nations” Voices. The co-design committee wasn’t allowed to consider First Nations’ Voices, as the Referendum Council proposed in its Uluru Statement from the Heart in 2017.

The Referendum Council was established in 2015 by then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and the leader of the opposition, Bill Shorten. Its job was to recommend amendments to the Constitution to “recognise” Australia’s first peoples.

The significance of the term “First Nations” is that nationhood implies distinctive and enduring political community, whereas the term “Indigenous” refers only to prior occupancy.

Under instruments like the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, “Indigenous” is a politically significant concept. But it’s not the same as nationhood. This is important because the Referendum Council made its recommendations after widespread consultation with First Nations people and most said they preferred to be recognised as members of First Nations because of its more significant political meaning.

The Uluru Statement from the Heart recommended amending the Constitution to create a permanent First Nations’ Voice to Parliament. However, amending the Constitution requires a referendum.

The Voice was to be complemented by Makarrata, a process of “coming together after a struggle”. Makarrata would lay the foundation for agreement-making.

Discussions are underway on what agreement-making through treaties might look like in Queensland, Victoria and the Northern Territory. However, the Commonwealth doesn’t like the idea of recognising Indigenous peoples’ nationhood, which treaties would require.

The co-design report

The Uluru Statement from the Heart was a plan to recognise human equality by accepting that enduring nationhood, cultural perspectives and colonial experiences legitimately influence the way people want to participate in public life. However, the Coalition government immediately rejected the statement.

More than four years later, the co-design report proposed to create 35 local and regional voices to government. How these voices will collectively appoint a 24-member National Voice to Parliament and government is yet to be worked out.

There isn’t time to pass the legislation to set up these Voices before the federal election, due by May. However, the Labor party says if it is elected, it will support a referendum to establish a national Voice to Parliament as a permanent institution.

The co-design committee wasn’t allowed to consider a referendum to change the Constitution. However, it did report that constitutional entrenchment was what many of the 9,400 people it spoke to actually wanted.

Read more:
What did the public say about the government’s Indigenous Voice co-design process?

The next steps for the Voice to Parliament

There is potential for these Indigenous regional voices to help improve public administration and contribute to better policy-making. But it’s not a guaranteed contribution at a national level. Also, because the plan is to set them up by legislation, not by referendum, they could be abolished at any time.

Standalone concepts like “co-design” and “partnership” can’t assure First Nations people of the decision-making authority that self-determination requires. An entrenched Voice to Parliament also won’t provide this, but the Voice was only one part of the Referendum Council’s proposal. Taken alongside truth-telling and Makarrata, there is potential for politics to work differently and inclusively.

For example, in New Zealand, there are guaranteed Maori seats in parliament. In Victoria, the First Peoples’ Assembly is considering whether it wants to propose a similar kind of arrangement so First Nations people actually get to make policy.

This is why, in spite of consultation’s benefits for effective policy-making, the co-design report is not significant from a human rights perspective.

Only a positive referendum vote would give Australia a better chance at recognising Indigenous peoples human rights.

Dominic O’Sullivan 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. Voice to Parliament design report still doesn’t meet international human rights standards – https://theconversation.com/voice-to-parliament-design-report-still-doesnt-meet-international-human-rights-standards-174861

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew King, Senior Lecturer in Climate Science, The University of Melbourne

Well, it’s official: 2021 was one of the planet’s seven hottest years since records began, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) declared this week. The year was about 1.11℃ above pre-industrial levels – the seventh year in a row that the average global temperature rise edged over 1℃.

The WMO report echoes two separate official US analyses released last week that found 2021 was the sixth hottest year on record, tied with 2018.

For many of us in Australia and overseas, however, 2021 may have felt generally colder and rainier than usual. This is because of the effect of back-to-back La Niña events, a natural phenomenon that brings cooler, rainier weather in our region.

The fact 2021 was among the world’s hottest years despite these cooling forces shows just how strong the long-term warming trend is. Indeed, 2021 may well be the coldest year we’ll ever experience again. Let’s reflect on the year that was, and what we can expect for this year and beyond.

La Niña dampens the heat, but not enough

2021 started and ended with La Niña events. While it’s unusual for this climate phenomenon to occur two years in a row, it’s not unheard of.

In La Niña years, we see the global average temperature decrease by about 0.1-0.2℃. So how does it work?

Read more:
Back so soon, La Niña? Here’s why we’re copping two soggy summers in a row

During La Niña we see cool water from deep in the Pacific Ocean rise to the surface. This happens when wind strength increases at the equator, which pushes warmer water to the west and allows more cool water to rise off the coast of South America.

Essentially, the net transfer of energy from the surface to the deeper ocean brings the average global surface temperature down. While La Niña is a natural phenomenon (it’s not the result of human activities), human-caused climate change remains a constant underlying influence that sets a long-term warming trend.

The La Niña conditions of 2021 took the edge off the global average surface temperature. Parts of Australia, southern Africa and northwestern North America saw cooler temperatures during 2021 compared to recent years as the effects of La Niña kicked in.

Unless we have another strong La Niña very soon, we’re going to keep seeing even hotter years than 2021 for the foreseeable future until net global greenhouse gas emissions cease.

A year with massive, extreme events

As the world warms we’re becoming more accustomed to extreme events, especially severe heatwaves. This was no different for 2021, which was characterised one incredibly extreme heat event in particular, which occurred in western North America.

In late June and early July, heat built over northwest United States and southwest Canada. New temperature records were set across the region – at some sites, by several degrees. A staggering 49.6℃ was recorded in Lytton, British Columbia, which is Canada’s highest temperature measurement.

This heatwave was disastrous, including in Seattle and Portland where death rates spiked. Soon after, wildfire destroyed the town of Lytton.

While many other parts of the world also saw heatwaves, including significant events in Europe and Asia, the western North American heatwave stands out. The scale of this event would have been virtually impossible without human-caused climate change.

Severe floods were also a feature of 2021 in many places. Short bursts of extreme rainfall that bring flash flooding are becoming more frequent and intense due to the human influence on the climate. We saw especially devastating events in central Europe and in China in July.

Australia’s coolest year since 2012

Australia not only experienced back-to-back La Niña events, but also the negative Indian Ocean Dipole – a bit like the Indian Ocean’s version of La Niña, bringing cool, rainier weather to Australia during winter and spring.

Both left their mark, with Australia experiencing its coolest year since 2012 and its wettest year since 2016.

And still, 2021 was warmer than any year in the observational series prior to 1980. In fact, Australia is warming faster than the world as a whole, with Australian temperatures already up about 1.4℃ since 1910.

We also saw major floods in Australia that inundated eastern New South Wales in March, and Queensland more recently.

However, the influence of climate change on extreme rainfall in Australia is less clear than for other parts of the world because Australia has a high climate variability – swinging from drought to flooding rains and back again. Another reason is because our major floods are often caused by extreme rain that falls for several days, and the effect of climate change on this type of rain is difficult to unpick.

What’s in store for 2022 and beyond

We can’t forecast the weather beyond about ten days, but we can make a couple of forecasts for 2022 with confidence.

First, while 2022 may experience a slight cooling influence from the ongoing La Niña, it will still be among our warmest years. To have an individual year as cool as those we experienced as recently as the 1990s is exceptionally unlikely due to our high greenhouse gas emissions.

Second, there will be more extreme heat events somewhere on Earth this year, because our influence on the climate has greatly increased the odds of record-breaking heatwaves occurring.

Even if we start acting on climate change with more urgency, we will experience more frequent and intense heatwaves in coming years. This means we need to build greater resilience to these extremes and adapt cities and towns to a hotter world.

Beyond 2022, we know we will see continued global warming until we stop emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. And with global carbon dioxide emissions rebounding to near-record levels in 2021 after a brief drop in 2020 from the pandemic, we’re a long way off stopping global warming.

Rapid decarbonisation is needed to reduce further warming of the planet. It’s not too late to avoid the most dangerous climate change impacts.

Read more:
Adapting cities to a hotter world: 3 essential reads

Andrew King receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the National Environmental Science Program.

– ref. 2021 was one of the hottest years on record – and it could also be the coldest we’ll ever see again – https://theconversation.com/2021-was-one-of-the-hottest-years-on-record-and-it-could-also-be-the-coldest-well-ever-see-again-175238

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Kemish, Former Ambassador and Adjunct Professor, School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, The University of Queensland

Many Australians are probably unaware that neighbouring Indonesia has assumed the G20 presidency and will host the crucial meeting of the world’s largest economies for the first time in October.

The theme for the summit in Bali will be “Recover Together, Recover Stronger”. We can all hope this will more closely match global realities by then.

Indonesia is well-positioned to ensure the world focuses on the gap in the global pandemic response between developed and lower-income countries, which threatens to prolong the crisis. Its overall growth trajectory has earned it international respect, and it has made solid efforts to combat extremism and maintain a vibrant democracy at home.

Jakarta has also showed diplomatic skill on the international stage, for example, in mustering ASEAN support for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership – a free-trade agreement among more than a dozen countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

And it has carved out a potentially influential role in the region by maintaining constructive relations with both China and the United States.

Public disengagement

But this isn’t the way Australians tend to think about their next-door neighbour. Australians seem little engaged in what is generally considered a very important relationship for the country.

The Lowy Institute’s poll of Australian attitudes to the world reveals limited knowledge about Indonesia’s system of government and national experience. Recent annual surveys indicate only 39% of Australians agree that Indonesia is a democracy, and just 37% believe its government has worked hard to fight terrorism.

Read more:
Jokowi’s visit shows the Australia-Indonesia relationship is strong, but faultlines remain

Another sign of this disengagement is the steady decline in Indonesian language enrolments in Australian universities. Only 178 university students were undertaking Indonesian language studies in 2019, down 63% from a peak of 503 in 1992.

Australian businesses also lack interest or capability when it comes to Indonesia. There has been little evidence of change since an Asialink business report in 2017 found 90% of the top Australian public companies were not adequately equipped to do business in Asia.

Australia isn’t front of mind for many Indonesians, either. They are naturally more focused on the pressing challenges and opportunities in the rest of Asia, specifically Southeast Asia and China.

Bipartisan efforts to prioritise the relationship

It wasn’t always like this. Enthusiasm for Bahasa Indonesia grew rapidly in the early 1990s when it became the third-most studied language in Australian schools.

Its rise was spurred by a national languages policy introduced by the Hawke government, which highlighted the importance of Indonesian. The establishment of the New Colombo Plan by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop provided fresh momentum after 2013, supporting significant numbers of Australians to study Indonesian and other regional languages while extending their studies abroad.

Governments can clearly play a role in stimulating public interest.

Successive Australian administrations have certainly prioritised the official relationship between the countries, with both the Keating and Howard governments signing security agreements with Indonesia in 1995 and 2006, respectively.

The Morrison government has joined its predecessors in prioritising Jakarta as a destination for ministerial travel. During a recent visit by Foreign Minister Marise Payne and Defence Minister Peter Dutton to Jakarta last September, the two countries agreed to collaborate more closely on defence training and efforts to combat terrorism and cybercrime.

And a new trade agreement, called the Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, came into force in mid-2020, which built on a range of important economic and security arrangements between the countries.

By reducing barriers to trade, this agreement provides the framework to boost bilateral trading links – if business is willing.

Read more:
It’s more than a free trade agreement. But what exactly have Australia and Indonesia signed?

Fresh opportunities for trade

Despite these efforts, the two countries are still “strangers next door.” Australians stand to lose most if the two countries remain this way.

Indonesia is projected by some to be the world’s fifth-largest economy by 2030, and fourth-largest soon after that. It is already host to many mega-cities and a thriving digital economy. In fact, a number of tech “unicorn” companies are developing relationships with the largest global tech platforms.

There are other areas of growth potential in the trade relationship, including textiles, fashion, food processing, healthcare services and infrastructure development.

But, overall, bilateral trade remains too skewed towards “traditional” items, such as petroleum, minerals and live animals. The economic relationship is under-performing as a result.

In fact, trade between the two countries has declined to the point where Indonesia is now Australia’s 14th largest trading partner, behind Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia. This cannot be fully explained by the pandemic’s impact on the tourism and education markets.

Indonesia should be factored into any Australian strategy to diversify its trading links away from China. But Australians will be poorly positioned to take advantage of these opportunities unless something is done to address the lack of knowledge about Indonesia’s language, culture and governance.

Greater public awareness is what’s needed

A truly mature relationship requires high levels of public participation and awareness, and this needs work.

The challenge is for Australians to stay informed about what Indonesia is becoming. This involves understanding the effort it has made to put its security challenges in the past, while also recognising there are some areas where we may differ. The death penalty is an obvious case in point, and a really strong relationship should allow for frank discussion on this and other human rights concerns.

Read more:
Indonesians’ support for the death penalty declines with more rigorous survey methods

While there’s a lot of ground to make up, there are some positive ingredients to work with. The 2021 Lowy Institute poll indicates Australian trust in Indonesia as a nation has lifted recently, even if Australian knowledge of the country and trust in its leaders remain low.

Science and technology ties remain strong, with some exciting joint research projects by Australian and Indonesian universities underway through the Partnership for Australia-Indonesia Research. And programs such as the Australia-Indonesia Youth Association indicate growing interest by young people in both countries to learn more about each other.

Before the last Australian federal election in 2019, there were calls for any incoming government to stimulate fresh community understanding and awareness of this important relationship. This case remains strong. Indonesia is changing, and Australians need to keep up.

Ian Kemish is a director of the Australia-Indonesia Centre and a senior adviser with Bower Group Asia. He is also a nonresident fellow at the Lowy Institute and an adjunct professor at the University of Queensland. He is a former Australian diplomat who served as Head of DFAT’s Southeast Asia Division, as Head of the Prime Minister’s International Division, and as an Ambassador in both the Asia Pacific and Europe. After leaving government service he worked for several years as a member of the leadership team at Newcrest Mining Limited, which had operational interests in eastern Indonesia.

– ref. Indonesia will take a big step on the global stage this year – are Australians paying enough attention? – https://theconversation.com/indonesia-will-take-a-big-step-on-the-global-stage-this-year-are-australians-paying-enough-attention-174866

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter McNeil, Distinguished Professor of Design History, UTS, University of Technology Sydney

Every time we see a “fashion moment”, we use the words of André Leon Talley, from his description of Galliano’s 1994 Japonisme show.

Talley, who died yesterday age 73, was a flamboyant, over-the-top figure from the fashion industry, inclined to snobbery and rather overbearing. He had a longstanding love of French culture and the cross-fertilisation of fashion, art, poetry and life.

Most prominently, he worked at Condé Nast for four decades, where, as creative director and editor-at-large of Vogue, he shaped the way we understand and talk about fashion.

Born in Washington in 1948, Talley was raised by his modest grandmother in segregated North Carolina and graduated high school in 1966. Slight and bookish, he dreamed of:

living a life like the ones I saw in the pages of Vogue, where bad things never happened.

A regular church-goer, he later said that particular ritual was akin to going to a royal court. The bright women’s clothes and careful accessories seen there were filed away mentally.

Talley went to college at the historically black university, North Carolina Central University, before completing his masters at Brown University, Rhode Island – the first in his family to attend an Ivy League School.

At Brown he wrote his thesis on black models in the poetry of Charles Baudelaire, a figure who upheld fashion as the epitome of modernity.

New fashion narratives

Talley’s first fashion job was as an assistant with Diana Vreeland at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The “fashion empress”, as he called her, had been fired as editor of American Vogue (1963-1971) for her over-literary imagination and costly fashion shoots. In her second life as a curator in the Costume Institute at the Met, she pioneered a theatrical approach to fashion exhibitions in which dress was connected to epic themes.

She was the perfect mentor for Talley and suffused his imagination with stories of refined luxury, fashion figures from past and present, and the sweep of world culture.

In 1975, Talley was employed by Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine. Earning US$50 a week, he wore preppy clothes, striped shirts and tight jeans.

He soaked up this world of the regulars of Studio 54, where the young man was regularly photographed with the jet set and older movie icons, whose myth Warhol foregrounded in new and unusual ways.

Read more:
Halston: The glittering rise – and spectacular fall – of a fashion icon

In the 1970s and 1980s, American fashion magazines were performing important work in recovering older stylistic histories and fashion narratives.

Talley rose to cover the Paris fashion shows for Women’s Wear Daily and Vogue, becoming the first African-American man to work at this level, and began wearing bespoke suits after the Duke of Windsor.

For Women’s Wear Daily, in addition to writing Talley began to style photographs. He was skilled at capturing the languid sensuality of 1970s fashion, but his eye was not always appreciated.

In France, his closeness to the fashion aristocracy of Yves Saint Laurent and Betty Catroux caused jealousy. Talley was intimidated by rumours suggesting he was only popular because he slept with people as a black man; he was called “Queen Kong” by some.

Wider worlds

In 1978, his report on the Yves Saint Laurent Broadway collection saw Vreeland write it was the best report on fashion she had read: “a masterpiece of description”.

Talley had a talent for a very close reading of fashion. Not simply how it looked, but where it came, how it resonated, and what wider worlds it might allude to.

In 1983, Talley joined Vogue as fashion news director, later becoming creative director and editor-at-large, wearing Savile Row regimental dress or capes in the manner of Balenciaga.

To Talley, Vogue was about more than fashion. In his time, as in Vreeland’s, “it became also a literary world”. He was one of the first to mix couture with inexpensive clothes in fashion shoots, styling Chanel couture with the model’s jeans in a Helmut Newton spread for Vogue.

For Vanity Fair’s 1996 Gone with the Wind shoot, shot by Karl Lagerfeld, Talley swapped out black for white. Naomi Campbell became Scarlett O’Hara as the first supermodel, being nasty to her servant, a pretty white boy. The fashion designer Gianfranco Ferré played a black maid. British designer John Galliano was another housemaid, and shoe designer Manolo Blahnik played the gardener.

The background and decorations were authentic antiques from Lagerfeld’s fine collection, creating a visual narrative that surprised readers used to spreads more aligned with advertising and marketing.

Falling out of fashion

Talley faced unhappy times in recent years. He found himself spurned by Anna Wintour at the Met Ball, when his regular commentary was replaced by that of an influencer.

“I had suddenly become too old, too overweight and too uncool” he wrote in his 2020 memoir, The Chiffon Trenches.

The book covered many difficult phases of his life. He recounted childhood sexual abuse, reflected on what it was like to be the only black man in the echelons of high fashion, and his sadness with “falling out of fashion” with many. He was evicted from a home in which he believed he had an arrangement to inhabit.

He wrote of his disappointment with both Lagerfeld and Anna Wintour. Nonetheless, he pushed back at the idea that Wintour was reactionary, saying she “crashed the glass ceiling” when she made him the first African American man to be named as creative director of Vogue in 1988.

In recent decades, Talley embraced his size, appearing on the red carpet in caftans and capes by designers including Lagerfeld for Chanel and Tom Ford. Talley encouraged freedom in dressing with a degree of care and self-reflection. As he remarked:

There’s not necessarily a certain way one must dress. One must dress well according to how you see yourself in society.

Peter McNeil 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. André Leon Talley dreamed of a life ‘in the pages of Vogue, where bad things never happened’ – https://theconversation.com/andre-leon-talley-dreamed-of-a-life-in-the-pages-of-vogue-where-bad-things-never-happened-175237

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By William Turner, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne

Picture yourself standing at the edge of a road, trying to decide if it’s safe to cross. It’s night time and rain is falling, making it difficult to see what’s up ahead. After looking both ways, you step onto the road.

But what if this was a poor choice? Perhaps you’ve misjudged the speed of an approaching car. How does your brain realise its error and correct things before it’s too late?

Experiments in cognitive psychology and neuroscience have taught us we make decisions by integrating information over time – that is, our brains collect and “add up” information across a very brief window of time, often only tens to hundreds of milliseconds, to form a clearer picture before committing to an action.

But when we need to judge how appropriate a decision actually was, for example when we already have one foot on the road, we suddenly become selective. Our new research shows that when changing our minds, not all information is considered equally, and our first impressions count.

Our brains make and ‘appeal’ decisions

A useful analogy for how our brains make decisions is that of a courtroom judge. Rather than passing a judgement after hearing from a single witness, they wait to hear from multiple witnesses to avoid acting on false or misleading testimony.

Similarly, our brains sample sensory information for a while before deciding what to do. From the brain’s perspective – peering through the “veil of our senses” – the world is much hazier than you might think. As a result, we don’t always choose the most appropriate courses of action, despite our best efforts.

When mistakes are made, we need to be able to rapidly change our minds. Just as appeal processes are a critical part of the judicial system, the ability to reverse decisions is a critical function of our brains.

Imagine being unable to overrule the decision to step onto the road after grossly underestimating the speed of an approaching car. Even small delays in the time it takes you to reconsider can have serious consequences.

Read more:
Changing your mind about something as important as vaccination isn’t a sign of weakness – being open to new information is the smart way to make choices

Probing how the brain samples information over time

In our work at the Decision Neuroscience Lab at the University of Melbourne, we investigated how people sample information across time to change their minds.

Specifically, it has been unclear whether information used to inform an initial decision is also used in the process of reconsideration (and whether the weight given to information is constant or differs over time).

Think of a judge presiding over an appeal. The dominant perspective has been that only testimony heard after an initial decision has been made determines whether that decision is reversed. Another possibility, however, is that testimony from both before and after influence whether the decision is overturned.

To investigate this, we ran an experiment in which participants watched two rapidly flickering squares (that varied in brightness) for a short time, and made decisions about which was brighter on average.

We carefully manipulated the exact brightness of each square at all times, noting how people’s perceptions changed throughout. Usually, people stuck with their decisions, but every so often they changed their mind.

Contrary to current theories, we found information used to inform an initial decision (the brightness difference between the squares early on) also influenced whether that decision was later reversed.

Most strikingly, the very first snapshot of brightness information participants saw had a large and lasting influence over whether, and how quickly, they later changed their mind.

If this first snapshot of information strongly supported participants’ initial decisions, they tended to exhibit greater “decision inertia”. That is, they were slower and more resistant to changing their mind, even in the face of evidence they had made a mistake.

If it was the other way around, however, participants were more likely and quicker to change their mind. It appears greater weight was given to the first snapshot of evidence, and the strength of this evidence influenced subsequent assessments, biasing decisions made thereafter.

Read more:
To what extent are we ruled by unconscious forces?

First impressions count

On first consideration, deciding if it’s safe to cross a road seems simple. Yet our research reveals complex and unexpected dynamics underlie even these rapid decisions.

In some sense, the variations in “decision inertia” participants displayed are reminiscent of confirmation bias, wherein a person will downplay evidence that does not support their initial conclusion.

Our findings are an important reminder that similar biases affect the processes in our brains which determine how we perceive, and act upon, the world around us.

William Turner was supported by a Research Training Program Scholarship while conducting this research.

Stefan Bode receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC DP160103353).

Daniel Feuerriegel 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. First impressions count, and have an impact on the decisions we make later on – https://theconversation.com/first-impressions-count-and-have-an-impact-on-the-decisions-we-make-later-on-175034

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jenny Davies, PhD researcher, Curtin University

For billions of people across the world, life as we knew it stopped in 2020.

Families and friends were separated. Masks mandated. Hand washing essential. Every trip outside became risky.

As news of deaths, variants and long-term effects of COVID trickled in daily, we were forced to adjust to a new normal marked by constant anxiety and fear, which has only worsened with the recent surge in Omicron cases in Australia.

But for a particular group of Australians, this lifestyle is all too familiar.

As both the mother of a childhood cancer survivor and a Curtin University PhD student exploring families’ experiences of childhood cancer, I embarked on a study to understand the pandemic’s effects on kids going through cancer treatment, and their families.

In mid-2020 I interviewed 34 parents of children with cancer across Australia about their experiences during the pandemic.

The answer I received was a resounding: “welcome to our world”. The pandemic lifestyle we are all adjusting to is the life families of children with cancer have already been living.

The parents in our study, published in December with a team of Curtin University researchers, painted a picture of both benefits and devastating costs.

Even a cold can lead to hospitalisation

Every year, almost 1,000 Australian kids are diagnosed with cancer.

With advances in treatment, survival rates have increased and 84% of children now survive to five years after diagnosis. But this comes at the cost of long, gruelling and complex treatments involving a combination of chemotherapy, surgery and radiotherapy.

Chemotherapy leaves children profoundly vulnerable to infection. Even a simple cold can leave a child in hospital struggling for their life.

For the families in this study, wearing masks, washing hands, isolating and missing social events was already a way of life during treatment. Some even placed hand sanitiser outside their front door.

COVID silver linings

For this reason, many of the parents welcomed the increased infection control which came with COVID.

“When COVID happened, [people] started taking care […] social distancing, wiping everything, covering their mouths,” said one father. Another added: “it’s actually positively impacted us […] she wasn’t getting colds and flus she’d normally get”.

Previous research has found parents of children with cancer often struggle trying to care for siblings and keep up an income while being in hospital with the child with cancer. The shift to online work and school helped reduce some of this burden.

“One of the good things is that COVID allows me to work remotely […] it’s a big weight off my shoulders […] allows for income to keep coming in,” commented one dad, adding “if it had happened in 2019 it would have been a different approach.”

Read more:
We need better treatments for childhood cancer, with fewer side effects

For both the child with cancer, and their siblings, it’s a lonely road. These kids are forced to miss out on having a normal childhood, missing birthday parties, school and time spent with friends. This is an isolating experience, leaving kids feeling like the “odd one out”, and leaving parents feeling profoundly guilty for the impact on their children.

But parents in our study noticed a silver lining to COVID: their kids no longer felt like the only one missing out. “Either way she didn’t miss out on anything, because everybody missed out,” said one parent.

A lonely road

Despite some silver linings of COVID for the families in our study, they also told a story of devastating isolation and fear.

Because of restrictions which allowed only one parent with a child in hospital, several of the parents in our study recalled being alone when they were told of their child’s diagnosis.

“The very first moment we discovered their diagnosis, I was sitting alone, and my husband was in the ED waiting room. I then stayed with my child and it meant we were left to process this news solo and not together […] the last thing I wanted was to sit with my own thoughts.”

As treatment progressed, hospital visitor restrictions kept families apart for months: “I couldn’t see my partner for three months […] five minutes at the door of the hospital […] a little kiss and good night, that was horrible.”

One mother described the gruelling experience as restrictions kept friends and family from visiting hospital: “For the whole year I was on my own […] it was the loneliest year”.

Travel restrictions also meant overseas parents and relatives couldn’t visit to provide support. One parent said: “we definitely felt like we were in the trenches, just the three of us”.

Read more:
Immunocompromised people make up nearly half of COVID-19 breakthrough hospitalizations – an extra vaccine dose may help

Even though our study was conducted before the recent wave of Omicron cases, it can still teach us some valuable lessons going forward.

Despite the hardships of COVID, the virus has allowed us to develop new ways of connecting online, and increased flexibility for those unable to be there in person.

As we renegotiate what life with COVID looks like, we can use these lessons to protect and support the most vulnerable among us.

Jenny Davies receives funding from a Commonwealth PhD research scholarship.

– ref. ‘Welcome to our world’: families of children with cancer say the pandemic has helped them feel seen, while putting them in peril – https://theconversation.com/welcome-to-our-world-families-of-children-with-cancer-say-the-pandemic-has-helped-them-feel-seen-while-putting-them-in-peril-175143

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jack Heinemann, Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics, University of Canterbury

In less than 24 hours the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists will update the Doomsday Clock. It’s currently at 100 seconds from midnight – the metaphorical time when the human race could destroy the world with technologies of its own making.

The hands have never before been this close to midnight. There is scant hope of it winding back on what will be its 75th anniversary.

The clock was originally devised as a way to draw attention to nuclear conflagration. But the scientists who founded the Bulletin in 1945 were less focused on the initial use of “the bomb” than on the irrationality of stockpiling weapons for the sake of nuclear hegemony.

They realised more bombs did not increase the chances of winning a war or make anyone safe when just one bomb would be enough to destroy New York.

While nuclear annihilation remains the most probable and acute existential threat to humanity, it is now only one of the potential catastrophes the Doomsday Clock measures. As the Bulletin puts it:

The Clock has become a universally recognized indicator of the world’s vulnerability to catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate change, and disruptive technologies in other domains.

Multiple connected threats

At a personal level, I feel some sense of academic kinship with the clock makers. Mentors of mine, notably Aaron Novick, and others who profoundly influenced how I see my own scientific discipline and approach to science, were among those who formed and joined the early Bulletin.

In 2022, their warning extends beyond weapons of mass destruction to include other technologies that concentrate potentially existential hazards – including climate change and its root causes in over-consumption and extreme affluence.

Read more:
Affluence is killing the planet, warn scientists

Many of these threats are well known already. For example, commercial chemical use is all pervasive, as is the toxic waste it creates. There are tens of thousands of large scale waste sites in the US alone, with 1,700 hazardous “superfund sites” prioritised for clean-up.

As Hurricane Harvey showed when it hit the Houston area in 2017, these sites are extremely vulnerable. An estimated two million kilograms of airborne contaminants above regulatory limits were released, 14 toxic waste sites were flooded or damaged, and dioxins were found in a major river at levels over 200 times higher than recommended maximum concentrations.

That was just one major metropolitan area. With increasing storm severity due to climate change, the risks to toxic waste sites grow.

Read more:
New Zealand could take a global lead in controlling the development of ‘killer robots’ — so why isn’t it?

At the same time, the Bulletin has increasingly turned its attention to the rise of artificial intelligence, autonomous weaponry, and mechanical and biological robotics.

The movie clichés of cyborgs and “killer robots” tend to disguise the true risks. For example, gene drives are an early example of biological robotics already in development. Genome editing tools are used to create gene drive systems that spread through normal pathways of reproduction but are designed to destroy other genes or offspring of a particular sex.

Climate change and affluence

As well as being an existential threat in its own right, climate change is connected to the risks posed by these other technologies.

Both genetically engineered viruses and gene drives, for example, are being developed to stop the spread of infectious diseases carried by mosquitoes, whose habitats spread on a warming planet.

Once released, however, such biological “robots” may evolve capabilities beyond our ability to control them. Even a few misadventures that reduce biodiversity could provoke social collapse and conflict.

Similarly, it’s possible to imagine the effects of climate change causing concentrated chemical waste to escape confinement. Meanwhile, highly dispersed toxic chemicals can be concentrated by storms, picked up by floodwaters and distributed into rivers and estuaries.

The result could be the despoiling of agricultural land and fresh water sources, displacing populations and creating “chemical refugees”.

Read more:
It’s been 75 years since Hiroshima, yet the threat of nuclear war persists

Resetting the clock

Given that the Doomsday Clock has been ticking for 75 years, with myriad other environmental warnings from scientists in that time, what of humanity’s ability to imagine and strive for a different future?

Part of the problem lies in the role of science itself. While it helps us understand the risks of technological progress, it also drives that process in the first place. And scientists are people, too – part of the same cultural and political processes that influence everyone.

J. Robert Oppenheimer – the “father of the atomic bomb” – described this vulnerability of scientists to manipulation, and to their own naivete, ambition and greed, in 1947:

In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humour, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.

If the bomb was how physicists came to know sin, then perhaps those other existential threats that are the product of our addiction to technology and consumption are how others come to know it, too.

Ultimately, the interrelated nature of these threats is what the Doomsday Clock exists to remind us of.

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

– ref. How long to midnight? The Doomsday Clock measures more than nuclear risk – and it’s about to be reset again – https://theconversation.com/how-long-to-midnight-the-doomsday-clock-measures-more-than-nuclear-risk-and-its-about-to-be-reset-again-175049

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Xin Hu, Lecturer, School of Architecture and Built Environment, Deakin University

Improving the sustainability of Australia’s housing stock is crucial to meeting national emissions reduction goals. But for older adults, such changes can bring both benefits and challenges.

My recent research examined the literature on environmental sustainability measures at residences for older adults. These included private homes, retirement villages and nursing homes.

I found that while sustainability measures can bring multiple benefits to older people, they also bring challenges. For example, people living in sustainable dwellings may use less energy and water which leads to lower bills. But older people may suffer cognitive decline and struggle to use sustainable technology devices.

The full effects of environmentally sustainable features must be better understood if we’re to provide seniors with high-quality residential environments.

Sustainability and ageing: a complex mix

Forecasts suggest that by 2056, 22% of Australians – or 8.7 million people – will be aged 65 or older. High-quality residential environments are important to maintaining the welfare of these people as they age.

Environmental sustainability is playing an ever greater role in residential development across the board, including retirement villages. And previous research suggests most retirement village residents want to lead more sustainable lifestyles.

As climate change worsens, the dwellings of older adults should allow them to adapt to these changing conditions. The reduced ability of elderly people to regulate their body temperature means global warming is a profound threat to this group.

Improving the sustainability of a residential environment may include:

• reducing waste
• using low carbon or recycled building materials
• solar passive design
• efficient heating and cooling
• using renewable energy such as rooftop solar.

Some residential projects for the elderly already include environmental sustainability. A case study of a not-for-profit retirement village in South Australia revealed practices such as innovative floor plans, thermally efficient building materials, good window orientation and a water harvesting system.

And my previous research found a range of sustainability features at eight private and not-for-profit retirement villages in Queensland.

However, while many retirement village developers prioritise “social sustainability” features such as care provision and social interaction, environmental sustainability is largely ignored.

Read more:
Intergenerational report to show Australia older, smaller, in debt

On the plus side

The benefits of environmentally sustainable features in in older adults’ residential environment include:

– reduced resource consumption: sustainable dwellings usually require less water and energy use, which lowers living costs. This is especially important for older adults who often have reduced financial capacity after retirement. Older people also use energy more intensively than other groups because they have fewer household members, greater heating requirements and spend more time at home.

– reduced health risks: environmentally sustainable measures can lead to healthier indoor environments. For example, good ventilation and high-quality air conditioning often lead to improved indoor air quality and more comfortable ambient temperatures.

– alleviated environmental challenges: many older people want their homes to be more environmentally friendly. Doing their bit to alleviate global problems such as greenhouse gas emissions can provide them with peace of mind.

Read more:
The Great Australian Dream? New homes in planned estates may not be built to withstand heatwaves

The potential downsides

The challenges of environmentally sustainable home features for older adults include:

– financial pressure: the income of many older adults is substantially reduced after retirement. This can conflict with the high initial investment of developing an sustainable housing and the cost of replacing existing systems with sustainable ones.

– reducing energy consumption: in some cases, sustainability measures can involve tolerating slightly higher or cooler temperatures. For example, moving from a gas-heating system to a more sustainable type may delay the arrival of heat in a room and leave older people uncomfortable for a short time. This may conflict with older people’s increased sensitivity to ambient temperatures.

– confusion and complexity: Older adults can have reduced cognitive capabilities affecting memory and information processing speed. As a result they may struggle to use sustainable technologies such as smart thermostats. Research has suggested ways of overcoming this, such as better recognising the diversity of older adults to achieve a better “person-technology fit”.

Read more:
Buildings produce 25% of Australia’s emissions. What will it take to make them ‘green’ – and who’ll pay?

Next steps

Older adults have unique needs which their homes must satisfy, even when sustainability features are being adopted.

Ageing should be seen as a dynamic process with physical, psychological and social dimensions. And the complex interrelationships of ageing, environmental sustainability and the residential environment also need to be recognised.

Best practices and lessons learned in creating sustainable living environments for older adults should be shared.

Finally, developers making sustainability decisions should consult other stakeholders. These include contractors, occupational therapists, researchers and most importantly, older adults themselves.

Xin Hu 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. Confusion, financial pressure, discomfort: older people can struggle with sustainable living, despite its obvious benefits – https://theconversation.com/confusion-financial-pressure-discomfort-older-people-can-struggle-with-sustainable-living-despite-its-obvious-benefits-174535

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Anderson. Palawa, Deputy Vice-Chancellor Student and University Experience, Australian National University

Australia’s position in the international higher education market weakened significantly while our border was closed over the past two years. But recent demand and application data suggest our position may be strengthening since the border re-opening was announced in November. More than 43,000 international students have arrived in Australia since December 1.

Read more:
Morrison’s opening of the door to international students leaves many in the sector blindsided and scrambling to catch up

The Australian share of demand from international students has recovered from a low of 16.22% in October 2021 to 19.68% in January 2022, despite rising COVID-19 case numbers driven by the Omicron variant. The real-time aggregated search data come from students researching their international study options on IDP’s digital platform. It’s a dataset of over 100 million site visits a year.

This improving trend is also seen in student applications data. The largest intake for Australia is usually in semester 1. There were concerns that northern hemisphere countries would gain from pandemic uncertainties this summer.

These early signs of recovery are encouraging. However, we cannot confidently predict at this point the impact of this summer’s Omicron wave on enrolments. IDP survey data were showing Australia had a relatively strong reputation as a COVID-safe destination.

What will it take to sustain the recovery?

Sustained market recovery is a longer-term project. To be globally competitive, universities should focus on creating a world-class student experience. Some changes may take time to build and communicate to the market.

Read more:
Australia’s international education market share is shrinking fast. Recovery depends on unis offering students a better deal

Strengthening skilled migration pathways for international students will also improve Australia’s market position.

The recently released Australian Strategy for International Education identifies the creation of a world-class student experience as a priority. It recommends universities work to create social connections between international students, domestic students and local communities. It also recommends they improve the classroom experience.

Read more:
Australia’s strategy to revive international education is right to aim for more diversity

There is evidence to support this approach. It would help address international students’ concerns about experiences of loneliness, racism and harassment for their political views.

The Australian Productivity Commission’s 2020 report on its inquiry into mental health highlighted concerns for international students’ mental health. A 2021 QS survey of international students suggests COVID-19 added to these concerns due to increased social isolation and difficulties in accessing mental health services.

In 2022, universities can act to improve the social integration and well-being of international students. Actions should cover COVID safety, welcoming and connecting new and returning students, and re-engaging local communities on international education. This builds a platform for longer-term change.

Omicron presents challenges for the sector as semester one enrolments are finalised. Policy uncertainty and acrimonious public debate put at risk Australia’s reputation as a COVID-safe destination.

Universities can act to ensure travel pathways and campuses are COVID-safe and meet the public health challenges of Omicron. Clear and timely communication is needed to reassure prospective students and their families.

Universities are putting in place programs to welcome international students and support their social integration and well-being. The cohort of returning students requires specific attention as they reconnect to campus life. Some have been stranded outside Australia for up to two years, leaving them socially and educationally isolated.

Read more:
As international students return, let’s not return to the status quo of isolation and exploitation

Local communities must be considered too

During the pandemic international students have been noticeably absent from local communities. Many, including tourism and hospitality operators, will welcome them back.

But universities should not assume that welcome will be uniform. Anecdotally, some domestic students and their families are raising concerns about the impact of international education on the quality of the domestic student experience.

Universities should act on these community concerns. This will help to rebuild the brand of international education over the longer term.

In its road map to recovery, the Strategy for International Education recommends a stronger focus on domestic skills shortages. However, it is silent on issues relating to the policy settings that underpinned skilled migration for international graduates.

Students take into account opportunities for post-study work rights when deciding their destination of study. Research published in 2019 reported international graduates were ambivalent about the rights granted by temporary graduate visas. However, many still saw this visa class as a pathway to skilled migration.

As Australia emerges into the post-COVID economy, key sectors face significant skill shortages. There is a strong case for the Australian government to revisit post-study work rights. Any policy changes would need to consider local political and community concerns.

The aim should be stronger outcomes for the economy from a more competitive international higher education sector and great outcomes for local economies and communities through targeted post-study migration rights.

The latest international higher education data are encouraging. But universities and government have more work to do to ensure recovery is sustained.

Read more:
COVID to halve international student numbers in Australia by mid-2021 – it’s not just unis that will feel their loss

The author acknowledges the contribution of Andrew Wharton of IDP Connect to this article.

Andrew Wharton of IDP Connect contributed data for this article.

– ref. Border opening spurs rebound in demand from international students – https://theconversation.com/border-opening-spurs-rebound-in-demand-from-international-students-175046

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cassandra Goldie, Adjunct Professor and UNSW Law Advisory Council Member, UNSW

With Australia’s official COVID-19 infection numbers topping 100,000 a day,
the federal government has slashed its last remaining pandemic support payment.

The decision is ill-timed, irresponsible and heartless. It is stripping away support for those most affected by the pandemic at the time they need it most. It will place those in low paid and precarious work in further financial stress as they lose income to isolate when infected or in close contact with someone else with COVID-19.

The Pandemic Leave Disaster Payment was introduced in August 2020 in response to concerns casual workers and others without sick or pandemic leave entitlements could not take time off work when infected or in contact with someone with COVID-19.

The leave payment was initially available to those not qualifying for JobKeeper – or, after JobKeeper ended in March 2021, the “disaster payment” introduced in response to the Sydney lockdown in July 2021. Since that payment ended the Pandemic Leave Disaster Payment is the only individual financial support the federal government provides.

Read more:
The end of JobKeeper wasn’t a blip. It might have cost 100,000 jobs

Available to people who had contracted COVID, were a close contact or needed to care for someone who had COVID, until this week it paid A$750 a week for two weeks. You could claim the payment regardless of the number of hours of paid work you lost.

On January 18 the rules tightened – a move announced via a press release on January 8 (a Saturday).

Now it only pays $750 if you lose 20 hours or more of paid work a week. If you lose 8-19 hours you get just $450 a week. If you lose less than eight hours you get nothing.

Getting the payment has also been made more difficult by imposing a 14-day time limit to apply, from the start of the isolation period. To qualify, you must show evidence of a positive PCR or rapid antigen test. Considering the difficulty of obtaining RATs, and delays in PCR test results of a week or more, this is a unreasonable and unnecessary constraint.

Flawed eligibility rules

A major flaw in the eligibility rules for the leave payment it is not available to people receiving social security payments. This excludes all JobSeeker recipients, despite about one in four being in some form of paid work – generally low-paid casual jobs.

The leave payment has been a vital part of the economic supports to help people stay safe and protect their loved ones and the community.

The peak body for the community services sector, the Australian Council of Social Service, has condemned this decision. It says cutting the payment will leave people without enough to cover basic costs, let alone the extra costs of isolation such as delivery fees, rapid tests (if you can get them) and personal protective equipment.

Worst time possible

There could scarcely be a worse time to cut this payment, with Australia now in the worst stage of the pandemic.

Between August 5 2020 and July 8 2021 the Pandemic Leave Disaster Payment provided almost 15,000 grants to support those in need. During this period the peak COVID case rate was just over 500 day, in August 2020. Consider, therefore, the likely need now we’re at more than 100,000 a day.

With no other form of federal income support available you may apply for an unemployment or sickness payment like JobSeeker. But Services Australia advises this will be paid about two weeks after a claim is granted. That is of little help to cover rent while you’re isolating with COVID. JobSeeker is also a maximum of $315 a week – inadequate to cover basic costs.

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This cut will affect many of the same people lauded as the heroes of pandemic – essential workers employed casually in health and aged care, supermarkets, hospitality venues and warehouses. It will also hurt temporary visa holders, who are entitled to the leave payment and do not qualify for any other federal income support.

Last week ACOSS called for for the establishment of a civil society COVID Rapid Response Group to work alongside National Cabinet. We need the interests of people most at risk in the room at the highest levels when decisions like the future of the Pandemic Leave Disaster Payment are made.

Cutting this payment now is effectively telling low-paid workers at the worst stage of the pandemic in Australia that they’re on their own.

Cassandra Goldie is chief executive of the Australian Council of Social Service, which receives funding from governmental, philanthropic and member organisations.

– ref. What a disaster: federal government slashes COVID payment when people need it most – https://theconversation.com/what-a-disaster-federal-government-slashes-covid-payment-when-people-need-it-most-175146

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nick Haslam, Professor of Psychology, The University of Melbourne

Review: MENTAL: Head Inside, curated by Tilly Boleyn.

After three false starts due to lockdown, the Science Gallery’s inaugural exhibition, MENTAL: Head Inside, is opening at its new space in Carlton.

The gallery is one node in a global network of youth-focused spaces that playfully kicks down the walls between art and science.

Previous Science Gallery exhibitions — BLOOD, PERFECTION and DISPOSABLE — were held in different temporary locations. Curated by and for young people, MENTAL is both a homecoming and a housewarming in an airy, purpose-built space.

Confronting and comforting

Two years in the making, MENTAL was curated in defiance of the pandemic by a team of professional curators, an advisory group of young people and experts. The works on display are the fruits of an international open call on the expansive topic of the human mind. They invite engagement and interaction rather than chin-in-hand appraisal.

Although the exhibition explores the mind’s many dimensions, it tilts toward timely issues of mental health.

The most confronting is Rory Randall and Indigo Daya’s Isolation Chamber, a recreation of a seclusion room for involuntarily detained psychiatric patients. The practice is due for elimination following the Royal Commission into Victoria’s mental health system.

Visitors can enter and experience the pinned helplessness of being surveilled from many angles by those outside. Like many other exhibits, visitors can also record their reactions.

Emily Fitzsimons’ Cushions, knitted in the form of assorted pills, reflect on the role of medication in mental health treatment.

Relief of another sort is offered by Wemba Wemba and Gunditjmara artist Rosie Kalina’s Respite Space, a sanctuary where the mental health of First Nations people is front and centre.

Read more:
The rise of pop-psychology: can it make your life better, or is it all snake-oil?

Fear and influence

Selfcare4eva has Mary Angley and Caithlin O’Loghlen inhabit an in-gallery bedroom in their quest to become famous wellness influencers. A frenzy of wellness-related video and image content creation is promised, to which visitors can add when the artists surrender the room to the public.

The richness of human emotion presented extends beyond wellness, of course. Zhou Xiaohu’s mesmerising Even in Fear has a weather balloon inflate menacingly within a pink, vaguely ribcage-like enclosure. Some may find the suspense frightening, others thrilling.

Fear and nightmares also animate some of Indigenous artist Josh Muir’s sumptuous visual designs and soundscapes in Go Mental. The dreamlike feel of his work leads into the visual and auditory distortions and trippiness of Nwando Ebizie’s Distorted Constellations. Like several of the exhibits, hers is partnered with an ongoing research project.

Gut feelings

Music is also central to Sophia Charuhas’ Microbial Mood. A live experiment tests whether different kinds of music differently influence the growth of gut bacteria, collected in petri dishes above a set of speakers. The artist speculates future music could be used to enhance health by fine-tuning the gut-brain connection.

Emanuel Gollob’s beautiful sea-sponge-like robot in Doing Nothing with AI is also responsive, moving slowly and sinuously to relax the viewer. A headset transmits the brainwaves of observers as they admire the strange seaborg.

Nina Rajcic’s remarkable Mirror Ritual generates a personalised poem based on the visitor’s facial expressions, read as they front a mirror.

Read more:
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Meeting of minds

Mental life happens inside our heads, but several exhibits recognise the importance of interactions between minds. Hiromi Tango and Emma Burrows’ Wheel invites visitors to try out a rainbow-striped hamster wheel, exploring how social rewards promote exercise.

Georgie Pinn’s Echo uncannily dramatises the experience of empathy. The visitor listens to another person’s story while looking at their face. Gradually their own face appears to take over the narrator’s.

The opposite phenomenon is presented in Your Face is Muted, by computer scientists Tilman Dingler, Zhanna Sarsenbayeva, Eylül Ertay, Hao Huang and Melanie Huang. The difficulty of maintaining online video conversations when faces become hard to read is illustrated dramatically in this interactive exhibit. Anyone who has experienced a patchy video conversation will relate.

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Rachel Hanlon’s charming Hello Machine, Hello Human allows visitors to initiate a spontaneous phone call with another person … or does it? Hanlon’s work is an artistic rendition of Alan Turing’s famous test of whether a machine can pass as human.

Colour and movement

Overall, the exhibition has a sense of lightness and dynamism. There are gobs of colour everywhere, darker nooks to explore, and high ceilings and abundant natural light.

At a time when the importance of STEM education is almost universally acknowledged, if not adequately funded, STEM needs to show itself as welcoming, open and attractive. If we want young people to engage with science and technology, they must be able to see these fields not as obscure bodies of knowledge and mechanical methods but as pathways to creative discovery.

By showcasing the works of diverse young artists and scientists who collaborate to explore the issues of the day, MENTAL delivers a powerful message on the value and creative possibilities of science. It is an exemplary exhibition that deserves a visit, whether you are 15, 25 or 85.

MENTAL: Head Inside runs until June 18 at Science Gallery Melbourne.

Nick Haslam works for the University of Melbourne, with which Science Gallery Melbourne is affiliated, and has in the past consulted on an unpaid basis with the gallery.

– ref. From fear to connection, dynamic MENTAL exhibition explores a colourful spectrum of experiences – https://theconversation.com/from-fear-to-connection-dynamic-mental-exhibition-explores-a-colourful-spectrum-of-experiences-164358

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kirsten Benkendorff, Associate Professor in Marine Biology, Southern Cross University

Am I not pretty enough? This article is part of The Conversation’s series introducing you to Australia’s unloved animals that need our help.

Camouflaged by a layer of silty mud, most people probably wouldn’t notice the large flat oysters lurking beneath shallow water in Australia’s coastal estuaries. These are remarkable “leaf oysters”, and they can form reefs, produce mauve pearls, and reach the size of a dinner plate.

Of the 14 species of reef-forming oysters and mussels in Australia, leaf oysters (Isognomon ephippium) are the least well known. Our review, published last year, found only 30 publications globally that mention leaf oysters. Half of those were only incidental recordings.

This is a huge problem because there is widespread evidence of significant declines in the number and condition of shellfish reefs. In Australia, 99% of shellfish reefs have been described as “functionally extinct”, meaning the habitat these reefs previously provided has now been lost.

This has led to serious efforts in shellfish reef restoration. Leaf oysters are crucial members of these ecosystems, and we need substantially more information about them to ensure they’re not left out of these programs. Let’s delve into what we do know.

Meet the leaf oyster

Oysters are often associated with summer feasts and intensive aquaculture. While leaf oysters are edible, they have a large shell to meat ratio and so aren’t particularly attractive as a source of food for humans.

But like the iconic pearl oysters, leaf oysters are members of the Pteridine family of bivalve molluscs and have an inner nacre layer. This means they can produce pearls mainly mauve in colour, or sometimes purple, bronze, cream or silver.

Although not much is known about the life history of leaf oysters, we do know they reproduce by spawning. Thousands of eggs and sperm are released into the water and develop into swimming larvae after fertilisation. Only a fraction of these survive and settle onto the substrate, where they develop into juvenile oysters.

Like other reef-forming oysters such as the Sydney rock oyster and the Pacific oyster, leaf oyster larvae appear to be attracted to the shells of the adult oysters. They attach to the surface via “byssus” – a matt of strong hair-like threads. This enables shell clusters to form, which can develop into leaf oyster reefs.

Leaf oysters are ecosystem engineers. When they live in dense clumps, they support an entire ecosystem of fish and other invertebrates.

The flat, plate-like shape of the leaf oysters provides a complex three-dimensional habitat, with many nooks and crannies for species to seek shelter from drying out at low tide, and to hide from predators at high tide. Their shells provide a hard surface for other invertebrates to attach to, and form biofilms grazed by snails and fish.

Our preliminary studies on leaf oyster beds have detected a high diversity of fish species. Using underwater videos, we recorded a number of important fishing species, including yellowfin bream, dusky flathead, sand whiting, sand mullet, leatherjacket and black spotted snapper.

Keeping estuaries clean

Leaf oyster reefs are found on soft sediment in estuaries, on sand, mud and among mangroves, in tropical and subtropical regions around the world. In Australia, they’re found from Exmouth in Western Australia to the Macleay River on the mid-north coast of New South Wales.

We’ve also seen leaf oysters on artificial rock walls and in shallow water along the edge of small boat harbours. Some of these are likely to be remnant populations of larger clusters or reefs, but given they’re often partially buried, there’s little information available about their past distribution.

Like other oyster reefs, we expect leaf oysters play a significant role in maintaining water quality and nutrient cycling in estuaries.

Read more:
The surprising benefits of oysters (and no, it’s not what you’re thinking)

Coastal lakes and estuaries are a major repository of run-off from agriculture and urban development, leading to poor water quality. Shellfish reefs in healthy estuaries can buffer this effect by removing particles and bacteria from the water, and reducing dissolved nutrients and algal blooms.

As animals that eat food suspended in water, leaf oysters can filter vast volumes of water each day. With their large gills and extremely flat shape, their filtration abilities are highly effective in slow-moving tidal waters.

Oyster reefs more generally also trap and stabilise sediment, which can provide an important buffer against coastal erosion.

Threats to leaf oyster reefs

The current condition of shellfish reefs in Australia is dire. Declining water quality is recognised as one of the most serious threats to estuaries, with excessive nutrients leading to algal blooms, which can be harmful.

High amounts of sediment can clog up the gills of filter-feeding oysters and can lead to the complete burial of historical oyster reefs. In the past, dredging for oysters, boat harbours and breakwaters has also directly damaged oyster reefs.

Our recent surveys (which aren’t yet published) of leaf oyster beds across four estuaries in northern NSW suggest leaf oysters have disappeared from some locations where they were previously known to live. In the remaining beds, we found 30-67% of the shells to be dead.

Their deaths have terrible knock-on effects and are correlated with poor water quality after rain, high acidity, low dissolved oxygen, high nutrients and higher rates of sedimentation.

But one of biggest threats to leaf oyster populations is the lack of knowledge on the species. In particular, the lack of historical information on where they live and how many there are makes it difficult to document how they’ve declined. And this is necessary for listing them as threatened species.

Our concern extends beyond the survival and protection of the single species, to the entire ecosystem the leaf oysters underpin.

Improving our understanding of leaf oyster reefs requires more comprehensive mapping of the remaining populations and gaining a better understanding of their life cycle. This includes when they breed, how the larvae develop and where they settle, their age at sexual maturity and how long they live.

This will help us include them in reef restoration and estuarine management plans, protecting Australia’s precious, fragile wildlife in the face of a difficult future.

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Kirsten Benkendorff receives funding from NSW Department of Primary Industries, Fisheries, Coffs Harbour City Council Environmental Levy and the Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research.

Victoria Cole receives funding from the NSW Marine Estate and works for the NSW Department of Primary Industries, Fisheries.

Chamara Bethotage 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. Leaf oysters: the unsung heroes of estuaries are disappearing, and we know almost nothing about them – https://theconversation.com/leaf-oysters-the-unsung-heroes-of-estuaries-are-disappearing-and-we-know-almost-nothing-about-them-164330

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jenny Graves, Distinguished Professor of Genetics and Vice Chancellor’s Fellow, La Trobe University

The Earth Biogenome Project, a global consortium that aims to sequence the genomes of all complex life on earth (some 1.8 million described species) in ten years, is ramping up.

The project’s origins, aims and progress are detailed in two multi-authored papers published today. Once complete, it will forever change the way biological research is done.

Specifically, researchers will no longer be limited to a few “model species” and will be able to mine the DNA sequence database of any organism that shows interesting characteristics. This new information will help us understand how complex life evolved, how it functions, and how biodiversity can be protected.

The project was first proposed in 2016, and I was privileged to speak at its launch in London in 2018. It is currently in the process of moving from its startup phase to full-scale production.

The aim of phase one is to sequence one genome from every taxonomic family on earth, some 9,400 of them. By the end of 2022, one-third of these species should be done. Phase two will see the sequencing of a representative from all 180,000 genera, and phase three will mark the completion of all the species.

The importance of weird species

The grand aim of the Earth Biogenome Project is to sequence the genomes of all 1.8 million described species of complex life on Earth. This includes all plants, animals, fungi, and single-celled organisms with true nuclei (that is, all “eukaryotes”).

While model organisms like mice, rock cress, fruit flies and nematodes have been tremendously important in our understanding of gene functions, it’s a huge advantage to be able to study other species that may work a bit differently.

Many important biological principles came from studying obscure organisms. For instance, genes were famously discovered by Gregor Mendel in peas, and the rules that govern them were discovered in red bread mould.

DNA was discovered first in salmon sperm, and our knowledge of some systems that keep it secure came from research on tardigrades. Chromosomes were first seen in mealworms and sex chromosomes in a beetle (sex chromosome action and evolution has also been explored in fish and platypus). And telomeres, which cap the ends of chromosomes, were discovered in pond scum.

Answering biological questions and protecting biodiversity

Comparing closely and distantly related species provides tremendous power to discover what genes do and how they are regulated. For instance, in another PNAS paper, coincidentally also published today, my University of Canberra colleagues and I discovered Australian dragon lizards regulate sex by the chromosome neighbourhood of a sex gene, rather than the DNA sequence itself.

Read more:
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Scientists also use species comparisons to trace genes and regulatory systems back to their evolutionary origins, which can reveal astonishing conservation of gene function across nearly a billion years. For instance, the same genes are involved in retinal development in humans and in fruit fly photoreceptors. And the BRCA1 gene that is mutated in breast cancer is responsible for repairing DNA breaks in plants and animals.

The genome of animals is also far more conserved than has been supposed. For instance, several colleagues and I recently demonstrated that animal chromosomes are 684 million years old.

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It will be exciting, too, to explore the “dark matter” of the genome, and reveal how DNA sequences that don’t encode proteins can still play a role in genome function and evolution.

Another important aim of the Earth Biogenome Project is conservation genomics. This field uses DNA sequencing to identify threatened species, which includes about 28% of the world’s complex organisms – helping us monitor their genetic health and advise on management.

No longer an impossible task

Until recently, sequencing large genomes took years and many millions of dollars. But there have been tremendous technical advances that now make it possible to sequence and assemble large genomes for a few thousand dollars. The entire Earth Biogenome Project will cost less in today’s dollars than the human genome project, which was worth about US$3 billion in total.

In the past, researchers would have to identify the order of the four bases chemically on millions of tiny DNA fragments, then paste the entire sequence together again. Today they can register different bases based on their physical properties, or by binding each of the four bases to a different dye. New sequencing methods can scan long molecules of DNA that are tethered in tiny tubes, or squeezed through tiny holes in a membrane.

Why sequence everything?

But why not save time and money by sequencing just key representative species?

Well, the whole point of the Earth Biogenome Project is to exploit the variation between species to make comparisons, and also to capture remarkable innovations in outliers.

There is also the fear of missing out. For instance, if we sequence only 69,999 of the 70,000 species of nematode, we might miss the one that could divulge the secrets of how nematodes can cause diseases in animals and plants.

There are currently 44 affiliated institutions in 22 countries working on the Earth Biogenome Project. There are also 49 affiliated projects, including enormous projects such as the California Conservation Genomics Project, the Bird 10,000 Genomes Project and UK’s Darwin Tree of Life Project, as well as many projects on particular groups such as bats and butterflies.

Jenny Graves is a member of the Earth Biogenome Project Working Group, and an author on the two PNAS papers. She receives funding for other projects from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. A huge project is underway to sequence the genome of every complex species on Earth – https://theconversation.com/a-huge-project-is-underway-to-sequence-the-genome-of-every-complex-species-on-earth-175033