Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Allen Rodrigo, Professor and Head, The School of Biological Sciences, The University of Auckland, University of Auckland

At the conclusion of the G7 summit yesterday, leaders called for a fresh and transparent investigation to determine how the COVID-19 pandemic began.

I welcome the renewed interest in the potential “lab-leak” origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. It wouldn’t be the first time an infectious pathogen was accidentally released from a research laboratory.

I know from personal experience. Back in 1994, on my first day of a fellowship at Stanford University, I picked up a damp courier parcel at reception and took it back to the lab. My professor put on latex gloves immediately. The parcel contained a vial with an HIV-infected lymph node.

The dry ice used to pack the sample had evaporated, soaking the cardboard. There I was, someone who had not worked with HIV before, with hands damp from handling a box containing live virus.

I didn’t get infected. But the experience left me acutely aware of how easily accidents happen. A 2018 review found 27 cases of laboratory-acquired infections between 1982 and 2016 in the Asia-Pacific region alone. The list of pathogens included everything from the virus that causes dengue fever to the SARS coronavirus.

Read more:
Fifty-nine labs around world handle the deadliest pathogens – only a quarter score high on safety

The American Biological Safety Association (ABSA) maintains a searchable database of reported laboratory-acquired infections. It documents “leakage from the plastic bag in the negative-pressure transport chamber” and exposure to “droplets when cleaning a spill”, among many other examples.

From a scientific perspective alone, it is important to investigate the lab-leak hypothesis because, if true, we have to tighten safety procedures to prevent future leaks.

Two lab-leak hypotheses

When the virus was first reported from Wuhan almost 18 months ago, people have raised the possibility that it emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where research on SARS coronaviruses was underway.

This lab-leak hypothesis comes in two flavours. First, the virus could have jumped from an animal (or animal tissue) infected with a SARS coronavirus as part of the research. The infected person subsequently infected others in the community.

The transfer of a pathogen from an animal to people is called a zoonotic transmission. This process also occurs outside of laboratories, perhaps when there is close contact with infected animals or they are eaten.

The second hypothesis suggests a purposeful genetic modification of a coronavirus that gave rise to a more infectious and human-transmissible variant, which then leaked into the community. This type of genetic modification is called gain-of-function, because the engineered virus acquires new biological traits.

It is unfortunate these hypotheses have been miscast as somehow equivalent, and often portrayed as alternative to the “natural origins” hypothesis.

When I and other computational biologists think of origins, we think about evolutionary ancestors: a virus’ evolutionary line of descent. If SARS-CoV-2 had evolved without human intervention from an ancestral variant found in one or more hosts, it is quite possible that such a host animal, or a sample from an infected host animal, was the subject of study in a lab.

Through some unfortunate misadventure, it is plausible that someone in that lab became infected.

Why an investigation is important

Arguments for or against these hypotheses are often couched in terms of likelihoods. In February, the World Health Organisation (WHO) listed four scenarios in its global study of SARS-CoV-2 origins: direct zoonotic transmission, indirect zoonotic transmission through an intermediate host, transmission through cold/food-chain products and accidental laboratory release.

Indirect zoonotic transmission through an intermediate host was deemed “likely to very likely” and accidental lab release “extremely unlikely”. The WHO panel rejected deliberate gain-of-function manipulation because it “has been ruled out by other scientists following analyses of the genome”.

But that wasn’t the last word, because the exact origin of the COVID-19 virus remains a mystery.

Read more:
The COVID-19 lab leak theory highlights a glaring lack of global biosecurity regulation

Genome sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 has shown the virus is related (about 96%) to a strain found in horseshoe bats. Although this seems like a high level of similarity, it implies that SARS-CoV-2 diverged from this strain several decades ago. Therefore, it remains unclear if the spillover was directly to humans or through an intermediate species.

In any case, such evolutionary analysis cannot distinguish between transmission in or outside a laboratory.

The WHO panel considered a lab-acquired infection as extremely unlikely because of the Wuhan laboratories’ strict biosafety protocols. But the ABSA database lists accidental infections happening even in labs with the highest biosafety accreditation, and these include SARS-coronavirus infections.

Read more:
The next pandemic is already happening – targeted disease surveillance can help prevent it

In its arguments for and against accidental lab release, the WHO report noted the Wuhan laboratories moved to a new location near the Huanan market in early December 2019, but “reported no disruptions or incidents caused by the move”. There is no reason to distrust the WHO panel’s conclusions, but it is nonetheless true that lab relocations present opportunities for error.

The lab-leak hypothesis is at least plausible and it’s therefore important to investigate it. If it were related to the operations of the lab, or its relocation, we need to re-examine safety protocols. For relocations, we may want to require independent monitoring and pre- and post-move quarantine of essential personnel.

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

– ref. The COVID-19 lab-leak hypothesis is plausible because accidents happen. I should know – https://theconversation.com/the-covid-19-lab-leak-hypothesis-is-plausible-because-accidents-happen-i-should-know-162430

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Donna Weeks, Professor of Political Science, Musashino University

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga is probably a little relieved the G7 Summit came when it did.

Before departing for the UK at the end of last week, Suga had been subjected to three days of intense scrutiny in the Diet, Japan’s parliament, over the Tokyo Olympics and the country’s slow rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine.

When an opposition lawmaker pointed out that Suga was being singled out for criticism over the Olympics instead of Tokyo’s governor, the prime minister replied,

I’m very glad you said what I want to say. […] I am not trying to run away from [responsibilities], but I feel it is regrettable that this is the direction of the debate in parliament.

Suga’s political fortunes are increasingly tied to the success of the Tokyo games, which are scheduled to begin in just over a month. As the country grapples with a fourth wave of COVID infections, the pressure is building on the government from all quarters.

The public’s support for Suga’s government is hovering in the low- to mid-30% range, while medical professionals are warning the games could lead to the emergence of a new “Olympic” variant of the coronavirus.

Read more:
Olympic athletes speak up: current COVID plans aren’t enough to keep them safe

Proposed public viewing areas for Olympic events around the country are gradually being withdrawn as local authorities fear the spread of the virus. Notable figures selected to run in the torch relay are pulling out, citing “timetable clashes”. Some 10,000 volunteers have withdrawn from the games, as well.

To make matters worse, Kaori Yamaguchi, a Japanese Olympic Committee member and former judo medallist, said Tokyo had been “cornered” into hosting the games in a scathing opinion piece:

We are damned if we do, and damned if we do not. […] What will these Olympics be for, and for whom? The games have already lost meaning and are being held just for the sake of them.

Suga’s long game

All of this would appear to be very bad for Suga’s government. In the Diet last week, Suga took what many perceived to be a non-committal approach, failing to clearly answer questions put to him over the games.

He insisted he is responsible for ensuring the health and safety of the Japanese people, but didn’t offer specifics beyond this. He waxed lyrical about his memories of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and his hope that everyone can experience the excitement of that time.

He did manage to announce, to the surprise of most observers, that the vaccination rollout is picking up and should be completed by November. Japan has administered 20 million vaccine doses so far, but just 4% of the population is fully vaccinated.

Read more:
Can the Olympics still be cancelled? Yes, but the legal and financial fallout would be staggering

By focusing his attention on the pandemic and offering vague responses on the Olympics, one could speculate Suga is playing the long game.

Elections are expected this year both nationally and for the Tokyo governorship.
Suga may be hedging on the Olympics. If the games are successful, this will work in his electoral favour, but if there are problems, he can claim the games were outside his purview.

Suga and his government do have some room for optimism, too. Though his public support has plummeted from around 70% last year, voters may be reluctant to transfer their support to what many see as a lacklustre opposition.

And though there is still much public opposition to the games going ahead, it is becoming clearer to people that the decision lies with the International Olympic Committee, not with government officials at the national and local level.

The fortunes of Koike and (possibly) Abe?

Interestingly, the three politicians with direct political carriage of the Olympics are women: Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike; Hashimoto Seiko, the recently installed president of the Japanese Olympic Committee; and Marukawa Tamayo, the minister responsible for the Olympics.

Koike was comfortably re-elected last year and has been consistent in her push to apply tight restrictions to combat the pandemic. She fronts the media on an almost daily basis appealing to Tokyoites to “stay home” and observe all the necessary protocols to prevent the spread of the virus.

She has also garnered some support from her prefectural colleagues in a team effort to force the hand of the national government to implement stricter controls. As a result, her popularity has remained relatively high, with 57% of respondents in a recent poll approving of her leadership.

Koike was formerly a member of Suga’s Liberal Democratic Party prior to taking on Japan’s largest governorship. There has been speculation around whether she will make a return to national politics to realise her own prime ministerial ambitions. A strong show of leadership during this time won’t hurt her ambitions.

The recent machinations of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe are not to be overlooked, either. When Abe made a surprise appearance at the 2016 Rio Olympics closing ceremony, he no doubt harboured ambitions to see a successful Tokyo Olympics as the swansong of his long time in office.

Abe resigned as prime minister last year due to health reasons, but not, significantly, from parliament. Suga was then elected by his party colleagues to replace Abe as prime minister.

Abe recently made some “observations” regarding Suga’s potential successor, and rumours swirled about a possible (but unlikely) return to the top job. Abe appeared to take himself out of the running, but polls show he still has some public support.

A new opinion poll suggests the Japanese public are reluctantly giving into the inevitable, accepting the games will get underway in just over one month.

With the upcoming elections increasingly being seen as a referendum on the government’s handling of both the Olympics and the vaccine rollout, Suga and his colleagues are probably hoping the same sense of inevitably will get them over the line, as well.

Read more:
The Tokyo Olympics are going ahead, but they will be a much compromised and watered-down event

Donna Weeks works at Musashino University in Tokyo, which was due to be a hub for the host city officials during the Games. She also was allotted tickets (paid for herself) for two events in the initial ticketing lottery.

– ref. Under pressure on the Olympics, Japan’s prime minister is saying little and hoping for a political lifesaver – https://theconversation.com/under-pressure-on-the-olympics-japans-prime-minister-is-saying-little-and-hoping-for-a-political-lifesaver-161740

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

We recently heard a new “hybrid variant” of the coronavirus has been detected in Vietnam, amid a spike in cases in the country.

The variant was originally described as a hybrid of the UK (now Alpha) and Indian (now Kappa B.1.617.1 and Delta B.1.617.2) strains of the virus. But what does this actually mean? And if we look at the science behind virus behaviour, is a hybrid really what we’re seeing?

What is a ‘hybrid’?

In virology, the scientific name for a hybrid is a “recombinant”. Recombination is when two strains infect a person at the same time and combine to make a new strain.

This process is common in influenza, where it’s often called an “antigenic shift”.

The major concern with viral recombination is the possibility the new strain will rapidly emerge with advantages of both strains, and you’ll get, for example, a strain that’s both more transmissible and faster at replicating. The same can be true for gradual mutation, but this takes more time.

Emerging evidence suggests coronaviruses can undergo recombination, which may have contributed to the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. There’s moderate evidence SARS-CoV-2 itself has undergone some recent recombination, with early reports suggesting a possible recombination event between an Alpha (B.1.1.7) and Epsilon (B.1.429) variant.

It’s important to note these reports are early and some of the science is not yet peer-reviewed. So, the role of recombination in the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 still needs to be confirmed.

Read more:
What’s the difference between mutations, variants and strains? A guide to COVID terminology

According to early reports from the World Health Organization (WHO), genetic sequencing is now showing the strain circulating in Vietnam is a Delta strain that has developed some additional mutations.

Scientifically, and according to the WHO, this means it’s not a “hybrid” at all. Rather, it’s a mutated version of the Delta variant.

The Delta variant was originally detected in India and has since spread around the world, including to Australia. Early reports suggest it’s more transmissible and possibly more deadly than other variants, leading health authorities, including in Vietnam, to be on high alert.

We don’t yet know the details of which extra mutations are found in the Vietnam version of the Delta variant. But we have seen this phenomenon before, where mutations known in one variant are reported as accumulating in a different SARS-CoV-2 variant.

What we know, and don’t know

Late last month, Vietnamese health officials reported this so-called hybrid variant circulating was very dangerous and more transmissible than other strains of the virus. They said it was behind the surge in infections Vietnam experienced during May.

These initial reports were based on clinical observations. Whether this mutated variant is more infectious, and the degree to which it can be implicated in Vietnam’s current surge of infections, is not yet certain.

Read more:
What’s the Delta COVID variant found in Melbourne? Is it more infectious and does it spread more in kids? A virologist explains

When someone is diagnosed with COVID-19, it’s not always common to perform whole-genome sequencing on their viral sample. It’s often an expensive and time-consuming process undertaken by public health officials, epidemiologists and virologists to understand and predict the movement of an outbreak.

This means not all countries will have the capacity to rapidly provide whole-genome SARS-CoV-2 sequences. So the exact details of what strain is circulating where will always come after reports of case numbers.

It’s likely we don’t yet know if this altered Delta strain is the predominant one circulating in Vietnam. Vietnam has either not yet conducted full analysis of genomic data from enough patient samples, or is yet to make this information publicly available.

Additionally, we don’t yet know whether this mutated variant is more transmissible or causes more severe COVID-19 than the Delta variant or the original SARS-CoV-2. We also don’t know whether it will affect how well COVID vaccines work.

To answer these questions, we’ll need more detailed genomic data, time to see how things play out in the community, as well as data from scientific and clinical studies involving people infected with this variant.

New names

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to evolve, so too do the SARS-CoV-2 strains driving the chaos.

Initially reports focused on the “UK variant” or the “Indian variant”, and so on.

Recognising the need for a universal naming system, the WHO has assessed the genomic classification of strains and provided new, more general names based on the Greek alphabet.

This list includes both “variants of interest” and “variants of concern”. While Delta is classified as a variant of concern, this altered Delta variant detected in Vietnam is not listed at this stage.

To be considered as a new variant of the virus, or strain, a variant needs to show distinct physical properties, and therefore behave differently, from the original virus or an existing strain. From the WHO’s perspective, this doesn’t appear to be the case for the mutated Delta strain. At least not yet.

Read more:
Coronavirus variants have new names: we can finally stop stigmatising countries

A stark reminder

Vietnam was a country that prided itself on containing the virus, with initial success in border control and public health measures. This resulted in periods without community transmission. At the moment, it’s recording more than 200 new cases a day (on June 10 there were 413).

Hybrid strain or not, Vietnam’s situation should be a reminder to the world — and particularly countries like Australia, with a similarly good track record in containing the virus — of the continued importance of social distancing and vaccination in our fight against COVID-19.

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

– ref. Is a hybrid COVID strain behind Vietnam’s latest wave? Not exactly – https://theconversation.com/is-a-hybrid-covid-strain-behind-vietnams-latest-wave-not-exactly-161879

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By William Terry, PhD Researcher, Southern Cross University

Environmental scientists see flora, fauna and phenomena the rest of us rarely do. In this series, we’ve invited them to share their unique photos from the field.

As a result of logging and severe bushfires, Australian wildlife is facing a severe shortage of tree hollows — holes in the trunks and branches of large old trees. More than 300 species of birds and mammals, including possums, bats, cockatoos, owls and kookaburras, rely on tree hollows for shelter or breeding.

In Australia, hollows are usually formed through the decay of a tree scar, and it can take hundreds of years for tree hollows big enough for medium-sized animals to form naturally.

This includes phascogales — the rat-sized, carnivorous marsupials that live in open woodlands across Australia and are the focus of my research and photography. But like many of Australia’s forest-dwelling mammals, phascogales are vulnerable to extinction.

So with hollows becoming harder to find, I venture into forests and study how well artificial hollows, made with chainsaws, can replace them. And, incredibly, it’s working: my research shows phascogales and other native animals are enthusiastically moving into the new real estate.

Meet the mysterious brush-tailed phascogale

Phascogales are an important species to Australia but, unfortunately, their cryptic behaviour and nocturnal habits mean people rarely see them.

Phascogales feed on insects after stripping bark from eucalypts. But through my close interactions and radio tracking, I’ve documented phascogales eating other more unusual foods, including bird eggs and sometimes even small birds, such as grey-shrike thrush.

I’ve also recorded them taking dead birds, such as the rosella pictured below. They even have a reputation among farmers as being a fierce chicken killer, but this may be exaggerated.

Phascogales have an unusual life. Shortly after mating between April and May, all males die at about 11 months of age from stomach ulcers. This frees up resources for the next generation of young joeys that will emerge from the nest in early summer.

But will they survive in the future?

Tragically, at least one species, the brush-tailed phascogale, is threatened with extinction, primarily due to habitat loss, climate change, and feral predators such as foxes and cats.

The brush-tailed phascogale (Phascogale tapoatafa tapoatafa) occurs across the eastern side of Australia, from southern Queensland to Victoria. It’s now extinct in South Australia.

Likewise, the much smaller red-tailed phascogale (Phascogale calura) once survived across a vast swathe of land from Western Australia to Victoria. Today, it survives only in small pockets in the Western Australia wheatbelt.

Household cats are a particularly major issue for phascogales, and many cat owners in central Victoria have a story about their cat bringing home a phascogale (so please keep your pet cat inside at all times).

Read more:
Don’t let them out: 15 ways to keep your indoor cat happy

Last year, research confirmed climate change would reduce the available areas phascogales could survive. This research found areas with a phascogale-friendly climate would decline by up to 79% in Queensland, 67% in Victoria and 17% in NSW, by 2070.

Climate change also threatens to bring longer, more frequent and severe heatwaves. For phascogales and many other mammals, this could be a death sentence.

Tree hollows with thick walls can protect the animals sheltering inside from the high temperatures outside.

But these are getting increasingly rarer, and this is where my research on chainsaw hollows comes in. Thick-walled hollows may be very important for the long-term survival of phascogales and other species in a warming climate.

Carving them a home

A chainsaw hollow is a cavity constructed inside a tree. A faceplate is then attached over the top, with a hole drilled into it for the animal to enter. They offer refuge for Australia’s endangered mammals and birds.

For our project, we carved 45 chainsaw hollows in dry forests and woodland where phascogales are known to occur. We also installed similar-sized nest boxes — which are more commonly used to offset the loss of hollows — on nearby trees. We monitored these for two and a half years.

Research from 2018 shows nest boxes offer little protection from outside temperatures. I’ve collected data, which is not yet published, that confirms this.

My research shows chainsaw hollows provide 27% more protection from extreme temperatures during heatwaves compared to nest boxes, which provided almost no protection.

Read more:
The world endured 2 extra heatwave days per decade since 1950 – but the worst is yet to come

So it’s no wonder we observed and recorded phascogales and the more common sugar glider (Petaurus notatus) more frequently sheltering in chainsaw hollows than in nearby nest boxes.

Other animals used the chainsaw hollows, too. This includes the feather-tailed glider, yellow-footed antechinus, and the white-throated treecreeper.

But like nest boxes, the chainsaw hollows showed signs they would be only an interim measure, requiring maintenance with bark growing over entrance holes and issues with a buildup of moisture.

In any case, further research into this species is needed, as it will aid land managers to conserve this enigmatic species as more challenges are thrown their way into the future.

Read more:
Photos from the field: the stunning crystals revealing deep secrets about Australian volcanoes

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

– ref. DIY habitat: my photos show chainsaw-carved tree hollows make perfect new homes for this mysterious marsupial – https://theconversation.com/diy-habitat-my-photos-show-chainsaw-carved-tree-hollows-make-perfect-new-homes-for-this-mysterious-marsupial-159639

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christina Ho, Associate professor, University of Technology Sydney

The South Australian government in recent months announced it was relaxing its catchment zone policy for secondary schools. This means families can apply for their year 6 or 7 child to attend any public high school in the state in 2022.

The change is designed to enhance choice for families, who will no longer be stuck with just the option of their local school.

So, what are school catchment zones and why were they established? Would it be better to get rid of them altogether?

A history of school zones

Australian governments created the school catchment zone policy to manage the growth of mass secondary education in the 20th century. They wanted to ensure students were offered a place at the school closest to where they lived, and regulate enrolment numbers in schools. The government established high schools from the 1950s to the 1970s to be “neighbourhood schools”.

Parents at the time were not given the option of choosing a school outside their local area.

Read more:
Choosing a school for your kid? Here’s how other Australian parents do it

But in the name of “choice”, all Australian states now allow students to apply to any public school. Although schools first need to ensure they offer a place to any student living within their catchment zone before accepting students from outside the zone.

Education is not a marketplace

We all like to have choice. But what might be ideal for the individual does not always create fair outcomes for all.

Policies to enhance school choice reflect a neoliberal ideology, dominant since the 1980s. It assumes schools and families, or “consumers”, can compete in a free and fair marketplace.

Families go “school shopping”, comparing different schools’ educational programs, facilities, NAPLAN results or student cohorts.

Easing school zoning is one policy shift that aims to increase school choice. This process arguably improves the quality of education. As with the market, schools are compelled to do better to attract more students, or “customers”.

However, schools are not a marketplace but a social service. Not all schools are equally equipped to compete, and not all families are equally equipped to choose. Australian and international research has shown policies to boost school choice exacerbate inequality and social segregation in school systems.

Read more:
Australian schools are becoming more segregated. This threatens student outcomes

Well-educated, middle-class parents have the knowledge and resources to target the best schools for their children. This includes paying for private tutoring and other extra-curricular activities, so their kids are competitive applicants in a sought-after school.

These families are more able to bypass a “less desirable” local school.

Meanwhile, the “less desirable” schools start losing their better educated and well-resourced families. They may suffer declining enrolments and subsequent staffing cuts, making them even less appealing for future families.

This downward spiral makes it virtually impossible for them to compete effectively with other schools.

Australia has the fourth most segregated schooling system in the OECD. Disadvantaged students are heavily concentrated in disadvantaged and poorly performing schools, and the opposite is true of students from wealthy backgrounds.

How some parents avoid schools

In my Sydney-based research, a principal lamented that middle-class Anglo-Australian parents had expressed reluctance to send their children to her school. Because many kids from migrant and refugee families went to the school, these parents thought the academic standard would be inadequate.

Because these families repeatedly bypassed her school for other schools, schools in this area became increasingly segregated by ethnicity and socioeconomic status.

One of my parent participants recounted her observation of other parents standing outside the school gates, assessing whether the school would be too “rough” for their kids. The parent said:

They would stand outside the school, look at the kids coming out, and say, “I don’t see anyone that I want my kids to be friends with”.

Other policies around school choice

The idea of school choice isn’t just seen in school catchment zone policies. It’s also seen in governments spending more money on private schools. Or governments providing more public selective and specialist schools, such as performing arts or sports-focused schools.

For example, in NSW between 1988 and 2010, the number of public non-comprehensive secondary schools (selective and specialist schools) increased by 955% while the number of traditional comprehensive secondary schools fell by 24%.

Read more:
New South Wales has 48 selective schools, while Victoria has 4. There’s an interesting history behind this

Under the Howard government, federal funding for non-government schools tripled . According to Howard-era education minister Brendan Nelson, one of the greatest achievements of that administration was having the courage to “bring choice to education”.

With strict school zones in place, schools are more likely to reflect the full diversity of the local community. The policy allows students to mix and learn with others from different backgrounds. And it ensures more schools can benefit from the contributions of better-resourced families — from fundraising events to lobbying efforts. It is a means of putting schools on a more equal footing.

School zones may limit individual choice, but they can help create a more equitable and cohesive society.

Christina Ho receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. School catchment zones may be annoying for some parents, but they help ensure equality for everyone – https://theconversation.com/school-catchment-zones-may-be-annoying-for-some-parents-but-they-help-ensure-equality-for-everyone-160252

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ruud Gerards, Coordinating Senior Researcher, Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market , Maastricht University

Under so-called mutual obligation rules, the Australian government requires the unemployed to complete activities (including training and applying for a certain number of jobs) in return for receiving unemployment benefits.

Failure to comply attracts demerit points which can lead to the loss of benefits.

The goal is meant to be to help the unemployed return to work more quickly.

But do they? Academic literature provides several reasons to think they might not.

One is self-determination theory.

The argument is that there are two types of motivation: self-authored (intrinsic motivation) and enforced by others (external motivation).

Both types can spur action, but often only the former leads to success.

Remember your parents told you to do something, rather than you deciding for yourself? We’re guessing it mattered for the end result.

External motivators needn’t work well

“Mutual obligations” and threats of penalties are external motivators. Self-determination theory says they are not likely to work well.

Another is scarcity theory.

The idea is that decision-making takes place in two separate parts of the brain — automatic decision-making in one part; careful, deliberate decision-making in another part.

The second part, scarcity theory argues, only works well if you have sufficient cognitive resources, or “bandwidth”, to use it.

Bandwidth is limited

The threat of penalties might create stress that uses up bandwidth that might otherwise be available for properly searching for jobs.

We followed the experiences of 6,253 unemployed Australians aged 15-65 who were part of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia HILDA survey between 2001 and 2019.

Because of changes in the rules governing who was subject to mutual obligations and delays in administering mutual obligations, some were subject to obligations, some were not.

Read more:
The true cost of the government’s changes to JobSeeker is incalculable. It’s as if it didn’t learn from Robodebt

In what we believe is the first study to assess the effects of Australia’s mutual obligations requirements on job search and employment outcomes, we compared the experiences of otherwise-similar Australians who were subject to mutual obligations with those who were not.

We didn’t (for instance) simply compare people who had been out of work for a short period of time and not subject to mutual obligations with people who had been unemployed for longer and were.

We matched those who were similar across about 30 dimensions and differed mainly in whether or not they were subject to mutual obligations.

Those under obligations take longer to find work

We found that those subjected to mutual obligations search just as intensively (if not more) for jobs, but that they took longer to find employment and spent less time in employment twelve months on.

Twelve months on those who had been on mutual obligations who were in employment were in lower quality jobs in terms of hourly wage, hours worked and weekly wage, than those otherwise identical Australians who had not been.

We conclude that mutual obligation as a labour market policy instrument fails the test of assisting unemployed Australians into jobs. Where it does, it gets them into jobs which aren’t as remunerative.

Bandwidth seems to matter

It is consistent with the theory that energy (“bandwidth”) spent on compliance, reduces the energy available to properly search.

It lends support to the theories of self-determination and scarcity (of bandwidth).

Our findings suggest that removing mutual obligations would improve employment outcomes in addition to removing red tape.

But they do not suggest this is sufficient for getting unemployed Australians into good jobs.

Read more:
What happens when you free unemployed Australians from ‘mutual obligations’ and boost their benefits? We just found out

That will require sustained fiscal stimulus in excess of the kind the government is now providing to ensure there is enough work for everyone who wants work, including the 160,000 people presently underemployed.

Only then will we properly use our resources, and be able to provide a proper job for everyone who wants one.

Ruud Gerards receives funding from the Think Forward Initiative. https://www.thinkforwardinitiative.com/

Riccardo Welters receives funding from the Think Forward Initiative. https://www.thinkforwardinitiative.com/

– ref. New finding: jobseekers subject to mutual obligations take longer to find work – https://theconversation.com/new-finding-jobseekers-subject-to-mutual-obligations-take-longer-to-find-work-162093

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ou Yang, Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne

The solution to most problems in most markets is more competition.

Whether it’s the market for hairdressers, for massage therapists or for general practitioners, usually, the more of them there are in any town or suburb, the greater is the range and quality they offer and the lower the price.

It’s part of the thinking behind a range of government legislation designed to increase competition and consumer choice in residential aged care.

Yet in research just published by the Melbourne Institute using the de-identified records of 2,900 nursing homes provided to the aged care royal commission we found no such effect.

No matter how competition was measured, we found no statistically-significant differences in price or quality as indicated by a range of measures including nursing hours worked per resident, assaults per resident, complaints per resident, the use of antipsychotic drugs and avoidable early deaths.

We measured the amount of competition for each nursing home in three ways: by the number of competitors within a 10-kilometre radius, the distance in kilometres to the nearest competitor and a measure of market concentration known as the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index.

Read more:
Aged care, death and taxes after the royal commission

We found great variation in competition (much more in cities, much less in regions) along with slight decreases in competition in urban and remote areas (notwithstanding government measures designed to promote it) and minor increases in competition in regional Australia.

But we found no evidence linking competition to measures of quality of care, with the possible exception of registered nurse hours, although this linkage wasn’t present in all measures of competition.

Competition was weakly associated with price if at all.

On the other hand, we found strong links between ownership and quality of care.

For most measures of quality, government-owned facilities provided much higher quality of care than for-profit providers and not-for-profit providers.

On prices, government-owned facilities charged by far the lowest price per resident per day — 23% lower than for-profits and 8% lower than not-for-profits.

In trying to think of the reasons why competition should not result in competition on prices or on the quality of service, a number of possibilities present themselves.

Residents know little about what they are getting

One reason is that demand for aged care places often arises suddenly due to significant changes in health conditions such as falls, dementia and loss of balance meaning they have little choice but to use the first facility that becomes available.

Another is that consumers have little information about quality with which to make decisions. Unlike the United States and the United Kingdom, Australian authorities do not yet provide a five-star system of ratings that can be easily understood.

Read more:
4 key takeaways from the aged care royal commission’s final report

And prices are extremely hard to understand.

Demand often arises from consumers who experience sudden changes in their cognitive and physical conditions that make it difficult to search for information, and weigh options and exercise choice.

With users hamstrung, there are few market forces to discipline providers.

We could empower users…

Measures that would help include publishing quality ratings (recommended by the royal commission), simplifying prices (not recommended, although the commission recommends an independent pricing authority) and providing consumer advocates to help people navigate through the system (recommended).

Given that most consumers transition from home care to residential care, it would help if advocacy services were integrated into home care services.

An alternative would be to abandon the pursuit of competition and set up a system of enforced standards, funded for different categories of care along the lines of the casemix system used in hospitals.

…or regulate more strongly on their behalf

Although this was recommended in the commission’s final report it would be harder to implement than it is in hospitals.

Aged care is about making life comfortable whereas health care is about fixing problems, making consumer preferences much more important in aged care.

Harnessing the power of consumer preferences is a worthy goal, and there is a great deal we can do to move toward it, but there’s a long way to go.

Anthony Scott receives funding from NHMRC and ARC

Yuting Zhang receives funding from Australian Research Council and National Health and Medical Research Council, National Institutes of Health in the US.

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

– ref. There are problems in aged care, but more competition isn’t the solution – https://theconversation.com/there-are-problems-in-aged-care-but-more-competition-isnt-the-solution-154943

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephanie Gardner, Postdoctoral Research Associate, UNSW

Review: Playing with Sharks: The Valerie Taylor Story, directed by Sally Aitken

A new documentary Playing with Sharks: The Valerie Taylor Story shines a light on Valerie Taylor AM, a pioneering ocean explorer.

With flashbacks, interviews and expert commentary it reveals her extraordinary underwater life and transition from champion spearfisher to passionate marine conservationist.

As a marine biologist, I’m aware of the environmental crisis our oceans are facing, and the importance of sharks to the ocean ecosystem.

A bad reputation

Increasing numbers of shark encounters around the world have people feeling more on edge and less like a swim.

In 2020, there were eight fatal shark bites recorded in Australia from 26 reported incidents. This was slightly higher than the 23 recorded in 2019 (with no fatalities). So far this year, there have been ten incidents with one death. This increase can be explained by changes in shark population size, human behaviour and reporting methods.

While these statistics are undoubtedly awful, it is important to recognise the role the media plays in shaping people’s perceptions.

Sharks have gained a bad reputation as “cold-blooded killing machines”, yet there is a higher chance of being killed by cows, motor vehicles, dogs and even vending machines. National Geographic estimates you have a one in 218 chance of dying from a fall but a one in 3.7 million chance of being killed by a shark.

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

Making friends

This film is about changing attitudes. The title itself is a nod to the positive association Valerie Taylor enjoys with sharks, who she regularly refers to as her “friends”. But it wasn’t always that way for the Sydney-born diver who left school at 15 to draw animations and started diving in the 1950s.

In 1974, Valerie and her late husband Ron were excited to film underwater shark sequences for Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster movie Jaws.

With its suspenseful score and blood in the water, the film terrified audiences. But in this film Valerie shares the couple’s pain when they realised they’d contributed to damaging the sharks’ image. She says a spike in public fear led to reckless shark culls.

“I only ever killed one shark,” Valerie says, recalling her spearfishing days. “I wish I hadn’t.”

Valerie and Ron vowed from that moment on to only shoot sharks with their cameras.

Read more:
Friday essay: The Meg is a horror story but our treatment of sharks is scarier

The perfect animal

Valerie and Ron’s journey from spearfishers to conservationists highlights their role in a broader transition from fear to admiration for these complex, majestic creatures.

“Nature made the perfect animal,” Valerie marvels in the film. “That wonder has never gone away.”

Valerie and Ron used cinematography to balance the reality of shark behaviour with the Hollywood horror narrative (they were later made Members of the Order of Australia for their conservation efforts).

Footage in the documentary of Valerie underwater with sharks accurately shows the interactions between humans and sharks. The message is that sharks don’t see humans as food.

To prove her point, Valerie dons a chain mail suit and puts her arm in a shark’s mouth. Archival footage shows her using fish bait to lure the shark towards her, before moving her forearm into its jaws. “The sharks don’t have crush power,” she says. “This is a misconception”.

She’s correct. Sharks use their sharp teeth to slice flesh and head-shaking to rip off chunks, so they don’t need to rely on biting down. In fact, the bite force quotient (which compares bite force to body mass) is higher for a Tasmanian devil than for a Great White Shark.

In another clip, Valerie coaches a Whitetip Reef Shark to swim over pink coral for a photograph. Delightedly she announces, “They learn faster than you can teach a dog”. Based on my own diving experiences with sharks I would agree they show aptitude for intelligent, learned behaviour.

Sharks play a critical role in healthy ocean ecosystems because they are a top predator, keeping potentially destructive fish populations at a healthy level and preventing algae overgrowth that advances the decline of coral reefs. Tiger Sharks, for example, have been shown to prevent green turtles from overgrazing seagrass beds.

Read more:
Tide turned: surveys show the public has lost its appetite for shark culls

A woman underwater

Like Girls Can’t Surf before it, Playing with Sharks explores gender imbalances. The viewer gets to see how Valerie created her own deeply-rewarding adventure story in a male-dominated world, from hand-feeding a Great White from the back of a boat to untangling one caught in wire with her bare hands in waist-deep water.

Tiny and blonde, she fought to be taken seriously, even at the top of her game with a spear in her hand. The film pays tribute to Ron’s appreciation of her fearlessness and love for the ocean. “She was aggressive, not one of those wimpish women”, he recalls of their meeting, nicknaming her: Give-it-a-go Valerie.

This visually stunning documentary interweaves historical footage with insights from diving legends, scientists and Valerie herself to highlight the power of passion to challenge ideas.

This film is an accessible and inspiring documentary. If viewers watch curiously with even a fraction of Valerie’s sense of adventure then they will have taken part in her mission.

Valerie Taylor: Playing with Sharks screens nationally 17–20 June.

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

– ref. New documentary recalls how Valerie Taylor played with sharks to prove a point – https://theconversation.com/new-documentary-recalls-how-valerie-taylor-played-with-sharks-to-prove-a-point-161808

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

The Biloela Tamil family will finally be released from detention.

Immigration Minister Alex Hawke will announce this on Tuesday, but we have yet to learn the terms of that release.

There are several options. These include letting the Murugappan family live in the community while their current legal action continues, allowing them to apply for a non-refugee visa (the parents have been denied refugee status), or simply giving them some sort of other visa now.

The first course would be churlish, bring more criticism on the government, add to its taxpayer-funded legal costs, and risk inviting a new round of controversy at some later point.

The last option would be the simplest, cleanest way to deal with the whole unfortunate saga.

We should be clear about this. The government would not be removing the family from detention this week if the younger child Tharunicaa hadn’t become seriously ill, and had to be transferred from Christmas Island, where they have been since 2019, to a Perth hospital (accompanied by her mother).

To the extent the government is exercising compassion now, it is compassion driven by the bad publicity it is suffering.

The timing is also to pre-empt the parliamentary sitting, starting Tuesday, during which Michael McCormack is acting prime minister until Scott Morrison returns from overseas.

When the pictures of hospitalised Tharunicaa appeared in the media, there was a public outcry. Some Coalition backbenchers, including Trent Zimmerman and Katie Allen, started to speak out publicly to say enough was enough.

Former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce went close to an accusation of racism, suggesting if the girls’ names were “Jane and Sally” and they played in the local netball team “we’d think twice about sending them back to another country which they’re not from”.

“Why not send them to Southern Sudan, why not send them to Rwanda to Belarus? They’re also countries they were never born in,” Joyce said, arguing they should be enitled to stay in Australia because they were born here.

Joyce’s message had cut-through, although on moral rather than legal grounds – they are not entitled to citizenship because they were born in Australia.

The Nationals Ken O’Dowd, whose electorate of Flynn covers Biloela, has been a long term advocate for the family, who have strong support in the town. He told the ABC he had spoken to Hawke who “wants a favourable outcome”.

Others in government ranks take a tougher line, worrying about the precedent of making an exception, and the message that would be sent.

They raise their binoculars to the horizon. Could that be a people smuggler boat?

Well no. More likely the ocean version of a mirage.

Even before Tharunicaa’s medical evacuation, Hawke had been asked as part of the legal process to review the case and consider whether he should lift the ban on the Murugappans being allowed to seek another sort of visa. O’Dowd said this involved more than 2,000 pages of reading.

The child’s evacuation shortened Hawke’s time frame and, given the public storm, effectively ensured the family had to be let out of detention.

Scott Morrison, questioned in the United Kingdom, had a tone of irritation in his answers, as he said options were being worked through.

Asked whether the family would be settled in Australia, he said, “Well, when we have more to say on that matter, well, settled? Well, that wouldn’t be government policy for a pathway to permanent settlement. That is not the government’s policy.”

Pressed further, he said, “Well, I just said there are options that are being considered that are consistent with both health advice and the humanitarian need and the government’s policy.”

Acting Prime Minister Michael McCormack had a bob each way, saying the government didn’t want to do anything to encourage people smugglers; on the other hand, this was a “humanitarian government”, and he personally was a “compassionate person”.

The formal decision about the family rests in the hands of Hawke as minister. We usually hear little about Hawke, and when we do it’s often in his role as a member of Morrison’s inner factional circle and a numbers man. He can be expected to have been working closely with his leader.

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

– ref. View from The Hill: Biloela family to be released but Hawke has yet to reveal the terms – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-biloela-family-to-be-released-but-hawke-has-yet-to-reveal-the-terms-162696

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ran Porat, Affiliate Researcher, The Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation, Monash University

Israel’s 36th government was approved today, with a slim majority of 60–59 in the Knesset (parliament).

The new prime minister is the leader of national-religious party Yamina, Naftali Bennett. A religious person, former commander in an elite army combat unit and successful high-tech entrepreneur, Bennett was forced to form a unity government with centrist Yair Lapid, head of Israel’s second-largest party, Yesh Atid.

Lapid is slated to become prime minister in 2023. Other coalition partners include the left-wing Meretz and Labour parties; the right-wing parties Tikva Hadasha (“New Hope”) Israel Beiteinu (“Israel is our home”); and Benny Gantz’s centrist Blue and White party.

Read more:
Historic change: Arab political parties are now legitimate partners in Israel’s politics and government

The cherry on top of this ideologically mixed-up parfait is the Arab Islamic party Ra’am, headed by Mansour Abbas, which has successfully carried out Abbas’s strategic plan to be the first Arab party leader to join an Israeli government.

His move signifies the preference of many Arab Israelis to focus on domestic priorities, such as reducing crime and retrospectively attaining permits for illegal constrictions in Arab towns, rather than Palestinian nationalism.

The ultra-orthodox parties are the big losers. For the first time in many years, they are outside the government, disconnected from the fountain of public funding that has long flowed to their religious and educational institutes.

Challenges facing the new government

The eight parties forming the government had only one thing in common — a determination to oust Israel’s longest serving prime minister, the charismatic Benyamin “Bibi” Netanyahu.

As head of the right-wing Likud party, Netanyahu has been the face of Israel for the past 12 years, as well as during his earlier stint as prime minister from 1996–99. Famous for his political wizardry and clever coalition manoeuvres, he ended up losing the trust of almost everyone in the political arena. Many of his former allies were among those who ousted him.

The ideologically diverse new government will now need to deliver change, and fast. Another flare-up of tensions with Hamas, designated a terrorist organisation by many nations, is likely in the cards. A budget must be approved swiftly, after two years without one. Netanyahu can no longer be blamed if the government fails to deliver.

The complex set of coalition agreements between the parties means the government will most likely focus its attention domestically and avoid major initiatives on divisive topics, such as the Palestinian issue. One key task will be to work to heal the social tensions that have resurfaced in Israel in recent years, dividing Arabs and Jews, secular and religious, and left and right.

The coalition needs to find a way to work together efficiently or it could face a rapid collapse. Now the official opposition leader, Netanyahu has made clear he is not going anywhere and will work tirelessly to oust the new government.

But Netanyahu may go somewhere in the future – to jail. He is facing several indictments over bribery, fraud and breach of trust. His trial could take years, and was the prime motivator for Netanyahu’s almost desperate attempts to hold on to power. Many rallied against him because he is seen as corrupt and decadent.

New peace treaties in the region

In Washington, there will have been a sigh of relief. Netanyahu alienated former US President Barack Obama over the latter’s drive to sign the problematic 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. The current president, Joe Biden, was among the first to call Bennett, signalling US hope for greater leverage over the new government.

Netanyahu’s overall legacy will be marked by unequivocal diplomatic, economic and political achievements, alongside his deliberate strategy to turn Israelis from different sectors against each other, exacerbating long-lasting internal rifts.

Under his premiership, Israel became a world leader in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on his personal ties with the CEO of Pfizer, Netanyahu mobilised the health system to inoculate almost the entire adult population of Israel in record time.

Using his close relationship with former US president Donald Trump, he also orchestrated a move of the US embassy to Jerusalem, solidifying the city’s status as Israel’s capital.

Netanyahu maintained a staunch and uncompromising position against Iran’s aspirations to develop a nuclear weapon, which helped Israel secure the Abraham accords, peace treaties with four Muslim countries. Israel also undertook covert flirtations with Saudi Arabia, the leader of the anti-Iran camp.

Netanyahu’s reign ends with Israel enjoying an emboldened status in the region and a strong economy.

Read more:
After 12 years of Netanyahu, here’s what to expect from a new coalition government in Israel

Managing the conflict with the Palestinians

Netanyahu’s track record in dealing with the Palestinians is far more disputed. He won office after the murder of Labour Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1994, and effectively broke away from Rabin’s Oslo peace agreements with the Palestinian leadership, without repudiating them completely.

Following a surge in bombings by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the mid-1990s, Netanyahu was elected in 1996 to slow down Israel’s retreat from territories in the West Bank. He also delivered to his base continued expansion of settlements in that disputed area — a move opposed by many in the international community.

In the past 12 years, Netanyahu worked to mostly manage — not resolve — the conflict. His approach to the two-state solution has been ambiguous at best, even though he showed some willingness to make concessions during the US-led talks in 2014. Trying to soothe Hamas with Qatari money – part of his managerial approach — backfired dramatically in the latest war with Gaza.

With this scorched earth legacy behind him, Netanyahu has been removed from power, at least for the time being. The Bennett-Lapid government is not expected to stray much from existing Israeli foreign policies. Israel’s strong strategic actions against Iran are here to stay.

Read more:
Benjamin Netanyahu was on the brink of political defeat. Then, another conflict broke out in Gaza

With regards to the Palestinians, there is very little that can be done until another long-serving leader is ousted – 86-year-old Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who is increasingly seen as corrupt and dysfunctional.

The new government remains on shaky ground. All its participants know a single actor among them can take the government down. But no one has an appetite now for another election; they have too much to prove and a lot to lose if they do. It seems that at least for the next 12 months, Israel will finally have a government.

Ran Porat is a research associate at The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC). The views in this article are private and do not represent any academic institute related related to Dr. Porat.

– ref. Netanyahu leaves behind a complex legacy in Israel. His successor will need to deliver change — and fast – https://theconversation.com/netanyahu-leaves-behind-a-complex-legacy-in-israel-his-successor-will-need-to-deliver-change-and-fast-162660

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

What a difference a year makes in international diplomacy.

A year ago, then-US President Donald Trump was obliged to abandon his plans for a G7 summit at the presidential retreat of Camp David outside Washington.

Various excuses were advanced by participants, including the inadvisability of travelling across the world in the midst of a pandemic. But in reality few, if any, G7 leaders wanted to associate themselves with Trump in what was hoped would be the last days of an ill-starred presidency.

A year later, these same leaders gathered at an English coastal retreat – in the shadow of a persistent COVID-19 pandemic – to celebrate the end of a disruptive chapter in diplomatic history. Relief was palpable in the interactions of representatives of the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, Italy and Canada.

America was back, not in its “America First” guise, but as the proclaimed leader of the free world, to use an old-fashioned description.

However, in the four years of the Trump presidency, during which Washington effectively abandoned its global leadership role in favour of an inward-looking posture defined by its embrace of an America First doctrine, the world had changed, and shifted dramatically.

Read more:
Grattan on Friday: Scott Morrison’s quest to be a Biden ‘bestie’

In 2016, the final year of the Obama administration, the G7 summit in Japan focused on the issue of climate in the wake of the Paris Agreement signed in April of that year. Its other priorities were disputes in the South China Sea and, interestingly enough, the need to strengthen a global response to pandemics in light of experiences with the Ebola virus in Africa.

That global response has been found to be inadequate. This prompts the question: what notice did global health authorities, principally the World Health Organization, take of the G7’s 2016 communique?

Five years later, the challenges identified in the 2016 document have been vastly magnified. This has been brought about by a combination of lack of US leadership on issues such as climate, and a broader global failure to manage China’s rise.

In 2016, China’s activities in the South China Sea in defiance of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) were a growing concern, as were signs of its increasing assertiveness under its nationalist leader, Xi Jinping.

But the consensus view then was that China’s rise could be accommodated without undue disruption to a rules-based international order. That has proved a significant miscalculation.

Fast-forward to the 2021 G7 in Cornwall, where concerns about China’s rise in its various dimensions stalked the round-table discussions and bilateral meetings. No other issue came close to matching worries about China: not climate change, nor the ongoing challenges of the pandemic.

In the end, the G7 communique was relatively restrained on China. This reflected differences of opinion among participants about how to manage a difficult situation. The US and Canadians would have liked stronger language. The Europeans favoured a less hawkish approach. Japan was somewhere in the middle.

References to China were nevertheless pointed, in contrast to previous G7 communiques, which have danced around the issue of Beijing’s challenges to a rules-based global order.

From an Australian perspective, the communique’s reference to China’s resort to economic reprisals to punish those who found themselves at odds with its policies will have been welcome:

With regard to China, and the competition in the global economy, we will continue to consult on collective approaches to challenging non-market policies and practices which undermine the fair and transparent operation of the global economy.

On human rights, the G7 was commendably forthright:

We will promote our values by calling on China to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, especially in relation to Xinjiang and those rights, freedoms and high degree of autonomy for Hong Kong enshrined in the Sino-British joint declaration and the Basic Law.

Significantly, Taiwan made its way into a G7 communique for the first time. Here, the world’s leading democracies issued a fairly blunt warning to Beijing not to further destabilise relations across the Taiwan Strait:

We underscore the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, and encourage the peaceful resolution of cross-Strait issues. We remain seriously concerned about the situation in the East and South China Seas and strongly oppose any unilateral attempt to change the status quo and increase tensions.

Predictably, Chinese commentators dismissed the G7 process as a sideshow, claiming “the world’s economic and political centre of gravity had shifted”, as the nationalist Global Times put it.

Morrison, as an official guest, will have been relieved the G7 did not reach a consensus on the timing for a phase-out of coal for generating electric power. On the other hand, he will not have overlooked strong language in the communique calling for a commitment to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions “as soon as possible”.

Australia will have had no issue with other G7 initiatives such as calls for a global minimum tax to ensure greater global equity. Nor will it object to a proposal for liberal democracies to contribute to an infrastructure fund to compete with China’s Belt-and-Road initiative in the developing world.

Morrison will no doubt have been disappointed he did not have a “one-on-one” meeting with US President Joe Biden. Instead, he had to make do with a three-way conversation involving the summit’s host, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. It is not clear whether this was a snub, but those briefing journalists in advance of the G7 should not have raised expectations.

In one respect, Morrison will have found the Cornwall G7 awkward. No other leader of a Western liberal democracy had aligned themselves as closely with the Trump White House.

Read more:
Spot the difference: as world leaders rose to the occasion at the Biden climate summit, Morrison faltered

In his attempts to position himself alongside Trump, Morrison echoed the then US president’s antagonism towards international institutions, broadly summed up by the Morrison’s reference to “negative globalism” in a Lowy Institute speech in 2019. These were sentiments the former US president used to promote his version of an America First policy, in contrast to the multilateralist tendencies of his predecessors.

Morrison’s adoption of this Trumpism, now quietly discarded in his public statements, sits uncomfortably with the new president’s emphasis on Washington’s global leadership in partnership with like-minded countries and institutions.

Pointedly, the G7 communique reiterated liberal democracies’ commitment to “multilateralism”.

If nothing else, Australia’s prime minister should have concluded in Cornwall that his own personal investment in a Trump presidency was not the most prudent course. The world has shifted.

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

– ref. G7 showed that post-Trump, the world has shifted – https://theconversation.com/g7-showed-that-post-trump-the-world-has-shifted-162598

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Noor Gillani, Deputy Editor, Science and Technology

Speculation has been rife about the contents of an unclassified report set to be released later this month from the Pentagon’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) task force.

The document, expected to drop on June 25, will supposedly provide a comprehensive summary of what the US government knows about UAPs — or, to use the more popular term, UFOs.

While the report is not yet public, the New York Times recently published what it claimed was a preview of the findings, provided by unnamed senior officials who were privy to the report’s contents.

According to the Times’s sources, the report does not provide any clear link or association between more than 120 incidents of UFO sightings from the past two decades, and a possibility of Earth having been visited by aliens.

If the Times’s sources are to be believed, there’s clearly still no good reason to interpret an unexplained object in the sky as evidence of aliens. But does that mean aliens aren’t out there, somewhere else in the universe? And if they are, could we ever find them? Or might they be so different to us that “finding” them is impossible in any meaningful sense?

We asked five experts.

Four out of five experts said aliens do exist

Here are their detailed responses:

If you have a science or technology-related question you’d like posed to Five Experts, email it to: noor.gillani@theconversation.edu.au

Read more:
The US military has officially published three UFO videos. Why doesn’t anybody seem to care?

– ref. Do aliens exist? We asked five experts – https://theconversation.com/do-aliens-exist-we-asked-five-experts-161811

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin T. Jones, Lecturer in History, CQUniversity Australia

Today, many Australians are enjoying a public holiday. For republicans, days off are great, but celebrating the queen’s birthday rather than an Australian achievement is bizarre. Without constitutional change, we will soon be taking a day off in honour of King Charles.

Surely we can find a better reason.

Fortunately, the republic is back on the public agenda. The royal scandals surrounding Prince Andrew, the Palace Letters, and the explosive Oprah interview with Harry and Meghan (and ongoing fallout) have seen the debate take off anew.

Even the passing of the queen’s husband, Prince Philip has prompted reflection on Australia’s relationship with the monarchy.

We can be sure that when the queen’s long reign comes to an end, it will also spark a new push for an Australian republic.

The Australian Republic Movement’s new approach

Since the defeated referendum in 1999, the Australian Republic Movement has been neutral on what model should be used. Its position has been for a plebiscite asking only if people support a republic, before the exact model is determined. Critics have claimed this is asking for a policy blank cheque.

In a change of policy, the Australian Republic Movement now plans to unveil its preferred model later this year.

This is significant because it was the model, not the monarch, that sunk the republic in 1999. Some republicans were so opposed to the option on offer they campaigned with the official “no” team. Ultimately, the success of a new republic referendum will depend on the ability of the model to unite republicans, not the popularity of the monarch.

So, what are the options for a republic and what are their pros and cons?

Another minimal model

Under the minimal model from the 1999 referendum, the head of state would have been appointed by a two-thirds majority of parliament.

Despite its failure in 1999, many republicans still insist this is the best fit for Australia. The appointment by parliament is similar to the systems used in India, Israel, and Greece, and seeks to ensure a non-partisan appointment and reinforce the titular nature the position. Variations include the McGarvie model (proposed by former governor of Victoria, Richard McGarvie), which has a council of former governors to act on the prime minister’s advice and select a worthy candidate.

For supporters, this model guards against populism, or candidates using their wealth or celebrity to gain the position. However, critics argue a minimal model has already failed the ultimate test.

Malcolm Turnbull, who led the 1999 “yes” campaign, argued at a recent Australian Republic Movement event that support for direct election is a “mile wide but an inch deep”. In other words, people instinctively support it but often change their minds when they consider the consequences.

Minimal model supporters insist that the referendum failed because of constitutional ignorance and an effective scare campaign. They suggest a minimal model can succeed with much wider community consultation and public education.

Direct election

Direct electionists argue that without a popular vote, Australia would only have a “politicians’ republic”. Leading up to the 1999 referendum, former independent MPs Phil Cleary and Ted Mack, and former Brisbane lord mayor Clem Jones, among others, formed the Real Republic, urging people to vote “no”. Now led by chair of the Clem Jones Trust, David Muir, the group is still active on Facebook.

Read more:
After Oprah: what will it take to revive an Australian republic?

In theory, direct election means anyone could be the head of state. Critics argue it could actually reduce the pool of candidates. Winning an election generally requires substantial finances and resources. Direct election could mean that only the rich or famous can realistically run.

Supporters counter this by claiming a mature nation can make up its own mind. If the people democratically elect someone like Clive Palmer or Shane Warne, then so be it.

A hybrid model

The third option is a hybrid of minimalism and direct-election. Former Western Australia Premier Geoff Gallop put forward the Gallop Model at the Constitutional Convention in 1998. He proposed that the federal parliament select at least three suitable nominees who are then put to a popular vote.

Another hybrid is the 50-50 model created by government consultant Anthony Cianflone. Under this model, anyone can nominate. Then there is both a popular vote and a parliamentary vote, each worth 50%.

Read more:
The Oprah interview is a royal PR nightmare, but republicans shouldn’t get their hopes up just yet

Previously, I have proposed a hybrid model, with each state and territory parliament selecting a nominee, and then those eight going to a popular vote. The logic behind this system was that it provided a double hurdle for candidates. Only an exceptional candidate would gain the confidence of both an elected parliament and the people.

Critics of hybrid models say they are not democratic enough. Under a 50-50 model, the problematic situation could arise where the most popular candidate with the people is effectively vetoed by parliament. Critics of the Gallop model or mine could say it is undemocratic to only let people vote from a pre-approved list.

Further, public confidence in our parliaments is at a low point. Explaining my model to a friend recently, he exclaimed, “why let politicians anywhere near it?”

Other considerations

The method for choosing the head of state is the most important element in any republican model but there are other considerations.

Should gender equality be written into the constitution? Australian National University professor Kim Rubenstein has argued the head of state should alternate between women and men. Similarly, Griffith University professor and Waanyi and Jaru man Gregory Phillips has argued for direct election, but every second term the nominees must be Indigenous.

As the 1975 Whitlam dismissal showed, the governor-general has great reserve powers, even if they are rarely used. As a republic, Australia could continue to rely on protocol and trust the head of state to treat the position as titular and ceremonial.

Another option is to codify the head of state’s powers and have strict rules outlining exactly when and how they can be used. Under direct election models especially, this may be an important safeguard. Without it, a head of state may see their election as a popular mandate for political interference. Under any model, only codification can guarantee the dismissal is never repeated.

A way forward?

It was only in 1973 with the passage of the Royal Style and Titles Act that the queen was given a unique Australian title, the “Queen of Australia”. Without constitutional change, Charles will become the first official “King of Australia”.

When coins bearing Charles’s face come into circulation, we can expect many will question the benefit of a foreign head of state living on the other side of the world. Nevertheless, the fate of an Australian republic does not rest with the next monarch.

Whichever model goes to a vote, the mathematics is simple. Republicans will either unite and probably win or divide and certainly fail.

Benjamin T. Jones is a life member of the Australian Republic Movement.

– ref. Forget Charles — an Australian republic hinges on the model we adopt, not the monarch – https://theconversation.com/forget-charles-an-australian-republic-hinges-on-the-model-we-adopt-not-the-monarch-158873

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Colin Zhang, Lecturer, Department of Actuarial Studies and Business Analytics, Macquarie University

For senior Australians who cannot live independently at home, residential aged care can provide accommodation, personal care and general health care.

People usually think this is expensive. And many assume they need to sell their home to pay for a lump-sum deposit.

But that’s not necessarily the case. Here’s what you need to consider.

Read more:
So you’re thinking of going into a nursing home? Here’s what you’ll have to pay for

You may get some financial support

Fees for residential aged are complex and can be confusing. Some are for your daily care, some are means-tested, some are for your accommodation and some pay for extras, such as cable TV.

But it’s easier to think of these fees as falling into two categories:

• an “entry deposit”, which is usually more than $A300,000, and is refunded when you leave aged care

• daily “ongoing fees”, which are $52.71-$300 a day, or more. These cover the basic daily fee, which everyone pays, and the means-tested care fee.

To find out how much government support you’ll receive for both these categories, you will have a “means test” to assess your income and assets. This means test is similar (but different) to the means test for the aged pension.

Generally speaking, the lower your aged-care means test amount, the more government support you’ll receive for aged care.

With full support, you don’t need to pay an “entry deposit”. But you still need to pay the basic daily fee (currently, $52.71 a day), equivalent to 85% of your aged pension. If you get partial support, you pay less for your “entry deposit” and ongoing fees.

Read more:
How to check if your mum or dad’s nursing home is up to scratch

You don’t need a lump sum

You don’t have to pay for your “entry deposit” as a lump sum. You can choose to pay a rental-style daily cost instead.

This is calculated as follows: you multiply the amount of the required “entry deposit” by the maximum permissible interest rate. This rate is set by government and is currently at 4.01% per year for new residents. Then you divide that sum by 365 to give a daily rate. This option is like borrowing money to pay for your “entry deposit” via an interest-only loan.

You can also pay for your “entry deposit” with a combination of a lump sum and a daily rental cost.

As it’s not compulsory to pay a lump sum for your “entry deposit”, you have different options for dealing with your family home.

Option 1: keep your house and rent it out

This allows you to use the rental-style daily cost to finance your “entry deposit”.

Pros

• you could have more income from rent. This can help pay for the rental-style daily cost and “ongoing fees” of aged care

• you might have a special sentimental attachment to your family house. So keeping it might be a less confronting option

• keeping an expensive family house will not heavily impact your residential aged care cost. That’s because any value of your family house above $173,075.20 will be excluded from your means test

• you can still access the capital gains of your house, as house prices rise.

Cons

• your rental income needs to be included in the means test for your aged pension. So you might get less aged pension

• you might need to pay income tax on the rental income

• compared to the lump sum payment, choosing the rental-style daily cost means you will end up paying more

• you are subject to a changing rental market.

Read more:
Home-owning older Australians should pay more for residential aged care

Option 2: keep your house and rent it out, with a twist

If you have some savings, you can use a combination of a lump sum and daily rental cost to pay for your “entry deposit”.

Pros

• like option 1, you can keep your house and have a steady income

• the amount of lump sum deposit will not be counted as an asset in the aged-care means test.

Cons

• like option 1, you could have less pension income, higher age-care costs and need to pay more income tax

• you have less liquid assets (assets you could quickly sell or access), which could be handy in an emergency.

Option 3: sell your house

If you sell your house, you can use all or part of the proceeds to pay for your “entry deposit”.

Pros

• if you have any money left over after selling your house and paying for your “entry deposit”, you can invest the rest

• as your “entry deposit” is exempt from your aged pension means test, it means more pension income.

Cons

• if you have money left over after selling your house, this will be included in the aged-care means test. So you can end up with less financial support for aged care.

Read more:
What adds value to your house? How to decide between renovating and selling

In a nutshell

Keeping your house and renting it out (option 1 or 2) can give you a better income stream, which you can use to cover other living costs. And if you’re not concerned about having access to liquid assets in an emergency, option 2 can be better for you than option 1.

But selling your house (option 3) avoids you being exposed to a changing rental market, particularly if the economy is going into recession. It also gives you more capital, and you don’t need to pay a rental-style daily cost.

This article is general in nature, and should not be considered financial advice. For advice tailored to your individual situation and your personal finances, please see a qualified financial planner.

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

– ref. Is it worth selling my house if I’m going into aged care? – https://theconversation.com/is-it-worth-selling-my-house-if-im-going-into-aged-care-161674

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sven Teske, Research Director, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney

The International Energy Agency (IEA) last month made global headlines when it declared there is no room for new fossil fuel investment if we’re to avoid catastrophic climate change.

However, our new research suggests the horse may have already bolted. We found even if no new fossil fuel projects were approved anywhere in the world, carbon emissions set to be released from existing projects will still push global warming over the dangerous 1.5℃ threshold.

Specifically, even with no new fossil fuel expansion, global emissions would be 22% too high to stay within 1.5℃ by 2025, and 66% too high by 2030.

However, keeping global warming under 1.5℃ is still achievable with rapid deployment of renewables. Our research found solar and wind can supply the world’s energy demand more than 50 times over.

The stunning potential of wind and solar

While our findings were alarming, they also give us a new reason to be hopeful.

We analysed publicly available oil, gas and coal extraction data, and calculated the future production volume. We worked under the assumption no new fossil fuel extraction projects would be developed, and all existing projects would see production declining at standard industry rates.

We found fossil fuel projects already in the pipeline will, by 2030, produce 35% more oil and 69% more coal than what’s consistent with a pathway towards a 1.5℃ temperature rise.

Fossil fuels are the main driver of climate change, accounting for more than 75% of carbon dioxide emissions. Continuing to expand this sector will not only be catastrophic for the climate, but also for the world’s economy as it locks in infrastructure that will become stranded assets.

Ultimately, it’s not enough to simply keep fossil fuels in the ground. To meet our climate goals under the Paris Agreement, we must phase down existing production.

Read more:
4 reasons why a gas-led economic recovery is a terrible, naïve idea

Solar and wind power technologies are already market ready and cost competitive. And as our analysis confirms, they’re ready to be scaled up to meet the energy demands of every person on the planet.

We mapped all the potential areas where wind and solar infrastructure can be built, and the energy potential across six continents.

Even after applying a set of robust, conservative estimates that take environmental safeguards, land constraints and technical feasibility into account, we found that solar and wind energy could meet the world’s energy demand from 2019 — 50 times over.

It’s clear we don’t need new fossil fuel development to ensure 100% energy access in the future.

Australia’s laggard status

In Australia, the Morrison government refuses to set new emissions reduction targets, and continues to fund new fossil fuel projects, such as a A$600 million gas plant in the New South Wales Hunter Valley.

Despite Australia’s laggard status on climate change, there are positive moves elsewhere around the world.

The progress was evident ahead of the G7 summit this past weekend, where climate change was firmly on the agenda. Ahead of the summit, environment ministers worldwide agreed to phase out overseas fossil fuel finance and end support for coal power.

And in recent weeks, three global fossil fuel giants – Shell, Chevron and ExxonMobil – faced legal and shareholder rebukes over their inadequate action on climate change.

Read more:
Four seismic climate wins show Big Oil, Gas and Coal are running out of places to hide

Coming on top of all that, the IEA last month set out a comprehensive roadmap to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. It included a stark warning: no new fossil fuel projects should be approved.

Natural carbon storage is key

However, the IEA’s findings contradict our own on several fronts. We believe the IEA underestimated the very real potential of renewable energy and relied on problematic solutions to fill what it sees as a gap in meeting the carbon budget.

For example, the IEA suggests a sharp increase in bioenergy is required over the next 30 years.

This would require biofuels from energy plantations — planting crops (such as rapeseed) specifically for energy use.

But conservationists estimate the sustainable potential for biofuels is lower. They also say high volumes of bioenergy might interfere with land use for food production and protected nature conservation areas.

Our research found the exact opposite is needed: rapid phase out of deforestation and significant reforestation alongside the decarbonisation of the energy sector.

Bioenergy should be produced predominantly from agricultural and organic waste to remain carbon neutral.

Read more:
International Energy Agency warns against new fossil fuel projects. Guess what Australia did next?

Likewise, the IEA calls for an extreme expansion of carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects — where carbon dioxide emissions are captured at the source, and then pumped and stored deep in the ground.

In its roadmap, the IEA expects CCS projects to grow from capturing 40 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (as is currently the case), to 1,665 million tonnes by 2030.

This is quite unrealistic, because it means betting on expensive, unproven technology that’s being deployed very slowly and is often plagued by technical issues.

Establishing natural carbon sinks should be prioritised instead, such as keeping forest, mangrove and seagrass ecosystems better intact to draw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Phasing out early

As a wealthy country, Australia is better placed than most to weather any economic disruption from the energy transition.

Our research shows Australia should phase out fossil fuels early and urgently. The Australian government should also ensure communities and people reliant on fossil fuel industries are helped through the transition.

We must also support poorer countries highly dependent on fossil fuels, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region.

There is new international momentum for climate action, and the future of the fossil fuel industry looks increasingly dire. The technologies to make the transition are ready and waiting – now all that’s needed is political will.

Read more:
Tracking the transition: the ‘forgotten’ emissions undoing the work of Australia’s renewable energy boom

Sven Teske received research funding from the Leonardo Di Caprio Foundation, the European Climate Foundation and the Stand-Earth Foundation.

Sarah Niklas received research funding from the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, the European Climate Foundation (ECF) and the Stand.Earth Foundation.

– ref. Even without new fossil fuel projects, global warming will still exceed 1.5℃. But renewables might make it possible – https://theconversation.com/even-without-new-fossil-fuel-projects-global-warming-will-still-exceed-1-5-but-renewables-might-make-it-possible-162591

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Craig Jeffrey, Professor of Geography, The University of Melbourne

South Asia is crucial to the future of Australia. But Australia has just one (small) program focused on South Asian studies across its many universities.

This has not always been the case. In the mid-1970s, 13 of Australia’s universities offered undergraduate subjects on South Asia (India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives). Students could learn about South Asian coins at ANU and Sanskrit at the University of Wollongong.

Australia boasted some of the leading scholars on South Asia. ANU nurtured subaltern studies – the study of social groups excluded from dominant power structures – which became a global movement in the field of post-colonial analysis. Leading post-colonial scholar Dipesh Chakrabarty was based at the University of Melbourne. Other luminaries active in that period include A.L. Basham, Anthony Low and Robin Jeffrey.

But, even as the Australian university sector has expanded since the 1970s, it has withdrawn support for Asian studies, and South Asian studies in particular. There is currently only one South Asia or India program – at ANU.

Only five of the 40 Australian universities offer semester-length subjects on India or South Asia. Six universities offered an Indian language in 1996. Now only two do so.

Read more:
6 unis had Hindi programs. Soon there could be only 1, and that’s not in Australia’s best interests

Several universities, often supported by government grants, have launched country or regional research initiatives since 1990. The National Centre for South Asian Studies, based at Monash, is one of these. But Australian universities have not built any strong or sustainable South Asia programs for students.

A trend at odds with national priorities

This point sits oddly alongside a high-level commitment to South Asia in Australia. The Australian government is exploring new forms of engagement with India, including the Quad security dialogue involving India, Australia, Japan and the US.

At a social level, Australia is increasingly Indian. In 2019 more than 700,000 people in Australia claimed Indian descent. Hindi is among the fastest-growing languages in Australia, and India is the country’s leading source of skilled migrants.

Historically, there are fascinating connections between Australia and South Asia. The lives and work of Australia’s “Ghans” (cameleers) is one famous example.

Moving forward, Australia needs a knowledge base to match this longstanding and increasingly important commitment to India and South Asia more generally.

Read more:
From lascars to skilled migrants: Indian diaspora in New Zealand and Australia

Out of step with global academic practice

Australian universities could learn from their counterparts in other parts of the world how to integrate area studies into their teaching. Outside of Australia, most of the top universities in the world make great play of their area studies expertise. Area studies enables people to apprehend their own distinctive humanity, anchors innovative cross-disciplinary teaching across the university, and provides a basis for re-evaluating assumptions about a person’s disciplinary field.

Students arriving at Oxford, Yale or Columbia know that if they are studying law, business, art, politics, education, design, technology, anthropology, economics, agriculture, military affairs or modern media, they will need to think about how to apply their disciplinary knowledge to specific places. A “whole of university” commitment to area studies teaching, including South Asian studies, has long been a key mechanism for drawing on multiple disciplines.

Even with small numbers of area studies majors, the world’s best universities do not see area studies as a niche endeavour. On the contrary, they see it as a central feature of their global mission. Strong universities without robust, independent, and widely accessible area studies programs open themselves up to accusations of antiquated parochialism and a poor understanding of the interdisciplinary trends that powerfully shape our world.

Read more:
Axing protection for national strategic languages is no way to build ties with Asia

What should South Asian studies offer?

Today, South Asian studies programs in Australia should include internships, opportunities to study abroad and virtual classrooms connecting Australian students to their counterparts elsewhere.

Asian studies programs should also include language options, because effective communication with rising regions like South Asia is essential. Keep in mind that only 10% of India’s population speak English.

At its most fundamental, good area studies and good South Asian studies allow people to understand that they are, as French philosopher Michel de Montaigne put it in an essay on global education written 450 years ago “like a dot made by a very fine pencil” on the world map. It teaches them how they fit within a global whole.

Beyond this, area studies helps people understand and confidently engage with forms of difference and diversity. It fosters key skills for interacting with peers overseas as well as global diasporas. This includes connecting with foreign organisations, managing communications and cultivating an active sense of global citizenship.

Area studies allows us to develop an understanding of our common humanity across national boundaries – something Indian scholar Veena Das has written about in her book Critical Events.

Now is the time for Australian universities to place area studies teaching at the core of an internationally engaged education. We must provide a much larger number of Australians with a deeper understanding of South Asia.

Craig Jeffrey receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

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

– ref. From 13 unis to 1: why Australia needs to reverse the loss of South Asian studies – https://theconversation.com/from-13-unis-to-1-why-australia-needs-to-reverse-the-loss-of-south-asian-studies-161006

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society and NATSEM, University of Canberra

Nayib Bukele, president of El Salvador, has got himself a pair of laser eyes – on his Twitter profile at least.

Laser eyes are something social media users give themselves to show they love cryptocurrency – and Bukele proved his crypto-enthusiasm last week by having El Salvador become the world’s first nation to make Bitcoin legal tender.

El Salvador’s parliament passed Bukele’s proposed legislation on June 9, after he announced his plan just a few days earlier. The law will take effect in September.

Some Bitcoin fans have leapt on this as a step towards much broader acceptance. But the changes in Bitcoin’s market value since Bukele announced his plan gives crypto-sceptics reason for doubt.

Over the past week Bitcoin’s value was as high as US$38,200 (about A$49,000) and as low as US$31,428. Over the past month it has fallen from more than US$58,000. This isn’t the type of price volatility any government generally wants to see in a currency.

Such fluctations show Bitcoin’s weakness as a viable alternative to central bank currencies – good only for transactions you don’t want traced and as a speculative investment.

So what is Bukele thinking in wanting to make Bitcoin legal tender for the small central American nation (population about 6.5 million) whose economy accounts for less than 0.05% of global GDP?

Read more:
El Salvador’s façade of democracy crumbles as president purges his political opponents

What does ‘legal tender’ mean?

Before we get to that, let’s clarify what making Bitcoin legal tender means.

Using Bitcoin is already legal in El Salvador, as it is in most countries. If you want to pay for something in bitcoins, and the recipient is willing to accept them, it’s all good.

Making bitcoins legal tender mean a payee will have to accept them. As the new legislation states, “every economic agent must accept Bitcoin as payment when offered to him by whoever acquires a good or service”.

El Salvador making this move isn’t as significant as it would be for most nations, because it is one of about a dozen countries – most of them micro-states such as Andorra and Nauru – without its own currency (or a common currency such as the Euro).

El Salvador abandoned its own currency (the “colon”, named after Christopher Columbus) in 2001 and adopted the US dollar as its legal tender. This process of “official dollarisation” was seen as a reform that would curb inflation and increase trade with the US (by far its major trading partner).

So El Salvador has less to lose than other nations in adopting a second currency as legal tender. There is no controversy about losing sovereignty and monetary policy autonomy. There will be no loss of “seignorage” – the profit made on issuing currency that’s worth a lot more than the cost of making it.

Highly volatile

But having two legal tenders will complicate matters – particularly when one of those currencies is subject to wild swings in its value.

Consider the provision in the new law that “all obligations in money expressed in USD, existing before the effective date of this law, may be paid in bitcoin”.

Even that is complicated. How, and by whom, will the amount of bitcoins necessary to pay a debt be determined? Will it be based on the Bitcoin price at the time the debt was incurred, or when the debt falls due?

The difference of even a few days could be significant.

If the expectation is the price of Bitcoin is going to rise, why would you want to buy things with it? Why not wait? If the expectation is the price is going to fall, why would you want to accept it? For most transactions, using US dollars will still make the most sense.

So making Bitcoin legal tender could help destabilise El Salvador’s economy.

Read more:
Bitcoin: this year I stand to make $200 million more than Elon Musk

Increasing El Salvador’s GDP

Things would have been simpler if El Salvador had adopted a “stablecoin” whose price is fixed at one US dollar – such as Tether, the third-largest cryptocurrency.

But that would have not been nearly so newsworthy, and would have defeated the apparent reason Bukele has championed this move.

Bukele’s reasoning, delivered via Twitter on June 6, is that Bitcoin has “a market cap of US$680 billion” and:

If 1% of it is invested in El Salvador, that would increase our GDP by 25%.

This argument – which appears to be the only “analysis” Bukele has made public – seems very confused.

Market capitalisation typically refers to a listed company’s valuation, based on multiplying the share price by the number of shares. The $US680 billion Bitcoin market cap Bukele referred to represents the currency’s market value multiplied by the number of bitcoins created so far. (For comparison, the market cap of Tether’s 63 billion coins in circulation is US$63 billion.)

But it is flawed logic to think Bitcoin’s total market value equals money bitcoin owners around the globe are looking to invest anywhere.

In very few cases do people buy bitcoins to invest in other things. Bitcoins are their investment. Neither major funds nor average punters holding bitcoins are likely to want to start investing in El Salvador.

Nor is foreign investment a component of GDP (which is the value of market transactions in an economy). Foreigners using bitcoins to buy assets such as land in El Salvador would bid up its price but not necessarily increase GDP. A surge in foreign investment into new infrastructure and businesess that increase productive capacity would contribute to GDP, but there’s no reason to think giving Bitcoin legal tender status will make this more likely.

Facilitating remittances

A second reason given by Bukele is that Bitcoin “will have 10 million potential new users” and is “the fastest growing way to transfer 6 billion dollars a year in remittances”.

This apparently refers to both the population of El Salvador (about 6.5 million) and Salvadorans living abroad, many of whom send money home to help their families. In 2020 these remittances totalled US$5.9 billion, or 23% of El Salvador’s GDP.

While any cryptocurrency can well facilitate more efficient transfers (without the charges banks impose), the significance of remittances to the Salvadoran economy points to another issue. El Salvador is a poor country, with one of the lowest rates of internet use in the Americas – 33% in 2017, according to World Bank data.

How many vendors, street hawkers or farmers are equipped to handle cryptocurrency transactions? US dollars will more than likely remain the default currency.

The benefits of making Bitcoin legal tender are far from clear. El Salvador is already facing higher interest rates as international investors are worried about the move. There are concerns wider use of Bitcoin will facilitate the black economy and make tax avoidance easier.

So this is a great experiment.

Read more:
Bitcoin: El Salvador’s grand experiment

For the sake of El Salvador’s people, let’s hope it is successful. But the odds are on it being further evidence of the cryptocurrency’s unsuitability for use as a real currency – confirmation that Bitcoin is nothing more than a speculative gamble.

John Hawkins formerly worked for the Bank for International Settlements and two central banks,

– ref. Can Bitcoin become a real currency? Here’s what’s wrong with El Salvador’s crypto plan – https://theconversation.com/can-bitcoin-become-a-real-currency-heres-whats-wrong-with-el-salvadors-crypto-plan-162348

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christine Judith Nicholls, Honorary Senior Lecturer, ANU, Australian National University

Eminent Australian anthropologist Peter Sutton and respected field archaeologist Keryn Walshe have co-authored a meticulously researched new book, Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate. It’s set to become the definitive critique of Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu: Black Seeds — Agriculture or Accident?

First published in 2014, Pascoe’s Dark Emu has spawned numerous derivatives. Pascoe contends that in pre-contact times, Australian Aboriginal people weren’t “mere” hunter-gatherers, but agriculturalists. Descriptors like “simple” or “mere” are anathema to people like me who’ve lived long-term with hunter-gatherers.

For many Australians, Pascoe’s book is a “must-read”, speaking truth to power. For such readers, Dark Emu seems a breakthrough text. Not so, in Sutton and Walshe’s estimation. Nor mine.

Underpinning Dark Emu is the author’s rhetorical purpose. This proselytising is partly achieved by painstaking “massaging” of his sources, a practice forensically examined by Walshe and Sutton. It has led to converts to Pascoe’s dubious proposition. But this willingness to accept Pascoe’s argument reveals a systemic area of failure in the Australian education system.

On the basis of long-term research and observation, Sutton and Walshe portray classical Australian Aboriginal people as highly successful hunter-gatherers and fishers. They strongly repudiate racist notions of Aboriginal hunter-gatherers as living in a primitive state.

In their book, they assert there was and is nothing “simple” or “primitive” about hunter-gatherer-fishers’ labour practices. This complexity was, and in many cases, still is, underpinned by high levels of spiritual/cultural belief.

Not agriculturalists

As Sutton attests, seeds were and are occasionally deliberately scattered. But in classical Aboriginal societies they were never planted nor watered for agricultural purposes. Such aforementioned rituals are collectively called “increase ceremonies”. Sutton’s alternative term, “maintenance ceremonies”, invokes spiritual propagation as opposed to oversupply.

Their objective was continuing subsistence. Australia’s hunter-gatherer-fishers left an extremely light carbon footprint — the diametric opposite of many contemporary agricultural/industrial practices. The photo below, taken in 1932 or earlier, shows Pilbara people throwing yelka (nutgrass) — not threshing or scattering seeds.

Pascoe’s sources and approach

Pascoe draws on records of explorers and early colonists, also citing recent works, including Bill Gammage’s The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines made Australia. Dark Emu leans most heavily on the work of the late historian/ethnographer Rupert Gerritsen.

Read more:
Friday essay: Dark Emu and the blindness of Australian agriculture

Counter-intuitively, Pascoe mainly cites non-Aboriginal sources. There is no real “voice” given to the few remaining people who lived traditional lives as youngsters, or are cited in books or articles.

While some have described Dark Emu as fabrication, Sutton and Walshe are more measured. They methodically show that in Dark Emu, Pascoe has removed significant passages from publications that contradict his major objectives. This boosts his contention that all along Aboriginal people were farmers and/or aquaculturalists.

One example concerns Pascoe’s quoting of the journal entries of the explorer Charles Sturt. Sutton writes:

Sturt is quoted [by Pascoe] on his party’s discovery of a large well and ‘village’ of 19 huts somewhere north of Lake Torrens in South Australia.

This “village” concept arose from colonial records, and is still sometimes used in recent articles.

Pascoe’s edit of Sturt’s original 1849 text breathes oxygen into Dark Emu’s polemical edge. It’s misleading at best. For Sturt’s diary reveals Aboriginal people didn’t live in “houses” in any single site all year round.

Such accounts destabilise Pascoe’s argument, reinforced by ethnographic, colonial, and archaeological records.

Hunter-gatherers did alter the country in significant ways — most Australians know about the ancient practice of firing the country, recently discussed in depth owing to our increasingly devastating bush-fires. This involved ecological agency and prowess. But expert fire-burning isn’t an agricultural practice, as Pascoe avers.

Read more:
Indigenous expertise is reducing bushfires in northern Australia. It’s time to consider similar approaches for other disasters

Misidentification of implements

In a key chapter, Walshe homes in on Pascoe’s mis-interpretations of hunter-gatherer implements, which he labels “agricultural” tools. For instance, Pascoe misconstrues grooved “Bogan Picks” as heavy stones used for agricultural activity.

Walshe disputes Pascoe’s claim, stating that, “with their adze-shaped end and grooved midline for hafting, they were likely used in a similar way to stone axes.”

Wooden digging sticks were also used for breaking up the earth to extract yams when in season, among various other purposes — not for “tilling” or “ploughing” the soil in preparation for planting seeds.

Language used by early colonists and explorers — words like “village” and “picks” — befuddles readers. British colonists’ monolingualism meant they used English words, often imposed arbitrarily, to name never-before-seen hunter-gatherer implements. For example, “Bogan Pick” references the nearby Bogan River.

Hunter-gatherer mobility and stasis

Sutton expertly summarises the experience of escaped convict, William Buckley, who spent 32 years travelling around country with the Wathawurrung people in Central Victoria.

Over time, Buckley became fluent in the language of his Wathawurrung hosts. Later, his oral account of the hunter-gatherer group’s approximate lengths of mobility and stasis at numerous sites was transcribed. It’s a unique document covering a significant timespan.

This account reinforces earlier chapters in Dark Emu Debate. Sutton and Walshe make it crystal clear that Aboriginal people weren’t “simple nomads” wandering around randomly, opportunistically searching for food and water. They knew their country intimately.

Rather, hunter-gatherers engaged in purposeful travel to sites with which they familiar and able to source seasonally available food, water and shelter at variable times of year.

Another conspicuous weakness in Dark Emu’s approach, pinpointed by Sutton and Walshe, is Pascoe’s penchant for choosing exceptions to the general rule, implying that these atypical practices were widespread or universal. It’s another strategy to consolidate his argument but involves eliding vital information.

Pre-contact aquaculture

Pascoe offers two examples of “aquacultural” practice, one in Brewarrina (NSW) in the bed streams of the Barwon River, and the other in Lake Condah, in south-western Victoria.

He seizes on rock use in the Brewarrina fishery and Lake Condah’s fish and seasonal eel trapping as “proof” of Aboriginal people’s aqua/agricultural prowess — giving the impression they created these complex hydrological systems from scratch.

But Sutton writes, “The fish traps of Brewarrina … were not claimed as the ingenious works of human beings, but … regarded as having been put there in the Dreaming, by Dreamings.” Both he and Walshe readily acknowledge the fact that Aboriginal people use/d their human agency to create modifications. It’s not an either/or matter.

However, a chapter written by Walshe throws light on the seismic activity that forged Lake Condah’s unique terrain and waterways. This area, she writes, is part of

a volcanic system … last active … 9,000 years ago, with a major eruption much earlier, about 37,000 thousand years ago, causing a massive lava flow across the pre-existing drainage system.

The natural tilt southwards, she explains, facilitated “naturally formed ancient river channels … to reach the Southern Ocean”.

This enabled migratory fish to spawn. Fish, and at certain times of year, eels, swam through both fresh and salty water — making for ease of catching. Local Aboriginal people moved the heavy stones into semi-circular formations to enable netting, spearing or grabbing by hand, possibly creating further semi-captivity of these food staples.

In this way, hunter-gatherers consistently and constantly “value-added” to, or enhanced, nature’s creation.

Read more:
The detective work behind the Budj Bim eel traps World Heritage bid

Not a bunfight

Pascoe’s skilful editing of his sources involves conscious, deliberate intervention. Does he hope Dark Emu will convince people to change their belief in the noxious evolutionary ladder, once uniformly, but still sometimes, applied to different groups of homo sapiens?

Or was his book written to prove Aboriginal people were/are more like Europeans, which could perhaps lead to much needed progress on reconciliation? Perhaps that accounts for its rapturous reception by many Australians, especially the young.

Why not simply celebrate the long-term achievements of hunter-gatherers?

Hunter-gatherers worked in concert with the natural world, not against it as most humans do today, resulting in insoluble difficulties such as overcrowding, pandemics and toxic agricultural and aquacultural practices. Survival depends on this. For eons, it ensured the continuity and the continuing existence of Australia’s hunter-gatherer people and their culture.

Farmers or Hunter Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate needs to be read carefully, keeping an open mind. The book’s focus is on both material and spiritual economies and their misrepresentation. Despite racist commentary from some, this isn’t an exclusively right or left-wing issue or a bunfight.

Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu will continue to be granted recognition, if not immortality. But Sutton and Walshe’s Dark Emu Debate will undoubtedly be acclaimed. As a critique of Pascoe’s book, it’s just about perfect — a volume with the twin virtues of rigour and readability.

Farmers or Hunter Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate is published by Melbourne University Press and will be released 16 June 2021.

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

– ref. Book review: Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate rigorously critiques Bruce Pascoe’s argument – https://theconversation.com/book-review-farmers-or-hunter-gatherers-the-dark-emu-debate-rigorously-critiques-bruce-pascoes-argument-161877

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tristan Kennedy, Senior Lecturer In Indigenous Studies, Macquarie University

Social media offers many benefits to Indigenous peoples, such as ways to establish and navigate identity, build and maintain strong connections to family and community, and seek and offer mutual support. While there are these positive experiences, many people also report having negative encounters online.

Recent research in the Department of Indigenous Studies at Macquarie University, with the support of Facebook Australia, has investigated the benefits of social media, as well as the impacts of negative and harmful content for Indigenous peoples.

The findings shed light on the types of harmful content Indigenous people are facing. These include references to white supremacy, Indigenous identity being challenged, and conflicts within Indigenous communities (also known as lateral violence) in which people attack or undermine each other, often based on colonial ideas about legitimate Indigenous identities.

Our research, which included Indigenous peoples from across Australia, was primarily concerned with identifying how negative content is conceptualised, identified and dealt with from Indigenous Australian perspectives.

Indigenous communities are facing a crisis in mental health, with harmful content on social media a major contributor to increased Indigenous suicide rates Our research responds to this crisis and can potentially help policy makers and social media companies make their platforms safer for Indigenous peoples.

Indigenous peoples’ experiences of social media: the good and the bad

Participants in our study were quick to identify the positive contributions that social media makes in their lives. 83% of respondents confirmed they had positive experiences on social media on a daily basis. In fact, every respondent in the study noted they had positive experiences at least weekly.

Among the most positive aspects, respondents cited accessing creative arts, Indigenous storytelling, and making contact with community members and services. Another positive was the ability to engage in political conversations — that is, to raise issues that are important to Indigenous people which may not receive adequate attention in mainstream media.

Despite these positive opportunities, there is a less comfortable side to social media which must be addressed. Bullying and harassment are having devastating effects on our young people and communities.

In 2019, academics Bronwyn Carlson and Ryan Frazer pointed to research that suggested

victims of cyberbullying are more likely to experience psychological ill-health, most seriously in the forms of depression, anxiety and thoughts of suicide.

Participants in our study agreed negative content was commonplace on social media. 63% of respondents said they experienced negative content on social media on a daily basis, while 97% reported witnessing negative content at least weekly.

Much of this content is grounded in ways of talking about Indigenous people and racist ideas that have pervaded Australian settler-colonial history.

This includes assimilationist policies that were based on the idea that Indigenous culture could be “bred out”. This line of thinking underpins assertions on social media that Indigenous people who live in cities or have fair skin are not genuinely Indigenous.

Read more:
Why is it so offensive to say ‘all lives matter’?

How can moderators and social media platforms help?

It comes as no surprise harmful speech exists on (and off) social media. What remains troubling, however, is that the cultural subtleties of offensive content are not readily identified by non-Indigenous platform moderators.

Our research included Indigenous voices in the discussion about what needs to be done to address these concerns. They identified a need to employ more Indigenous peoples in society generally – particularly in government, policy making institutions and education.

Indigenous perspectives and voices, which for too long have been silenced or ignored, need to be heard in these settings.

Participants also suggested social media platforms could employ more Indigenous people to assist with learning from Indigenous communities how to identify the cultural subtleties of harmful content online.

Indigenous people who contributed to this study had some advice for non-Indigenous individuals, too. They suggested people connect with Indigenous-led social media pages that showcase diverse cultures and knowledges.

In the wake of National Reconciliation Week, there is no better time to make an effort to reach out via social media and connect with Indigenous community pages and websites.

By listening to and engaging with Indigenous peoples’ opinions and perspectives on social media, non-Indigenous people can learn about the history of their local area and find out what is happening around them.

Most of all, they can learn about what is important to Indigenous communities and how we can work together toward a safer online, and offline, society.

Tristan Kennedy received funding from Facebook Australia in support of this research project.

– ref. 97% of Indigenous people report seeing negative social media content weekly. Here’s how platforms can help – https://theconversation.com/97-of-indigenous-people-report-seeing-negative-social-media-content-weekly-heres-how-platforms-can-help-162353

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Evangeline Mantzioris, Program Director of Nutrition and Food Sciences, University of South Australia

Research Checks interrogate newly published studies and how they’re reported in the media. The analysis is undertaken by one or more academics not involved with the study, and reviewed by another, to make sure it’s accurate.

Diets that exclude meat and fish (vegetarian) or all animal products including dairy and eggs (vegan) are becoming increasingly popular for health, environmental and ethical reasons.

Past research in adults has linked vegetarian and vegan diets with a reduced risk of heart disease but a greater risk of fractures, caused by low calcium intakes. But the impact on children has not been evaluated, until the release of a new study this week.

The researchers found a link between shorter heights and lower bone mineral content among vegan children, compared to meat-eaters. But they didn’t show vegan diets caused the difference. Nor can they say the differences will last into adulthood.

How was the study conducted?

The paper, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, examined the differences in children aged five to ten years of age in Poland.

They looked at 187 healthy children between 2014 and 2016 who had been on their respective diets for at least one year: 72 children were omnivores (meat eaters), 63 were vegetarians and 52 were vegans.

The research team looked at the children’s nutrient intakes, body composition and cardiovascular risk – how likely they are to have heart disease or a stroke in the future.

The study was observational, so researchers didn’t make any changes to the children’s diets. They recruited children who were already eating these diets.

Specifically, it was a type of observational study called a cross-sectional study. They looked back at the children’s diets, growth and cardiovascular risk factors at a given time point.

The research team ensured the children in the vegan and vegetarian group were similar to children in the omnivore group, in factors that impact growth and cardiovascular risk factors. These include sex, age, parental smoking, parental education, clinical characteristics of their mother’s pregnancy and, importantly, their parents’ height.

Read more:
Are there any health implications for raising your child as a vegetarian, vegan or pescatarian?

What did the researchers find?

The researchers found that compared to children on omnivore diets, children on vegan diets had a healthier cardiovascular risk profile, with 25% lower levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL, or unhealthy cholesterol).

However the vegan children had an increased risk of nutritional deficiencies. They were more likely to have lower levels of vitamin B12, calcium, vitamin D and iron in their diet.

Children on vegan diets had about 5% lower bone mineral content and were on average 3cm shorter in height. This is important, as the higher the bone mineral content, the higher the bone mineral density.

This 5% difference is concerning, as people have a limited period of time at this age in which they can optimise their bone mineral density; 95% of bone mass is attained by about 20 years of age. Lower bone densities are linked to higher rates of fractures in later life.

Vegetarians showed less pronounced nutritional deficiencies but, unexpectedly, a less favourable cardiovascular risk profile compared to both meat-eaters and vegans. The authors attributed this to a lower-quality diet, with these children consuming more processed foods.

Are there any problems with the study?

Observational studies are only able to tell us if something is linked, not if one thing caused another. This study only tells us there is a link between these diets and the outcomes they looked at.

But in this study, there are plausible biological links between bone development and growth in children.

Calcium, vitamin D and protein are critical for bone development and growth. These nutrients may be lower in vegan diets, as they come mainly from animal products:

• calcium is found in dairy products
• vitamin D, which we normally get from exposure to sunlight on our skin, is also found in animal foods but in smaller amounts
• protein from plant foods is considered of lower biological value than animal sources.

One single plant source of protein won’t provide you with all the essential amino acids (the protein building blocks your body is unable to make for itself) that are needed. Vegans need to make sure they eat a variety of plants so they get a good mix of all the essential amino acids.

So, why didn’t the researchers carry out an intervention study and change the diets of the children?

First, it would be difficult to find children and their families who are willing to change their diets for a long period.

Second, it would be unethical to put children on a diet potentially affecting their growth and cardiovascular risk factors.

This study, conducted in Poland, is the only one to look at growth and cardiovascular outcomes in vegan and vegetarian children.

One small study in children aged five to ten years isn’t enough for the scientific community to say these results are valid and we must act on them.

But it does give us clues about potential problems and what we can look out for.

As the researchers indicated, more observational studies are needed, and in different countries.

Read more:
Have you gone vegan? Keep an eye on these 4 nutrients

So what does it mean for children on vegan and vegetarian diets?

This doesn’t mean every child who follows these diets is going to have these nutritional and health benefits or problems. And we also can’t say whether these problems will persist into adulthood.

But it does highlight potential risks which health practitioners and parents need to be aware of. And it’s a reminder to either find suitable replacements that align with the family’s diet philosophy, or prescribe supplements if a deficiency is diagnosed through a blood test.

In particular, parents and caregivers need to be careful their children are maintaining a good intake of protein from a variety of vegan sources (beans, lentils, nuts) and calcium (from calcium supplemented plant milks).

Whether you’re following a vegan, vegetarian or meat-eating diet, you still need to make sure the diet is balanced across all food groups.

The study is also a reminder to minimise your family’s intake of processed foods which are high in salt, sugar and saturated fat, which are risk factors for heart disease and stroke.

If you’re concerned about your children’s diet, talk to your GP or an accredited practising dietitian, who can assess their growth and diet. – Evangeline Mantzioris

Blind peer review

The reviewer has provided an accurate assessment of the research paper.

The study highlights the importance of meal planning to optimise food and nutrient intakes of children whose usual dietary pattern is vegan or vegetarian and the need for regular use of fortified foods and/or dietary supplementation with vitamin B12 and vitamin D and potentially calcium and iron, particularly for vegans.

However, the results of the study may be a “best case scenario”, given most families participating were highly educated and hence likely to be more invested in planning family meals. It is possible other families might have less healthy dietary patterns, and therefore greater nutritional deficits.

Together with the results highlighted by the reviewer about bone mineral content and height, as well as iron and cholesterol levels, this study confirms both the potential risks and benefits associated with vegan and vegetarian diets in children.

A key message is that families following plant-based diets need more advice and support to optimise their food and nutrient intakes, and their children’s diet-related health and well-being. – Clare Collins

Read more:
Pregnant women and babies can be vegans but careful nutrition planning is essential

Evangeline Mantzioris receives funding from National Health & Medical Research Council.

Clare Collins is affiliated with the Priority Research Centre for Physical Activity and Nutrition, the University of Newcastle, NSW. She has received research grants from NHMRC, ARC, MRFF, Hunter Medical Research Institute, Diabetes Australia, Heart Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, nib foundation, Rijk Zwaan Australia, WA Dept. Health, Meat and Livestock Australia, and Greater Charitable Foundation. She has consulted to SHINE Australia, Novo Nordisk, Quality Bakers, the Sax Institute and the ABC. She was a team member conducting systematic reviews to inform the Australian Dietary Guidelines update and the Heart Foundation evidence reviews on meat and dietary patterns.

– ref. Do vegan diets make kids shorter and weaker? – https://theconversation.com/do-vegan-diets-make-kids-shorter-and-weaker-162420

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tristan Kennedy, Senior Lecturer In Indigenous Studies, Macquarie University

Social media offers many benefits to Indigenous peoples, such as ways to establish and navigate identity, build and maintain strong connections to family and community, and seek and offer mutual support. While there are these positive experiences, many people also report having negative encounters online.

Recent research in the Department of Indigenous Studies at Macquarie University, with the support of Facebook Australia, has investigated the benefits of social media, as well as the impacts of negative and harmful content for Indigenous peoples.

The findings shed light on the types of harmful content Indigenous people are facing. These include references to white supremacy, Indigenous identity being challenged, and conflicts within Indigenous communities (also known as lateral violence) in which people attack or undermine each other, often based on colonial ideas about legitimate Indigenous identities.

Our research, which included Indigenous peoples from across Australia, was primarily concerned with identifying how negative content is conceptualised, identified and dealt with from Indigenous Australian perspectives.

Indigenous communities are facing a crisis in mental health, with harmful content on social media a major contributor to increased Indigenous suicide rates Our research responds to this crisis and can potentially help policy makers and social media companies make their platforms safer for Indigenous peoples.

Indigenous peoples’ experiences of social media: the good and the bad

Participants in our study were quick to identify the positive contributions that social media makes in their lives. 83% of respondents confirmed they had positive experiences on social media on a daily basis. In fact, every respondent in the study noted they had positive experiences at least weekly.

Among the most positive aspects, respondents cited accessing creative arts, Indigenous storytelling, and making contact with community members and services. Another positive was the ability to engage in political conversations — that is, to raise issues that are important to Indigenous people which may not receive adequate attention in mainstream media.

Despite these positive opportunities, there is a less comfortable side to social media which must be addressed. Bullying and harassment are having devastating effects on our young people and communities.

In 2019, academics Bronwyn Carlson and Ryan Frazer pointed to research that suggested

victims of cyberbullying are more likely to experience psychological ill-health, most seriously in the forms of depression, anxiety and thoughts of suicide.

Participants in our study agreed negative content was commonplace on social media. 63% of respondents said they experienced negative content on social media on a daily basis, while 97% reported witnessing negative content at least weekly.

Much of this content is grounded in ways of talking about Indigenous people and racist ideas that have pervaded Australian settler-colonial history.

This includes assimilationist policies that were based on the idea that Indigenous culture could be “bred out”. This line of thinking underpins assertions on social media that Indigenous people who live in cities or have fair skin are not genuinely Indigenous.

Read more:
Why is it so offensive to say ‘all lives matter’?

How can moderators and social media platforms help?

It comes as no surprise harmful speech exists on (and off) social media. What remains troubling, however, is that the cultural subtleties of offensive content are not readily identified by non-Indigenous platform moderators.

Our research included Indigenous voices in the discussion about what needs to be done to address these concerns. They identified a need to employ more Indigenous peoples in society generally – particularly in government, policy making institutions and education.

Indigenous perspectives and voices, which for too long have been silenced or ignored, need to be heard in these settings.

Participants also suggested social media platforms could employ more Indigenous people to assist with learning from Indigenous communities how to identify the cultural subtleties of harmful content online.

Indigenous people who contributed to this study had some advice for non-Indigenous individuals, too. They suggested people connect with Indigenous-led social media pages that showcase diverse cultures and knowledges.

In the wake of National Reconciliation Week, there is no better time to make an effort to reach out via social media and connect with Indigenous community pages and websites.

By listening to and engaging with Indigenous peoples’ opinions and perspectives on social media, non-Indigenous people can learn about the history of their local area and find out what is happening around them.

Most of all, they can learn about what is important to Indigenous communities and how we can work together toward a safer online, and offline, society.

Tristan Kennedy received funding from Facebook Australia in support of this research project.

– ref. 97% of Indigenous people report seeing negative content weekly. Here’s how platforms can help – https://theconversation.com/97-of-indigenous-people-report-seeing-negative-content-weekly-heres-how-platforms-can-help-162353

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

University of Canberra Professorial Fellow Michelle Grattan and University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Paddy Nixon discuss the week in politics.

This week Michelle and Paddy discuss the G7 summit which is set to take place in Cornwall, where Prime Minister Scott Morrison will be meeting with some of the world’s leaders and discussing COVID-19, climate change, and China.

Crucially, it will be Morrison’s first face-to-face meeting with US President Joe Biden.

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

– ref. VIDEO: Michelle Grattan on the G7 summit and the Biloela Tamil family – https://theconversation.com/video-michelle-grattan-on-the-g7-summit-and-the-biloela-tamil-family-162595

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nerilie Abram, Professor; ARC Future Fellow; Chief Investigator for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes; Deputy Director for the Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science, Australian National University

Senator Matt Canavan sent many eyeballs rolling yesterday when he tweeted photos of snowy scenes in regional New South Wales with a sardonic two-word caption: “climate change”.

Canavan, a renowned opponent of climate action and proponent of the coal industry, appeared to be suggesting that the existence of an isolated cold snap means global warming isn’t real.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has previously insisted there is “no dispute in this country about the issue of climate change, globally, and its effect on global weather patterns”. But Canavan’s tweet would suggest otherwise.

The reality is, as the climate warms, record-breaking cold weather is becoming less common. And one winter storm does not negate more than a century of human-caused global warming. Here, we take a closer look at the cold weather misconception and two other common climate change myths.

Myth #1: A cold snap means global warming isn’t happening

Canavan’s tweet is an example of a common tactic used by climate change deniers that deliberately conflates weather and climate.

Parts of Australia are currently in the grip of a cold snap as icy air from Antarctica is funnelled up over the eastern states. This is part of a normal weather system, and is temporary.

Climate, on the other hand, refers to weather conditions over a much longer period, such as several decades. And as our climate warms, the probability of such weather systems bringing record-breaking cold temperatures reduces dramatically.

Just as average temperatures in Australia have risen markedly over the past century, so too have winter temperatures. That doesn’t mean climate change is not happening. In a warming world, extremely cold winter temperatures can still occur, but less often than they used to.

In fact, human-caused climate change means extreme winter warmth now occurs more often, and across larger parts of the country. Record-breaking hot events in Australia now far outweigh record breaking cold events.

Myth #2: Global warming is good for us

Yes, climate change may bring isolated benefits. For example, warmer global temperatures may mean fewer people die from extreme cold weather, or that shorter shipping routes open up across the Arctic as sea ice melts.

But the perverse benefits that may flow from climate change will be far outweighed by the damage caused.

Extreme heat can be fatal for humans. And a global study found 37% of heat-related deaths are a direct consequence of human-caused climate change. That means nearly 3,000 deaths in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne between 1991 and 2018 were due to climate change.

Extreme heat and humidity may make some parts of the world, especially those near the Equator, essentially uninhabitable by the end of this century.

Global warming also kills plants, animals and ecosystems. In 2018, an estimated one-third of Australia’s spectacled flying foxes died when temperatures around Cairns reached 42℃. And there is evidence many Australian plants will not cope well in a warmer world – and are already nearing their tipping point.

Heatwaves also damage oceans. The Great Barrier Reef has suffered three mass bleaching events in just five years. Within decades the natural wonder is unlikely to exist in is current form – badly hurting employment and tourism.

Read more:
Climate change is making ocean waves more powerful, threatening to erode many coastlines

Myth #3: More CO₂ means Earth will definitely get greener

In January last year, News Corp columnist Andrew Bolt caused a stir with an article that suggested rising carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions were “greening the planet” and were therefore “a good thing”.

During photosynthesis, plants absorb CO₂. So as the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere increases, some researchers predict the planet will become greener and crop yields will increase.

Consistent with this hypothesis, there is indirect evidence of increased global photosynthesis and satellite-observed greening. There is also indirect evidence of increased “carbon sinks”, whereby CO₂ is drawn down from the atmosphere by plants, then stored in soil.

Rising temperatures lead to an earlier onset of spring, as well as prolonged summer plant growth – particularly in the Northern Hemisphere. Researchers think this has triggered an increase in the land carbon sink.

However, there’s also widespread evidence some trees are not growing as might be expected given the increased CO₂ levels in our atmosphere. For example, a study of how Australian eucalypts might respond to future CO₂ concentrations has so far found no increase in growth.

Increased plant growth may also cause them to use more water, causing significant reductions in streamflow that will compound water availability issues in dry regions.

Overall, attempts to reconcile the various lines of evidence of how climate change will alter Earth’s land vegetation have proved challenging.

So, are we doomed?

After all this bad news, you might be feeling a bit dejected. And true, the current outlook isn’t great.

Earth has already warmed by about 1℃, and current policies have the world on track for at least 3℃ warming this century. But there is still reason for hope. While every extra bit of warming matters, so too does every action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

And there are promising signs of increasing ambition to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on the global front – from the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Japan and others.

Unfortunately, Australia is far behind our international peers, instead pushing the burden of action onto future generations. We now need the political leadership to set our country, and the world, on a safer and more secure path. Ill-informed tweets by senior members of the government only set back the cause.

Read more:
Spot the difference: as world leaders rose to the occasion at the Biden climate summit, Morrison faltered

Nerilie Abram receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Martin De Kauwe receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Matt Canavan suggested the cold snap means global warming isn’t real. We bust this and 2 other climate myths – https://theconversation.com/matt-canavan-suggested-the-cold-snap-means-global-warming-isnt-real-we-bust-this-and-2-other-climate-myths-130878

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Patrick Rule, Research Fellow, Monash University

Monk seals are one of the most endangered marine mammals alive today, with just over 2,000 individuals remaining in the wild. These seals live in warm waters, specifically the tropics and the Mediterranean.

Hunting by sailors in the past resulted in the extinction of the Caribbean monk seal by the end of the 1950s. It also heavily reduced the numbers of the two remaining populations, in Hawaii and the Mediterranean.

Given how rare monk seals are today, it is hard to imagine a time when they were abundant. However, fossils from Australia show monk seals used to be much more widespread.

Two fossils from Beaumaris and Hamilton in Victoria have turned out to be the remains of ancient monk seals. This discovery, part of an ongoing effort to investigate Melbourne’s globally important marine fossils, was outlined by our team in a paper published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.

How are monk seals different from other seals?

Monk seals are from a completely different group to the fur seals and sea lions that live in Australian waters today. Australia’s warm environment in the past made it an ideal habitat for true seals, the group to which monk seals belong.

These seals would have coexisted with Australia’s ancient megafauna, such as giant kangaroos and the oddball palorchestids.

Read more:
In a land of ancient giants, these small oddball seals once called Australia home

This discovery was made when our team revisited two fossils from Museums Victoria’s collections, the identity of which has been a mystery for 40 years.

When we analysed them, they turned out to be the oldest evidence of monk seals found so far, at roughly 5 million years old. The fossils are earbones, the part of the skull that contains the structures needed for hearing. The anatomy of earbones means they are very useful for helping palaeontologists identify what animal fossils belong to.

Together with the recently discovered Eomonachus (a 3 million-year-old New Zealand monk seal), these fossils demonstrate that monk seals had a long history in Australasia. These discoveries have now almost doubled the number of geographic regions monk seals used to occupy in the past, and confirm they used to be a much larger group.

What happened?

If monk seals were so widespread down under in the past, why are they no longer here? The short answer is climate change.

Around 2.5 million years ago, the onset of the ice ages changed the world’s oceans, making the waters colder and sea levels lower. This led to extinctions in many marine mammal groups, including the monk seals. In short, monk seals disappeared in the southern hemisphere, leaving them only present in the Mediterranean and the tropics.

Read more:
Scientists thought these seals evolved in the north. 3-million-year-old fossils from New Zealand suggest otherwise

Despite monk seals being protected from hunting today, these fossil discoveries suggest their troubles may be far from over. Their fossil relatives have now demonstrated they are susceptible to environmental change.

Rising sea levels are already threatening the Hawaiian species, and human-driven changes also endanger the Mediterranean species.

Without continued protection, the remaining monk seals may soon disappear along with their extinct relatives.

James Patrick Rule received funding from an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship and a Robert Blackwood Scholarship.

Erich Fitzgerald receives support for research on The Lost World of Bayside from Bayside City Council, Community Bank Sandringham, Beaumaris Motor Yacht Squadron, Bayside Earth Sciences Society, Sandringham Foreshore Association and generous community donations to Museums Victoria.

Justin W. Adams receives funding from the Australian Research Council and Monash University.

– ref. The most endangered seals in the world once called Australia home – https://theconversation.com/the-most-endangered-seals-in-the-world-once-called-australia-home-162523