This Tonga Language Week, Pacific Media Network asked several people how they are celebrating being Tongan. PMN news journalist Khalia Strong shares her story.
“Grandma, can I say I’m ‘afakasi?”
I’m in the kitchen of my grandmother’s home on the North Shore, preparing for a video journalism piece on the Tongan tau’olunga.
“No, you’re palagi”, she says quietly, turning to fill up the kettle for a cup of tea.
“You don’t speak Tongan.”
She’s right, and it’s a blunt truth I’ve struggled with as I’ve tried to reconnect with my culture as an adult.
It’s a truth that makes me feel like I need to justify my Tongan-ness, and almost stopped me telling people my cultural heritage, or even applying for my current job.
But, it’s there, deep down.
Statistics NZ 2018 figures show just 40 percent of New Zealand-born Tongans can speak the language, that figure dwindling from 56 percent in 2006.
Hearing stories of my history, I can see where my own family has leaned away from some of their Tongan roots and done things the “palagi way” to access opportunities and get ahead.
My grandmother, ‘Alieta Strong was born on 6th January 1934. Her mother was Louveve Tohi and she was the 6th child of 10 children. Her father was Robert Hurrell.
As a young woman, she made a vow that she would either marry a palagi or be a nun. Luckily for us grandchildren, she caught the eye of Michael Strong who was the manager at her work in Nuku’alofa, and they were married in St Paul’s Church in 1955.
My grandmother Alieta’s wedding, walking on the tapa cloth that was made by her mother, Louveve Tohi. 1955. Image: Kahlia Strong
I don’t mean any disrespect, but I’m not entirely sure if it was a love match. They had three children before moving to New Zealand in 1965, to a one-bedroom bach in Torbay.
My grandfather Michael, holding my dad Gordon, 2, with Grandma Alieta and their one-year-old daughter Connie, c. 1958. Image: Kahlia Strong
My father, Gordon, remembers being the only dark-skinned boy at Torbay school when he arrived at the age of 9.
To settle into their new country, he and his siblings were only allowed to speak English at home, and only remembers a few words of Tongan now.
My dad, Gordon Strong, 9, in their Torbay home, c. 1965. Image: Kahlia Strong
This attitude was still there in my youth, after many requests to learn the language or Tongan weaving and handicrafts, they were abandoned after first attempts.
My grandmother would make beautiful woven bags and hats to sell at the markets, using her own earnings to eventually purchase a car in New Zealand.
Childhood memories My best memories of Tongan culture stem from my grandmother, and her home near Waiake beach, where she died in 2011.
She stayed connected to our family in the islands, going back to visit every year or so, and would often be picking someone up from the airport, and there always seemed to be a relative staying whenever we visited.
As a child, I remember when Telecom would do their special prices to call the islands, and Grandma would go through her black book, filled with her neat, precise handwriting.
She’d be on the phone for hours.
We’d pick up the phone downstairs and hear her and an Auntie gossiping away, followed by, “Oi! Get off the phone, you lot!” and we’d run away giggling.
Every January for her birthday we had an umu with a big puaka tunu on a spit roast.
There would be music and dancing and so much laughter.
Aunties would kiss my cheeks and uncles would bite my ear.
I’d scurry off with my cousins and we’d try to figure out how we were related, then give up and go running off to find more food or scab $2 from one of the rich uncles.
My Tongan memories are filled with music and colour, family, and food.
Pictures of my Grandma always showed her dressed beautifully, often with a grandchild in her arms, surrounded by family.
Grandmother Alieta with her handicrafts at market. Image: Kahlia StrongGrandma Alieta with my brother Jason, 3, and me aged one, 1990. Image: Kahlia Strong
Present day Our household’s best effort for Tongan Language Week goes to my partner, who is an Englishman and doesn’t speak a lick of Tongan.
“Malo peto Khalia,” he says in a text, proudly repeating it when I walk in the door after a morning spent reading the news on 531pi, “malo peto”.
Although my nine-year-old chickened out of saying “Malo e lelei” in his class zoom, I can’t force him without leading by example, so I’ve signed up for online Tongan classes. They start in a few weeks with the Pasifika Education Centre.
As an adult, it is with great regret that I didn’t make more effort to learn the language, and converse with my Grandma in her mother tongue.
I am more familiar with words in Samoan and Te Reo, so the Tongan language seems more interrupted and punctuated than other flowing, vowel-heavy Pacific languages.
Being just under a quarter Tongan, I can pass for a regular Kiwi, and am aware of the privilege this has afforded me, but looking palagi doesn’t cancel out DNA.
So, I’d encourage my New Zealand-born non-speakers out there, it’s on you now. Speak to your aunties and cousins, hear their stories.
Tell them it’s OK to speak their island language around you. Sign up for some classes or learn some words or songs.
You can’t judge someone for where they are in their language journey, because everyone starts at different places, but the rest is up to you.
‘Ofa atu.
Image: Kahlia Strong
In memory of my dear Grandma, Alieta Strong.
Republished from Pacific Media Network with the permission of the author.
For most of our lives, the rhythms of our days are governed by crystallised routines: we get up, have breakfast, go to school or work, have lunch, dinner, watch TV, go to bed. For families, weekly routines often revolve around kids’ sport or active hobbies.
Then there are times in life when our routines are upended. Mostly these are life transitions like starting school or retiring. Less often, disruption stems from individual crises like sickness or job loss. Even rarer are social upheavals. The COVID pandemic is certainly one of those.
A number of surveys report changes in parents’ and kids’ physical activity and screen time during lockdowns. But what will this mean for their long term health and fitness?
Kids’ activity down, screentime up
According to the Royal Children’s Hospital’s National Child Health Poll last year 42% of parents said their kids had been less active, while only 13% said they had been more active.
An AUSPLAY survey of 20,000 Australians over 15 found 44% of adolescents participated in fewer sports, compared to 31% being involved in more sports. In 2020, out-of-school sports participation at least once a week dropped nationally from 55% to 43% compared to 2019.
One good marker of how active kids are is how much time they spend outdoors. In the National Child Health Poll 42% of parents said their kids spent less time outdoors, compared to 14% who said they spent more time outdoors. Since outdoor time is often limited to one hour during lockdown, the more active kids likely had their time curtailed.
Unsurprisingly, screen time has rocketed. Over half of parents in the same survey said their kids were spending more time using screens and digital media, even when online learning was excluded. Only 5% said their kids were getting less.
Kids are likely to be spending more time in front of screens during remote learning. Unsplash/Thomas Park, CC BY
Parents fared better, especially mums
The story is quite different for parents: 29% say they are getting more moderate physical exercise, slightly more than those who say they are getting less (24%).
The AUSPLAY surveys show an increase in overall levels of physical activity in adults. But these increases are driven almost entirely by women, and mainly middle-aged women. Perhaps women in this age group who have taken on more of the housework and home-schooling burden are using the time they used to spend commuting to go outside for a walk, take a break and socialise.
Middle-aged mums are reporting increases in physical activity during lockdown. Unsplash/Alex McCarthy, CC BY
Under lockdown, some of the important venues for sports traditionally undertaken by men were closed, so team sports were down 40–50% and gym activities were down 36% (though some undertook workouts at home). Meanwhile, common forms of physical activity for women were up — jogging (up 40%), yoga and home exercises (up 39%), walking (up 33%) — as they remained feasible.
Some 58% of parents are doing more exercise with their kids. The 35–54 year-old age group increased this kind of participation by 19–23%.
Physical inactivity has a myriad of negative health effects, such as lower mood, poorer cognition and mental health, weaker bones and muscles and poorer cardiovascular fitness.
Over the long term, physical inactivity increases the chances of becoming overweight and of obesity. It increases the likelihood of early onset for chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, many cancers and mental illness.
If the lockdown trends for lessened physical activity are sustained, it’ll be bad news for our children’s health. The question is, once restrictions ease, will children’s activity levels return to normal?
Children get their physical activity in three main ways: play, active transport (walking, running, cycling and scooting to get somewhere) and sport.
Much of their play happens at school, so will presumably rebound once school’s back. But there have been decades-long declines in children’s active transport (though such activities have enjoyed a renaissance during COVID while families stay within their local neighbourhood).
Both organised sport and schoolyard activity has been disrupted. Shutterstock
The long-term impact on sport is less clear. In June 2020, 32% of parents reported concern about their kids going back to sport after the pandemic, due to ongoing fear of COVID infection. Furthermore, many families are reporting enjoyment of a slower pace of life under COVID with less rushing to sporting games, classes or practice. It is possible that COVID may speed up a decades-long shift in participation for both adults and kids from organised group sports (such as football, basketball and surf lifesaving), to more informal and individual activities (such as cycling, running and surfing).
As a society, it will be imperative that we closely observe trends in children’s (and adults’) activity, as these COVID trends have the potential to leave lasting scars with long-term health consequences.
Targeted efforts to address lockdown-related declines in physical activity may be needed. For now, there is cause for quiet optimism, with vaccination numbers growing, an easing of restrictions in sight, as well as the warmer, longer days of summer ahead.
Tim Olds receives funding from the NHMRC and ARC.
Carol Maher receives funding from the NHMRC and the Medical Research Future Fund
Verity Booth is a member of Exercise and Sports Science Australia
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Egliston, Postdoctoral research fellow, Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology
Facebook/AP
In partnership with eyewear brand Ray-Ban, Facebook has released its first pair of smart glasses, offering wearers the ability to capture photos and videos without even needing to pull out their phone.
The glasses, called Ray-Ban Stories, are now available for A$449 and are functionally similar to devices already on the market, such as SnapChat Spectacles. They allow users to capture images and video and upload them to their social media accounts, via an app called Facebook View.
Users will be able to share content on Facebook and other Facebook-owned platforms, including Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, as well as non-Facebook apps such as Twitter, TikTok and SnapChat. Besides two 5-megapixel cameras, the glasses have three microphones and built-in speakers, so they can respond to voice commands and also be used for calls.
The glasses are the latest step in Facebook’s initiative to develop wearable tech. As chief executive Mark Zuckerberg puts it, such devices represent “a future where phones are no longer a central part of our lives”.
It’s not augmented reality (yet)
Facebook has stressed the glasses do not have any augmented reality (AR) functionality – that is, the ability to overlay one’s view of the physical world with digital images.
That said, during his product launch video, Zuckerberg presents the glasses as a stepping-stone to more fully realised forms of wearable AR — something Facebook has repeatedly hinted at over the past few years. As he puts it, “glasses are going to be an important part of building the next computing platform”.
Mark Zuckerberg revealing Ray-Ban Stories.
With its 2014 acquisition of virtual reality (VR) company Oculus – and numerous other startups in areas such as computer vision – Facebook’s VR and AR development wing, Facebook Reality Labs, has grown so much it now reportedly employs 20% of Facebook’s workforce.
As we argued in a recent paper, Facebook sees AR and VR as a central component of its future, and envisions this technology having a similar impact to the mobile computing revolution of the past decade or so.
This was most recently exemplified in the company’s framing of its social software and hardware in terms of the “metaverse” — a seamless blending of the real and virtual worlds.
These future computing platforms might look something like the company’s announcement of Project Aria — an internal Facebook research project testing the viability of wearable AR smart glasses. Facebook has also been attempting to further integrate AR features into its Oculus VR technology.
One problem for prospective users is that these technologies will require intensive data capture and processing of our bodies, homes and other intimate data.
‘Designed with privacy in mind’
Even without AR functionality, there are still clear privacy concerns associated with a Facebook device that can record whatever you’re looking at.
Perhaps attempting to pre-empt a backlash, Facebook has developed a dedicated privacy policy for the new technology, assuring us:
Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses and Facebook View are ads-free experiences, so you won’t see ads when using the glasses or app. And we don’t use the content of your photos and videos for personalised ads. If you share content to any other app, that app’s terms will apply.
But as with previous forms of smart glasses, such as the widely derided Google Glass, the main privacy issue isn’t protecting yourself from unwanted ads, but protecting other people from being surreptitiously recorded.
Ray-Ban Stories features a small light on the side of the frame, which is illuminated when recording. But it can easily be covered over, and while this would violate Facebook’s terms of service, it’s hard to see how Facebook would realistically stop anyone doing it.
Ultimately, Facebook has put the onus on users to behave responsibly. As outlined in the Stories privacy page, Facebook’s suggested “best practices” include not using the device in private spaces, and advising users not to “engage in harmful activities”. (Facebook’s responsible innovation principles for its AR development staff are similarly vague.)
Facebook’s guidelines for responsible use of its Ray-Ban Stories smartglasses. https://about.facebook.com/reality-labs/ray-ban-stories/privacy
What does Facebook expect to achieve?
Smart glasses have always been a tricky sell. Google Glass was an abject commercial failure because of privacy concerns. Despite being just down the road from Silicon Valley, some bars in San Francisco reportedly banned anyone wearing them, and some residents even reacted with violence.
Given this ignominious track record, what is Facebook hoping to achieve here? We believe — based on Facebook’s broader investments in VR and AR technologies — the ultimate aim is to gradually normalise wearable surveillance technology many people currently have deep and understandable reservations about.
By branding them as a Ray-Ban product rather than a Facebook one, with classic styling rather than a high-tech look, and able to upload to many different social media platforms, the company is trying to sell us on the concept of “smart glasses”, rather than “Facebook glasses”. But if video Ray-Bans become mainstream, who knows what other data-intensive gadgets are lurking just around the corner?
Marcus Carter has received funding from Snapchat, Inc.
Ben Egliston 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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Annamarie Jagose, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and Pro-Vice-Chancellor, University Schools, University of Sydney
K.C. Bailey/Netflix
Our writers nominate the TV series keeping them entertained during a time of COVID.
Those who, like us, grew up gay in the era before narrow-cast television have long been attuned to the queerness of those supporting characters who exist just beyond the limelight.
Less tied than the leads to the heteronormative story arc underpinning most generic product, these peripheral figures have assisted and thwarted straight romance since Hollywood passed its classic three-act narrative structure to broadcast television.
Think of Agnes Moorehead’s Endora, the witchy mother-in-law relentlessly undermining Samantha’s marriage to mere-mortal Darren in season after season of Bewitched (1964-72), or Nancy Jane Kulp’s Miss Jane Hathaway, the bird-watching spinster who made 246 episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies queerly watchable.
Long before there were openly queer characters on television, characters like Bewitched’s Endora were read as queer. IMDB
Abetted by the popularisation of cable television, in the 1990s, gay characters left the sidelines for centre stage. But, even then, queer sidekicks kept up a running commentary on the absurdity of human sexual behaviour. Often, these wayward characters were more memorable than the leads they ostensibly supported.
Like many, we have been seeking reliable distraction to see us through the charmless experience of lockdown. This is less a matter of relieving tedium than of ensuring the everyday calibrations of novelty that make coupled living — and now also working together — fun.
We continue to watch TV as if it were only available on schedule. We restrainedly dole out one or two episodes of carefully curated series per evening, an anti-binge practice (much like our alcohol consumption — or so we maintain to our GPs) in keeping with the demands of our professional lives.
Recently, we found ourselves turning to Master of None, the Aziz Ansari vehicle that marked his transition from ethnic supporting character in Parks and Recreation to post-romantic lead and showrunner in an observational comedy built around his character, Dev Shah.
A first-generation, South Asian actor-foodie living among his kind in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Dev is impeccably turned out and ahead of the hipster curve. Yet he lacks social radar, particularly in relation to gender and sexual rapprochement of any kind, which is largely what the program is about.
Interestingly uncomfortable viewing
Citing cinematic masterpieces and multi-camera sitcom classics with equal reverence, Master of None’s blend of satirical send-up and earnest search for romance makes for interestingly uncomfortable viewing. We are often unsure whether we should be invested in getting Dev and his love-object together, or in keeping them apart.
Again and again, the romantic scenarios on screen register as sexually off, even as they drive the normative rom-com plot onwards. Throughout season one (2015) and two (2017), Dev’s romantic adventures are abetted by his male wingman, Arnold (Eric Wareheim), a Jewish guy as tall and bulky as Dev is small. The role of cynical observer is ceded to his equally oversized butch Black friend, Denise (Lena Waithe).
Waite steals every scene she is in. K.C. Bailey/Netflix
Playing a classic queer supporting character with her low-key, almost affectless presentation, Waithe steals every scene she is in, however few her lines. No surprise then, that after the long hiatus brought about by the well-publicised sexual misconduct allegation against Ansari, he and fellow creator Alan Yang relaunched the series in 2021 by focusing almost exclusively on Waithe’s character.
Bergman’s observational drama followed the breakdown of an established marriage in the wake of an affair, which barely commands screen time. The real interest is in how the original and irretrievably broken coupling nonetheless persists across the advent of new partnerships and the passing of time.
When it first screened, the six episodes of Bergman’s series were said to have emptied the streets of Stockholm and raised divorce rates in Europe as previously shtum couples learned to express their feelings. (A HBO reboot of this series is about to drop. Husbands and wives, be warned.)
Flat caps and drop-crotch pants
In Master of None’s third season, this Bergmanian story plays around Denise. Since season two, she has socially overtaken Dev by publishing an award-winning book and securing a massive advance for a second (a story arc belonging to Ansari in real life).
This financial windfall has enabled her to purchase a colonial-era cottage in upstate New York, which is where, in the season opener, we find her and her girlfriend, Alicia (played by British actor Naomi Ackie), an interior designer specialising in Black antiques and art.
We meet Denise and Alicia in up-state New York. Netflix
Across five “chapters” varying in length from 55 to 20 minutes, all co-written with Waithe, we simultaneously dwell in and fast forward through Denise and Alicia’s relationship. From the honeymoon period, through emotional and career tensions, the things that lesbians go through to have babies with and without each other, and finally, years later (when both have other wives), to a sexual reunion on the down-low in the same cottage, now rented out via AirBnB from a straight couple with poor taste in furnishings.
Across the series, everything from storyline to mise-en-scène gets the Bergman treatment, including the frame itself: no longer the letterboxed format of television circa 2020, but the squarer 4:3 aspect ratio of the 1970s, the decade of our media adolescence.
This boxy retro format captures the boundedness of relationships and situations to which there seems no outside or alternative. The camera is static. Characters wander into shots that seem to anticipate them. Dialogue is measured in pauses not beats.
We simultaneously dwell in and fast forward through Denise and Alicia’s relationship. Netflix
Unlike the earlier seasons, in which Dev’s Woody Allenish romantic tribulations play out across Italy and New York, the third season was filmed in the UK during lockdown.
Created on a sound stage, the make-believe cottage captures the emotional feel of domestic life in the pandemic, when the dimensions of your dwelling assert spatial and temporal pre-eminence over life as it used to be lived.
But Lena Waithe’s Denise, with her flat-billed caps, drop-crotch pants and high-end sneakers, is also a reminder of how the lesbian world continues to expand its televisual co-ordinates, calling up the old to deliver the poignantly new. How our locked-down, lesbian world continues to expand, night in after night in.
Master of None is available to screen on Netflix.
Annamarie Jagose receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Lee Wallace receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
The arrival of the Delta variant in Indonesia has plunged Bali, one of the country’s richest provinces, into an economic crisis and a conflict between beliefs and public health measures.
Mask wearing is now mandatory and a partial lockdown is in place. But many Balinese see the virus as something caused by forces we cannot apprehend and require ritual to appease.
The English word supernatural does not do justice to the depth of this understanding of causation. The Balinese word niskala refers to another level of reality which underlies the everyday reality known as sekala.
The solution therefore lies (at least partially) in ritual, but Balinese ritual is inherently collective – hundreds or thousands of people making offerings and praying together – especially to address a problem on this scale. While this makes sense in niskala terms, in the sekala world of public health it is dangerous.
Last month, the official organisation of Balinese Hinduism (Parisada Hindu Dharma) and the council of customary villages (Majelis Desa Adat) issued a joint statement urging people to restrict the scale of essential ritual observances and the number of people attending. The military and police would be “supporting” the request.
Collapse of tourism sector
Bali hotels and restaurants are all but empty and employees have been laid off or put on minimal salaries. The tiny street-side businesses selling cheap trinkets for tourists have either disappeared or moved into survival mode by selling cheap food for locals.
The secondary layer of industries that once served the now collapsed tourism sector, including building and agriculture, have likewise lost most of their incomes. Official estimates (probably underestimates) are of 100,000 jobs lost.
A complicating factor is that for most people the main concern still appears to be the impact of economic ill health — and getting tourism flowing again. This is obviously desirable in the short term, but does not address the longer-term risks of an economy based almost entirely on a single sector.
Although Bali reopened to domestic tourism, visitor numbers have dropped. Johanes Christo/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Since March 2020, international tourist arrivals fell from around 15,000 per week to a handful. The drop in domestic figures was only slightly less dramatic. Between 2019 and 2020, the number of international visitors dropped by 79%, and by 66% for domestic travellers.
The overall economic impact was from more than 5% annual growth to more than 10% contraction.
Low levels of testing and systemic under-reporting have long obscured real numbers in Indonesia. But when the Delta variant arrived in July, Indonesia became one of the new frontlines — described by some as the next India.
The government consistently tried to minimise the perception of risk and prioritised the economy over public health, but it was finally forced to accept reality and impose (relatively modest) restrictions.
Bali especially had relatively low numbers of infections, even allowing for under-reporting. The main impact was the economic distress caused by the sudden and prolonged collapse in tourism.
Many people had to return to their villages to survive off an already strained subsistence economy. This is a time-honoured safety net whenever tourism has one of its periodic crises and it works — for a while.
But now, many people have been without incomes for well over a year. Support from family, friends or charities is not sustainable indefinitely. People with unpaid debts (usually for motor vehicles or investment in tourism businesses) are in especially difficult situations as interest rates are high and many are selling off assets cheaply to repay loans.
Bali as digital island hub
While there have been some success stories of people rediscovering agriculture, they are exceptions. Most people are waiting and praying for tourism to resume.
The government has been praying too, by sponsoring major rituals in temples of island-wide significance, ostensibly for protection from the pandemic, but also, as the deputy governor put it, for Bali to get “back to normal”.
But it also has more pragmatic plans. Vaccination is a priority, with official figures claiming “100% coverage” with first vaccination and about 36% second vaccination.
Early in 2021, the Indonesian government initiated a plan for 25% of the staff of seven ministries to return to Bali and work remotely from there. There is also a plan for a new five-year visa to attract digital nomads, many of whom have been operating less than legally.
Another key element is an accreditation program for hospitality businesses and tourism attractions to send a message that Bali is ready to welcome tourists, but with strict health protocols.
Until recently, the island remained open to domestic arrivals, but from Java this carries a high risk of infection. There have been plans for re-opening the island to international tourism, but each has been postponed because of new developments.
Since the partial lockdown in July, a further 3,500 hotel employees have been laid off and hotels and restaurants (at least 48 at last count) are now for sale. Hospitals on the island have been overwhelmed, oxygen supplies are low and many expatriates who had ridden out the first wave are now trying to leave.
These risks of relying on tourism have been made glaringly obvious by a series of disruptions over the past decades, beginning with the 9/11 attack in US and including volcanic eruptions and less dramatic epidemics.
The government may finally be persuaded to act on strong advice from the Bank of Indonesia to reduce the dependence on tourism by developing “other sectors such as agriculture, creative economy, digital economy and education”. Such solutions may appear obvious, but are easier said than done.
Graeme MacRae received funding from an ARC Discovery grant from 2017 to 2019.
I Nyoman Darma Putra 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.
New Zealand is under siege from Covid19. We can learn some things from medieval city sieges.
Keith Rankin.
A traditional siege takes place in a fortress, and the besieging agent waits outside the wall or the moat. The defenders also waited, in a battle of attrition; they won if the besieging attackers went away of their own accord (military besiegers were in a sense also under siege, when their own supply lines were weak), or the besiegers were attacked by a third party (eg the cavalry of an allied principality). Waiting was the ‘elimination strategy’.
If there is no prospect that the besieger will go away, and there is no likelihood of rescue from an allied cavalry force, then you – the besieged – are going to have to confront your enemy. The best way to do this successfully is to:
· choose the date and place of the coming battle
· prepare for the battle by being at maximum fitness
We note that high performance athletes prepare for (ie train for) their battles so that they peak on the chosen date or dates. In the military sense, to be a successful defender, you must be prepared to mount the best possible defence.
Choosing the Date and Time for Battle
Covid – the ‘enemy’ – is at maximum strength in winter, and also has a second maximum in hot summer. These are times when people spend much of their time indoors, in poorly ventilated or air-conditioned environments.
The burghers of Adelaide (South Australia) – which gets very hot in summer – should be choosing October and November of this year, for their battle; indeed they have a moatless border to defend. Cooler New Zealander should be choosing January and February 2022. This would indeed match the July and August 2021 dates of the battle fought in England and Europe. While the jury is still out on whether England’s battle has been won (or maybe drawn), Denmark has declared victory; likewise, Sweden seems to have won its battle. Victory means that the virus has become endemic. While Sweden continues to record 1,000 new ‘delta’ cases per day, its last day with more than one death was 25 August.
For New Zealand, including Auckland, to break out of its siege (and siege mentality) in time for these optimal months, New Zealand needs to open up to normal international travel (albeit with arriving travellers having vaccine passports, and rapid saliva tests) after the New Year holiday weekend. [I remember those days of having vaccination ‘passports’ for smallpox and yellow fever; indeed, when visiting Madagascar in 1978 (arriving from Tanzania in Africa) I had to report to a government health clinic in Antananarivo on day 3.]
It means that all domestic quarantines for Covid19 should end on or (preferably) before the beginning of December. (Other limited and local restrictions may still apply, but only as indicated by wastewater testing.) Further, it is essential that the relevant dates be announced this month, so that New Zealanders can make their own plans for a summer without siege. (Those of us with a fearful mindset may of course choose to take a summer ‘staycation’ as a way of using annual leave.)
Most of us know about ‘mission creep’; we just remind ourselves about the extended western military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. ‘Lockdown creep’ is a bit similar. Once in a siege mindset, we find it very hard to let go.
Preparing for Battle
As renowned British television doctor Michael Mosley suggested in The Listener (‘Defeating the Viral Enemy’, 24 July 2021), “tweak your health to reduce the risk of getting seriously ill from Covid”. We need to be ‘fighting fit’ when the necessary opening-up takes place.
The first and most important measure that we can take to boost our ‘host fitness’ is to get fully vaccinated. And there should be no government vacillation around vaccination. By the end of November, every New Zealander over 12 should have been offered a vaccination, and every person who has not had a vaccination in the preceding six months should be classed as ‘unvaccinated’. (I would regard myself as unvaccinated from influenza if, in any year, I miss out on my annual influenza immunisation.)
The second is to recognise that we get vaccinated in order to free ourselves from Covid’s siege. It’s a waste of vaccination resources to vaccinate people and then force them to stay at home for months on end. So it should not be ‘vaccinate and stay at home’; and, it should not be ‘vaccinate and wear a mask’. Rather, it should be ‘maintain vaccination status or wear a mask’. Most people reluctant to get vaccines are even more reluctant to wear facemasks; let them choose, and reward those who do the right thing. When we fight for freedom, we should be rewarded with freedom. Face covers are oppressive, especially but not only in a secular culture.
The second component of our preparation for battle is to open ourselves to the day-to-day acceptable risks of common colds and even (for young people) influenza. (After all, it was only people aged over 65 who were expected to get influenza immunisation; the rest were expected to maintain immunity through regular exposure to seasonal viruses.) The ideal timing for this ‘fitness-exposure’ is spring and early summer. It means that New Zealanders not subject to quarantines should be actively discouraged from wearing facemasks. (We can think of this process of living normal lives in the community as priming ourselves – in the pub, on the bus, on the beach, in the gym – for the coming unavoidable confrontation.) Facemasks, as well as being oppressive, impede rather than facilitate our preparation for the ‘battle’ ahead.
We need to recognise that, for most of us, natural immunity has always been a complement to immunity by vaccination. This principle still applies. Indeed, it would appear that the most-immune people in Europe (and elsewhere) are those who have been both vaccinated against the virus and exposed to the virus. In Aotearoa in January and February, we will need as many people as possible to have been immunised against Covid, by vaccination and with some help from nature, in the preceding months.
The third component of our preparation for battle in the New Year is to eat good healthy foods that support rather than inhibit immune system responses. Thus, it is time to promote, for example, fresh vegetables and fruit, through subsidies and delivery programs; and by allowing greengrocers to stay open during quarantines. Further, it is time to apply substantial disincentives to the consumption of ‘junk foods’ which promote obesity and other comorbidities.
Additionally, people should be encouraged to stock up on Vitamin C supplements, and to take extra Vitamin C from the beginning of 2022 until, at least, the end of winter. I know some public health professionals disapprove of Vitamin C supplementation. But this is a time that the anti-vitamin brigade should keep quiet, and allow the ‘abundance of caution’ principle to prevail; the potential for good from Vitamin C is substantial (albeit disputed), while the health risks of excess Vitamin C are very small. Vitamin C can indeed be part of our preparation for the siege-breaking ‘battle’ ahead.
When does a Pandemic End?
Last week I read the following article, in Practical Ethics: The end of the COVID-19 Pandemic, by Alberto Giubilini and Erica Charters, both from Oxford University. They start: “it is not clear what it means to be in the middle of a pandemic if we don’t know what it means for a pandemic to end”. They continue: “the end of an epidemic is not determined by epidemiological factors alone. Historically, epidemics end not with the end of the disease, but with the disease becoming endemic”.
Among other things the authors discuss the apparent disappearance of SARS (Covid03). And they note that, disappearance is no longer an option for Covid19. (I would argue that elimination could have been a global option back in February 2020, but that poor policymaking in the European Union in that month ensured that this particular Covid genie could never ever be put back into the bottle.)
Giubilini and Charters continue: “A disease is endemic when disease rates are reduced to ‘a locally acceptable level’ and the disease becomes manageable. However, what level is considered manageable and acceptable, particularly for a new disease, is not defined by epidemiology. … There might well be a day in which the WHO declares the pandemic is over. … But that type of announcement will likely not mark the actual end of the pandemic for most. For some – those who have resumed normal life — the pandemic will have already ended. For others, the pandemic will continue not only through the effects of Covid19 related illness, but also through economic hardship, political instability, social dislocation, and non-Covid related health problems that restrictions imply. … Discussions [considering the end of a pandemic] should include input from those who specialise in understanding society, culture, and politics. Such discussions will necessarily involve articulating social priorities and cultural values, and calculating risks and benefits, alongside epidemiological data. Such discussions must therefore involve experts beyond the fields of medicine – ethicists, philosophers, and historians, as well as anthropologists, sociologists, economists, and political scientists. … Even as the virus keeps circulating and recirculating.”
I would add that such discussions should also involve people other than academic ‘experts’. Democracy works in large part because discussions are not confined to politicians and tohunga.
Has the HIV/AIDs pandemic ended? The answer will vary, depending on who you talk to. Likewise, the 1918 influenza pandemic. Certainly, variants of the H1N1 influenza virus continue to circulate. And numbers of deaths (up to 500 per year) were attributed to influenza, and another similar number to road traffic crashes; all these deaths, while lamented, were acceptable in terms of our previously accepted balancing of risk.
Who stands to benefit most by arguing for the perpetuation of restrictions, such as indefinite facemask mandates and compulsory record-keeping? Certainly, I suspect, not the communities who have been most victimised by the Covid19 pandemic. ‘Rogernomics’ in the 1980s put economist technocrats – true believers – at centre-stage, and the more their policy recommendations fell short, the more politicians and journalists sought advice from them. They enjoyed the spotlight. Is there a parallel today, in public health?
Conclusion
Let’s choose to break the Siege of Covid19, in the New Year of 2022. We need to prepare. And we need to understand that success in this ‘battle’ will be something less than ‘total victory’; rather, it will be an assimilation of sorts.
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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
Illustration by Isobel Joy Te Aho-WhiteAuthor provided
Mai i te ētita: Nā Piripi Walker i whakamāori tēnei tuhinga mō Te Wiki o te Reo Māori. Pāwhiria ki konei hei pānui i tēnei tuhinga ki roto i te reo Pākeha.
Ki te hīkoi koe ki roto i tētahi rūma poari, kura pakihi rānei, ka rongo koe i ētahi ingoa, hoki atu, hoki atu, e whakatairangatia ana: Ko Apple tērā, Tesla tērā, ko Google tērā, arā atu, arā atu. Kei hea ngā ingoa nunui, me ngā kōrero whakaharikoa mai i te ao Māori? Kāore i te rahi rawa.
He mea pōuri. Arā te tini o ngā kamupene Māori hei akoranga mō tātou i roto i ā tātou mahi whakahaere, whakapakari hinonga, kia toitū te āhua, kia nui ngā hua mō te motu katoa — he whāinga ēnei kāore i tutuki i te huhua o ngā kamupene o te ao arumoni.
He tini ngā māramatanga mō te whakahaere auaha, whakahaere toitū kua tuia ki roto i ngā tātai kōrero o te ao Māori — mai i a Kupe me te toronga mai o tana tira i te kitenga tuatahi o Aotearoa e 800 tau ki mua, tae atu ki ētahi mahi o ēnei ngahuru tau tata hei whakaora i te reo, te whawhai mō te whenua me te tiaki wāhi tapu.
Me kī, e toru pea ngā mātāpono whakahaere hei whakakapi i ēnei māramatanga. E mea ana mātou ka noho ēnei hei kaupapa e ara pūputu anō i roto i ngā kōrero pakihi whakaharikoa ā ngā rā e tū mai nei.
Me hāpai tautuhitanga whānui kē atu o tēnei mea te ekenga taumata pakihi
Tētahi āhuatanga e kitea nuitia ana i roto i ngā whakahaere Māori, ka tere kitea hoki i roto i ā rātou mahere rautaki, ko te aro nui ki te whai i ngā painga huhua, kaua ko ngā painga ahumoni anake.
I ēnei rā hoki, e kī ana ngā kamupene nui whakaharahara, ko te toitū me ētahi whāinga ehara i te ahumoni tētahi uara nui ki a rātou. Ahakoa ēnā whakapuakanga a ngā kamupene nei, e ai ki te titiro a te nuinga o te tangata, kāore anō ngā whāinga taketake o aua kamupene kia huri ki āhua kē — e noho tonu ana ko te whai kia hua ake he hua moni mā te hunga pupuru pānga, te whāinga nui.
Kāore e pēnei mō te tino nuinga o ngā hinonga Māori, ki a rātou ko ngā pānga ā-hapori, ā-taiao, ā-ahurea kei te pū tonu o ā rātou mahi. He āhuatanga tēnei e mōhiotia ana i te ao Māori, nā te mea, ka noho ēnei uara i waenga pū o te ahurea.
Ka kitea te whakaaro nui ki te hapori, ki te taiao hoki i te ao Māori katoa, mai i ngā pakiwaitara o tua whakarere, ki ngā karakia ka tākina i mua i ngā āhuatanga nunui.
He mea taketake hoki ngā whakaaro whakapūmau i te hapori, i te taiao i roto i ngā tikanga, te pūnaha o ngā uara me ngā mahi ka noho hei wāhi mō tō tātou āhua noho.
Ehara i te mea ka wareware ngā umanga Māori ki ngā āhuatanga o te nuinga o te ao mō te ine i te ekenga taumata. Me kī, ko te ōhanga Māori te wāhanga hohoro rawa ki te tupu o te ōhanga katoa o Aotearoa, ina tirohia te taha ahumoni anake.
Otiia, ko tā te nuinga o ngā kamupene o te ao he aru i te huamoni, ko tā ngā kamupene Māori (me kī, ngā umanga iwi taketake huri noa i te ao), he ara, he pou tēnei mea te mahi moni hei whakapūmau i ētahi atu ekenga taumata tiketike kē atu: te oranga o te iwi, te whāinga reo i waenga i ngā iwi o te whenua o te ao, me te toitū o te taiao.
Te titiro whakamua ki ngā whakatupuranga kāore anō kia whānau mai
Tētahi, ko te mahi a te whakahaere Māori he titiro whakamua ki tua atu i ngā pae tūtata, i mua anō i tāna whakatau take nunui.
I ngā kaporeihana e mōhio nuitia ana, ka aro nui ngā kaiwhakahaere ki ngā putanga hua hauwhā tau, ki ngā hua ā-tau rānei. Ko tā ngā whakahaere Māori he āta whiriwhiri kaupapa mō ngā hua ka puta mā ngā whakatupuranga kei mua i te aroaro, hei ngā ngahuru tau, ngā rau tau hoki kei mua.
Hei tauira, i te tau 1975, i hangaia tahitia e Ngāti Raukawa, e Ngāti Toa me Te Atiawa tāna mahere 25 tau te roa, e mōhiotia nei ko Whakatupuranga Rua Mano. Tētahi o ngā hua o tēnei rautaki ko Te Wānanga o Raukawa, he wānanga tēnei mō ngā akoranga aro ki te ao Māori, kātahi anō he wānanga pēnei ka whakatūria i te ao hou.
I ēnei tau tata, kua tīmata te mahi a te Kaporeihana o Wakatū i tāna mahere rautaki neke atu i te 50 te whāroa. E mea ana a Rachel Taulelei, tumuaki o te kamupene kai, inu hoki a Wakatū e mōhiotia nei ko Kono, e mahi ana te kamupene i raro anō i āna tirohanga 500 tau i roto i ana mahi whakamahere.
Ko tētahi take nui i pēnei ai te roa o te toronga whakaaro o ngā whakahaere Māori ko te whakapapa. Kei runga noa atu te whakapapa i ngā kāwei whakaheke noa iho o te tangata, i te ao Māori. He uara, he āhuatanga noho, ehara au i te tangata takitahi, engari he hononga, he uri nā ōku tūpuna, heke mai ki ahau, ā, heke atu ana ki ngā whakatupuranga o āpōpō.
Ngā hononga ki te hapori
Hei kupu whakamutunga, whakatairanga ai tēnei mea te umanga Māori i tōna hapori hei pūtahi mō ngā whakaaro o ngā whakahaere. Ka whakaatatia tēnei i roto i te āhua o tā rātou waihanga, whakahaere hoki i ā rātou mahi hautū.
Hei tauira, he mea tohu ngā mema poari o ngā kāporeihana nunui (te hunga kawe haepapa mō te ahunga o te ihu o te waka o te hinonga) e ētahi mema o nāianei, nā tō rātou matatau ki ao pakihi. Hei ngā whakahaere Māori, he mea pōti kē ngā poari i runga anō i te pōti o ngā mema katoa o tō rātou hapori.
Nā konei, he matahuhua ngā poari o ngā whakahaere Māori, te matatau, ngā whakaaro, huri noa i te tēpu.
Ko te mea nui pea, ka rangona ngā reo me ngā whakaaro o te hapori i ngā whakatau hira a te hinonga, nā te pōtitanga o ngā mema poari e te hapori.
Hei tauira anō, ko tētahi o ngā whakahaere Māori e mōhiotia ana e mātou kua kawea kētia āna mahi taketake kia hora whare pāpori, nā te kore whare tōtika mō te tini o te tangata o te hapori.
He mea ātaahua te huringa o ngā whakaaro o Aotearoa i ēnei tau tata ki tōna taha Māori. Ahakoa he maha ngā mahi kāore anō kia tutuki, kua huri ngā whakaaro, kua huri hoki ngā ngākau o ngā tāngata o Aotearoa mō te painga o te ako i te reo me te whakamiha atu ki ngā toi Māori.
He akoranga nui ngā whakaaro Māori mō te pakihi, mō te whakahaere, mā tātou. Mā ōna ara whakatika i te korenga e ōrite o te whiwhinga, me te panonitanga āhuarangi, ka āwhina te ao Māori i a tātou katoa kia piki anō te pai o ō tātou umanga.
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.
Illustration by Isobel Joy Te Aho-WhiteAuthor provided
Editor’s note: This article has been translated by Piripi Walker for Te Wiki o te Reo Māori/Māori Language Week. Click here to read it in te reo Māori.
Walk into any boardroom or business school and you’ll often hear the same companies held up as models of excellence: Apple, Tesla, Google and so on. Sharing success stories from te ao Māori (the Māori world)? Not so much.
And that’s a shame. There are many of them, and they can teach us how to manage and grow organisations in sustainable ways that benefit the wider community — goals that often elude large Western businesses.
Insights into innovative and sustainable management are woven through the history of te ao Māori — from Kupe and his crew’s discovery of Aotearoa some 800 years ago to more recent efforts to revitalise te reo, reclaim land and protect wāhi tapu (sacred sites).
Broadly, we can bundle these insights into three management principles. We argue these will be recurring themes in future business success stories.
Embracing wider definitions of success
A common feature of Māori organisations, and one that’s often explicit in their strategic planning, is their focus on judging success against many criteria, not only financial ones.
Nowadays, of course, even the biggest businesses claim to value sustainability and other non-financial outcomes. But it’s usually accepted that the ultimate goal of such businesses has stayed the same — to turn a profit for shareholders.
This is rarely the case for Māori organisations, which almost always put community, environmental and cultural impacts at the centre of what they do. Such an approach comes naturally to those in te ao Māori, as these values are also central to the culture.
Community and ecological concerns are everywhere in te ao Māori, from the ancient pakiwaitara (legends) about how our world came to be, to the karakia (prayers) said before significant events.
Sustaining community and environment is also central to tikanga, the system of values and practices that inform our way of living.
None of this is to say that Māori businesses don’t care about conventional measures of success. In fact, the Māori economy may be the fastest growing part of the New Zealand economy in purely financial terms.
But whereas conventional companies prioritise profit, for Māori (and indeed Indigenous businesses around the world), making money is usually seen as a stepping stone to more valued destinations: community well-being, a political voice and environmental sustainability.
Taking the long view
Māori organisations also tend to take a long-term perspective when making important decisions.
In a typical corporation, managers are hyper-focused on quarterly or annual results. But it’s not uncommon for Māori organisations to approach things from a multi-generational standpoint, where success is measured over decades and sometimes even centuries.
In 1975, for example, the iwi of Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Toa and Te Atiawa jointly created a 25-year strategic plan known as Whakatupuranga Rua Mano (Generation 2000). One of the fruits of this strategy was Te Wānanga o Raukawa, an institute for Māori-focused tertiary education, a first of its kind.
More recently, Wakatū Incorporation has started work on a strategic plan spanning more than 50 years. And Rachel Taulelei, CEO of Wakatū-owned food and beverage company Kono, has been emphatic that the company is working to an ambitious 500-year horizon in its planning.
A major reason Māori organisations think in such long time frames is whakapapa. In te ao Māori, whakapapa is more than just one’s line of descent. It is a value, a way of being that encourages people to think and act not as individuals, but as links in the chain between past ancestors and future generations.
Connections with community
Finally, Māori businesses place their communities at the centre of management thinking. This is often reflected in how they create and maintain their leadership.
In large corporations, for example, board members (those responsible for the overall direction of the organisation) are typically appointed by existing members on the basis of their business acumen. In Māori organisations, however, boards are often democratically elected by the community they serve.
Because of this, Māori organisation boards tend to be diverse in the expertise and viewpoints they bring to the table.
Most importantly, though, the election of board members means community views are represented in an organisation’s most important decisions.
For example, one Māori organisation we know of has been considering a radical departure from its core business into providing social housing because so many in the community are struggling to find affordable places to live.
There has been a welcome shift in Aotearoa’s relationship with its taha Māori (Māori side) in recent years. While there’s still much ground to make up, New Zealanders increasingly see value in learning te reo and recognising Māori artforms.
Māori approaches to business and management can be equally enlightening. By giving us a glimpse of how to tackle troubling issues like inequality and climate change, te ao Māori can help us all build better businesses for the future.
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.
Getting around an Australian city without a car can be a real hassle. Imagine how much easier it would be if you had the option of combining public transport and shared services — be it bus, train, tram, taxi, car share, electric bicycle or e-scooter — and could book and pay for the lot using a single app.
In Finland, this is already an option. The digital platform Whim enables you to book and pay for a trip mixing public transport, ferry service, car rental, taxi, shared bike and even e-scooter.
You simply have to enter your destination in the app, and Whim recommends the best options. You can pay on a subscription or pay-as-you-go basis. It’s convenient, flexible and better value than booking each leg separately.
The concept and technology behind Whim is known as Mobility as a Service — or MaaS. The aim is to promote more sustainable modes of travel and make individual car ownership unnecessary for urban mobility.
Whim has now expanded to the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Switzerland. Could such service work in Australia?
MaaS in Australian cities must obviously contend with both supply and demand challenges. On the supply side, challenges include lower population densities with less comprehensive alternatives to private vehicle use. Emulating the success of Whim would also need something like Finlnad’s national transport law, which requires mobility services to make their data and APIs open to third parties.
On the demand side, Australians have a high rate of car ownership, with fixed costs creating incentives to use those vehicles, rather than alternatives.
Could a MaaS service tempt more Australian to leave the car at home? Our research suggests some room for optimism, with 44% of 331 adults we surveyed saying they would use a MaaS regularly if it was available. But translating that enthusiasm into actual behavioural change will require getting many moving parts to mesh.
We conducted our survey at the end of 2020. Our survey sample was broadly representative of Australian society. There were more women (59%) and people with degrees (40%, compared with 35% of all Australians aged 20-64). About 13% had an annual income of more than $100,000. About 84% owned a car (roughly in line with the rate of car ownership suggested by statistics).
Attitudes towards the MaaS concept were generally very favourable. Of the 144 of 331 participants who said they would use MaaS on a regular basis if it was available, 75% said they would use for social trips, 72% for commuting to work and study, and 66% for general trips (shopping, errands, visiting the doctor etc).
At the last census of Australian’s travel modes (in 2016), 69% drove to work, with another 5% being car passengers, 4% walking and 5% working from home. This means 17% used other modes. In our survey 31% indicated they were open to using MaaS for commuting.
Of course, there is almost always a difference between good intentions and actual behaviour. The phenomenon of response bias in surveys, with the desire to appear pro-social influencing respondents’ answers, is well documented.
Nonetheless our results do suggest MaaS could make a difference in shifting travel habits, not to mention making urban travel much easier for those without cars.
MaaS in Australia
Our research underlines the importance of a MaaS service being intuitive, easy to use, reliable, efficient and economical.
This last point has also been shown by the results of the one MaaS trial so far done in Australia.
The Sydney Maas trial,ran from November 2019 to March 2021 involved 100 employees of insurance company IAG using an app (called Tripi) supplied by MaaS software developer Skedgo.
SkedGo’s Tripi app, used in the Sydney Maas trial. SkedGo
The trial tested, among other things, users’ willingness to pay, either by subscription or pay as you go, for transport bundles combining public transport, taxi, ride share, car share and car rental.
The research was run by the Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies at the University of Sydney. The final report was published in March 2021. The key outcomes were that MaaS had appeal to car owners and frequent car users, but those most keen were already multi-modal travellers.
Notably the researchers reported:
Without a (monetary) incentive, travellers appear to see very little value in MaaS in the presence of existing apps that are improving all the time (such as Opal Connect, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and improved technical platforms that facilitate payment in addition to searching and planning) and hence one may not get enough buy-in to make a currently niche product scalable.
And also:
While a MaaS app (and hence technical actors) is important, it is only one of the many factors that we need to structure a successful MaaS program/product offer.
So while our survey results show enthusiasm about MaaS, we must be cautious about about its current viability to work at scale. More understanding is needed about the design of MaaS, the sustainability of commercial models, the scalability of trials and users’ reactions and behavioural insights.
Dr Sophia Duan is affiliated with the Department of Information Systems and Business Analytics, RMIT University. She is a member of the Australian Computer Society, the Association for Information Systems, and the Institute of Analytics Professionals of Australia.
Professor Alemayehu Molla is affiliated with the Department of Information Systems and Business Analytics, RMIT University. He is a Member of the Australian Computer Society and the Association for Information Systems
Professor Hepu Deng is affiliated with the Department of Information Systems and Business Analytics, RMIT University. He is a Member of the Australian Computer Society.
Richard Tay is affiliated with the Department of Logistics and Supply Chain at RMIT University. He is Fellow and Life Member of the Institute of Transportation Engineer, a Fellow of the Chartered Institue of Logistics and Transport and a Senior Fellow of the Economic Society of Australia.
New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage. You can sign up to NZ Politics Daily as well as New Zealand Political Roundup columns for free here.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Laurenceson, Director and Professor, Australia-China Relations Institute (ACRI), University of Technology Sydney
Leah Millis/AP
The Australian government desperately hopes this week’s AUSMIN meetings between Australian and US officials will see greater practical American support being delivered in the face of ongoing trade strikes by China.
Reports confirm that measures to combat Chinese economic coercion will be discussed at the meetings between Foreign Minister Marise Payne, Defence Minister Peter Dutton and their American counterparts.
This desire is readily understood: China’s US$14.7 trillion (A$20 trillion) economy towers over Australia’s at $US1.3 trillion (A$1.7 trillion). And since May 2020, China has blocked or disrupted around a dozen Australian exports, including beef, wine, barley and coal. Previously, sales of these goods to China had been worth more than A$20 billion per year.
Yet, there is good reason to question whether repurposing the ANZUS security alliance to tackle economic issues — and working ever more closely with Washington on initiatives aimed at Beijing — represents a coherent strategy for Canberra to get what it wants.
In 2017, the leading Australian foreign policy practitioner, Allan Gyngell, wrote that the animating force behind Australia’s foreign policy has long been a “fear of abandonment” by a “great and powerful friend” – first the United Kingdom, and since the ANZUS treaty was signed in 1951, the US.
The US has consistently signalled its support for Australia in its trade dispute with China — at least, rhetorically.
Late last year, Jake Sullivan, the new national security adviser in the Biden administration, declared the US stood “shoulder to shoulder” with Australia.
Then, in March, Kurt Campbell, President Joe Biden’s “Indo-Pacific czar”, assured Australian media the US was “not going to leave Australia alone on the field”. This message was repeated in May by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Yet, when Trade Minister Dan Tehan went to Washington in July, he received a more tepid message regarding Australia’s stoush with China.
Katherine Tai, the US trade representative, was only prepared to say the US is “closely monitoring the trade situation between Australia and China” and she “welcomed continuing senior-level discussion”.
The US is not always a reliable partner
What has been particularly jarring isn’t just that the Biden administration has stopped at rhetoric, without offering any material support to Canberra. Rather, it has persisted with choices that actively hurt Australia.
One example is a continuation of the tariffs the Trump administration unilaterally imposed on Chinese imports, which were subsequently assessed by the World Trade Organisation as being inconsistent with international rules.
The US then appealed the decision, which effectively ended China’s legal challenge to the WTO. This was because the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations have blocked the appointment of new judges to the WTO’s appeals body as the terms of serving judges expired.
As a result, the body was left completely paralysed in November 2020. Last month, the US rejected a proposal from 121 other WTO members to have it restored.
Lacking the sheer power of the US or China, Australia relies on global adherence to WTO rules to protect its trade interests. But the US actions mean the rules can no longer be enforced.
Another example is Tai’s insistence in February that China “needs to deliver” on the bilateral trade deal that Washington pressured Beijing into signing in January 2020.
This granted American producers favourable access to the Chinese market compared with their Australian competitors. It also served as another demonstration to China that big countries are able to use their power to coerce others.
Australia still likely to double down on US support
That US support for Australia hasn’t gone beyond rhetoric is in a sense not surprising. To do so would involve a political or economic cost to the US. The bilateral trade deal it struck with China, for example, benefits American producers.
But as Gyngell’s analysis suggests, tepid US support to date is more likely to prompt Australia to double down on its efforts to seek more US help.
Addressing the Australian American Leadership Dialogue in August, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that in view of China’s economic coercion, he believed “bilateral strategic cooperation must extend to economic matters”.
He proposed a “regular strategic economic dialogue” — an extension of AUSMIN talks that cover defence and foreign affairs – between key senior US and Australian economic and trade officials.
The American response to the proposal was reportedly “non-committal”.
Nonetheless, a new report commissioned by the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney backed Morrison’s call and advocated an alliance response to China’s trade strikes on Australia.
Reasons to be concerned about an economic ‘alliance’
There’s nothing wrong with an economic dialogue with Washington. But there’s two important considerations for Canberra to reflect on.
First, the pain that Beijing has been able to inflict on the Australian economy by disrupting exports has been limited.
A new analysis by the Australia-China Relations Institute looked at 12 goods that were disrupted by China’s economic coercive actions — everything from barley to rock lobster. And it found that for nine of those 12 goods, the cost incurred by Australian exporters has been less than 10% of the total export value.
The analysis also found that in the first half of 2021, the value of Australia’s overall goods exports to China was actually 37% higher than the previous record set in 2019.
What this means is that China’s trade strikes are nowhere close to being an existential crisis. The Australian economy can weather the storm, with or without US support.
Second, what Australia wants most is for China to follow global trade rules and for these rules to be updated and extended to cover more activities, like government subsidies for agriculture and fisheries.
But the ANZUS alliance is ill-equipped to deliver on this. It has no legitimacy in setting or enforcing global trade rules. And the US has a poor record of following the existing WTO rules itself.
Further complicating matters, the US has designated China as a “strategic competitor” since 2017.
But as Peter Varghese, Australia’s former chief diplomat noted in June,
that does not automatically make it the strategic competitor of Australia.
The more the idea of an “economic alliance” with the US on par with its security alliance is embraced, the greater the danger of Australia getting bogged down with the US in a “forever war” against its largest trading partner — in this case, spilling treasure rather than blood.
Alternatively, the US might cut another bilateral trade deal with China, leaving Australia on the sidelines again.
If the Australian foreign and defence ministers emerge from this week’s AUSMIN meetings empty-handed on the economic front, the public might, in time, consider itself lucky.
James Laurenceson 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.
This may be welcome news for those in Sydney who have been under stay-at-home orders since June, and those in Melbourne who have lived through more than 220 days of lockdown over the past 18 months. It means these states will leave strict lockdowns eventually without having to wait for case numbers to decrease to zero.
But with other jurisdictions across the country continuing to pursue COVID-zero, what does this mean for Australia?
The future is likely, at least in the short term, to look similar to the current situation with different rules for different states and territories.
Those states pursuing COVID-zero may have greater freedoms, almost resembling pre-COVID life, with generally low levels of restrictions such as mandatory venue check-ins. Though strict lockdowns would be likely when cases do appear.
States like New South Wales and Victoria will require ongoing low level restrictions, such as masks and capacity limits — even with vaccination rates of 70%–80% of over 16s.
Moderate or strict lockdowns would likely still need to occur in response to rising case numbers and local outbreaks.
The importance of ongoing low-level restrictions has been shown consistently by Australian modelling and is highlighted by the current rise in case numbers in the highly vaccinated population of Israel.
Likely the biggest impact of divided COVID-zero policies across states and territories will be interstate travel, with different rules between jurisdictions depending on their COVID-zero status.
Restrictions imposed to date would suggest travel between COVID-zero states and territories, who haven’t had any recent COVID cases reported, would be allowed.
There’s also the possibility of interstate travel occurring between jurisdictions with ongoing community transmission.
Will other states give up on COVID-zero?
As the virus continues to spread, other jurisdictions across Australia may also stop trying to reach COVID-zero.
NSW and Victoria having high levels of ongoing community transmission makes other states and territories more vulnerable to imported COVID infection.
For example, we’ve already seen cases from truck drivers reported in Queensland and South Australia.
However, tight border control and strict lockdowns when required do appear to be working in some jurisdictions, for example Western Australia.
Other states’ vaccination rates are also rising, albeit more slowly. Approximately 36% of over 16s in Western Australia and Queensland are fully vaccinated.
If the current rate of rollout continues, it’s anticipated 70% of over 16s in Australia could be vaccinated by early November, with 80% coverage reached later in the same month.
Australia could reach its 70% vaccination target at the start of November, and 80% not long after. COVID Live, CC BY
With vaccination rates increasing rapidly and restrictions easing despite high case numbers, NSW and Victoria may provide test cases for the other Australian states and territories in terms of a roadmap to living with COVID.
While modelling provides a tool to guide decision makers about what to expect, these calculations are based on a number of assumptions. Predicted outcomes differ depending on key factors such as the ability of the public health workforce to maintain optimal contact tracing.
The real world experience of decreasing restrictions with COVID transmission in the community will provide important information for those that follow.
It’s important to remember, while the country is slightly fractured in its current response, we are all in this together. As vaccination rates continue to rise in the coming months, states and territories will likely return to a more level playing field.
In good news, it does seem we will have more freedom in the coming months as vaccination rates continue to rise.
But this will be an evolving situation that requires constant monitoring and changes in response to the local spread of disease, with all states and territories likely to require low level restrictions for some time.
With the easing of restrictions, it’s important we all listen to and follow public health directions and get vaccinated as soon as we can to try to maintain manageable case numbers and workload for our public health workforce.
Amalie Dyda 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.
Cat owners are urged to keep their pet indoors for a variety of reasons, including protecting wildlife and preventing the spread of disease. But our research has found an entirely different motivator for containing cats.
Concern for their cat’s safety is the primary reason people keep cats inside. And people who allow cats to roam are also motivated by concern for the animal’s well-being.
Keeping domestic cats properly contained is crucial to protecting wildlife. Cats are natural predators – even if they’re well fed. Research last year found each roaming pet cat kills 186 reptiles, birds and mammals per year.
If we want more domestic cats kept indoors, it’s important to understand what motivates cat owners. Our research suggests messages about protecting wildlife are, on their own, unlikely to change cat owners’ behaviour.
Cats are natural predators, and can kill many animals each year if left to roam. Shutterstock
Why keep your cat indoors?
Cat containment involves confining the animals to their owners’ premises at all times.
In the Australian Capital Territory, cat containment is mandatory in several areas. From July next year, all new cats must be contained across the territory, unless on a leash.
In Victoria, about half of local councils have some form of cat containment legislation. Current revisions to Domestic Animal Management Plans could mean the practice becomes more widespread.
Cats have long been part of human societies and play an important social role in their owners’ lives. But our affection for the animals means efforts to keep cats contained can be met with opposition.
Officials, conservation groups and others put forward a range of reasons for containing cats, including:
preventing cats from spreading diseases and parasites such as toxoplasmosis to both people and wildlife
reducing threats to wildlife, especially at night
reducing unwanted cat pregnancies
avoiding disputes with neighbours, including noise complaints, and cats defecating or spraying in garden beds and children’s sandpits
protecting cats from injury or death – such as being hit by a vehicle, attacked by dogs, snake bite and exposure to diseases and parasites.
So which argument is most persuasive? Our research suggests it’s the latter.
The Safe Cats Safe Wildlife campaign focuses on keeping cats safe. Zoos Victoria.
What we found
We surveyed 1,024 people in Victoria – 220 of whom were cat owners.
We found 53% of cat owners did not allow roaming. These people were more likely to hold concerns about risks to cats’ safety than cat owners who allowed roaming. They were also less likely to believe cats have a right to roam.
Some 17% of cat owners allowed their cats unrestricted access to the outdoors day and night, while 30% contained their cats at night but allowed some unrestricted outdoor access during the day.
Both cat owners and other respondents generally believed cat owners should manage their pet’s roaming behaviour. But for cat owners, concern about harm to wildlife was not a significant predictor of containment behaviour.
Instead, people who keep their cats contained were more likely to be worried that their cat might be lost, stolen, injured or killed.
It’s not that cat owners don’t care about native animals – only about one in ten cat owners said they’d never seriously considered how their cat affects wildlife. But our survey results show this isn’t a big motivation for keeping cats indoors.
What Victorian cat owners are doing, based on our survey findings. Author provided.
Roaming is dangerous
A roaming lifestyle can be risky to cats. A 2019 study of more than 5,300 Australian cat owners found 66% had lost a cat to a roaming incident such as a car accident or dog attack, or the cat simply going missing.
Despite the risks, people who let their cats roam are more likely to think the practice is better for the animal’s well-being – for example, that hunting is normal cat behaviour.
Owners who let their cat roam were more likely than those who contained their cat to believe their cat did not often hunt. While not all cats kill wildlife, those that do typically only bring home a small proportion of their catch. That means owners can be unaware of their cats’ impact.
Cat owners must be made aware of the risks of roaming and equipped with the tools to keep their cats happy and safe at home. Unfortunately, research shows many Australian cat owners are not providing the safe environment and stimulation their cat needs when contained.
Cat containment doesn’t have to mean keeping the animal permanently in the house – nor does it require building them a Taj Mahal on the patio.
Cats can be outside while supervised or walked on leash. You can also cat-proof your backyard fence to keep them in.
Resources such as Safe Cat Safe Wildlife help owners meet their cat’s mental, physical and social needs while keeping them contained.
Moonee Valley City Council partners with the Safe Cats Safe Wildlife campaign to promote responsible cat ownership.
Changing containment behaviour
Our study shows cat containment campaigns can be more effective if messaging appeals to owners’ concern for their cats’ well-being. These messages could be delivered by trusted people such as vets.
Helping owners understand that cats’ needs can be met in containment, and giving them the tools to achieve this, may be the best way to protect wildlife.
Demonising cats is not the answer. The focus must shift to the benefits of containment for cats’ well-being if we hope to achieve a cat-safe and wildlife-safe future.
Lily van Eeden works for the Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research and is affiliated with ICON Science (RMIT University) and BehaviourWorks Australia (Monash University).
Emily McLeod works for Zoos Victoria, a not-for-profit zoo-based conservation organisation.
Fern Hames and Zoe Squires 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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Warburton, Honorary Senior Fellow, Centre for the Study of Higher Education, The University of Melbourne
Shutterstock
The federal government’s promise to deliver more student places through its Job-ready Graduates Package was hollow rhetoric, as research released today demonstrates.
From university funding agreements, we now know the maximum subsidy payable to each university from 2021 to 2023.
My research shows the total amount made available isn’t enough to provide subsidies for any extra student places, let alone the extra 30,000 this year announced by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg in his budget speech in May.
Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg delivers the budget in May.
One year ago, the government legislated major changes to higher education funding, marketed as Job-ready Graduates. In selling these changes, the then education minister, Dan Tehan, said:
“[…] our government wants more Australians to have the opportunity to benefit from a university education. Because of the surge in demand caused by the COVID-19 recession we need those additional places from next year. Doing nothing for one or two years will not help the year 12s of 2020 and the Australians looking to retrain in 2021. Deferring our economic recovery helps no one and risks scarring a generation.”
The changes meant that, on average, student contributions should increase while government subsidies for student places decrease. An increase in student places was one of the major reasons given for accepting these changes. If we could rely on the government rhetoric about its policy, then every year this decade we should have seen more working-age Australians able to enrol in higher education than ever before.
The Job-ready Graduates promise was to increase the total subsidy for student places over time. This growth was in recognition of the extra demand that would arise in areas of high population growth and from the “Costello baby boom” generation reaching university age.
The government response to questions on notice about how many new Commonwealth-supported places there will be each year. Commonwealth Parliament
The government doesn’t fund a set number of student places. Under the Job-ready Graduates arrangements, it sets the maximum subsidy it will pay to a university for student places. Each student place attracts a set subsidy, with the amount varying depending on its discipline.
Each university is free to decide the number and mix of student places it provides. But it is paid the subsidy for student places only up to the maximum amount set for it by the government. If it provides places beyond its subsidy cap, it receives only the student contribution. This would usually not be enough to cover costs.
I advised the Senate committee inquiry into the changes that it was a mystery how the government had produced its estimate of the number of student places to be created. We now know the maximum subsidy payable to each university from 2021 to 2023 from the publicly available funding agreements of universities. We also know how this maximum amount is proposed to increase each year to 2030.
Unis continue to be short-changed on subsidies
With Job-ready Graduates, the government appeared to radically change its attitude to funding student places from the previous three years. In 2018 and 2019, it froze funding. In 2020, subsidies increased by less than inflation. These decisions effectively reduced the number of government-subsidised student places.
By 2019, there were 27,800 places in the system from which the government was withholding over A$322 million in subsidies.
Universities were bearing that cost when COVID-19 hit in 2020. The government response to the pandemic, notably closing the borders to international students, continues to reduce the revenue universities receive.
Hidden in the detail of the transition to Job-ready Graduates is another source of subsidy shortfall that will further limit universities’ ability to provide student places. “Grandfathered students” are students who started their courses before the changes took effect in 2021. They are protected from having to pay higher student contributions. To ensure funding for their places is not severely cut, the old, higher government subsidy rate continues for them.
In reality, university subsidy limits do not adequately allow for these grandfathered students. The shortfall is likely to be around $300 million over the time they take to complete their courses. Around $200 million relates to the period from 2023 to 2025.
Shortfall exceeds $1 billion by 2024
The total amount of government subsidy over the next decade is shown in the chart below.
The amount made available in 2021 is not enough to provide subsidies for any additional student places. The combined effect of the changes since 2018 is that, in 2021, the government has underdelivered on its promised subsidy level by the equivalent of 39,000 student places – the 27,000 extra places promised under Job-ready Graduates and 12,000 places in the system since 2019 that remain unsubsidised.
While the shortfall reduces over time, by 2024 the government is still subsidising around 14,000 fewer student places than it promised. It would need to provide about $1.1 billion more in subsidy from 2021 to 2024 to honour the claims it made to the public and the parliament.
The government explicitly set student contributions to influence student choices. It was trying to encourage students into disciplines that it considered would make them job-ready. If students respond as desired, they will shift from disciplines with low subsidies into more highly subsidised disciplines.
If successful, however, this policy would increase the average cost of subsidy per place. And that would reduce the number of subsidised places that universities could provide within their maximum subsidy level.
If the government was serious about ensuring universities were able to support Australia’s economic recovery, it could have adopted a policy that was both more effective and simpler. As a first step, it could have provided the subsidies to support the student load already in the system in 2019. It could then have increased subsidy levels so that from 2021 to 2023 working-age Australians have the same opportunities to undertake higher education that they had from 2014 to 2017 before the funding freeze.
In the long term, the rate of growth in subsidies may restore these opportunities, but that time is two elections away. By then, reducing government debt may be the priority. If the government of the day decides to abandon the policy of increasing subsidies each year, it will not require any legislative change.
Caught out by its strategy to bet on COVID-19 vaccines that could be made in Australia, the federal government is now scrambling oto manufacture mRNA vaccines locally.
Its “approach to market” strategy has effectively asked companies how much government money they need to do so. But even with subsidies, this plan will take years.
So why can’t Australia make the mRNA vaccines?
That’s not actually the right question to ask. The crucial issue is why Australia hasn’t been producing the type of companies that can make mRNA vaccines. Why don’t we produce more start-ups like BioNTech or Moderna – the two companies that developed and brought the mRNA vaccines to market?
Answering this question is important not just to vaccines but to the whole range of “deep technologies” that will shape economic development and sustainability in the 21st century.
Technology is generally defined as the application of new knowledge for practical purposes. Deep technology is slightly different. It refers to the type of organisation required to bring certain types of technological innovation to fruition.
It is more accurate to talk about deep technology ventures. BioNTech and Moderna are two such examples. Both are relatively young companies — BioNTech was founded in Germany in 2008, Moderna in the US in 2010 — that have brought to market a technological solution underpinned by substantive advances in scientific research, engineering and design.
Deep-tech ventures span advanced materials, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, blockchains, robotics and quantum computing. A few are now household names, such as Tesla and SpaceX, but most fly under the radar of public awareness, as Moderna and BioNTech did before the pandemic.
They include synthetic biology companies such as the Ginkgo Bioworks and Zymergen, which can program organisms to create completely new biologically based materials for use in manufacturing. These “biofoundries” can produce everything from biodegradable plastics, new protein-based foods to probiotic microorganims that improve human health.
There are advanced engineering companies such as Carbon Engineering and Climeworks, working on ways to suck carbon dioxide from the air to use for industrial purposes.
There are experimental energy companies such as Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Helion, which are working on making the holy grail of clean energy technology, nuclear fusion, a reality.
Australia’s problem with deep tech
Australia’s problem with deep technology ventures isn’t to do with the quality of our science and research. We produce, per capita, nearly twice as many scientific research papers as the OECD average.
We also have some great support structures, such as the CSIRO, the national research and science agency, and Cicada Innovations, the deep-tech venture incubator in Sydney.
The problem is our inability to take our scientists’ knowledge and turn it into innovative ventures. Other countries are much more successful at this. Britain, Germany and France, for example, all publish fewer research papers than Australia per capita but produce far more patent applications — a key indicator of potential research commercialisation. The US produces nine times as many per capita.
The ‘valley of death’
Australia’s primary challenges here are related to the culture of innovation and entrepreneurship and our current mechanisms for long-term venture funding.
Deep-tech ventures usually require longer time horizons to translate new scientific insights into commercially successful products. Few universities are set up to see this process through. Public funding mechanisms prioritise basic research leading to publications, not the entrepreneurial processes required to find a market fit for a new product or solution.
Nor are venture capital funds — the normal providers of seed funding — well placed to fund deep technology ventures. This is partly because the science itself can be difficult to understand. Also many funds prioritise ventures that can “exit” through an acquisition or public offering within 10 years.
The complex science and length of time needed to commercialise deep tech mean many good ideas die in the so-called “valley of death” — the gap between initial seed funding and sustainable revenue generated from product sales. This gap is filled in some countries by investments from sovereign wealth funds, more “mission” oriented government programs and even prizes. Australia has yet to emulate these solutions. CORRECT?
These issues help explain why Australia’s investment in R&D as a portion of GDP over the past decade has declined, from a peak of 2.3% in 2008 to 1.8% in 2019. That puts us below the OECD average (2.47% in 2019), well behind innovation leaders such as Israel (4.9%), South Korea (4.6%) and Taiwan (3.5%).
In 2020 only 12 Australian companies were listed among the world’s top 2,500 R&D leaders (as ranked by EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard). This compares with Taiwan (88), South Korea (59) Switzerland (58), Canada (30) and Israel (22).
What can we do about it?
Australia’s future economic prosperity depends on our ability to translate scientific advances into innovation and entrepreneurship. Technological innovation is the only driver of economic growth over the long term. MIT professor Robert Solow won the 1987 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work demonstrating this point.
To correct our trajectory requires more “patient” capital. We are one of the world’s wealthiest nations on a per capita basis, but too much wealth is locked up in property ($8 trillion) and superannuation funds ($3.8 trillion) opting for “safer” investments.
If just 0.1% of superannuation assets were allocated to fund deep technology ventures, Australia would have a fund about as large as the the nation’s entire current venture capital pool.
We also need leadership around a shared vision of the benefits of deep technology entrepreneurship. Not enough Australians recognise the importance of science and technology in driving both economic prosperity and addressing global challenges. Some are even suspicious that technology causes more problems than it solves.
But these ventures will be crucial to addressing pressing development and sustainability challenges, including climate change.
Tomorrow’s economy and society will be built with today’s scientific breakthroughs in deep technology ventures.
Julian Waters-Lynch 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.
Am I not pretty enough? This article is part of The Conversation’s series introducing you to unloved Australian animals that need our help.
Spiny-tailed skinks (Egernia stokesii badia), known as meelyu in the local Badimia language in Western Australia, are highly social lizards that live together in family groups — an uncommon trait among reptiles.
They’re culturally significant to the Badimia people but habitat degradation and mining has put them under threat of extinction.
These sturdy, mottled lizards — which live in colonies in the logs of fallen trees and branches — are a candidate for what researchers call “mitigation translocation”.
That’s where wildlife are relocated away from high-risk areas (such as those cleared for urban development or mining) to lower risk areas.
It might sound simple. But research shows these mitigation translocation decisions are often made on an ad hoc basis, without a long-term strategic plan in place.
Example of the range in individual size/age occupying the same permanent log pile structure within the Mid West region of Western Australia. Holly Bradley, Author provided
Not enough pre-planning or follow-up
There has been much research into assisted relocation of larger, charismatic mammals and birds. But other animals, such as reptiles with a less positive social image, have been less widely studied.
Our recent research has found there is often little pre-planning or follow-up to monitor success of mitigation translocations, even though reptile mitigation translocations do take place, sometimes on a large scale.
In fact, fewer than 25% of mitigation translocations worldwide actually result in long-term self-sustaining populations.
Mitigation translocation methods are also not being improved. Fewer than half of published mitigation translocation studies have explicitly compared or tested different management techniques.
Mitigation translocation studies also rarely consider long-term implications such as how relocated animals can impact the site to which they are moved — for example, if the ecosystem has limited capacity to support the relocated animals.
But it’s not just about ecosystem benefits. Preservation of species such as meelyu also has cultural benefits — but mitigation translocation can only be part of the solution if it’s done strategically.
As part of Holly Bradley’s research into understanding how to protect meelyu from further loss in numbers, she had the privilege to meet with Badimia Indigenous elder, Darryl Fogarty, who identified meelyu as his family’s totem.
Totemic species can represent a person’s connection to their nation, clan or family group.
The meelyu or Western Spiny-tailed Skink is significant to the Badimia people and require translocation as part of mine site restoration and mitigation of population loss. Holly Bradley, Author provided
Unfortunately, Darryl Fogarty cannot remember the last time he saw the larger meelyu in the area. The introduction of European land management and feral species into Western Australia has upset the ecosystem balance — and this also has cultural consequences.
Preserving totemic fauna in their historic range can be a critical component of spiritual connection to the land for Indigenous groups in Australia.
In the past, this spiritual accountability for the stewardship of a totem has helped protect species over the long term, with this responsibility passed down between generations.
Before European colonisation, this traditional practice helped to preserve biodiversity and maintain an abundance of food supplies.
A strategic approach to future meelyu relocations from areas of active mining is crucial to prevent further population losses — for both ecological and cultural reasons.
Good mitigation translocation design
If we are to use mitigation translocation to shore up their numbers, we need effective strategies in place to boost the chance it will actually help the meelyu.
Good mitigation translocation design includes factors such as:
selecting a good site and understanding properly whether it can support new wildlife populations
having a good understanding of the animal’s ecological needs and how they fit with the environment to which they’re moving
using the right methods of release for the circumstances. For example, is it better to use a soft release method, where an individual animal is gradually acclimatised to its new environs over time? Or a hard release method, where the animal is simply set free in its new area?
having a good understanding of the cultural factors involved.
A holistic approach
A holistic approach to land management and restoration practice considers both cultural and ecological significance.
It supports the protection and return of healthy, functioning ecosystems — as well as community well-being and connection to nature.
Mitigation translocation could have a role to play in protection of culturally significant wildlife like the meelyu, but only when it’s well planned, holistic and part of a long term strategy.
Holly Bradley has received funding from the Gunduwa Regional Conservation Association as part of her research.
Bill Bateman and Darryl Fogarty 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.
As many court visitors or news consumers will know, criminal law can be a mix of often horrific detail and seemingly dry procedure.
Our current system, based in large part on the English adversarial process, embraces notions of the rational and dispassionate nature of law. There is an expectation the criminal courts will take an objective – almost clinical – approach to the human condition.
Yet despite this reputation for objectivity, in reality the criminal law is steeped in emotion. Historically, moral concerns have been instrumental in deciding what behaviours we criminalise. Criminal cases – certainly those that are not minor – often document painful times in people’s lives.
This all means that criminal lawyers are regularly exposed to traumatic material and emotions. Their job requires them to work with graphic evidence and distressing testimony, from which they are expected to emotionally detach. And all with the knowledge that case outcomes will significantly affect the lives of complainants, defendants, their whānau and communities.
But over the past two years, there has been much talk of the need for transformative change of the criminal justice process. And the experience of criminal lawyers is surely a key factor in calls for greater humanisation of the criminal law as part of the ongoing reform process.
The criminal law strives to be rational and dispassionate, but ‘trauma is everywhere’. Shutterstock
The impact of working in criminal law
We know lawyers as a group are at higher risk of poor mental health as well as occupational stress and burnout. Yet there has been little research – and until now none based in New Zealand – that has qualitatively examined whether (and how) criminal lawyers’ work affects their emotional and psychological well-being.
There is even less research examining what we might do to address any negative outcomes for lawyers themselves and for the system as a whole.
We are in the early stages of a project that hopes to provide an evidence base about emotional impact, vicarious trauma and well-being in the criminal courts. Our research aims to be a first step in understanding more about the impacts of working in the criminal law, in the hope of better supporting the profession and students entering it.
In the process, we want to increase understanding about how criminal lawyers try to preserve their own well-being, what methods are successful, and how they might manage emotions positively to improve their experience and outcomes at work.
Criminal lawyers are rarely offered professional debriefing or support by a psychologist. Shutterstock
‘Trauma is everywhere’
Under the umbrella of the project, one of our researchers has looked at the experiences of Crown prosecutors, who are exposed to some of the most violent and harmful criminal offending.
Prosecutors described several types of traumatic material and the emotional consequences, observing that “trauma is everywhere”. Written, visual and aural exposure to traumatic material is the norm, but face-to-face meetings with complainants are understandably the most difficult for prosecutors to manage and distance themselves from.
Prosecutors have a profound sense of responsibility for case outcomes and for larger problems of the criminal justice process, including over-representation of Māori as defendants and complainants. They feel professional inadequacy and guilt if they don’t secure convictions. They experience difficulties in dealing with cases that mirror their own personal trauma or have personal significance for them or their whānau.
It was common for the prosecutors interviewed to report an inability to sleep, an increased sense of concern for the safety of themselves and their loved ones, and limited emotional capacity for personal relationships.
Prosecutors told us about coping mechanisms they use to help them maintain professionalism, such as setting emotional boundaries, creating a courtroom persona to ensure they do not show emotion, and even aspiring to become desensitised.
Good working relationships and self-care help protect their well-being. But what prosecutors told us about the pressures of their work, self-criticism and workplace culture all suggest much more needs to be done to address the impacts of working in the criminal law.
Unlike other professions dealing with human trauma, criminal lawyers are very rarely offered professional debriefing or support by a psychologist. Different institutional and professional care needs to be explored, as do ways to prepare those entering the profession for the reality of criminal justice work.
To produce a robust set of findings that reflect the experiences of both prosecutors and defence counsel, we’re expanding the research we’ve already done by conducting further interviews over the coming months.
From this, we hope to make recommendations about changes that could be made in the profession and to its support structures. And from there, to consider the experiences of other criminal justice professionals, especially those who work in the criminal courts.
Criminal law is a profession whose inner workings remain largely invisible, until a high-profile case makes headlines. But maintaining a healthy workforce is integral to a responsive and safe criminal process for all.
When Tanya Plibersek – who many believe would give Labor its best chance if she were leader now – was asked about the party parachuting Kristina Keneally into the safe seat of Fowler, she slid all around the place to avoid giving a direct answer to an awkward question.
What might be called the Keneally “Fowler solution” is the outcome of Labor’s dilemma over its Senate ticket. Its two NSW senators from the right faction, Keneally and Deb O’Neill, were battling over who would get the ticket’s number one spot. With the left in the second spot, the loser would be relegated to the third place, considered unwinnable.
Anthony Albanese claims Keneally, as Labor’s deputy leader in the Senate, would have been on the top of the ticket if she’d nominated. But O’Neill had strong union support.
Regardless, Keneally’s endorsement by the right faction for Fowler – being vacated at the election by the retirement of the popular Labor whip Chris Hayes – stopped a row. But it started another one.
When he announced he was retiring Hayes strongly promoted a young lawyer, Tu Le, daughter of Vietnamese refugees, to succeed him. She ticked boxes on gender, diversity and local grounds.
Keneally’s pushing her aside has caused outrage in some Labor circles.
Labor MP and Muslim Anne Aly told the ABC: “Diversity and equality and multiculturalism can’t just be a trope that Labor pulls out and parades while wearing a sari and eating some kung pao chicken to make ourselves look good”. She added, “I’m one of the few people of culturally, linguistically diverse backgrounds in the parliament – this matters to me”.
Appearing on the ABC on Sunday Plibersek was pressed about where she stood on the matter.
She tried a bluff: “I’m a glass half-full person. Aren’t we lucky in the Labor Party to have three fantastic women, all who want to be in parliament representing the Labor Party”.
Several follow ups, and several dodges, later, Plibersek was where she started: “I think Kristina is a fantastic candidate who’s made a great contribution. I also think Deb O’Neill has made a wonderful contribution in the Senate, and Tu Le has got a big future.”
While Keneally’s installation may be a snub to some locals, it should be noted it doesn’t deprive ALP branch members of a rank and file ballot they would otherwise have had.
Through a peculiar arrangement that goes back decades and has its origins in branch stacking, the preselection process for Fowler, a seat designated for the right, is very top down. The right faction selects its candidate, who is then rubber stamped by the party.
Keneally’s facilitated passage into Fowler is the latest break for the one-time NSW premier who lost the 2011 state election. She was a favourite of Bill Shorten and the candidate chosen to contest the 2017 Bennelong byelection. Then after Sam Dastyari quit the Senate as a result of revelations he’d promoted Chinese interests, Keneally took the casual vacancy.
After the 2019 election Keneally became the opposition’s deputy Senate leader, elbowing out right numbers man Don Farrell. This put her number four in Labor’s hierarchy. As home affairs spokeswoman she aggressively took the fight up to then home affairs minister Peter Dutton. They were well matched.
At Friday’s right faction meeting which endorsed her, Keneally described herself as the “accidental senator” and thought her “brawler” style better suited to the lower house.
Given her quick rise and her take-no-prisoners political approach, the question inevitably is: how high can Keneally hope to fly?
Those close to her say her move isn’t driven by leadership ambitions. Maybe not, but if her career up to now is any guide, it would be strange if she didn’t harbour them.
However she is not universally popular in the party and if Labor loses, it would be too early for her. The favourite to become opposition leader would probably be Plibersek who, while on the left, would overwhelmingly win a ballot among the rank and file, which gets a 50% say, with caucus having the other 50%.
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.
More than a week after four Indonesian soldiers were killed by pro-independence fighters in an attack on a military post in Kisor village, South Aifat sub-district, Maybrat district, West Papua, police have arrested two suspects and launched a manhunt for 17 others.
Also, a joint team of personnel from the Indonesian Military (TNI) has continued to crack down on Papuan rebels operating in the area.
The XVIII/Kasuari Regional Military Command’s spokesperson, Colonel Hendra Pesireron, said that TNI soldiers had “secured” several villages.
The troops’ presence in villages had “restored the security situation” in Maybrat district, and guaranteed public safety, he claimed in a statement.
On 5 September 2021, TNI personnel engaged in a gunfight with several members of a pro-independence group in the neighborhood areas of East Aifat sub-district.
The rebels retreated into a thick forest to escape, Colonel Pesireron said.
Before the gunfight, the rebels destroyed a bridge, he said.
Kisor military post attacked On Thursday, pro-independence rebels had ambushed several soldiers while they were sleeping at the Kisor military post.
Four soldiers—2nd Sergeant Amrosius, Chief Private Dirham, First Private Zul Ansari, and First Lieutenant Dirman—died in the attack, while two others suffered serious wounds.
The bodies of three soldiers had been found at the post, while the body of another soldier had been discovered in bush not far from the post.
Several local residents had fled their homes fearing for their safety.
On Friday, Indonesian police investigators named 19 alleged suspects in connection with the attack on the military post.
Rahmad Nasutionis a journalist for the Indonesian news agency Antara.
Since the attacks on the United States by 15 Saudi Arabian Islamic fanatics on 11 September 2001 — now known as 9/11 — the world has been divided by a “war on terror” with any protest group defined as “terrorists”.
New anti-terror laws have been introduced both in the West and elsewhere in the past 20 years and used extensively to suppress such movements in the name of “national security”.
It is interesting to note that the 9/11 attacks came at a time when a huge “global justice” movement was building up across the world against the injustices of globalisation.
Using the internet as the medium of mobilisation, they gathered in Seattle in 1999 and were successful in closing down the World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting.
They opposed what they saw as large multinational corporations having unregulated political power, exercised through trade agreements and deregulated financial markets, facilitated by governments.
Their main targets were the WTO, International Monetary Fund (IMF), OECD, World Bank, and international trade agreements.
The movement brought “civil society” people from the North and the South together under common goals.
Poorest country debts In parallel, the “Jubilee 2000” international movement led by liberal Christian and Catholic churches called for the cancellation of US$90 billion of debts owed by the world’s poorest nations to banks and governments in the West.
Along with the churches, youth groups, music, and entertainment industry groups were involved. The 9/11 attacks killed these movements as “national security” took precedence over “freedom to dissent”.
Dr Dayan Jayatilleka, a former vice-president of the UN Human Rights Council and a Sri Lankan political scientist, notes that when “capitalism turned neoliberal and went on the rampage” after the demise of the Soviet Union, resistance started to develop with the rise of the Zapatistas in Chiapas (Mexico) against NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and culminating in the 1999 Seattle protests using a term coined by Cuban leader Fidel Castro “another world is possible”.
“All that came crashing down with the Twin Towers,” he notes. “With 9/11 the Islamic Jihadist opposition to the USA (and the war on terror) cut across and buried the progressive resistance we saw emerging in Chiapas and Seattle.”
Geoffrey Robertson QC, a British human rights campaigner and TV personality, warns: “9/11 panicked us into the ‘war on terror’ using lethal weapons of questionable legality which inspired more terrorists.
“Twenty years on, those same adversaries are back and we now have a fear of US perfidy—over Taiwan or ANZUS or whatever. There will be many consequences.”
But, he sees some silver lining that has come out of this “war on terror”.
Targeted sanctions “One reasonably successful tactic developed in the war on terror was to use targeted sanctions on its sponsors. This has been developed by so-called ‘Magnitsky acts’, enabling the targeting of human rights abusers—31 democracies now have them and Australia will shortly be the 32nd.
“I foresee their coordination as part of the fightback—a war not on terror but state cruelty,” he told In-Depth News.
When asked about the US’s humiliation in Afghanistan, Dr Chandra Muzaffar, founder of the International Movement for a Just World told IDN that the West needed to understand that they too needed to stop funding terror to achieve their own agendas.
“The ‘war on terror’ was doomed to failure from the outset because those who initiated the war were not prepared to admit that it was their occupation and oppression that compelled others to retaliate through acts of terror.” he argues.
“Popular antagonism towards the occupiers was one of the main reasons for the humiliating defeat of the US and NATO in Afghanistan,” he added.
Looking at Western attempts to introduce democracy under the pretext of “war on terror” and the chaos created by the “Arab Spring”, a youth movement driven by Western-funded NGOs, Iranian-born Australian Farzin Yekta, who worked in Lebanon for 15 years as a community multimedia worker, argues that the Arab region needs a different democracy.
“In the Middle East, the nations should aspire to a system based on social justice rather than the Western democratic model. Corrupt political and economic apparatus, external interference and dysfunctional infrastructure are the main obstacles for moving towards establishing a system based on social justice,” he says, adding that there are signs of growing social movements being revived in the region while “resisting all kinds of attacks”.
Palestinian refugee lessons Yekta told IDN that while working with Palestinian refugee groups in Lebanon he had seen how peoples’ movements could be undermined by so-called “civil society” NGOs.
“Alternative social movements are infested by ‘civil society’ institutions comprising primarily NGO institutions.
“‘Civil society’ is effective leverage for the establishment and foreign (Western) interference to pacify radical social movements. Social movements find themselves in a web of funded entities which push for ‘agendas’ drawn by funding buddies,” noted Yekta.
Looking at the failure of Western forces in Afghanistan, he argues that what they did by building up “civil society” was encouraging corruption and cronyism that is entangled in ethnic and tribal structures of society.
“The Western nation-building plan was limited to setting up a glasshouse pseudo-democratic space in the green zone part of Kabul.
“One just needed to go to the countryside to confront the utter poverty and lack of infrastructure,” Yekta notes.
”We need to understand that people’s struggle is occurring at places with poor or no infrastructure.”
Social movements reviving Dr Jayatilleka also sees positive signs of social movements beginning to raise their heads after two decades of repression.
“Black Lives Matter drew in perhaps more young whites than blacks and constituted the largest ever protest movement in history. The globalised solidarity with the Palestinian people of Gaza, including large demonstrations in US cities, is further evidence.
“In Latin America, the left-populist Pink Tide 2.0 began with the victory of Lopez Obrador in Mexico and has produced the victory of Pedro Castillo in Peru.
“The slogan of justice, both individual and social, is more globalised, more universalised today, than ever before in my lifetime,” he told IDN.
There may be ample issues for peoples’ movements to take up with TPP (Transpacific Partnership) and RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) trade agreements coming into force in Asia where companies would be able to sue governments if their social policies infringe on company profits.
But Dr Jayatilleka is less optimistic of social movements rising in Asia.
Asian social inequities “Sadly, the social justice movement is considerably more complicated in Asia than elsewhere, though one would have assumed that given the social inequities in Asian societies, the struggle for social justice would be a torrent. It is not,” he argues.
“The brightest recent spark in Asia, according to Dr Jayatilleka, was the rise of the Nepali Communist Party to power through the ballot box after a protracted peoples’ war, but ‘sectarianism’ has led to the subsiding of what was the brightest hope for the social justice movement in Asia.”
Robertson feels that the time is ripe for the social movements suppressed by post 9/11 anti-terror laws to be reincarnated in a different life.
“The broader demand for social justice will revive, initially behind the imperative of dealing with climate change but then with tax havens, the power of multinationals, and the obscene inequalities in the world’s wealth.
“So, I do not despair of social justice momentum in the future,” he says.
Republished under Creative Commons partnership with IDN – In-Depth News.
Headline: Hate crimes are not always terrorism. – 36th Parallel Assessments
A screen grab shows police officers working outside a shopping mall following a knife attack in Auckland, New Zealand September 3, 2021. TVNZ via Reuters TV
Director Paul G. Buchanan has researched and written for over thirty years about terrorism and irregular warfare. He has participated in counter-terrorism analysis and policy development while working in and with US government intelligence and military agencies, including leadership and recruitment profiling. With this background, he offers an assessment of the recent supermarket stabbings outside of Auckland, New Zealand.
A screen grab shows police officers working outside a shopping mall following a knife attack in Auckland, New Zealand September 3, 2021. TVNZ via Reuters TV
Blood had not been mopped up from the floor after the supermarket stabbing spree when the prime minister strode to the parliamentary theatre podium and declared it to be an act of terrorism committed by an individual following an extremist ideology. Within minutes of her pronouncement the media sped to get reaction to the event. The terrorism studies industry dutifully jumped into action and joined the bandwagon labeling the stabbings as an act of terrorism committed by a “lone wolf,” followed by cheerleading the official line arguing that the powers of the State needed to be expanded so as to include acts of preparation and planning along with actual crimes of ideologically-motivated violence in the Terrorism Suppression Act (TSA). That several of the critically unreflective media-ordained “experts” who featured over the following days are associated with research centers that receive government (including security community) funding does not appear to have given a second of pause to the media booking agents (not that the funding of dedicated research centers is disqualifying but it should be acknowledged).
Allow me to present a contrary view, starting with some basic definitions of terrorism and its sub-types and then proceeding to a quick comparison between the Christchurch attacks of March 15, 2019 and what happened outside of Auckland on September 3, 2021.
There are several forms of terrorism. These include state terrorism (the most common form), where a State terrorizes its own people or other targets; state-sponsored terrorism, where a State uses a proxy to commit acts of terrorism against an enemy or its core interests (think of the Iranian relationship with Hamas or Hezbollah, or—dare I say it–the Saudi relationship with al-Qaeda); non-state terrorism, including criminal (for example, Mafia) and ideological terrorism perpetrated by non-state irregular warfare actors (al-Qaeda, Daesh, the IRA, Sendero Luminoso in Peru, Mano Blanca in El Salvador or “Triple A” in Argentina). The list is extensive and covers the entire ideological spectrum. The bottom line of non-state ideological terrorism is that it must have an explicitly political focus—it has a political end or endgame in mind.
There is also terrorism committed during war time and terrorism that occurs during peace. War terrorism is mainly a sub-set of state terrorism but is also found in irregular warfare. The fire-bombing of Dresden had little military purpose but was designed to have a psychological impact on the German population. Likewise, the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were done not so much because of the military importance of these targets but because of the psychological impact that a single bomb annihilation of a city would have on the Japanese. In both cases the purpose was to terrorize, not gain a military advantage per se. Likewise, beheadings and other atrocities committed by jihadists do not improve their military positions but do have a psychological impact on those who are witness or subject to them. Terrorism during peace are those that occur outside of recognized (declared or undeclared) conflicts. Again, this includes terrorism by the State against dissidents and criminal terrorism against authorities or non-compliant members of the public. As of 9/11, the focus has been on non-state ideological terrorism even if the specific ideology behind many acts of terrorism has shifted over time.
Terrorism can involve large-scale mass attacks or small cell and solo operator (“lone wolf”) attacks. The tactical logic at play is to commit acts of seemingly random and disproportionate violence against soft targets with the purpose of instilling fear, dread and a sense of powerlessness, if not hopelessness in the population. Be at the Bataclan in Paris or at a Labour Youth Camp in Norway, the terrorist seeks to atomise and infantilize the social subject so as to isolate and paralyze it in the face of the perpetrator’s actions. That facilitates surrender or acquiescence to the terrorist will.
Terrorism has a target, subject and an object. The target are the immediate victims of a terrorist act, the more vulnerable and helpless the better. The subject(s) is the wider audience, including the public, government and even sympathetic or like-minded groups and individuals. The object is to send a message and to bend the subject to the will of the perpetrator, that is, to get the subject(s) to do or not do something in accordance with the perpetrator’s objectives and desires.
Having said all of this, by way of illustration let us run a comparison between the Christchurch attacks and the supermarket stabbings.
The Christchurch killer meticulously planned over at least 18 months an act of mass murder, stockpiling weapons and ammunition in order to do so. He did so in secrecy and without drawing attention to his actions (or so the Royal Commission of Inquiry would like us to believe). He displayed cunning, situational awareness and observed operational security as he counted down to the attack date, which was chosen for its historical significance (the Ides of March). He wrote a lengthy manifesto detailing his ideological views and reasons for committing the attacks. As believers gathered in houses of worship on a day of prayer, his targets were highly symbolic and chosen after considerable observation and research. The acts of mass murder were carried out in a cold blooded, calculated, methodical manner, live streamed on social media and eagerly shared by his co-believers world-wide. After capture, he was determined to be sane if narcissistic in personality and interviews with those who knew him prior to March 15 said he exhibited no signs of mental illness. In fact, even though a foreigner, he had friends and socialised normally (I use the last term neutrally as opposed to differentiating between so-called “normal” and “abnormal” or “unusual” conduct).
Now consider the supermarket stabbings. By way of a broad summary, let’s note the following. The perpetrator—I will refer to him by his suppressed identity “Mr. S”– had been granted refugee status in NZ after leaving Sri Lanka in 2011 (he was Tamil) and yet for years had publicly spoken of his desire to kill infidels and his hatred of the West. He was said to be lonely and homesick, with few social contacts in NZ. After being arrested in 2015 he was assessed as being depressed, subject to wild mood swings, prone to violence as a result of having Post Traumatic Stress Disorder stemming from experiences as a Tamil in his homeland. He had come to the authorities’ attention by openly posting jihadist supportive rants online, making threats to others (including muslims) on social media, and for seemingly preparing to wage jihad in NZ or abroad. When searched his flat contained violent extremist literature and videos and hunting knives. After being arrested while trying to leave NZ on a one way ticket (which the authorities believe was to be a journey to the killing fields of Syria), he was bailed and promptly went out and bought an exact copy of a knife that had been confiscated from him, apparently from the same store that he had bought the first one. He was then re-arrested and charged with possessing an offensive weapon (charges later dropped) and with posessing objectionable materials in the form of jihadist literature and videos.
When in court he railed against the injustices done to him, threatened the judge and openly spoke about his desire to do harm to others. But, because his refugee status was being disputed, further cases against him were pending and he had served three years already while waiting for and then during trial, he was sentenced to community supervision for a year, then released on July 16 and bailed to a mosque that, as it turns out, did not have its own Imam but did have a bed. He was ordered to undergo psychiatric evaluation but refused to do so and was never forced to comply. Then came Friday Sept 3.
Rather then the culmination of months of meticulous planning and preparation, that day we saw a spontaneous act of white hot rage (which makes suggestions that strengthening the TSA to include acts of planning and preparation would have prevented the attack utterly ludicrous). He grabbed a knife off a shelf and started stabbing other shoppers (who, fortunately, were observing social distancing rules during the Level 4 pandemic lockdown). His targets were chosen opportunistically and at random–they were simply close enough to attack. He ran through the aisles yelling and shouting, thereby alerting other potential victims to impending danger. He ran from victim to victim rather than pause to finish them off in deliberate fashion. He had no manifesto and he he did not video his actions or communicate or transmit his attack to others. He had no subject other than his immediate targets and he had no object other than to satisfy his own bloodlust and sense of being wronged by society. His message was to himself.
He had no connections to any jihadist network because even if he once did (and that has not been alleged, much less proven) his internet access was cut off after his arrest and he was largely isolated within the Sri Lankan and Muslim communities because of his notoriety. He had no affective relationships to speak of since his family remains in Sri Lanka and he had no partner or romantic attachments. Described as normally behaved before he arrived in NZ, he descended into personal and political darkness in the years after, linking the two in his public and private utterances. In fact, although he glorified ISIS violence and fetishised bladed weapons, it is unclear how deeply rooted he was in the Salafist world view that underpins ISIS’s ideology.
After he was released in July he developed, according to media reports, an obsessive focus on someone whose identity is suppressed but who was deliberately distanced from him after concerns were raised about his behaviour towards that individual in the days before the stabbings. One can only wonder if this was a case of what is known as affective displacement or transfer in which his emotional focus shifted from jihad to something more immediate and personal, and when that object of attention was removed, he snapped. If so, his ideological focus was more an opportunistic product of his mental state than of true devotion to the extremist cause. Put another way, his homicidal ideation may not have primarily been driven by ideology, which may have been more of a convenient crutch for his grievances rather than the root cause of his sociopathy.
To be clear: I am no mental health expert and defer to them on the subject, but I have learned enough over the years to believe that something more than ideological zealotry may have been at play here.
What S did have is a constant armed police surveillance presence around him because unlike the judge who released him in the hope that he could be rehabilitated, the police had no illusions that he was anything but a danger to himself and society. They therefore devoted considerable resources to surreptitiously monitoring him. As it turns out, he received no rehabilitation as well, which meant that the police emphasis on covert surveillance from a distance was certainly not designed to be pre-emptive or preventative in nature (since an intensive rehab counselor could have given them daily updates on his state of mind). As quick as the police reaction was to the stabbings, they were at a disadvantage given the nature of their surveillance technique, which apparently did not benefit from regular psychological updates. This is no slight on the police. They did what they thought best given the difficult circumstances that they were put in, and in the end they saved lives.
Even lumping Mr. S with the Christchurch killer as “lone wolves” is problematic. The Christchurch killer clearly was such a threat, quietly stalking his prey and preparing his attacks. Mr. S, however, acted impulsively and without the type of deliberation usually associated with lone wolves. Rather than “flying under the radar” of specialised and dedicated counter-terrorism units in NZ (as the Royal Commission would like us to believe with regard to the Christchurch terrorist), he was a known, clear and present danger, at least as far as the police were concerned. Likening him to the March 15 killer as a lone wolf is , again, drawing too long a comparative bow. In fact Mr. S seems closer to the May Dunedin Countdown stabber (four wounded in that attack) than the Christchurch killer, even if the demons inside the Dunedin stabber’s head were fueled by meth rather than ideology and/or mental illness.
For those who would differentiate terrorism from other violent crimes by consequences or effects, here too Mr. S’s actions fall short of the definitional threshold. The Christchurch attacks had immediate and longer-term impacts at home and abroad. While championed by white supremacists and rightwing extremists and causing wide-spread fear in NZ society in the immediate aftermath, it had a more dramatic influence on counter-terrorism threat assessments and approaches world-wide. It occasioned considerable reflection within NZ about tolerance and community and has produced numerous government initiatives to address its root causes. Its message was heard globally, albeit in different ways by different audiences/subjects. In contrast, the supermarket attacks caused a media frenzy, some political debate, assorted commentary and much questioning of how S came to be loose in public. That focused scrutiny lasted about five days, but soon the story receded on media outlets and from the public eye, replaced by coverage of the lowering of Covid lock-down levels and the usual political and social news. Beyond the victims, immediate witnesses, some politicians, pundits, activists and police, NZ society is already moving on and the consequences of the attack outside of (and arguably even within) NZ is minimal. The Christchurch attacks had long-term and wide-ranging effect; the supermarket stabbing spree has had a relatively narrow and short term impact. In other words, in consequence it does not rise to the level of a terrorist attack.
Put another way. Although the supermarket stabbings were certainly terrifying to those who were in and around the store, they were not terroristic in intent or effect.
It is interesting to consider that Andrew Little is both the Minister of Health as well as the Minister of Intelligence and Security. While this may promote efficiency in the discharge of portfolio obligations, it meant that there was no ministerial cross-check on the decision about Mr. S. Instead it presented Mr. Little with a choice when it came to Mr. S: treat him as a mental health case or as a national security threat? The institutional bias underlying the decision about him given the portfolio arrangement is now clear. National security was the priority, not Mr. S’s mental health.
The government says that it considered ordering Mr. S into compulsory treatment under terms of the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act, but was advised that it was not realistic to do so because he did not meet the threshold for involuntary commitment. This is presumably because even though he was diagnosed with PTSD, depression and other ailments, it did not rise to the level of a recognized clinically diagnosed disorder. Fair enough, because the bar for involuntary commitment must be set very high. But what about him being a clear and present danger to himself and society? Should that have factored into the decision as to whether he should be held for assessment and treatment? Had he not held ideological views, would have national security even entered into consideration even if the threat he presented to the public was the same? What would have been the decision then?
Because the decision was made against the mental health option, the government tried to revoke his refugee status so that he could be deported as a national security threat. That is easier said than done given international protocols governing the treatment of refugees, but what seems clear is that even though (or perhaps because) the High Court struck down prosecuting S under the Terrorism Suppression Act since “planning and preparation” is not part of the language in it, the Crown was determined to treat him as a jihadist rather than someone who was violently unwell. However coincidentally, Sept 5 fell into the government’s lap when it came to pushing under urgency amendments to the TSA that incorporated “planning and preparation” into the definition of behaviour covered by the Act, and the chorus of experts all sang in harmony the government line that the law, as it stands without the amendment, is unfit for purpose.
Three things should be noted as an aside. This is the second time that the Crown has attempted to invoke the TSA when no act of violence was committed, only to be rejected by the Court. The first was after the Urewera raids, when the not-so-merry band of activists and misfits were initially accused of being terrorists for playing Che Guevara in the bush. That attempt to lay charges under the TSA failed even though people were in fact terrorised: the innocent Tuhoe who were held at gunpoint (including children on a school bus) by Police. The second point is that even though the TSA does not allow for prosecutions for planning and preparing for a terrorist act, the Crimes Act has enough in it to do so. Just imagine if police had evidence of someone about to commit a “common” (non-ideologically motivated) murder. Would they not step in to prevent the deed by using the evidence collected under the Crimes Act? If so, what is the difference with an ideologically motivated crime that makes it only prosecutable under the TSA? As it turns out, the Crown went for six and tried to test the TSA a second time on Mr. S. And for the second time, it was given out by the Court.
The third point is that the government had a legal remedy on national security grounds that would have kept Mr. S confined indefinitely while being assessed and treated but chose not use it: issuing a Security Risk Certificate against him recommended by the Security Intelligence Service (SIS) and once used in the Ahmed Zaoui case (even though Zaoui never threatened or committed any act of violence). The Certificate calls for the preventative detention of an individual deemed to be a threat to NZ’s national security while legal processes are pending. Unlike Zaoui Mr. S was a well recognized threat to himself and others and yet, also unlike Zaoui, the Security Risk Certificate remedy was not explored or was rejected (perhaps because it too was “unreasonable” to do so). Which is odd given that he could have been subject to the strictures of the Security Risk Certificate during and after his trial regardless of sentence on lesser charges and therefore would not have been free on September 3 or required a constant resource-draining police surveillance presence in the weeks leading up to it. (Hat tip to Selwyn Manning for alerting me to this angle of inquiry).
In any event, rather than an act of terrorism or terrorist act (take your pick), what we saw on Sept. 5 was the commission of a hate crime. It is true that NZ does not have a hate crime statute and hate crimes are usually designated as acts of violence committed against individuals or groups because of who they are (e.g. gays, Muslims, redheads). Here the phrase “hate crime” is used because Mr. S’s hatred and rage was directed at non-Muslim society in general and because of the lack of compliance with the definitions and description of terrorism mentioned above. It does not make the supermarket attacks any less heinous than those done deliberately as terrorist attacks with the same (thankfully non-fatal) outcome. But it does help distinguish between underlying motive and rigorousness of method, which in turn helps prevent us from being suckered into agreeing and complying with the agendas of security officials and vested “experts” alike.
Since the September 11 terror attacks, there has been no hiding from the increased militarisation of the United States. Everyday life is suffused with policing and surveillance.
This ranges from the inconvenient, such as removing shoes at the airport, to the dystopian, such as local police departments equipped with decommissioned tanks too big to use on regular roads.
This process of militarisation did not begin with 9/11. The American state has always relied on force combined with the de-personalisation of its victims.
The army, after all, dispossessed First Nations peoples of their land as settlers pushed westward. Expanding the American empire to places such as Cuba, the Philippines, and Haiti also relied on force, based on racist justifications.
The military also ensured American supremacy in the wake of the Second World War. As historian Nikhil Pal Singh writes, about 8 million people were killed in US-led or sponsored wars from 1945–2019 — and this is a conservative estimate.
When Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican and former military general, left the presidency in 1961, he famously warnedagainst the growing “military-industrial complex” in the US. His warning went unheeded and the protracted conflict in Vietnam was the result.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower addresses American paratroopers prior to D-Day in the Second World War. Image: Wikimedia Commons
The 9/11 attacks then intensified US militarisation, both at home and abroad. George W. Bush was elected in late 2000 after campaigning to reduce US foreign interventions.
The new president discovered, however, that by adopting the persona of a tough, pro-military leader, he could sweep away lingering doubts about the legitimacy of his election.
Waging war on Afghanistan within a month of the Twin Towers falling, Bush’s popularity soared to 90 percent. War in Iraq, based on the dubious assertion of Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction”, soon followed.
The military industrial juggernaut Investment in the military state is immense. 9/11 ushered in the federal, cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security, with an initial budget in 2001-02 of US$16 billion. Annual budgets for the agency peaked at US$74 billion in 2009-10 and is now around US$50 billion.
This super-department vacuumed up bureaucracies previously managed by a range of other agencies, including justice, transportation, energy, agriculture, and health and human services.
Centralising services under the banner of security has enabled gross miscarriages of justice. These include the separation of tens of thousands of children from parents at the nation’s southern border, done in the guise of protecting the country from so-called illegal immigrants.
More than 300 of the some 1000 children taken from parents during the Trump administration have still not been reunited with family.
Detainees sleep in a holding cell where mostly Central American immigrant children are being processed at the US-Mexico border. Image: The Conversation/Ross D. Franklin/AP
The post-9/11 Patriot Act also gave spying agencies paramilitary powers. The act reduced barriers between the CIA, FBI, and the National Security Agency (NSA) to permit the acquiring and sharing of Americans’ private communications.
These ranged from telephone records to web searches. All of this was justified in an atmosphere of near-hysterical and enduring anti-Muslim fervour.
Only in 2013 did most Americans realise the extent of this surveillance network. Edward Snowden, a contractor working at the NSA, leaked documents that revealed a secret US$52 billion budget for 16 spying agencies and over 100,000 employees.
Normalisation of the security state Despite the long objections of civil liberties groups and disquiet among many private citizens, especially after Snowden’s leaks, it has proven difficult to wind back the industrialised security state.
This is for two reasons: the extent of the investment, and because its targets, both domestically and internationally, are usually not white and not powerful.
Domestically, the 2015 Freedom Act renewed almost all of the Patriot Act’s provisions. Legislation in 2020 that might have stemmed some of these powers stalled in Congress.
And recent reports suggest President Joe Biden’s election has done little to alter the detention of children at the border.
Militarisation is now so commonplace that local police departments and sheriff’s offices have received some US$7 billion worth of military gear (including grenade launchers and armoured vehicles) since 1997, underwritten by federal government programmes.
Atlanta police line up in riot gear before a protest in 2014. Image: The Conversation/Curtis Compton/AP
Militarised police kill civilians at a high rate — and the targets for all aspects of policing and incarceration are disproportionately people of colour. And yet, while the sight of excessively armed police forces during last year’s Black Lives Matter protests shocked many Americans, it will take a phenomenal effort to reverse this trend. The heavy cost of the war on terror The juggernaut of the militarised state keeps the United States at war abroad, no matter if Republicans or Democrats are in power.
Since 9/11, the US “war on terror” has cost more than US$8 trillion and led to the loss of up to 929,000 lives.
The effects on countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, and Pakistan have been devastating, and with the US involvement in Somalia, Libya, the Philippines, Mali, and Kenya included, these conflicts have resulted in the displacement of some 38 million people.
These wars have become self-perpetuating, spawning new terror threats such as the Islamic State and now perhaps ISIS-K.
Those who serve in the US forces have suffered greatly. Roughly 2.9 million living veterans served in post-9/11 conflicts abroad. Of the some 2 million deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, perhaps 36 percent are experiencing PTSD.
Training can be utterly brutal. The military may still offer opportunities, but the lives of those who serve remain expendable.
Sailor cleaning a fighter jet during aboard the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf in 2010. Image: The Conversation/Hasan Jamali/AP
Life must be precious Towards the end of his life, Robert McNamara, the hard-nosed Ford Motor Company president and architect of the United States’ disastrous military efforts in Vietnam, came to regret deeply his part in the military-industrial juggernaut.
In his 1995 memoir, he judged his own conduct to be morally repugnant. He wrote,
We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong.
As McNamara realised far too late, the solution to reversing American militarisation is straightforward. We must recognise, in the words of activist and scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore, that “life is precious”. That simple philosophy also underlies the call to acknowledge Black Lives Matter.
The best chance to reverse the militarisation of the US state is policy guided by the radical proposal that life — regardless of race, gender, status, sexuality, nationality, location or age — is indeed precious.
As we reflect on how the United States has changed since 9/11, it is clear the country has moved further away from this basic premise, not closer to it.
A ranking of an institution of higher education by Times Higher Education (THE) is the ultimate recognition of excellence that an institution can aim for.
The University of the South Pacific (USP) has achieved two accolades by being ranked for 2022 and secondly being the only institution of higher education in the Pacific to gain this recognition.
All USP graduates of the 12 member country states can look back and appreciate the wisdom of the decision to establish the USP with the main campus at Laucala.
Fiji as the host of the main campus continues to be the largest beneficiary in terms of graduates and financial income and has much to be grateful for.
I am an alumni and a grateful Fijian!
This kind of recognition takes a team and every team has a captain.
Vice-chancellor and president Professor Pal Ahluwalia is the captain that took the university across “the finishing line” that won us “gold”.
In this journey he has acknowledged the contribution of the many who played a part in this achievement that is about all of us Pasefikans.
Congratulatory messages have been received from alumni, current and former staff members, stakeholders and generous donors inclusive of messages from the member governments of Nauru, Samoa and Tuvalu to date.
The silence from the leadership of the country hosting the largest campus that also leads the Pacific Islands Forum is deafening to say the least!
Should we live in hope?
Nevertheless this will not detract from USP’s status as the most successful example of regionalism in the Blue Pacific as it continues to “Shape Pacific Futures”.
Long live USP!
Dr Elizabeth Reade Fong is chief librarian at the University of the South Pacific. This letter was first published in The Fiji Times on 10 September 2021.
He said another 51 infections had been detected in the past day, bringing the total to 117.
A lockdown has been in force since Tuesday.
New Caledonia’s members of the French legislature have asked France to send medical personnel because there were not enough specialists to staff the ICUs that had been set up.
In French Polynesia, a further three covid-19-related deaths were reported but health authorities say the latest wave appears to have peaked.
Almost 400 people have died since the surge of delta cases in late July, with the daily death toll reaching more than 20 two weeks ago.
However, the number of hospitalisations has remained high, with 303 covid-19 patients in care, 57 of them in ICUs.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Quatre jours après avoir plongé dans une crise sanitaire qui s’aggrave d’heure en heure, la #NouvelleCaledonie connaît son premier décès des suites de l’épidémie de Covid-19. Ce vendredi, une personne de 75 ans a succombé au Médipôle.https://t.co/3AGMeKpJvcpic.twitter.com/KvxHCjg2Lf
The woman was swabbed as a precaution when she went to Middlemore Hospital yesterday for a non covid-related reason.
She spent two hours at the hospital’s emergency department and short stay ward, and the positive result came back after she had left.
She had also had contact with seven police officers on Wednesday morning.
The officers were wearing masks but have been stood down as a precaution.
The hospital staff were wearing full protective gear and are deemed to be low risk, but 36 patients were being asked to isolate.
New Zealanders are being told to keep covid-19 testing numbers up over the weekend ahead of next week’s alert level decision.
Monday alert levels meeting Cabinet will meet on Monday to decide whether any parts of the country can move down an alert level.
More than 14,000 swabs were processed yesterday.
Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said 7000 of those tests were from the Auckland region.
“This continues to be giving us confidence about the outbreak, and whether or not it is controlled, and one thing I would like to emphasise is this weekend is critical that we get high testing numbers.
“So anyone who is symptomatic, particularly in Tāmaki Makaurau, please do go and get a test.”
The numbers
There are 11 new cases of covid-19 in the community today.
There are now 879 total cases, with 288 cases having now recovered.
There are 29 unlinked cases, including six from today.
Six new cases are in managed isolation and two historical cases were reported today.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
West Papua activists have called on the Australian government to raise concerns about the Indonesian military’s ongoing human rights abuses in West Papua, when they met with their Indonesian counterparts this week.
Foreign Minister Marise Payne and Defence Minister Peter Dutton are attending the seventh Indonesia-Australia Foreign and Defence Ministers 2+2 dialogue in Jakarta, which started yesterday, before continuing on to visit New Delhi, Seoul, Washington and New York.
Australia-West Papua Association spokesperson Joe Collins said: “We can expect all the usual statements about regional stability, peace, economic prosperity, terrorism and defence cooperation, but highly unlikely anything about human rights — unless it is criticism of China’s record.”
In a reply to correspondence from AWPA, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) indicated that because of Australia’s close relationship with Indonesia it had allowed DFAT to discuss a range of issues, including sensitive topics like the situation in Papua.
Given this close relationship, Collins said activists were hoping the human rights situation in West Papua would be raised, including: the ongoing concerns for arrested West Papuan activist Victor Yeimo; the security force operation taking place in the Maybrat Regency; and the death of Kristian Yandun from a beating in a police cell in Merauke.
Yeimo faces a number of charges, including treason with conspiracy. There is concern for his mental and physical health, which is deteriorating.
According to AWPA, after an attack on a military post in Kisor village in the Maybrat regency, security forces have retaliated, causing residents from five districts to flee their villages in fear of the Indonesian military.
AWPA is concerned that Merauke local police chief Untung Sangaji was trained by Australian Federal Police and trainers from the United States and Britain in anti-people smuggling and surveillance techniques at the Jakarta Centre for Law Enforcement Cooperation (JCLEC).
AWPA is calling on Payne and Dutton to urge Jakarta to release Yeimo and all political prisoners, and to raise the human rights abuses committed by the Indonesian security forces.
Susan Price reports for Green-Left.
Clash between Indonesian forces and the WP National Liberation Army, reportedly on 5/9/21 in Maybrat.
Notes for int’l humanitarian law observers: – level of intensity – the operation seems to be led by soldiers not police
Stronger Australian-Indonesian military ties Indonesian troops could join regular training exercises on Australian soil, as part of a deepening of defence ties with Australia, reports The Guardian.
While Indonesia regularly joins naval exercises with Australia, and has participated in occasional joint military exercises on Australian land, the two countries have flagged plans to “step up” their joint training in the coming years, writes Daniel Hurst.
Australia’s defence minister, Peter Dutton, and foreign minister, Marise Payne, met their Indonesian counterparts in Jakarta yesterday, on the first leg of a four-country trip.
Indonesia’s Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto said he and Dutton had discussed “the possibility of Australia opening their training areas for the participation of Indonesian units to be training together with Australia”.
“I think this is a historical first,” Prabowo said.
Indonesian security forces troops being flown in to Sinak, Puncak region, in the Papuan highlands for operations against independence fighters. Image: Screenshot APR
“So many detractors were saying, ‘no you won’t get it, the Supervisor of Elections won’t allow it’. I said, ‘well let him just do his work’. And I believe in the goodness of the man. We got it and we’re happy.” — Sitiveni Rabuka, CFL/FijiVillage interview. 8 September 2021
The leader of the new People’s Alliance gives Frank Bainimarama and Aiyaz Sayed-Kahyum has given yet another masterclass in how to win friends and influence people in the Fijian context.
Of course, he doesn’t necessarily “believe in the goodness” of Elections Supervisor Mohammed Saneen, who tried to prevent him from contesting the 2018 election and will do his damnedest to try to exclude him from the 2022 election.
Or maybe he does. It doesn’t matter because Sitiveni Rabuka has spoken well of someone who everyone regards as his nemesis and in doing so has presented himself as magnanimous and humble.
Fijians like that and Rabuka knows it. Which makes it all the more astonishing that Frank Bainimarama and Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum still don’t know it after 15 years in power.
It was Rabuka’s humility and forbearance in the face of an ordeal in the courts before the 2018 election that triggered a wave of community sympathy that manifested itself on election day and took the Bai-Kai duo to the brink of defeat.
Readers of my website will know that in the immediate aftermath of the election, I tried and failed to get Bainimarama to realise that the FijiFirst government’s appearance of arrogance — its vei beci, viavialevu attitude to everything — was the prime cause of its electoral collapse.
But they still don’t get it. And having given them a fright in 2018 but still not having learnt their lesson, I suspect that the Rabuka juggernaut is going to bear down on them in the coming months and flatten them like toads on hot bitumen.
Why? Because the Fijian people are fed up with them, not just the usual burden of longevity in government and people tiring of their increasingly tired faces but a visceral distaste for the manner in which they conduct themselves.
Always right. Never wrong. Always contemptuous. Never, ever humble.
Sitiveni Rabuka is the front runner to win the next election, presuming it is ever held. The Western Force/Fiji Sun poll published in the September 1 edition of the Fiji Sun. Image: Grubsheet
Even some of my closest friends say Rabuka cannot win — that the burden of his two coups in 1987 and the hatred and bitterness that lingers — especially among Indo-Fijians – is too much of a cross to bear, let alone such things as the fiasco of the National Bank collapse under his watch when he was eventually elected prime minister.
But politics is more about perception than substance wherever it is practiced in the world. And is equally true that electors have notoriously short memories, never mind that a great many voters weren’t even born when Rabuka held the reins of power.
I am coming to the view that not only can Rabuka win the next election but probably will.
For many Fijians, the events of 1987, let alone Rabuka’s period in government, aren’t a part of their lived experience. In any event, Bainimarama and Khaiyum have yet to learn the most basic lesson of politics — that oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them.
And these two conjoined twins — with their chronic hubris and arrogance — are doing everything they possibly can to lose.
I’ve chosen the accompanying selection of photos to illustrate Rabuka’s extraordinary journey from coup-maker in 1987 to the benign figure that the opinion polls now tell us is set to make the most extraordinary comeback in Fijian political history. Provided of course, that Bainimarama and Khaiyum keep to the election timetable and the people still get their say.
Grubsheet montage of Sitiveni Rabuka photos. Image: Grubsheet
There’s “Rambo” – the smiling tough guy and defender of iTaukei rights who forced thousands of Indo-Fijians to leave Fiji post 1987. And there’s Rabuka as Prime Minister in the 1990s forming a warm partnership with the main Indo-Fijian politician, Jai Ram Reddy, that produced the 1997 Constitution and eventually led to Rabuka’s defeat.
There’s the “treasonous” soldier who abolished the monarchy and took Fiji out of the Commonwealth when it wouldn’t accept his takeover. And there is the barefooted Prime Minister at Buckingham Palace making a formal apology to HM the Queen for his act of lese majeste and it being graciously accepted.
The man has had an incredible journey, that’s for sure. And maybe, just maybe, he is going to cement his place in Fijian history next year with an incredible final twist.
Is it in the stars? It doesn’t matter. It’s already in the opinion polls.
And you can bet your last saqamoli that it’s keeping Frank Bainimarama and his puppet master, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, awake at night with agonising intimations of their own political mortality.
Fiji-born Graham Davis is a Walkley Award and Logie Award-winning Australian-based journalist and media consultant. He is publisher of the Grubsheet blog on Fiji affairs. This commentary is republished with permission.
Host Selwyn Manning with security analyst Dr Paul Buchanan on this week’s A View From Afar podcast. Video:EveningReport.nz on YouTube A VIEW FROM AFAR:Podcast with Selwyn Manning and Paul Buchanan
In this week’s security podcast, Dr Paul G. Buchanan and host Selwyn Manning discuss:
three areas that have been relied on to protect New Zealanders from terror-style attacks;
legal measures designed to protect communities from danger and even protect individuals from themselves;
and why they failed.
The background to this episode is the tragic, terrifying, attack that were committed against unarmed innocent people at West Auckland’s LynnMall Countdown supermarket, by Ahamed Aathill Mohamed Samsudeen.
The attack occurred last Friday, 3 September 2021. It ended with the hospitalisation of seven people, and, the death of Samsudeen, who was fatally shot by special tactics police officers during his attempt to kill and injure as many people as he could.
Immediately after, the Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told the nation that the dead man was a terrorist and that she herself, the police, and the courts were all aware of how dangerous he was and had been seeking to protect New Zealand from this man.
Within days of the attacks, we learned, that Samsudeen was a troubled man with psychologists describing him as angry, capable of carrying out his threats, and displaying varying degrees of mental illness and disorder.
Refugee who sought asylum Samsudeen was a refugee who sought asylum in New Zealand after experiencing, through his formative years civil war and ethnic cleansing in Sri Lanka, who, at around 20 years of age, arrived in New Zealand on a student visa and then sought political asylum.
He was eventually granted refugee status, and since then spent years in prison on various charges and convictions – largely involving the possession of terrorist propaganda seeded on the internet by Islamic State (ISIS), and, threats showing intent to commit terrorist acts against New Zealanders.
In this week’s episode, Dr Buchanan and Manning examine questions about whether this tragedy could have been prevented and considered New Zealand’s:
Security and terror laws
Deportation laws involving those with refugee status
The Mental Health Act and whether this was available to the authorities.
Dr Buchanan and Manning also analyse whether it is necessary for the New Zealand government to move to tighten New Zealand’s terrorism security laws. And, if it does, how the intended new laws compare to other Five Eyes member countries.
The 2001 World Trade Center disaster was the most significant high-rise evacuation in modern times, and the harrowing experiences of the thousands of survivors who successfully escaped the twin towers have had a significant influence on building codes and standards. One legacy of the 9/11 tragedy is that today’s skyscrapers can be emptied much more safely and easily in an emergency.
The twin towers’ elevator layouts meant getting to ground level was more complicated on some floors than on others. US NIST
The 110-storey twin towers, constructed from 1966 to 1973, both had open-plan floor designs, with stairs and elevators located in the buildings’ core. Each tower had three staircases which, barring a few twists and turns, ran all the way from the top of the building down to the mezzanine level just above the ground floor. One of the stairways had steps 142 centimetres wide, but the other two measured just 112cm, which would not be permitted by today’s skyscraper building codes.
As a result of the twin towers’ system of “sky lobbies”, which was innovative for its time, the number of available elevators varied depending on the floor. The system was not designed to be used in an emergency, and today, many towers above a certain height are required to be fitted with dedicated emergency elevators or an additional staircase.
When the planes hit on the morning of September 11 2001, the twin towers were at less than half their full occupancy, with about 9,000 people in each tower. Many people who worked there had not yet arrived, partly because of a New York mayoral election scheduled for that day.
At 8:46am, American Airlines flight 11 slammed into the north face of the north tower, rendering all three staircases impassable for anyone above the 91st floor. Sixteen minutes later, and after one-third of its occupants had already evacuated, the south tower was hit by United Airlines flight 175, leaving only one staircase available for evacuees above the 78th floor.
Besides the problems posed by fires and damage on floors, and debris inside the stairways, people in both towers also faced issues with communication. The north tower’s public address system, which would have been used to make emergency announcements to the building’s occupants, was disabled by the crash.
In the south tower, three minutes before the impact, occupants were told via the public address system to stay in place and wait for further information. Two minutes later they were told they could evacuate if they wanted. This may have meant more people from higher floors were waiting at the sky lobby on floor 78 when the plane crashed into that floor.
In both towers, people had only limited information on which to base their decisions. For those closest to the impacts, the seriousness of the situation and the need to evacuate was clear. But for those further away, who may have witnessed only the lights flicker, the uncertainty was palpable. Many people delayed their evacuation to seek out extra information, whether by speaking with colleagues, making phone calls, sending emails or searching online for news updates.
Many lives were saved by the brave leadership of people who took control of the situation, urging others to evacuate and helping those who needed assistance. My PhD research revealed these were typically people who were used to taking charge: high-level managers, fire wardens and people with military experience.
Hazardous exit
Evacuees faced a dangerous and claustrophobic journey down to ground level. A subsequent US government investigation found 70% of evacuees encountered crowding on the stairs. Some people recalled having to leave the stairwell either because of overcrowding, being told to do so by fire or building officials, or because they needed a rest. Other problems included poor lighting, not knowing which direction to go, and finding the route unavoidably blocked by people with permanent or temporary disabilities.
One of the narrow staircases in the north tower, taken during the evacuation on September 11 2001. NIST
While people are typically told not to use elevators in an emergency, 16% of those who escaped the south tower used the elevators to evacuate during the 16 minutes between the two impacts. Simulations of a hypothetical 9/11 in which elevators were unavailable showed that occupants’ use of elevators saved 3,000 lives in the south tower.
Not everyone was so lucky. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) investigation (on which I was an author) estimated that between 2,146 and 2,163 people were killed in the towers, and that more people died in the north tower, which was struck first. Most of those who died on 9/11 were on or above the floors hit by the planes.
Roughly 99% of people on floors below the impacts managed to evacuate successfully. For those who didn’t, the factors linked to their deaths included delaying their evacuation, performing emergency response duties, or being unable to leave their particular floor because of damage or debris. Had the buildings been fully occupied, the consequences would undoubtedly have been even worse.
The stories of those who experienced the terrifying evacuations have helped to shape important and life-saving changes in high-rise buildings. The NIST report made several recommendations that were eventually implemented in a range of building codes and standards around the world, notably the International Building Code.
Emergency stairs in skyscrapers must now be at least 137cm wide, and feature glow-in-the-dark markings on the stair treads that are visible even if the power fails.
Stairwells in large buildings are now wider and have better signage. Rico Shen/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
What’s more, while elevator use is not typically encouraged during building fires, the International Building Code now requires a new “occupant-safe” elevator system or an additional staircase in buildings over 128 metres tall. These new elevator systems are designed to be safely used during fires, offering a vital escape route for people unable to use stairs.
The tragic events of 9/11 changed the world in all sorts of ways. But hopefully, when it comes to the design of today’s skyscrapers, it has changed things for the better.
Erica Kuligowski currently receives funding from the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Measurement Science and Engineering Grants Program (as a subcontractor). She is affiliated with the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE) as a Section Editor for their Handbook of Fire Protection Engineering (Human Behaviour Section) and as a member of the Board of Governors for the SFPE Foundation. Also, from 2002 to 2020, Erica worked as a research engineer and social scientist in the Engineering Laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. While at NIST, Erica worked on NIST’s Technical Investigation of the 2001 WTC Disaster as a team member of Project 7: Occupant Behavior, Egress, and Emergency Communications. Finally, Erica gratefully acknowledges the UK WTC project HEED, funded by the UK EPSRC (grant EP/D507790/1) for providing access to the HEED database, which was used in her PhD thesis.
Earlier this year, the Australian Greens proposed a wealth tax on billionaires straight out of the (former US presidential candidate) Elizabeth Warren playbook.
This week it added what it called a “tycoon tax” that would tax so-called super-profits made by companies with annual turnovers of more than A$100 million.
It might not be the winner it seems.
If Australian taxpayers want to get more tax from super-profitable companies there might be better ways to do it.
Under the Greens proposal some companies, even large ones, would escape the extra annual tax. It would apply only to that part of their post-tax profits that exceeded an “allowance for a corporate equity”.
The allowance would be 5% of the value of the company plus the long-term bond rate, which at present is 1.2%, meaning at the moment the threshold would be a post-tax return on capital of 6.2%
Extra profit — so-called super-profit above the threshold — would be taxed at 40%, meaning almost half of it would lost.
An idea with a backstory
The Greens system is the system (and the rate) recommended by the Henry Tax Review for taxing the larger-than-normal profits from mining, and it’s the system used since 1988 for the larger than normal profits from off-shore petroleum.
What the Greens propose would apply not only to the earnings of Australian companies but also to the share of a multinational’s operations in Australia.
The mining sector would be dealt with on a project-by-project basis rather a company-by-company basis, which is what happened with Labor’s short-lived minerals resource rent tax (also 40%) between 2012 and 2014.
A 2010 Perth rally against the Resource Super Profit Tax proposed by the Rudd Labor government. Josh Jerga/AAP. Josh Jerga/AAP
Some years ago the idea was put forward by the Business Council of Australia as part of a plan to remove the tax on normal company profits (something the Greens are not proposing to do).
In its 2009 submission to the Henry Tax Review, the Business Council said taxing only returns that exceeded a “normal” return had the “potential to stimulate investment both for locally based companies and inbound investors”.
But there are problems with the idea, as the Business Council acknowledged.
It’s hard to get right
One problem is that it is hard to know where to set the threshold between “normal” profit and “super” profit (what economists call “economic rent” which is returns in excess of those needed to justify the activity).
The threshold is unlikely to be 5% plus the bond rate across the entire economy.
If we end up not only taxing excessive economic rents but also genuine needed returns we might damage the engine of the economy. We would be like an athlete who is burning muscle as well as fat.
Investors take a risk when they put money into a business.
Sometimes the investment goes well, other times it will fail. Grabbing 40% of the extra upside, but leaving investors to wear all of the downside or accumulate losses to offset against future profits, would create an asymmetry.
It’d seem like “heads Adam Bandt wins, tails I lose”.
Many of the companies that make so-called super-profits would stay here grudgingly. The big five banks make profits way in excess of the threshold. Some multinational franchise operations probably make them as well.
We can’t be certain companies would stay
But other companies might decide to wind down their operations in Australia, redirecting investment to somewhere else. Jobs and wages might suffer.
Also it would be hard to measure the capital base of the the company to work out how to measure the return and calculate how much of it was above 6.2%.
The Greens did the right thing getting the independent Parliamentary Budget Office to assess how much the tax would raise.
The PBO’s best guess is that the mining component would raise $124.78 billion over 10 years and the non-mining component $213.9 billion.
The costing of one of those components (the non-mining component) includes so-called “behavioural responses” which in this case means it assumes 20% less tax would be paid than calculated as companies restructured their affairs.
That might be too mild an assumption for such a big tax change.
The costing of the mining component has not been adjusted. Anyone who remembers Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan’s mining super-profits tax remembers the threats of big behavioural responses. They helped end Rudd’s prime ministership.
There are more promising ideas
On Monday at the ANU Crawford Leadership Forum, former Australian finance minister Mathias Cormann, who is now secretary general of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, outlined a more promising proposal.
The OECD has developed a worldwide plan to get multinationals with annual revenues of more than €750 million (about A$1.2 billion) to pay a minimum tax rate of at least 15% all over the world.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen wants to go further. She is working on a global minimum corporate rate of 21%.
They are ambitious plans, but they have a real chance of success.
Richard Holden is President-elect of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Balanzategui, Senior Lecturer in Cinema and Screen Studies, Swinburne University of Technology
Australian Children’s Television Foundation
Australian kids’ TV show Round the Twist gained an international following when it was first broadcast in 1989-1990. Broadcast over four seasons up until 2001, young audiences were thrilled by the supernatural adventures of the lighthouse-dwelling Twist family.
As its original fans have grown up, a veritable cottage industry has emerged around Round the Twist nostalgia.
In 2016, Netflix promoted one of its most successful Original series, Stranger Things, with a trailer in the style of the Round the Twist title sequence, including the iconic theme song. In creating this mash-up trailer, Netflix acknowledged the intergenerational appeal of these two often creepy dark fantasy shows.
The production house for Round the Twist, the Australian Children’s Television Foundation, had to fight to find a home for this horror-inflected children’s show. According to ACTF founder and the show’s producer Patricia Edgar, one French company who was in discussions to co-finance the show called it “disgusting”.
Round the Twist is remembered as a challenging, subversive show: one that combines horror, dark fantasy and the grotesque. Ghosts make frequent spooky appearances, but ultimately turn out to be friendly spirits needing the family’s help to finish their business and move on.
Skeletons come to life; Santa Claus becomes “Santa Claws”; love spells go wrong; and monsters really do live under the bed.
The show has evidently left a lasting impact on its former child viewers. Horror and dark fantasy for children often leaves an impression: TV tends to be how young viewers first encounter these genres.
New life through nostalgia
Round the Twist is what media scholar Kathleen Loock describes as a “dormant” TV show: shows that continue to be meaningful to the original audience or find new audiences long after they go off the air.
Because Netflix is not dependent on high ratings or constricted by limited airtime, they can afford to license long-cancelled series like Round the Twist. Their hope is previous fans will re-watch the show and post about it on social media, attracting more subscribers.
By hosting these shows, Netflix is able to attract adult viewers who find the nostalgia appealing; but also adults who now have children of their own, and who want to introduce their children to shows they loved as a child.
Round the Twist is joined on the platform by other 1990s shows like Goosebumps and Spellbinder, and other series – like Lost in Space, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and the Baby-Sitters Club – have been rebooted with a 21st century spin, soliciting an intergenerational conversation between existing adult and young new fans.
Nostalgia has also proven a potent tool in launching stage musicals. Simon Phillips, who is slated to direct Round the Twist, also directed the stage musical adaptations of Muriel’s Wedding in 2017, and Priscilla Queen of the Desert in 2006.
Just as Round the Twist’s release on Netflix caused a stir, nostalgia will surely draw in the crowds to the musical: the producers already have the advantage of the beloved theme song to entice fans who first watched the show more than 30 years ago – as well as a whole new generation who have discovered it on streaming.
Our research project, Australian Children’s Television Cultures, aims to find out more about the kids’ TV shows we remember. Let us know which shows from your childhood have stuck in your mind the most. You can also follow us on Twitter.
Jessica Balanzategui receives funding from the Australian Children’s Television Foundation.
Djoymi Baker receives funding from the Australian Children’s Television Foundation (ACTF)
Joanna McIntyre receives funding from The Australian Children’s Television Foundation (ACTF).
Liam Burke receives funding from the Australian Children’s Television Foundation (ACTF)
Many Australians are walking for their permitted fitness activity during lockdown. Some, emerging from winter hibernation, are taking part in STEPtember — a global initiative to raise money for cerebral palsy services and research.
The goal for participants is to reach 10,000 steps each day during the month of September. Indeed, 10,000 steps is the de-facto target around the world that many people associate with being fit, healthy and ageing well.
Now, a new study says a lower — and more achievable — daily goal of 7,000 steps will still yield substantial health benefits.
From marketing to medical advice
The 10,000 step benchmark originated from a marketing campaign rather than a specific health objective. A Japanese company (Yamasa Corporation) built a campaign for their new step-tracker off the momentum of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. The pedometer’s brand name — Manpo-Kei means 10,000 step meter in English — and a new phenomenon was born.
The new study from the US in 2,100 adults aged over 40 found that while 10,000 steps may well be an optimal health goal, adults can still achieve significant health benefits from only 7,000 steps per day.
Technology including smart watches help walkers and researchers keep track of steps. Shutterstock
The researchers in the new study collected data using wearable sensors (triaxial accelerometers similar to those used in smartwatches and phones) and followed participants over a period of around ten years. Researchers looked at the average step counts and analysed the risk of death (after controlling for other factors that might influence the result, like poor health, smoking, and diet).
Compared to adults who walked less than 7,000 steps per day on average, those who reached between 7,000 and 9,999 steps per day had a 60% to 70% lower risk of early death from any cause. The effect was the same for both men and women. But there wasn’t significant further reduction in the risk of early death for those who walked more than 10,000 steps.
The effective step target might be even lower in older women. A 2019 study of 16,741 women with a mean age of 72 years found those who averaged around 4,400 steps per day had significantly lower mortality rates when they were followed up more than four years later, compared with the least active women in the study.
The researchers found health benefits were not affected by walking pace (based on the peak steps per minute over a 30-minute period) or intensity (the total time with over 100 steps per minute).
These findings corroborate a 2020 publication and further confirm the WHO’s 2020 physical activity report that tells us “every move counts”. Such messaging is echoed in Australia’s Move it campaign.
Research has shown walking to increase our individual speed could be more important than absolute speed — emphasising the goal to challenge ourselves while out walking for exercise.
What about during lockdown?
A large UK study shows prolonged lockdown conditions may limit our movement to 3,500 steps a day. And we know less physical activity not only affects physical health, but also mental health.
Exercise during lockdown is considered an essential activity by national and international authorities — as important as obtaining food and medical care.
For the millions of Australians in lockdown right now, this new study brings positive news and a more achievable goal for protecting their health.
There is no one-size fits all when it comes to fitness. And there are many different innovative ways to stay active while we’re at home.
For those people who don’t have mobility issues, walking provides therapeutic benefits and is an excellent activity for health. It is free of charge, expends energy at any pace, can be done all year round and is a habit forming activity.
While it is estimated more than a quarter of the world’s population is physically inactive, an easy and achievable solution might be right on our doorstep.
Whether we walk or do other physical activities, it is important we do so at a speed and intensity appropriate to our personal abilities and physical capacity.
More research is needed to understand the potential long-term health benefits across the lifespan of light-intensity activities such as household activities like gardening, watering the garden or vacuuming. But evidence continues to affirm that stepping to the beat of your own drum can ensure health benefits, prevent premature death and set attainable benchmarks to make us want to keep active and motivated to continue.
Public health messaging has emphasised the need to sit less and move more. Events like STEPtember add to heightened public awareness around the health benefits of physical activity and present an opportunity to focus on efficient ways to be active.
Whether you take 7,000 or more steps a day, the most important message is every single step counts.
Matthew Ahmadi 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.
When I was a child, I was intrigued by the Queensland box (Lophostemon confertus) growing in our backyard. I noticed its leaves hung vertical after lunch in summer, and were more or less horizontal by the next morning.
This an example of heliotropism, which literally means moving in relation to the sun. We can see it most clearly as spring arrives and various species burst into flower — you might even get the feeling that some flowers are watching you as they move.
Many of us probably first got to know of heliotropism at home, kindergarten or primary school by watching the enormous yellow and black flowering heads of aptly name sunflowers, which moved as they grew.
These flowers track the course of the sun spectacularly on warm and sunny, spring or summer days. Sometimes they move through an arc of almost 180⁰ from morning to evening.
So with the return of sunny days and flowers in full bloom this season, let’s look at why this phenomenon is so interesting.
The mechanics of tracking the sun
A number flowering species display heliotropism, including alpine buttercups, arctic poppies, alfalfa, soybean and many of the daisy-type species. So why do they do it?
This is Heliotropium arborescens, named for its heliotropism. They were very popular in gardens a century or more ago, but have fallen from favour as they can be poisonous and weedy. Shutterstock
Flowers are really in the advertising game and will do anything they can to attract a suitable pollinator, as effectively and as efficiently as they can. There are several possible reasons why tracking the sun might have evolved to achieve more successful pollination.
By tracking the sun, flowers absorb more solar radiation and so remain warmer. The warmer temperature suits or even rewards insect pollinators that are more active when they have a higher body temperature.
Optimum flower warmth may also boost pollen development and germination, leading to a higher fertilisation rate and more seeds.
For many heliotropic flowering species, there’s a special layer of cells called the pulvinus just under the flower heads. These cells pump water across their cell membranes in a controlled way, so that cells can be fully pumped up like a balloon or become empty and flaccid. Changes in these cells allow the flower head to move.
Fly traps have somewhat similar mechanics to heliotropism. Shutterstock
When potassium from neighbouring plant cells is moved into the cells of the pulvinus, water follows and the cells inflate. When they move potassium out of the cells, they become flaccid.
These potassium pumps are involved in many other aspects of plant movement, too. This includes the opening and closing of stomata (tiny regulated leaf apertures), the rapid movement of mimosa leaves, or the closing of a fly trap.
But sunflowers dance differently
In 2016, scientists discovered that the pin-up example of heliotropism — the sun flower — had a different way of moving.
They found sunflower movement is due to significantly different growth rates on opposite sides of the flowering stem.
Sunflowers move differently to other heliotropic flowers. Aaron Burden/Unsplash
On the east-facing side, the cells grow and elongate quickly during the day, which slowly pushes the flower to face west as the daylight hours go by — following the sun. At night the west-side cells grow and elongate more rapidly, which pushes the flower back toward the east over night.
Everything is then set for the whole process to begin again at dawn next day, which is repeated daily until the flower stops growing and movement ceases.
While many people are aware of heliotropism in flowers, heliotropic movement of leaves is less commonly noticed or known. Plants with heliotropic flowers don’t necessarily have heliotropic leaves, and vice versa.
Heliotropism evolves in response to highly specific environmental conditions, and factors affecting flowers can be different from those impacting leaves.
The leaves of Queensland box, Lophostemon confertus, which track the sun. Krzysztof Ziarnek, Kenraiz/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
For example, flowers are all about pollination and seed production. For leaves, it’s for maximising photosynthesis, avoiding over-heating on a hot day or even reducing water loss in harsh and arid conditions.
Some species, such as the Queensland box, arrange their leaves so they’re somewhat horizontal in the morning, capturing the full value of the available sunlight. But there are also instances where leaves align vertically to the sun in the middle of the day to minimise the risks of heat damage.
Plants are dynamic
It’s easy to think of plants as static organisms. But of course, they are forever changing, responding to their environments and growing. They are dynamic in their own way, and we tend to assume that when they do change, it will be at a very slow and steady pace.
Heliotropism shows us this is not necessarily the case. Plants changing daily can be a little unsettling in that we sense a change but may not be aware of what is causing our unease.
As for me, I still keep a watchful eye on those Queensland boxes!
Gregory Moore does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Michelle Grattan discusses the week in politics with University of Canberra Associate Professor Caroline Fisher.
This week the pair discuss the National Summit on Women’s Safety, focusing on the prime minister’s opening address and the criticism it attracted. This criticism came at the same time that Scott Morrison attracted significant flack for travelling to Sydney from Canberra and back again over the weekend, to see his family on Father’s Day.
They also discuss the New South Wales roadmap to freedom, and revelations that Greg Hunt possibly could have secured more Pfizer in June of last year.
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.
However, research also shows LGBTQ+ people experience violence and abuse at similar, if not greater, rates than cisgender, heterosexual women. These rates are even higher for people who face multiple structural disadvantages, such as racism, the effects of colonisation, and ableism.
The Women’s Safety Summit did include a private round table discussion on LGBTQ+ issues, but LGBTQ+ people were not part of the public talks. Indeed, even the focus on “women’s safety” frames the issue in a fundamentally hetero-normative way.
What we know about violence experienced by LGBTQ+ people
Rates of family, sexual and domestic violence in LGBTQ+ communities are under-researched in Australia. However, some data are emerging.
Notably, in a survey of the LGBTQ+ community conducted last year, researchers found over 40% of participants reported being in an abusive, intimate relationship in their lives. A similar percentage had suffered abuse from a family member (both chosen and family of origin).
Other national surveys do not provide robust data. The census and the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ personal safety survey do not even collect information on sex, sexual orientation or gender diversity.
The Pride in Prevention report released by La Trobe University researchers last year, meanwhile, sought to identify the specific drivers of violence and abuse in LGBTQ+ communities.
They found that while gender inequality was a driver of family violence, LGBTQ+ people can face additional discrimination based on their gender and sexuality, which can further fuel violence and abuse.
LGBTQ+ people frequently experience discrimination from some mainstream support services, or simply do not know if they will be met with a homophobic or transphobic response. In other cases, service workers may be supportive, but lack an understanding of queer relationships.
And in rural and remote areas, accessing LGBTQ+ specific services may not be possible or safe.
How can LGBTQ+ people be included in the discussion?
The experiences of LGBTQ+ people must be urgently addressed in the next National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women and Their Children. Our communities are diverse and we do not speak for everyone, however, we suggest some important starting points.
1) The next national plan must meaningfully include LGBTQ+ people beyond just acknowledging us as a minority group. To do so, it needs to build on the gendered drivers of domestic, sexual and family violence to include those outlined in the Pride in Prevention report. LGBTQ+ victim-survivors must be consulted widely to ensure the diversity of our voices are included.
2) There must be recognition of how LGBTQ+ identity intersects with other disadvantages (such as racism) and how this impacts experiences of violence.
3) There must be discussions of how support services can be better tailored and more sensitive to the specific needs of diverse genders and sexualities.
4) There should also be an emphasis on developing innovative, community-led justice responses to violence in the LGBTQ+ community, recognising the resistance from some in engaging with police and legal systems.
The exclusion of LGBTQ+ people from discussions like last week’s summit is also a missed opportunity, as we have insights that could be valuable.
And LGBTQ+ communities have built strong networks of care and support, which could help inform what community-based responses to family violence can look like.
Meaningfully including the experiences and knowledge of LGBTQ+ people and other diverse groups is not only important for those communities, but will likely strengthen responses and have benefits for all survivors.
Bianca Fileborn receives funding from the ARC and Women NSW.
Jessica Ison previously received funding from the Department of Social Services.
Sophie Hindes 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.
New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage. You can sign up to NZ Politics Daily as well as New Zealand Political Roundup columns for free here.
Even before any COVID-19 vaccines were invented, vaccine passports for participation in public activities appeared likely.
Australia’s plagued vaccine rollout meant such requirements lay in a distant future — until now.
Australian political leaders have begun talking about a two-track future.
Proof of vaccination is already required in contexts around the globe by governments and private companies for people seeking to travel, dine and party.
We can expect a similar scenario here. So how will Australians be able to prove they’re fully vaccinated?
How can I prove I’m vaccinated?
NSW and Victoria are experiencing high new COVID case numbers. Both states have indicated reaching vaccination targets of 70-80% will be required for widespread easing of restrictions.
They’ve also suggested some freedoms will be only available to people who are fully vaccinated.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian yesterday announced freedoms for fully vaccinated people once 70% of the state’s eligible population are double dosed. These include being able to go to hospitality venues, hairdressers and gyms, and have five people to your home.
Attention is now turning to the ways in which these and other Australian governments will require proof of vaccination for entry into public and private spaces.
Currently, vaccinated Australians can access a COVID-19 digital certificate through MyGov or the Express Plus Medicare app.
Those needing proof of vaccination for overseas travel will soon have this linked to their passport chips, along with a smartphone compatible QR code.
For returned travellers, this technology is likely to inform the circumstances under which they quarantine. Fully vaccinated travellers may have less stringent requirements than those who are unvaccinated, so technology to demonstrate this will be necessary.
States are also preparing to require proof of vaccination for local participation in hospitality venues and events. This would very likely be different to the way you would prove your vaccination status for travelling overseas.
Vaccination data from the Australian Immunisation Register would be embedded in the Service NSW app, meeting hospitality industry demands for a simple process.
A draft of what a vaccine passport might look like in the Service NSW phone app. Supplied, NSW Government
A “vaccinated economy” to be piloted in regional Victoria will allow only the double-dosed to access events, facilities and services. Again, the hospitality industry supports easy-to-use vaccine passports following their role in reopenings overseas.
What about people who can’t get vaccinated?
Currently, the only formal medical exemption in Australia for COVID-19 vaccines is available on a federal government form. Until now, this form has been used for the country’s “No Jab” policies.
Recently updated for COVID-19 vaccines, it lists a very narrow set of criteria for exemption and can be lodged only by specific medical practitioners.
All levels of government using vaccine passports will need to consider whether other types of exemptions are appropriate or necessary, including for people who have recently been infected with COVID and are advised not to vaccinate for up to six months.
Victoria’s human rights apparatus indicates a wider set of considerations or exemptions may be necessary for those unwilling or unable to vaccinate.
Governments will then need to work out how to manage these exemptions with the technologies they use.
Whether or how these negative tests would be integrated into Australian systems remains to be seen. Pending policies for nightclubs in England and Scotland are set to exclude the “negative test” opt out, meaning only the fully vaccinated will be able to access these venues.
Some Australian states and regions will be scrambling for technology if they want to go down the vaccine passport route.
The check-in app used in Queensland, Tasmania, the NT and the ACT lacks verification mechanisms and is not designed to hold a vaccine passport.
Western Australia is focused on vaccine requirements for interstate travellers and health-care workers, and so far has made no moves towards requiring vaccines for local activities; nor has South Australia.
Research suggests there’s public support for these kinds of measures in Australia, and there are good reasons to prefer governments introducing the terms of a vaccine mandate rather than private corporations.
However, there are issues of legality, viability and ethics to consider, with venue and individual compliance likely to remain a key issue.
Katie Attwell receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the WA Department of Health. She is currently funded by ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award DE1901000158. She is a member of a government advisory committee, the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) COVID-19 Working Group 2. She is a specialist advisor to the Therapeutic Goods Administration. All views presented in this article are her own and not representative of any other organisation.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kurt Iveson, Associate Professor of Urban Geography and Research Lead, Sydney Policy Lab, University of Sydney
The dull roar of traffic, the barking of dogs in backyards and the screeching of cockatoos at dusk. The shattering of early morning quiet by the first plane overhead or the garbage truck on its rounds. The squealed delights and occasional fights of a children’s playground.
These sounds and many more create what Canadian composer R Murray Schafer famously called a “soundscape”. Schafer, who passed away last month, helped us realise we experience cities with our ears as well as our eyes.
In recent years, studies have confirmed these soundscapes affect the well-being of urban inhabitants — both human and non-human. But with much of the country back under lockdown, urban soundscapes have changed, sometimes bringing delight, but sometimes causing new distress.
So let’s take a moment to consider how soundscapes influence our lives, and the lives of urban wildlife.
When sounds become ‘noise’
Whether it’s housemates, traffic, or construction, we tend to respond to many urban sounds by defining them as “noise”, and try to shut them out. We do this using a range of techniques and technologies: building regulations on soundproofing, controls on the times for certain activities like construction, and planning measures.
Housing quality is a major factor here, and noise problems are likely exacerbated under lockdown. A recent study of pandemic housing inequality in Sydney found increased exposure to noise during lockdown is significantly contributing to poor well-being.
For example, sounds travelling across internal and external walls of apartments were frequently a source of tension in pre-pandemic times. Now, with so many more people spending more time at home, these domestic sounds inevitably increase.
It’s not just humans whose lives are disrupted by city noise, as many animals use sound to communicate.
The ever-vigilant New Holland honeyeaters of Australian cities use their alarm calls to warn their friends and neighbours of danger, while the iconic chorus of banjo frogs in wetlands are the hopeful calls of males seeking mates.
This is the sound a banjo frog makes.
Noisy environments can dramatically change how these animals behave. In some cases, animals adapt to their noisy environment. Some frogs, for example, overcome traffic noise disrupting their sex lives by calling at a higher pitch. Likewise, populations of bow-winged grasshoppers in Germany exposed to road noise sing at higher frequencies than those living in quieter areas.
For other animals, such as microbats in England, disruptive noise changes how they forage and move around their environments.
First, there are new noises. For example, in Sydney’s areas of concern subject to tighter lockdown restrictions, people are living with the frequent intrusive noise of police helicopters patrolling their neighbourhoods, making announcements over loudspeakers about compliance.
But in other cases, as our movements and activities are restricted, some city sounds associated with a negative impact on well-being are significantly reduced. People who live near major roads, aircraft flight paths, or construction sites will certainly be noticing the quiet as road traffic is greatly reduced and non-essential construction is paused.
But of course, while this silence might be golden for some, for others the sound of silence is the sound of lost work and income. This quietude may even be considered as unwelcome or even eerie — the sonic signature of isolation, confinement and loss.
The bow-winged grasshopper adapts to noisy soundscapes by singing at higher frequencies. Quartl/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA
Just as many animals adapt to or avoid noisy urban environments, there is a chance many will respond to this natural experiment playing out. Quieter urban environments may see the return of some of our more noise sensitive species, but this depends on the species.
The Brazilian marmosets mentioned earlier didn’t return to those locations even during quieter times, suggesting the noise left a disruptive legacy on their habitat choice, well after it was experienced. On the other hand, other experiments show some species of birds rapidly returned to sites after noise was removed from the landscape.
While it’s too early to confirm any early speculation about nature returning to quieter urban environments during lockdown, there is compelling evidence many people will benefit from engaging with local nature more actively than they did before.
Birdwatching increased tenfold in lockdown last year. Matthew Willimott/Unsplash
It’s clear people are seeing novelty and wonder in animals and plants that have survived and even thrived in our cities right beneath our noses the whole time. Our increased use of local greenspace during the pandemic has created new opportunities to find the extraordinary in the ordinary.
Rethinking post-pandemic soundscapes
What might we learn from this natural experiment about the soundscapes we take for granted and the soundscapes we actually want?
This is an invitation to think about whether we ought to do more to control sounds we consider “noise”. Yes, decibel levels of activities like car and air traffic matter. But it’s also an opportunity to think beyond controlling sounds, and consider how we might create soundscapes to enhance human and non-human well-being. This is easier said than done, given there’s no universal measure of what sounds give pleasure and what sounds are perceived as noise.
This aligns with the growing body of evidence on the need to reduce noise pollution and protect biodiversity when planning and managing our cities.
Like just about every other dimension of urban life, envisioning and creating an improved urban soundscape requires careful attention to spatial inequality and diversity – including of species – and a capacity to work through our differences in a fair and just way.
Dieter Hochuli receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the City of Sydney and the Inner West Council.
Kurt Iveson 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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Fischetti, Professor, Pro Vice-Chancellor of the College of Human and Social Futures, University of Newcastle
Victoria and New South Wales are in a scramble to plan for end-of-school exams. Vaccination targets may not be hit in time (for students or teachers), and there are other issues too — such as kids having missed weeks of face-to-face schooling.
Some critics believe postponing exams isn’t enough, and are calling on states to eliminate end-of-school exams altogether.
Both states have special consideration policies put in place for scores impacted by COVID, but is this enough? And does this unique circumstance give us an opportunity to change the way end-of-school assessments are done?
Two schools of thought
Opinions around this year’s exams fall into two main schools of thought.
The first is that year 12 students deserve to finish what they started. We have spent 12 years convincing them of the importance of this milestone. Many students are anxious, if exams are cancelled, their pathway to university and beyond will be jeopardised by using only their prior track records. Some students are advocating keeping exams for all these reasons.
The alternate school of thought is that we’ve known for years end-of-school exams can cause debilitating stress for many young people. The extraordinary pressure of the process has tipped over the breaking point this year with so much time missed in schools.
So we should take the pressure off our kids and work with vocational education and training providers, and universities, to accommodate them.
There have always been alternative pathways to university and they have been expanding in recent years. We can use those already existing pathway which include subject-specific recruitment schemes, principal recommendations and portfolio entry.
There is already enough data in a student’s record to make an informed decision and allow admissions officers to move forward without this year’s exams. Perhaps we can even look toward eliminating them into the future with more lead time to do the calculations.
What is the rest of the world doing?
End-of-school exams were cancelled this year due to pandemic restrictions in the United States, France, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands and Germany. Exams were modified in Denmark, Israel and Austria, while Italy held oral only exams.
The United Kingdom cancelled its A-level exams for the last two years and, in Finland, students were allowed to sit their university entrance exams multiple times.
Most Asian countries have postponed their exams. Many pundits in Western countries are advocating for a major change to the high-stakes assessment process, noting universities adjusted their entry criteria in the first year of the pandemic and coped just fine.
What are Australia’s options?
Australian educational leaders and policy makers have three distinct options:
1. Keep the system we have and continue to improve it
The first option – supported by most education ministers and regulators in states and territories – is that our exams and curriculum are built on a high degree of excellence and rigour. They have been honed by years of experience and completed by millions of students.
Continuing to improve the assessments and the curriculum that feeds them will ensure high standards and credibility for excellence rather than promoting a “lowering of the bar”. Over time, we can evolve new courses and assessments, incorporating more technology-based assessments as they are tested and validated for the high-volume administrations of state exams.
2. Add a learner profile to the current system
A second option – that of “learning profiles” – is based on the idea we need to expand the skills we value in young people, beyond those in traditional academic subjects. Skills of the future include critical thinking, problem-solving and collaboration.
Digital platforms are being developed to house evidence of student engagement in the community and to store non-traditional forms of learning (including video and other media) in online tools, creating a learner profile to represent these authentic learning experiences. NSW says it will be trialling this next year, creating an “education passport” for students.
3. Transform the system with new designs for schooling and assessment
The Catholic Education Diocese of Parramatta is transforming the use of student progress data over the school years. Think of the dashboard of a car that has multiple dials and indicators and imagine using that same approach to aggregate data about students and their learning journeys.
These tools can reliably forecast student performance, allowing us to adjust our interventions to promote student success. With the use of predictive analytics, rather than waiting for end-of-school exam results, we can help students boost their future trajectories through immediate support and interventions.
The Paramatta Education Diocese is in the early days of re-designing its schools to promote personal pathways and allow students to align their passions to their emerging skillsets.
Around 40+ schools across the country are in partnership with this model. Students develop portfolios of their learning to document their journeys, organising their projects and assignments to critical learning outcomes which are assessed in a cloud-based learner credential. Nearly 20 Australian universities already accept these portfolios and the credentual for admission in lieu of end-of-school exams.
Our education system is built on 20th century (or earlier) designs of teaching, learning and assessment. COVID gives us the chance to do what we could have done already — move forward with a modern assessment model based on our current knowledge of learning. The goal is for all our children to discover and reach their potential.
John Fischetti is affiliated as a volunteer, unpaid Board member of Big Picture Australia.
