Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Greg Kelly, Senior lecturer, The University of Queensland

Doctors and health experts have expressed shock on social media recently about the number of ICU patients on ECMO treatment, especially in Victoria.

ECMO, which stands for extra corporeal membrane oxygenation, is the life support of last resort for patients with severe heart and lung failure.

At any one time, a busy ECMO hospital would normally have three to five patients supported with ECMO. The number of patients on ECMO at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne is hovering around 20, almost all because of COVID. In the US, hospitals report more requests for ECMO for teenagers and young adults and severely stretched resources.

ECMO is a vital tool but it requires highly trained staff and a huge amount of hospital resources. Patients who survive ECMO support may have long term health complications related to their critical illness.

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

Outsourcing the heart and lungs

In lay terms, ECMO is a heart or lung bypass machine. A pump and artificial lung, both sitting outside the body, provide a level of support the sick organs can no longer provide. This way, the rest of the body’s functions are maintained.

The meaning of each of the letters of the ECMO acronym is:

• Extracorporeal: outside the body

• Membrane: the artificial lung is referred to as a “membrane”, or thin layer of material that keeps blood flowing on one side and oxygen on the other. This thin and porous membrane allows oxygen in and carbon dioxide out

• Oxygenation: when oxygen enters the blood it is equivalent to breathing in. The process equivalent to breathing out, the removal of carbon dioxide, also occurs.

As well as the oxygenator, the ECMO machine includes cannulae – or tubing – to drain the blood from the patient and return it once oxygen has been added and carbon dioxide removed, a pump and a control panel.

ECMO evolved from cardiopulmonary bypass (heart-lung bypass) machines used to perform open heart surgery. But ECMO equipment is optimised for support lasting days to weeks rather than hours.

ECMO can be connected to the patient in two main ways: veno-venous (to replace just the function of the patient’s lungs) and veno-arterial (to do the work of both the heart and lungs).

Read more:
When COVID patients are intubated in ICU, the trauma can stay with them long after this breathing emergency

A heavy load

ECMO is the highest level of life support that can be provided, with a machine wholly or partly replacing the function of the patient’s own heart and/or lungs.

Only a small number of facilities in the world, and in Australia, are able to provide ECMO. In Australia, all ECMO services are located in large city intensive care units (ICUs), though some ECMO retrieval services can initiate ECMO support in smaller hospitals before moving patients to an ECMO ICU for ongoing care.

Highly specialised equipment and staff are required to provide ECMO.

Around-the-clock care is provided by highly trained ECMO nurses. Many ECMO ICUs have one nurse to look after the ECMO machine and another to look after the patient, who remains critically ill and usually on a full suite of other life support measures in addition to ECMO. These might include a ventilator to support the lungs, a dialysis machine to support the kidneys and many different types of drugs continuously delivered to keep the patient alive.

Medical care in the ICU is provided by large specialised teams. A broader allied health team including physiotherapists, dietitians, social workers and pharmacists help provide holistic care. Perfusionists, who specialise in extracorporeal life support, provide vital expert guidance.

Life-threatening problems with bleeding, clotting and infection are common when managing ECMO patients. Patients frequently require highly specialised support from cardiothoracic surgical teams, haematology and specialised blood bank services, radiology and interventional radiology, general surgical services, infectious diseases, cardiology, and respiratory medicine.

Some patients require weeks to months of ECMO support, which can raise ethical issues regarding resources, allocation and deaths. Some COVID patients are on ECMO for more than 100 days. The COVID pandemic has severely tested the ability of our health-care services to provide ECMO care.

Read more:
If COVID hospitalisations increase, it’s still not clear how patients will be prioritised for ICU beds

Often just the beginning

A patient’s time on ECMO represents only one early phase of their critical illness recovery and, even if they survive their initial illness, most require ongoing hospital care and rehabilitation for many months afterwards. It is vital that a full suite of specialised hospital and rehabilitation services are available to maximise the patient’s chances of good quality survival.

Despite ECMO being the most complex form of life support available, the simple maxim that “prevention is better than cure” still applies.

Avoiding COVID infection by getting vaccinated, wearing a mask and paying attention to ventilation and air quality all remain vitally important to protect yourself and our healthcare system.

Greg Kelly is a Staff Specialist, Paediatric Intensive Care, Sydney Children’s Hospital Network and affiliated with OzSAGE.

Josh Ihle is Senior Intensive Care Physician and Deputy Head of Cardiothoracic ICU at the Alfred Hospital.

– ref. What is ECMO? Doctors are shocked so many ICU patients are on this advanced life support right now – https://theconversation.com/what-is-ecmo-doctors-are-shocked-so-many-icu-patients-are-on-this-advanced-life-support-right-now-171490

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sally Thompson, Associate professor, The University of Western Australia

Forests directly cool the planet, like natural evaporative air conditioners. So what happens when you cut them down?

In tropical countries such as Indonesia, Brazil and the Congo, rapid deforestation may have accounted for up to 75% of the observed surface warming between 1950 and 2010. Our new research took a closer look at this phenomenon.

Using satellite data over Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea, we found deforestation can heat a local area by as much as 4.5℃, and can even raise temperatures in undisturbed forests up to 6km away.

More than 40% of the world’s population live in the tropics and, under climate change, rising heat and humidity could push them into lethal conditions. Keeping forests intact is vital to protect those who live in and around them as the planet warms.

Deforestation hot spots

At the recent climate change summit in Glasgow, world leaders representing 85% of Earth’s remaining forests committed to ending, and reversing, deforestation by 2030.

This is a crucial measure in our fight to stop the planet warming beyond the internationally agreed limit of 1.5℃, because forests store vast amounts of carbon. Deforestation releases this carbon – approximately 5.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year – back into the atmosphere. This accounts for nearly 10% of the global emissions from 2009-2016.

Deforestation is particularly prevalent in Southeast Asia. We calculate that between 2000 and 2019, Indonesia lost 17% of its forested area (26.8 million hectares of land), and Malaysia 28% of its forest cover (8.12 million hectares). Others in the region, such as Papua New Guinea, are considered “deforestation hot spots”, as they’re at high risk of losing their forest cover in the coming decade.

Forests in this region are cut down for a variety of reasons, including for expanding palm oil and timber plantations, logging, mining and small-scale farms.
And these new types of land uses produce different spatial patterns of forest loss, which we can see and measure using satellites.

What we found

We already know forests cool the climate directly, and losing forest causes local temperatures to rise. But we wanted to learn whether the different patterns of forest loss influenced how much temperatures increased by, and how far warming spread from the deforested site into neighbouring, unchanged areas.

To find out, we used satellite images that measure the temperature of the land surface. As the illustration below shows, we measured this by averaging forest loss in rings of different widths and radius, and looking at the average temperature change of the forest inside the ring.

For example, if you consider a circle of forest that’s 4km wide, and there’s a completely deforested, 2km-wide ring around it, the inner circle would warm on average by 1.2℃.

The closer the forest loss, the higher the warming. If the ring was 1-2km away, the circle would warm by 3.1℃, while at 4-6km away, it’s 0.75℃.

These might not sound like big increases in temperature, but global studies show for each 1℃ increase in temperature, yields of major crops would decline by around 3-7%. Retaining forest within 1km of agricultural land in Southeast Asia could therefore avoid crop losses of 10-20%.

These estimates are conservative, because we only measured the effect of forest loss on average yearly temperatures. But another important factor is that higher average temperatures usually create higher temperature extremes, like those during heatwaves. And those really high temperatures in heatwaves are what put people and crops at most risk.

Of course, forests aren’t normally cut down in rings. This analysis was designed to exclude other causes of temperature change, putting the effect of non-local forest loss in focus.

Why is this happening?

Forests cool the land because trees draw water from the soil to their leaves, where it then evaporates. The energy needed to evaporate the water comes from sunshine and heat in the air, the same reason you feel colder when you get out of a pool with water on your skin.

A single tree in a tropical forest can cause local surface cooling equivalent to 70 kilowatt hours for every 100 litres of water used from the soil — as much cooling as two household air conditioners.

Forests are particularly good at cooling the land because their canopies have large surface area, which can evaporate a lot of water. When forests in tropical regions are cut down, this evaporative cooling stops, and the land surface warms up.

This is not news to the people of Borneo. In 2018, researchers surveyed people in 477 villages, and found they’re well aware nearby forest loss has caused them to live with hotter temperatures. When asked why forests were important to their health and the health of their families, the ability for trees to regulate temperature was the most frequent response.

A climate change double whammy

In many parts of the world, including the tropics and Australia, expanding farmland is a major reason for cutting down forest. But given hotter temperatures also reduce the productivity of farms, conserving forests might prove a better strategy for food security and for the livelihoods of farmers.

If forests must be removed, there may be ways to avoid the worst possible temperature increases. For example, we found that keeping at least 10% of forest cover helped reduce the associated warming by an average of 0.2℃.

Similarly, temperatures did not increase as much when the area of forest loss was smaller. This means if deforestation occurs in smaller, discontinuous blocks rather than uniformly, then the temperature impacts will be less severe.

To help share these findings, we’ve built a web mapping tool that lets users explore the effects of different patterns and areas of forest loss on local temperatures in maritime South East Asia. It helps show why protecting forests in the tropics offers a climate change double whammy – lowering carbon dioxide emissions and local temperatures together.

Sally Thompson receives funding from the US National Science Foundation, the Western Australian Department of Water and Environmental Regulation, the Western Australian Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions, and the Australian Research Council. The research described in this article was funded by the National Geographic Society through the “AI for Earth” grant program.

Débora Corrêa receives funding from the Australian Research Council via the Discovery Project DP200102961 and the Centre for Transforming Maintenance through Data Science (IC180100030). The research described in this article was funded by the National Geographic Society through the “AI for Earth” grant program. Sheis affiliated with de Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Western Australia and the ARC Industrial Transformation Training Centre (Transforming Maintenance through Data Science), also at the University of Western Australia.

John Duncan receives funding from the British Council COP26 Seasons Programme, the Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network, and the research described in this article was funded by the National Geographic Society through the “AI for Earth” grant program.

Octavia Crompton receives funding from the US National Science Foundation (under the BSF-NSF joint program, the NSF EAR Program and the NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship), and the National Geographic Society’s AI for Earth program which funded the research discussed in the article.

– ref. Deforestation can raise local temperatures by up to 4.5℃ – and heat untouched areas 6km away – https://theconversation.com/deforestation-can-raise-local-temperatures-by-up-to-4-5-and-heat-untouched-areas-6km-away-163584

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kathy Bowrey, Professor, Faculty of Law, UNSW

Chief Scientist Cathy Foley is leading an open access strategy for Australia.
Foley estimates the Australian government invests A$12 billion a year of public money in research and innovation only for most of the publications that eventuate to be locked behind a paywall, inaccessible to industry and the taxpayer. At the same time, Australian universities and others pay publishers an estimated $460 million to $1 billion a year to see this published work.

Inspired by the European open-access initiative Plan S, Foley’s goal is to make all publicly funded Australian research publications free for the public to read. This is to be done through a sector-wide agreement between universities and publishers.

Read more:
2020 locked in shift to open access publishing, but Australia is lagging

The multinational publishers of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) research – Elsevier, Springer Nature Group, Wiley and Clarivate – are talking with the Chief Scientist. But no new sector funding is available from the government. The idea is it will pool the funds that universities currently pay to publishers to finance new sector-wide transformative agreements. These are also known as “read and publish” agreements.

Australia has lagged behind Europe and America in making research open access. That’s despite it being required by funders like the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and Australian Research Council (ARC).

Transformative agreements could help redress the problem. However, these agreements are also a new business model.

Two existing models: green and gold

When publishers accept a journal article for publication they negotiate with authors about the licence terms that will apply to its distribution. Most publishers will issue contracts that allow for open access. It’s usually achieved in one of two ways.

The “green model” involves researchers placing copies of their work in an online open-access repository. Often the pre-editing and layout version is made available because the publisher denies permission to make the “version of record” accessible to non-subscribers, even in the university institutional repository. Sometimes authors can negotiate green access but with a delay of at least 12 months and up to several years.

The “gold model” guarantees the article will immediately be made available free to readers. It usually involves authors or their institutions paying an up-front article processing charge (APC) to publishers.

APCs can be steep. Costs map the “prestige” of the journal and what the market will bear. The huge diversity in fees, even from the same publisher, shows these are unrelated to any real-world cost of article processing.

Read more:
Increasing open access publications serves publishers’ commercial interests

Both green and gold open-access publishing can increase the social capital or reputation of the author. For the publisher, it increases the asset value of the much-cited text and the associated journal.

However, in the business of scholarly communication, individual articles are not of significant value. Commercial products emerge from the accumulation of individual copyrights. Publishers bundle works under recognisable titles to be sold back to the sector as database subscriptions and data-driven research services and platforms.

Data related to citations, reads and downloads can be sold to third parties. These include the ARC to underpin its ranking of universities and grants.

Large publishers monitor repositories and sharing sites that often house green open-access papers. They do this both to capture the data generated and to reduce the potential of these outlets to challenge the need for commercial library subscriptions.

For example, Elsevier’s research products include Scopus, SciVal, Science Direct, Mendeley, Pure, Academia and bepress/SSRN. Elsevier has taken copyright infringement action against independent sharing sites such as Sci-Hub and ResearchGate.

Read more:
Science publishing has opened up during the coronavirus pandemic. It won’t be easy to keep it that way

What is the transformative agreement business model?

With transformative agreements, universities agree to pay a fee that covers both subscriptions and costs for their future open-access publishing. These agreements do not necessarily reduce subscription costs.

Some agreements create a “read fee” for subscription access to existing academic literature, with open-access publishing apparently permitted at no extra cost. Others limit how many articles will be published as open access by the institution or discount article processing costs. Many include an annual fee increase of 2-3% to cover inflation.

In Australia, the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) has taken the lead on negotiating transformative agreements on behalf of its member institutions. It is not yet clear who would negotiate agreements with publishers under the Chief Scientist’s plan, if the funding is not directly paid by universities but by government.

In the UK, the introduction of Plan S has raised concerns for the future of humanities, arts and social sciences (HASS), which also face the higher costs of monograph publishing. Were Foley’s negotiations to proceed with the big STEM publishers first, HASS, Australian and independent publishers could find themselves locked out of open access, as the pooled fund runs dry. A sustainable transition to open access requires arrangements with a variety of publishers.

Pooling funds and collective negotiation are helpful in achieving better open-access outcomes. However, greater financial transparency and accountability over who benefits from academic copyright are required for Plan S-style agreements.

Read more:
All publicly funded research could soon be free for you, the taxpayer, to read

There are risks in taking money from universities that are struggling to fund research. Their grants already do not cover the full cost of academic research. One outcome is pressure to increase teaching-only positions.

As global open-access advocacy organisation SPARC reported in its 2021 update:

“The past year has seen more [commercial] deals that led to more concentration, loss of diversity, and ultimately to the academic community’s lessening control over its own destiny.”

Academics provide a free service to commercial publishers by researching, writing, reviewing and editing journals without payment. Universities pay for this labour, which generates the intellectual property relied on by publishers. Recognising this value could help us cut better deals with publishers.

Kathy Bowrey receives funding from the Australian Research Council. This research is based on ARC DP200101578 Producing, managing and owning knowledge in the 21st century university.

Kimberlee Weatherall works for the University of Sydney. She also receives funding from the Australian Research Council. This research is based on ARC DP200101578, Producing, managing and owning knowledge in the 21st century university.

Kylie Pappalardo receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is the recipient of an ARC DECRA Fellowship (DE210100525) and a Chief Investigator on the ARC Discovery Project (DP200101578) Producing, managing and owning knowledge in the 21st century university.

Marie Hadley receives funding from the University of New South Wales, to work as a postdoctoral researcher/collaborator on the ARC DP2001101578 ‘Producing, Managing and Owning Knowledge in the 21st Century University’.

– ref. Making Australian research free for everyone to read sounds ideal. But the Chief Scientist’s open-access plan isn’t risk-free – https://theconversation.com/making-australian-research-free-for-everyone-to-read-sounds-ideal-but-the-chief-scientists-open-access-plan-isnt-risk-free-171389

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David McCooey, Professor of Writing and Literature, Deakin University

Review: Paul McCartney, The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, ed. Paul Muldoon, Allen Lane, 2021.

The Lyrics recounts Paul McCartney’s life and art through the “prism of his songs”. Despite its apparently unambiguous title, The Lyrics is not an exhaustive collection of the words to songs written or co-written by McCartney over his 60-year career. Rather, it brings together, across two volumes, 154 songs, some of which are universally known, and some of which are minor and/or off the beaten track of McCartney’s discography.

As well as reproducing the texts of these songs, The Lyrics includes commentaries by their author. These commentaries are based on 50 hours of recorded conversations, undertaken between 2015 and 2020, with the poet Paul Muldoon.

Muldoon, as editor, shaped these conversations into coherent mini essays, deleting his own voice in the process. The resulting product, richly decorated with over 600 photos and reproductions of memorabilia, is a kind of “self-portrait in song”.

Many songs are covered no doubt for their musical and/or literary importance. But many others, if not most, are included because they allow an entry into certain themes or periods of McCartney’s life. The commentary on Rocky Raccoon, for instance, leads into an anecdote about McCartney requiring stitches to his lip from a drunk doctor (an experience that indirectly led to all four Beatles sporting moustaches in 1967).

On My Way to Work (from the 2013 album NEW) allows McCartney to talk about his first job as a delivery man, which leads into the oft-repeated Beatles’ ur-narrative of when McCartney met John Lennon at a church fete in 1957.

Writing the unexpected

McCartney’s primary strength (sometimes considered a fault by detractors) is melody, rather than words. And while it’s the case some of his lyrics can be facile even in their musical contexts, McCartney can be a fine lyricist. His lyrics, as he points out in his commentaries, often traffic in the unexpected (in the sense of the surreal and/or the nonsensical) and the comedic.

These characteristics are also observable in McCartney’s commentaries. The account of She Came in Through the Bathroom Window begins with the deadpan observation that

My mum was a nurse and my dad loved words, so I was the only one in my class who could spell ‘phlegm’.

McCartney – who long stood in Lennon’s shadow as a lyricist – most clearly came into his own as a lyricist with Eleanor Rigby, which was the first of McCartney’s songs to receive wide praise for its lyrical content.

Read more:
Two of Us: inside John Lennon’s incredible songwriting partnership with Paul McCartney

McCartney’s lyrics often revel in word play, and his wit, often seen by critics as a sign of facileness, is surely one of his great strengths. Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, from the Beatles’ Abbey Road (1969), was publicly dissed by Lennon and George Harrison at the time of its release, and it has often stood as an example of “bad McCartney”.

But the song is blackly comic, and it shows McCartney’s understanding of the comic potential of multisyllabic rhyme:

PC Thirty-One said, we’ve caught a dirty one
Maxwell stands alone.

(It’s not surprising that, as well as the obvious rock’n’roll antecedents, McCartney refers to the influence of the earlier Tin Pan Alley songwriters, such as Cole Porter and the Gershwins.)

As well as showing McCartney’s attraction to wit, Maxwell’s Silver Hammer highlights a feature noticed by both him and Muldoon: the use of the vignette. As Muldoon notes in his introduction, McCartney

has the capacity to render a fully rounded character from what might otherwise be merely a thumbnail sketch.

In songs such as Eleanor Rigby, Paperback Writer and Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey, McCartney presents self-contained sketches of characters and situations, often bringing together the mysterious and the mundane.

This latter characteristic is most obviously found in the Beatles’ A Day in the Life, where McCartney’s section (“Woke up, fell out of bed …”) is placed within the psychedelic splendour of the greater body of the song by Lennon.

The mix of the extraordinary and the ordinary is a leitmotif that runs throughout The Lyrics. With his customary emphasis on parents, family, education and work, McCartney is also open to the unexpected and anarchic.

Ghosts behind the music

But there is also an elegiac feeling to this collection, with numerous references to McCartney’s late parents, and his late wife, Linda. The death of his mother, Mary, when McCartney was 14, is repeatedly evoked. In his commentary on Let it Be (famously inspired by a dream about “mother Mary”), McCartney cites two lines from Hamlet, a play he learnt at school.

Read more:
On the intimate and character-revealing photographs of Linda McCartney – Paul’s wife, and a stunning artist

Hamlet is a play about ghosts and hauntings and there are plenty of ghosts – in the form of lost friends and colleagues, most obviously Lennon – in The Lyrics.

But there is a more literary and musical sense of hauntedness in McCartney’s songs, something apparent in this book, with its emphasis on precedents, mimicry, and revisionism. Back in the USSR, for instance, is a parody of Chuck Berry via the Beach Boys.

The Lyrics reminds us McCartney’s greatness is his ability to inhabit styles and genres and make them his own.

What is extraordinary about this ability is not just McCartney’s facility, but also his range; from Rupert Bear (We All Stand Together) to Helter Skelter, from Here, There and Everywhere to his classical work (represented here by an aria from the Liverpool Oratorio), there seems to be almost no style that McCartney can’t turn his hand to.

In his foreword, McCartney compares The Lyrics to an “old snapshot album”, that vernacular storehouse of haunting presences, memory and loss. Like a photo album, The Lyrics can be dipped into anywhere, and one can find the serious and frivolous, the straightforward and the enigmatic, side by side. What is amazing is that these “snapshots” are, for the most part, the work of one person.

David McCooey 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. Paul McCartney’s The Lyrics: an extraordinary life in song – https://theconversation.com/paul-mccartneys-the-lyrics-an-extraordinary-life-in-song-171603

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Claire Breen, Professor of Law, University of Waikato

For workers in the health and disability and education sectors, midnight last night was the deadline to receive at least their first vaccine dose under a government mandate that now extends to about 40% of New Zealand’s workforce.

With the potential for this to mean “no jab, no job”, and with no end date set for the mandates, there have already been challenges in the streets and in the courts.

As well as border and MIQ workers, some aviation workers, midwives and teachers and doctors have claimed the vaccine mandates are a breach of their legal rights.

So far, the focus of legal action has been the right to refuse medical treatment, with the courts consistently finding any such breaches were justifiable.

But the question of what breaches of which rights are justifiable in a public health emergency is not as clear cut as might first appear. And there is a case to be made for new and comprehensive legislation addressing these complex ethical and legal issues.

What are our existing protections?

As it stands, vaccine mandates and exemptions are covered by the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Vaccinations) Order 2021. The order allows an exemption for a very narrow category of people, based on a medical professional determining an individual’s medical history and health status would make vaccination inappropriate.

This is consistent with the Human Rights Act 1993’s prohibition of discrimination on the grounds of disability and illness. But, as noted in the aviation workers’ case, the order could raise questions around the right to be free from discrimination on the grounds of religious beliefs.

In a similar vein, the Human Rights Act also prohibits discrimination on the grounds of ethical beliefs and political opinions. As such, it could be argued some New Zealanders may face discrimination because of their beliefs or opinions. And this raises some very important questions around some of our wider fundamental freedoms.

Read more:
How do NZ’s vaccinated teachers have those hard conversations with their anti-vax colleagues?

One of the arguments (unsuccessfully) raised in the aviation workers’ case was that the order limited the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, as well as the right to freedom of expression.

The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 protects each of these rights as do the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966.

The rights to freedom of thought, conscience and religion are difficult to define. But because they go to the heart of who we are as individuals, they are considered absolute. This means the freedom to think or believe what we want cannot be restricted or suspended, even in times of emergency.

In particular, the United Nations takes the right to freedom of thought to be far-reaching and profound, closely related to the absolute right to hold an opinion.

The difference between thinking and acting

The right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, and the right to hold an opinion, are closely related to the right to freedom of expression. Indeed, according to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, freedom of opinion and freedom of expression are indispensable to our full development as individuals, and are the foundation stone of every free and democratic society.

In turn, the right to freedom of expression is closely related to the rights to freedom of association and peaceful assembly, and all three freedoms form the basis of protest action.

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

Although we have the absolute freedom to think or believe what we like about a particular issue, our freedom to turn our thoughts into something tangible (by doing something or not doing something) may be restricted.

The external manifestations of our inner thoughts and beliefs can be limited – but only in a carefully controlled way. According to the UN Human Rights Committee, any restrictions must:

• be applied only for specified purposes

• be directly related and proportionate to the specific needs on which they are based

• match one of the grounds specified in the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

• not be applied for discriminatory purposes or in a discriminatory manner.

The UN Human Rights Committee takes a similar approach to limits on the rights to freedom of opinion and expression.

Public health is a specified ground for restricting all of these rights, but such restrictions should only be permitted to allow a state to take measures specifically aimed at preventing disease.

Time for a new law?

Because of the profound nature of these rights and restrictions, perhaps it is time for new legislation to deal with how we strike the right balance between protecting the rights of New Zealanders and the government’s obligation to protect public health.

At a minimum it would address the vexed questions of compulsion and exemption.

There are a few historic examples to draw from. The Vaccination Act 1863 made the smallpox vaccination for children compulsory, although it was neither well received nor very effective.

Read more:
Spirit of resistance: why Destiny Church and other New Zealand Pentecostalists oppose lockdowns and vaccination

During WWI and WWII, conscientious objectors were exempt from compulsory military service if they could demonstrate their objection stemmed from their religious beliefs. There were very few of them, however, and no exemptions were given on political or philosophical grounds.

Also during WWII, teachers who were conscientious objectors were given one month’s salary and put on leave of absence for the duration of the war.

Read more:
New Zealand’s mass vaccination event lifts uptake but highlights dangerous inequities as the country prepares to open up

The people need a voice

Today, we need appropriately worded law to deal with matters such as equitable access to vaccines, whether vaccinations should be mandatory, the requirement for vaccine passports or certificates, potential restrictions on unvaccinated people, and the vaccination of children.

Such a law would also address time limits for all such restrictions and requirements, and provide for transparent processes governing their extension.

It would ensure any restrictions are justifiable and for specified purposes only, are not discriminatory, and are directly related and proportionate to the specific needs on which they are based.

The legislative process of making such a law would also allow New Zealanders to express their own thoughts and opinions (through select committee submissions, for example) on what are fundamental issues of citizenship. And it would oblige elected representatives to squarely confront their actions and accept any consequent political cost.

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

– ref. Vaccine mandates for NZ’s health and education workers are now in force – but has the law got the balance right? – https://theconversation.com/vaccine-mandates-for-nzs-health-and-education-workers-are-now-in-force-but-has-the-law-got-the-balance-right-171392

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

Ita Buttrose was Scott Morrison’s “captain’s pick” for chair of the ABC. When he appointed her in 2019, he said “Australians trust Ita, I trust Ita and that’s why I have asked her to take on this role.”

If he was right that “Australians trust Ita”, she has shown why, in pushing back in the most unequivocal terms against a Senate inquiry into the ABC’s complaints procedure. With a long, diverse and demanding media career behind her, Buttrose is her own woman.

The inquiry was announced by NSW Liberal Andrew Bragg, chair of the Senate’s communications committee, late last week. What has particularly raised Buttrose’s ire is that the move is despite the ABC itself having underway an independent inquiry into the handling of complaints.

In his announcement Bragg, who says it was his idea, described the inquiry, which also takes in SBS, as “surgical”, a rather odd term.

Bragg drew on his own experience of making “extensive complaints” in saying the current arrangements are wanting. His inquiry will report late February, before the ABC one is concluded.

Buttrose was quick out of the blocks with a long, strongly worded statement, targeting Bragg directly, and she followed up by appearing on ABC radio.

Her core accusation was succinct.

“This is an act of political interference designed to intimidate the ABC and mute its role as this country’s most trusted source of public interest journalism. If politicians determine the operation of the national broadcaster’s complaints system, they can influence what is reported by the ABC,” she said.

Governments over the years have had a history of battles with the ABC, but under this Coalition government the conflict has been more sustained and intense.

The period has also included a major implosion in the ABC (admittedly not the first) which led to the sacking of Michelle Guthrie, who was managing director, and the departure of then chair, Justin Milne, amid accusations of his interfering in the organisation’s editorial independence, with a swirl of controversy about high profile journalists.

ABC investigations and stories have caused much angst in the government, most dramatically those relating to Christian Porter, but also to other individuals and a range of issues. In general, government critics claim the public broadcaster is biased to the left, in political orientation generally and in the subjects it features.

Tensions have deepened as the media have become more polarised. News Corp in recent years has increasingly run interference on the ABC, driven by a combination of ideological and commercial factors. Some Coalition parliamentarians feel much more at home with Sky, believing they’re talking to their base when they appear on Sky-after-dark.

News Corp was angered by a recent Four Corners investigation calling out Fox News, about which Fox News lodged a complaint.

It’s not always the right of politics complaining – a program on the Luna Park “Ghost Train” fire stirred wrath for a reflection on the late Neville Wran.

Bragg describes himself as pro-ABC. He said, when interviewed on the ABC on Monday:“There’s been quite a lot of concern from different community groups about the way that the ABC has handled complaints. So as a supporter of the ABC, I’d like to see those complaints handled in a better and stronger way.”

Bragg mentioned veteran and multicultural groups, an apparent reference to discontent over reporting of alleged war crimes in Afghanistan and complaints by Jewish groups about the coverage of the most recent Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Dealing with complaints properly is vital to a media organisation’s credibility. But even with the best intentions, it is not as easy as it sounds.

Some lapses – errors of fact, unacceptable behaviour – will be clear. Others will be a matter of interpretation. (Federal energy minister Angus Taylor and NSW environment minister Matt Kean, both Liberals, might view the same report on a climate issue and have different opinions on whether it was “biased”.)

Acknowledging this is a very tricky area, the ABC needs a complaints procedure in which the public generally, and the political class to the extent possible, have confidence.

The independent inquiry, being undertaken by former federal ombudsman John McMillan and former SBS director of news and current affairs, Jim Carroll is directed to ensuring that.

It’s hard to see, beyond the politics, how a Senate inquiry can be justified on the grounds of need. Buttrose wants the Senate to stop or suspend the inquiry until the ABC one is finished.

But despite a report in The Australian that Bragg had been “rapped over the knuckles” by the Prime Minister’s Office for his initiative, there has been no retreat by the government, or Bragg.

Morrison on Monday supported Bragg, not Buttrose. The PM said it was a matter for the Senate “and I don’t understand why that would be an extraordinary initiative to take”.

Pressed on being comfortable with the inquiry, Morrison said the ABC was “a government agency. Yes, they have their independence, and no one’s questioning that. But they’re not above the scrutiny for how they conduct themselves using taxpayers’ money.”

A lot of public money does go into the ABC – of course there has to be accountability. And there is: ABC executives regularly appear at Senate estimates, at which they are questioned about a range of things including editorial decisions.

But the ABC is not like any other “government agency”, and its “independence” is of a special nature. To subject its complaints procedure to what inevitably will be a political inquiry, with senators very likely dividing along party lines, is not simply or even primarily an exercise in accountability – it is sending a wider message.

Buttrose says Australians should see the message “for what it is: an attempt to weaken the community’s trust in the public broadcaster.”

When it comes to “trust” the surveys indicate the ABC starts well ahead of the politicians. Nevertheless, the ABC is in for a testing time between now and the election. That might, however, be mild compared with how it would fare under a re-elected Coalition.

Michelle Grattan does regular commentary on the ABC.

– ref. View from The Hill: Ita isn’t saluting the captain who picked her – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-ita-isnt-saluting-the-captain-who-picked-her-171828

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bruce Mountain, Director, Victoria Energy Policy Centre, Victoria University

Households in most of Australia have been able to choose between electricity retailers for more than a decade. The main reason is to reduce their bills.

But past research by the Victoria Energy Policy Centre (at Victoria University) has found only marginal benefits in switching retailers. Our study of more than 48,000 bills from Victorian households in 2018, for example, found households typically saved less than A$50 a year by switching energy providers.

Has anything improved since then? A few weeks ago I decided to test the market for my own household supply. To guide my choice, I evaluated 357 competing offers from 30 retailers using my half-hourly consumption and solar export data for the last year.

The 357 offers came from the Victorian government’s price comparison website, the only comprehensive source of all commonly available offers. After having found the deal I wanted, it was a painless and quick online process to switch to the new retailer.

Two weeks later I checked what had actually happened.

I discovered my new retailer had not switched me to its cheapest offer, but to one of its most expensive. I estimate I’ll still save about $143 for the year. But I would have saved about $100 more if the company had put me on its cheapest advertised offer (which, after all, was the reason I chose this retailer).

These numbers might not be large, but I have a small bill because I have solar panels and consume much less electricity than typical customers. For the typical customer, the differences would be bigger.

I have asked my new retailer to explain, but am yet to receive a reply.

How I worked out my (lack of) savings

My electricity bill has five elements: a daily charge, two consumption rates and a solar feed-in rate. You might note such elements in the offer you choose and then compare them to the offer the retailer actually puts you on. But you’d need to be highly motivated with time on your hands to do so.

To do my sums I used special software to scrape and price all competing offers. This software, developed over several years and used in our previous research, is not publicly available.

The outcome of my test is broadly consistent with the findings of our previously mentioned research.

Read more:
You can’t trust the price-comparison market, as iSelect’s $8.5 million fine shows

That analysis – using more than 48,000 bills voluntarily uploaded to the Victorian government’s price comparison website in 2018 – found typical households could theoretically save A$281 a year, or about 20% of their bill, by switching to the best possible advertised deal.

In reality, however, customers who switched retailers saved only A$45 a year – or about 3% of their annual bill.

I cannot be sure my recent experience is typical. But I think it likely other switchers will have had a similar experience. My study of the 357 competing offers available to me suggests many retailers seem to use “bait and switch” – or “tease and squeeze” – marketing strategies to attract new customers.

Read more:
How better data would improve the electricity market

What should be made of this?

Choice can be valuable. Competition can lead to innovations – such as solar and battery packages with zero upfront payment that are now appearing in the the market. But the benefit of reforms making it easier to choose and switch between electricity retailers are not being fully realised.

The more complex the market becomes as electricity generation is progressively decentralised and electricity buyers also become sellers, the harder it becomes to assess the merits of the complicated offers from energy retailers. Or even to know if what you signed up for is what you are actually getting.

Had I known my new retailer would not switch me to its best offer (the one that attracted me in the first place), I wouldn’t have switched.

This underlines the need for governments and regulators to look at how the market is working in practice, not just in theory.

Read more:
Your household power bills could be 15% cheaper, if Australia’s energy regulator was doing its job

Examples of this approach are the 2017 independent review of Victoria’s electricity and gas retail markets chaired by former deputy premier John Thwaites and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s 2018 inquiry into electricity affordability. But these are exceptions.

The devil lies in the detail of how customers search for better offers and then switch to retailers in pursuit of those better offers. Regulations to clean up possibly misleading advertising and “sharp” business practices should flow from that.

Bruce Mountain co-developed price comparison software which has since been sold. He retains access to the software for research purposes.

– ref. I chose the electricity retailer offering the best deal for my home. That’s not what I got – https://theconversation.com/i-chose-the-electricity-retailer-offering-the-best-deal-for-my-home-thats-not-what-i-got-171676

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Roshan Rigby, PhD Candidate in Nutrition and Dietetics, Griffith University

How do we feel thirsty? Shruthi (she), 8 years

Hi Shruti!

Thank you for your important question.

Most of our body is made of water. And we need water to do all sorts of really important things. We need water to help us digest our food, and move nutrients and oxygen around our body. We need water to make our muscles move and to make sure we don’t get too hot or too cold.

We lose water all the time too – when we sweat, breathe and go to the toilet.

So we need to replace that water. If we don’t, we can start to feel thirsty.

Feeling thirsty is good for us

Our brain is amazing. It can tell us when our body doesn’t have enough water (but has too many salts and minerals).

Our brain then sends messages to parts of our body to put things right. We feel those messages as an urge to drink. And when we feel that thirst, we drink.

Read more:
Curious Kids: how do sea creatures drink sea water and not get sick?

How do we know when to stop drinking?

We all know that nice feeling once you start gulping down water on a hot day. But how does your brain know you’ve had enough water?

When we drink water, the water levels in our blood rises, and the levels of salts and minerals drop. When your brain is happy with these levels, it tells us. It removes the urge to drink any more.

Also, when we swallow water, a “happy” chemical called dopamine is released into our bodies that makes us feel good. This is why drinking other liquids, like fruit juice, can feel good, even if it doesn’t doesn’t do as good a job as water at rehydrating us.

Listen to your body

As the weather gets hotter, it’s even more important to keep drinking water. You want to replace all that water you lose while riding your bike, or running around with your friends in the heat.

So if you feel thirsty, that’s really your brain telling you to drink up.

Hello, Curious Kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au

Lauren Ball receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, Royal Australian College of General Practitioners & Queensland Health.

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

– ref. Curious Kids: how do we feel thirsty? – https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-how-do-we-feel-thirsty-169531

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

Review: ShoPaapaa, written and directed by Molly Reynolds and Shekhar Bassi

The COVID-19 pandemic threw the world into disarray, forcing many to reinvent processes, reimagine what it means to live in modernity.

Artists, actors, filmmakers and musicians had to adapt to cancellations of exhibitions, productions and gigs, and had to quickly (try to) transition to working in a digital space.

Despite the valiant efforts to make Zoom theatre productions interesting, for example, there was always a sense of desperation and making-do about these events.

ShoPaapaa, written and directed by Molly Reynolds and star of the film Shekhar Bassi, screening at this year’s Sydney Film Festival, responds to the lockdown in kind: how do you make a stultifying boring situation interesting?

The film follows the day-to-day life of “ShoPaapaa”, a fictional (or is the film documentary?) character played by Bassi during the 2020 lockdown in the UK.

ShoPaapaa is in a “high risk” category and – unlike his niece, nephew and brother who visit him during the film and stay outside – he does not feel safe leaving the house at all, even for permitted exercise or shopping.

Revelling in the uninteresting

We watch him as he completes mundane tasks like boiling a kettle, making a cup of coffee, cleaning a table. Some tasks – like changing his bed – take longer than they would for the able-bodied, the film suggesting this character already lived in a world at times difficult to navigate. Everyone’s mobility was affected by COVID-19; ShoPaapaa’s mobility is always affected.

Read more:
Our minds may be wandering more during the pandemic — and this can be a good thing

We hear his view on a variety of aspects of his life through straight to camera interviews and voice overs. Being disabled and Indian in the UK is the main topic, and the racism and bullying he has faced because of these facts.

His observations are delivered in a monotonous voice over an excruciating 95 minutes, indicating the depression of the character being stuck in this situation. The actual content of his discourse is thoroughly uninteresting, and nothing about the narrative or style (though its hints at a Zoom-esque aesthetic through split screen are worth noting) moves it beyond the banal.

The film seems to revel in this, and one assumes this was a strategy on the part of Reynolds and Bassi – it seems to be a monologue into the void delivered with the energy of the void.

ShoPaapaa’s discourse sits firmly in the realm of the kind of trite self-help patois of the online age, including statements like “All you can do is move forward and try not to think about it” regarding his memories of being bullied, and “closure’s always about oneself.”

It’s an axiom of making narrative that you make it interesting: you may want to present a character’s boredom, but if the audience or reader are bored then it isn’t working as a narrative. Of course, various artists – like Andy Warhol with his “anti-film” Sleep, which runs for five hours and 20 minutes and features a person sleeping – have experimented with this in the past, and ShoPaapaa is up there with some of these experiments in audience tedium.

Opposed to pleasure

The pleasure of film lies in its objectification of the world. In turning the world into an image limited in space and time, film is able to briefly suspend time and space – to transcend the limitations of the world, and, in doing so, to formally say something about it.

Film turns live bodies into glistening and vital dead things, and endows objects with a mystery and enigmatic quality absent from reality. In doing so, it murders the world. This is both its glory and its curse.

Read more:
My Name is Gulpilil: a candid, gentle portrait of one of Australia’s best actors

ShoPaapaa’s position is almost diametrically opposite to this pleasure. We watch a person mired in a bad situation and suffering for it – but it isn’t energetic or dramatic. It seems sincere, but sincerity does not necessarily make good art.

At the same time, ShoPaapaa does effectively capture the weird combination of boredom and self-loathing so many experienced (are still experiencing) during the pandemic lockdowns. Self-indulgent would be an understatement, but there weren’t exactly a lot of options for filmmakers and actors around, and one senses there is an authenticity and accuracy to the self-indulgence: who doesn’t become “self-indulgent” when they keep themselves company for months on end?

It is likely the film will endure as a record and testimony of the COVID-19 pandemic, and for this, the filmmakers deserve recognition. Does it work as a film, as a piece of cinema? No – it’s long and excruciatingly dull, the most colour coming from ShoPaapaa’s assortment of superhero t-shirts – but maybe this is its point.

Why should we be interested and entertained when the world has been so radically and negatively impacted by COVID-19 – why should we be given spectacular pleasure when the world is so rife with inequality and discrimination?

ShoPaapaa is available to stream at the Sydney Film Festival until November 21.

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

– ref. ShoPaapaa, a film about COVID lockdowns, is long and excruciatingly dull – but weren’t lockdowns, too? – https://theconversation.com/shopaapaa-a-film-about-covid-lockdowns-is-long-and-excruciatingly-dull-but-werent-lockdowns-too-171604

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gabrielle Appleby, Professor, UNSW Law School, UNSW

Victoria’s Pandemic Management Bill, designed to replace the current state of emergency powers in pandemic emergencies, has swiftly become one of the state’s most polarising pieces of legislation.

Amid the politics, public fear-mongering and death threats, there appears to be a growing consensus among lawyers the bill would bring positive changes to the way emergency powers have been exercised during the COVID pandemic. Still, it needs improvement.

Public law academics, the Centre for Public Integrity, the Human Rights Law Centre, the Law Institute of Victoria, Liberty Victoria, and a growing number of barristers are calling for key amendments to the bill, as well as an independent review of the law a year after its enactment.

The government’s powers rapidly expanded during the COVID pandemic. Here are six amendments to the pandemic bill we think the government must adopt to ensure these powers are used in a fair and accountable manner.

1) Give parliament stronger oversight

A fundamental democratic principle in Australia – called responsible government – is the ability of parliament to hold the executive branch (the premier and other ministers) to account. Parliament does this by asking questions, requiring documents to be released, and reporting on the government’s actions to the public.

Already, the bill includes stronger mechanisms to ensure parliament can hold the premier and health minister accountable during pandemic emergencies. For instance, it calls for the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee (otherwise known as SARC) to review the legality of public health directions, including their compatibility with the Victorian human rights charter.

However, the bill risks using the SARC to create a veneer of scrutiny only. As the Victorian Bar has argued, amendments are needed to ensure the SARC has the powers and time to conduct those reviews effectively.

Read more:
Victoria’s draft pandemic law is missing one critical element – stronger oversight of the government’s decisions

The bill should also follow emerging global best practice and create a specialised cross-party parliamentary committee that would immediately start operating when a pandemic declaration is put into effect.

This already exists at the federal level with the Senate Select Committee on COVID-19, which reviews the Commonwealth government’s actions in response to the pandemic. New Zealand also created a cross-party Epidemic Response Committee that reviews that government’s pandemic-related responses.

This kind of committee would have broader oversight powers of the executive and, therefore, work in conjunction with the more detailed reviews carried out by the SARC.

2) Bolster the expert oversight committee

The pandemic bill creates an expert committee (including public health, law, and Indigenous rights experts) to provide advice to the health minister. However, there is little guarantee this committee would be independent from the minister, or that it would have the resources and powers it needs to do its job.

A merits-based appointment process should be introduced to guarantee the independence and calibre of the committee. It must include public lawyers and have a mandate to provide advice to the government on whether certain measures would infringe on fundamental human rights.

Finally, the committee must report to parliament, rather than to the minister.

Read more:
Have our governments become too powerful during COVID-19?

3) Create an emergency review mechanism

One serious deficiency of the bill is its failure to provide for an expedited and independent merits review for individuals who might be detained or fined for breaching public health orders. This kind of mechanism would provide a way for people to contest a fine or detention if they believe it’s unlawful.

Given the significance of these powers, the inclusion of a no-cost, expedited and independent merits review process is essential – an emergency review for emergency powers.

This role could be performed by the ombudsman, or by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT), and it must be properly resourced.

4) Protect safe protest

The bill contains no protections of the right to safe protest. The right to peaceful protest is fundamental to a liberal democracy, and is protected under the Australian constitution, the Victorian human rights charter and international law. It is essential during a pandemic.

The bill should accommodate “safe” protest that follows proper health guidelines by recognising it as an “essential” activity, similar to food shopping and exercise.

Read more:
Is protesting during the pandemic an ‘essential’ right that should be protected?

One example is allowing for socially distanced or sit-in protests (as have occurred in Israel and elsewhere during the pandemic), or a drive-by car protest that accords with social distancing rules.

5) Require justification of measures targeted at specific groups

The bill currently permits a pandemic order to apply differently to people with various attributes protected under the Victorian Equal Opportunity Act, such as age and pre-existing medical conditions. The government has noted this could also include how an order applies to vaccinated versus unvaccinated people.

Such a differentiation may be supported if it relates to a person’s health profile. However, the attributes in the Equal Opportunity Act also include race and political and religious beliefs (among many others). This means the bill has a wider remit than just a person’s health profile.

This aspect of the bill has therefore led to significant community backlash and concern.

The preferable means to deal with this is to amend the bill to ensure the health minister must justify any differentiation in pandemic restrictions or policies on health grounds.

6) Require a mandatory two-year review

In light of the lack of adequate time for meaningful consultation on the bill – and the serious concerns that experts have about the appropriateness of its safeguards – we recommend it should have a sunset clause. This means the law would automatically terminate after a set period of time, such as two years.

An alternative would be a mandatory independent review (for instance by a retired judge), to be completed within two years of the law being enacted.

These suggestions would allow the government to respond to the current COVID pandemic under an improved legislative framework, but also require it to conduct further consultation and review before enacting a more permanent law.

Gabrielle Appleby is a member of the Executive Power Project Committee for the Centre for Public Integrity. She is the constitutional consultant to the Clerk of the Commonwealth House of Representatives. She teaches the annual parliamentary law, practice and procedure course for the Australian and New Zealand Association of Clerks at the Table (ANZACATT). Gabrielle is a director of The Wilderness Society Ltd.

Catherine Williams is Research Director at the Centre for Public Integrity

Maria O’Sullivan previously received funding from the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department and currently serves as a legal adviser on the Human Rights Panel with Queensland Parliamentary Services.

William Partlett 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. Victoria’s controversial pandemic bill: 6 ways for the government to show it is serious about scrutiny – https://theconversation.com/victorias-controversial-pandemic-bill-6-ways-for-the-government-to-show-it-is-serious-about-scrutiny-171600

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne

This week’s Newspoll, conducted November 10-13 from a sample of 1,524, gave Labor a 53-47 lead, a one point gain for the Coalition since the last Newspoll, three weeks ago. Primary votes were 38% Labor (steady), 37% Coalition (up two), 11% Greens (steady), 2% One Nation (down one) and 12% for all Others (down one).

52% (up two) were dissatisfied with Scott Morrison’s performance, and 44% (down two) were satisfied, for a net approval of -8, down four points. This continues Morrison’s slump from his pandemic highs. Six months ago, Morrison’s net approval in Newspoll was +20, and last November his net approval was +36.

Anthony Albanese’s net approval also fell, by two points to -11. Morrison’s lead over Albanese as better PM was cut to 46-38 from 48-34 three weeks ago. Newspoll figures are from The Poll Bludger.

While Morrison’s ratings are sliding, that does not mean the Coalition is doomed. Analyst Kevin Bonham says five PMs with worse ratings in the six months prior to an election have won, two with pro-government swings.

However, Morrison has failed to gain following the reopening of Sydney and Melbourne. His recent international performance appears to have hurt him, with the Liberals suffering marked declines in maintaining international relations and national security in an Essential poll (see below).

Inflation could cause problems for Morrison and the Coalition in the lead-up to the next election that is due by May 2022. It has damaged the US Democrats.

The Guardian’s datablog has 69.4% of the population (not 16+) with two vaccine doses, up from 60.3%three weeks ago. We rank 14 of 38 OECD countries in share of population double dosed, up 12 places from three weeks ago; we were ranked last a few months ago. In the past three weeks, Australia has overtaken the UK, France and Germany, and retaken the lead from New Zealand.

Official government data show 83.0% of 16+ are double dosed and 90.4% have received at least one dose. Around 90% of 16+ are double dosed in Victoria, NSW and the ACT, compared with 80% of 12+ in the UK; this shows the success of Australia’s vaccine mandates.

Liberals in danger in Kooyong seat poll

A Redbridge poll of the federal seat of Kooyong (currently held by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg) for the activist group Climate 200, conducted October 16-18 from a sample of 1,017, gave the Liberals 38%, Labor 31%, the Greens 15% and UAP 7%. The Liberals had 58.2% of the Kooyong primary vote at the 2016 election, and this dropped to 49.4% in 2019. These results imply another 11% primary vote swing against the Liberals.

There are skewed poll questions that were designed to promote a climate-focused independent. The results that have the independent ahead of the Liberals on primary votes after these questions should be ignored.

While the Coalition won the 2019 election owing to gains in regional Queensland and Tasmania, there were solid swings to Labor in inner city seats with high levels of educational attainment. A continuation of this trend would make Kooyong and other former safe Liberal seats in Sydney and Melbourne attainable for Labor.

Read more:
Final 2019 election results: education divide explains the Coalition’s upset victory

Essential poll: Morrison’s ratings slump

In last week’s Essential poll, 48% approved of Morrison’s performance (down six since October), and 42% disapproved (up five), for a net approval of +6, down 11 points. This is Morrison’s worst approval in Essential since before the pandemic began. He had gained eight points on net approval in October.

Albanese’s net approval was down two points to +5, and Morrison led as better PM by 44-28 (45-29 in October).

The Liberals led Labor on just two of nine issues canvassed: the economy (by eight points) and national security (by six). The Liberals’ position deteriorated since September on most issues, with marked falls on national security and maintaining international relations.

94% thought it important for Australia to have a good international reputation. By 47-27, voters thought Morrison had undermined, rather than enhanced, our international reputation.

Despite Morrison’s slump, the federal government’s COVID rating improved to 48-29 good from 46-31 in late October, owing to an 11-point jump in Victoria (to 45% good). The Victorian state government also benefited, with its good rating up 13 to 56%.

43% thought the net zero by 2050 commitment was not enough action on climate change, and we need to do more, while 37% thought it was enough. There was pessimism about COP26 achieving meaningful changes to address climate change both globally (52-35 not confident) and in Australia (52-37).

Morgan poll: 53.5-46.5 to Labor

A Morgan poll, conducted in late October and early November from a sample of over 2,700, gave Labor a 53.5-46.5 lead, a 0.5% gain for the Coalition since mid-October. Primary votes were 36.5% Coalition (steady), 35% Labor (steady), 11.5% Greens (down 2%), 3% One Nation (down 0.5%) and 14% for all Others (up 2.5%).

Unemployment rate jumped to 5.2% in October

The ABS reported last Thursday that the unemployment rate jumped 0.6% from September to 5.2% in October. The participation rate was up 0.1% to 64.7% and the employment population ratio – the percentage of eligible Australians employed – was down 0.3% to 61.3%; it has fallen 1.7% from its July peak of 63.0%.

This ABC report says fieldwork for the labour force survey was taken between September 26 and October 9, before lockdowns in Sydney and Melbourne were eased. Economists expect a strong rebound in November’s report.

Proposed changes to require voter ID

The government is proposing voters be required to show ID at the polls to vote. This has been compared to the US, where some Republican state governments make it harder for Democratic supporting minorities to vote.

While such tactics in the US receive much media attention and condemnation, gerrymandering – the manipulation of electoral district boundaries – has a far bigger impact on electoral outcomes.

Both Democrats and Republicans will gerrymander when given the opportunity. To gerrymander, a party usually needs control of both chambers of a state’s legislature and the governor. I had more on US gerrymandering in a Poll Bludger article on October 29.

Canada has similar requirements on voter ID to what is being proposed in Australia. But the left in Australia obsesses over the US comparison.

If these voter ID proposals become law, they will have very little impact on the next federal election.

Swings against US Democrats in off-year elections point to a drubbing next November

I live blogged the Virginia and New Jersey state elections for The Poll Bludger on November 3. Virginia voted for Joe Biden in 2020 by ten points and Democrats lost the governor election. New Jersey voted for Biden by 16, and Democrats barely won.

If these swings are repeated at the November 2022 midterm elections, when all federal House seats and one-third of the Senate are up for election, Democrats would be thumped.

President Biden is unpopular owing to inflation. Headline US inflation increased 0.9% in October to be up 6.2% for the 12 months to October, the highest inflation rate since 1990. The high inflation has resulted in real earnings falling 1.2% (hourly) and 1.6% (weekly) in the 12 months to October.

Adrian Beaumont 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. Coalition improves but Morrison’s slide continues in Newspoll; Liberals in danger in Kooyong – https://theconversation.com/coalition-improves-but-morrisons-slide-continues-in-newspoll-liberals-in-danger-in-kooyong-171593

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pok Man Leung, PhD candidate in Microbiology, Monash University

Humans have only recently begun to think about using hydrogen as a source of energy, but bacteria in Antarctica have been doing it for a billion years.

We studied 451 different kinds of bacteria from frozen soils in East Antarctica and found most of them live by using hydrogen from the air as a fuel. Through genetic analysis, we also found these bacteria diverged from their cousins in other continents approximately a billion years ago.

These incredible microorganisms come from ice-free desert soils north of the Mackay Glacier in East Antarctica. Few higher plants or animals can prosper in this environment, where there is little available water, temperatures are below zero, and the polar winters are pitch-black.

Despite the harsh conditions, microorganisms thrive. Hundreds of bacterial species and millions of cells can be found in a single gram of soil, making for a unique and diverse ecosystem.

How do microbial communities survive in such punishing surroundings?

A dependable alternative to photosynthesis

We discovered more than a quarter of these Antarctic soil bacteria create an enzyme called RuBisCO, which is what lets plants use sunlight to capture carbon dioxide from air and convert it into biomass. This process, photosynthesis, generates most of the organic carbon on Earth.

However, we found more than 99% of the RuBisCO-containing bacteria were unable to capture sunlight. Instead, they perform a process called chemosynthesis.

Rather than relying on sunlight to power the conversion of carbon dioxide into biomass, they use inorganic compounds such as the gases hydrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide.

Read more:
Extremophiles: resilient microorganisms that help us understand our past – and future

Living on air

Where do the bacteria find these energy-rich compounds? Believe it or not, the most reliable source is the air!

Air contains high levels of nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide, but also trace amounts of the energy sources hydrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide.

They are only present in air in very low concentrations, but there is so much air it provides a virtually unlimited supply of these molecules for organisms that can use them.

And many can. Around 1% of Antarctic soil bacteria can use methane, and some 30% can use carbon monoxide.

More remarkably, our research suggests that 90% of Antarctic soil bacteria may scavenge hydrogen from the air.

The bacteria gain energy from hydrogen, methane and carbon by combining them with oxygen in a chemical process that is like a very slow kind of burning.

Our experiments showed the bacteria consume atmospheric hydrogen even at temperatures of -20°C, and they can consume enough to cover all their energy requirements.

What’s more, the hydrogen can power chemosynthesis, which may provide enough organic carbon to sustain the entire community. Other bacteria can access this carbon by “eating” their hydrogen-powered neighbours or the carbon-rich ooze they produce.

Water from thin air

When you burn hydrogen, or when the bacteria harvest energy from it, the only by-product is water.

Making water is an important bonus for Antarctic bacteria. They live in a hyper-arid desert, where water is unavailable because the surrounding ice is almost permanently frozen and any moisture in the soil is rapidly sucked out by the dry, cold air.

So the ability to generate water from “thin air” may explain how these bacteria have been able to exist in this environment for millions of years. By our calculations, the rates of hydrogen-powered water production are sufficient to rehydrate an entire Antarctic cell within just two weeks.

By adopting a “hydrogen economy”, these bacteria fulfil their needs for energy, biomass, and hydration. Three birds, one stone.

Could a hydrogen economy sustain extraterrestrial life?

The minimalist hydrogen-dependent lifestyle of Antarctic soil bacteria redefines our understanding of what is the very least required for life on Earth. It also brings new insights into the search for extraterrestrial life.

Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, making up almost three-quarters of all matter. It is a major component of the atmosphere on some alien planets, such as HD 189733b which orbits a star 64.5 light-years from Earth.

If life were to exist on such a planet, where conditions may not be as hospitable as on much of Earth, consuming hydrogen might be the simplest and most dependable survival strategy.

“Follow the water” is the mantra for searches of extraterrestrial life. But given bacteria can literally make water from air, perhaps the key to finding life beyond Earth is to “follow the hydrogen”.

Read more:
Hydrogen-breathing aliens? Study suggests new approach to finding extraterrestrial life

Chris Greening receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Australian Antarctic Science Program, the National Health & Medical Research Council, and the Wellcome Trust.

Steven Chown receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Australian Antarctic Science Program, the National Health & Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust. He is Immediate Past President of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research.

Pok Man Leung 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. Antarctic bacteria live on air and make their own water using hydrogen as fuel – https://theconversation.com/antarctic-bacteria-live-on-air-and-make-their-own-water-using-hydrogen-as-fuel-171808

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Frank Jotzo, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy and Head of Energy, Institute for Climate Energy and Disaster Solutions, Australian National University

COP26 president Alok Sharma has described the pivotal United Nations talks, which concluded over the weekend, as only a “fragile win” for ambition on climate change. But, against the odds, the summit produced the goods on several important aspects of international climate policy.

It resolved tricky outstanding issues for implementing the Paris Agreement. And most importantly, it reinforced the multilateral consensus that much stronger climate action is needed in both the short and long term.

Stabilising the climate depends on a lot more than the outcome of multilateral negotiations like Glasgow. But those agreements set a frame for real-world decisions.

Here’s a preliminary interpretation of some of the decisions at COP26 on climate change mitigation, and the implications for Australia.

Coal power “phase down”

Global climate negotiations are usually a relentless grind, with occasional fireworks. One such firework moment came in the final session when India, supported by China, demanded the Glasgow Climate Pact’s language on coal should be weakened from “phase-out” to “phasedown” of unabated coal power.

To prevent the disagreement scuttling the entire deal, the revision was agreed to, despite bitter protests by many countries intent on stronger action.

The wording of United Nations agreements is cumbersome, but deliberate. Here’s the full reference to coal in the final COP26 text. It calls on the parties to the Paris Agreement to:

accelerate the development, deployment and dissemination of technologies, and the adoption of policies, to transition towards low-emission energy systems, including by rapidly scaling up the deployment of clean power generation and energy efficiency measures, including accelerating efforts towards the phase-down of unabated coal power and phase-out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, while providing targeted support to the poorest and most vulnerable in line with national circumstances and recognising the need for support towards a just transition.

(By way of definition, “unabated” coal power refers to the absence of carbon capture and storage in power stations. This technology is very expensive for power generation and unlikely to be used at large scale.)

So what does the above text mean, exactly? At the core of it, the international community is spelling out an expectation that countries strive to greatly reduce the use of coal in electricity generation, and to stop subsidising fossil fuels. The original “phase-out” language would obviously have meant nations should stop using unabated coal power altogether.

Read more:
Are you kidding, India? Your last-minute Glasgow intervention won’t relieve pressure to ditch coal

On the face of it, the change in wording makes a big difference. But the signal to investors in coal mining and coal power plants is the same: the international community has decided coal-fired power must fall, and its end is coming.

No previous United Nations climate change decision has so directly called for action to cut fossil fuels. So even the weakened language is unprecedented.

What’s more, nations can act independently of – and more ambitiously than – the wording in the COP agreement.

For example, China recently pledged to rely much less on coal power and stop building coal-fired power stations abroad. And the surprise US-China joint declaration on climate change announced at Glasgow enshrines the “elimination of support for unabated international thermal coal power generation”.

The international market for thermal coal – the type burned for electricity – will shrink and could do so quickly. Australia is the world’s number two thermal coal exporter behind Indonesia. We’d better get used to the fact the business is in decline.

Ratcheting up 2030 targets

Another key aspect of the Glasgow pact is the call for stronger 2030 emissions targets and short-term action.

By the end of next year, nations are asked to strengthen their 2030 targets to align with the 1.5℃ temperature goal. This puts big pressure on Australia.

The federal government still retains the very weak target of a 26-28% emissions reduction by 2030, based on 2005 levels, and recently said the target will be exceeded by up to 9%. Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s insistence on Sunday that the target is “fixed” will not cut it over the next year.

Almost all other developed countries have strengthened their targets already, some greatly so. An important reference point is the United States, which has adopted a 50-52% reduction target in the same time frame.

In yet stronger language, the Glasgow pact “urges” countries that haven’t yet submitted a long-term emissions-reduction strategy to do so by next year’s conference.

This puts the onus on the federal government. Its recent “plan” to reach net-zero by 2050 falls far short of the mark of what constitutes a real national strategy.

Read more:
Government assumes 90% of Australia’s new car sales will be electric by 2050. But it’s a destination without a route

International carbon trading

COP26 managed to resolve an issue that had proven extremely difficult since the Paris talks – rules for future international carbon markets.

The compromise reached appears to largely close loopholes for double-counting of emissions reduction. What kind and extent of international emissions markets will emerge under the Paris Agreement framework remains to be seen. However, the rules to underpin them are now available.

From an Australian perspective, an outcome on international emissions markets is very positive. Australian governments and negotiators have worked to help make it happen.

It opens the door to Australian companies or governments purchasing emissions reductions achieved in other countries, if this turned out cheaper than acting more strongly to cut emissions at home. It will also help Australia work with countries in the Pacific and Southeast Asia to reduce emissions there, and to share the resulting emissions reductions between countries.

Australia’s large land mass and unlimited potential for cheap renewable energy means it’s better positioned than most countries to become a net-negative emissions economy in the long term. In other words, Australia could one day remove more greenhouse gases from the atmosphere than it emits.

So an international carbon trading framework means Australia could eventually sell emissions reduction credits to other countries, and the revenue could fund large-scale CO₂ removal from the atmosphere.

A momentum that cannot be ignored

Earth’s climate will not be determined by what is agreed at global climate talks, but by the actions that businesses and people take, and the policies governments put in place.

But what’s decided at conferences like Glasgow sets the frame for real-world decisions. The Glasgow outcome shows there is resolve to get on top of the problem.

Governments that might prefer the old ways of a carbon-intensive economy cannot ignore that momentum.

Read more:
COP26 leaves too many loopholes for the fossil fuel industry. Here are 5 of them

Frank Jotzo leads and has led research projects funded by a variety of funders. None present a conflict of interest on this topic.

– ref. COP26: the Glasgow climate summit demonstrates an appetite for change Australia simply can’t ignore – https://theconversation.com/cop26-the-glasgow-climate-summit-demonstrates-an-appetite-for-change-australia-simply-cant-ignore-171810

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew McKenzie-McHarg, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry, Australian Catholic University

It is not entirely irrational to fear needles (or to suffer from trypanophobia for those who prefer the Greek term). Likewise, feeling anxious about injecting a foreign substance into the bloodstream seems quite reasonable.

And it is hardly surprising that people might find these things even more anxiety-inducing because of the duty of care we feel toward loved ones, especially children.

The anti-vax movement, thus, has an understandable relationship with fear and anxiety. In fact, there has been resistance to vaccinations since at least the late 18th century when the British physician Edward Jenner began to promote them as a prophylactic measure against smallpox.

One of Jenner’s contemporaries, the caricaturist James Gillray, famously lampooned people’s fears by imagining how cows grotesquely begin to sprout from the limbs and faces of the newly vaccinated. It was an early 19th-century version of what we today might assign to the sub-genre of body horror.

The anti-vax movement is, however, no longer fuelled purely by fears about vaccines and harmful side-effects.

At recent protests against vaccine mandates in Australia, for instance, “F*** the jab” was one of the chants that could be heard. The mood was dominated by anger, not anxiety.

Read more:
Why QAnon is attracting so many followers in Australia — and how it can be countered

On first sight, there is nothing surprising about such truculence. The vaccine mandates imposed in response to the COVID pandemic are forcing some people to do something they are fearful of and would prefer not to do.

But the militancy of the protests and make-up of participants suggest many far-right nationalists and extreme libertarians have either co-opted the anti-vax movement or converged with it. Ideological differences recede into the background and common ground is found in opposing public authorities whose attempts to counteract the spread of the virus have been interpreted as the first steps toward tyranny.

From philosophy to psychology

A common denominator uniting these movements is the penchant for viewing the world through the prism of conspiracy theories.

For some, Big Pharma ruthlessly pursues profits by exploiting human frailty and gullibility. For others, the state is exploiting a health crisis with the goal of installing itself as Big Brother. For a few, the Illuminati overlords are lurking somewhere in the background.

Because conspiracy theories claim to be based in fact – unlike myths or fables – the concept encourages us to treat them as rational and therefore refutable.

At least this was the presumption guiding the philosopher Karl Popper when he delivered two lectures in 1948 that are regarded as the first effort to examine conspiracy theories from a philosophical standpoint.

Read more:
In defence of conspiracy theories (and why the term is a misnomer)

Although Popper was aware that conspiracy theories are found throughout history, his analysis was akin to a thought experiment. The experiment revolved around the question of whether it was possible to imagine events and trends in the world as the result of a conspiracy. Is this a tenable view of how society works?

It was not, he concluded. And refuting the claim that secret agents were responsible for a war or an economic depression, for example, was a way of edging closer to the correct understanding of such phenomena.

If this sounds somewhat abstract, the legal theorist Franz Neumann attempted to get nearer to the reality of conspiracy theories by linking them to a psychological condition.

In a 1954 lecture called “Anxiety and Politics”, Neumann diagnosed conspiracy theories as an attempt to transform people’s anxieties into fear. The distinction had political consequences. Anxiety had a paralysising effect; fear, by contrast, was a catalyst for action.

Neumann insisted that at the core of the delusions characterising conspiracy theories, there remained a “kernel of truth”. In this spirit, the suspicions long harboured by the anti-vax movement are not entirely misplaced if you take into account the far-from-unblemished public health record of pharmaceutical giants.

Much of the research on conspiracy theories since then continues to take its cues from Neumann by treating them as attempts by frightened, panicked people to get a grip on the world.

How anger leads to falsehoods

What if, however, fear and anxiety are not sufficient to understand the social psychology at work here?

The protests against vaccine mandates, as well as earlier protests against 5G technology and the rise of the QAnon movement, suggest there are other emotions underpinning all of this. These are feelings of anger, grievance, and resentment. Add to this the restrictions and lockdowns imposed by governments over the last 18 months and the effect is like pouring fuel on the fire.

Anger makes us want to lash out – to kick the cat or some other unfortunate proxy for those deemed responsible for our troubles and woes.

Read more:
‘It’s almost like grooming’: how anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, and the far-right came together over COVID

Importantly, anger also has a disinhibiting effect on our relationship to the truth. That is, when we are angry, we feel less obliged to speak truthfully and allow our emotions to take over.

For instance, research shows anger enhances our propensity to lie. And the deeper you probe into the contemporary anti-vax movement, the more you find a conscious willingness to play it fast and loose with the truth.

The movement is now driven by lies told out of spite and believed in part by those who tell them because of the gratification this brings them.

The online documentary Plandemic: The Hidden Agenda Behind COVID-19, for example, features Judy Mikovits, a discredited medical researcher with an axe to grind against Anthony Fauci, the leading infectious disease expert in the US, because of the alleged role he played in the loss of her professional reputation.

The documentary makes a series of bogus claims, culminating in the assertion that masks function as a catalyst for COVID because “they activate your inner virus.”

Another widespread lie is that philanthropist Bill Gates was using the vaccine as an opportunity to implant microchip tracking devices in humans.

Presumably, it is still possible to ask about the “kernel of truth” buried deep within such claims, yet their outlandishness suggests this model has its limits.
At some point, one has to start factoring in the role of dishonesty.

Clearly, this presents a challenge to historians and social scientists who would prefer to understand falsehoods as innocent errors caused by psychological factors or social circumstances.

Identifying a falsehood as a lie incurs the risk of moralising. And denouncing conspiracy theorists as liars will hardly alleviate social tensions. Easy fixes are hard to come by, but a start would be to understand better the anger that makes lying appear justifiable in the first place.

Andrew McKenzie-McHarg was a member of the five-year (2013-2018) Conspiracy and Democracy project based at the University of Cambridge and funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

Francois Soyer received postdoctoral funding from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions between 2012 and 2016.

– ref. Anger, grievance, resentment: we need to understand how anti-vaxxers feel to make sense of their actions – https://theconversation.com/anger-grievance-resentment-we-need-to-understand-how-anti-vaxxers-feel-to-make-sense-of-their-actions-169829

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melissa Conley Tyler, Honorary Fellow, Asia Institute, The University of Melbourne

We are seeing an unusual level of discussion about Australian diplomacy.

There’s been harsh criticism – and some degree of embarrassment – surrounding what has been described been as a “diplomacy fail” in managing relations with France.

The head of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Peter Jennings, has gone as far as saying:

If it looks like our foreign policy is all a bit rough and ready, it’s because we have not invested in our diplomatic capability for a long time […] Acquiring some diplomatic smarts would be a damned sight cheaper than a nuclear sub.

So, what is diplomacy – and is it in decline?

Diplomatic smarts

Diplomacy is the operating system of international relations.

The responsibilities of diplomats include gathering and reporting information, communication and negotiation (both with foreign governments and other actors), promoting friendly relations (including economic, cultural and scientific) and protecting citizens abroad.

These are often in high-pressure and crisis situations.

Former ambassador Sue Boyd recalls Gough Whitlam articulating the key questions a diplomat’s job should centre on: “What’s going on? What does it mean for Australia? And what should we do about it?”.

If there’s one key diplomatic skill, it is perspective-taking: being able to see the world as others see it. Most other countries don’t share our viewpoint and don’t care about our interests. If we want to understand and communicate with them, we need to enter imaginatively into their worldview.

The analytical abilities and relationships required to answer such questions are specialist skills. Diplomats are, by definition, elite – they spend years studying other cultures, societies and economies and developing the intercultural skills required to communicate and persuade.

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

This doesn’t appeal to populists. Politicians such as Donald Trump prefer to see international relations as something they or their family members can do through force of personality (note how this approach to diplomacy brought no discernible dividends for the former US president with North Korea).

Underinvesting in diplomacy

We can see the decline in diplomacy starkly through Australia’s resource allocation.

In research for Australian Foreign Affairs, I charted the decline in resourcing stretching over decades from 8.9% of the federal budget in 1949 dedicated to diplomacy, trade and aid compared to only 1.3% in 2019. To compare Australia to other developed countries with similar-sized economies, Canada and the Netherlands invest 1.9% and 4.3% of their budgets in this area.

Looking at the last 20 years, there has been a pronounced drop in funding for diplomacy at the same time as funding for defence and intelligence has increased. As of 2019-20, the Department of Defence budget increased by 291% since 2011, while the allocation for the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation grew by 528% and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service by 578%.

More subtly, you can see the devaluing of diplomacy in other indicators.

This includes the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade not being consulted on major foreign policy decisions, not being perceived as having “heft” in policy debates within government and the record level of political appointments (rather than career diplomats) to diplomatic posts.

Why the decline?

It’s worth noting, this is not just an Australian problem, with diplomatic approaches being sidelined in countries from the United States to Brazil. So the wider question is why does diplomacy get overlooked? There are three reasons:

1. Diplomacy is no longer widely regarded as a special skill

In the golden age of diplomacy, diplomats were an exclusive club that managed international engagement. Today, real-time communication technologies and ease of travel give the (false) impression that anyone can communicate seamlessly across borders.

2. Security approaches are preferred

Diplomacy deals with nuance (which can sound like being an apologist) and engagement (which can sound like appeasement). A security mindset – which sees things in black and white, defining enemies and friends – is much more comforting. In some places, like Xi’s China, diplomats are under pressure to show their patriotism and “fighting spirit”, which does not help good diplomatic communication. This is related to the third issue, that –

3. Domestic politics is seen as more important

There is always a danger good foreign policy will be crowded out by domestic political considerations. To avoid this, we need leaders who care about the long-term interests of the country as well as immediate political gain. That requires both largeness of vision and self-restraint.

Making the case for diplomacy

So, how do we make the case for diplomacy?

It begins with a dose of realism. Valuing diplomacy requires a degree of acceptance about what is possible, living with compromises, stop-gaps and partial solutions. It is incremental, rather than revolutionary.

By contrast, politics can fall into the trap of magical thinking – that if only we say what we want loud enough, it will occur.

Australia is, for example, only one moderate-sized power among many, meaning there are significant limits on how much it can get of what it wants. It’s a big, tough world out there and we need the very best people trying to make sense of it and shape it to our interests.

For me, commentary that describes the Macron/Morrison episode as a “failure of Australia’s diplomacy” misses the point: in a real sense, diplomacy wasn’t even tried.

It is the sidelining of diplomacy that is the problem.

Read more:
‘I don’t think, I know’ – what makes Macron’s comments about Morrison so extraordinary and so worrying

Melissa Conley Tyler is Program Lead at the Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy & Defence Dialogue (AP4D), a platform for collaboration between the development, diplomacy and defence communities. It receives funding from the Australian Civil-Military Centre.

– ref. Australia has not just had a ‘diplomacy fail’ – it has been devaluing the profession for decades – https://theconversation.com/australia-has-not-just-had-a-diplomacy-fail-it-has-been-devaluing-the-profession-for-decades-171498

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Wiseman, Professorial Fellow, The University of Melbourne

The COP26 climate conference in Glasgow is over. Despite some progress, deep concerns remain about the outcomes. The final pact at least mentions the importance of exiting coal and the door remains open to ratcheting up national targets in 2022. But we’re all still on a long, hard road through wild and unfamiliar landscapes scarred by fires, floods and storms.

Accelerating the transition to a just and resilient zero-carbon future remains humanity’s most urgent task. Scientific evidence about global warming trends already locked in is, however, crystal clear: humans and all other species are on a journey into an increasingly harsh climate future.

This realisation raises two tough questions, which led me to begin work on my new book, Hope and Courage in the Climate Crisis:

– what sources of hope and wisdom can strengthen our capacity to take courageous and effective climate action?

– how do we live meaningful lives in a world of rapidly intensifying climate and ecological risks?

There are times when I imagine all the ideas and voices I have drawn on – scientists and activists, teachers and writers, poets and artists – gathered in respectful and intense debate. The conversations spark and crackle with fierce, urgent energy.

All agree the hope we need is realistic and defiant. It is not wishful thinking, denial, or delay disguised as naïve optimism.

As my research has helped me understand, humans continue to draw on a rich diversity of ideas to sustain defiant and courageous hope in dark times.

Read more:
Five things you need to know about the Glasgow Climate Pact

Science-based emergency action

I turn first to my colleagues from science and technology. Surely, they argue, our first priority remains speaking truth to power about the speed and scale of action needed to restore a safe climate?

Targets and agreements set at global conferences like COP26 are useful. But only if national and sub-national governments, cities and communities, unions and business all actually deliver on those targets and rapidly intensify their work to cut emissions, including a swift end to using coal, oil and gas.

OK, but how do we achieve the necessary political momentum? My climate activist friends seem less convinced by the promise of scientific evidence and reason.

The pandemic response has been a useful wake-up call about the possibilities as well as the limits of human ingenuity. But in the climate crisis, how do we deploy data and evidence at the speed required, while avoiding the delusional hubris that there are always technical solutions to every human problem?

Historical examples my activist colleagues turn to for inspiration are stories of solidarity and fellowship, where ethically informed collective action has achieved transformational change which once looked completely impossible.

These include the anti-slavery movement, the Suffragettes, the overthrow of Apartheid and the fall of the Berlin Wall. More recently we can look to examples like Black Lives Matter, 350.org, Pacific Climate Warriors, Beyond Zero Emissions, Market Forces and School Strike 4 Climate.

Justice, care and beauty

I turn next to my friends and colleagues from Indigenous and First Nation communities, such as the Seed Indigenous Youth Climate Network.

From them, we might learn to deepen our understanding of the histories of the lands on which we gather – and the legacies of colonialism, resistance and dispossession which have led us to these times of risk and crisis.

Climate justice – the principle that the burdens of climate change impacts and solutions should be shared fairly – is therefore one of the first propositions we should bring to the table.

In thinking about the concept of climate justice I also find it helpful to bear in mind the responses Indigenous school students gave, when Indigenous author and activist Tony Birch asked them to define climate justice:

if we fail to care for Country, it cannot care for us

This response highlights the importance of remembering that the principle of climate justice should not be restricted to humans alone.

I am joined next by teachers and scholars from a wide array of spiritual and faith-based traditions. They suggest the first key step in times of suffering and despair is thankfulness.

Buddhist poet and environmental activist Gary Snyder makes this point very well. He notes that while many severe climate impacts may already be locked in, every day he feels gratitude to this world that is.

Snyder quotes Kobayashi Issa, a poet who once wrote:

This dewdrop world

Is but a dewdrop world

And yet …

Our shared responsibility

Remembering the fragile impermanence of our dewdrop world is a constant reminder of our shared responsibility to defend the beauty of the world we’ve been given, and hand this gift on to all humans and other species who’ll come after us.

Honouring and celebrating the astonishing, complex beauty of life on Earth is also, as legendary nature writer Rachael Carson reminds us, an abiding source of strength and inspiration:

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring.

There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.

I turn finally to the theorists and writers, farmers and engineers, poets and artists and film makers who can help us imagine and create the regenerative action we need to cross the wild landscapes of the long climate emergency.

Visionary, insightful writers like Vandana Shiva, Jeremy Lent and George Monbiot who can help us clearly see the patterns and textures of our interwoven world, and understand and confront the ignorance, violence and greed threatening to tear this delicate fabric apart.

Authors and activists such as Rebecca Solnit, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Christiana Figueres, who can assist us navigate dangerous and uncertain times, remembering that the world is always full of surprises and the future is never fully settled.

Sunlight on the water, wind in the trees

So, where might we find sources of wisdom, hope and courage in this world of rapidly intensifying climate consequences?

Honesty with ourselves and others about the scale and consequences of the crisis we now face. Scientific rigour, evidence and ingenuity. Working together, shoulder to shoulder to ignite and accelerate emergency speed action. Justice and care, respect and reciprocity. Thankfulness, kindness and compassion. Beauty, creativity and imagination.

And also these abiding gifts: the laughter of children. The comfort of old friends. Sunlight on the water, the wind in the trees, the silence of mountains, the roar of the ocean.

Read more:
COP26: experts react to the UN climate summit and Glasgow Pact

John Wiseman is a Senior Research Fellow with Melbourne Climate Futures and Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute at the University of Melbourne; a Research Fellow with the Centre for Policy Development and a Board Member of The Next Economy.
He is the author of ‘Hope and Courage in the Climate Crisis’, Palgrave Macmillan, 2021

– ref. Where to find courage and defiant hope when our fragile, dewdrop world seems beyond saving – https://theconversation.com/where-to-find-courage-and-defiant-hope-when-our-fragile-dewdrop-world-seems-beyond-saving-171299

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra de Gendre, Postdoctoral Research Associate in Economics, University of Sydney

Who you go to school with matters. Almost all of us, as children or parents of children, have felt the influence of good, and bad, classmates at school.

There is a large body of research showing better peers can help increase a child’s test scores. But much less is known about how these peer effects actually take place between classmates. This is because the mechanisms through which peers positively influence other students are difficult to pinpoint.

The results of our study get us closer to understanding how peer effects work.

We found parental investment increases when a child is in a classroom with higher performing peers. This could partly explain why test scores increase for students in such classrooms. But we also found while their test scores may go up, little else does. For instance, the amount of time a student spends studying when in a classroom with higher performing peers does not go up.

Our study shows the positive effects of peers seem to occur with no real extra effort from the student.

Combining rich data and a social experiment

Our study is the first of its kind to test many of the possible mechanisms underlying the transmission of peer effects.

We tested 19 different ways peers can positively influence their classmates. These fall into three main categories: student behaviour, parental investments and school environment. They cover mechanisms such as students’ study effort and participation in class, aspirations and expectations to go to university, parents’ time, parental support and strictness, and teacher engagement.

We used data from the national Taiwanese Education Panel Survey of more than 20,000 students, parents, teachers and school administrators. The data includes student characteristics such as how many hours they spend studying per week, parental education and how much time students spend with their parents.

We analysed this data from middle schools in Taiwan (ages 12 to 14, or years 7 to 9 in Australia) where students are assigned to classrooms by chance. This way, we could compare kids in the same school in classrooms with higher- or lower-achieving peers.

Each student takes a standardised test at the beginning of year 7, and another test at the beginning of year 9. We measured the progress these students made.

We compared kids who had the same test scores at the beginning of year 7, and controlled characteristics we know make a difference for test scores. These include parental education, how much time each student spends studying and teacher motivation. The only difference between the students we compared, in terms of influence on academic results, was the classroom they were assigned to by chance.

Students in top classrooms had higher grades

For simplicity, we can explain it like this. There are two students in the same school. One is assigned by chance to a classroom where the standardised test scores are the average in the country. And the other is assigned to a classroom where the test scores are the top in the country. Other than that, the two students are identical.

We examined the scores of both these two kids two years later.

In our study, the student assigned to the top classroom has progressed more than the student in the average classroom.

Read more:
Our study in China found struggling students can bring down the rest of the class

In year 7, both students answered 31 questions out of 75 in the standardised test correctly. Two years later, the student in the average test-score classroom still answered 31 questions correctly, while the student in the top test-score classroom answered nearly 32 questions correctly. This equates to 2.4% more correct answers.

While this may seem like a small difference, it is statistically significant and similar to what previous studies have found. However, our study goes beyond this.

What else we found

We also showed that two years later, the student in the top test-score classroom was 1.6 percentage points more likely to aspire to go university than the student in the average test-score classroom. And the top classroom student was 2 percentage points more confident in their ability to get into and attend university.

A later finding (which is yet to be published) was that students assigned to the top class had not changed the amount of hours they were spending on study.

However, the parents of the child assigned to a classroom with higher-achieving peers had spent more time with their child, and provided them with more general emotional support, two years later, than the parents of the child in the average test score classroom.

Reasons for peer effects remain a mystery

By testing more potential mechanisms than before, our study rules out many possible pathways for peer effects hypothesised in previous work. For example, we found no effects of high-achieving peers on students’ initiative in class, cheating, misbehaving and truancy, nor on parents‘ investments in private tutoring and aspirations for their child to go to university. There was also no difference in students’ perceptions of their school environment and teacher engagement.

While our study shows high-achieving peers positively influence student and parent behaviours, these alone don’t explain much of the positive effects on test scores in our data. In other words, the things that do change – aspirations and expectations, and parental investments – don’t fully account for the benefits of high-achieving peers.

Read more:
Will sorting classrooms by ability improve marks? It depends on the mix

The fact that our study didn’t deliver a clearer overall picture of how peer effects actually work is a testament to their complexity.

We were able to explore mechanisms due to the rich Taiwanese data combined with the unique experiment where students are randomly assigned to classrooms within schools.

But there were still two notable exceptions not measured, such as direct learning from peers and detailed teaching practices.

Collecting data on peer-to-peer interactions, such as discussing and coordinating tasks, is difficult but could be a key to unlocking the mystery of how higher-achieving peers benefit fellow students.

Data on teaching practices, like pairing students for group work and the amount of material covered in lessons, could also provide new insights.

Alexandra de Gendre is affiliated with the School of Economics at the University of Sydney, the IZA Institute of Labor Economics and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course.

Nicolás Salamanca receives funding from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course. He is affiliated with the Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic & Social Research at The University of Melbourne.

– ref. Being in a class with high achievers improves students’ test scores. We tried to find out why – https://theconversation.com/being-in-a-class-with-high-achievers-improves-students-test-scores-we-tried-to-find-out-why-171400

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philip Adams, Professor at the Centre of Policy Studies, Victoria University

On Friday November 12, after a wait of a fortnight, the government released a 100-page summary of the modelling and analysis behind its claim that an emissions target of net-zero by 2050 would leave the economy no worse off.

The report details both formal in-house modelling using a large global economic model and a relatively informal but detailed assessment of employment outcomes prepared by the consultancy McKinsey & Company.

The formal modelling starts with a scenario labelled “no Australian action”, in which every developed country other than Australia cuts its emissions to net-zero by 2050, and when taken together every country other than Australia does whatever else is needed to hold global warming to 2°C.

In “no Australian action” Australia as good as ignores the major green technological advances in the rest of the world (including those in hydrogen) and is penalised for not targeting net-zero via measures including carbon tariffs and a reluctance of financiers to advance money to Australian projects.

The modelling compares “no Australian action” with a number of alternative “action” scenarios, of which “the plan” is the most preferred.

Included in “the plan” are the technological advances foregone in “no Australian action” and excluded are the financial penalties.

Read more:
Australia is about to be hit by a carbon tax whether the prime minister likes it or not, except the proceeds will go overseas

Under “the plan”, Australia’s gross emissions fall to between 25% and 35% of their 2005 level by 2050. As yet unknown technological advances remove a further 15%, and the rest of the path to net zero is provided by the purchase of emissions offsets, the foreign ones costing (a remarkably cheap) A$40 per tonne.

Given the technological advances and freedom from penalties associated with the plan, it isn’t surprising that it produces a better economic outcome.

What is surprising, given those assumptions, is that the gain in real income the modellers came up with is so small.

Six months difference after 30 years

The projected gain under “the plan” compared with “no Australian action” is 1.6% after 30 years, which is about six months worth of economic growth, meaning the economy would be as big in June 2050 as it would have been in December 2050.

The summary says the employment outcomes produced by McKinsey are “broadly in line” with the outcomes produced by the macroeconomic modelling.

What this means isn’t quite explained. It might have just turned out that way, or the government might have picked or asked for results that mirrored its own.

Regardless, the summary released on Friday has little to say (except in a cursory way) about the impacts of the plan on regions, on industries other than the most emission-intensive, and on the labour market adjustments and changes to the skills and types of education that will be required.

Read more:
Five things you need to know about the Glasgow Climate Pact

As it happened, the day before the summary was released, my team at the Centre of Policy Studies at Victoria University published its own modelling of the economic impact on Australia of achieving net-zero emissions with a good deal more detail about the impacts on regions and industries.

We are preparing a second report on the impact on education with the Mitchell Institute for release early next year.

We asked a slightly different question…

My team assessed the impacts of net-zero in a slightly different way to the government, by asking what would happen to the Australian economy if the rest of the world (including Australia) moved to net-zero by 2050, comparing it to what would happen if they did not.

In our modelling Australia faced no financial penalty for not pulling its weight and there was no role for as yet unknown technologies and no ability for Australia to achieve net-zero by buying permits from overseas. This made our modelling conservative, less likely to find that net-zero produced an economic benefit.

…and got a similar answer

We found that despite deep cuts in emissions, the Australian economy would continue to grow strongly in terms of production and employment. However after 30 years real GDP and income would be slightly lower than they would have been without action.

In contrast to the government’s projected gain of around 1.6% after 30 years (six months of economic growth) we found a loss of around 1%, equivalent to four to five months of economic growth.

Real GDP in 2021 prices, base case and net-zero scenarios

What’s significant is that when we last did this work in 2014, we estimated a larger loss in GDP of 3.8%.

The loss is smaller now because the task has become easier, thanks to lower than previously expected renewable generation costs and a faster than expected uptake of both light and heavy electric vehicles.

On employment, we found Australia would have about the same number of jobs by 2050 under either scenario.

Industries such as coal mining would suffer, although not as much as might be thought. Coal mining would continue in 2050 due to continued international demand, with production down 34% and hours worked down 37% compared to no more toward net-zero.

But more detail on jobs

Decarbonisation will provide an impetus to many industries, especially renewable electricity and forestry which would almost double as decarbonisation boosted tree planting in order to take advantage of bio-sequestration opportunities.

This would lead to significant increases in forested land and increased sales of logs for processing and export as forest pulp. Surprisingly, we found little mention of forestry or wood processing and exports in the government’s summary.

Change in hours worked by industry under net zero scenario, 2050

Electricity would replace more than all the jobs lost in coal generation with additional jobs in renewables generation and electricity distribution and supply as more of the economy became electric-powered.

Although vulnerable industries account for less than 4% of employment across the country, some regions are much more heavily dependent on them than others.

Read more:
How government modelling found net-zero would leave us better off

We identify nine of Australia’s 88 statistical area level 4 regions as vulnerable to loss of employment. They include the coal-dependent regions such as Hunter in NSW, Fitzroy in Queensland and Gippsland in Victoria.

On the other hand, another 46 regions are identified as likely to gain employment. They are more highly exposed to the industries that would grow.

Change in real state product by industry under net zero scenario, 2050

By state, Tasmania benefits the most under net-zero, having more hydroelectricity, forestry and wood products industry than other states as well as no coal-fired generation. Its real gross state product would be 4.9% higher than otherwise in 2050, and employment 11,600 higher

Queensland suffers the most, because of an over-representation of coal mining, broadacre agriculture and coal-generated electricity in its economy. Its real gross state product would be 5.9% lower than otherwise in 2050, and employment 97,800 lower.

Read more:
COP26: experts react to the UN climate summit and Glasgow Pact

The worse outcomes need to be put into perspective. Queensland is expected to employ an extra 1.2 million people by 2050 without decarbonisation. With decarbonisation it would be slightly fewer extra people, an extra 1.1 million.

It’s important our leaders do this work too

Whatever the government does to achieve zero emissions there will be a clear need for adjustment packages to cushion impacts on those most affected.

Given that we will be embarking on decarbonisation to secure community-wide benefits, it will be appropriate for the community to fund those packages.

To do that we will need detailed projections for the parts of the economy (regions, industries, occupations by skill) that will most benefit from the changes and the parts that will be most hurt. To date, the government hasn’t told us.

Philip Adams receives funding from Victoria University..

– ref. ​The government’s net-zero modelling shows winners, we’ve found losers as well – https://theconversation.com/the-governments-net-zero-modelling-shows-winners-weve-found-losers-as-well-171502

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katrina Dernelley, PhD Candidate in History, La Trobe University

This article contains graphic depictions of historic domestic violence.

For many women in colonial Victoria, home was not a place of security and comfort. Instead, home – both on the goldfields and off – tethered women to lives that were unsafe and unpredictable.

The “private” nature of historic violence in the home presents unique challenges to historians. While newspaper reports of men’s violence towards their wives were commonplace, they presumably comprised only a small percentage of the actual domestic violence being perpetuated.

Often, only the most violent stories reached the press. In my research, I draw on the interwoven lives of the fictionalised account of Mrs Morland and the woman on whom I believe she was based, Isabella Murrell, to focus on the violent acts committed inside the homes on the goldfields. In this work, I hope to expose the realities of life inside the tent as part of a broader study of home and homemaking on the diggings.

‘A perfect treasure’

In 1866 the Australasian newspaper printed a fictionalised story of a miner who boarded with a married couple, Mr and Mrs Morland.

The narrator found Mrs Morland to be a “perfect treasure of a wife”. Her home was a clean and neat slab hut, lined with hessian kept scrupulously whitewashed. The earthen floor was “pipeclayed” every week, sack mats were regularly boiled, and breakfast was on the table every morning by half-past-six.

“I don’t want to make out that she was an angel”, the miner noted. “I shouldn’t have liked her so well if she had been so very angelic.”

After the miner moved on to the next gold discovery, he continued to run into the couple, each time finding them more delapidated than the last. Their neat, clean home was no longer, now replaced by a “refreshment shanty”. Mrs Morland had become “a creature”. The miner could no longer bear to look at her.

Mr Morland was often brutal, repeatedly slamming and crushing Mrs Morland between the door and the wall of their slab hut.

Later, when Mrs Morland finally tried to leave her husband, he beat her to death with an iron hook attached to a windlass rope.

Read more:
Hidden women of history: how mother of 8, Mary Anne Allen, made do on the goldfields amid gunshots, rain and sly grog

Sensationalist journalism

Such sensationalist articles often appeared in colonial newspapers, and were written to entertain: they were often more fancy than fact. But many of the details of this story are horrifically, frighteningly real.

While Mrs Morland is fiction, her brutal death appears to have been based on the murder of Isabella Murrell by her husband William Dixon Murrell.

Isabella Robinson (a house servant) married William Dixon Murrell (a chandler) in England in 1852. The couple sailed to Victoria where they had three sons, the last on the goldfields in Dunolly in 1857.

In July 1863, William viciously murdered his wife Isabella, beating her naked body for over an hour with three different weapons: a leather saddle strap and buckle, a piece of wood and a rope with an iron hook attached.

After William had beaten Isabella to death, he carried her inside their tent, dressed her in a clean shift and attempted to revive her with warm coffee and a hot flannel. He did not notice she was dead until morning.

When the police found her, Isabella’s lifeless body was cold but her stomach still warm from the flannel.

At the trial, William blamed his dead wife for his behaviour, saying Isabella was an unfaithful drunkard who needed punishing. William pleaded he had dearly loved his wife. William cried he was very sorry for what had occurred, he had no intention of killing Isabella. He was trying to punish her; she was about to repent. He had struck Isabella “in the heat of passion”.

When the defence in the colonial courtrooms argued murder was a “crime of passion”, the wife was often presented as unfaithful, immoral and unrespectable. She was put on trial for her conduct and habits as much as the husband for his acts of violence.

William was committed for Isabella’s murder and sentenced to death (later commuted by a sympathetic judge). After the verdict, William said he was concerned his actions would be perceived poorly. His intention, he said, was never to kill his wife – but to reform her.

The veneer of civilisation

The murder and trial were reported widely, and in graphic detail. Alcohol was blamed for William Dixon Murrell’s descent from a good and loving husband to wife-beating murderer. Isabella was blamed for failing at domesticity, morality and respectability.

After the discovery of gold in Victoria, there was a sharp jump in newspaper reports and articles connected to wife-beating. This coverage mirrored discussions occurring in Britain and the colony more broadly. Politicians, community leaders and newspapers alike expressed concern the scourge of “wife-beating” was a threat to civilisation itself.

The success of empire and the colonisation project was directly connected to a functioning happy and respectable home.

Women were held responsible for men’s behaviour in the newspapers and in the courts. For many women, then as now, the immediate and ongoing consequences of violence in the home were an inescapable part of everyday life.

Read more:
The long history of gender violence in Australia, and why it matters today

Katrina Dernelley receives funding from an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship and an Australian Communities Foundation Graduate Women Victoria Feminist Fathers Bursary.

– ref. Mrs Morland and Isabella Murrell: the brutal murder of a domestic angel on the diggings – https://theconversation.com/mrs-morland-and-isabella-murrell-the-brutal-murder-of-a-domestic-angel-on-the-diggings-169839

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Hales, Director Centre for Sustainable Enterprise, Griffith University

After two hard-fought weeks of negotiations, the Glasgow climate change summit is, at last, over. All 197 participating countries adopted the so-called Glasgow Climate Pact, despite an 11th hour intervention by India in which the final agreement was watered down from “phasing out” coal to “phasing down”.

In an emotional final speech, COP26 president Alok Sharma apologised for this last-minute change. His apology goes to the heart of the goals of COP26 in Glasgow: the hope it would deliver outcomes matching the urgent “code red” action needed to achieve the Paris Agreement target.

At the summit’s outset, UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged countries to “keep the goal of 1.5℃ alive”, to accelerate the decarbonisation of the global economy, and to phase out coal.

So, was COP26 a failure? If we evaluate this using the summits original stated goals, the answer is yes, it fell short. Two big ticket items weren’t realised: renewing targets for 2030 that align with limiting warming to 1.5℃, and an agreement on accelerating the phase-out of coal.
But among the failures, there were important decisions and notable bright spots. So let’s take a look at the summit’s defining issues.

Weak 2030 targets

The goal of the Paris Agreement is to limit global temperature rise to well below 2℃ this century, and to pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5℃. Catastrophic impacts will be unleashed beyond this point, such as sea level rise and more intense and frequent natural disasters.

But new projections from Climate Action Tracker show even if all COP26 pledges are met, the planet is on track to warm by 2.1℃ – or 2.4℃ if only 2030 targets are met.

Read more:
COP26: experts react to the UN climate summit and Glasgow Pact

Despite the Australian government’s recent climate announcements, this nation’s 2030 target remains the same as in 2015. If all countries adopted such meagre near-term targets, global temperature rise would be on track for up to 3℃.

Technically, the 1.5℃ limit is still within reach because, under the Glasgow pact, countries are asked to update their 2030 targets in a year’s time. However, as Sharma said, “the pulse of 1.5 is weak”.

And as Australia’s experience shows, domestic politics rather than international pressure is often the force driving climate policy. So there are no guarantees Australia or other nations will deliver greater ambition in 2022.

Phase down, not out

India’s intervention to change the final wording to “phase down” coal rather than “phase out” dampens the urgency to shift away from coal.

India is the world’s third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, after China and the United States. The country relies heavily on coal, and coal-powered generation is expected to grow by 4.6% each year to 2024. India was the most prominent objector to the “phase out” wording, but also had support from China.

Read more:
COP26 leaves too many loopholes for the fossil fuel industry. Here are 5 of them

And US climate envoy John Kerry argued that carbon capture and storage technology could be developed further, to trap emissions at the source and store them underground.

Carbon capture and storage is a controversial proposition for climate action. It is not proven at scale, and we don’t yet know if captured emissions stored underground will eventually return to the atmosphere. And around the world, relatively few large-scale underground storage locations exist.

And it’s hard to see this expensive technology ever being cost-competitive with cheap renewable energy.

In a crucial outcome, COP26 also finalised rules for global carbon trading, known as Article 6 under the Paris Agreement. However under the rules, the fossil fuel industry will be allowed to “offset” its carbon emissions and carry on polluting. Combined with the “phasing down” change, this will see fossil fuel emissions continue.

It wasn’t all bad

Despite the shortcomings, COP26 led to a number of important positive outcomes.

The world has taken an unambiguous turn toward away from fossil fuel as a source of energy. And the 1.5℃ global warming target has taken centre stage, with the recognition that reaching this target will require rapid, deep and sustained emissions reductions of 45% by 2030, relative to 2010 levels.

What’s more, Article 21 of the Glasgow Climate Pact nature and ecosystems, including protecting forests and biodiversity. This comes on top of a side deal struck by Australia and 123 other countries promising to end deforestation by 2030.

The pact also urges countries to fully deliver on an outstanding promise to deliver US$100 billion per year for five years to developing countries vulnerable to climate damage. It also emphasises the importance of transparency in implementing the pledges.

Nations are also invited to revisit and strengthen the 2030 targets as necessary to align with the Paris Agreement temperature goal by the end of 2022. In support of this, it was agreed to hold a high-level ministerial roundtable meeting each year focused on raising ambition out to 2030.

The US and China climate agreement is also cause for cautious optimism.

Despite the world not being on track for the 1.5℃ goal, momentum is headed in the right direction. And the mere fact that a reduction in coal use was directly addressed in the final text signals change may be possible. But whether it comes in the small window we have left to stop catastrophic climate change remains to be seen.

Brendan Mackey has previously received research grants from the Federal government, stage governments and charitable trusts that have focussed on problems related to climate change, forests, mitigation and ecosystem services including biodiversity conservation. He is a coordinating lead author in IPCC 6th Assessment Report Working Group II, and he is a voluntary board member of the Great Eastern Ranges Initiative Inc, and a member of the Queensland Government’s Native Timber Advisory Panel.

Robert Hales 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. The ultimate guide to why the COP26 summit ended in failure and disappointment (despite a few bright spots) – https://theconversation.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-why-the-cop26-summit-ended-in-failure-and-disappointment-despite-a-few-bright-spots-171723

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

The government’s decision to target net-zero emissions by 2050 will leave each Australian nearly A$2,000 better off by then compared to no Australian action.

That’s what we were told in a six-point summary of the government’s economic modelling released at a press conference on Thursday October 26, days before the prime minister left for the Glasgow climate talks.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said at the time the actual modelling would be released “in due course”, later clarifying that it might not be released for a fortnight, after which the Glasgow climate talks would be almost over.

The 100-page summary of modelling prepared by the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources and the consultancy McKinsey & Company was released on Friday afternoon as the climate talks were concluding.

The document tells us both how the $2,000 figure was arrived at and the question that was asked.

The question that was asked

McKinsey and the department were asked to compare economic outcomes in 2050 after 30 years of “no Australian action” with economic outcomes in 2050 after 30 years of “the plan”.

“No Australian action” meant that every developed country other than Australia cut its emissions to net-zero by 2050, and all of the world apart from Australia did whatever else was needed to hold global warming to 2°C.

Australia would find it harder to raise money because of its reluctance to commit to net-zero (meaning its borrowing costs would incorporate a “risk premium”) and would get access to only those improvements in technology that were available elsewhere.

“The plan” involved Australia continuing “to invest in technological breakthroughs,” acting as an “enabler to support consumer choice and voluntary adoption of other technologies”.

Australia would adopt a target of net zero by 2050, escaping a risk premium.

The government would invest more than A$21 billion to support the development and deployment of low emissions technologies including clean hydrogen, ultra low-cost solar, energy storage, low-emissions materials, carbon capture and storage and soil carbon to 2030, and continue to play a “direct role” beyond that.

Read more:
Between the lines, the plan has coal on the way out, the future bright

Otherwise, emissions would be reduced on “a voluntary basis”.

Importantly, and so the size of the voluntary action can be incorporated into the modelling, the voluntary emissions reductions are assumed to be the same as what would be expected if Australians faced a carbon price (or tax) that climbed to A$24 per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2050.

Emitters finding it hard to cut emissions as much as they or consumers or investors wanted would be able to buy international “offsets” (overseas emissions reductions) at a price that would climb to A$40 per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2050.

$2,000 per person better off

The modelling concludes that under “the plan” each Australian would be almost A$2,000 better off in 2050 compared with under “no Australian action”.

That’s $2,000 per year in so-called gross national income per capita, but it’s less impressive than it sounds. The latest stats have gross national income per capita approaching A$80,000.

That’s not what’s received by any one individual, but what’s received by businesses and all sorts of other entities averaged across the population.

Compounding economic growth means that by 2050 that dollar sum will be two to three times as big, against which (and given all the uncertainties) a projection of an extra $2,000 amounts to little difference.

A reasonable way to interpret the modelling is that, compared to “no Australian action”, the “plan” won’t impose significant costs on Australians.

Where the $2,000 comes from

Which isn’t to say that there won’t be big costs.

The world will move away from coal and liquefied natural gas – two of Australia’s biggest exports – but what is assumed is that will happen in any event, under both “the plan” and the “no Australian action” scenarios.

Unless you were to assume that the rest of the world won’t pull its weight in getting to net-zero (and the modelling does not assume this) Australia not pulling its weight does almost nothing to rescue its exports.

Read more:
COP26: what the draft agreement says – and why it’s being criticised

The $2,000 comprises two parts. $375 is the benefit to Australia of avoiding investors being less keen to invest in a country that isn’t pulling its weight.

The modelling says Australia would score an average of 5.5% less investment per year under the “no Australian action” scenario compared to under “the plan”.

The other $1,625 derives from the development of new industries, spurred in part by the government’s $21 billion, the most important being hydrogen production which by itself would lift national income per person by about $1,000 of the $2,000.

What was released Friday afternoon is not the modelling itself but a government-authored “summary”.

Although it is difficult to compare the McKinsey modelling with the Treasury modelling prepared for the Gillard government ahead of the 2012-2014 carbon pollution reduction scheme, it is notable that both arrived at a similar conclusion: that over time, action to reduce emissions will cost Australia little.

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

– ref. How government modelling found net-zero would leave us better off – https://theconversation.com/how-government-modelling-found-net-zero-would-leave-us-better-off-171743

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland

The response to Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s announcement of an electric vehicle policy has focused on its inconsistency with his derisive statements in 2019 that the technology would “end the weekend”.

What’s more important, however, is whether the policy is consistent with the government’s belated commitment to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Examining the modelling behind the commitment allows us to assess this, and possibly helps explain the timing of Morrison’s rhetorical pivot.

Transport is covered only briefly in the modelling, which was released late on Friday, and the government does not set out technological goals. However, it is assumed by 2050, the proportion of electric vehicles will have risen to 90%, compared to around 1% at present.

2050 is a long way off, but motor vehicles are long-lived pieces of capital equipment. If we’re going to replace 90% of the existing fleet with electric vehicles, we must start now.

Simple arithmetic

The average age of Australian cars is about ten years, implying they last about 20 years on average. So, the shift to electrics will need to be well under way ten years from now – by about 2030.

To illustrate the speed of the adjustment needed, suppose electrics represent 50% of new car sales by 2030. This was the target proposed by then-Labor leader Bill Shorten at the 2019 election. Morrison rejected it the time, but now appears to have tacitly embraced something similar.

Given the 2030 starting point, and assuming a 20-year vehicle life, how fast would the share of electric vehicles need to grow to reach 90% of Australia’s fleet by 2050 – and how fast would the sale of conventional cars have to fall?

According to my calculations, the sale of traditional vehicles would have to cease completely by 2038 to reach the government’s target.

Roughly speaking, Australians buy 1 million new vehicles a year, with a total stock of 20 million.

If the share of traditional vehicle sales falls from 50% to zero between 2030 and 2038, that leaves about 2 million traditional vehicles, or 10% of the total fleet, remaining on the road by 2050 (with the rest being electric vehicles).

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

A challenging task

This estimate assumes the number of cars sold every year remains constant. But in fact, it has been increasing over time, which has a couple of effects.

First it means newer cars are over-represented, relative to the case of constant sales. That implies the expected lifetime of cars is actually longer than 20 years. And if the number of cars keeps growing, the task of decarbonising is even harder.

A policy of electrification should be accompanied by measures to encourage the use of public transport, cycling and walking, as well as remote work and other ways of reducing unnecessary travel.

In view of the magnitude and urgency of the task, the Morrison government’s commitment to spend A$250 million on electric vehicle charging stations (about $10 for each person in Australia) is nowhere near sufficient.

To electrify Australia’s vehicle fleet in time, the government must either provide price incentives to consumers or mandate improvements in fuel efficiency across the vehicle fleet. Such government interventions appear anathema to Morrison’s new mantra of “can-do capitalism”. But something of the the kind will be necessary.

The simplest approach would be a combination of tax relief and subsidies. This would reduce the cost difference between electric and traditional vehicles, which one estimate puts at $20,000-$30,000. This is partly offset by fuel savings and the lower repair costs of electric vehicles.

A subsidy or tax exemption of $10,000, declining over time as the cost advantage of traditional vehicles diminished, would promote fairly rapid uptake of electric vehicles. The likely cost would be around $1 billion a year, or $20 billion over the transition.

Getting a handle on the numbers

To put these numbers in perspective, comparisons are useful.

The New South Wales government has just announced $100 million to cover the cost difference for electric vehicles bought by councils, taxi companies and other fleet operators. This, covering part of the fleet in one state, comes on top of $490 million announced in the state’s June budget.

As NSW Treasurer Matt Kean pointed out, his Liberal-Nationals government is taking the electric vehicle transition much more seriously than its federal counterpart.

Alternatively, we could look at the inland rail scheme, a proposed 1,700km freight rail line between Melbourne and Brisbane. The National Party demanded the project be accelerated as part-payment for their acceptance of a 2050 net-zero target.

This likely white elephant is budgeted to cost $14.5 billion, an amount which will almost certainly blow out. It will reduce the use of fuel for trucks, but at an immense cost.

For the amount paid to placate one noisy lobby group, we could cover most of the cost of electrifying Australia’s road vehicle fleet.

Not there yet

There is an alternative, recommended by bodies including the federal government’s own Climate Change Authority. It would involve a fuel efficiency requirement for new car sales, which would work similarly to the Renewable Energy Target.

Vehicle importers could decide whether to meet the target by shifting to electrics or more fuel efficient traditional vehicles.

Over time the target would fall to zero, requiring complete electrification. The cost would be spread across importers and car buyers.

A third approach would be to do nothing now, but pay owners of traditional vehicles to scrap them before the end of their working life.

This would involve something like the Cash for Clunkers scheme adopted in the United States under the Obama administration and briefly floated by the Gillard government in 2010. While enabling government to defer action, it would cost more in the long run.

The Morrison government’s commitment to a 2050 net-zero target is a welcome step, if long overdue. But as far as motor vehicles are concerned, the policies to get there are badly lagging the ambition.

Read more:
Take heart at what’s unfolded at COP26 in Glasgow – the world can still hold global heating to 1.5℃

John Quiggin is a former Member of the Climate Change Authority and took part in the preparation of its report proposing a Fuel Efficiency Target

– ref. Government assumes 90% of Australia’s new car sales will be electric by 2050. But its a destination without a route – https://theconversation.com/government-assumes-90-of-australias-new-car-sales-will-be-electric-by-2050-but-its-a-destination-without-a-route-171741

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

It’s not often that leaders get the blunt question 3AW’s Neil Mitchell threw at the prime minister on Friday. “You ever told a lie in public life?”

What could Morrison say?

“Yes” – the frank answer, and the discussion would turn to where and when. “No” – and that would invite sceptical responses and provide another opportunity to put French President Emmanuel Macron’s now-famous interview clip on repeat.

Morrison opted for denial. “I don’t believe I have, no.” Inevitably this set off claims that here was another lie.

It was put to him at his press conference later: “You said earlier today you’ve never lied in public life, is that really true?” “That’s what I think to be true,” he replied. “What are you suggesting? What do you think I did?”

Macron’s skilfully delivered political dagger, in the row over the French submarines, set off the current debate about Morrison’s honesty, or lack of it. And Malcolm Turnbull chimed in with the accusation his successor was a serial liar.

Coincidentally, all this has been given some underpinning by Sean Kelly’s just published book The Game: A Portrait of Scott Morrison, which analyses the PM’s character.

Recent events have provided traction to an existing perception that the PM is inclined to say anything that suits his immediate purpose.

“Lies”, it should be noted, are not the same as “broken promises” (unless the intention always was to break the undertaking). In fact, Morrison may be more careful than some predecessors about the latter, because the voters have become increasingly censorious of governments flouting pledges.

Many politicians are accused of lying. The dangerous difference for Morrison is that he risks the tag being attached to him like a sewn-on label, and a subject of conversation when voters think about him.

Nailing particular “lies” can be a tricky business, however, because “lies” shade into “being slippery with the truth”.

Take his words on electric cars this week. At one point he was asked, “How can you honestly spruik electric vehicles when you campaigned against them in the last election?”

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

It might be right that in 2019 Morrison said at some point he wasn’t against electric cars as such. But on any normal reading of what he said, he was condemning them.

How otherwise to characterise his hyperbole that Shorten would destroy the weekend – the electric cars wouldn’t be able to tow your trailer or boat?

The facts are somewhat murkier with Macron.

It’s clear enough the French were deliberately deceived. What we can’t know is precisely how Morrison deployed his words.

If there was a transcript of the Morrison-Macron mid-year conversation in Paris, would a straight-out lie be found? Or was it a matter of misleading by the impression given, then and in later Australian interactions with the French?

So in dealing with what Morrison says, it can be important to distinguish between the actual words and the sense that a person would get from the words.

For example, when recently asked why the government supported Clive Palmer’s case against the Western Australian government over its closed border, Morrison told parliament “The government did not pursue that case at all”.

Literally, he could say this was correct. It’s all about the word “pursue”. The government dropped off the case for political reasons. But anyone unfamiliar with what had happened could think from Morrison’s answer that it had not been involved.

When a person’s integrity is beyond question, one doesn’t need to be so careful; if they are slippery, every nuance must be studied. This is even more so in the age of “spin” when the spinners and their bosses live by the maxim “what the traffic will bear”.

A politician says, in a campaign, that the government “plans” to do something. This can be a statement of firm intent – or something that’s deliberately hedged so it can be reviewed later.

Kelly (a former Labor staffer who has observed a few politicians up close) argues Morrison doesn’t feel untruthful because he believes what he says “in the moment”.

Whatever he might think at the time, Morrison’s tactic often is just to slide away when confronted. Pressed by Mitchell on whether he wasn’t worried when Macron and Turnbull call him a liar, Morrison said no, because he was making the “right decisions” on defence and you shouldn’t be in the PM’s job if you couldn’t deal with the sledges.

He’s asking people to look beyond the claims about lies, suggesting they are just a nasty part of the political environment.

Many people may think the same. But past a tipping point, having the reputation of being a liar cuts through. The question is whether Morrison has reached that point with voters.

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. View from The Hill: Scott Morrison caught in catch-22 over the issue of his integrity – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-scott-morrison-caught-in-catch-22-over-the-issue-of-his-integrity-171750

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

The government’s decision to target net-zero emissions by 2050 will leave each Australian nearly A$2,000 better off by then compared to no Australian action.

That’s what we were told in a six-point summary of the government’s economic modelling released at a press conference on Thursday October 26, days before the prime minister left for the Glasgow climate talks.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said at the time the actual modelling would be released “in due course”, later clarifying that it might not be released for a fortnight, after which the Glasgow climate talks would be almost over.

The 100-page government summary of modelling prepared for it by the consultancy McKinsey & Company was released on Friday afternoon as the climate talks were concluding.

The document tells us both how the result was arrived at and the question that was asked.

The question that was asked

McKinsey was asked to compare economic outcomes in 2050 after 30 years of “no Australian action” with economic outcomes in 2050 after 30 years of “the plan”.

“No Australian action” meant that every country other than Australia cut its emissions to net-zero by 2050, and that every country other than Australia did whatever else was needed to hold global warming to 2°C.

Australia would find it harder to raise money because of its reluctance to commit to net-zero (meaning its borrowing costs would incorporate a “risk premium”) and would get access to only those improvements in technology that were available elsewhere.

“The plan” involved Australia continuing “to invest in technological breakthroughs,” acting as an “enabler to support consumer choice and voluntary adoption of other technologies”.

Australia would adopt a target of net zero by 2050, escaping a risk premium.

The government would invest more than A$21 billion to support the development and deployment of low emissions technologies including clean hydrogen, ultra low-cost solar, energy storage, low-emissions materials, carbon capture and storage and soil carbon to 2030, and continue to play a “direct role” beyond that.

Read more:
Between the lines, the plan has coal on the way out, the future bright

Otherwise, emissions would be reduced on “a voluntary basis”.

Importantly, and so the size of the voluntary action can be incorporated into the modelling, the voluntary emissions reductions are assumed to be the same as what would be expected if Australians faced a carbon price (or tax) that climbed to A$24 per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2050.

Emitters finding it hard to cut emissions as much as they or consumers or investors wanted would be able to buy international “offsets” (overseas emissions reductions) at a price that would climb to A$40per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2050.

$2,000 per person better off

The modelling concludes that under “the plan” each Australian would be almost A$2,000 better off in 2050 compared with under “no Australian action”.

That’s $2,000 per year in so-called gross national income per capita, but it’s less impressive than it sounds. The latest stats have gross national income per capita approaching A$80,000.

That’s not what’s received by any one individual, but what’s received by businesses and all sorts of other entities averaged across the population.

Compounding economic growth means that by 2050 that dollar sum will be two to three times as big, against which (and given all the uncertainties) a projection of an extra $2,000 amounts to little difference.

A reasonable way to interpret the modelling is that, compared to “no Australian action”, the “plan” won’t impose significant cost on Australians.

Where the $2,000 comes from

Which isn’t to say that there won’t be big costs.

The world will move away from coal and liquefied natural gas – two of Australia’s biggest exports – but what is assumed is that will happen in any event, under both “the plan” and the “no Australian action” scenarios.

Unless you were to assume that the rest of the world won’t pull its weight in getting to net-zero (and the modelling does not assume this) Australia not pulling its weight does almost nothing to rescue its exports.

Read more:
COP26: what the draft agreement says – and why it’s being criticised

The $2000 comprises two parts. $375 is the benefit to Australia of avoiding investors being less keen to invest in a country that isn’t pulling its weight.

McKinsey says Australia would score an average of 5.5% less investment per year under the “no Australian action” scenario compared to under “the plan”.

The other $1,625 derives from the development of new industries, spurred in part by the government’s $21 billion, the most important being hydrogen production which McKinsey says by itself could lift national income by about $1,000 per person.

What was released Friday afternoon is not the modelling itself but a government-authored “summary”.

Although it is difficult to compare the McKinsey modelling with the Treasury modelling prepared for the Gillard government ahead of the 2012-2014 carbon pollution reduction scheme, it is notable that both arrived at a similar conclusion: that over time, action to reduce emissions will cost Australia little.

Peter Martin 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. Here’s how the government’s modellers concluded net-zero would leave us better off – https://theconversation.com/heres-how-the-governments-modellers-concluded-net-zero-would-leave-us-better-off-171743

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Rigby, Adjunct Research Fellow, University of Southern Queensland

Earlier this week, the International Space Station (ISS) was forced to maneouvre out of the way of a potential collision with space junk. With a crew of astronauts and cosmonauts on board, this required an urgent change of orbit on November 11.

Over the station’s 23-year orbital lifetime, there have been about 30 close encounters with orbital debris requiring evasive action. Three of these near-misses occurred in 2020. In May this year there was a hit: a tiny piece of space junk punched a 5mm hole in the ISS’s Canadian-built robot arm.

This week’s incident involved a piece of debris from the defunct Fengyun-1C weather satellite, destroyed in 2007 by a Chinese anti-satellite missile test. The satellite exploded into more than 3,500 pieces of debris, most of which are still orbiting. Many have now fallen into the ISS’s orbital region.

To avoid the collision, a Russian Progress supply spacecraft docked to the station fired its rockets for just over six minutes. This changed the ISS’s speed by 0.7 metres per second and raised its orbit, already more than 400km high, by about 1.2km.

Orbit is getting crowded

Space debris has become a major concern for all satellites orbiting the Earth, not just the football-field-sized ISS. As well as notable satellites such as the smaller Chinese Tiangong space station and the Hubble Space Telescope, there are thousands of others.

As the largest inhabited space station, the ISS is the most vulnerable target. It orbits at 7.66 kilometres a second, fast enough to travel from Perth to Brisbane in under eight minutes.

Read more:
China’s Tiangong space station: what it is, what it’s for, and how to see it

A collision at that speed with even a small piece of debris could produce serious damage. What counts is the relative speed of the satellite and the junk, so some collisions could be slower while others could be faster and do even more damage.

As low Earth orbit becomes increasingly crowded, there is more and more to run into. There are already almost 5,000 satellites currently operating, with many more on the way.

SpaceX alone will soon have more than 2,000 Starlink internet satellites in orbit, on its way to an initial goal of 12,000 and perhaps eventually 40,000.

A rising tide of junk

If it was only the satellites themselves in orbit, it might not be so bad. But according to the European Space Agency’s Space Debris Office, there are estimated to be about 36,500 orbiting artificial objects larger than 10cm across, such as defunct satellites and rocket stages. There are also around a million between 1cm and 10cm, and 330 million measuring 1mm to 1cm.

Most of these items are in low Earth orbit. Because of the high speeds involved, even a speck of paint can pit an ISS window and a marble-sized object could penetrate a pressurised module.

The ISS modules are somewhat protected by multi-layer shielding to lessen the probability of a puncture and depressurisation. But there remains a risk that such an event could occur before the ISS reaches the end of its lifetime around the end of the decade.

Watching the skies

Of course, no one has the technology to track every piece of debris, and we also don’t possess the ability to eliminate all that junk. Nevertheless, possible methods for removing larger pieces from orbit are being investigated.

Meanwhile, nearly 30,000 pieces larger than 10cm are being tracked by organisations around the world such as the US Space Surveillance Network.

Read more:
It’s not how big your laser is, it’s how you use it: space law is an important part of the fight against space debris

Here in Australia, space debris tracking is an area of increasing activity. Multiple organisations are involved, including the Australian Space Agency, Electro Optic Systems, the ANU Institute for Space, the Space Surveillance Radar System, the Industrial Sciences Group, and the Australian Institute for Machine Learning with funding from the SmartSat CRC. In addition, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) has a SMARTnet facility at the University of Southern Queensland’s Mt Kent Observatory dedicated to monitoring geostationary orbit at a height of around 36,000km – the home of many communication satellites, including those used by Australia.

One way or another, we will eventually have to clean up our space neighbourhood if we want to continue to benefit from the nearest regions of the “final frontier”.

Mark Rigby is a Fellow of both the International Planetarium Society and the Queensland Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a former Curator of the Sir Thomas Brisbane Planetarium.

Brad Carter works for the University of Southern Queensland, and is the recipient of funding from the Australian Research Council. He is a member of the Australian Institute of Physics, the Astronomical Society of Australia, and the International Astronomical Union.

– ref. A chunk of Chinese satellite almost hit the International Space Station. They dodged it – but the space junk problem is getting worse – https://theconversation.com/a-chunk-of-chinese-satellite-almost-hit-the-international-space-station-they-dodged-it-but-the-space-junk-problem-is-getting-worse-171735

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Adams, Professor of Corporate Law & Head UNE Law School, University of New England

The High Court of Australia has today refused to hear Volkswagen’s appeal against the record A$125 million fine imposed on it for deliberately deceiving regulators and customers about the environmental performance of its cars.

The $125 million fine is the largest penalty ever imposed on a company in Australia for misleading consumers. It relates to the so-called “dieselgate” scandal, by which the German car company used secret software to beat emissions standards and tests in multiple countries.

This is a significant win for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission in its ongoing battle against “greenwash”, by which companies make false environmental claims to mislead consumers.

Research shows greenwashing harms the market for environmentally friendly products. Without being able to distinguish between genuine and dubious claims, consumer cynicism about all claims increases.

The Australian Consumer Law adequately prohibits greenwashing claims through its provisions covering false and misleading practices. But this evidence the consumer watchdog is enforcing these laws, and that the courts are upholding them, will build confidence that environmental claims can be trusted.

Background to the ‘dieselgate’ case

The ACCC initiated Federal Court proceedings against Volkswagen in September 2016, a year after the US Environmental Protection Agency revealed the car company had used “defeat” software in diesel vehicles since 2009 to produce lower greenhouse gas emissions during “laboratory” tests.

This software shut off during road use, meaning the cars performed better, but then produced nitrogen oxide pollution up to 40 times that permitted by US law.

Volkswagen had used its software globally. The ACCC alleged the car maker sold 57,000 cars with these defeat devices in Australia between 2011 and 2015.

Volkswagen initially fought the case by the ACCC, but in 2019 agreed to settle for a fine of $75 million (and $4 million in court costs).

Read more:
Volkswagen’s record settlement payout: treating the symptom not the disease

When this was taken to the Federal Court for ratification (approval) the judge, Justice Lindsay Foster, rejected the deal as “outrageous”. He called the “agreed statement of facts” about the harm caused “a bunch of weasel words”. In his ruling in December 2019 he doubled the penalty to $125 million.

Volkswagen appealed this judgement to the full bench of the Federal Court (the equivalent of a court of appeal), arguing it was manifestly excessive. In its ruling (in April 2021) the full bench disagreed and upheld the A$125 million penalty.

This led to Volkswagen appealing to the High Court (Australia’s ultimate court of appeal). Today it refused “special leave” (permission to bring the whole case) to challenge the ruling and the large penalty. Which means the A$125 million fine stands.

This sends a strong message

This decision will send a very strong message to other manufacturers and sellers of products making environmental claims.

The Australian Consumer Law’s provisions against greenwashing are contained in Section 18 of the act, dealing with misleading or deceptive conduct.

As the market for “green products” has expanded over the past few decades, so too has the temptation for unsavoury producers and marketers to make misleading statements.

In response, some consumer groups and activists have demanded new laws to prevent greenwash. But my research with Marina Nehme (now associate professor of corporate law at UNSW) led us to to the view the existing laws actually cover all the relevant situations.

The High Court decision today demonstrates this. There are hundreds of examples of the consumer watchdog successfully pursuing greenwashers, but the size of the fine in this case will stand out and serve to deter others.

Michael Adams 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. High Court decision on $125 million fine for Volkswagen is a warning to all greenwashers – https://theconversation.com/high-court-decision-on-125-million-fine-for-volkswagen-is-a-warning-to-all-greenwashers-171733