Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Delia Falconer, Senior Lecturer, Creative Writing, UTS, University of Technology Sydney

When I experienced a great loss in in my early forties — almost a year to the day after another — I went to see my mother in the family home. She wasn’t a hugger or giver of advice, so instead we fed the birds. As she had when I was a child, she stood behind me in the kitchen with her shoulder propped against the back door, passing slices of apple and small balls of minced meat into my hand.

Each bird, apart from the snatching kookaburras, was touchingly gentle in the way it took food from my fingers. The white cockatoos ate daintily, one-legged. The lorikeets jumped onto the sloping ramp on both feet, like eager parachutists, to quarrel over the apple and press the juice from the pulp with stubby tongues.

Lined up on the veranda rail, the magpies cocked their heads to observe me before accepting meat precisely in their blue-white beaks. They had a beautiful, carolling song, with a chorded quality in the falling registers. But the bright-eyed butcher birds had the most lovely song of all: a full-throated piping, which I’ve heard compared to the Queen of the Night’s aria in Mozart’s Magic Flute.

Over decades, a family of these little blue-grey birds, had come to stack their hooked meat-eaters’ beaks with mince, which they flew to deliver to young somewhere in our neighbour’s garden, though we had never bothered to try to work out where they lived. This afternoon, when my mother and I opened the door, they landed by our side as they always had, having spotted us from their watching places. For a brief moment, surrounded by these vital creatures, I felt as if I might still want to be alive.

Small agents

Birds have always been small agents charged with carrying the burden of our feelings simply by following the logic of their own existence. The Irish imagined puffins as the souls of priests. The ancient Romans released an eagle when an emperor died in the belief it would “conduct his soul aloft”. In the Abrahamic religions, doves are given powers of revelation. We have even been inclined, right up until the present, to imagine birds as the souls of our recently departed returned to us, if only for a moment.

Even without being recruited into such labour, birds touch on our lives in small but significant ways. Once, in the botanical gardens of Melbourne, a boyfriend laughed until he almost cried at the mechanical, eager hopping of the tiny fairy wrens, a fact that only made me like him more. A friend tells the story of her uncle who ordered quail for the first time at a restaurant and cried when he saw it on his plate. “She had a raven’s heart, small and obdurate,” American author Don DeLillo writes of a nun in Underworld; it is my favourite description in any novel.

In Japan, where my partner and I tried to ease our sadness, the calls of crows were ubiquitous in every town. Like the low sounds of its deer, they had a subdued, almost exhausted quality, as hollow as the bells that are rattled to call the oldest spirits to its Shinto temples.

In 1975, when his first wife left him, Masahise Fukase began to photograph these birds, which he had seen from the window of a train. He would keep taking their pictures – on a hilltop tori at dusk, grouped on the budding branches of a bare tree, in flying silhouette – for ten years. Ravens would become one of the most famous books of modern photography, hailed as a “masterpiece of mourning”. While some people see the birds in his photos as symbols of loneliness I see them as embodiments of pure intention. “I work and photograph to stop everything,” Fukase said. As if fulfilling a prophecy, he would spend the last two decades of his life in a coma, after falling down the stairs at his favourite bar.

Yet for all our emotional investment in them, we’ve never treated birds particularly well. To train a falcon in Qatar, owners sew the young bird’s eyes shut, unstitching and then restitching them for longer intervals, until it is entirely dependent on its keeper. In Asia the appetite for caged songbirds is so great that their calls are disappearing from its forests. Our careless acceptance that these extraordinary creatures are subject to our will is perhaps as damning as any direct mistreatment of them. This is symbolised for me by that fact that, in North America, owners of long pipelines add a putrid odorant to the natural gas they carry so that turkey vultures, circling over the deathly smell, will alert them to methane leaks.

We are currently draining marshes globally three times faster than we are clearing forests. Migratory Red Knots fly 15,000 kilometres per year between Australia and their breeding grounds in the Arctic Tundra, but they’re declining because of the industrial development of the Yellow Sea’s tidal mudflats, where they stop to feed and rest. One of the details that most haunted me in the reports of Australia’s mega-fires was the fact that many birds that survived the radiant heat would die of smoke inhalation because the continuous one-way airflow of their breathing systems and air sacs meant they couldn’t cough to clear their lungs.

When we first moved into my childhood home, wattlebirds fed in the grevilleas, calling from the rockery with voices that sounded, as a poet once said to me, like the cork being pulled from a bottle of champagne. While their long forms ending in a slim, curved beak seemed the embodiment of alertness, they were the birds our cat caught most often. To see one, rescued but internally injured, vomit up its honey and grow limp was one of my first intimations as a child of the world’s evils. Unable to bear the thought of their sleek, streaky bodies in the bare earth, my mother would bury them wrapped in tea towels. But it was the 70s and no one thought to keep the cat inside.

As my mother entered her nineties, her life contracted around her birds. Although experts were now advising that the lack of calcium could soften chicks’ bones, I continued, against my conscience, to put through her weekly grocery order, which contained as much bird mince as food for herself. She had stopped feeding the cockatoos, which had chewed her windowsills and the struts of the back door, but when they heard us in the kitchen they would still plaster their chests like great white flowers against the window or poke their heads through the large holes they’d made over the years in the door’s wire fly screen.

But it was only the butcher birds that ever entered through these gaps to wait for her by the sink, feathers fluffed calmly. Once or twice, one would come and find her in the dining room and quietly walk back ahead of her to be fed. When I came with the children, she would press food into their hands as she stood behind them at the door, leaning against the kitchen counter for support. So she continued to be one of the estimated 30 to 60% of Australian households that fed wild birds, a statistic that suggests that we need them far more than they need us.

Survivors

Scientists began to think in the 19th century that birds might have evolved from dinosaurs, when the 150-million- year-old fossil skeleton of Archaeopteryx — which we now know was capable of short bursts of active flight — turned up in a German quarry.

The Victorian biologist Thomas Henry Huxley observed the bony-tailed, feathered fossil’s striking resemblance to small dinosaurs like Compsognathus and proposed that it was a transitional form between flightless reptiles and birds. Huxley’s theory fell out of favour until the last decades of the 20th century, when a new generation of palaeontologists returned to the similarities between the metabolisms and bird-like structures of dinosaur fossils and birds, and there is now a consensus that birds are avian dinosaurs. That the birds with which we share our lives are the descendants of the hollow-tailed, meat-eating theropods is a true wonder that never fails to thrill me.

Birds, like us, are survivors. They escaped the Cretaceous-Paleogene (or K-Pg) mass extinction event 65 million years ago: the fifth and last great dying in the history of our planet, until the Sixth Extinction taking place around us now.

Scientists were able to work out, from unusually high deposits of rare iridium (which mostly comes from outer space) in the Earth’s crust that a ten-kilometre-wide asteroid hitting the area that is now Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula had killed off three quarters of the world’s living creatures by causing forest fires and then a freezing “nuclear winter,” which inhibited photosynthesis and rapidly acidified the oceans. Its blast was thousands of times more powerful than the combined force of all the nuclear weapons in the world today. The dust and debris it dispersed into the atmosphere eventually settled into a thin grey band of iridium-rich clay, which came to be called the K-Pg boundary and, above it, no trace of a non-avian dinosaur can be found.

In historical ironies whose obviousness would shame a novelist, it was geophysicists looking for petroleum in the 1970s who would discover the existence of the Chicxulub crater. Walter Alvarez, who discovered the “iridium anomaly”, was the son of physicist Luis Alvarez, a designer of America’s nuclear bombs, with whom he posited the asteroid strike theory; Alvarez senior had followed in a plane behind the Enola Gay to measure the blast effect as it dropped “Little Boy” on Hiroshima.

The ground-dwelling, beaked avian dinosaurs were able to scratch out a life for themselves in the ferny “disaster flora” that replaced the obliterated forests; their intelligence, their feathery insulation, their ability to feed on the destroyed forests’ seeds, and to digest the “hard, persistent little morsels” as one writer puts it, would help them to survive, and later flourish.

More incredibly, these dinosaurs were already recognisably bird-like, inside and out; capable of at least short horizontal flight like quails, the parts of their brains that controlled sight, flight and high-level memory as expanded as those of modern birds’, while our early mammal ancestors — small, nocturnal, insectivorous, shrew-like mammals — were hiding in clefts and caves.

It is now thought that the world’s oldest modern bird, Asteriornis maastrichtensis, could probably fly and was combing the shallow beaches of today’s Belgium, in the way of modern long-legged shore birds, 700,000 years before the K-Pg mass extinction.

Because of a wealth of new fossil evidence in China, we now also know that feathers are far more ancient than we once thought; they didn’t evolve with birds 150 million years ago but are instead probably as old as dinosaurs themselves. In fact, many of the dinosaurs that we have been trained to think of as scaly, were at least partially feathered, including the fearsome Tyrannosaurus Rex, which may have used its primitive feathers, like a peacock, for display.

Powerful electron microscopes have allowed scientists to determine that the long filaments covering 150-million-year-old Sinosauropteryx, the first feathered non-avian dinosaur discovered, in China, in 1996, were “proto-feathers”; and even, looking at the melanosomes inside them, that they were ginger, running in a “Mohican” pattern down its back and ending in a stripey white-and-ginger tail. Similar examination of the melanosomes of another Jurassic-era theropod found that it had a grey-and-dark plumage on its body, long white and black-spangled forelimbs, and a reddish-brown, fluffy crown.

Scientists are puzzled about what dinosaurs’ feathers, which developed before the capacity of feathered flight, were “for”, but I don’t really care: the fact of them is startling enough, along with the imaginative readjustments we have to make in seeing the fearsome creatures of paleoart that we grew up with, locked in orgasmic conflict, as softly plumaged. Did their young call for them with the same open-mouthed yearning as baby birds, I wonder? Did they possess their own sense of beauty? If we imagine dinosaurs as being less alien and fluffier, does it make our own era’s potential annihilation seem more real?

Read more:
Meet the prehistoric eagle that ruled Australian forests 25 million years ago

Emissaries

Over the last century folkorists and psychoanalysts have kept trying to account for birds’ deep hold over our imaginations; as agents of death, prophets, ferriers of souls, omens, and symbols of renewal and productivity. Some attribute it to the power of flight and their ability to inhabit the heavens, others to the way eggs embody transformation. But could it be that the vestigial shrew-like part of ourselves has always recognised them instinctively as the emissaries of a deep past, much older than we are? “We float on a bubble of space-time,” writes author Verlyn Klinkenberg, “on the surface of an ocean of deep time”.

Recently, this deep past has begun to reassert itself as, even during coronavirus lockdowns, burned fossil fuels continue to release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, bringing its concentration in the air to levels not seen since the Pliocene three million years ago when the seas were 30 metres higher. To try to help us understand the literal profundity of this moment in the history of the earth, writers have been looking increasingly below its surface, far beyond the human realm, to its deepest, billions-of-years-old strata.

In his astonishing Underland, English writer Robert Macfarlane travels physically far underground into caves, mines, and nuclear waste bunkers, to revive our ancient sense of awe as forces and substances once thought safely confined there begin to exert themselves above ground, but also to convey the enormity of the long shadow we will cast into the future of a planet that has already seen periods of great transformation.

In Timefulness, geologist Marcia Bjornerud argues that understanding the Earth through her discipline’s vastly expanded time-scales can help us avoid the almost unthinkably grave consequences of our actions. We live in an era of time denial, she writes, while navigating towards the future with conceptions of the long patterns of planetary history as primitive as a 14th-century world map. And yet, she writes, “as a daughter, mother, and widow, I struggle like everyone else to look Time honestly in the face.”

Yet here, I think, all around us on the surface of the planet, are our vivacious and inscrutable companions, feathered messengers from deep time, who still tell their own story of complex change.

What lives and dies

At a writer’s festival in northern New South Wales, I remember, a magpie lark landed between the chair and speaker on stage to let forth a cascade of liquid notes, “as if, to say,” a droll friend sitting next to me said, “I too have something to contribute!” while I found myself wondering, yet again, how something with such a small heart could be so alive.

To think about dinosaurs, as evolutionary biologist Steven Brusatte writes, is to confront the question of what lives and what dies. To think that dinosaurs were far more complex than we imagined, Klinkenberg muses, interrupts the chain of consequence we’ve been carrying in our heads, which assumes that deep time’s purpose was to lead to us as the end point of evolution. The history of feathers and wings, in which the power of flight appears to have been discovered and lost at least three times, shows that evolution is not a tree, but a clumped bush. And yet, Klinkenberg writes, “Because we come after, it’s easy to suppose we must be the purpose of what came before.”

The same could be said of mothers. When the time came to choose the photographs for my mother’s funeral, the images of her as a child in Mexico and Canada seemed as unreal as dispatches from the moon. The photographs of our mothers as young girls are so affecting a friend wrote to me, because they show them living lives that were whole without us. Now my own children turn their heads away from pictures of me as a girl, because, they say, “You don’t look like you.” And yet, if our minds struggle to encompass the deep time of our mothers, I think, how can they hope to stretch across aeons?

On my last visit to my mother, I left her on her front step throwing meat to the two magpies which had learned to come around from the backyard, away from the other birds, and would follow her on stilted legs around the garden. When she pressed her emergency pendant the next morning, I missed her call; it was my partner, hearing her faint answers, who called the ambulance. Unconscious in the hospital, she died having never known that she had left her home. When I stopped back at the house afterwards, one of the butcher birds, which I had never seen around the front, was on the windowsill of her dark bedroom, break pressed against the glass, looking for her.

This is an extract from Signs and Wonders: Dispatches from a time of beauty and loss by Delia Falconer, published by Simon and Schuster.

Delia Falconer 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. Friday essay: on birds — feathered messengers from deep time – https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-on-birds-feathered-messengers-from-deep-time-168469

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

If Scott Morrison doesn’t go to the Glasgow climate conference, “his absence will send a pretty strong message about his priorities”, Malcolm Turnbull said during his general excoriation of the prime minister this week.

Absolutely, it will. And Morrison’s priorities are clear. At the top of the list is political survival at next year’s election. Whether his political career lives or dies at that election will depend, in good part, on how he manages the issues of COVID and climate in the coming weeks and months.

The course of COVID from now on is unpredictable. Despite general (and politically fanned) excitement at the prospect of restrictions lifting or easing in NSW and Victoria, what happens then is highly uncertain, at least for the short term. And Queensland is suddenly a worry.

He might be PM but COVID management is always only partly in his hands (except the vaccine rollout, and we know the story there). The premiers will continue to flex their muscles.

Nor is climate policy, even at the federal level, under Morrison’s full control. He is determined to land that 2050 net-zero target for Glasgow, but can’t do it without the Nationals signing up.

We’re being reminded how differently the Nationals operate from Morrison’s preferred way of doing things. The PM likes secrecy, strict adherence to talking points, then everything put in place before the curtain is pulled aside to reveal an outcome trumpeted as ground-breaking. When it comes, the climate package will have plenty of tinsel.

In contrast the Nationals, as the minor partner in the Coalition, reckon they have to play loud and rough to get what they want. Also these days the party has a fair sprinkling of bomb throwers in its ranks who do what they like.

Any notion of cabinet solidarity is out the window, as we saw when Nationals Senate leader Bridget McKenzie had a public go at Treasurer Josh Frydenberg in an opinion piece in the Australian Financial Review this week.

McKenzie wrote: “It is easy for the Member for Kooyong [Frydenberg] or the Member for Wentworth [Dave Sharma] to publicly embrace net zero before the government has a position, because there would be next to zero real impact on the way of life of their affluent constituents.”

Read more:
Grattan on Friday: Morrison is wedged between Biden and Barnaby in forging climate policy for Glasgow

The following day, at a (virtual) joint news conference with McKenzie called on another matter, Frydenberg countered with “climate change has no postcode”. Scientifically he’s right. But, politically, one challenge for both Coalition and Labor in the climate debate is that it is often seen variously according to voters’ postcodes. Hence Labor’s past problems in trying to deliver separate messages in coal and inner-city electorates.

It is said by insiders that McKenzie was helping Joyce by making it clear the Nats can’t be taken for granted, although the impression to the casual observer was she added to the chaos.

The mood of Morrison, locked in The Lodge in quarantine, must be mixed. He’s buoyed by his US trip, with its AUKUS agreement and the promise of nuclear-powered submarines, even if by their delivery time he’ll be in his 70s (perhaps critiquing his successors, as has become the ex-prime ministerial fashion). But he must also be frustrated that the policy and political difficulties of reaching a climate agreement within the Coalition make the road to AUKUS start to look like a walk in the park.

The bar keeps being raised too, as it was this week by the NSW Coalition government increasing its ambition to a 50% emissions cut by 2030.

Nevertheless, Liberal backbenchers who’d sought a virtual meeting with Morrison to put their views ahead of Glasgow were reassured by his feedback, including his indication he’d found his discussions with Joyce constructive. Many of the Liberals on the Tuesday call spoke about the local political contexts they faced.

Read more:
Grattan on Friday: After the deal on security, Scott Morrison turns to the shift on climate

It’s not just Glasgow and pressure from Joe Biden and Boris Johnson that’s making it imperative for Morrison to secure agreement on 2050. A number of Liberals in safe seats will face well-organised and cashed-up challenges from independent candidates campaigning on climate change. Climate 200’s Simon Holmes a Court says there’s already more than $1.5 million in the kitty.

The independents will also be preoccupied with another issue that’s a weak point for Morrison – integrity. The rorting (sports grants, car parks) is a touchy point with voters, tapping into their distrust of politicians, and the government still has not set up an integrity commission (it promises to introduce legislation before Christmas).

It’s very hard for independents to win seats in the House of Representatives, given the electoral system. Recently their chances have been best where the incumbent has been weakened (this helped deliver victories in Indi, Mayo and Warringah), or has departed (Wentworth after Turnbull resigned, although the seat is now back in Liberal hands).

So no one should anticipate an influx of new independents next year. But the possibility of even one managing to get through, adding to the several expected to be re-elected, would concern Morrison. Especially if the election happened to produce a hung parliament, which is not out of the question, with voters disillusioned with both sides.

Whatever Morrison announces on climate is unlikely to be enough because, even with a firm 2050 target and something for the medium term, the government can expect to be widely criticised for failing to have sufficient medium-term ambition.

Morrison raised the prospect of not attending the Glasgow summit in an interview with the West Australian while he was abroad, saying he hadn’t finally decided. “It’s another trip overseas … and I’ve spent a lot of time in quarantine.”

Read more:
Politics with Michelle Grattan: The push to run independents on issues of climate and integrity

The Glasgow conference comes immediately after the G20; Morrison couldn’t go to one without the other.

While there would be much criticism of his failure to be at Glasgow, the hard-headed counter argument would be that leaving the country during a time of high COVID uncertainty could backfire.

Unlike the US trip, Morrison would get no plaudits at Glasgow. He’d be seen, as best, as the under-performer who, facing enormous pressure, had lifted his game to a greater or lesser degree.

Morrison’s absence from Glasgow would give his opponents, and those independent candidates, ammunition. The more substantial issue, however, is the quality of the policy he unveils, on home soil, before the summit.

Beyond that, whether he travels can reasonably be left to a judgment on how the COVID situation is looking, although one cynic suggests he might have been wiser to stay silent on the possibility of cancelling until a decision had to be finalised.

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

– ref. Grattan on Friday: To go or not to go — Morrison grapples with Glasgow – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-to-go-or-not-to-go-morrison-grapples-with-glasgow-169028

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

If Scott Morrison doesn’t go to the Glasgow climate conference, “his absence will send a pretty strong message about his priorities”, Malcolm Turnbull said during his general excoriation of the prime minister this week.

Absolutely, it will. And Morrison’s priorities are clear. At the top of the list is political survival at next year’s election. Whether his political career lives or dies at that election will depend, in good part, on how he manages the issues of COVID and climate in the coming weeks and months.

The course of COVID from now on is unpredictable. Despite general (and politically fanned) excitement at the prospect of restrictions lifting or easing in NSW and Victoria, what happens then is highly uncertain, at least for the short term. And Queensland is suddenly a worry.

He might be PM but COVID management is always only partly in his hands (except the vaccine rollout, and we know the story there). The premiers will continue to flex their muscles.

Nor is climate policy, even at the federal level, under Morrison’s full control. He is determined to land that 2050 net-zero target for Glasgow, but can’t do it without the Nationals signing up.

We’re being reminded how differently the Nationals operate from Morrison’s preferred way of doing things. The PM likes secrecy, strict adherence to talking points, then everything put in place before the curtain is pulled aside to reveal an outcome trumpeted as ground-breaking. When it comes, the climate package will have plenty of tinsel.

In contrast the Nationals, as the minor partner in the Coalition, reckon they have to play loud and rough to get what they want. Also these days the party has a fair sprinkling of bomb throwers in its ranks who do what they like.

Any notion of cabinet solidarity is out the window, as we saw when Nationals Senate leader Bridget McKenzie had a public go at Treasurer Josh Frydenberg in an opinion piece in the Australian Financial Review this week.

McKenzie wrote: “It is easy for the Member for Kooyong [Frydenberg] or the Member for Wentworth [Dave Sharma] to publicly embrace net zero before the government has a position, because there would be next to zero real impact on the way of life of their affluent constituents.”

Read more:
Grattan on Friday: Morrison is wedged between Biden and Barnaby in forging climate policy for Glasgow

The following day, at a (virtual) joint news conference with McKenzie called on another matter, Frydenberg countered with “climate change has no postcode”. Scientifically he’s right. But, politically, one challenge for both Coalition and Labor in the climate debate is that it is often seen variously according to voters’ postcodes. Hence Labor’s past problems in trying to deliver separate messages in coal and inner-city electorates.

It is said by insiders that McKenzie was helping Joyce by making it clear the Nats can’t be taken for granted, although the impression to the casual observer was she added to the chaos.

The mood of Morrison, locked in The Lodge in quarantine, must be mixed. He’s buoyed by his US trip, with its AUKUS agreement and the promise of nuclear-powered submarines, even if by their delivery time he’ll be in his 70s (perhaps critiquing his successors, as has become the ex-prime ministerial fashion). But he must also be frustrated that the policy and political difficulties of reaching a climate agreement within the Coalition make the road to AUKUS start to look like a walk in the park.

The bar keeps being raised too, as it was this week by the NSW Coalition government increasing its ambition to a 50% emissions cut by 2030.

Nevertheless, Liberal backbenchers who’d sought a virtual meeting with Morrison to put their views ahead of Glasgow were reassured by his feedback, including his indication he’d found his discussions with Joyce constructive. Many of the Liberals on the Tuesday call spoke about the local political contexts they faced.

Read more:
Grattan on Friday: After the deal on security, Scott Morrison turns to the shift on climate

It’s not just Glasgow and pressure from Joe Biden and Boris Johnson that’s making it imperative for Morrison to secure agreement on 2050. A number of Liberals in safe seats will face well-organised and cashed-up challenges from independent candidates campaigning on climate change. Climate 200’s Simon Holmes a Court says there’s already more than $1.5 million in the kitty.

The independents will also be preoccupied with another issue that’s a weak point for Morrison – integrity. The rorting (sports grants, car parks) is a touchy point with voters, tapping into their distrust of politicians, and the government still has not set up an integrity commission (it promises to introduce legislation before Christmas).

It’s very hard for independents to win seats in the House of Representatives, given the electoral system. Recently their chances have been best where the incumbent has been weakened (this helped deliver victories in Indi, Mayo and Warringah), or has departed (Wentworth after Turnbull resigned, although the seat is now back in Liberal hands).

So no one should anticipate an influx of new independents next year. But the possibility of even one managing to get through, adding to the several expected to be re-elected, would concern Morrison. Especially if the election happened to produce a hung parliament, which is not out of the question, with voters disillusioned with both sides.

Whatever Morrison announces on climate is unlikely to be enough because, even with a firm 2050 target and something for the medium term, the government can expect to be widely criticised for failing to have sufficient medium-term ambition.

Morrison raised the prospect of not attending the Glasgow summit in an interview with the West Australian while he was abroad, saying he hadn’t finally decided. “It’s another trip overseas … and I’ve spent a lot of time in quarantine.”

Read more:
Politics with Michelle Grattan: The push to run independents on issues of climate and integrity

The Glasgow conference comes immediately after the G20; Morrison couldn’t go to one without the other.

While there would be much criticism of his failure to be at Glasgow, the hard-headed counter argument would be that leaving the country during a time of high COVID uncertainty could backfire.

Unlike the US trip, Morrison would get no plaudits at Glasgow. He’d be seen, as best, as the under-performer who, facing enormous pressure, had lifted his game to a greater or lesser degree.

Morrison’s absence from Glasgow would give his opponents, and those independent candidates, ammunition. The more substantial issue, however, is the quality of the policy he unveils, on home soil, before the summit.

Beyond that, whether he travels can reasonably be left to a judgment on how the COVID situation is looking, although one cynic suggests he might have been wiser to stay silent on the possibility of cancelling until a decision had to be finalised.

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

– ref. Grattan on Friday: To go or not to go — Morrison’s rocky road to Glasgow – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-to-go-or-not-to-go-morrisons-rocky-road-to-glasgow-169028

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sung-ae Lee, Lecturer, Asian Studies, Macquarie University

Squid Game, an original Netflix drama produced in South Korea, is a streaming phenomenon. Released on 17 September, within two weeks the series has become the most watched Netflix title in 76 countries, including the US, Australia and South Korea.

Across nine episodes, desperate people enmeshed in debt voluntarily participate in a sequence of six sadistic and lethal survival games. The prize for the winner is 46.5 billion won (around A$50 million). At the outset, the 456 participants are unaware there is a twist. There can only be one winner — and the rest of the contestants will die along the way.

This outcome is foreshadowed for viewers in a segment that precedes episode 1, in which two groups of children are seen playing the eponymous Squid Game (essentially a violent game played by Korean schoolboys). The groups struggle for possession of a squid-shaped area drawn on the ground. Both attackers and defenders must resist being pushed out of the play area, for, according to the commentary, if you are pushed out you “die”.

Such games are commonly metaphors for life experiences. Games structured as a struggle for possession, or with the goal of overcoming a player in a position of control, are often stories about social aspiration and limited social mobility.

In the survival game played in episode 1, Red Light, Green Light (also known as “Hibiscus flowers have bloomed” in Korea and “Statues” elsewhere around the world), players can win if they can creep forward when the controlling figure’s back is turned. If seen to move, they are “eliminated” (and in this case, die).

The brutal adaptation of children’s games at the centre of Squid Game have clearly captured the imagination of the show’s viewers, and also provide a startlingly evocative metaphor for socio-economic inequality and capitalism.

Television drama frequently portrays Korea as a profoundly unequal and violent society. Its traumatic history throughout most of the twentieth century — Japanese colonisation, the Korean War, almost 40 years of military dictatorship, and financial crises — has left deep psychological scars on the national psyche.

Dark political narratives in TV and film continue to express the social impact of that history, such as the recent Netflix zombie series, Kingdom (2019–2021), along with D.P. (2021), Signal (2016) and Stranger (2015). The economic gap within Korean society is ever widening, and has become a recurrent motif in TV drama.

This unequal society is a staple of “Cinderella” stories in which protagonists are displaced into poverty and abused by those with wealth and power until they regain their place. It is also reflected in dramas about the super-rich such as Sky Castle (2018) and The Penthouse (2020-2021), which show how ultra-wealthy Koreans maintain their control over the country’s wealth.

Bong Joon-Ho’s Oscar-winning Parasite (2019) drew dramatic attention to the economic gap, as have several other films: Burning (2018), Veteran (2015) and Insiders (2015).

Read more:
Parasite’s win is the perfect excuse to get stuck into genre-bending and exciting Korean cinema

Economic stress

Socio-economic inequality in Squid Game is explored through the often heartbeaking narratives of the contestant’s economic stress. These are shown to be often compounded by Korea’s lack of a social safety net and unregulated financial structures.

Employment in underclasses is precarious: chief protagonist Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) has been retrenched, has amassed gambling debts, cannot afford lifesaving surgery for his mother, and has tried to solve his financial problems by borrowing from loan sharks.

Television dramas widely depict this latter practice as a blight upon society: interest rates are extortionate and borrowers easily slip into a form of modern slavery through ever increasing debt.

Effective slavery is also depicted in Squid Game in the exploitation of North Korean refugees and South Asian migrant workers, often by other underclass members.

Squid Game participants who question their commitment to the violent game are warned by those in control that because of their poverty or level of debt they will be much worse off in the world outside. Episode 2, Hell, is a realistic account of the precarious life of marginalised people, and the motivations that drive them into the perilous game.

The popularity of Squid Game

The global popularity of Squid Game can be attributed to various factors.

First, it draws on a worldwide cultural obsession with game shows, from quiz shows where winners hope to make a fortune to reality television programs such as Survivor.

As the participants wake on their first morning in their huge dormitory, the soundtrack rather comically consists of Haydn’s triumphalist Trumpet Concerto, which was previously used as signal music in a popular Korean quiz game titled Janghak Quiz (1973-1996).

Squid Game also includes a level of violence characteristic of western cinema but rare in Korean TV drama. It forms a potent metaphor for a deep social malaise.

The series also contains a lot of black comedy and even schadenfreude. There is a humorous contradiction between events on the screen, and the romantic music of the soundtrack.

For example, the ominous preparation for the first game, including passage along an Escher-inspired staircase, is accompanied by Johann Strauss’s Blue Danube waltz. Having forgotten his daughter’s birthday, Gi-hun gets her a mystery present which turns out to be a cigarette lighter in the shape of a gun. The moment when she opens her present is both very funny and heart-wrenching.

Finally, the series is a high-quality production. Its visuals are strong and it builds suspense very effectively. Such elements temper what otherwise might seem heavy-handed social critique.

The success first of Parasite and now of Squid Game is bringing Korean film and media into the international limelight in an unprecedented way.

Hwang Dong-hyuk, director of Squid Game, had to wait 12 years to find a backer for his script. He has been a highly successful film maker, known for Dogani (2011) and Miss Granny (2014), and currently seems to have his sights set on a return to the large screen. Perhaps he can be persuaded otherwise?

Sung-ae Lee 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. Social inequality and hyper violence: why the bleak world of Netflix’s Squid Game is a streaming phenomenon – https://theconversation.com/social-inequality-and-hyper-violence-why-the-bleak-world-of-netflixs-squid-game-is-a-streaming-phenomenon-168934

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Tuffley, Senior Lecturer in Applied Ethics & CyberSecurity, Griffith University

In the pre-digital world, advertising was largely carried by print media, radio and television.

Today, digital advertising has surpassed those channels, pervading our desktops and laptops, smartphones, tablets and a variety of other internet-connected devices. And perhaps the biggest player in the online advertising space is Google.

Australia’s competition watchdog, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), says Google now dominates the country’s online advertising so throughly it must be reined in.

The ACCC maintains that over the past ten years, Google’s advertising technology has developed to the point of being anti-competitive.

The lion’s share

In a report released on Tuesday, the ACCC said Google had arrived at market dominance through a massive data advantage. The tech giant hoovers up vast quantities of information about the people who use Google Search, YouTube, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Contacts, Google Sites, Google Meet, Google Chat, Cloud Search and more.

The watchdog estimates 80–90% of all online ad impressions for Australia passed through at least one Google service in 2020. An “ad impression” is created when an ad is displayed on an app or webpage. It is the benchmark by which advertisers know how many times an ad has been viewed.

In light of this estimate, it’s fair to say Google has the lion’s share of Australia’s digital advertising industry, which last year reached A$9.5 billion in spending.

The ACCC has recommended a new industry code to make the end-to-end ad process more transparent. It also wants to impose rules on how user data is collected for digital advertising purposes, and how fees for services are calculated.

The full list of recommendations is aimed at limiting Google’s potentially monopolistic power in the digital advertising market.

What does Google say?

In response, Google has said the ACCC hasn’t properly taken into account other online advertising channels available to Australian advertisers, such as Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat.

Google also highlighted a PwC report which estimated three-quarters of the tech giant’s advertising customers in Australia were small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) — and that Google’s services contributed A$2.4 billion to Australia’s economy each year.

A Google spokesperson reaffirmed the company’s willingness to work with the ACCC to engender a “healthy ads ecosystem”, according to The Guardian.

Google’s winning formula

It may be apocryphal that in the early days of Google, when their only product was a revolutionary search engine, a business advisor is said to have asked the founders how they intended to make money. The reply was along the lines of “we’ll figure something out”. That something, it seems, was Google Ads.

Last year, Google Ads helped the market value of US company Alphabet (of which Google is a part) surge in excess of US$1 trillion, joining Apple and Microsoft. It places ads in Google Search results, as well on mobile apps, webpages and videos, and is the main tool through which advertisers can reach customers via Google’s services.

Each time someone uses Google Search, or visits a website hosting ads through Google Ads, an automated ad auction takes place behind the scenes. Advertisers bid on the maximum cost-per-click amount they’re willing to pay for their ad.

Paying cost-per-click means that rather than paying for the ad space itself, the winning advertiser pays a set amount to Google each time someone clicks on their ad.

Of course, not everyone who clicks an ad will also make a purchase. It might only be one click in ten that converts to a sale — this depends on how hot or cold the market is.

So if the cost per click is 50 cents, and the click-to-sale conversion rate is one in ten, the advertiser must sell their product for no less than $5 if they want to break even on their ad purchase. But how does that price compare with their competition’s? They must do their sums carefully.

For an ad to be displayed in a prime position, the cost-per-click bid must be sufficiently high, the ad must be of a high quality, and must have keywords directly related to the search enquiry.

Read more:
ACCC ‘world first’: Australia’s Federal Court found Google misled users about personal location data

According to Google, ads can be targeted based on a number of factors including audience “demographics” (certain locations, ages, genders and device types) and by picking out “similar audiences”:

Expand your audience by targeting users with interests related to the users in your remarketing lists. These users aren’t searching for your products or services directly, but their related interests may lead them to interacting with your ads.

The exact details of the process are murky, however, as Google guards its methods carefully.

What does the future look like?

As artificial intelligence (AI) comes increasingly into people’s lives, the job of buying things will conceivably be delegated to AI assistants. This is the vision of Peter Diamandis, one of Silicon Valley’s leaders best known as the founder of the technology nonprofit X Prize Foundation.

How would it work? Well, over time your personal AI will come to know all about your daily habits, the products you use, how often you use them, what brands you like, where you go, who you meet — everything.

It will then make product suggestions to you based on these patterns. This is an expanded version of what Google already does with its Google Assistant feature.

Amazon does this too, sending users messages along the lines of “we notice you’re reading this. Other readers who’ve read that have also read…”

The next step would be for AI to go ahead and buy the consumables it knows you need, when you need them, and have them delivered to you — without you expressly requesting it. This means you won’t run out of things you didn’t realise you were low on.

But on the other hand, this potential future raises serious concerns regarding our personal privacy, agency and consumerist behaviours.

Read more:
Google is leading a vast, covert human experiment. You may be one of the guinea pigs

David Tuffley 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. Australia’s competition watchdog says Google has a monopoly on online advertising — but how does it work? – https://theconversation.com/australias-competition-watchdog-says-google-has-a-monopoly-on-online-advertising-but-how-does-it-work-168939

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kristin Carson-Chahhoud, Associate Research Professor, University of South Australia

Cigarettes are the only legal consumer product that kill up to half of their users when consumed exactly as the manufacturer intended. The diseases they cause cost Australia’s health system A$136.9 billion a year.

Philip Morris International (PMI) is one of the global leaders in the cigarette supply chain. But with steady declines in cigarette sales over the past 20 years, tobacco companies such as Philip Morris are now attempting to market themselves as health-care companies with visions for a “smoke-free future”.

One of the industry’s first moves was to manufacture non-cigarette nicotine products, such as nicotine replacement therapy to help people quit smoking.

In the latest move to diversify its portfolio, Philip Morris has acquired British health-care company Vectura Group Plc, at a cost of more than £1 billion (A$1.9 billion).

Vectura specialises in manufacturing inhalation products such as commonly used inhalers (or puffers) and nebulisers that help people with asthma and lung disease to breathe.

Read more:
Big Tobacco’s decisive defeat on plain packaging laws won’t stop its war against public health

On August 12, the Vectura board announced it “unanimously recommended the PMI offer” to shareholders, with the decision based on price and access to resources.

The Vectura board noted:

[…] wider stakeholders could benefit from PMI’s significant financial resources and its intentions to increase research and development investment and to operate Vectura as an autonomous business unit that will form the backbone of its inhaled therapeutics business.

On September 15, the deal became official. And so the problems begin.

Why Vectura?

In acquiring Vectura, Philip Morris will profit from treating the very illnesses its products cause, as nebulisers are commonly prescribed for patients with tobacco-related lung disease.

Philip Morris’s interest in the company is to help it generate “[…] at least $1 billion in annual net revenues from Beyond Nicotine sources in 2025”. In other words, Philip Morris plans to expand development of electronic cigarettes and start profiting from other inhaled devices.

This is despite there being limited evidence to support electronic cigarettes to help people quit smoking, but mounting evidence showing damaging health effects.

If Philip Morris really wants to move “beyond nicotine”, it should stop its aggressive promotion and sale of all tobacco products.

Why does it matter?

The consequences of Philip Morris’s acquisition of Vectura are far reaching, especially for the medical and research workforce fighting against respiratory disease. The Philip Morris takeover will have significant implications for the sector.

Many public health organisations, medical professional bodies, universities, individual health professionals and researchers cannot and will not work with tobacco companies or their affiliates. This is in line with the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

This means researchers who would have received support from Vectura, or used their products to pioneer the next generation of inhaler therapies, will no longer be able to do this.

There will be conflicts of interest prohibiting them from publishing their findings, collaborating on grants for new research, and presenting their work at conferences.

Read more:
Medical journals refuse to publish tobacco-funded research

This has already begun to happen, with pharmaceutical industry conferences such as the Drug Delivery to the Lungs Conference terminating Vectura’s sponsorship, forcing the company’s representative to stand down from its committee, and barring them from participation.

Going forward, companies, health professionals and researchers now inadvertently linked to big tobacco through Vectura may be restricted from fully participating in the medical and scientific community. The European Respiratory Society, for example, excludes participation from anyone with links to the tobacco industry in the past ten years.

The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) will need to consider if it’s appropriate for Australian taxpayers to subsidise inhaler devices licensed to Vectura or, more truthfully, to big tobacco.

Many doctors will be looking for alternative devices to prescribe for their patients that do not contribute to Philip Morris’s or Vectura’s profits.

Meanwhile, people with lung disease are also likely to be reluctant to use devices linked to big tobacco.

But switching from one inhaler to another comes with consequences, such as lower adherence and new side effects, causing poorer clinical outcomes.

There are also concerns Philip Morris’s takeover of Vectura could be used to buy “a seat at the table” with health care policymakers and professionals, meaning they could have a say in the development of government policies.

The tobacco industry hasn’t changed

The tobacco industry remains one of the world’s most lethal. And Philip Morris continues to undermine public health messages, while trying to disguise itself as a health brand.

Yet Philip Morris’s company statutory regulations, which are the standards by which they undertake business, list evidence-based actions to reduce smoking rates – such as strong health warnings on packets and smoking bans in public places – as “risk factors” for its business.

Philip Morris’s move into the health sector, reinforced with the latest acquisition of Vectura, should be met with equal measures of disgust and contempt.

Kristin Carson-Chahhoud receives funding from The National Health and Medical Research Council, Channel 7 Children’s Research Foundation, Cancer Australia, Ministry of Health, The Sax Institute, New South Wales Government, Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand, University of South Australia, Australian Association of Gerontology, Cancer Council Victoria, Asthma Australia, The University of Adelaide and the Australian and New Zealand School of Government. She has received honorariums and travel reimbursement from Pfizer Australia to present her research findings at the Pfizer annual general meeting and at the Ogilvy Smoking Exchange Summit. Kristin is a Board Director for the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand (TSANZ), Chair of the TSANZ Research Subcommittee and Executive Director of the SA/NT Branch of the TSANZ. She is also a member of the Australian Association of Gerontology.

Bruce Thompson is immediate past president of the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand. He has received research funding from the NHMRC, and historically speaker fees from Chiesi, Mundipharma, GSK and AstraZenca.

John Upham has received funding from the National Health & Medical Research Council. He is currently President of the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand.

– ref. After buying health company Vectura, tobacco giant Philip Morris will profit from treating the illnesses its products create – https://theconversation.com/after-buying-health-company-vectura-tobacco-giant-philip-morris-will-profit-from-treating-the-illnesses-its-products-create-168564

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Mills, Hon Senior Lecturer, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney

Former Liberal backbencher Craig Kelly recently spammed large numbers of Australian voters by sending bulk text messages to their mobile phone numbers.

The spam texts, one of which promoted Kelly’s anti-vax views, struck many recipients as an invasion of privacy and triggered thousands of complaints to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).

Kelly said the messages were “100% legal.” He is right.

Indeed, Australia’s anti-spam law applies only to “commercial” messaging and specifically exempts political communication (Section 44) — including text messages like Kelly’s.

Read more:
The Therapeutic Goods Administration has the power to stop misleading advertising. So why can’t it stop Craig Kelly’s texts?

Some have proposed changes that would allow people to unsubscribe from unwanted political text messages.

But it is likely in future we will see more, not less, unsolicited text messaging — and not just in politics.

How did they get my number?

Kelly, who joined Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party earlier this year, has said he used software to generate random mobile numbers.

That’s plausible: there are plenty of sites that will perform this relatively simple task.

But it is not cheap to upload the random numbers onto a server that can send text messages. It’s also not efficient, as many of the randomly generated numbers will not be real numbers.

Then again, Palmer’s track record of lavish electoral expenditure in the 2019 federal election suggests he can afford such an approach.

Kelly did not reveal the actual number of text messages he sent, though it is likely to be in the thousands.

Read more:
How political parties legally harvest your data and use it to bombard you with election spam

There are plenty of other ways in which your mobile phone number might end up being fodder for marketing campaigns.

Think how many times you provide your private contact details for retail and financial transactions, social media accounts, ID checks, entertainment subscriptions.

Now ask yourself: how often do you read the privacy policy of the company or organisation collecting your data?

The reality is your private details have a commercial value. In the murky world of data harvesting, they can be transferred and bundled up into large data bases and rented out to telemarketers — or they can be leaked or hacked.

These can include your mobile phone numbers.

How is that legal?

By and large Australian phone numbers, including both landline and mobile services, are well secured. Access to the Integrated Public Number Database (IPND), managed by Telstra, is overseen by the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

Phone subscribers can choose to have a “silent” (unlisted) number, and can opt out of telemarketing calls via the do not call register.

But even here, there are political exemptions. Researchers can be given permission to call numbers from the IPND to conduct interview-based research – including market research into “federal state and local government electoral matters.”

ACMA can punish companies that misuse numbers for “spam” marketing purposes.

But both Telstra and ACMA are clear they can’t block political parties, along with charities and some government agencies, from sending unsolicited marketing numbers.

What about the electoral roll?

When you enrol to vote, you provide your full name, date of birth, current residential address, phone number or numbers, email address and citizenship. You also need proof of identity such as a driver’s licence or passport.

These details are well protected and support Australia’s system of compulsory voting. Again, however, under the Electoral Act, your name and address can be provided to members of parliament, registered political parties and candidates for the House of Representatives.

For both major parties, ALP and Liberal, that information forms the basis of the large data bases they have assembled for targeted campaigning: making phone calls, knocking on doors, sending automated “robocalls” and texting.

Why are political parties exempt?

When Kelly joined Palmer’s party, he not only accessed Palmer’s campaign war chest. Registered political parties enjoy special treatment under Australian electoral law – including entitlement to public funding for their campaign costs, and exemptions from privacy rules governing access to personal data.

The rationale for the exemption is that no regulator should impede the free flow of information about electoral choice.

The argument is that claims and counterclaims by different politicians and parties — even false claims about vaccinations — constitute the lifeblood of democracy and should be resolved, ultimately, at the ballot box, not in the courts.

All this is underpinned by the High Court’s finding that the constitution “implies” the freedom of political communications to the extent necessary to allow the operation of democratic government.

Read more:
83% of Australians want tougher privacy laws. Now’s your chance to tell the government what you want

For all these reasons, political advertising in Australia is largely unregulated. It doesn’t have to be truthful or factual. Courts and regulators would be reluctant in the midst of an election campaign to adjudicate on truth; voters are expected to have the wisdom to work it all out at the ballot box.

Of course, political parties are not just the beneficiaries of this lack of regulation; they are in a real sense its authors. The capacity of rival parties to collaborate in shaping laws to suit themselves forms a key pillar of the cartel theory of parties.

The main, virtually the sole, regulatory requirement for political ads is they are “authorised” – that is, they include the name of a person responsible for them. Authorisation provides accountability for political statements.

Remember ‘Mediscare’?

Back in 2016, however, SMS messages were not covered by this requirement. At the end of the 2016 federal election campaign, the Queensland Labor Party sent a bulk text message promoting its scare campaign about Liberal plans to “privatise Medicare”.

The text messages were not authorised and, moreover, purported to come from “Medicare.”

The law was tightened in 2019. Kelly’s text messages were authorised, by himself.

Is this likely to happen more often in the future?

During the Black Summer bushfires, blazes ripped through Cobargo on the far south coast of New South Wales. As part of the nation’s emergency warning system, thousands of landlines and mobile phones — my own included — were alerted with urgent warnings to evacuate.

Alerts were sent to mobiles according to their registered service address and also to the “last known location of the handset at the time of the emergency.”

It is a far cry from Kelly, and no one envisages political parties being able to target voters by this kind of electronic geo-location.

But it suggests the ability to send brief, urgent and unsolicited text messages, to large numbers of people, is too valuable to ignore.

Read more:
Three reasons why we should have seen Labor’s ‘Medicare SMS’ coming

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

– ref. How did politicians and political parties get my mobile number? And how is that legal? – https://theconversation.com/how-did-politicians-and-political-parties-get-my-mobile-number-and-how-is-that-legal-168750

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alex Collie, Professor and ARC Future Fellow, Monash University

Victoria’s occupational health and safety regulator, Worksafe, has charged the state’s health department with 58 breaches for failing to provide hotel quarantine staff with a safe workplace.

The breaches occurred between March and July 2020, and at up to A$1.64 million per breach, could amount to fines of $95 million.

This should serve as a warning to all employers to start assessing their workers’ safety against COVID and how they can mitigate these risks, ahead of the nation reopening.

Read more:
Here’s the proof we need. Many more health workers than we ever thought are catching COVID-19 on the job

Remind me, what is Worksafe?

States and territories have responsibility for enforcing laws designed to keep people safe at work: occupational health and safety (OHS) laws.

Worksafe Victoria is responsible for and regulates OHS in Victoria. It’s responsible for making sure employers and workers comply with OHS laws; and it provides information, advice and support.

Victoria’s parliament has given Worksafe the power to prosecute employers if they breach OHS laws. In 2018-19, it commenced 157 prosecutions which resulted in nearly A$7 million in fines.

Unlike some other state OHS regulators, Worksafe also manages the Victorian workers’ compensation system.

Why did Worksafe charge the health department?

Worksafe charged Victoria’s Department of Health with 58 breaches of sections 21 and 23 of the Victorian Occupational Health and Safety Act.

The Act requires employers to maintain a working environment that is “safe and without risks to health” of employees. These obligations extend to independent contractors or people employed by those contractors.

Worksafe is alleging that in operating the Victorian COVID-19 quarantine hotels between March and July 2020, the Department of Health failed to maintain a working environment that was safe and limited risks to health, both to its own employees and to other people working in the hotels.

Essentially Worksafe is stating that through a series of failures, the department placed government employees and other workers at risk of serious illness or death through contracting COVID-19 at work.

Worksafe alleges the Victorian health department failed to:

• appoint people with expertise in infection control to work at the quarantine hotels

• provide sufficient infection prevention and control training to security guards working in the hotels, as evidence shows training can improve employees’ safety practices

• provide instructions, at least initially, on how to use personal protective equipment, and later did not update instructions on mask wearing in some of the quarantine hotels.

Worksafe undertook a 15-month long investigation, beginning in about July 2020. It’s possible the trigger for this investigation was a referral from the Coate inquiry into hotel quarantine, but that has not been stated.

Is it unusual for a government regulator to fine a government department?

It’s not that unusual. Government departments are subject to the same OHS laws as other employers in the state, and so Worksafe’s powers extend to them as well.

In the past few years, Worksafe has successfully prosecuted the Department of Justice, Parks Victoria and the Department of Health, resulting in fines and convictions.

In 2018, for example, Worksafe prosecuted Corrections Victoria (part of the Department of Justice) after a riot at the Metropolitan Remand Centre in 2015 that put the health and safety of staff at risk.

The riot occurred after the introduction of a smoking ban in prisons. Worksafe considered prisoner unrest was predictable and its impact on staff could have been reduced by having additional security in place in the days leading up to the smoking ban.

In that case the Department of Justice pleaded guilty and was convicted and fined A$300,000 plus legal costs.

What does this mean for other employers?

This case highlights that employers have obligations to provide safe working environments for their staff, and other people in their workplaces. This extends to reducing risks of COVID-19 infection.

These obligations don’t just apply to government departments. They apply to every employer in the state.

Employers should ensure they have appropriate systems and policies in place to reduce COVID-19 infection risk to their staff. This includes, where appropriate, physical distancing, working from home, wearing personal protective equipment (PPE), good hygiene practices, workplace ventilation, and so on.

Employers should consider the risks unique to their environment and address them appropriately, in advance of the nation reopening when we reach high levels of COVID vaccination coverage.

Some employers in high-risk settings – such as health care, retail and hospitality – will need to do more to protect their workers than others.

What happens next for the Vic health department?

The case has been filed in the Magistrates court, with an initial hearing date set for October 22. It will progress through the court system from there. Most prosecutions are heard in the Magistrates Court although some proceed to the County Court.

If the Department of Health pleads guilty, the courts will determine if a fine should be paid and how much. The court may also determine if a conviction is recorded.

Read more:
Soon you’ll need to be vaccinated to enjoy shops, cafes and events — but what about the staff there?

Alex Collie receives funding from the Australian Research Council, National Health and Medical Research Council, State Insurance Regulatory Authority of NSW, Worksafe Victoria and Safe Work Australia. He was previously CEO and Chief Research Officer of the Institute for Safety Compensation and Recovery Research, a research institute established by Worksafe Victoria and Monash University.

– ref. Worksafe’s hotel quarantine breach penalties are a warning for other employers to keep workers safe from COVID – https://theconversation.com/worksafes-hotel-quarantine-breach-penalties-are-a-warning-for-other-employers-to-keep-workers-safe-from-covid-168968

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kado Muir, Chair of National Native Title Council and Ngalia Cultural Leader, Indigenous Knowledge

In May 2020, Rio Tinto blasted two rock shelters at Juukan Gorge in the Pilbara as part of its operations to feed an insatiable global appetite for iron ore.

Some 46,000 years of Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people’s spiritual and cultural connections to Juukan Gorge were shaken with a detonation. The shockwaves also resounded globally. People took to social media and the streets to voice their anger at the actions of Rio Tinto.

While the final report of the Juukan Gorge inquiry is yet to be released, interim findings suggest the inquiry has the potential set a new precedent for legal codes to align with ethical standards for Aboriginal land management.

These outcomes are reflective of a shift in the balance of authority in Australia — and this shift is tilting towards Aboriginal people.

Read more:
Juukan Gorge inquiry puts Rio Tinto on notice, but without drastic reforms, it could happen again

The Juukan Gorge tragedy: ‘never again’

Despite shareholders and stakeholders deeming the blast unconscionable, these destructive actions by Rio Tinto were legal under Section 18 of the Western Australia Aboriginal Heritage Act of 1972.

While the act was designed to protect sites of cultural significance to Aboriginal people, it hasn’t prevented their destruction.

The Juukan Gorge is “of the highest archaeological significance in Australia.” Over 7,000 artefacts have been discovered in the rock shelters, including a 4,000-year-old belt made from the human hair of the direct ancestors of the current Traditional Owners.

Rio Tinto was aware of the living cultural value of the rock shelters to the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people, “but blew it up anyway”.

Three senior executives responsible for this decision resigned from their jobs in the aftermath of the blast, including the chief executive.

The “Never Again” national inquiry was subsequently held and Rio Tinto was ordered to provide compensation to the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people.

A critical turning point in First Nations authority over land

We are witnessing a turning point in the control and management of Aboriginal lands and the flow of benefits from these lands. For Indigenous people, land is central to self-determination.

Indigenous people are part of their traditional lands and draw nourishment from them. Control of their lands is also key to the economic flourishing of Indigenous people.

This turning point is being driven by regulatory changes — such as the recommendations from the Juukan Gorge inquiry — as well as shifts in environmental and social governance, growing economic independence, and increased Indigenous representation in parliaments.

Read more:
‘Although we didn’t produce these problems, we suffer them’: 3 ways you can help in NAIDOC’s call to Heal Country

Regulatory changes in environmental and social governance

Australia is moving towards 80–90% of its land mass being under Native Title and Land Rights claims and agreements.

The recommendations of the “Never Again” report for stronger protections and informed consent hold significant implications for the governance of these lands. Shifting custodianship of land and water back into the hands of Indigenous Traditional Owners allows them to receive equal share of the benefits from the resources extracted from their lands.

The rise of environmental and social governance globally is further supporting the shift in authority back to Indigenous custodians of the land.

In addition, the global march towards zero-carbon emissions is creating a flow of capital towards markets that meet carbon emissions and sustainable growth targets. This includes renewable energy and circular food production. This de-carbonisation of economies has been termed “carbonomics”.

These sustainable practices are integral to Aboriginal land management. This is why Indigenous-owned and -managed operations are informing carbonomic solutions and attracting carbonomic capital investment.

Economic independence providing hope for the future

The Australian Indigenous procurement policy has begun mandating minimum procurement targets for contracts to be awarded to Indigenous-owned businesses. This has the potential to increase Indigenous participation in local and global economies.

The growth of carbonomics also illustrates the shift towards environmental and sustainable forms of commerce that are bringing Indigenous land and water management to the forefront of business operations and leadership.

The potent combination of investment in Indigenous land management systems, the recommendations in the Indigenous procurement policy, and increasing consumer demand for Indigenous-owned goods and services, is creating the conditions for an Indigenous-business boom.

These conditions provide opportunities for economic independence and self-determination in Indigenous commerce. Indigenous entrepreneurship and businesses are being supported through initiatives such as the Dilin Duwa Centre for Indigenous Business Leadership.

Read more:
Juukan Gorge: how could they not have known? (And how can we be sure they will in future?)

However, further Indigenous representation at the highest levels of government, as well as corporate, education and community sectors, is needed for Indigenous voices to be heard on a national scale.

As has been seen with the backlash from Rio Tinto shareholders, investors and the media are holding corporations and their executives accountable for their treatment of Indigenous people and their lands.

There is more work to be done to ensure all Indigenous people are central to the land and water decisions of their respective Countries.

Yet, these changes are combining to give power back to Indigenous people. First Nations people need to be rightful authorities in the control, management and beneficiaries of the land. This will pivot the narrative from pain to power.

Affiliated with National Native Title Council.

Michal Carrington is affiliated with the Dilin Duwa Centre for Indigenous Business Leadership, University of Melbourne.

– ref. Juukan Gorge inquiry: a critical turning point in First Nations authority over land management – https://theconversation.com/juukan-gorge-inquiry-a-critical-turning-point-in-first-nations-authority-over-land-management-167039

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Welch, Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning, University of Auckland

When I first moved to New Zealand – even after living in some of the highest-priced US property markets – I was taken aback by house prices. My shock was reinforced by the condition of the houses, many of which lack sufficient insulation, adequate heating or cooling, or double-glazed windows.

I wondered why I’d pay so much for a house that needed so much attention. Then I overheard someone quip, “In New Zealand, you pay for the land and the house comes for free.” Suddenly things made a lot more sense.

Unlike in the US, where land is valued at a small fraction of the “improvements” (the building that stands on the section), in New Zealand it’s the exact opposite.

But it also raised a big question: in a country where the cost of land is so exorbitantly high and the supply of housing so scarce, how could so many surface car parks exist?

The price of parking

Take Auckland, for example, arguably the most housing-constrained market in New Zealand. Specifically, the still developing Wynyard Quarter on the downtown waterfront presents a clear case of car parking over potential housing.

One of the several abundant surface car parks is located on Jellicoe Street. It encompasses 8,146 square metres of tar, paint and parked cars. The massive lot has a NZ$37,000,000 valuation, with the improvements valued at $1,000,000 — presumably all that pavement and paint.

Read more:
Why calling ordinary Kiwi cyclists ‘elitist’ just doesn’t add up

The next part is a bit more difficult to swallow. The land is valued at just over $4,500 per square metre. With the average parking spot occupying 15 square metres, that means each spot is worth about $68,000.

That’s just for the parking spots themselves, not all the land required for people to drive in and out and around the car park.

What parking earns

Now things get interesting. The Jellicoe Street car park is maintained by Auckland Transport which provides people who drive to the CBD the courtesy of a free initial hour of parking followed by a rate of $6 per hour.

So for just $18 drivers can park for four hours. On the weekend those four hours of parking will cost a mere $6.

Assuming a parking space is fully occupied during all operating hours (from 7am to 10pm Monday to Sunday), it could optimistically take in $480. Extended over an entire year, a single space might earn just under $25,000.

Ignoring overhead costs and more realistic occupancy rates, it would take almost three years for a single open-air parking space to earn back the cost of the land it sits on. Perhaps this sounds economically viable. But what isn’t in this equation is the actual, very high cost of cheap and plentiful parking.

Read more:
To get New Zealanders out of their cars we’ll need to start charging the true cost of driving

Parking expectations

The widespread availability of low-priced parking in high-demand locations has significant impacts on our cities. When people expect parking to be available in these locations, they often choose to drive rather than use a more sustainable mode such as public transport. This means people buy more cars and take more trips by personal vehicle.

When cheap parking spots fill up during peak hours, people tend to cruise for a parking space rather than search out slightly more expensive and less convenient alternative locations. That is, they circle a car park or a city block until someone else leaves. When enough drivers do this it creates more congestion, pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

Read more:
What can our cities do about sprawl, congestion and pollution? Tip: scrap car parking

The long-term availability of cheap urban parking also implies that parking in such locations is a public good. People expect parking to always be in these places and will fight to keep the land from being used for higher and better purposes.

This is where the rubber hits the road. Open-air parking is the least productive use of important urban land. In the midst of the greatest housing affordability crisis in perhaps a generation, we could stand to lose some of this car space in favour of apartments.

People before parking

According to the Auckland District Plan, a one bedroom/one bathroom apartment should occupy about 45 square metres — precisely three parking spaces.

The good thing about an apartment building compared to an open-air car park is that we can build it up. Instead of some 200 spots for cars, we can build more than 600 apartments across ten storeys.

Rather than storing a couple of hundred cars for part of the day, with bare pavements overnight, we could provide living space for up to 1,200 people around the clock.

Read more:
What can our cities do about sprawl, congestion and pollution? Tip: scrap car parking

We could do the same thing with the car park across the street and the one a block over and so on — until we are a city and a country that focuses more on housing people than parking cars.

It will be hard to let go of the car parks. Where some see an opportunity for urban regeneration through the development of under-utilised space, others see the loss of car parking as another impediment for city workers to overcome.

But we simply have too much space in our cities dedicated to the car. Our land is far too valuable to pave over. It’s time to use a fraction of that space to house many people instead of a few machines.

Timothy Welch 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. Using valuable inner-city land for car parking? In a housing crisis, that just doesn’t add up – https://theconversation.com/using-valuable-inner-city-land-for-car-parking-in-a-housing-crisis-that-just-doesnt-add-up-168745

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Helen Dickinson, Professor, Public Service Research, UNSW

This week the Disability Royal Commission highlighted several failings in ensuring people with disability – a priority group in the rollout – could access vaccinations.

Children and adolescents don’t feature strongly in this report as they only became eligible for vaccination last month.

Yet 62% of parents responding to a recent survey by Children and Young People with Disability Australia (CYDA) report having trouble securing a vaccination for their child or children with disability.

While numbers of children contracting severe illness because of COVID have been low to date, the Delta variant has changed this situation. Countries such as the United States are seeing spikes in hospitalisations among children and adolescents.

As Australia starts to “live with” COVID and restrictions ease, we will see substantial increases in severe infection in children and young people with disability – unless vaccination rates rise significantly among this group.

À lire aussi :
Opening up when 80% of eligible adults are vaccinated won’t be ‘safe’ for all Australians

Why are children with disability at greater risk?

Australians with disability are at heightened risk during the COVID pandemic because many have other health conditions, such as respiratory problems, heart disease, and diabetes. This makes them more likely to get sicker or die if they become infected. This is the case for children with disability too.

People with disability are also more likely to be poor, unemployed and socially isolated, making them more likely to experience poor health outcomes.

In other countries we’ve seen people with disability die from COVID-19 at higher rates than their non-disabled peers. In England, nearly six out of every ten people who died with COVID in 2020 were disabled, and this risk increases with level of disability.

Severe COVID is uncommon in children and adolescents and rarely causes death, although children with pre-existing conditions are at greater risk of severe disease.

There is debate over whether the Delta variant of COVID causes more severe disease than previous variants in children. However, it does spread faster so the number of children who will develop severe disease will be increased.

Also, because older groups have been prioritised in vaccination campaigns, we will see infections grow in children as a proportion of overall infections.

We have seen this in the United States. Schools recommenced recently and the country reported its highest weekly rate of new cases in children and young people since the pandemic began.

US children’s hospitals are reported to be straining under pressure, with a fivefold increase in COVID hospitalisations. In any rise in cases, those with disability disproportionately bear the burden of severe disease.

Children with disability can’t book vaccinations

Children and Young People with Disability Australia (CYDA) wanted to understand whether children and young people and their families were experiencing challenges accessing vaccinations and if so, what the nature of those were.

Its online survey was open for one week and received 150 responses, which our research team then analysed. Some responses were from young people and most were from parents/caregivers of children and young people with disability.

The survey finds 62% of respondents were parents or carers who report having trouble in securing a vaccination for their child or children, some of whom had also experienced challenges getting vaccinated themselves.

In total, 72% of survey respondents were either parents or young people who’d had challenges with vaccination. This includes difficulties with booking systems, not being recognised as part of the priority rollout, and not being able to book with GPs.

Systems are not designed with children and young people with disability in mind. Parents and caregivers struggled to get vaccination appointments and to prove their or their child’s eligibility.

À lire aussi :
Vaccinating the highest-risk groups first was the plan. But people with disability are being left behind

The system is not set up to book for dependants, so if children do not have their own phone number and email address, parents cannot easily book appointments.

When phoning the call centre, things did not always get easier as one parent explains:

The person at call centre only wanted to talk to my son who is 16 and non-verbal. Refused to talk to me.

Parents report having to do much work via a number of different channels to secure an appointment for their child or young person, for example:

I ended up spending 7 hours in total calling different GP practices and sitting on hold and eventually secured my child an appointment. NSW Health hubs took a month to catch up with priority eligibility for 12-15-year-olds with disabilities.

I know people who have not been able to secure an appointment for their child with a disability. Many GP practices did not know that this group were eligible or would not accept anyone who wasn’t an existing patient. This is inherently discriminatory.

Inaccessible vaccination experiences

Once appointments were booked, several respondents reported vaccination hubs and GP practices were not accessible or able to cater to the needs of their child or young person. As one parent explained:

My son is Downs Syndrome and severe Intellectual Disability and going to a Vaccination Hub is traumatic. He has a phobia of needles and to take blood he has to go under general anaesthetic at […] Hospital.

Some young people with disability have experienced high degrees of medical trauma in the past and so find accessing regular vaccination processes very difficult. One parent told us that:

I know of many incidences where parents have had to do restrictive type practices to ensure that their child with a disability was able to remain still during their vaccination, lots of trauma and anxiety, not to mention the potential for future stress/trauma.

In many places a lack of access to GPs or specialist services mean parents have to make difficult decisions about whether to put their child through a traumatic process or else risk them being unvaccinated.

À lire aussi :
‘I’m scared’: parents of children with disability struggle to get the basics during coronavirus

Some good practice but not widespread enough

However, there are some areas where things have worked.

Victoria has a disability liaison officer service that seeks to link up people with disability with appropriate vaccination experiences. One parent explained:

Initially had this challenge until I was made aware of the Vic Disability Liaison support for COVID vaccination. They were awesome and my daughter was supported to have her first dose yesterday. Without them I’d still be waiting, without support and anxious. I understand this is only available in Victoria and should be available everywhere.

And some families have GPs who went the extra mile to vaccinate in a safe and appropriate way.

But these good examples are not widespread and the communication around specialist services is not as strong as it might be.

As the country moves towards living with COVID and progressively lifting public health restrictions, it’s imperative we vaccinate as many children and young people with disability as possible. Otherwise we’re likely to see significant numbers of infections and severe illness in this group.

Identifying individuals and families who are eligible and providing appropriate specialist support so they can be vaccinated is a priority.

Helen Dickinson receives funding from ARC, NHMRC, Commonwealth Government and CYDA.

Catherine Smith receives funding from Victorian DET, ACCAN and CYDA.

Sophie Yates ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.

– ref. Children with disability are prioritised in the vaccine rollout, but many struggle to get an appointment – https://theconversation.com/children-with-disability-are-prioritised-in-the-vaccine-rollout-but-many-struggle-to-get-an-appointment-168755

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kylie Morphett, Research Fellow, School of Public Health, The University of Queensland

From October 1, Australians who use e-cigarettes and other vaping products containing nicotine will need a doctor’s prescription to buy them from a local pharmacy or to order them from overseas.

But there’s another evidence-based way to help more smokers quit, which Australia is yet to act on: reducing the nicotine in cigarettes to non-addictive levels. And e-cigarettes could play an important role in this policy.

If you know someone who’s ever tried to stop smoking and failed, nicotine addiction is likely the reason they found it so hard. While nicotine itself is not a significant direct cause of the health harms from smoking, it makes tobacco products highly addictive. In 1963, tobacco industry lawyers wrote:

We are […] in the business of selling nicotine, an addictive drug.

So what are other countries doing to reduce nicotine addiction? What role could alternative nicotine products including e-cigarettes play, and how could reducing nicotine in cigarettes backfire if not managed well? And how much potential does a new very low nicotine standard for cigarettes have to end Australians’ addiction to smoking?

À lire aussi :
From October, it will be all but impossible for most Australians to vape — largely because of Canberra’s little-known ‘homework police’

How other countries are tackling a global killer

Most people know someone who has died or developed serious health problems from smoking.

Even today, smoking remains the leading preventable cause of early death in Australia, causing the deaths of more than 20,000 Australians every year. It also costs the Australian economy $136.9 billion annually.

That’s why many countries, including Australia, are setting targets to reduce smoking to very low levels. But new approaches are needed to achieve this goal.

Reducing the nicotine levels in cigarettes to non-addictive levels was first proposed by the US Food and Drug Administration in 1994. While it was not implemented at that time, there has been renewed interest in this policy.

New Zealand recently proposed a nicotine reduction strategy as an option for its Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 Action Plan.

US President Joe Biden’s administration is also considering the US Food and Drug Administration’s proposal to reduce nicotine levels to “give addicted users the choice and ability to quit more easily”.

The World Health Organization supports a global nicotine reduction strategy and has provided recommendations for implementing it.

The good news is that it’s possible to reduce nicotine levels in cigarettes, and such cigarettes have already been tested in clinical trials.

Results show people smoke fewer cigarettes when given ones where the nicotine level has been reduced by 95% or more compared to regular cigarettes. They are also more likely to quit smoking. This is because those who smoke regularly find cigarettes with very low levels of nicotine less enjoyable and rewarding.

While it is not ethical to conduct similar studies with young people who do not already smoke, reducing nicotine levels is also expected to reduce the number of adolescents who become addicted to smoking, with promising results from animal studies.

How could alternative nicotine products help?

Allowing only very low nicotine content cigarettes to be sold would require increased investment in smoking cessation services and support, such as nicotine replacement therapies (including patches and gum), prescription medicines, and behavioural support from health professionals.

A nicotine reduction policy for tobacco products has also been made more feasible by the Australian government’s changes to how smokers can access nicotine-containing e-cigarettes from October 1 2021.

While not harmless, e-cigarettes are likely to be significantly less harmful than smoked tobacco products. They can provide an alternative source of nicotine for those who are nicotine dependent, and have been shown to increase quitting compared to nicotine replacement therapy.

À lire aussi :
E-cigarettes: misconceptions about their dangers may be preventing people from quitting smoking

Ensuring access to lower risk forms of nicotine is central to the policies being considered by both New Zealand and the USA.

But there are possible unintended consequences of a nicotine reduction policy. Many people hold misconceptions about nicotine and one risk is that people may believe reduced nicotine cigarettes are less harmful than regular cigarettes. This could reduce motivation to quit smoking.

That’s why we would also need a health education campaign encouraging people to quit tobacco smoking, and warning of the harms of continued smoking regardless of nicotine content.

Another risk is a growth in the illicit tobacco market, which would need to be monitored with increased enforcement effort.

Policymakers may also be concerned about the tobacco industry mounting legal challenges. However, Australia’s successful defence of tobacco plain packaging laws show that such industry challenges can be overcome.

Making it easier to quit — and stop kids ever getting hooked

Michael Russell, a founder of medical approaches to help people quit smoking, famously said if nicotine was removed from cigarettes, people would “be little more inclined to smoke cigarettes than they are to blow bubbles or light sparklers”.

Modelling suggests that mandating very low nicotine levels for cigarettes would give New Zealand a “realistic chance” of reaching its target of less than 5% of the population smoking. It has been estimated that 24 million deaths in the USA would have been prevented if nicotine in cigarettes had been reduced decades ago.

If we make tobacco smoking less addictive, we could prevent a new generation becoming addicted to smoking and help people who currently smoke to quit. And that’s a good thing, given the high cost of cigarettes and their contribution to health inequalities in Australia.

Australia led the world in tobacco policy by introducing tobacco plain packaging laws. Taking a leading role in new tobacco control policies, such as reducing the addictiveness of tobacco products, could help us achieve a smoke-free Australia.

But does Australia have the critical ingredient — political will — to finish the task?

Kylie Morphett is an affiliate of the NHMRC funded Centre for Research Excellence on Achieving the Tobacco Endgame. Her research has been funded by ARC and NHMRC grants. She is a member of The Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco.

Coral Gartner receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Australian Research Council. She is a member of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco, and is a member of Project Sunset, which is a network of tobacco control researchers and advocates who support phasing out the general retailing of commercial combustible tobacco products.

– ref. The missing ingredient Australia needs to kick its smoking addiction for good – https://theconversation.com/the-missing-ingredient-australia-needs-to-kick-its-smoking-addiction-for-good-167973

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Garnett, Professor of Conservation and Sustainable Livelihoods, Charles Darwin University

The federal government has proposed replacing almost 200 recovery plans to improve the plight of threatened species and habitat with “conservation advice”, which has less legal clout. While critics have lamented the move, in reality it’s no great loss.

Recovery plans are the central tool available to the federal government to prevent extinctions. They outline a species population and distribution, threats such as habitat loss and climate change, and actions needed to recover population numbers.

But many are so vague they do very little to protect threatened species from habitat destruction and other threats. And governments are not obliged to implement or fund the plans, rendering most virtually useless.

Until federal environment law is strengthened and conservation management is properly funded, the prospects of our most vulnerable species will continue to worsen – and some will be lost forever.

What’s being proposed?

All threatened species and ecological communities have a conservation advice, and some also have a recovery plan.

Recovery plans and conservation advices both set out the research and management needed to protect and restore species and ecological communities listed as threatened under federal environment law.

Both instruments are usually developed by state or federal environment departments. Recovery plans can be long, complex documents which take several years to draw up and get approved. Conservation advices are usually shorter and less detailed, and are approved when a species is listed as threatened.

The minister is legally bound to act consistently with a recovery plan – for example when considering a development application which would damage threatened species habitat. Conservation advices are not legally enforceable.

The government has been reviewing past recovery plan decisions, and has identified almost 200 threatened species and ecological communities for which it believes a conservation advice will suffice.

They include the spectacled flying fox, the Tasmanian devil and the ghost spider-orchid, as well as the giant kelp marine forests of southeast Australia and NSW’s Cumberland plain woodland.

The government says a conservation advice is a “more streamlined, nimble and cost-effective document” than a recovery plan for identifying conservation needs and actions.

A broken system

On the surface, it may seem the federal government wants to replace a powerful conservation instrument with a weaker one. But in reality, most recovery plans have done little to protect threatened plants and animals – for several reasons.

First, the wording of recovery plans is often vague and non-prescriptive, which gives the minister flexibility to approve projects that will harm a threatened species.

One analysis in 2015 by environment and legal groups exposed weaknesses in the wording around habitat protection. Of the 120 most endangered animals covered by recovery plans, only 10% had plans where limits to habitat loss was clearly stated.

For example, North Queensland’s proserpine rock wallaby is threatened by land clearing for residential and tourism developments. The analysis found its recovery plan contained “no direct and clear requirement to avoid or halt land clearing or other destructive activities”.

The Carnaby’s black-cockatoo, of Western Australia, has lost much of its foraging and breeding habitat to land clearing. Yet its recovery plan also failed to specify limits to habitat loss, allowing substantial clearing to continue.

Second, many recovery plans never come to fruition. In October last year, plans were reportedly outstanding for 172 species and habitats, and the federal environment department had not finalised one in almost 18 months. The recovery plan for the Leadbeater’s possum, for example, was devised five years ago but has never progressed past draft form.

Third, conservation management in Australia is grossly underfunded. This means recovery plans are often just a piece of paper, without funding or a team to implement them.

So will conservation advices work?

A good recovery plan, such as that of the eastern barred bandicoot, includes all the relevant detail of biology, threats, budgets, timelines and targets to turn a population around.

In the next few years, hundreds of recovery plans will need updating – a huge bureaucratic task. Given so many recovery plans have been ineffective, one has to question whether that’s the best use of government conservation dollars.

So will the move to conservation advices do as good a job? Historically, they have contained such scant detail they were of little use. However, this has been changing. Conservation advice for the northern hopping-mouse, and Mahony’s toadlet, for example, provide precise details of habitat and threats.

The Threatened Species Scientific Committee is reportedly working with the federal environment department to ensure all conservation plans provide an efficient, best-practice method for conveying recovery needs. This work is crucial.

There’s some evidence to suggest conservation advices can have legal sway. Conservation advice on the Leadbeater’s possum last year helped persuade a Victorian court to stop logging in some habitat. (The decision was later overturned, for unrelated reasons).

And federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley last year directed A$18 million to koalas on the basis of a conservation advice. This shows they can successfully inform government investment decisions.

À lire aussi :
Australia’s threatened species plan sends in the ambulances but ignores glaring dangers

Looking ahead

Recovery plans will remain vital for species with complex planning needs, such as those that face multiple threats. Conservation advices can suffice in some instances, but also have failings.

Far better than both instruments would be to strengthen regulatory tools, such as critical habitat protection. This can happen independently of recovery plans or conservation advices.

Even better would be for the government to adopt the recommendations of Graeme Samuels’ recent review of federal environment law – particularly his recommendation for national, legally-binding environmental standards to guide development decisions.

But most importantly, the federal government must invest far more in threatened species protection. Without money, many threatened species will continue on the path to extinction.

Stephen Garnett has received funding recently from the Australian Research Council, the National Environment Scientific Program. He is affiliated with Charles Darwin University and BirdLife Australia

– ref. Australia’s threatened species protections are being rewritten. But what’s really needed is money and legal teeth – https://theconversation.com/australias-threatened-species-protections-are-being-rewritten-but-whats-really-needed-is-money-and-legal-teeth-168262

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Tingay, John Curtin Distinguished Professor (Radio Astronomy), Curtin University

Have you ever looked up at the night sky and wondered what it all means? You are not alone. Billions of people before you have done the same. Looking at the stars to make sense of the universe, and our lives on Earth, extends back many tens of thousands of years, across all cultures.

A new 360 degree immersive film, Star Dreaming, set to screen around Australia and internationally, draws on our common wonder about the universe, exploring ancient culture and astrophysics, side by side.

In Australia, the world’s longest continuous culture can also claim to provide some of the first astronomers. Indigenous Australians attach rich meaning to the night sky, and its connection to the land and our environment.

Also in Australia, much more recently, astrophysics has become one of the nation’s most successful and prominent sciences. In Western Australia, one of the world’s largest astronomy projects is being hosted, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).

On the land of the Wajarri Yamaji people, in mid-west WA, the SKA will be the largest radio telescope ever built, detecting radio waves from galaxies forming soon after the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago. This massive project will be completed towards the end of this decade.

Read more:
Aspiration vs delivery: the long road to the Square Kilometre Array

Over the last 13 years, I have been privileged to work with colleagues from Yamaji Art in Geraldton, exploring Indigenous stories about the sky alongside the stories of the Greeks and Romans, and the astrophysical stories about the universe. We have learned from each other and taken our experience to the world through art exhibitions.

Three years ago, we started work on Star Dreaming. It has been filmed using a 360 degree camera and is designed to be shown inside a dome, like a planetarium. Star Dreaming is an immersive experience, combining live action and CGI animation, and a unique cross-cultural exploration.

The film is a narrative, following two children from Geraldton as they discover the astrophysical story of the universe and Yamaji stories of the sky and land. Max Winton and Amangu girl Lucia Richardson make their acting debuts, as do I as “the scientist”.

Filming was interesting and demanding. Over four days, we filmed prototype SKA antennas (from a drone), the landscape (including in scorching hot creek beds), and indoor sequences. The director, Perun Bonser (an Ngarluma man), Julia Redwood (producer), and cast and crew had their work cut out.

The film starts with the Big Bang, the origin of all matter and energy, space and time. We look at the life cycle of stars, and how stars produced the atoms that make up the Earth — and us. Without stars, we would not exist. We explain the speed of light, the temperatures and colours of stars, and the basics of how the SKA works.

This is interwoven with Indigenous stories, like the astonishing Emu in the Sky, which appears after dusk in March/April toward the east, appearing to sit on its nest on the horizon. This is the same time of year when real emus lay their eggs and tend to them.

When the Emu in the Sky appears, Indigenous people know it is time to hunt for the eggs. As Yamaji artist Margaret Whitehurst says in the film, “good tucker!” Margaret and fellow Yamaji artist and poet Charmaine Green lead the kids on an egg hunt, and cook up the results.

Yamaji artists Barbara and Kevin Merritt show the kids the Seven Sisters, the Indigenous story of a hunter pursuing seven sisters across the country and into the night sky — repeated every night.

Turns out, this is almost identical to an ancient story of the Greeks and Romans for this group of stars, also identified as seven sisters (the Pleiades) being chased by a hunter (Orion).

How is that cultures on opposite sides of the Earth, separated by thousands of years, arrive at the same story for the same group of stars? These are mysteries that hint at common origins.

As a scientist, I’ve learned so much from being with the artists and sharing our stories together. I have a much richer perspective on the universe and Indigenous culture, well beyond the night sky, as a result of our time together.

Read more:
Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters is a must-visit exhibition for all Australians

Another Yamaji artist, Wendy Jackamarra, paints the Jewel Box, a colourful cluster of stars right next to the Southern Cross that can only be seen with a telescopes; it comes to life on the screen, as does Margaret’s painting of the Emu in the Sky, and Barbara’s painting of the Seven Sisters. The paintings reveal themselves through CGI, telling their stories as the different elements come together.

I’ve been asked, “what do you want people to take away from the film?” Of course, I want people to come away with a better understanding of Indigenous culture, and to have learned something about the science. But, to me, the film captures intertwined cultural and scientific perspectives that are common to all peoples.

The atoms in our bodies are produced in stars and scattered into space when those stars die, providing the building blocks for planets and life. For many millennia, humans have sat under the night sky and watched all this unfold, our different cultural stories underpinned by our common sense of wonder.

Differences in race, religion, culture, politics, and society melt away with that perspective. We all experience a shared sky, a common origin.

Star Dreaming is screening at the WA Maritime Museum in Fremantle, WA. Keep an eye out for it in major cities and planetaria across Australia before the end of 2021. In 2022 it will be screened around the world. All aspects of the film and the project, including its name, were derived from consultations and formal sign-off between the Indigenous participants, Prospero Productions, and the scientists.

Steven Tingay receives funding from the Australian Government and the Government of Western Australia. He is a member of the Australian Labor Party.

– ref. How making a film exploring Indigenous stories of the night sky enriched my perspective as a scientist – https://theconversation.com/how-making-a-film-exploring-indigenous-stories-of-the-night-sky-enriched-my-perspective-as-a-scientist-167529

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

Malcolm Turnbull has accused Scott Morrison of trashing Australia’s reputation for trustworthiness and putting national security at risk, in a swingeing attack on the Prime Minister’s handling of the cancellation of the French submarine contract.

Turnbull also revealed that since the blow up with France he had spoken to French President Emmanuel Macron – describing him as a friend and “an enormously important figure in global politics”. Macron has refused to take Morrison’s call, after the government quashed its contract effectively without notice.

Turnbull declined to go into the details of Macron’s reaction in their call but indicated French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, who accused Australia of stabbing France in the back, “was not speaking just for himself”.

“France believes it has been deceived and humiliated – and she was,” Morrison told the National Press Club. “This betrayal of trust will dog our relations with Europe for years.

“The Australian government has treated the French Republic with contempt. It won’t be forgotten. Every time we seek to persuade another nation to trust us, somebody will be saying, ‘Remember what they did to Macron? If they can throw France under a bus, what would they do to us?’”

Turnbull said when Morrison did something domestically which was criticised as slippery or disingenuous it reflected on him and the government, but “when you conduct yourself in such a deceitful manner internationally, it has a real impact on Australia.”

“What seems to have been overlooked is that one of our national security assets is trustworthiness,” Turnbull said. Morrison’s admirers were praising him for his “clever sneakiness”, but this was “an appalling episode in Australia’s international affairs” and the consequences would “endure to our disadvantage for a very long time”.

Read more:
View from The Hill: For Morrison AUKUS is all about the deal, never mind the niceties

Turnbull said anyone who raised the unresolved questions about the AUKUS deal for nuclear-powered subs was essentially accused of being unpatriotic.

“I can say to you, I am not getting any lectures on patriotism from Scott Morrison. I defended the national security of this country and its national interest and I know the way that he has behaved is putting that at risk.”

Turnbull said Moorison defended his conduct by saying it was in Australia’s national interest. “So, is that Mr Morrison’s ethical standard with which Australia is now tagged: Australia will act honestly unless it is judged in our national interest to deceive?”

The government should have been honest and open with the French – who produce nuclear submarines – about exploring the acquisition of nuclear-powered boats. Macron would have been supportive, Turnbull said.

“Let us assume that after this discussion the conclusion was that only a US or UK submarine would do. If the contract was terminated at that point, nobody could say that Australia had been dishonest or sneaky. France would be disappointed, but not betrayed, disrespected or humiliated,” Turnbull said.

“Morrison’s response is to say that he could not be open and honest with Macron because the French might have run to Washington and urged Biden not to do the deal. That tells you a lot about how confident he is about the commitment of the Americans.”

Turnbull said despite its “awkward birth” he hoped AUKUS was “a great success. It should be. We are already the closest of friends and allies – none closer.”

Turnbull is off to Glasgow

Turnbull revealed he will attend the Glasgow climate conference

Asked what message it would send if Morrison did not go (the Prime Minister has indicated he might not), Turnbull said, “History is made by those who turn up. If Mr Morrison decides not to go to Glasgow […] his absence will send a pretty strong message about his priorities. This is a critical conference.”

Pressed on what Australia’s present 26-28% 2030 emissions reduction target should be raised to, Turnbull said there were plenty of scientists who said it should be 70%, but it should be at least 45% or 50%.

He was cagey on whether he would endorse climate-focused independents at the election if the government didn’t produce a satisfactory climate policy. Still a member of the Liberal party, he said “I haven’t made a decision about that”. “I will wait and see, I reserve my rights, as they would say.”

The NSW government this week boosted its 2030 emissions reduction target to 50%, from its previous target of 35% reduction.

Read more:
Grattan on Friday: After the deal on security, Scott Morrison turns to the shift on climate

Morrison is negotiating with Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce to embrace a net zero by 2050 target for the Glasgow conference.

In awkward timing on Wednesday Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, who is preparing the way for the 2050 net zero target, and Nationals Senate leader Bridget McKenzie, who took a swipe at Frydenberg this week, appeared jointly. They were talking about the coming end of the COVID disaster payment, but were inevitably put on the spot about climate policy.

McKenzie wrote in her opinion piece in the Australian Financial Review: “It is easy for the Member for Kooyong [Frydenberg] or the Member for Wentworth [Dave Sharma] to publicly embrace net zero before the government has a position, because there would be next to zero real impact on the way of life of their affluent constituents”.

Questioned about this Frydenberg said: “Climate change has no postcode. Climate change is a global challenge that requires national solutions.”

He said the government was “having very positive and constructive internal discussions. Not everyone will agree on every point.

“But it shouldn’t be seen as a binary choice between the regions and jobs. It shouldn’t be seen as a binary choice between city electorates or suburban electorates and regional electorates.

“When you reduce emissions in accordance with a well considered, funded plan, you actually create jobs.”

McKenzie said one message in her opinion price was to challenge the assumtion that “rural and regional Australians are anti climate and the National Party anti–caring for the climate.”

Her second message had been “that we had a job to do in the National Party and that is to stand up for our constituents and the industries that not just prop up our own local economies, but indeed prop up our national economy”.

“And the third message was that in this very, very serious debate, there are MPs out there, Josh isn’t one of them, Sharma isn’t one of them, but there are MPs out there who want to be cool for the climate, want to be cool on climate change, want to be popular without actually understanding and assessing and evaluating the consequences of these decisions.”

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. Turnbull slams ‘deceitful’ Morrison for giving Australia a reputation as untrustworthy – https://theconversation.com/turnbull-slams-deceitful-morrison-for-giving-australia-a-reputation-as-untrustworthy-168961

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

With the 2022 election looming, local activists are mobilising in many government seats to sponsor independent candidates. The push – stronger and more organised since the 2019 election – is driven especially by concerns about climate change and integrity issues, as well as the general declining faith in the major parties,

There will be substantial money and campaigning help for the more viable independent candidates. Businessman Simon Holmes à Court, with his Climate 200, is putting together a war chest that currently has more than $1.5 million, while former independent member for Indi, Cathy McGowan, who pioneered the “Voices” movement, is assisting local groups with advice on how to mobilise support.

Asked why people have shifted towards campaigns such as ‘Voices of’, Holmes à Court says these groups “are being set up by people who feel really let down”. He says expected target seats include Wentworth, North Sydney and Mackellar in Sydney, and Flinders, Kooyong and Goldstein in Melbourne. Hume may be also on the list. “There is a very strong ‘vote Angus [Taylor] out’ group [that] makes that an interesting seat as well.”

Noting many of the “Voices” groups are in safe seats, McGowan says “there’s a sense that if you’re in a marginal seat, you get better service from either the government or the opposition. But if you’re in a safe seat for either of those teams, you get missed out on… [the locals] want better representation and then they want more, certainly on policy areas”.

She points out crossbenchers can be “really effective. […] And I think people like the calibre of the crossbench. And in many cases they’re much, much more effective than a backbench, either in the opposition or in the government.”

Additional audio

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

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. Politics with Michelle Grattan: The push to run independents on issues of climate and integrity – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-the-push-to-run-independents-on-issues-of-climate-and-integrity-168950

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Craig Mark, Professor, Faculty of International Studies, Kyoritsu Women’s University

Fumiko Kishida will become the next prime minister of Japan after winning a dramatic runoff in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leadership vote today.

He will be Japan’s third prime minister in just over a year, replacing the deeply unpopular Yoshihide Suga, whose fortunes began to fall after he followed Shinzo Abe into the prime minister’s office last September.

In a surprise result, Kishida, a former foreign minister, narrowly beat his main rival, Taro Kono, the popular vaccine minister, 256–255 in the first round of voting by party members. The two female candidates, ultra-nationalist Sanae Takaichi and liberal Seiko Noda, meanwhile, were eliminated.

In the second round of voting, which is dominated by the LDP’s members in the Diet (Japan’s parliament), Takaichi’s supporters, with the backing of Abe, threw their weight behind Kishida and secured his election.

Kishida’s rise through the ranks

The mild-mannered Kishida, 64, comes from a family of parliamentarians — both his grandfather and father were members in the Diet.

As a child, Kishida spent three years in New York when his father was posted to the US as a senior trade ministry official, where he attended public school in Queens. After graduating from prestigious Waseda University in Tokyo, Kishida had a short stint in banking before becoming a member of the House of Representatives in 1993.

As Japan’s longest-serving, post-war foreign minister in Abe’s government from 2012–17, Kishida helped arrange US President Barack Obama’s historic visit to Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in 2016.

Despite representing Hiroshima in parliament, he defended Japan’s policy of remaining out of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, citing the need to rely on the extended nuclear deterrence of Japan’s ally, the US.

After Kono replaced him as foreign minister, Kishida was briefly defence minister, and then took the post of LDP policy chief.

As a leader of one of the LDP’s powerful factions, which were instrumental to his victory in the leadership vote, Kishida is perceived as more able to build consensus than the headstrong Kono.

Read more:
Who will replace Yoshihide Suga as Japan’s prime minister? Here’s a rundown of the candidates

Unlike Kono and his similarly abstinent predecessors Abe and Suga, Kishida does enjoy a drink, having once reportedly challenged Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to a drinking contest of vodka and sake.

Critics say Kishida is too indecisive, which could leave him open to influence by the party’s faction chiefs, particularly those from Abe’s more hardline nationalist group.

This could result in a push to alter Japan’s constitution to allow a more belligerent defence policy and further delay reforms to gender equality, which would go against the majority of public opinion.

Where does Kishida stand on major issues?

Kishida will be designated Japan’s 100th prime minister by a special session of the Diet on October 4, and then formally appointed by Emperor Naruhito.

He is then expected to announce his new cabinet. Many party heavyweights are likely to stay in place, such as deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso, Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi and Defence Minister Nobuo Kishi, Abe’s younger brother.

Takaichi and Noda may also be returned to the cabinet to boost gender equality, with only two women in the outgoing Suga cabinet. Kono will also likely be kept in the cabinet, if only to keep his ambitions in check.

Kishida will then immediately lead his party into a national election, which must be held before November 28.

Assuming the LDP retains power, which is highly expected, Kishida will face the challenge of completing Japan’s much-criticised COVID-19 vaccination rollout and then leading Japan’s post-pandemic recovery.

Read more:
Why are Japan’s leaders clinging to their Olympic hopes? Their political fortunes depend on it

During his leadership campaign, Kishida pledged to spend tens of trillions of yen to stimulate the economy, prioritising those on lower incomes, struggling regional areas and the tourism industry. This would take Japan further from Abe’s neo-liberal economic policies – nicknamed “Abenomics” – which worsened income inequality in society.

While committed to having Japan reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, Kishida has supported restarting the country’s idle nuclear reactors, investing in small modular reactors and fusion technology to do so.

Although Kono made the surprising move to come out in support of same-sex marriage during the campaign, Kishida is noncommittal on the issue.

He also does not favour female imperial succession, but he does support changing the law to allow women to keep their family names after marriage.

As a member of the nationalist lobby group Nippon Kaigi, Kishida says he will “consider” visiting the controversial Yasukuni shrine dedicated to Japan’s war dead, even though this would anger neighbouring China and South Korea.

How about foreign affairs?

In foreign affairs, little is likely to change. Kishida will likely continue Japan’s promotion of the Quad – the security grouping made up of Japan, the US, Australia and India — and may even adopt Kono’s proposal to develop nuclear-powered submarines.

Read more:
With vision of a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’, Quad leaders send a clear signal to China

Japan may also seek to join the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance, another of Kono’s suggestions.

Kishida will continue to boost Japan’s Self-Defence Forces – including developing longer-range missiles – to deter China’s incursions in the East China Sea. He also backs Taiwan’s application to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) — a major trade agreement China is also seeking to join.

However, Kishida regards maintaining stable relations with Beijing as a priority, as China remains Japan’s largest trading partner.

Does the opposition have a shot in the election?

Even though the LDP is favoured to win the national election, Kishida’s elevation to prime minister will give a bit more hope to the opposition parties, who would have feared campaigning against the high-profile Kono.

The main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party has formed an agreement with the Japanese Communist Party and two other minor parties not to run against each other in order to maximise their chances of unseating marginal LDP members.

This alliance is still unlikely to defeat the LDP, but it may be enough to substantially reduce its current two-thirds majority in parliament (which it enjoys with its coalition partner, Komeito).

Kono, meanwhile, is certainly willing to bide his time and cultivate his already prominent profile for yet another attempt at the party leadership, due to be held in three years.

That is, unless Kishida succumbs to one of the LDP’s frequent political scandals, or like Suga, fumbles policy badly enough that he is driven to an early resignation, keeping the revolving door of leaders going.

Craig Mark 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. Who is Fumio Kishida, Japan’s new prime minister? – https://theconversation.com/who-is-fumio-kishida-japans-new-prime-minister-168472

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By C Raina MacIntyre, Professor of Global Biosecurity, NHMRC Principal Research Fellow, Head, Biosecurity Program, Kirby Institute, UNSW

The latest New South Wales roadmap to recovery outlines a range of freedoms for fully vaccinated people in the state when 80% of those aged 16 and over are vaccinated.

Unvaccinated people will remain restricted, but will have the same freedoms by December 1, when 90% of adults are expected to be vaccinated.

The relaxing of restrictions will occur in three stages, at the 70%, 80% and 90% vaccination mark, with many restrictions dropped by December 1.

This includes relaxing the 4 square metre density rule to 2 square metres in most indoor venues; and no indoor mask mandates in most venues except public transport, airports and for front-of-house hospitality staff.

The problem is, other countries such as Israel already tried relying mostly on vaccines to relax restrictions – and failed, albeit at lower vaccination levels than NSW is aiming for.

Vaccines alone may not enough to protect against the highly contagious Delta variant.

So who is most vulnerable under the current plan, and how should the NSW reopening plan change to protect these groups and the wider population?

Read more:
NSW risks a second larger COVID peak by Christmas if it eases restrictions too quickly

Vulnerable group 1: children

About 20% of the population is under 16 years. The 80% adult target corresponds to less than 70% of the whole population, leaving plenty of room for Delta to spread.

One in three children aged 12 to 15 have had a single dose of vaccine, but it may be next year before this age group is fully vaccinated.

Another 1.2 million NSW children under 12 will remain unvaccinated. This is the largest unvaccinated group. With no requirements for unvaccinated primary school children to wear masks, and no plan to ventilate classrooms, outbreaks will almost certainly occur.

In the US, counties with school mask mandates had much lower rates of COVID in children that counties that did not mandate masks. One unvaccinated teacher who took off her mask to read to a primary school class resulted in 26 people becoming infected.

While children get mild infection compared to adults, around 2% of children who get Delta are hospitalised. Of these, some will require ICU care and a proportion will die. This becomes more apparent when there is high community transmission, and high case numbers in unvaccinated children.

The Doherty report estimates 276,000 Australian children will be infected in the first six months after reopening in the most likely scenario, with 2,400 hospitalisations, 206 ICU admissions and 57 child deaths in that time.

Vulnerable group 2: Aboriginal people

Aboriginal communities in NSW are especially vulnerable to epidemics, contracting COVID and getting severe disease.

There are relatively more children in the under 12 age category in Aboriginal communities, which leaves a much higher proportion of the community unvaccinated.

We saw in the Wilcannia outbreak that a high proportion of cases were in children.

Read more:
COVID in Wilcannia: a national disgrace we all saw coming

Despite this, vaccination rates for Aboriginal communities continue to lag about 20% behind the rest of NSW.

Allowing unrestrained travel into these communities before vaccination rates are high enough to afford protection may be disastrous.

Vulnerable group 3: regional NSW

Remote and regional communities are also vulnerable, because of fewer health services and difficulties with access to care.

An outbreak would disproportionately affect regional NSW.

Vulnerable group 4: people with disability

People with disability, many of whom have significant health conditions, are also at high risk.

Vaccination rates for NSW participants in Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme lag state rates by about 14% despite being prioritised in the national rollout.

In the UK, 58% of COVID deaths in the United Kingdom were among people who had a disability. People with intellectual disability were eight times more likely to die of COVID than the general population.

Vulnerable group 5: people with cancer and other conditions

Adults and children living with cancer and other conditions that suppress the immune system may have a poorer response to COVID vaccines, and may need a third dose.

Read more:
Why is a third COVID-19 vaccine dose important for people who are immunocompromised?

The need for third dose boosters in susceptible people is recognised and programs to deliver these are underway in many countries.

Some are vaccinating specific groups: the United States and United Kingdom are providing boosters to all people 65 and 50 years and over respectively.

Others, such as Israel and many European nations, are starting with older adults and immunosuppressed people, and later including the rest of the population.

Australia is yet to formulate such a plan.

Children under 12 years with cancer (not yet eligible for vaccination), also deserve to be protected, by vaccines and/or other measures to stop the spread of COVID in the community.

The consequences of overwhelmed health systems on timely diagnoses and treatment of cancer and other serious illness is already being seen in NSW.

A layered plan for a safer reopening

Currently available vaccines alone will not be enough to control Delta. We will need layered protection including safe indoor air, testing, tracing and masks to continue our lives freely when lockdowns lift.

Here’s what we propose:

1. Implement vaccine targets for at-risk groups

We need to make sure no disadvantaged group is left behind, and that vaccine targets are met for all these groups.

For Aboriginal people, we recommend 85-90% targets be met.

For other groups such as people with disability, particularly those living in congregate settings, higher vaccine targets should also be considered.

Read more:
Vaccinations need to reach 90% of First Nations adults and teens to protect vulnerable communities

2. Make indoor air safer

NSW needs a plan to address indoor ventilation, because the virus is airborne.

This has already occurred in Victorian schools, and should be an important part of lifting restrictions in NSW.

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

The plan should ensure homes, businesses, schools and other public venues have safe indoor air, and that the community is as well informed on safe air as it is on handwashing, so that people are empowered to mitigate risk in their own homes.

3. Maintain high rates of testing and tracing

We must maintain high testing capacity, make rapid antigen testing widely available, and improve contact tracing capacity.

Suggestions of stopping QR code scanning and thereby reducing contact tracing capacity are misguided, and will result in a resurgence of infection.

We do contact tracing routinely for all serious infections such as TB, meningitis and measles, and need to continue this for COVID-19.

4. Plan for booster doses

We also need to address waning immunity from vaccines and be pro-active about booster doses, particularly for those with reduced immunity or who are immunocompromised, and for health care workers.

For the rest of the population, there is enough real-world evidence protection starts to wane as early as five to six months after vaccination.

It is urgent we address this for health workers and other priority groups such as aged care residents, who were mostly vaccinated six months ago or longer. This is not only for their own safety but to prevent health system collapse from under-staffing due to illness or burnout.

Let’s avoid future lockdowns

In the post-lock down world, NSW will likely face a Delta resurgence if multiple restrictions are simultaneously relaxed, as we have seen in countries overseas.

Dropping most restrictions is also likely to result in repeated stop-start lockdown cycles, prompted by health system strain when cases surge.

Only layered, combined protections will provide a chance of safer and sustainable re-opening until we await the promise of second generation vaccines, boosters and smarter vaccine strategies.

C Raina MacIntyre receives funding from NHMRC (Principal Research Fellowship and Centre for Research Excellence) and MRFF.

Anne Kavanagh receives funding from the NHMRC, ARC, and the Victorian and Commonwealth governments.

eva.segelov@monash.edu receives funding from Cancer Australia

Lisa Jackson Pulver has received ARC grants and NHMRC grants.

– ref. Relying only on vaccination in NSW from December 1 isn’t enough – here’s what we need for sustained freedom – https://theconversation.com/relying-only-on-vaccination-in-nsw-from-december-1-isnt-enough-heres-what-we-need-for-sustained-freedom-168833

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Liam Burke, Associate Professor and Cinema and Screen Studies Discipline Leader, Swinburne University of Technology

Bluey, the Emmy award-winning animated series about a family of anthropomorphized cattle dogs, has become a ratings phenomenon since it was first broadcast on the ABC in 2018. Bluey follows the eponymous six-year-old Blue Heeler, her younger sister, Bingo, and their playful parents, Bandit and Chilli.

As part of our new research project, Australian Children’s Television Cultures, we are surveying audiences about how they interact with Australian children’s programming.

From over 700 adult responses, Bluey was the TV program parents were most keen to watch with their children. Respondents celebrated its unambiguously Australian setting, irreverent humour, and family orientated themes at a time when other children’s content, such as the dead-eyed nursey rhymes of YouTube channel Cocomelon, seem to only offer generic, computer-generated distractions. Indeed, many adults without children said they watch Bluey.

One respondent described Bluey, which is set in Brisbane, as “representative of an idealised Australian ethos — relaxed, curious, and hard-working”.

Read more:
‘Making up games is more important than you think’: why Bluey is a font of parenting wisdom

Another, an early childhood educator, emphasised that “Australian children need Australian shows”. And as a parent explained,

It’s nice for children to see familiar landmarks and have issues that are current to them, as opposed to Peppa Pig and needing to explain why we don’t have snow at Christmas”.

One aspect of Bluey audiences consider particularly relatable is the family dynamic, including the games Bluey and Bingo play with their resourceful parents. One locked-down Australian mother has even created “50 Days of Bluey”, guidelines for home activities inspired by the show.

Bluey’s games include: “Daddy Robot” in which a “malfunctioning” Bandit teaches Bluey and Bingo the importance of tidying up; “Rug Island”, a kids-only oasis that the Heelers create in their backyard; and “Mount Mumandad”, in which Bluey and Bingo climb their exhausted parents after they have collapsed on the couch.

Then there’s the humour: described by one respondent as full of Australian cultural nuances. As one parent noted,

Bluey ‘gets’ parents perfectly … we enjoy watching it so we steer our kids towards it.

Read on many levels

The show can be read on multiple levels, which is why it can appeal to adults too. For instance, a recent Father’s Day episode saw Bluey’s dad, Bandit, discuss his conflicted feelings about getting a vasectomy with another dad.

As Bandit explained, “I’m keen to get it done, but, Chilli, [his wife] she wants to keep her options open”. This adult moment in what is ostensibly a kids’ cartoon generated much discussion on social media. One fan tweeted

I’m a grown man wondering if a cartoon dog family is going to have a baby. Weird life this is.

From election day barbecues to Queenslander houses and backyards, early audience responses to our study agree Bluey offers a snapshot of Australia. However, many were quick to point out this snapshot doesn’t provide the full picture.

Bluey has been gently criticised for a perceived lack of diversity. The show centres on a hetero-normative nuclear family in a world largely populated by able-bodied characters, with Anglo-Australian names and accents. As one respondent noted

We’re definitely getting better [at reflecting Australian culture] with shows like Bluey, but as a gay man I would love to see more LGBT representation in kids’ shows. It would be nice as a kid to know you’re valid.

Nevertheless, many of this study’s early participants felt that on the whole, kids’ TV was becoming more reflective of wider Australia. Children’s content praised for providing greater diversity of representation included Indigenous Australian-led shows Little J & Big Cuz and Jarjums.

National babysitter Play School was celebrated for its continued commitment to featuring hosts from a variety of backgrounds, and the greater diversity in The Wiggles’ new line-up was applauded.

Taking ‘bush wees’ global

One respondent wondered if the humour and references in Bluey were “lost on audiences outside of Australia”. However, since the Walt Disney Company acquired the show’s international broadcasting rights in 2019, Bluey has been reaching a wide overseas audience.

While some small accommodations have been made for international viewers — “capsicums” became “peppers” in the UK and a gag with a pooping pony was cut for Disney Junior — the show has resisted being watered down. As such, it is taking bilbies and “bush wees” to global audiences.

At a time when the commercial broadcaster quotas that previously protected local kids’ TV have been scrapped and international shows like Paw Patrol and Peppa Pig can be instantly summoned by tapping on a smart-phone, the local enthusiasm for Bluey is heartening.

Read more:
Cheese ‘n’ crackers! Concerns deepen for the future of Australian children’s television

“I have friends in the US whose kids watch Bluey and they say their kids are talking in Aussie accents,” noted one respondent with pride.

Said another: “Bluey will be forever iconic not just to kids but their parents, not just in Australia but all over the world”.

Our research project, Australian Children’s Television Cultures, aims to better understand the role and responsibility of local Kids’ TV. You can participate in this research by clicking on the following link. You can also follow us on Twitter.

Liam Burke receives funding from the Australian Children’s Television Foundation (ACTF).

Djoymi Baker receives funding from the Australian Children’s Television Foundation (ACTF)

Jessica Balanzategui receives funding from the Australian Children’s Television Foundation.

Joanna McIntyre receives funding from the Australian Children’s Television Foundation (ACTF).

– ref. ‘An idealised Australian ethos’: why Bluey is an audience favourite, even for adults without kids – https://theconversation.com/an-idealised-australian-ethos-why-bluey-is-an-audience-favourite-even-for-adults-without-kids-168571

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Perran Ross, Postdoctoral research fellow, The University of Melbourne

The whine of the mosquito is unpleasant and often inescapable outdoors on summer evenings. Mosquitoes track you down from tens of metres away by sensing carbon dioxide in the air you breathe out. Within seconds, they home in on exposed skin and feast on your blood with an array of specialized needles.

Only female mosquitoes drink blood, which is how they spread deadly diseases like dengue fever and malaria. Males mosquitoes are harmless, mostly feeding on nectar, but our new research confirms they are just as annoying as female mosquitoes.

Our study, published in the Journal of Medical Entomology, dispels a common misconception that male mosquitoes avoid people. In fact, male mosquitoes from at least one common species probably like you just as much as females do – but the reason for their fondness and the way they express it are very different.

The backyard and the laboratory

We used a simple experiment to test if male mosquitoes from the species Aedes aegypti, which spreads dengue, seek out people. We released mosquitoes into a large arena, the size of a suburban yard, and had willing subjects sit in a chair as bait. Cameras facing the subjects filmed mosquitoes as they flew nearby. We confirmed that male mosquitoes are indeed attracted to people.

Female mosquitoes are after your blood, but male mosquitoes just want to hang out. In our experiments, male mosquitoes continuously swarmed around people but rarely landed. By contrast, female mosquitoes land, drink their fill and then fly away to rest.

People differ in their attractiveness to female mosquitoes, and this also holds true for male mosquitoes.

À lire aussi :
Feel like you’re a mozzie magnet? It’s true – mosquitoes prefer to bite some people over others

Of the two participants in our study, one person was about three times as attractive as the other. The basis of this variation is not fully understood, but the mix of chemicals you emit from your skin is likely to be important.

We also tested mosquito attraction in small cages in the laboratory. In this environment, males showed no apparent interest in people, while female mosquitoes did. This is likely because male mosquitoes can’t detect some of the close-range signals that female mosquitoes can.

If they’re not after our blood, what do male mosquitoes want?

Why are male mosquitoes interested in people if they can’t feed on your blood? We think it’s all about finding the females. Since female mosquitoes are often around people, male mosquitoes that have the same inclination should have greater reproductive success.

But more work is needed to understand the how and why. Almost all behavioural research so far has focused on female mosquitoes.

À lire aussi :
A genetic approach to mosquitoes can stop them spreading infections

However, there is growing interest in releasing modified male mosquitoes to sterilise female mosquitoes, which gives our research practical applications.

So, not all mosquitoes you see are out for your blood. Some just want you as their wingman, whether you like it or not.

Perran Ross ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.

– ref. Male mosquitoes don’t want your blood, but they still find you very attractive – https://theconversation.com/male-mosquitoes-dont-want-your-blood-but-they-still-find-you-very-attractive-168751

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Enqi Weng, Research Fellow, Deakin University

A lack of religious literacy by journalists – and a failure of news programs to feature a wider variety of faith leaders – is having an impact on the quality of coverage of major news stories and events in Australia.

Our new peer-reviewed article, Blessed Be the Educated Journalist, sheds light on the media’s limited understanding of the range of religions and faith traditions in Australia.

We focused on a specific case study of producers selecting talent for the ABC’s Q&A program. However, we argue ABC journalists are not the only ones who have failed to improve their limited understanding of religions outside Christianity and Islam.

The country’s religiosity landscape is changing: while Australians are increasingly reporting themselves to be non-religious (from 22% in 2011 to 30% in 2016), more than half (52%) of the general population still claims affiliation with Christianity. And minority religions such as Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Sikhism are fast growing.

To responsibly report news in a country of religious “superdiversity”, knowledge of the full range of belief systems should similarly be superdiverse.

Read more:
Yes, religion plays a more prominent role in politics. But ‘secular Australia’ has always been a myth

How reporting on religions has been flawed

Some well-funded projects have made substantial efforts to educate Australian journalists about Islam in the past 20 years, but there has not been equivalent education around other faiths. And very few of these other faith leaders are ever featured in the news.

Change can be difficult for Australian journalists who are, by nature, a sceptical bunch unlikely to align themselves to any particular faith. Journalists generally have a higher level of non-religiosity compared to other people (70% reported having no religion in 2016, compared to 30% of the general population).

Read more:
Explainer: what is Pentecostalism, and how might it influence Scott Morrison’s politics?

And as newsrooms have shrunk, many have lost religion reporters and others with religious expertise who are able to report knowledgeably on different faiths.

As a result, basic factual errors can creep into reporting. For example, the Pentecostal church the prime minister attends is Horizon, not Hillsong – they are different churches. And the religion predominantly practised in the South Sudanese community is Christian, not Muslim.

Other times, the media lack proper balance when it comes to including a variety of faith leaders in their reporting. There’s also often a lack of awareness of the need to include voices from less-prominent faith and spiritual groups, such as Indigenous Spirituality, mysticism, animism, Bon and Wicca.

In recent reporting on the COVID crisis, some reporting has similarly lacked nuance and more detailed understanding of people’s faiths. This has led to generalisations and misconceptions in the broader community.

For example, Muslim, ultra-Orthodox Jewish and Orthodox Christian communities have received negative attention for breaking COVID rules, without adequate explanation of the traditions or beliefs of those in the faiths.

The narrative that religion is the sole cause of many problems can also be misleading, especially if the media play a role in crafting that. The ABC’s Religion and Ethics Report recently reported on research dispelling the assumption that religion is a key driver of conflict.

Catholic perspectives dominated ABC panels

My (Weng) analysis of religions discussions on the Q&A program from 2009–13 found that Catholic perspectives dominated, while others were excluded.

These discussions also took place around Christian dates of significance or with regard to specific Christian topics, while other religious representatives played adjunct roles. Discussions related to Islam also occurred at times without Muslim representation and input.

I also questioned why the prominent atheists Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens were key contributors to discussions on Australian religions on the program. This allowed them to shape, influence and reinforce understandings of religions from their particular British colonial view.

Why does it matter?

The news media continue to be significant sources of information about religions, especially for those who are not part of a religious community themselves or personally know anyone religious.

Yet, the rich diversity of cultures and religions in Australia has not yet translated into increased media representation or more knowledgeable reporting on religions.

Australian journalists need to be exposed to a wider range of faiths through training programs similar to the Reporting Islam Project. Given the success of this initiative, the materials could simply be reproduced to deepen knowledge about other religions.

Read more:
Unis are killing the critical study of religion, and it will only make campuses more religious

Research shows that investing a bit of time in training can have massive returns in the way journalists and journalism students think about and report on religion.

Our universities can do their part by retaining religious studies programs instead of dismantling them in the face of budget cuts.

Religious studies are more critical than ever before, especially in the training of those who shape the way others see the world, such as journalists and politicians.

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. Australia is rich with religious diversity. So why are our newsrooms falling behind? – https://theconversation.com/australia-is-rich-with-religious-diversity-so-why-are-our-newsrooms-falling-behind-165321

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samantha Lee, Adjunct Research Fellow, Centre for Ophthalmology and Visual Science, The University of Western Australia

How does our DNA relate to our personality and appearance? — Emma, age 9, Sydney

Hi Emma. Thank you for this great question!

Our body is made up of trillions of cells, each of which has a nucleus that holds our DNA.

Our DNA is made up of more than 20,000 genes. You can think of genes as the the instructions which help decide what we look like, how our bodies work and even our personalities.

We get half our genes from our biological mother and the other half from our father. That’s why we don’t look exactly like our parents, but we may look a bit like them — and may also think and act similarly to them.

That said, each of us still has a unique collection of genes overall. That means no two people carry exactly the same genes, not even brothers and sisters. And that’s why each of us has a unique appearance and personality.

What do our genes decide?

Our genes help explain many parts of our appearance, like how tall we are and the colour of our eyes.

They also have a hand in our other skills, such as how fast we can run, how good we are at solving problems, and whether we enjoy talking to new people (rather than if we feel shy).

By studying a person’s genes, scientists can tell whether that person is more likely to have blue or brown eyes, without even seeing them.

They may also be able to tell that person how likely they are to develop certain medical conditions later in life, such as cancer or myopia (when you can’t see far-off objects as clearly).

Read more:
Curious Kids: Why do people get cancer?

Not everything is determined by genes and DNA

Although genes are important, they’re not the only reason for why we look, think, feel and act as we do — or why we’re more likely to have certain diseases. While some traits such as eye colour are mainly determined by our genes, an eye injury can change someone’s eye colour.

Our habits, such as how much we eat and exercise, also have a big impact on who we are and what we look like. If you eat too much junk, you’ll probably get chubby and start running slower, regardless of the genes your parents gave you.

Our environment at home, school and/or work play a key role in shaping us, too. Take myopia. Before the discovery of the more than 400 genes for myopia, scientists noticed children are at least three times more likely to be myopic if either one or both parents are. They realised if someone has trouble seeing far-off objects, there’s a decent chance this is related to genetics.

At the same time, however, there is currently a surge in myopia happening around the world, with more people becoming myopic even though their parents are not!

Researchers discovered our environments and habits play a huge role in myopia development. For instance, they found myopia (and the need to wear glasses) is more likely to happen among people living in cities rather than the country, and those who spend less time outdoors.

The way we perceive colour is also influenced by both our genes and environment. You might remember the social media trend of #thedress that went viral back in 2015.

The world was torn over whether the dress (below) is actually blue and black, or white and gold. Researchers later found the way we see colour in this dress is 34% related to our genes and 66% linked to environmental factors.

Read more:
Curious Kids: why are people colour blind?

Genes and personality

“Personality” describes the relatively stable ways in which people think, feel and act. And again, genes do a pretty good job of explaining why some people are more outgoing and energetic, while others tend to be more moody and anxious.

Our genes also help explain how smart we are. But one surprising finding is our genes have more of an effect on us as we age. Among children, about 40% of the differences in intelligence scores are explained by genes. In young adults, this increases to about 60%, even though it’s the same genes that continue to affect intelligence.

This is most likely because our genes can impact which environments we prefer, and adults often act on their preferences.

For example, most adults do not get told when to go to bed at night! And adults who enjoy learning new things can choose to spend their time in libraries and art museums, or taking classes. In other words, adults can choose the environments and activities that best express their genes.

The future is in your hands

You can think of your genes as a way to understand yourself — but not as a way to make decisions. For example, just because someone’s parents may not have been able to go to university, they themselves can if they study hard.

Or, a person’s parents may be overweight, but that doesn’t mean they have to be. They can still join a sprint team if they’re willing to put in the effort.

Even though your DNA and genes shape a lot of your personality and appearance, remember: they do not determine your life story.

David Mackey receives funding through a National Health and Medical Research Council Practitioner Fellowship.

Samantha Lee and Serena Wee 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 does our DNA relate to our personality and appearance? – https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-how-does-our-dna-relate-to-our-personality-and-appearance-168489

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ferran Martinez i Coma, Senior Lecturer in Political Science, Griffith University

Australian women have long been under-represented in parliament. Although our country was the first in the world to give women the right to stand for election, we currently rank 56th in the world for female representation, just behind Uzbekistan, Zimbabwe, Germany and Suriname.

By comparison, New Zealand is sixth.

So why, in 2021, do we have a situation where less than one-third of MPs in the House of Representatives are women?

In our newly published research, we investigated whether the low numbers were due to discrimination of female candidates by voters or political parties. We found that while Australian voters used to preference men over women at the polls, they don’t tend to any more. Parties, on the other hand, do.

There are several ways in which parties can impede women getting elected. One is simply not to put them forward as candidates. Another slightly more subtle way is by preselecting them to stand for unsafe or marginal seats.

With this approach, you get to tick a box and maybe meet a quota, but you’re not making a genuine attempt to create real change.

Read more:
The missing women of Australian politics — research shows the toll of harassment, abuse and stalking

More women candidates, but fewer in safe seats

Australian voters have a history of preferring male candidates over female ones. Studies in the past have shown that women candidates of the major parties in Australia in the 1990s and the early 2000s obtained proportionately fewer votes than men.

We wanted to see if this had changed in the 21st century.

In our study, we looked at all federal House elections since 2001 to see how many candidates were women, whether they were running for safe seats, and if voters tended to support them less than men. We used the same definition of an unsafe or marginal seat as the Australian Electoral Commission.

Our research included data from 2001–19 on all 7,271 House candidates, of whom 2,101 were women.

In terms of the raw numbers, we found that Labor has increased its proportion of women candidates over the past two decades, reaching a high of 45% at the 2019 election. This placed it ahead of all other parties, including, for the first time, the Greens (42.4% in 2019).

The Liberals also fielded their largest percentage of female candidates in 2019 at 33%.

While Labor has done particularly well in terms of how many women it has put forward, it has less to brag about when it comes to the seats these women are contesting.

In fact, Labor has stood women in more unsafe seats than men at each lower House election since 2001. In 2019, 19.1% of women standing for the ALP were in unsafe seats, compared to 10.8% of men.

The Liberals had a smaller percentage of women in unsafe seats than men in two elections (2004, 2010), but a higher percentage in the other four. In 2019, 13.9% of women standing for the Liberals were in unsafe seats, compared to 11% of men.

Voters tend not to discriminate against women

While major parties are continuing to discriminate against women in this way (and others), we find a different story with voters.

Across all House seats, female Labor candidates have actually performed substantially better with voters than male candidates at four elections (2004, 2007, 2010 and 2013) and worse in just two (2001 and 2019).

As for female Liberals candidates, it’s more mixed. They performed better than male candidates in 2001 and 2010, but not in the three subsequent elections.

That’s still a much rosier picture than for female Nationals candidates, who have always done worse than their male counterparts.

When we ran further statistical checks, we discovered that, if everything else that might affect vote numbers is held constant (such as the marginality of the seat, number of other candidates, incumbency, and so on), female Labor candidates receive around 1,400 more votes per seat than male Labor candidates in the 2001-19 period.

In those same conditions, with all else held constant, Liberal voters don’t tend to favour women over men (or vice versa), and the same is true of the Greens.

Read more:
Australia can do more to attract and keep women in parliament – here are some ideas

What can parties do to address this?

So, what do our findings mean for Australia’s parties if they really want to increase the number of women in parliament?

First, quotas work. Only Labor has used enforceable quotas to try to increase the number of women among its candidate base — and it has succeeded.

Similar binding quotas would not only boost the number of female candidates put forward by the Coalition parties and the Greens, but would also likely have an impact on the numbers of women eventually elected to parliament.

Read more:
Julia Banks’ new book is part of a 50-year tradition of female MPs using memoirs to fight for equality

But Labor cannot rest on its laurels. Our results show it needs to build on its quota system by standing more women in winnable seats. If it does not, it leaves itself open to accusations of box-ticking.

Fielding more women in seats they can genuinely win is in the interests not only of political parties, but of democracy in Australia.

For reasons of representation, women should account for more seats than they currently do. Moreover, there are benefits for the country’s political culture: research has shown that women in parliament are often more collegial and more inclined to find bipartisan solutions.

In short, given that Australian voters no longer tend to preference men over women when it comes to candidates, it is surely not in the interests of the major parties to continue to do so, either.

Ferran Martinez i Coma receives funding from Australian Research Council Discovery Project, Grant number DP190101978.

Duncan McDonnell receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Why are there so few women MPs? New research shows how parties discriminate against women candidates – https://theconversation.com/why-are-there-so-few-women-mps-new-research-shows-how-parties-discriminate-against-women-candidates-167977

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Medha Majumdar, Fox International Fellow at Yale University; PhD Candidate at the Australian National University, Australian National University

We know Australian politics has a “woman problem” — the figures speak for themselves. Only 38% of all federal MPs are women, and there is a continued dearth of women in leadership positions.

We are also hearing increasing stories of the discrimination, sexism and outright abuse women face when forging a political career. Whether it be a junior political staffer or Australia’s first female prime minister.

Read more:
The missing women of Australian politics — research shows the toll of harassment, abuse and stalking

My research, done with the support of ALP-affiliated women’s organisation EMILY’s List Australia, examines the impact that violence against women in politics has had on the progress of women’s political leadership in Australia.

It investigates why it happens, how widespread it is and what the consequences are.

Speaking to women in politics

I conducted interviews with nine current and former MPs, election candidates, and volunteers and staffers from the ALP in 2021.

I also ran an anonymous survey open to women with experience at all levels of government: local, state and federal. Women across party lines participated in they survey. While the sample size of the survey is small (30), women wrote lengthy statements about their experiences.

My research charts women’s political careers from when they are girls interested in politics, to becoming volunteers and staffers, elections candidates, and finally members of parliament.

I found that at each stage, experiences of abuse and harassment force some women to abandon their aspirations for political leadership and at times, a political career entirely.

Harassment, bullying, assault

Many people start their formal political involvement as party volunteers or staffers. Violence and harassment were widespread among volunteers and employees of political organisations I surveyed.

• 83% of respondents said that they had been harassed, intimidated and verbally abused in the course of their work

• 77% reported being bullied

• 43% had been subjected to inappropriate sexual advances and behaviour

• 30% had been physically assaulted

The abuse mostly occurred within the workplace itself, or at a work-related event. In most cases, the identity of the perpetrator was known to the respondent. Unsurprisingly, 74% reported abuse and harassment had a negative impact on on their interest in continuing a career in politics.

As one respondent explained:

Verbal and physical harassment while working as a campaign volunteer gets very tiresome. After working on ten years of campaigns the negatives start to outweigh the positives. I have withdrawn from political participation as a result of constant online and real-life abuse.

What happens if you try to run for parliament?

If they were nominated as a candidate, some interviewees described facing threatening intimidation tactics from other members of their party to discourage them.

Read more:
‘Expect sexism’: a gender politics expert reads Julia Gillard’s Women and Leadership

This includes bullying behaviour, threats of isolation and back-listing within the party if they do not withdraw from the pre-selection process. Interviewees also described being “backgrounded” against or having rumours spread about them. This was particularly the case when they challenged favoured candidates or the fixed outcome of a pre-selection

As one interviewee explained:

When someone comes up out the blue, it threatens these predetermined outcomes. Because egos are on the line, and it has been done this way for a long time, people just use these intimidation tactics. They feel like they can justify that as politics. But it is very macho style of factional politics.

Candidates who are pre-selected go on to face abuse from members of the public and supporters of opposing candidates.

Expecting abuse in office from the public

If they survived this and were elected to public office, the threatening messages and abuse women MPs face from the public is relentless, particularly on social media.

In part, this abuse is the product of having a public profile. However, while male MPs also receive abuse, women are more often subjected to explicitly sexual and violent threats. In 2016, the Inter-Parliamentary Union (a global body of parliaments around the world) found this abuse is targeted at women MPs to discourage them from being vocal and politically active.

The women MPs interviewed said abuse is so normalised as to be expected in public office. Some reported having stalkers, as well as needing police patrols and close personal protection. More than one MP reported moving house because of the ongoing threat of violence.

You have to ensure that you are taking it seriously, particularly if the threats involve your office and staff. The threats are serious, because one day someone could lose their mind and try to kill you.

Harassed by other MPs

They also experience bullying and harassment from other MPs within parliament house.

For women MPs, harassment takes the form of repeated intimidating behaviour and unwanted sexualised attention. Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young is one federal MP who has spoken about this publicly. Recently, former Liberal MP Julia Banks described an unwanted sexual advance from a cabinet minister. Culturally and linguistically diverse women interviewed reported additional sexualised fetishism and attention.

As one interviewee described:

There were men who wolf-whistled, “Look at you, you look so good today”. I don’t take it just because I am a woman.

The missing women

Survey research already shows many young women think women MPs are treated unfairly by the media and male MPs. And that parliament house does not have a safe culture.

The poor reputation of politics discourages girls from choosing a career in politics in the first place. They are questioned by their friends and family about whether they will be safe working for a parliamentarian or political party.

One interviewee described her recent conversations:

I have actually had young women say to me, “I was so excited when I got offered a job as a staffer. [But] my parents said to me ‘Why would you go and work there? It is not safe.’”

Interview participants also expressed finding it difficult to encourage young women into a career in politics, knowing they could face abuse:

I find it really hard at the moment with what is going on with the Brittany Higgins story to be able to say those things I used to say. Which is, “it is a really honourable role to be a member of parliament. We need more really good female leaders. You should really consider stepping up. I would be happy to mentor you.”

So, the violence against and harassment of women in politics perpetuates itself to undermine the progress of women’s political leadership and representation in Australia.

My research suggest there are untold numbers of women who should have been in positions of political influence and leadership, but were put off.

They are the missing women of Australian politics.

How does this change?

My report makes 27 recommendations to reduce the prevalence of abuse and harassment against women in political organisations and politics more broadly. These include:

• young women and girls must be targeted to become engaged in politics. They need to be shown that they already hold the personal qualities needed to be a political leader (i.e. they don’t need to fit a “macho mould”)

• all political parties should make not engaging in intimidation, bullying and harassment a requirement of receiving party endorsement

• political parties should review its pre-selection rules in order to promote transparency and competitiveness of contests, and reduce the ability of intimidation and bullying tactics to be used

• safety guidelines for candidates in elections should be released by police forces and electoral commissions in Australia

• political parties should provide online self-defence training to MPs and their staff to tackle online abuse.

My interviewees were also adamant there must be robust complaints mechanisms and support structures within political parties and the Australian parliament. It is noted the new 24 hour complaints mechanism that launched last week for MPs and staff has already been criticised by former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins as inadequate.

Read more:
Politics with Michelle Grattan: Kate Jenkins on the women’s agenda

Ultimately, we must raise our demands and expectations of each other and our political leaders. Public office should be a place for people of the highest character and as citizens we should expect no less.

As a community we can no longer accept that enduring abuse and harassment is the cost of doing politics.

Medha Majumdar conducted this research as part of the Julia Gillard Next Generation Internship 2020-21 with EMILY’s List Australia. She is a member of the Australian Labor Party.
Medha receives funding from the Australian Government and the Westpac Scholars Trust to undertake her PhD research.

– ref. The missing women of Australian politics — research shows the toll of harassment, abuse and stalking – https://theconversation.com/the-missing-women-of-australian-politics-research-shows-the-toll-of-harassment-abuse-and-stalking-168567

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lara Herrero, Research Leader in Virology and Infectious Disease, Griffith University

Delta was recognised as a SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern in May 2021 and has proved extremely difficult to control in unvaccinated populations.

Delta has managed to out-compete other variants, including Alpha. Variants are classified as “of concern” because they’re either more contagious than the original, cause more hospitalisations and deaths, or are better at evading vaccines and therapies. Or all of the above.

So how does Delta fare on these measures? And what have we learnt since Delta was first listed as a variant of concern?

Read more:
Is Delta defeating us? Here’s why the variant makes contact tracing so much harder

How contagious is Delta?

The R0 tells us how many other people, on average, one infected person will pass the virus on to.

Delta has an R0 of 5-8, meaning one infected person passes it onto five to eight others, on average.

This compares with an R0 of 1.5-3 for the original strain.

So Delta is twice to five times as contagious as the virus that circulated in 2020.

What happens when you’re exposed to Delta?

SARS-CoV-2 is the virus that causes COVID-19. SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted through droplets an infected person releases when they breathe, cough or sneeze.

In some circumstances, transmission also occurs when a person touches a contaminated object, then touches their face.

Once SARS-CoV-2 enters your body – usually through your nose or mouth – it starts to replicate.

The period from exposure to the virus being detectable by a PCR test is called the latent period. For Delta, one study suggests this is an average of four days (with a range of three to five days).

That’s two days faster than the original strain, which took roughly six days (with a range of five to eight days).

The virus then continues to replicate. Although often there are no symptoms yet, the person has become infectious.

People with COVID-19 appear to be most infectious two days before to three days after symptoms start, though it’s unclear whether this differs with Delta.

The time from virus exposure to symptoms is called the incubation period. But there is often a gap between when a person becomes infectious to others to when they show symptoms.

As the virus replicates, the viral load increases. For Delta, the viral load is up to roughly 1,200 times higher than the original strain.

With faster replication and higher viral loads it is easy to see why Delta is challenging contact tracers and spreading so rapidly.

What are the possible complications?

Like the original strain, the Delta variant can affect many of the body’s organs including the lungs, heart and kidneys.

Complications include blood clots, which at their most severe can result in strokes or heart attacks.

Around 10-30% of people with COVID-19 will experience prolonged symptoms, known as long COVID, which can last for months and cause significant impairment, including in people who were previously well.

Longer-lasting symptoms can include fatigue, shortness of breath, chest pain, heart palpitations, headaches, brain fog, muscle aches, sleep disturbance, depression and the loss of smell and taste.

Is it more deadly?

Evidence the Delta variant makes people sicker than the original virus is growing.

Preliminary studies from Canada and Singapore found people infected with Delta were more likely to require hospitalisation and were at greater risk of dying than those with the original virus.

In the Canadian study, Delta resulted in a 6.1% chance of hospitalisation and a 1.6% chance of ICU admission. This compared with other variants of concern which landed 5.4% of people in hospital and 1.2% in intensive care.

In the Singapore study, patients with Delta had a 49% chance of developing pneumonia and a 28% chance of needing extra oxygen. This compared with a 38% chance of developing pneumonia and 11% needing oxygen with the original strain.

Similarly, a published study from Scotland found Delta doubled the risk of hospitalisation compared to the Alpha variant.

How do the vaccines stack up against Delta?

So far, the data show a complete course of the Pfizer, AstraZeneca or Moderna vaccine reduces your chance of severe disease (requiring hospitalisation) by more than 85%.

While protection is lower for Delta than the original strain, studies show good coverage for all vaccines after two doses.

Can you still get COVID after being vaccinated?

Yes. Breakthrough infection occurs when a vaccinated person tests positive for SARS-Cov-2, regardless of whether they have symptoms.

Breakthrough infection appears more common with Delta than the original strains.

Most symptoms of breakthrough infection are mild and don’t last as long.

It’s also possible to get COVID twice, though this isn’t common.

How likely are you to die from COVID-19?

In Australia, over the life of the pandemic, 1.4% of people with COVID-19 have died from it, compared with 1.6% in the United States and 1.8% in the United Kingdom.

Data from the United States shows people who were vaccinated were ten times less likely than those who weren’t to die from the virus.

The Delta variant is currently proving to be a challenge to control on a global scale, but with full vaccination and maintaining our social distancing practices, we reduce the spread.

Read more:
Why is Delta such a worry? It’s more infectious, probably causes more severe disease, and challenges our vaccines

Lara Herrero 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. How contagious is Delta? How long are you infectious? Is it more deadly? A quick guide to the latest science – https://theconversation.com/how-contagious-is-delta-how-long-are-you-infectious-is-it-more-deadly-a-quick-guide-to-the-latest-science-165538

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Boulet, Research Fellow, BehaviourWorks Australia, Monash University

From the farm to the plate, the modern day food system has a waste problem. Each year, a third of all food produced around the world, or 1.3 billion tonnes, ends up as rubbish. Imagine that for a moment – it’s like buying three bags of groceries at the supermarket then throwing one away as you leave.

Wasting food feeds climate change. Food waste accounts for more than 5% of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. And this doesn’t include emissions from activities required to actually produce the food in the first place, such as farming and transport.

One of the largest sites of food waste is the home. In Australia, households throw out about 2.5 million tonnes of food each year. That equates to between A$2,000 and $2,500 worth of food per year per household.

But there’s some good news. Our Australian-first research, released today, identified the six most effective behaviours anyone can do to reduce food waste. Combined, these relatively small changes can make a big difference.

What we did

Food waste by households is a complex problem influenced by many factors. Some, such as food type, package size and safety standards, are out of a consumer’s control. But some are insignificant daily behaviours we can easily change, such as buying too much, forgetting about food at the back of your fridge, not eating leftovers and cooking too much food.

We wanted to better understand the complex nature of household food waste. Together with Australia’s leading food rescue organisation OzHarvest, our research sought to identify and prioritise evidence-based actions to reduce the amount of food Australians throw away.

We reviewed Australian and international literature, and held online workshops with 30 experts, to collate a list of 36 actions to reduce food waste. These actions can be broadly grouped into: planning for shopping, shopping, storing food at home, cooking and eating.

We realised this might be an overwhelming number of behaviours to think about, and many people wouldn’t know where to start. So we then surveyed national and international food waste experts, asking them to rank behaviours based on their impact in reducing food waste.

We also surveyed more than 1,600 Australian households. For each behaviour, participants were asked about:

• the amount of thinking and planning involved (mental effort)

• how much it costs to undertake the behaviour (financial effort)

• household “fit” (effort involved in adopting the behaviour based on different schedules and food preferences in the household).

Consumers identified mental effort as the most common barrier to reducing food waste.

Read more:
What a simulated Mars mission taught me about food waste

What we found

Our research identified the three top behaviours with the highest impact in reducing food waste, which are also relatively easy to implement:

• Prepare a weekly meal at home that combines food needing to be used up

• Designate a shelf in the fridge or pantry for foods that need to be used up

• Before cooking a meal, check who in the household will be eating, to ensure the right amount is cooked.

Despite these actions being relatively easy, we found few Australian consumers had a “use it up” shelf in the fridge or pantry, or checked how many household members will be eating before cooking a meal.

Experts considered a weekly “use-it-up” meal to be the most effective behaviour in reducing food waste. Many consumers reported they already did this at home, but there is plenty of opportunity for others to adopt it.

Some consumers are more advanced players who have already included the above behaviours in their usual routines at home. So for those people, our research identified a further three behaviours requiring slightly more effort:

• Conduct an audit of weekly food waste and set reduction goals

• Make a shopping list and stick to it when shopping

• Make a meal plan for the next three to four days.

Our research showed a number of actions which, while worthwhile for many reasons, experts considered less effective at reducing food waste. They were also less likely to be adopted by consumers. The actions included:

• Preserving perishable foods by pickling, saucing or stewing for later use

• Making a stock of any food remains (bones and peels) and freeze for future use

• Buying food from local specialty stores (such as greengrocers and butchers) rather than large supermarkets.

Read more:
Melbourne wastes 200 kg of food per person a year: it’s time to get serious

Doing our bit

Today is the United Nations’ International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste. It seeks to increase awareness and prompt action in support of a key target in the global Sustainable Development Goals to halve food loss and waste by 2030.

Australia has signed up to this goal, and we hope this research helps fast-track those efforts.

OzHarvest is launching its national Use-It-Up food waste campaign today, aiming to support Australians with information, resources and tips. Based on our findings, we’ve also developed a decision-making tool to help policy makers target appropriate food waste behaviours.

Australia, and the world, can stop throwing away perfectly edible food – but everyone must play their part.

Read more:
What can go in the compost bin? Tips to help your garden and keep away the pests

Mark Boulet receives funding from multiple State and Federal government agencies to conduct behaviour change research. for this project, Mark was funded by OzHarvest through the Australian government’s Environmental Restoration Fund.

– ref. Want to reduce your food waste at home? Here are the 6 best evidence-based ways to do it – https://theconversation.com/want-to-reduce-your-food-waste-at-home-here-are-the-6-best-evidence-based-ways-to-do-it-168561

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Xanthe Mallett, Forensic Criminologist, University of Newcastle

The murder of 22-year-old American Gabby Petito, and disappearance of her fiance, 23-year-old Brian Laundrie, have sparked worldwide interest and speculation.

Podcasts have been made covering the case, news outlets worldwide are giving daily updates — it would seem the public’s incessant consumption of true crime is feeding a market need for new material at an increasingly ravenous pace. As of yesterday a Google search of Petito’s name returned over 41,000,000 hits, and between TikTok and Twitter, there are now well over a billion posts with her name as a hashtag.

In June 2021, the couple embarked on a road trip across the US, sharing their trip on social media with her growing fan base. Although the couple were travelling together, on the first of September, Laundrie arrived at his parents’ home in Florida, alone, in their white van. On the 19th of September, Petito’s remains were found, and police have ruled her death as a homicide. An arrest warrant has since been issued for Laundri, but his whereabouts remain unknown.

In essence, Petito’s life, and death, have been co-opted by the media and public as a form of entertainment. It would seem that the proliferation of true crime — and the constant need to feed that monster, have desensitised many to the human stories behind the deadlines.

But what effect does this have on those intimately caught up in these events, and why do some cases become of such significant public interest, while the families of other victims struggle to raise awareness of their own loved ones’ cases?

Read more:
Glamorising violent offenders with ‘true crime’ shows and podcasts needs to stop

Media narratives

There are a number of factors at play here. The first is that there are all the elements present to allow media outlets to create a strong narrative around Petito’s disappearance and death; the endless images and videos she posted to social media of her road trip, the drama of her previous interaction with the police — captured on body camera and showing a very distressed young woman obviously in crisis — the building of the tension with her disappearance, which also acted as a cliffhanger, before the tragic news of her death.

In essence, all of the elements of a popular true crime narrative, with all the mystery, hooks, and tropes of recent shows and podcasts such as Casefile, Bowraville, and Serial.

But this is not a TV show or a movie. This was a young woman’s life, and death, which has now become media fodder, with her final days being treated as entertainment. Theories as to what happened are running rife, current affairs programs are pumping out hastily produced pieces with experts picking apart what we know, and what they predict may have happened.

The media benefit, as it provides high traffic content for the 24-hour news cycle, and clickbait for online stories.

And some individuals are also capitalising on Petito’s case to gain attention. For example one woman co-opted Petito’s murder as her personal brand, posting 70 videos on TikTok in 6 days, rocketing her following from 170,000 people to over 650,000, with many other TikTok users capitalising on the same trend.

Others have created Instagram and Twitter accounts in Petito’s name, in what could be seen as an opportunistic and narcissistic attempt to gain followers.

‘Missing white woman syndrome’

Since Petito’s case went “viral”, a lot of people have pointed out the media’s complicity in creating another case of “missing white woman syndrome”.

Missing white woman syndrome highlights the notion of “worthy” and “unworthy” victims — those who are considered valuable front-page news, and those who aren’t. This refers to the overabundance of coverage of cases of missing white women, and the lack of coverage of people of colour and men.

The argument is not that white women deserve less attention, just that others deserve the same level of interest. This disparity in media coverage has led to calls from Indigenous people, both in the US and Australia, for change.

Consider the case of 20-year-old Ashley Loring Heavyrunner, an Indigenous woman who disappeared in Montana in 2017, whose story was barely given a fraction of the coverage that Petito received by the media. But her story is sadly reflected across Native American communities where there is an epidemic of missing people.

The lack of reporting around Indigenous people’s disappearances highlights the media’s disinterest in helping to raise awareness of missing persons more generally, and that the purpose of news stories is to create a sensationalised narrative for public consumption.

Criminal case as fair media game

My concern, from a criminologist’s perspective, is what happens if this case goes to court, if someone is tried for her murder? Will this saturation of speculation have an impact on the judicial process?

Perhaps we all need to look at how we respond to victims of violent crimes. We can all make a change to the narrative and don’t have to buy into the media feeding frenzy.

This is an important discussion — these women and their lives are not ours to co-opt, to voyeuristically dissect. They are not a form of entertainment.

Xanthe Mallett 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 Gabby Petito case has been exploited by the media. We need to stop treating human tragedy as entertainment – https://theconversation.com/the-gabby-petito-case-has-been-exploited-by-the-media-we-need-to-stop-treating-human-tragedy-as-entertainment-168562

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Apisalome Movono, Senior Lecturer in Development Studies, Massey University

Pacific Island countries are betting big on vaccination as a strategy for resuming tourism by Christmas and bringing much needed relief for their struggling economies.

For much of the Pacific, tourism has long been the goose that laid the golden egg. But the pandemic has underlined how fragile and temperamental tourism can be. It relies on stable social and economic conditions at both destination and source — the opposite of what has happened since early 2020.

While border openings dependent on vaccination rates might seem hasty, some Pacific leaders see it as the only viable path forward for economies that have nosedived because of COVID.

As the South Pacific’s second pandemic summer approaches, the question is how to balance the risk of further outbreaks with a return to tourism and some kind of economic normality.

Race to vaccinate

Against a backdrop of hesitancy and misinformation, vaccination rates in some parts of the Pacific are now breaking world records. Niue and the Cook Islands have almost fully vaccinated all eligible citizens this year.

Samoa is also ramping up its vaccination programme in the hope of joining the Cooks and Nuie if and when travel resumes within a contained New Zealand-Pacific bubble.

With vaccination also gaining traction in the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji, tourism officials are hopeful a fully vaccinated population will allow them to reopen borders while protecting the health and safety of citizens.

Read more:
How Cuban medical training has helped Pacific nations face the pandemic challenge

But some tourism-dependent states that opened earlier are now struggling. Guam had to suspend a “vacation and vax” programme – which allowed international visitors to receive a bonus COVID shot in an effort to jump-start tourism – after a Delta surge caused deaths and mass hospitalisations.

With some 278,000 residents, French Polynesia has recorded more than 40,000 COVID cases and over 600 deaths. With just 54% of the population having received their first vaccine dose, tourism is now largely quarantine-free for fully vaccinated visitors.

In Fiji, despite the virus having spread to tourism spots such as the Yasawa islands, Beqa and Kadavu, tourism stakeholders are optimistic the country (which has begun to ease local restricitions) will re-open its international borders on November 1.

Caution versus desperation

The other side of the coin, of course, is how prepared and willing tourists will be to plan a Pacific holiday — and what conditions are placed on their travel (such as New Zealand’s current quarantine requirement for re-entry).

After opening to quarantine-free travel with New Zealand in May this year, then closing the borders again due to a largely Auckland-based COVID outbreak in August, the Cook Islands has chosen to adopt a cautious approach.

In future, it will allow inbound travel only for fully vaccinated people and only when there has been zero community transmission in New Zealand. Given the stubbornly long tail of Auckland’s current Delta outbreak, this could mean longer delays.

Read more:
Pacific nations grapple with COVID’s terrible toll and the desperate need for vaccines

Similarly, New Zealand has taken a cautious approach with Fiji after declaring it a high-risk country and limiting travel for the foreseeable future. For its part, Fiji is relying on mass vaccination and compliance with COVID guidelines, including stringent enforcement of vaccination for certain workers.

And despite its devastating recent outbreak, Fiji’s government has claimed it is showing regional leadership in managing tourism recovery. The aim is to offer quarantine-free travel to visitors from “green list” countries (Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Canada, Korea, Singapore and parts of the US), with visitors needing to be fully vaccinated and testing negative for COVID before departure.

But the eagerness to re-open isn’t shared by all, including the country’s opposition leader, Bill Gavoka, who has said:

We have got to have our priorities right — health first over the economy. I don’t believe Fiji is ready.

Who wants to travel?

Ultimately, given these many uncertainties, the fate of tourism-dependent Pacific nations will hinge less on government proclamations than on the risk calculations of tourists themselves.

Elsewhere in the world, tourism destinations have tried to reassure travellers while also protecting their own populations. Greece, for example, enacted Operation Blue Freedom with the aim of vaccinating all resident adults on specific islands such as Corfu and Crete by the end of July. Subsequent Delta surges have disrupted re-opening plans, however.

Read more:
Fiji’s other crisis: away from the COVID emergency, political dissent can still get you arrested

Pacific nations could potentially implement similar policies in selected locations. But it remains to be seen how much vaccine “passports”, currently being touted as a prerequisite for international travel, will be the crucial circuit breaker.

The ability to track and trace visitors is also important, with some countries wanting tight oversight of tourist itineraries, while others hope voluntary use of tracer apps will be enough.

However there are limitations on using such technologies in the Pacific because they rely on people owning and carrying a mobile phone, having sufficient data and GPS permanently enabled. Network coverage is very poor in some places, and phones often cannot provide sufficiently detailed location information to determine virus exposure.

Whatever the measures, Pacific governments have a major challenge on their hands, especially given their weak public health systems. Having gambled hard on tourism being a mainstay of their economies, they must now live in hope that the tourism goose can get back to laying its golden eggs.

Regina Scheyvens receives funding from the Royal Society Te Apārangi under a James Cook fellowship.

Apisalome Movono 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. Vax and vacation? Why that Pacific island holiday will still mean ‘traveller beware’ – https://theconversation.com/vax-and-vacation-why-that-pacific-island-holiday-will-still-mean-traveller-beware-168380

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

As well as her interviews with politicians and experts, Politics with Michelle Grattan now includes “Word from The Hill”, where she discusses the news with members of The Conversation politics team.

In this episode, politics + society Senior Deputy Editor Justin Bergman and Michelle canvass the internal brawling that’s happening – which has included Nationals minister Bridget McKenzie attacking treasurer Josh Frydenberg – as Scott Morrison seeks a deal with Barnaby Joyce for the government to endorse a target of net zero emissions by 2050 for the Glasgow climate conference.

They also discuss Morrison’s indication this week that he mightn’t go Glasgow. The aftermath of lockdowns could make it a risky time to be out of the country.

Additional audio

Gaena, Blue Dot Sessions, from Free Music Archive.

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. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Coalition free-for-all over 2050 target – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-coalition-free-for-all-over-2050-target-168855

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luke Grzeskowiak, Channel 7 Children’s Research Foundation Fellow in Medicines Use and Safety – Flinders University & South Australian Health & Medical Research Institute, Flinders University

Pregnancy comes with aches and pains and heightened anxiety about what we put into the body.

A new article published in Nature Reviews Endocrinology has urged caution around taking paracetamol during pregnancy. The paper is a “consensus statement” that brings together analysis by a panel of experts who looked at evidence from human and animal studies of paracetamol use in pregnancy.

Paracetamol use during pregnancy may alter fetal development, say the authors, with long-lasting effects on child health. The authors call for improved education for health-care professionals and patients, less paracetamol use during pregnancy and further research.

Alert but not alarmed

At first glance, calls to minimise paracetamol use during pregnancy are alarming. For those who have taken paracetamol (commonly marketed in Australia as Panadol, Herron Paracetamol, Panamax, Chemist Own or Dymadon) during pregnancy, this could cause anxiety.

This new consensus statement calls for caution, but not concern. The proposed recommendations are largely consistent with current advice provided to pregnant women in Australia.

With any medication in pregnancy, there needs to be a careful balance between treating a maternal condition and protecting the unborn. A trusted health care provider can help reach an informed decision. Paracetamol is no different.

What are the concerns?

Worldwide, more than 50% of pregnant women use paracetamol to treat pain and/or fever. Paracetamol is the active ingredient in hundreds of prescription and non-prescription products. It has been widely regarded for many years as safe to use during pregnancy.

Some, but not all, observational studies in humans suggest paracetamol use during pregnancy may alter fetal development. The new statement notes that paracetamol has been linked to increased risk of certain neurodevelopmental, reproductive and urogenital disorders.

But these studies have limitations. Researchers have found it hard to distinguish the effects of paracetamol from the effects of underlying illness. And there are potential inaccuracies in recording the amount and timing of paracetamol use across an entire pregnancy as are highlighted in the accompanying editorial.

Possible risks of paracetamol use in pregnancy are supported by a number of animal studies, the authors say. For this reason, caution regarding paracetamol use has been advised until a definitive link can be proven or disproven.

It’s worth noting the available evidence suggests any possible harms of paracetamol are likely to be dose-related. As highlighted by the review article, most increased risks have been linked with use in pregnancy for more than two or four weeks. Current evidence suggests limited risks to unborn babies when paracetamol is taken short term.

Timing is also important. Taking paracetamol during the first trimester has been linked to an increased risk of reproductive and urogenital disorders. Neurodevelopmental disorders have been linked to use in the second or third trimester.

Read more:
Domperidone can boost breast milk supply – here’s what you need know

When the benefits outweigh the risks

The potential benefits of taking medication need to be weighed against any possible risks. Paracetamol is recognised as an important medication for treating pain and fever during pregnancy.

If left untreated, these conditions could harm the fetus or the pregnant person (the Nature editorial and statement say the expert advice is “relevant for all people who wish to become pregnant, including transgender individuals, non-binary people and intersex people”).

The review authors recognise the potential benefits of paracetamol use and note untreated pain has been linked to increased risks of depression or anxiety as well as hypertension during pregnancy. Fever in pregnancy is a risk factor for multiple neonatal and childhood disorders, including certain birth defects and miscarriage. There is evidence to suggest that use of paracetamol may reduce these risks.

Read more:
Using cannabis during pregnancy could be bad news for your baby: new research

What are the alternatives?

The optimal management of pain or fever during pregnancy has not been well studied and treatment options remain limited.

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medications (such as ibuprofen) have been linked to miscarriage when used in the first trimester, whereas use after 30 weeks’ gestation can negatively impact kidney and heart/lung function in the fetus. For this reason non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medications are best avoided unless advised by a healthcare professional. The same goes for strong pain medications such as opioids, which should be reserved for the management of severe pain. Paracetamol remains the best choice for the short-term treatment of pain and/or fever during pregnancy.

It is also important to identify the cause of the pain or fever, particularly during pregnancy. Discussions about paracetamol use can lead to further investigation, recommendations for non-medication treatments or the need for different medications.

Read more:
Weight gain during pregnancy: how much is too much?

The bottom line

The new consensus statement does not alter existing recommendations regarding paracetamol use during pregnancy. But it does highlight the importance of thinking carefully before using any medications during pregnancy and raises greater awareness about how challenging making informed decisions about medication use can be.

Better evidence is needed to support decision-making during pregnancy and reduce unnecessary anxiety and concern.

Paracetamol use during pregnancy should be discussed with a health-care professional and used at the lowest effective dose for the shortest possible duration. Non-medication therapies for treating pain or fever should be tried before or in addition to paracetamol. When indicated, short-term use of paracetamol remains the safest medication for the treatment of pain and/or fever during pregnancy.

Luke Grzeskowiak receives funding from the Channel 7 Children’s Research Foundation, The Hospital Research Foundation, and National Health and Medical Research Foundation

Debra Kennedy is affiliated with MotherSafe, the NSW Statewide Medications in Pregnancy and Lactation Advisory Service at the Royal Hospital for Women.

– ref. Take care with paracetamol when pregnant — but don’t let pain or fever go unchecked – https://theconversation.com/take-care-with-paracetamol-when-pregnant-but-dont-let-pain-or-fever-go-unchecked-168747