Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Martin Loosemore, Professor of Construction Management, University of Technology Sydney

The recently announced $250 million NSW budget boost for Aboriginal housing is much welcomed and long overdue.

In implementing this important new initiative, it is critical to consult Aboriginal communities about what culturally appropriate housing looks like. In the past, public housing policies have often been imposed on Aboriginal communities based on non-Aboriginal ideals of good housing.

Research findings show the social values of Aboriginal people differ significantly from non-Aboriginal values. Unfortunately, well-intentioned government policies too often ignore these crucial differences.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says everyone has the right to decent housing, which provides for their security, health and well-being.

However, past policies have not done enough to ensure Aboriginal people have adequate housing — it continues to lag behind non-Aboriginal housing across Australia.

Barriers to housing for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

In 2020, the National Agreement on Closing the Gap included housing among its 16 key socio-economic targets to improve life outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

However, the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute recently found closing the gap targets cannot be met without addressing the current lack of affordable and quality housing.

As it stands:

• a much higher proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people live in overcrowded and public housing

• only 42% own their own home compared with 65% of non-Indigenous households

• housing shortages are predicted to increase to 90,901 dwellings across Australia by 2031, of which 65,000 are in NSW

However, the use of financial metrics (such as the amount of money spent on Aboriginal housing) to determine the success of Aborginal housing policies can sometimes present a deceiving and biased view of the impact they have on Aboriginal communities.

It is critical the success of any Aboriginal policy is measured in a way which reflects Aboriginal cultural connections to country and kinship. These measurements should not reflect non-Aboriginal values of individualism and materialism, which typically guide government assessments of success and failure.

This is why it was reassuring to hear NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet state:

This budget is not just about dollars; it is about our commitment to ensure funding is directed to the areas where it can make the most difference for Aboriginal communities across our state.

It remains to be seen, though, whether the NSW government has the tools and knowledge to assess and communicate the success of policies affecting Aboriginal people in this way.

Important lessons for Aboriginal housing policy

Our research at the Indigenous Infrastructure and Sustainable Housing Alliance, in partnership with the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment, shows decent housing is critical for the health and well-being of Aboriginal communities.

The negative impacts of culturally inappropriate and poor-quality housing on the health and well-being of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, especially young people, has been well-known for many decades.

Well-intentioned housing policies that are inappropriately designed and implemented can represent yet another form of controlling and monitoring of Aboriginal communities.

We have found a large number of housing problems for Aboriginal people, which can be summarised into four main areas:

• overcrowding

• ageing housing stock

• poor quality construction and maintenance (especially waterproofing)

• inappropriate standardised designs which do not reflect Aboriginal cultural values and family structures.

Our evaluation of the NSW’s Roads to Home Program also highlights the importance of addressing underlying infrastructure deficiencies in Aboriginal communities.

Poorly maintained and constructed roads, footpaths, drains, and electricity and telecommunications systems present potential risks to peoples’ health, safety, security and wellbeing. And this, in turn, creates structural disadvantage and further isolates them from surrounding non-Aboriginal communities

It is good to see much-needed upgrades to infrastructure, such as drainage, roads and footpaths, continuing at a cost of $34.1 million over three years under the program.

The program also invests in road and infrastructure upgrades in Aboriginal communities, such as former reserves and missions. It commenced in July 2019, with ten communities being initially upgraded over a four-year period at a cost of $54.8 million.

What culturally responsive housing can look like

We have developed a series of design principles to inform culturally responsive housing designs currently under development in northwestern NSW.

These principles can be simplified under three main headings:

• orientation (building and block orientation)

• house layout (how the house is laid out internally)

• materials (durability, ease of maintenance)

To address the legacy of past Aboriginal housing policies new Aboriginal housing should reflect the diverse cultures, climate variations and environments of Aboriginal communities. They must not be built around the traditional, western, nuclear family model. Housing should be resilient, sustainable and provide flexible and adaptable spaces for extended families and community activities.

Importantly, they must also comply with the Building Code of Australia since too much Aboriginal housing has been built below Australian standards.

In building community resilience, hope and prosperity, our research also shows any new Aboriginal housing should also be implemented alongside social procurement policies. This ensures future projects provide meaningful and sustainable training and employment opportunities for the people who live in these communities.

However, governments must be committed to enforcing these policies and measuring their impact from Aboriginal people’s perspectives.

Most importantly, Aboriginal housing policies should be developed and implemented in close consultation with Aboriginal people, recognising each community’s unique cultures, needs and priorities.

Martin Loosemore receives funding from the Australian Research Council, NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment

Campbell Drake has received research funding from the NSW Aboriginal Housing Office and The NSW Department of Planning Industry & Environment.

John Evans receives funding from the NSW Department of Planning Industry and Environment and the Australian Research Council.

Sara Wilkinson receives funding from the ARC, the Kamprad Foundation, Sweden, Aboriginal Housing Office (AHO) and Dept of Planning Industry & Environment (DPIE).

– ref. Aboriginal housing policies must be based on community needs — not what non-Indigenous people think they need – https://theconversation.com/aboriginal-housing-policies-must-be-based-on-community-needs-not-what-non-indigenous-people-think-they-need-162999

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Plank, Professor in Applied Mathematics, University of Canterbury

New Zealand’s medicines regulator Medsafe has granted provisional approval of the Pfizer vaccine for youth aged 12 to 15, and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern expects cabinet approval to follow next week.

Once cabinet approves, 12-15-year-olds will become eligible for vaccination towards the end of the year, after older groups have had their turn.

Although children are at lower risk of serious illness or death from COVID-19 than older people, it is still essential to vaccinate them for two reasons.

First, if children catch the virus they can spread it to other people, including higher-risk groups or people who can’t be vaccinated for medical reasons. Several countries have seen outbreaks start in young people and spread into older age groups, causing significant hospitalisations and deaths.

Second, although the risk of death is very small, children can still suffer significant long-term health complications as a result of COVID-19, often known as long COVID. This has been shown to affect a significant proportion of people, even in younger age groups.

Read more:
Long COVID in children: what parents and teachers need to know

The Medsafe approval is based on solid data showing the vaccine is safe and highly effective for this age group. It follows similar moves in Europe, the US and Canada.

Vaccinating teenagers reduces their risk of getting sick and of passing the virus to others. By getting vaccinated, we are protecting not only ourselves, but also those around us.

How children fit into New Zealand’s rollout plan

In New Zealand, 265,000 children are in the 12-15 age group, accounting for just over 5% of the population. Add that to the 80% who are older than 16, and the Pfizer vaccine now has Medsafe approval for use in 85% of the population. This is good news because we will need really high vaccination rates to have a chance of reaching population immunity (sometime called herd immunity).

The vaccine is not mandatory and it’s likely not everyone will want to take it. This means we might need to vaccinate some children in younger age groups. Trials are currently underway to assess if the vaccine is appropriate for children aged six to 11. Director General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said Medsafe would consider the trial results once available.

There is a strong relationship between age and risk of severe COVID-19. It makes sense for the general rollout to start with older people and gradually work through the age groups, as Ardern announced last week. There may be exceptions — teenagers living with border workers or who have underlying health conditions could be offered the vaccine earlier in the rollout.

There are also other risk factors. We know that as a result of longstanding systemic racism in the healthcare system, Māori and Pacific people are at higher risk of needing hospital treatment for COVID-19. Therefore, an equitable rollout should ensure Māori and Pacific communities are prioritised for early access to the vaccine.

Read more:
Research shows Māori are more likely to die from COVID-19 than other New Zealanders

Moving towards collective immunity

At the moment, New Zealand’s population is like a pile of dry kindling: sparks of COVID-19 from countries around the world are constantly threatening to set it ablaze. Vaccinating our population is like dousing that kindling pile with a hose.

To begin with, the wood is still dry enough that a spark landing in the wrong place could set it alight. But eventually, once the wood is wet enough, there might be a bit of smouldering here and there, but the fire won’t be able to take off.

The government has laid out its side of the bargain: the plan is to offer the vaccine to everyone by the end of the year. Ardern said New Zealand’s pre-purchase orders of the Pfizer vaccine will deliver enough doses during the rest of the year to offer two doses to 12-15-years-olds without anyone else missing out.

Now it’s up to all of us to do our bit and get vaccinated when our turn comes. Everyone who gets vaccinated is making a contribution to our collective immunity against the virus.

The higher we can get our collective immunity, the better protected we will be as a community, and the more options we’ll have for safely allowing international travel to resume. Vaccinating young people will be an important part of this effort and this latest announcement marks a significant step on the long journey towards the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Michael Plank is affiliated with the University of Canterbury and receives funding from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) and Te Pūnaha Matatini, New Zealand’s Centre of Research Excellence in complex systems.

– ref. New Zealand approves Pfizer vaccine for young people from 12 to 15, but they’ll have to wait their turn – https://theconversation.com/new-zealand-approves-pfizer-vaccine-for-young-people-from-12-to-15-but-theyll-have-to-wait-their-turn-163158

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dominik Koll, Dual PhD Candidate, Australian National University

It is all around us. Every day in our lives we are in contact with it. In fact, we are made from it: ancient stardust.

All the atoms around us have witnessed the most violent explosions in the universe. Their journeys through space are the longest, roughest and loneliest voyages imaginable.

The hydrogen in the water we drink is the lightest of all the elements, and it dates back to the Big Bang at the beginning of the universe. Heavier elements, like the iron in our blood and the oxygen in the air we breathe, were forged in stars and ejected when they exploded at the end of their lives.

Dust from distant stellar explosions is still falling on Earth in a gentle, almost imperceptible rain. In my research, I hunt for traces of this dust to learn about how exploding stars have affected Earth’s history – and perhaps discover clues about the origin of the universe’s heaviest elements.

Hunting atoms

For many years my colleagues and I have been searching for fresh stardust (or any other kind of interstellar dust) across the giant dustbin we call home: Earth. We need dust that has fallen relatively recently (in cosmic terms), because then we have a chance of tracing it back to an event and a location like a particular exploding star.

Specifically, we are looking for atoms of iron-60 (or ⁶⁰Fe), a radioactive isotope of iron. Iron-60 is very rare on Earth, as it is mainly produced in massive stars and is found in minor quantities in cosmic dust and meteorites. However, it has a half-life of 2.6 million years, which means the atoms that do arrive here stick around for a long while before decaying.

Only a tiny amount of iron-60 rains down on Earth: each square centimetre of the planet’s surface receives a few atoms per year. If you stuck your tongue out for a full year, you might taste only a handful of atoms of iron-60.

To find iron-60, we need the help of nature: areas of Earth’s surface that are largely undisturbed and form a “geological archive” that concentrates and stores the iron-60 over time.

Traces beneath the sea

Iron-60 from the stars was first discovered in 2004, in layers of deep-ocean rock called “ferromanganese crust”. These hard iron-containing layers develop very slowly: in a million years, the crust will only grow by a few millimetres.

These geological vaults kept their iron-60 until samples are taken and studied using an ultra-sensitive technique called accelerator mass spectrometry.

The iron-60 found in 2004 suggested Earth had experienced an influx of interstellar dust from an exploding star (or supernova) about 2 million years ago. In 2016, this was confirmed by several independent studies of ocean sediments, deep-sea crusts and even rocks from the Moon.

Read more:
Our oceans give new insights on elements made in supernovae

More recently, traces of iron-60 found in seabeds revealed another influx of interstellar dust around 7 million years ago.

So we know Earth was impacted by at least two nearby stellar explosions in the past several million years. The collected data further indicated some iron-60 might still have been raining down on Earth within the past couple of hundred thousand years.

Is interstellar dust still falling today?

The search for interstellar dust in recent times is more challenging because nature is not helping us a lot anymore.

First, there is no concentration of iron-60 possible over a time period of a few years. This means we need to take a sample over a much larger area to find a useful number of iron-60 atoms.

Second, since humans invented nuclear weapons and other nuclear technology, there are many new radioactive isotopes present on Earth. So there is a slight chance that any iron-60 you find today might have been created by humans rather than exploding stars.

Read more:
Elements from the stars: The unexpected discovery that upended astrophysics 66 years ago

There are not many places to look for recent interstellar dust by its iron-60 signature, but one of them is in the pure snow of remote Antarctica. Still, you need to collect several hundred kilograms of snow for a big enough sample to reliably measure whether or not it contains interstellar iron-60.

In 2019, we analysed 500 kilograms of Antarctic snow and found 10 atoms of iron-60. The snow we collected was no more than 20 years old, and was about the amount that would fall in one year over 6 square meters of ground in Antarctica.

The iron-60 was of interstellar origin and perfectly within the expectations from previous measurements, and we also excluded human nuclear activity as the source. This was the first evidence that there is still interstellar dust from supernovae raining down on us every day.

We were able to confirm this result and extend it over the past 35,000 years by searching in ocean sediments. Combining all the evidence, we now have a record of interstellar dust influxes, on a scale of years, thousands of years, and millions of years.

The future of ancient stardust

What’s next in the hunt for stardust? First off, we still have a gap in the data in the 100,000-year range that needs to be filled to fully understand the origin and connection of the observed influxes.

Another line of inquiry is to use what we know about influxes of iron-60 to hunt for something much heavier, plutonium-244. This is the longest-lived radioactive isotope of plutonium with a half-life of 81 million years.

Like around half of the elements heavier than iron, plutonium-244 is created by a series of nuclear reactions called the astrophysical r-process. However, though scientists understand how this process works, yet we don’t know where in the universe these heavy elements are produced.

Supernovae were believed to entail the right conditions for the r-process to occur, but there is also some evidence suggesting that many of the heavy elements may instead be produced when neutron stars collide.

Read more:
Cosmic alchemy: Colliding neutron stars show us how the universe creates gold

One way to shed light on this question is to look for plutonium-244 in the same places where we have found iron-60, which we know comes from supernovae.

In my PhD research I will go back to the roots of iron-60 hunting, the ferromanganese crusts. If we find that plutonium-244 follows the iron-60, it might point towards a stellar r-process. The hunt is ongoing.

Dominik Koll works for the Australian National University. He receives funding from AINSE.

– ref. Dust from exploding stars is raining down on Earth. I hunt it to learn how the elements were made – https://theconversation.com/dust-from-exploding-stars-is-raining-down-on-earth-i-hunt-it-to-learn-how-the-elements-were-made-162242

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julie Anne Lee, Professor in Marketing, Founding Director of the Centre for Human and Cultural Values, and Director of Research at the UWA Business School, The University of Western Australia

The COVID-19 pandemic has already changed so many things about our society and our lives. While some of the impacts can be seen clearly and straight away, others take more digging.

Our new research, based on surveys with Australians before and during the pandemic, suggests COVID also shifted our values. This is surprising because values in adulthood rarely change.

It is also concerning as it showed as a society, we have become less caring and less open to new ideas.

Our research

As part of a larger project at the Centre for Human and Cultural Values, we asked Australian adults aged 18-75 how important different values are in their life.

We asked the same questions to the same group in 2017, 2018, and 2019. When the pandemic started, we were able to ask them the questions early on (April, 2020) and again in November-December 2020. During the pandemic, we also asked how worried respondents were about getting the virus.

We began with a near nationally representative sample of more than 2,300 people, who answered our survey from 2017 onwards. More than half (1,440 people) also responded in the last round in November-December 2020.

This gave us a rare opportunity to look at what impact the pandemic may have had on Australians’ values.

What are values?

Values are broad goals relating to things we think are desirable or worthy, like kindness, safety, adventure or success. There are no “bad” values, but our values can lead us to prioritise very different things.

We may not think about our values all the time, but they direct our way of thinking, and even our behaviour. They direct everyday decisions, such as whether to help a friend in need, or throw an item in the recycling bin. They also guide major decisions, such as which party to vote for, and which profession to choose.

Based on the work of psychologist Shalom Schwartz, our research grouped values into four categories.

1. Self-transcendence — seeking to care for the welfare of others and nature
2. Self-enhancement — seeking self-interest through ambition, success, and control
3. Conservatism — seeking to preserve the status quo through traditions, compliance, and security
4. Openness to change — seeking creativity, independence, novelty, and excitement

We care less about others

Our research found the values that motivate us to care for people and for nature (“self-transcendence”) were stable before 2020 and very early in the pandemic. But they decreased significantly in importance by late 2020.

One possible explanation is people who worried about what COVID might mean for them became especially less caring about the people around them. After suffering months of worry, lockdowns, border closures, and social distancing, people were less likely to prioritise others over themselves.

We are more conservative

We also found values that prioritise maintaining the status quo (“conservation”) were stable prior to COVID, but increased in importance early in 2020.

When the pandemic started, Australians immediately started prioritising safety and security, and traditions around one’s family, culture and religion. The increased importance of conservative values may have helped to motivate compliance with the new pandemic health and safety rules.

Again, this trend happened more in people who were worried about getting COVID early in the pandemic.

Read more:
How the pandemic has brought out the worst — and the best — in Australians and their governments

While the increase in importance of these more conservative values lingered later in the pandemic, this increase was no longer associated with worry over getting COVID.

In fact, it was somewhat surprising that the increase in more conservative values lingered throughout 2020, given that the pandemic situation in Australia was largely under control. This shows the pervasiveness of subtle changes taking place as a consequence of the pandemic.

Reassessing our priorities

Early in the pandemic, as more conservative values increased in importance, opposing values like adventure, excitement and enjoyment (“openness to change”) became less important for Australians.

Later in 2020, in contrast to the more conservative values that remained more important than before the pandemic, the importance of “openness to change” values began to change.

While people continued to disregard values that promote pleasure and enjoyment, values that prioritise independence and intellectual pursuits increased in importance. This suggests the pandemic restrictions may have led people to critically examine what’s important in life, and to seek out interesting things they can do independently of others.

COVID has changed us — and done it quickly

Our study shows major events such as the COVID pandemic can change values in society in a relatively short period of time.

Central to these value changes appear to be worries about getting infected, which was linked to more conservative values, less openness values, and decreased importance of values related to caring about others and the environment.

As values have been linked with social and political opinions and voting, these changes have important implications for Australian society.

Australians may vote more conservatively as a result. It’s noted that pandemic elections have seen Australians back incumbents (whether they be Coalition or Labor). Although interestingly, both the successful Queensland and West Australian ALP governments have had very tough state border regimes.

If these value changes linger on, we might see people objecting more to immigration, caring less about human rights, and being less likely to enact random acts of kindness. Indeed, separate survey results have already shown many Australians back the strict international border controls during COVID.

We may also see less volunteering and donations to a wide range of causes. We know volunteering rates have dropped since COVID hit Australia, and are yet to recover.

Our findings suggest the pandemic has significantly affected our values. Follow up surveys will be critical to understand our values as we emerge from the pandemic.

Read more:
‘Cabin fever’: Australia must prepare for the social and psychological impacts of a coronavirus lockdown

Julie Anne Lee receives funding from Australian Research Council

anat.bardi@rhul.ac.uk is affiliated with Royal Holloway University of London.

maya.benishweisman@mail.huji.ac.il receives funding from Jacobs Foundation, The Israeli Science Foundation, The U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF)

Ella Daniel and Ronald Fischer 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. Our research shows COVID has made Australians more conservative and care less about others – https://theconversation.com/our-research-shows-covid-has-made-australians-more-conservative-and-care-less-about-others-161500

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Heather Green, Senior Lecturer, School of Applied Psychology, Griffith University

Alongside logistical and supply issues, vaccine hesitancy has been a notable hurdle in Australia’s troubled vaccine rollout.

The news the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) now recommends Pfizer over AstraZeneca for everyone under 60, owing to a rare blood clotting disorder, is proving another blow to vaccine confidence.

With active local COVID cases in Victoria and New South Wales, it’s timely to be considering all possible factors which may be contributing to vaccine hesitancy.

One is the media. While news reports of vaccine hesitancy may well be describing genuine community concerns, they could be inadvertently fuelling COVID vaccine fears.

Why are some Australians reluctant to get a COVID vaccine?

While Australians perceive their environment is safe and relatively free from COVID-19, some will remain unmotivated to have the jab. They may hesitate to be immunised as they believe the vaccine could pose a greater risk than the virus itself.

This is not the case. ATAGI’s evolving recommendations ensure the benefit of getting vaccinated against COVID outweighs the risk for every age group.

Fear, meanwhile, is a behavioural motivator. The latest outbreak in Melbourne saw record numbers of Victorians turn up for vaccination.

Read more:
From smallpox to polio, vaccine rollouts have always had doubters. But they work in the end

A Griffith University survey conducted in the middle of 2020 found 68% of people would take a COVID-19 vaccine if one was available. Those who said they wouldn’t had concerns regarding side effects, quality of testing, and speed of vaccine development.

So we can see even when community transmission in Australia was higher, and before we knew about rare adverse events like the blood clots, safety was a key concern.

Reporting on vaccine hesitancy could worsen the problem

For the past several months, it seems as though every other day there’s been a new report or survey in the news, revealing x proportion of people are hesitant about getting a COVID vaccine.

Our attitudes and behaviours are shaped by what others in society do — social norms. A recent study found university students in the United States who perceived their peers felt COVID-19 vaccination was important were more likely to report they intended to get a vaccine themselves.

Similarly, it’s important to acknowledge there’s a real danger hesitancy and delay in vaccination, when reported widely in the media, could catch on to more people.

Read more:
Diverse spokespeople and humour: how the government’s next ad campaign could boost COVID vaccine uptake

A review of 34 studies found the way parents interpreted media reports about vaccination depended on their pre-existing beliefs. For example, a report of a “rare” side effect might reassure parents who already believed vaccine benefits outweigh risks, whereas the same report could discourage parents who were already concerned about side effects.

Indeed, humans are prone to confirmation bias — paying more attention to information that fits with prior beliefs. Seeking and considering evidence which goes against our beliefs is hard for our brains.

But the media can help with this in the way they frame their reports. For example, emphasising that the majority of Australians want to and intend to vaccinate is a better option than focusing on the number who don’t.

For people already hesitating, another report could further shift the balance away from vaccination. So reporters should think carefully about the way they present vaccine hesitancy stories (and the need to present them in the first instance).

Reporting on vaccine safety also must be handled carefully

In Italy, media reporting about a small number of deaths following a batch of influenza vaccines in the winter of 2014/2015 was linked to a 10% reduction in influenza vaccination among people 65 and older compared to the previous season.

These deaths were quickly confirmed as unrelated to vaccination, but it seems the early reports had a significant effect on behaviour.

In a global study, three of 13 national and state level immunisation managers interviewed said “negative information conveyed in the mass media” contributed to vaccine hesitancy in their countries.

On the flip side, media reports about influenza and vaccination can also increase vaccination uptake. In this study, careful data analysis showed higher numbers of news reports with “influenza” or “flu” in the headline corresponded with higher flu vaccination uptake in the same year.

What should the media aim for in reporting on COVID vaccination?

Any reporting on Australians’ inclination to vaccinate should reinforce what is in fact the social norm — the intention of the majority to receive a COVID vaccine.

Further, media reporting on COVID vaccines should be careful to contextualise the benefits alongside the risks, and regularly remind consumers of reliable sources such as federal and state health departments and ATAGI.

Read more:
Alarmist reporting on COVID-19 will only heighten people’s anxieties and drive vaccine hesitancy

And while the media must be cognisant of its role, the government needs to act quickly to reverse the hesitancy trend. People are looking for reasons to have the jab; they are desperate for a national roadmap out of COVID-19.

If Australians could see how becoming vaccinated would contribute to economic prosperity (for example, reopening tourism and international education), and facilitate other things returning to normal, such as our ability to travel overseas, they would be motivated into action.

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

– ref. Media reports about vaccine hesitancy could contribute to the problem – https://theconversation.com/media-reports-about-vaccine-hesitancy-could-contribute-to-the-problem-161422

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Lowe, Emeritus Professor, School of Science, Griffith University

My heart sank last week to see conservative Australian commentator Alan Jones championing a contentious book about climate science which has gained traction in the United States.

The book, titled Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters, is authored by US theoretical physicist Steven Koonin. Notably, Koonin is not a climate scientist.

As the title suggests, the book’s bold central theme is that climate science is far from settled, and should not be relied on to make policy choices in areas such as energy, transport and economics.

Jones cited Koonin’s book in a Daily Telegraph column last week. He decried the “nonsense” of governments in Australia and abroad aiming for net-zero carbon emissions, saying it was as though Koonin’s book “didn’t exist”.

So does the book hold up? I have been researching and writing about climate change since the 1980s. I wanted to give the book a fair reading, so I put any preconceived thoughts aside and tried to fairly weigh up Koonin’s arguments. If true, they would be very important findings.

Koonin frames his book as a brave attempt to reveal how the climate science we’ve been relying on all these years is, in fact, uncertain. But the book’s major flaw is to imply these uncertainties are news to climate scientists.

This is patently untrue. Science is never settled. But there is enough confidence in the science to justify significant climate action.

Uncertainty is par for the course

Koonin opens the book by saying he accepts that Earth is warming, and humans are contributing to this. But he muddies the waters with passages such as the following:

Past variations of surface temperature and ocean heat content do not at all disprove that the (approximately 1℃) rise in the global average surface temperature anomaly since 1880 is due to humans, but they do show that there are powerful natural forces driving the climate as well.

In other words, Koonin says, the real question is “to what extent this warming is being caused by humans”.

No rational person could deny that natural forces drive the climate. The climate record shows significant climate changes long before humans existed; clearly we’re not responsible for the planet being much warmer many millions of years ago.

However the five assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have expressed steadily increasing confidence that humans are the dominant cause of global warming this century.

Koonin attacks former US secretary of state and now Biden climate envoy, John Kerry, who once said of climate change “the science is unequivocal”.

It is true to say climate science is somewhat uncertain. Science is always a work in progress. Scientific integrity demands a willingness to look carefully at new data and theories to see if they require us to revise what we thought we knew.

But Koonin is wrong to imply scientists are somehow unaware of, or deny, this uncertainty. To the contrary, I have heard decision-makers express exasperation when we scientists seek to qualify our advice on the basis that our knowledge is limited.

Every reputable climate scientist I know is always willing to look at new data. But policy-makers must make decisions based on the current scientific understanding.

Koonin states, accurately, that few in the general public receive scientific information directly from research papers. Most people receive climate change information after it’s been filtered by governments and the media – which, in Koonin’s mind, often overstate the seriousness of climate change.

However Koonin fails to note the opposite forces at play – governments and media organisations, such as the Murdoch press in Australia and Fox News in the US, which systematically misreport climate science and underestimate the climate threat.

Read more:
Climate explained: why is the Arctic warming faster than other parts of the world?

Ignorance is not bliss

Koonin concludes by questioning the wisdom of reaching net-zero emissions in the second half of this century – a central goal of the Paris Agreement. He argues that when one balances the cost and efficacy of slashing emissions “against the certainties and uncertainties in climate science”, the net-zero goal looks implausible and unfeasible.

This is effectively an assertion that ignorance is bliss: because we don’t have perfect understanding that allows us to make exact projections about the future climate, we should not take serious action to reduce emissions.

Koonin proposes a different response: for society to adapt to a changing climate, and embrace “geoengineering” technology to artificially control Earth’s climate.

Both adaptation and geoengineering have their place in the climate response. But neither are sufficient substitutes for dramatically cutting carbon emissions.

Read more:
Solar geoengineering is worth studying but not a substitute for cutting emissions, study finds

Proceed with caution

Under the Hawke government, science minister Barry Jones was one of the first public figures in Australia to sound warnings about climate change.

Jones and I both appeared on a panel at a landmark climate conference in 1987. I recall Jones, when asked how decision-makers should respond, said we should consider the consequences of both acting and not acting.

If policymakers acted on inaccurate climate science, Jones argued, the worst that would happen is our energy would be cleaner – albeit, at that time, more expensive. But if the science was right and we ignored it, the consequences could be catastrophic.

Jones was essentially describing the precautionary principle, which is contained in a number of international treaties including the UN’s Rio Declaration, which states:

Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.

The principle demands we act to avoid disastrous outcomes, even if the science is uncertain. Because the uncertainty works both ways: things might get worse than we expect, rather than better.

The fundamental point of Koonin’s book is true, but irrelevant. The science is not settled – but we know enough to act decisively.

Read more:
Even without new fossil fuel projects, global warming will still exceed 1.5℃. But renewables might make it possible

Ian Lowe receives funding from the Australian Research Council for a study of intimidation of scientists, including climate scientists. He was president of the Australian Conservation Foundation from 2004 to 2014.

– ref. A controversial US book is feeding climate denial in Australia. Its central claim is true, yet irrelevant – https://theconversation.com/a-controversial-us-book-is-feeding-climate-denial-in-australia-its-central-claim-is-true-yet-irrelevant-162922

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Keith A Houghton, Emeritus Professor, Australian National University

Our newly published research on the costs of university study fails to support estimates used by the Australian government to justify its Job-Ready Graduates Package. The legislated policy directly linked funding to the cost of teaching, which the government also used to justify increased HECS student contributions in some subjects. Our findings indicate teaching costs could be significantly lower than the government policy settings imply.

In June 2020, the then federal education minister, Dan Tehan, announced an extra 39,000 university places by 2023 and 100,000 by 2030. To fund these places, he said:

“[…] we will address the misalignment between the cost of teaching a degree and the revenue that a university receives to teach it. We will reform the system so that the student contribution and the Commonwealth contribution actually equals the cost of teaching that degree.”

For our research, we took one discipline, business, for which tuition fees increased by 30%. We sought to investigate whether an undergraduate degree did cost the claimed A$15,600 a year to teach.

Course costings were questioned from the start

The proposed mechanisms of the Job-Ready Graduates legislation were criticised in many of the 280 submissions to the Education and Employment Legislation Committee inquiry into the bill.

In its submission, the Department of Education, Skills and Employment (DESE) said its consultant’s (Deloitte) costings “informed” the calibration by the Commonwealth. Deloitte’s data collection used questionnaires for a sample of universities.

Opposition Senator Kim Carr questioned these costings:

“The underlying data used to calculate [the] cost of provision [of education] far exceeds the limitations of the data identified in the Deloitte report […] What further work has the department conducted to ensure this policy change is based on reliable data?”

The department referred the senator back to the 2019 Deloitte report. It gave no response about data reliability.

A DESE official advised one author on May 10 2021 that the consultants were unaware of the Job-Ready Graduates legislation when undertaking their analysis.

One commentator wrote: “Few people in the higher education sector found the figures plausible (and to be fair, Deloitte themselves put caveats around the data). A common complaint is that the report over-estimates the cost to universities of delivering business, law and many humanities courses.”

The report’s caveats were understandable and reasonable. The critical question becomes: why was a questionnaire-based dataset, with several significant caveats disclosed, used as the basis for the multi-billion-dollar funding program?

Data on costs exist, but requests for access failed

Studying the production costs of education is complex and requires valid and reliable data because of the joint and common costs. DESE holds a significant dataset known as “Datamart”. This was not used for its costing analysis. When we were not given access to this data, we needed an alternative to examine the cost of business education.

Budgetary data from 283 US public university business schools was used instead. While not optimal, this dataset is a reasonable proxy. The US public higher education system is not a low-cost provider, so its costs are likely higher than Australia’s.

Using actual budgetary data allowed us to control for the impact of the costs of:

• graduate education
• research training (PhDs)
• university research.

A limitation of our dataset is the absence of university-level overhead costs. A positive is that we could measure potentially differing costs between research-intensive and teaching-focused institutions.

Our results show that, excluding all overheads (at university and school levels), the average (mean) cost per undergraduate student per year is about $A2,700. Significant differences exist between research and teaching-focused universities.

An intriguing result was the high cost of research publications, ranging from $A110,000 when published in “regular” scholarly journals to over $A400,000 for “elite” publications, and varying between research and teaching-focused schools.

What about overheads?

We re-estimated our results in several ways. Only when the school’s overheads, research and research training costs are “loaded” into the cost of education did the cost of undergraduate business education increase to something greater than $A5,000 a year. This amount is likely over-estimated since this approach treats research and research training as valueless byproducts of teaching.

We provided our preliminary results to DESE. The department correctly noted the exclusion of university-level overheads, saying overheads “would presumably be a reasonably large component of the cost”. However, the difference between our estimate of A$2,700 and DESE’s A$15,600 is substantial.

If DESE’s observations on overheads explain this difference, more than eight dollars in ten is spent on “overheads” (at university and school levels). If such a small percentage of teaching costs is directed to “frontline” teaching activities, that implies considerable inefficiency in our universities. We do not believe these inefficiencies exist on such a scale.

An alternative position is that these eight dollars are not all spent on “overheads”. Instead, some of this money subsidises other activities, potentially including teaching of other disciplines and/or research.

Of the many implications of our findings, we raise only one. If the cost of business education is actually much lower than estimated, and if one believes university funding is a “zero-sum” game – meaning there are no large overall surpluses or deficits – then could other fields be undercosted and therefore underfunded? Such fields might include science or technology or involve clinical and practical components, such as nursing.

Why transparency about costings matters

A policy of identifying the cost of education and linking it to funding allows for a more transparent and open market. However, the implementation needs repair.

Who cares? Australian business undergraduates should because their tuition fees are paying for activities other than their education.

Universities should care. This study raises the prospect that their activities in science, technology and clinical care fields may be undercosted and underfunded.

The government should also care. False costings will undermine the very misalignment it wanted to eliminate.

Keith A Houghton has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council under the Linkage and Discovery programs.

Christine Jubb has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council under the Linkage and Discovery programs.

Past President American Accounting Association

– ref. The government linked the cost of university teaching to funding and student fees, but the numbers don’t add up – https://theconversation.com/the-government-linked-the-cost-of-university-teaching-to-funding-and-student-fees-but-the-numbers-dont-add-up-161345

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Abraham Leung, Transport Academic Partnership (TAP) and Transport Innovation and Research Hub (TIRH), Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Cities Research Institute, Griffith University

Shared e-scooters are becoming common across Australia and in major cities around the world. Initial safety concerns about e-scooters left some councils wary, but early results from a research survey shows major benefits from e-scooters for tourists and local economies.

We already knew vistors and local residents use bike-sharing schemes differently. The effects for tourist attractions and visitors – an increase in visits and better experience – are complementary. But that’s bikes.

Until now there has been limited evidence that e-scooters help tourists either visit more local attractions or spend more. Australia’s first e-scooter trials began in Brisbane as recently as 2018. Services have since been launched in South Australia, the ACT, North Queensland and the NT.

While e-scooters may offer a low-carbon option for post-COVID tourism, do these schemes benefit tourist cities?

Read more:
Limes not lemons: lessons from Australia’s first e-scooter sharing trial

Avid e-scooter tourists spend more

Our research team at Griffith University’s Cities Research Institute partnered with Neuron Mobility to conduct a survey of Townsville tourists between December 2020 and February 2021. The survey collected shopping and travel patterns of 140 visiting e-scooter users, as well as the patterns of 80 Townsville residents (see the interactive map below). Some of these users had bought multi-day subscription passes.

Read more:
When 1 in 3 users are tourists, that changes the bike-share equation for cities

We analysed the visiting e-scooter users’ travel and spending behaviours. Though their e-scooter hire costs were identical, the visitors who rode the e-scooters the most spent more money in Townsville each day. The more avid e-scooter users (the top third by distance travelled) spent 41% more per day than those in the bottom third for use.

The avid users completed on median 11 e-scooter trips, covering nearly 26km each, while in Townsville. The map above shows how these visitors dispersed, experiencing more local destinations in the city.

Many of these trips (60%) would have been completed by walking if e-scooters were unavailable. They would have taken longer to complete each trip on foot, thus limiting the total number of destinations visited. Other trips wouldn’t have occurred at all. One user commented:

“We enjoyed being able to travel to areas that we would not normally have seen or were too far to walk in a reasonable amount of time.”

Many of these users said they did not need to use a car thanks to the e-scooters. This meant they were able to travel the Townsville CBD and the Strand without clogging the already busy roadways.

Across all the e-scooter users surveyed, most (69%) had never ridden an e-scooter before, but 91% reported they were easy to use. Confirming the positive impact of e-scooters on both city image and visitor experience, 93% said they enjoyed travelling within Townsville.

“It was amazing to see so many people enjoying scootering along the Strand and the mix of pedestrians and scooters worked well.”

Boomers on scooters – and it’s mostly women

A major misconception is that e-scooter riders tend to be younger and mostly men. Our survey found instead that 46% of the visitors who used the e-scooters were over the age of 40, many of them much older than that. The majority (55%) were female.

Of the visitors, avid users spent more money at restaurants and cafes, dining in. Light users spent a greater proportion on shopping and services.

When asked, visitors tended to be very positive about the e-scooter experience:

“Particularly liked the weekly pass which was extremely cost-effective. Would highly recommend and will use again.”

“A great option for a first-time visitor to Townsville to quickly see the sights and get my bearings of local attraction(s).”

Of the few negative issues raised, some visitors wanted the service area in which the e-scooters could operate expanded. Others would like some signage at preferred scooter parking locations to make drop-offs easier.

To sum up, our research finds:

• e-scooter sharing schemes are a convenient and enjoyable way for tourists to explore a city

• many users are travelling 26km or more on e-scooters while in town

• e-scooters assist tourist dispersal

• e-scooter use encourages tourist spending.

More questions to be answered

Our methods have been applied in Townsville only. We have also not yet compared tourist outcomes across different forms of mobility. But, on the face of it, there is now a case that tourist cities that adopt e-scooter sharing are boosting their image and tourism economy.

There are many things that we still don’t know about e-scooters and tourism. What is the scale of these benefits? How might cities calculate them when assessing mobility proposals?

When tourists disperse more widely, are they spending more in local “mum and dad” businesses and less in multinationals? What are the best pricing packages and bundles for tourists? And how can these technologies be further improved, and integrated with other modes of transport, to provide seamless, integrated mobility for urban tourists?

We will try to answer these questions in future. But for now, at least, it looks like e-scootering has been a major win for Townsville.

Abraham Leung’s research at Griffith Cities Research Institute is funded by the Transport Academic Partnership (Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads, The Motor Accident and Insurance Commission) and Transport Innovation and Research Hub (Brisbane City Council). He is also an active member of AITPM and PedBikeTrans.

Benjamin Kaufman is completing his PhD research at Griffith Cities Research Institute in partnership with the Queensland Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads. He is the Managing Consultant at Microtransit Consulting which has performed analyses for the micromobility operator Bird. He is also an active member of AITPM and PedBikeTrans industry groups.

Elaine Chiao Ling Yang 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 her academic appointment.

Matthew Burke receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads, the Motor Accident and Insurance Commission, Brisbane City Council, and the City of Gold Coast. Matthew is a member of the Queensland Government’s Fares Advisory Panel, Cycling Advisory Group and Bus Safety Forum, the Brisbane Lord Mayor’s Transport Strategy External Advisory Group, and the City of Gold Coast’s Active Transport Committee. Matthew is a member of scientific committees with the Australasian Transport Research Forum, the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies and the Transportation Research Board of the US National Academy of Sciences. He has been part of the Institute’s collaboration with Neuron Mobility since their arrival in Australia.

The views expressed are solely those of the authors and do not represent the views of any institution. All errors and omissions are the authors’ alone.

– ref. Wallets on wheels: city visitors who use e-scooters more spend more – https://theconversation.com/wallets-on-wheels-city-visitors-who-use-e-scooters-more-spend-more-161886

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Htwe Htwe Thein, Associate professor, Curtin University

Myanmar’s democracy movement wants the international community to get tough on the military junta. But if history is any indicator, that’s not going to happen.

Western nations have responded with suspending arms sales and “targeted sanctions” aimed at hurting individual members of the military elite. But for Myanmar’s regional neighbours it’s still largely business as usual.

Australia’s position is emblematic.

Normally it would be expected to follow the lead of friends and allies such as the US, Britain, Canada and the European Union. They have prohibited dealings with businesses controlled by Myanmar’s military, and targeted key junta officials and their families through asset freezes and travel bans.

But citing “national interest”, Australia has declined to follow, on the basis no other countries in the region are taking such measures.

Which is true. At their meeting in Jakarta in April, the leaders of the Association of Southeast Nations (ASEAN) – of which Myanmar has been a member since 1997 – backed “constructive engagement” and “constructive dialogue”. This echoes the stance taken through Myanmar’s previous two decades of military rule.

China, meanwhile, has said it supports Myanmar “choosing a development path that suits its own circumstances”. Its veto power on the UN Security Council makes any global consensus on sanctions unlikely.

Read more:
Aung San Suu Kyi trial: how Myanmar’s judicial system is stacked against the deposed leader

Sanctions in the past

We’ve been through all this before, from the time the US and European Union imposed sanctions against Myanmar in September 1988, following the military’s brutal suppression of democracy protests known as the 8888 uprising.

After thousands of civilians were killed, the Reagan administration suspended all aid and arms sales. More sanctions came with subsequent developments – the coup d’tat that established the junta known as the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), the house arrest of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in 1989, the refusal to hand over power to the Suu Kyi-led National League for Democracy following elections in 1990, and so on.

In 1996 the Clinton administration suspended visas for “persons who formulate, implement, or benefit from policies that impede Burma’s transition to democracy”, and in 1997 banned US businesses making new investments in Myanmar. In 2003 the US Congress banned imports from Myanmar and prohibited US nationals from providing financial services to the country. In 2008 it banned imports of any jadeite and ruby originating from Myanmar.

To varying degrees other Western nations followed suit. The European Union, for example, imposed an arms embargo and visa bans on top-ranking military personnel and their families in 1996. It then banned imports of timber, metals and precious stones from Myanmar in 2007.

Australia supported such measures with restrictions on financial transactions and visa and travel bans on top-ranking officials, though never prohibited trade and investment relations.

Business as usual

But for Myanmar’s Asian neighbours it was business as usual.

China forged a closer, if sometimes tense, relationship. ASEAN talked about “constructive engagement”. When it welcomed Myanmar into the fold in 1997, Malaysia’s prime minister Mahathir Mohamad explained: “We can’t wait until they put their house in order before admitting them.” In the assessment of human rights scholars such as Catherine Shanahan Renshaw: “The influence of ASEAN was negligible in encouraging Myanmar’s transition to democracy.”

Thus Asian business investment in Myanmar increased, seizing opportunities left untapped due the sanctions of the US and others.

In this context, critics thought the sanctions pointless. Leon Hadar of the libertarian US Cato Institute, for example, argued in 1998 that “unilateral trade and investment sanctions” had been a failure on all fronts.

International trade unions and human rights organisations disagreed, arguing the sanctions were important pressure points for improving human rights in the country.

Even so, most observers recognised broader sanctions such as bans and restrictions on imports from Myanmar had wreaked “collateral damage” on the very people they were meant to help. A US state department analysis in 2004 estimated the 2003 import ban had led to the loss of 50,000 to 60,000 jobs in Myanmar’s garment manufacturing industry.

Read more:
Myanmar’s anti-coup protesters defy rigid gender roles – and subvert stereotypes about women to their advantage

Sanctions in 2021

Is it possible to do better this time – for the US, Europe and a few other countries to more effectively target the regime without hurting the people of Myanmar?

We believe it is.

First, the Americans, British and Europeans have great influence over the global financial system. As noted by Human Rights Watch:

Sanctions imposed by the US, UK, the EU, and other jurisdictions can have extremely broad international consequences. The majority of the world’s financial institutions and banks are based in these jurisdictions, have shares that are traded on their securities exchanges, or otherwise have connections that make them subject to relevant sanctions or regulations enforcing them.

The United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, former US congressman Thomas Andrews, has suggested the US ban on financial dealings with junta leaders means any non-US bank or other entity could face criminal and civil penalties if they “wilfully facilitate US dollar transactions” that benefit the Myanmar regime.

Even without China’s support, there is much that can be done to financially isolate Myanmar’s junta.

The second reason is the pressure that civil society – human rights activists and so on – can now put on on multinational corporations. Companies already feeling such heat for links with military companies in Myanmar include the South Korean steel maker POSCO and Indian resources giant Adani Group.

The alternative government formed by deposed parliamentarians wants all foreign companies to stop dealing with the regime, including suspending all payments to the regime.

Read more:
We know how to cut off the financial valve to Myanmar’s military. The world just needs the resolve to act

A prime example is the Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise, a state-owned enterprise that provides Myanmar’s government an estimated US$1.5 billion a year. Its foreign partners include Chevron (US) and Total (France).

Cutting off the regime’s access to money will weaken the military’s grip on power. Even with collateral damage, it is “constructive disengagement” that the people of Myanmar are actually asking for in their struggle to restore their fledgling democracy.

Htwe Htwe Thein has received funding for Myanmar research from the Australian Research Council.

Michael Gillan has received funding for Myanmar research from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Sanctions against Myanmar’s junta have been tried before. Can they work this time? – https://theconversation.com/sanctions-against-myanmars-junta-have-been-tried-before-can-they-work-this-time-158054

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emlyn Dodd, Assistant Director of Archaeology, British School at Rome; Honorary Postdoctoral Fellow, Macquarie University; Research Affiliate, Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens, Macquarie University

Located about 50 kilometres north of Rome, the ancient city of Falerii Novi lies buried beneath agricultural fields and olive groves. City walls still stand in an almost complete circuit and visitors pass through the monumental western gate to enter the site.

The findings from detailed ground-penetrating radar mapping were published a year ago. Now the real business of digging has begun.

At the ancient site, our teams have already discovered remnants of daily life from more than 2,000 years ago. We hope excavation will yield rare insight into antiquity with its preserved urban layout, just like at the buried city of Pompeii.

A ‘new’ city

Ancient authors Polybius and Livy tell us the city was founded by Rome in 241 BCE, following the defeat of a revolt led by the inhabitants of nearby Falerii Veteres (now Civita Castellana). According to one source, 12th-century chronicler Zonaras, Rome forcibly resettled the defeated Faliscans to a less defensible location — Falerii Novi or “new Falerii”. Its construction, intimately associated with the Roman road Via Amerina, is a rare example of preserved Roman Republican urban planning.

The city was occupied through Roman antiquity and to the early medieval period (6th and 7th centuries CE). It was on a key strategic trading route leading north from Rome, perhaps from Ponte Milvio, through central Italy.

We know little of its later history, except that the still-standing church of Santa Maria di Falleri was founded by Benedictines in 1036, disbanded in 1392 and the building was in ruins by 1571. It is now largely restored with excavated Roman roads visible beneath the floor.

When and how Falerii Novi became buried remains a mystery. How did such a large walled city become covered in so much soil? And what happened in late antiquity to cause its abandonment? The current dig may answer those questions too.

Read more:
Cave of Horror: fresh fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls echo dramatic human stories

Old digs, new tricks

Three scattered attempts at excavation have been made previously. From 1821–30 a Polish team explored around the theatre area and in a (now lost) residential and commercial street-side strip. Towards the end of the 19th century work was attempted at a number of locations near city gates. And local Soprintendenza archaeologists looked at an area on the western flank of the suspected forum from 1969-75.

The site’s historical importance and immense potential, alongside developing technology, led to renewed archaeological attempts.

From 1997–8, topographic survey and surface collection were combined with magnetometry to get a broader sense of the city’s urban layout, chronology and neighbourhoods. This revealed structures including theatres, bathhouses, villas, temples and a forum a few feet under the ground.

Later, this was extended outside the city walls, revealing tombs, buildings and roads leading towards an amphitheatre.

Recently a survey of the entire city using cutting-edge ground-penetrating radar produced sharper images and created a three-dimensional rendering of sub-surface features. Completely new structures were revealed, including a colossal structure, over 100 metres long, thought to be a colonnaded temple against the north city wall.

The detailed map produced by these efforts is now being used to pin-point excavation areas.

Read more:
Six reasons to save archaeology from funding cuts

Breaking new ground

I’m one of the people working on the first season of systematic excavation (started in June) by a collaborative team from the Universities of Harvard and Toronto, the British School at Rome and under the concession of the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per la Provincia di Viterbo e l’Etruria Meridionale.

We have opened a series of over 120 small test pits across the site. These will provide an initial understanding of various neighbourhoods — domestic, productive, religious, civic — along with chronological and spatial densities of habitation and material.

We start digging at 8am, stopping for breaks through the heat of the day, and finishing around 4pm. The work is sweaty and dirty in the hot Italian summer, but the promise of this site excites and energises everyone.

Work so far has revealed clues to the early occupancy of the site soon after founding in 241 BCE. What archaeologists call “black gloss ware” — a typical type of Roman Republican pottery — has been pulled out of test pits. Small pieces of Roman glass, metal slag and other ceramics are also present. Pieces of shimmering, iridescent green-glazed medieval pottery were also found, highlighting continued, post-Roman occupancy.

Next, larger-scale trenches will be opened at areas of interest. Perhaps around domestic structures and insulae (groups of buildings). Revealing the macellum marketplace, might tell us what was bought and sold, what commercial structures looked like and who was engaged in these activities. A taberna (typically a one-room shop) on the edge of the central forum may tell us about the goods and services on offer.

Read more:
A batshit experiment: bones cooked in bat poo lift the lid on how archaeological sites are formed

Testing the soil

A team from Ghent University is following up previous work on site with Cambridge University. This year they are taking core samples (called augering) up to 5 metres below the current ground level. This gives archaeologists a snapshot of the site across time: human impacts on the landscape, environmental data, habitation and material changes.

Early results are starting to show the very real and profound effect of Roman settlement in the area. Pottery from cores also indicates occupancy over a long time, perhaps even earlier than told to us by Polybius and Livy.

Work will continue in 2022 when the first large trenches are opened and a new view of life at Roman Falerii Novi is illuminated.

Read more:
Pompeii: ancient remains are helping scientists learn what happens to a body caught in a volcanic eruption

Emlyn Dodd receives funding from the Australian Academy of the Humanities, Macquarie University, Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens (AAIA), Australasian Society for Classical Studies, and the British School at Athens. He is affiliated with Macquarie University, the AAIA and Centre for Ancient Cultural Heritage and Environment.
The author wishes to acknowledge and thank Stephen Kay (BSR), Margaret Andrews (Harvard) and Seth Bernard (Toronto), as well as the team from Ghent University.

– ref. Unearthing Falerii Novi’s secrets in the hot Italian summer: an archaeologist reports from the dig – https://theconversation.com/unearthing-falerii-novis-secrets-in-the-hot-italian-summer-an-archaeologist-reports-from-the-dig-162527

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

One central reason why the Nationals have installed Barnaby Joyce, with all the risks and baggage he carries, is because they want someone who’ll stand up to Scott Morrison.

The minor Coalition partner is after greater influence in government, and especially more acknowledgement and credit for decisions that affect their rural and regional supporters.

One Nationals source predicted Morrison would “be furious” at the change, “because he won’t have a patsy”.

This was a harsh reference to the accommodating Michael McCormack, who wasn’t seen to ever wrestle Morrison (although McCormack argued that in private they didn’t always agree).

Morrison will be looking for a bright side. Joyce will be an asset, they’re saying in prime ministerial circles, in Queensland, the Hunter, and the Northern Territory.

Whatever Morrison’s private reaction to the unceremonious dumping of McCormack, the PM knows he is confronted with a much tougher customer.

It’s too early to say just how hard Joyce will play, but one measure of the man’s determination is that he has achieved this resurrection at all.

When he quit in 2018, after an allegation of sexual harassment (which he denies) and a scandal over an extramarital affair with a staffer (now his partner and mother of his two sons) there seemed virtually no chance the party would ever go back to him.

Joyce said after his Monday win he hoped he returned to the leadership “a better person”. The question is whether he will be a better leader.

He’ll have to discipline himself, and his tongue, and his staff will need to ensure he does. Leaving aside his personal life, he wasn’t always politically undisciplined as deputy prime minister, but he had lapses.

And he has been able to get away with saying almost anything since he’s been on the backbench, because his more outrageous comments were just discounted as “crazy Barnaby”. Now all his words will be closely monitored.

Everyone acknowledges Joyce’s campaigning ability. He’s larger-than-life and people, especially in the country, warm to a “character”.

Except this time round he has the “women problem”, which concerns some colleagues.

The harassment complaint made by well-known rural woman Catherine Marriott was never resolved to her satisfaction.

Nationals assistant minister Michelle Landry told news.com.au before the vote, “I think that if he became leader again there would be women out there that would be unhappy with that.

“There were women out there who made accusations, none of that was ever proven but I do know there [are] women who would not be happy.”

Joyce returns to the leadership when the debate about sexual harassment and the treatment of women is on the front line of politics in a way it wasn’t before.

Reuniting the shambolic Nationals, who have been consumed with bitterness and infighting, won’t be easy. Some people will be angry and alienated, although they won’t have an alternative to coalesce around.

Joyce and deputy leader David Littleproud will need to work closely. Littleproud no doubt harboured the long-shot ambition he might emerge as leader on Monday – if McCormack resigned and left the way for him to run against Joyce.

It was not to be, and Littleproud has signed up to the new regime. It’s his best option. He’s 44, so has time to wait. If he’s patient, he can hope eventually to inherit the leadership if the Coalition remains in government, or win it in opposition.

The crucial relationship for Joyce to manage is with Morrison – promoting an agenda on behalf of the Nationals but not to the extent of creating destructive divisions that harm the entire government.

For his part, Morrison has to decide when to resist Joyce’s demands, and when to accede or compromise. In failing to allow McCormack visible victories, the PM weakened him and stirred Nationals’ resentment.

Immediate issues for Joyce will be ministerial changes, and what demands he might pursue in the new Coalition agreement he’ll conclude with Morrison.

The party’s Senate leader, Bridget McKenzie, is expected to return to the frontbench. Morrison made McKenzie the fall girl in the sports rorts affairs. Presumably he’ll take the pragmatic view she’s served her time.

The stretch point for Morrison and Joyce will be the net zero 2050 target.

Morrison has been inching towards embracing 2050 as a firm target before the November Glasgow climate conference. The feeling by some Nationals that McCormack would probably roll over was one factor in his demise.

Joyce said after his Monday victory he will be guided by his party on this issue.

Only a minority in the Nationals would favour endorsing the target – including most notably Littleproud (if agriculture was adequately looked after). But many in the farming sector are looking for a progressive climate policy.

Morrison must decide whether to press the case for firming the commitment, as Joe Biden and Boris Johnson urge him to do, or stay with his present loose wording of net zero “preferably” by 2050, to avoid a fight with the Nationals.

Joyce has varying voices in his party and its broader constituency. But his own view, as of February this year, was clearly stated in an article written with Nationals senator Matt Canavan and published in The Australian: “Even before you consider the impact on our mining and manufacturing industries, a net-zero emissions policy would destroy any hope of expanding Australian farming. If the Nationals supported net-zero emissions we would cease to be a party that could credibly represent farmers.”

Yet again, the climate issue has played its part in the fall of a leader. Once more, it remains a dangerous irritant to be dealt with within the Coalition, which will test both leaders and their relations.

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: Nationals give Scott Morrison a muscle man to deal with – especially on net zero – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-nationals-give-scott-morrison-a-muscle-man-to-deal-with-especially-on-net-zero-163109

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hart, Clinical researcher, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute

Last weekend, China reached a milestone of having administered more than one billion doses of its homegrown COVID-19 vaccines, the majority of which were developed by local companies Sinovac and Sinopharm.

What’s more, hundreds of millions of doses of these vaccines have been shipped to more than 80 countries worldwide.

Sinopharm was given emergency approval by the World Health Organization (WHO) in May this year, and Sinovac in June.

But what do we know about these vaccines? How do they work, are they safe, and how effective are they in the real world?

What type of vaccine are they?

Both are inactivated virus vaccines. This means they’re made from viral particles produced in a lab, which are then inactivated so they can’t infect you with COVID-19. Many other vaccines use similar platforms, including injectable polio, Hepatitis A and flu vaccines.

Both companies use similar technology, and the vaccines are mixed with an adjuvant, which is a substance added to vaccines to stimulate a stronger immune response.

The vaccines contain many proteins the immune system can respond to, stimulating the production of antibodies to fight COVID-19.

Read more:
Which COVID vaccine is best? Here’s why that’s really hard to answer

Are they safe?

Side-effects common after most other COVID-19 vaccines, such as fever and fatigue, were found to be uncommon after Sinovac or Sinopharm.

Once vaccines are approved and being used in large populations, they’re continuously monitored for very rare side effects. No significant safety concerns have been identified amid Sinovac’s rollout in China, Brazil, Indonesia and Chile.

In saying that, there were very low numbers of adverse events identified overall, which would suggest substantial under-reporting.

For example, there were only 49 serious adverse events reported following 35.8 million Sinovac doses administered in China.

In a population of that size, we’d expect to see a larger number of illnesses and deaths recorded in the few weeks after vaccination just by coincidence alone, even if not causally related to the vaccine.

Only 79 people reported mostly mild adverse events following 1.1 million doses of Sinopharm in China, much lower than usual rates of adverse event reporting following immunisation.

A potential side effect of particular concern is what’s called “vaccine-associated enhanced disease”. This is a very rare side effect of some other vaccines which use a similar “inactivated” technology to the Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines.

It occurs when a vaccinated person is exposed to the virus and develops a serious inflammatory condition, and results in them getting more severe symptoms than they would have without the vaccination.

This hasn’t been reported for these vaccines to date, although WHO recommends ongoing safety monitoring to identify any cases that occur.

What was their efficacy in clinical trials?

Sinovac’s efficacy at preventing symptomatic infection was 51% in Brazil, 67% in Chile, 65% in Indonesia, and 84% in Turkey. The differences in results may be due to different variants circulating in each country at the time and differences in the populations included in the studies.

Sinopharm’s efficacy in preventing symptomatic infection was 78% in UAE, Bahrain, Egypt and Jordan combined.

As with all the COVID-19 vaccines for which data are available, efficacy against the more severe outcomes is greater. Efficacy against hospitalisation for Sinovac in Chile, Brazil and Turkey was 85%, 100% and 100%, respectively.

However, few elderly people with underlying health issues were enrolled into these studies.

For Sinopharm, efficacy against hospitalisation was 79%, although few women were enrolled in these studies.

How effective are they in the real world?

Data published in April from a large real world study in Chile suggests Sinovac is 67% effective in preventing symptomatic COVID-19 infection. It’s effectiveness against hospitalisation was 85%, ICU admission 89%, and death 80%.

Sinopharm’s effectiveness against symptomatic infection in Bahrain was 90%.

However, it’s concerning there have been increases in infections in some countries where these vaccines have been extensively used, but detailed reports are not available.

For example, Seychelles has fully vaccinated 68% of its population, mostly with Sinopharm and the remainder with AstraZeneca.

Seychelles has recently experienced a surge in cases, which suggests the herd immunity threshold may not have been reached. The exact threshold for this is unknown but is influenced by variants in circulation, the number of people vaccinated, and the effectiveness of the vaccines.

Detailed epidemiological studies are required to investigate this but news reports suggest 20% of those hospitalised and 37% of new active cases are fully vaccinated.

Read more:
COVID is surging in the world’s most vaccinated country. Why?

Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have also achieved high vaccination coverage, predominantly with Sinopharm. They also experienced recent COVID-19 surges, and are offering a booster dose of Pfizer six months after two Sinopharm doses, because of concerns two doses of Sinopharm may not provide sufficient protection.

However, there’s no data publicly available to determine whether this mix and match schedule is safe and produces a protective immune response.

In Mongolia, the rapid vaccine rollout of four different vaccines, including Sinopharm, suggests initial good effectiveness but a recent increase in cases suggests short-term protection only, and perhaps little effect on transmission.

There’s increasing concern about surging cases in Indonesia. Almost all health workers have been vaccinated with the Sinovac vaccine but some are now developing severe disease.

Chile has also achieved high vaccine coverage, mostly with Sinovac. Around 75% of the adult population has received one dose, and 58% two doses.

Despite this, a current surge in infections and consistent high numbers of deaths has prompted a blanket lockdown across the capital, Santiago. The spread may be related to the more transmissible Gamma variant, which first emerged in Brazil.

However, in a small town of 45,000 in Brazil, very high vaccination coverage with Sinovac of 95% of adults, reportedly decreased symptomatic infections by 80% and deaths by 95%.

There’s currently no data on how effective Sinopharm is against any variant of concern despite its use in more than 50 countries.

For Sinovac, effectiveness against symptomatic infection with the Alpha and Gamma variants in Chile was 67%.

In Brazil, with circulation of the Gamma variant, one pre-print study suggested effectiveness against symptomatic infection was 42%.

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

Both vaccines are effective against severe COVID-19.

However, it is critical that researchers and health authorities determine vaccine effectiveness against variants and their effect on transmission, and their safety profiles. For countries that have community transmission this includes “vaccine-associated enhanced disease”.

As for any vaccine, we also need to understand how effective these vaccines are in older people, adolescents, pregnant women and immunocompromised groups, and how long protection lasts.

We need as many vaccines as possible to tackle the pandemic. But now these vaccines are in widespread use and will be further distributed by COVAX, a global alliance which provides vaccine doses to low-and middle-income nations, it’s essential the safety and effectiveness of all vaccines continues to be closely monitored.

Fiona Russell receives funding from NHMRC, the Wellcome Trust, the World Health Organization, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and DFAT.

John Hart 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. What are the Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines? And how effective are they? Two experts explain – https://theconversation.com/what-are-the-sinopharm-and-sinovac-vaccines-and-how-effective-are-they-two-experts-explain-162258

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Taren Sanders, Research Fellow, Institute for Positive Psychology and Education, Australian Catholic University

Australian children are among the least active in the world. In a recent study, Aussie kids ranked 140th out of 146 countries for physical activity.

And in 2018, a physical activity “report card” gave Australian children a D-minus for overall physical activity levels. The grade was based on only 18% of young people meeting the physical activity guidelines — 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity each day.

We developed and tested a program that trains teachers and schools to enhance the physical activity of their students long-term. And it costs just a fraction of some government policies that have shown limited results.

Government policies not meeting their goals

State policies typically require primary schools to provide students with at least two hours of planned physical activity each week. This doesn’t just have to be physical education classes and can include sport, energiser breaks and more active lessons. Still, many schools fail to meet these recommendations.

Australian children’s competency in fundamental movements are alarmingly low. For example, governments recommend children master an overarm throw by year 4 because it’s a gateway to many sports. Yet, evidence suggests 75% of year 6 girls have still failed to master this skill.

Read more:
Move it, move it: how physical activity at school helps the mind (as well as the body)

To address these problems, schools and governments have spent a lot of money on attempting to increase physical activity in kids.

For example, the New South Wales government recently spent $207 million over four years to subsidise children who enrol in sport outside of school. The Active Kids policy gives each eligible child a $100 voucher for the cost of sports registration, membership expenses and fees for physical activities such as swimming, dance lessons and athletics.

These vouchers do appear to be effective for children who use them. But an evaluation showed a substantial number of parents in socially disadvantaged groups didn’t know about the program, or just weren’t engaging with it. This is arguably the group who needs them most.

Plus, the vouchers cover only a few hours of sport per week. Children spend the rest of their time with their parents and teachers. And we know 85% of Australian adults don’t meet the required physical activity guidelines.

Teachers can be trained to help

Teachers have a lot on their plates, but equipping teachers to promote physical activity can have long-lasting benefits. Teachers can pass on new skills to thousands of students over their career.

The skills teachers can learn don’t have to be complicated. For example:

• well-meaning teachers may spend more than half of their physical education lessons with children being inactive, such as when giving instructions. Lessons could jump into active games that require minimal instruction

• classroom teachers can add five-minute “energiser breaks” of physical activity between lessons

• schools could make recess and lunch more active with a few hundred dollars of equipment or setting up games with the equipment they already have.

Read more:
Short exercise breaks during class improve concentration for senior students

Many teachers already use some of these strategies, but promoting them more widely is a cost-effective way of getting children moving without compromising other school priorities.

How we know it works

We compared the fitness of students that received a specific intervention in four primary schools, with students in four primary schools that carried on as usual. In total, 25 classes including 460 children participated in the study (199 children in the intervention group and 261 in control group).

The interventions involved several phases, including training teachers in strategies such as the ones above, giving kids awards for progress and enhancing school policies themselves to encourage fitness. We provided some basic equipment to schools like balls, markers and sashes.

In the schools that received the interventions, students’ fitness, physical activity, and fundamental movement skills improved significantly more than in the schools that carried on as usual. That is, children spent about 13 more minutes per day doing moderate-to-vigorous activity (huffing and puffing) and, as a result, were better at running, throwing, jumping and catching.

To make things cheaper and easier to scale, we then moved most of the teacher professional learning online, and used some digital technologies to give teachers extra feedback. Teachers received some face-to-face support, with specialist physical education teachers giving each teacher an hour of mentoring.

Our revised program, iPLAY, doubled the usual fitness gains children got over a two-year period. It worked twice as well in children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, and it only cost $16.50 per student per year.

Being so affordable, our small team was able to deliver the training to 189 Australian schools.

Read more:
Kids spend nearly three-quarters of their school day sitting. Here’s how to get them moving — during lessons

Our calculations show we could improve the health of Australia’s 2 million primary school children for just one-third of the the cost of the four-year Active Kids program in NSW.

And, by supporting teachers, we are building capacity in schools for the long-term.

Taren Sanders receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Sport Australia, and the NSW Department of Education.

Chris Lonsdale works for Australian Catholic University. He receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, Medical Research Future Fund, Australian Research Council, NSW Department of Education, and Australian Sports Commission.

David Lubans receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, Australian Research Council, New South Wales Department of Education, Medical Research Future Fund, NSW Office of Sport and Australian Heart Foundation.

Michael Noetel receives funding from Australian Research Council, Sport Australia, the Medical Research Future Fund, and New South Wales Department of Education. He is a director of Effective Altruism Australia.

Philip D. Parker receives funding from National Health and Medical Research Council, Australian Research Council, NSW Department of Education, NT Department of Education, and Australian Sports Commission

– ref. Aussie kids are some of the least active in the world. We developed a cheap school program that gets results – https://theconversation.com/aussie-kids-are-some-of-the-least-active-in-the-world-we-developed-a-cheap-school-program-that-gets-results-162844

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Ricketson, Professor of Communication, Deakin University

Journalism has rarely had a fiercer critic, nor a finer practitioner than the longtime writer for The New Yorker, Janet Malcolm, who died last week aged 86.

Some might quibble with the description of Malcolm as a journalist, but journalism is a far more supple practice than commonly believed. One list of the best American journalism of the 20th century, for instance, had Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward’s Watergate reporting for The Washington Post ranked highly, but the top place went to John Hersey’s Hiroshima.

Published in 1946 in The New Yorker, Hersey’s 31,000-word article revealed in horrifying details the experiences of the victims of the first atomic bomb. It was also a pioneering, influential piece of what we would now call narrative non-fiction.

Malcolm began contributing to the magazine 17 years later, in 1963.

Over the next nearly six decades, she wrote many long reported pieces, profiles and essays that were published first in the magazine, then as books. Few journalists’ work has had as much influence on the way people thought about a range of topics – psychoanalysis, journalism, biography and the law.

She achieved this through a formidably sharp intelligence and sentences that were, as the magazine’s current editor, David Remnick, wrote last week, “clear as gin, spare as arrows, like no one else’s”.

A quiver of these sentences opens her withering critique of journalism, The Journalist and the Murderer, published in 1989:

Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself [sic] to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.

When this was published, journalists exploded in outrage, not least because Malcolm had pierced the omertà observed by journalists concerning how they went about their work. There are all sorts of legitimate qualifications to be made about Malcolm’s insight, but more than three decades later it remains a key prod to any journalist, especially those working on longer projects, to reflect on the messy complexities inherent in the relationship between themselves and their sources.

Helen Garner’s ‘shard of horror’

Malcolm’s influence extends to Australia, primarily through Helen Garner, who came to fame through her fiction but forged a second career as one of the nation’s foremost practitioners of narrative non-fiction, and a highly controversial one, too.

When Garner read The Journalist and the Murderer, she said it immediately struck a chord. “It sends a shard of horror right through you,” she said in an interview for Meanjin in 2012.

Later in the same interview with Sonya Voumard, she talked about her debt to Malcolm when writing The First Stone (1995), her still much-debated account of a sexual harassment case at Melbourne University’s Ormond College in the early 1990s.

Read more:
Helen Garner’s This House of Grief: criminal justice viewed from the coalface

She recalled interviewing a retired judge who had once chaired the Ormond College council and was a “tough, smart old lawyer” who revealed little. As they talked and drank tea, Garner found herself gobbling up the homemade shortbread biscuits he had provided.

After she’d had three, he put the lid on the jar, saying “I didn’t do that to keep you out”, but he had.

Garner recalled:

It wouldn’t have occurred to me, unless I’d read Janet Malcolm, to put a Freudian interpretation on his closing the jar – I mean Freudian in the sense that people are always doing and saying things that enact their real purpose. He would have thought the incident was about biscuits. But unconsciously he was indicating to me that he was in charge of how much would be given and taken.

A writer of unusual intellectual courage

At that stage Garner had been reading Malcolm’s The Silent Woman (1993), her excoriating attack on biography in general and the industry surrounding the short life and tragic death of Sylvia Plath in particular.

In it, Malcolm likens biographers to professional burglars:

The voyeurism and busybodyism that impel writers and readers of biography alike are obscured by an apparatus of scholarship designed to give the enterprise an appearance of banklike blandness and solidity.

Readers, as well as biographers, are skewered for colluding in the exciting, forbidden undertaking of “tiptoeing down the corridor together, to stand in front of the bedroom door and try to peep through the keyhole”.

Biographers were as outraged as journalists had been a few years earlier. Readers don’t appear to have objected. They — we — seem to think Malcolm must be talking about other readers, the voyeuristic ones. She couldn’t possibly be talking about us.

But she was, of course. One of the paradoxes of Malcolm’s work is she continued to practice the crafts that she forensically critiques — journalism and biography. For some, this might amount to hypocrisy. To me, it underscores her intellectual courage, taking seriously the power and influence inherent in the practice of these two forms, and refusing to shelter behind loyalty to her tribe.

Which brings me to my favourite rhetorical aria of Malcolm’s, also from The Silent Woman:

The narratives of journalism (significantly called ‘stories’), like those of mythology and folklore, derive their power from their firm undeviating sympathies and antipathies. Cinderella must remain good and the stepsisters bad. ‘Second stepsister not so bad after all’ is not a good story.

Malcolm refused to write fairytales. Her stories may be as sharp as arrows; they also fly true.

Read more:
Biography in the age of celebrity: what’s left to reveal?

Matthew Ricketson 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. Remembering Janet Malcolm: her intellectual courage shaped journalism, biographies and Helen Garner – https://theconversation.com/remembering-janet-malcolm-her-intellectual-courage-shaped-journalism-biographies-and-helen-garner-163005

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Geoff Cockfield, Professor of Government and Economics, and Deputy Dean, University of Southern Queensland

Barnaby Joyce is back as Nationals leader, after a spill in Canberra on Monday morning.

This is the latest development in an unusually tumultuous period for the junior Coalition partner, beginning with Joyce’s reluctant resignation in 2018 and punctuated by his unsuccessful leadership challenge in February 2020 and ongoing discord and rebellion over climate policy.

Read more:
View from The Hill: Nationals in crisis, with pressure on Michael McCormack’s leadership

All this from a party that has a long history of relatively stable leadership, being out of the national media and settling disagreements with the Liberals behind closed doors

Some might argue the instability in recent years is the result of Joyce’s personality, ambition and behaviours. As well as the media’s focus on leadership and the contagious nature of leadership instability in other parties over the last decade.

But there are also other factors to consider.

Party differentiation

The federal Coalition has the characteristics of one party while formally remaining separate entities, which has been a successful, but unusual political arrangement.

In Canberra, party leaders largely act as one party, negotiating policy outcomes or implementing decisions. When in government, the Nationals leader gets the deputy prime ministership, Nationals MPs sit in Cabinet and there are joint party room meetings and joint Senate tickets.

Yet the Liberals and Nationals also have their own separate party room meetings and occasionally compete against each other for lower house seats when a previous member does not recontest a seat. During election season, the Nationals go on “the Wombat trail” as partial policy independents.

On the campaign trail, the Nationals speak the language of rural populism with its tropes of rural disadvantage and urban indifference or hostility, with the “urban enermy” implicitly including the Liberal Party.

The problem here

The problem for the Nationals is they struggle to deliver adequate agricultural support and rural services in a post-deregulation world. So they have no signature programs that show their policy value.

They fight for residual programs such as drought support or regional funding that are limited in scope, time and impact and subject to considerable criticism as to effectiveness and fairness.

The Nationals need new generation signature issues that deliver for regions, while still representing the values and aspirations of an earlier Australia. For example, large-scale irrigation projects and mining developments, but even many Liberals don’t want these.

Meanwhile, their vocal support for the coal industry only holds sway among select voters (and turns off others).

Geography

The Nationals are also trying to overcome geographical divides. At the federal level, National Party power is split between Queensland and NSW. The latter generally dominates party leadership, contributing to easily animated northern resentments.

Read more:
Politics with Michelle Grattan: Acting PM Michael McCormack on net zero 2050 and prospects for a new coal-fired power station

The formation of the Liberal National Party (LNP) in Queensland in 2008 further complicated matters.

It created a party now pressing for greater influence within the Coalition, especially after the 2019 federal election, where the LNP was seen to have “delivered” government for the Coalition.

The results in the so-called “coal seats” of central Queensland (such as Flynn and Dawson) have given further encouragement to the resources focus. Joyce, though now a NSW representative, started his political career in Queensland and it is presumed much of his support for his leadership challenges came from the sunshine state.

Leadership

Balancing the Coalition relationship, with different strands of the Nationals’ base is a difficult task for a leader. And is seen as a significant reason for Joyce’s return.

Last century, longstanding National leaders, such as John McEwan and Doug Anthony, possessed combinations of strong personality, electoral leverage, political acumen and good relationships with the Liberal (or predecessor parties) leaders. From 1922 to 1984, the average length of tenure of a Nationals leader was more than 12 years, with two of them serving more than 17 years.

No other party comes close to this record of keeping multiple leaders in office for long periods — and this now seems a historical quirk. Since 1988, there has been an increased rate of turnover, though most transitions still occurred reasonably peacefully.

More recent leaders have been confronted with the declining electoral position of the Nationals and the discontent of people in the bush. Most — such as Tim Fischer, John Anderson and Warren Truss — opted for being collaborative Coalition partners and keeping disputes behind closed doors. McCormack was also of that persuasion (and indeed, was criticised for not pushing back enough).

This means he could be characterised as too close to the Liberals and too accommodating. The other approach is more public signalling of the differentiation and more implicit threats of splitting the Coalition.

Policy tightrope

The Nationals then, must operate in the zone between tight cooperation and political competition.

The Liberals need them to form government but if skirmishes break into open disagreement and competition, the Liberals may lose majority government and the Nationals would face an existential threat.

Open competition at the state level in Victoria (in the 1930s-50s) and Queensland (in the 1980s) did yield some increased power in the short run for the Nationals. But this was followed by long periods out of government.

As a standalone party in Western Australia, they got a signature program (“royalties for regions”) in 2008 but no sustained increase in either state or federal representation. Voters in southern NSW and northern and western Victoria have also shown that they will elect rural Liberals, which is one of many threats to Nationals’ parliamentary representation.

In amongst this, rebel Nationals — such as George Christensen and Matt Canavan — have not necessarily picked issues that are easy for a modern Coalition government to give way to. Arguing for more coal fire power stations goes against international political trends and the sciences around climate change.

Under the new leadership of United States President Joe Biden, global cooperation on emissions is likely to step up and pull Australia along with it. Business is moving ahead of government in investment decisions on energy and even the National Farmers Federation want an emissions reduction strategy.

Marriage of convenience

Earlier this year, Joyce characterised the Coalition as a “marriage of convenience”.

This may be so, but a love match is unlikely (otherwise the parties would merge) and a divorce would come at a huge cost.

As Joyce resumes leadership of the Nationals, he now takes on the difficulties of keeping the party relevant, united and electable as we head towards the next federal election.

Geoff Cockfield 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. The National Party used to be known for its leadership stability — what happened? – https://theconversation.com/the-national-party-used-to-be-known-for-its-leadership-stability-what-happened-155382

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

Barnaby Joyce has blasted Michael McCormack out to seize back his old job of Nationals leader.

Joyce’s win, which automatically makes him deputy prime minister, has major implications and challenges for Scott Morrison, who had been hoping the more malleable McCormack would survive.

Joyce is a hardliner on issues such as climate change and coal. On a very different front, he recently declared the Bileola Tamil family should be allowed return to the town.

He is a formidable retail politician and will seek to strongly differentiate the Nationals from the Liberals in the run up to the election.

He may also want to renegotiate with Morrison the detail of the Coalition agreement. He has to deal with Morrison, who is in isolation after his trip, remotely.

As Joyce takes over the Nationals in parliament, Morrison this week will be handling question time via videolink.

David Littleproud remains as deputy Nationals leader. What changes Joyce will make to the Nationals ministerial line up are yet to be revealed.

But their Senate leader, Bridget McKenzie, who was forced out of cabinet at Morrison’s insistence after the sports rorts affair, appears likely to be brought back. Matt Canavan, a former resources minister, said ahead of the vote he was not seeking to return to the frontbench.

At Monday morning’s Nationals party room meeting, the spill was moved by Canavan, a Joyce loyalist, and David Gillespie, a backbencher from NSW.

There had been constant criticism among Nationals of McCormack’s performance, with many of them feeling he did not stand up to Morrison firmly enough.

Feeling against McCormack has intensified since the budget, when discontented Nationals believed the minor party had not received proper acknowledgement, particularly in the government’s infrastructure announcements.

Some Nationals have become particularly concerned at Morrison’s slow but steady move towards embracing a “net zero 2050” target. Nationals Resources Minister Keith Pitt and McKenzie both came out publicly last week declaring this was not the Nationals policy.

The Nationals were also dismayed by McCormack’s embarrassing performances in parliament when acting prime minister last week.

Joyce became deputy prime minister in February 2016 after Warren Truss resigned. He quit as leader in February 2018, amid a scandal over his extra-marital affair with his now partner Vikki Campion, and a claim of sexual harassment, which he denied.

In 2017 he had to fight a byelection for his seat of New England after he was disqualified by the High Court during the dual citizenship crisis. He had been a dual New Zealand citizen and so ineligible to be a candidate at the 2016 election, the court found.

This was Joyce’s second attempt to overthrow McCormack, after a failed challenge in February last year.

Asked on radio before the vote whether he was happy with McCormack’s performance as Nationals leader, Morrison said, “Absolutely. I’ve got a wonderful partnership with Michael. We’ve worked very closely together and provided great, stable leadership for Australia”.

McCormack said after the vote that it had been a privilege to serve and this was what democracy looked like.

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. Barnaby Joyce ousts Michael McCormack to regain Nationals leadership – https://theconversation.com/barnaby-joyce-ousts-michael-mccormack-to-regain-nationals-leadership-163076

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Plum, Senior Research Fellow in Applied Labour Economics, Auckland University of Technology

A job – any job – is generally thought of as better than no job at all. Consequently, low-paid work is often considered a “stepping stone” to a higher-paid job. But how easily do low-paid workers climb up the pay scale, really?

Our new research suggests past studies may have considerably overstated the chances of moving from low to higher pay. This has significant implications for understanding labour market behaviour.

Given the NZ$3.3 billion increase in welfare payments announced in New Zealand’s recent budget – dubbed the “biggest lift in a generation” – and the ongoing focus on inequality and minimum wage rates, how we measure income mobility is increasingly important.

In particular, what are some of the characteristics of the low-paid workforce? How likely or unlikely is it that an individual can transition from low to higher pay?

Past research has described low-paid work as a stepping stone if there is a greater chance of moving to higher pay relative to someone who is unemployed.

Furthermore, the data have suggested relatively high likelihoods of making the transition from low to higher pay — estimates range from 47% to nearly 90%, based on studies from the UK, Australia and Germany.

However, this research has mostly had to rely on survey data based on individual responses to an annual set of questions. This means we can only observe a snapshot of any given labour market once a year.

When determining whether an individual is unemployed, low paid or higher paid, a lot of information between those annual surveys falls into the unknown.

What traditional research misses

Why does this matter? It helps to imagine three different individuals, with different labour market experiences, answering a survey about their employment status in October 2019 and again in October 2020:

• one was low paid in the first survey and remained in low pay every month until the second survey

• the second oscillated between low and higher pay between surveys but happened to be in low pay at each survey point

• the third regularly moves between low pay and unemployment but is also in low pay at the time of each survey.

Because of the lack of information between survey time points, all three individuals will fall into the same category. In turn, this may influence estimates of movement out of low pay.

Read more:
NZ Budget 2021: women left behind despite the focus on well-being

What more detail reveals

In New Zealand we have the advantage of the integrated data infrastructure (IDI), a large research database published by Stats NZ.

As well as being population-wide, this provides monthly administrative tax records that reveal labour market states at a much higher frequency.

Our research uses these detailed data to look at the male low-paid workforce aged between 21 and 60 in New Zealand. The results are illuminating.

Read more:
NZ’s second ‘Well-being Budget’ must deliver for the families that sacrificed most during the pandemic

First, we mimicked conventional earlier research by looking at the labour market from only one month each year. Through this lens, New Zealand looks similar to Australia, with the probability of moving from low pay to higher pay estimated to be 74%.

When we use the detailed monthly income records, however, it is clear the picture is not as rosy. Most importantly, the likelihood of moving from low pay to higher pay is much lower than traditional methods suggest.

In fact, for those who have been in low-paid work for all of the prior 12 months, we found the likelihood of them moving into higher pay in the following month was only 28%. Being continuously in low-paid work, it seems, means it isn’t easy to climb out.

A limited stepping stone

On the other hand, our research confirms the stepping-stone effect does exist in the New Zealand labour market: compared to being unemployed, you’re more likely to move into higher pay from being low paid.

Specifically, someone unemployed for the previous 12 months has only a 1% probability of moving into higher pay in the next month. That compares to 28% for those in low-paid employment for all of the previous 12 months.

Overall, our research highlights the value of detailed, high-frequency, integrated data in assessing the nuances in the labour market landscape.

On top of that, it illustrates the real difficulty in climbing the wage ladder for those in long-term low-paid work. This suggests policymakers should focus on pathways to wage growth, as well as on job creation itself.

Gail Pacheco is a Commissioner at the NZ Productivity Commission

Alexander Plum and Kabir Dasgupta 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. Are low-paid jobs really a stepping stone to better pay? A new study suggests it’s not that simple – https://theconversation.com/are-low-paid-jobs-really-a-stepping-stone-to-better-pay-a-new-study-suggests-its-not-that-simple-162162

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

Australia’s top economists overwhelmingly back government measures to speed the transition to electric cars in order to meet emission reduction targets.

An exclusive poll of 62 of Australia’s preeminent economists — selected by their peers — finds 51 back measures to boost the take-up of electric cars including subsidising public charging stations, subsidising the purchase of all-electric vehicles, and setting a date to ban the import of traditionally-powered cars.

Only 11 oppose such measures, three of them because they prefer a carbon tax.

Six of the 51 who supported special measures said they did so reluctantly, as their preferred alternative would be a carbon price or a carbon tax, rather than subsidising “one alternative out of many to reduce emissions”.

Cars account for roughly half of Australia’s transport emissions, making them about 8% of Australia’s total emissions.

Yet Australia’s take-up of electric vehicles is dwarfed by the rest of the world.

On one measure, all-electric cars accounted for just 0.7% of new car sales in Australia in 2020 compared to 5% in China and 3.5% in the European Union.

Australia has no domestic car industry to protect, meaning industry policy concerns needn’t hold back the transition.

Read more:
Going electric could be Australia’s next big light bulb moment

Norway plans to outlaw new petrol car sales from 2025; Denmark, the Netherlands, Ireland and Israel from 2030; and California and Britain from 2035.

Asked whether Australia should take action to speed the transition, eight in ten of the 62 economists selected by the Economic Society said it should.

The results represent a departure for a profession whose usual advice is to avoid interfering with markets.

One participant, University of NSW professor Gigi Foster said an important question needed to be answered in order to justify government intervention: “what is the market failure here?”

The market failure was pollution, imposing costs on the community beyond the drivers of conventionally-powered cars and on the planet by pushing up global temperatures.

Broad support: subsidies for charging points

If it wasn’t to be dealt with by a carbon price, measures that sped up the switchover to electric vehicles could achieve some of the same effect.

By far the most popular measure of six presented to the panellists who supported government action was subsidising public charging points, backed by 84%.

The next most popular was removing the luxury car tax from electric-only vehicles. At present the 35% tax applies to cars valued at more than $69,152, and $79,659 for fuel-efficient vehicles.

43% supported making charging points compulsory in new homes and new car parks. 39% supported setting a date to ban the import of petrol and diesel cars.

Matthew Butlin, who chairs South Australia’s Productivity Commission, noted that much of Australia was not urban and unlikely to be served by charging points for some time.

Without government measures to speed the installation of remote charging stations, many buyers would be reluctant to go electric, even if most of their driving was in cities.

When they were in place, there would be a good case for banning the import of petrol and diesel vehicles, but not until then.

Read more:
Could electric car batteries feed power back into the grid?

Others wanted to hold off on banning the import of conventionally-powered cars until Australia had a lower-emissions mix of electricity.

Macquarie University’s Lisa Magnani said that with three quarters of Australia’s electricity generated from coal, electric vehicles created considerable emissions.

The Grattan Institute’s Danielle Wood disagreed, saying “network effects” built a case for switching over early.

Network effects build on themselves

The more people switched, the more charging stations would be built and the lower electric vehicle prices would drop, driving more people to switch, and increasing the benefits of decarbonising the electricity supply.

The sooner Australia swapped over, the easier it would be to get to net zero emissions by 2050 without the need for a “cash for clunkers” style scheme to buy back polluting vehicles.

Setting 2035 as the date for banning imports of petrol-powered cars as recommended this year by the International Energy Agency would give buyers time to adjust while the charging infrastructure developed.

Read more:
Want an electric car? Here’s how to buy second-hand

Tax specialist John Freebairn said electric cars were already heavily subsidised by escaping the fuel excise used to fund roads, despite the efforts of some states to plug the gap.

Sydney University economist Stefanie Schurer argued on the other hand bulky and polluting sport utility vehicles were effectively subsidised because of the tax benefits they attracted when used for work.

Former Liberal Party leader John Hewson who heads the Crawford School of Public Policy said smoothing the transition had become urgent.

Smooth transition now “urgent”

It took only ten years from 1903-13 for the United States to switch from horse-drawn to petrol-driven vehicles, and technology take-up was quicker today, particularly in Australia.

Other economists surveyed noted that there was much that could be done to reduce harmful emissions in addition to going electric.

Sue Richardson said Australia should impose serious limits on the tailpipe emissions of new cars. Australia is unusual among developed nations in not having such a limit, making it a favoured market for high-emission cars.

Read more:
The trucking industry has begun to turn electric; cars will take longer

Rana Roy said a better approach would be to limit transport itself through remote working and efforts to encourage walking and cycling. Subsidies for electric cars could send such moves backwards.

When responses to the survey were weighted by the confidence respondents had in them on a scale of 1 to 10, support of special measures to drive the transition remained about as strong, backed by eight in ten of the economists surveyed.

Detailed responses:

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

– ref. Top economists call for budget measures to speed the switch to electric cars – https://theconversation.com/top-economists-call-for-budget-measures-to-speed-the-switch-to-electric-cars-162883

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dana Rezazadegan, Lecturer, Swinburne University of Technology

Have you ever chatted with a friend about buying a certain item and been targeted with an ad for that same item the next day? If so, you may have wondered whether your smartphone was “listening” to you.

But is it really? Well, it’s no coincidence the item you’d been interested in was the same one you were targeted with.

But that doesn’t mean your device is actually listening to your conversations — it doesn’t need to. There’s a good chance you’re already giving it all the information it needs.

Can phones hear?

Most of us regularly disclose our information to a wide range of websites and apps. We do this when we grant them certain permissions, or allow “cookies” to track our online activities.

Read more:
94% of Australians do not read all privacy policies that apply to them – and that’s rational behaviour

So-called “first-party cookies” allow websites to “remember” certain details about our interaction with the site. For instance, login cookies let you save your login details so you don’t have to re-enter them each time.

Third-party cookies, however, are created by domains that are external to the site you’re visiting. The third party will often be a marketing company in a partnership with the first-party website or app.

The latter will host the marketer’s ads and grant it access to data it collects from you (which you will have given it permission to do — perhaps by clicking on some innocuous looking popup).

As such, the advertiser can build a picture of your life: your routines, wants and needs. These companies constantly seek to gauge the popularity of their products and how this varies based on factors such as a customer’s age, gender, height, weight, job and hobbies.

By classifying and clustering this information, advertisers improve their recommendation algorithms, using something called recommender systems to target the right customers with the right ads.

Computers work behind the scenes

There are several machine-learning techniques in artificial intelligence (AI) that help systems filter and analyse your data, such as data clustering, classification, association and reinforcement learning (RL).

An RL agent can train itself based on feedback gained from user interactions, akin to how a young child will learn to repeat an action if it leads to a reward.

By viewing or pressing “like” on a social media post, you send a reward signal to an RL agent confirming you’re attracted to the post — or perhaps interested in the person who posted it. Either way, a message is sent to the RL agent about your personal interests and preferences.

If you start actively liking posts about “mindfulness” on a social platform, its system will learn to send you advertisements for companies that can offer related products and content.

Ad recommendations may be based on other data, too, including but not limited to:

• other ads you clicked on through the platform

• personal details you provided the platform (such as your age, email address, gender, location and which devices you access the platform on)

• information shared with the platform by other advertisers or marketing partners that already have you as a customer

• specific pages or groups you have joined or “liked” on the platform.

In fact, AI algorithms can help marketers take huge pools of data and use them to construct your entire social network, ranking people around you based on how much you “care about” (interact with) them.

They can then start to target you with ads based on not only your own data, but on data collected from your friends and family members using the same platforms as you.

For example, Facebook might be able to recommend you something your friend recently bought. It didn’t need to “listen” to a conversation between you and your friend to do this.

Exercising your right to privacy is a choice

While app providers are supposed to provide clear terms and conditions to users about how they collect, store and use data, nowadays it’s on users to be careful about which permissions they give to the apps and sites they use.

When in doubt, give permissions on an as-needed basis. It makes sense to give WhatsApp access to your camera and microphone, as it can’t provide some of its services without this. But not all apps and services will ask for only what is necessary.

Perhaps you don’t mind receiving targeted ads based on your data, and may find it appealing. Research has shown people with a more “utilitarian” (or practical) worldview actually prefer recommendations from AI to those from humans.

That said, it’s possible AI recommendations can constrain people’s choices and minimise serendipity in the long term. By presenting consumers with algorithmically curated choices of what to watch, read and stream, companies may be implicitly keeping our tastes and lifestyle within a narrower frame.

Don’t want to be predicted? Don’t be predictable

There are some simple tips you can follow to limit the amount of data you share online. First, you should review your phone’s app permissions regularly.

Also, think twice before an app or website asks you for certain permissions, or to allow cookies. Wherever possible, avoid using your social media accounts to connect or log in to other sites and services. In most cases there will be an option to sign up via email, which could even be a burner email.

Once you do start the sign-in process, remember you only have to share as much information as is needed. And if you’re sensitive about privacy, perhaps consider installing a virtual private network (VPN) on your device. This will mask your IP address and encrypt your online activities.

Try it yourself

If you still think your phone is listening to you, there’s a simple experiment you can try.

Go to your phone’s settings and restrict access to your microphone for all your apps. Pick a product you know you haven’t searched for in any of your devices and talk about it out loud at some length with another person.

Make sure you repeat this process a few times. If you still don’t get any targeted ads within the next few day, this suggests your phone isn’t really “listening” to you.

It has other ways of finding out what’s on your mind.

Dana Rezazadegan is affiliated with Swinburne University of Technology. She is Superstar of STEM at Science and Technology Australia and Honorary fellow at Macquarie University.

– ref. Is your phone really listening to your conversations? Well, turns out it doesn’t have to – https://theconversation.com/is-your-phone-really-listening-to-your-conversations-well-turns-out-it-doesnt-have-to-162172

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kirsten Holmes, Professor, School of Management and Marketing, Curtin University

Though the official vote won’t happen until next month, Brisbane has already unofficially been awarded the hosting of the 2032 Summer Olympics.

This is potentially a great opportunity for Brisbane, Queensland and Australia. It will also be a catalyst to speed up long-term planning agendas for the fast-growing South East Queensland (SEQ) region.

In the past, Olympic Games have resulted in soaring budgets — Tokyo’s US$15.4 billion budget being the latest example — and infrastructure that has lain unused after the 16-day event is over. This has led to justified criticism the Olympics are not the jewel in the crown they were once considered.

For many past host cities, the games have not been a boon, but a drag. Greeks, for instance, have questioned how their country benefited from hosting the 2004 Summer Olympics, which left the country in crippling debt and with many venues abandoned and in disrepair. As these photos show, they are hardly the only ones.

So, what will make Brisbane 2032 different?

Temporary venues and a more dispersed games

First, the International Olympic Committee has introduced a more flexible and efficient approach to hosting, which it calls the “new norm”.

In short, this means host cities will need fewer new venues, a smaller athletes’ village and less Olympics-specific infrastructure overall. Temporary, flexible venues will be allowed for the first time, and venues can be shared by multiple sports. Athletes will also fly in just for their competitions and leave when they are over.

This new approach has been key to making Brisbane’s bid affordable. The operating cost for the Brisbane Olympic and Paralympic Games is projected to be a modest A$4.5 billion (US$3.4 billion), which is less than a third of Tokyo’s budget and the US$15 billion final cost of the London 2012 Games and US$13.2 billion cost of the Rio 2016 Games.

Second, the plans for the Brisbane Olympics and Paralympics are strongly grounded in existing development plans for the city.

Unlike host cities in the past, these Olympics will not be the sole reason for new development projects. Instead, they will be the catalyst for bringing forward current infrastructure and urban development plans. Around $400 million in road network improvements and $23 million in transport upgrades, for example, will be fast-tracked thanks to the successful Olympics bid.

Read more:
Reduce, re-use, recycle: how the new relaxed Olympic rules make Brisbane’s 2032 bid affordable

This mirrors the oft-cited “Barcelona model”, based on the Spanish city’s use of the 1992 Olympics to underpin a long-term, city-wide improvement plan. Studies argue such “event-themed” regeneration is linked with more positive legacy outcomes.

Third, the 2032 Games will be the first to represent a regionally spread-out hub-and-spoke model. This model aims to disperse the benefits of hosting beyond Brisbane, with permanent venues planned across the SEQ region, including the Gold and Sunshine Coasts, Redland Bay, Ipswich, Toowoomba and the Scenic Rim.

The model also includes three proposed Olympic villages to provide easy access to these venues.

These dispersed venues will be legacy project. An example is the Albion Precinct, where a proposed new stadium could be built to host the athletics in conjunction with existing plans for a food and lifestyle hub. There will also be temporary facilities to host training camps and preliminary events.

One of the main challenges for the Olympic organisers and governments at all levels will be delivering on major, costly transport infrastructure. This will be needed to link the various event sites and transport visitors, athletes and their support crews, and the media without a glitch.

An early feasibility study suggested the hub-and-spoke model would allow for a 45-minute travel region, with every venue within 45 minutes of Brisbane. The current projected costs for the SEQ portion of the rail link are A$5.3 billion (US$4 billion), although the proposal will need some rethinking as it has been rejected by Infrastructure Australia as being too costly.

Long-term social and environmental planning

Lastly, the social and environmental aspects of hosting the Olympics are front and centre of the Brisbane bid. Research by KPMG and The University of Queensland shows a projected economic and social benefit of $17.61 billion for Australia overall and $8.1 billion for Queensland alone.

The “social benefits” are measured in a variety of ways. For residents, the prestige of hosting the games and resulting civic pride should lead to enhanced community spirit. The Olympics can also be used to boost people’s health and well-being by encouraging increased participation in physical activity. This could lead to a lower risk of chronic disease and improved mental health.

Read more:
Under pressure on the Olympics, Japan’s prime minister is saying little and hoping for a political lifesaver

Finally, the benefits of volunteering, both for the volunteers themselves and the wider community, are well documented. Volunteer numbers in Australia have been in decline since COVID hit.

This could be a great way to kick-start a new drive to encourage people to volunteer, although there are questions about whether volunteer participation for such mega-events has long-term benefits.

With regard to the environment, the Olympics are often associated with a large carbon footprint. Brisbane’s bid document, however, highlights long-term measures to reduce waste and pollution. These include Queensland’s plastic pollution reduction plan, as well as the expanded use of public transport to reduce traffic congestion and emissions.

Why legacy planning matters

However, none of this happens without significant advance planning. Intangible legacy planning, such as promoting sports to the public and volunteer participation, needs specific attention and should begin as soon as hosting rights are awarded.

Legacy planning should also come under the remit of a distinct body from the Olympic organising committee. This is needed so that legacy planning is not subsumed by the immediate work of event planning and delivery.

Read more:
As the Pyeongchang Olympics comes to a close, what legacy will it leave?

Additionally, the Olympic organising committees typically disband soon after the games and the staff move on to other (often international) events. The legacy body and its budget need to continue to deliver long after the event concludes.

Such a model has yet to be widely adopted by host cities. London 2012 was widely recognised as the first Olympic Games of the so-called “legacy era”. However, it was criticised for leaving its legacy planning too late to be fully effective.

The 2032 Brisbane Games have the opportunity to showcase a new and improved model of Olympic hosting. The new “Brisbane model” for Olympic hosting could be one the IOC and future host cities will praise and seek to replicate.

Kirsten Holmes receives funding from The Olympic Studies Centre Advanced Olympic Research Grant Program.

Judith Mair receives funding from The Olympic Studies Centre Advanced Olympic Research Grant Program.

Leonie Lockstone-Binney receives funding from The Olympic Studies Centre Advanced Olympic Research Grant Program.

– ref. Leaner, cost-effective, practical: how the 2032 Brisbane Games could save the Olympics – https://theconversation.com/leaner-cost-effective-practical-how-the-2032-brisbane-games-could-save-the-olympics-162606

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katie Attwell, Senior Lecturer, The University of Western Australia

When we were hanging out for a COVID-19 vaccine in 2020, it was a bit like a horse race. We asked ourselves which vaccine would get over the line to win, and how quickly. Then, as multiple vaccines began reporting results from clinical trials, the race turned to which could offer superior efficacy and safety.

Flash forward to 2021, with multiple safe and effective vaccines approved, parts of the globe are experiencing “brand tribalism”. Which brand of vaccine you want, or can get, has become a hot issue.

In the United States, young vaccinators post their vaccine “team” or “tribe” preferences on social media, saying, “only hot people get the Pfizer Vaccine”.

In Britain, the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine invokes patriotism as well as warm feelings about its not-for-profit roots, even as some consumers prefer the “fancier” Pfizer vaccine.

In Hungary, fraught cold war politics have resurfaced as consumers can be vaccinated with one developed in the East or West.

In Australia, we’ve seen something different. Since the move away from the AstraZeneca vaccine for people under 50 announced in April, brand preferences became about safety rather than efficacy.

However, data from our research currently under peer-review and reports from elsewhere show younger and ineligible people are still stumping up to try and get vaccinated with whatever vaccine they can get.

The public isn’t so tuned in to flu vaccine brands

Having numerous brands of a particular vaccine is not new. Every year, multiple brands of influenza vaccines are used across various age groups.

One of us (Carlson) has been interviewing people about influenza vaccination for over five years, and no participant has told her they prefer a specific brand.

Things are different with COVID-19 vaccines, as people are increasingly aware of the different brands available to them and others. Through our Coronavax project, we are continually hearing brand names mentioned.

Yet some participants challenge the focus on brands. Alma*, a 50-year-old doctor, told us:

No one normally cares what brand of vaccine you get! With the flu vaccination […] people don’t start quizzing me on “what brand is this one?”

Other participants, such as 71-year-old Frank*, were critical of the emphasis on brands. When asked his opinion on under 50s receiving Pfizer and over 50s receiving AstraZeneca, he turned the tables. He asked his interviewer (McKenzie) if she had received her flu vaccination this year (she had) and whether she knew which brand she had received (she did not).

Others expressed some brand preferences, and all were very aware of the different brands.

The difference with flu vaccines, we hypothesise, is that although health-care providers are told about the different influenza vaccine brands so they can safely vaccinate people with the age-appropriate vaccine, the brands themselves are never front page news.

Flu vaccine brands are only ever sold to consumers as “the” flu vaccine. But COVID-19 vaccine brands feel like a buffet in which consumers don’t actually have much choice.

Read more:
Which COVID vaccine is best? Here’s why that’s really hard to answer

Vaccine preferences in Australia

International examples of COVID vaccine “teams” and people sharing their vaccine allegiances don’t directly translate to Australia. That’s because here, brand availability cannot be divorced from systemic and vaccine supply problems, such as not having enough of the appropriate vaccines for the specific age groups requiring them.

So in Australia, we don’t see brand tribalism as a fun expression of identity that can help orient everyone towards vaccinating.

Rather, brand preferences in Australia have developed through changing vaccine recommendations, and positive or negative news coverage.

In this imperfect scenario, governments need to keep backing the available vaccines that people can safely receive according to their age and risk profile, not encouraging people to wait for new ones.

Read more:
New AstraZeneca advice is a safer path, but it’s damaged vaccine confidence. The government must urgently restore it

Any pros of brand awareness?

One of the few benefits in the brand “team” wars is Australians are generally more aware of the science behind the development and safety of vaccines.

Most people we interviewed had recently learnt more about the science of vaccination. And most planned on being vaccinated with what was available to them, when it was (easily) available.

We hope this improved scientific literacy can help people appreciate the expertise that goes into creating vaccines, as well as the work of people like us who study their rollout, acceptance and uptake.

However, brand preference tribalism isn’t going to help Australia get vaccinated. Our unique situation of (necessary) directives about specific vaccine brands for different ages, our low rates of disease, and the increasing cut-off age for the AstraZeneca vaccine announced recently have contributed to a broken roll-out strategy.

The conversations we need to keep having about brands are difficult ones. We are on quicksand and science keeps evolving. The most important message isn’t about which team is better. It’s about having a responsive system that cares about people. It changes things up when it needs to, however challenging that makes our vaccine rollout.

Read more:
Diverse spokespeople and humour: how the government’s next ad campaign could boost COVID vaccine uptake

What we can do right now

The best thing we can do is to tone down the brand narrative within the significant constraints we face. All COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective, and if the disease profile of our country changes, then the recommendations about who should have which vaccine may change again. All COVID-19 vaccines protect and benefit individuals and communities.

Most importantly, all Australians benefit when we can safely reopen to the world and to our local businesses and communities. Without painful lockdowns, vaccines are all we have to look after ourselves and each other. We’re on that team.

*All names of research participants are pseudonyms.

Katie Attwell receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the WA Department of Health. She is currently funded by ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award DE1901000158. She is a member of a government advisory committee, the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) COVID-19 Working Group. She is a specialist advisor to the Therapeutic Goods Administration. All views presented in this article are her own and not representative of any other organisation.

Lara McKenzie receives funding from the WA Department of Health. All views presented in this article are her own and not representative of any other organisation.

Samantha Carlson receives funding from the WA Department of Health. All views presented in this article are her own and not representative of any other organisation.

– ref. COVID vaccination has turned into a ‘battle of the brands’. But not everyone’s buying it – https://theconversation.com/covid-vaccination-has-turned-into-a-battle-of-the-brands-but-not-everyones-buying-it-162181

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bill Laurance, Distinguished Research Professor and Australian Laureate, James Cook University

Wild elephants are awe-inspiring — even if they’re trying to kill you, as I discovered in 2004.

At the time I was studying how poachers and loggers threaten native mammals in Africa’s Congo Basin. I was sneaking up on a herd of forest elephants when they suddenly charged, rushing at me like enraged, out-of-control bulldozers. With the angry animals hot on my heels, I barely escaped by diving into a tangle of vines, shuddering with fear but oddly enthralled by it all, too.

Many residents of southern China must be feeling similarly. A herd of 15 Asian elephants, led by adult females, departed last year from Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve, near China’s border with Myanmar and Laos. Since then they’ve travelled about 500 kilometres northward, and are now approaching the bustling city of Kunming and its seven million inhabitants.

No one knows exactly where the elephants are going, or why. But two things are clear: the elephants were probably struggling to survive in their native habitat, and Chinese efforts to save the elephants clash with the nation’s aggressive strategies of investment and global development.

Hope for the homeless

As I’ve seen elsewhere, in Africa and Southeast Asia, hungry wild elephants can severely damage human crops, flattening gardens and orchards in their quest for a free meal.

During their sojourn in China, the behemoths — which can weigh over five tonnes as adults (more than three cars) — have indeed been helping themselves to farmers’ crops and anything else they deem edible from local villages and townships. In fact, they’ve caused more than US$1 million in damage to crops so far.

This whole journey has captured the imagination of millions of Chinese citizens, with state broadcaster CCTV carrying a 24-hour live feed of the spectacle.

At first blush, this sounds like a scenario that could go very badly for the elephants. When pachyderms and people collide, elephants usually lose.

But hope remains for the wandering herd. Asian elephants are a legally protected species in China.

Hundreds of police officers assisted by drones have been monitoring the intrepid animals, while wildlife officials are trying to steer them away from populated areas with food baits and roadblocks involving hundreds of trucks. So far, some 3,500 people have been evacuated temporarily to clear a path for the elephants.

Missing the big picture

Such efforts are laudable but misplaced. They address only the symptoms of environmental stress (displaced elephants) but not the “diseases” afflicting elephants in China and beyond.

Firstly, the wandering elephants may well have been forced to move because their home in southern China has been devastated by human development.

Even 15 years ago, when I first visited the Xishuangbanna region, the native rainforests there were being devastated, especially by clearing for exotic rubber-tree plantations.

As a result, only about 300 wild elephants survive in all of China today.

Secondly, even with government efforts since 2018 to ban domestic ivory trading, illegal ivory is still being consumed at a terrifying rate.

This bloody trade is one of the main drivers of elephant poaching in Asia and Africa. Chinese citizens working overseas have been widely implicated in wildlife smuggling activities, including illegal ivory.

Read more:
China’s growing footprint on the globe threatens to trample the natural world

Finally, as it promotes new roads, dams and other large developments, China’s Belt & Road Initiative, which now spans 139 nations worldwide, is rapidly increasing the effects of habitat destruction and human persecution on elephants and other native wildlife.

In Latin America, for example, entrepreneurs and workers from China are causing a dramatic increase in illegal poaching of jaguars, the teeth and body parts of which are being used to produce certain traditional Chinese “medicines”.

Take-home lessons

What can we learn from China’s wandering elephants? At the outset, it’s clear many people, in China and beyond, are motivated far more easily by large, charismatic animals such as elephants than they are by rather nebulous concepts like ecosystem loss and degradation.

So, as we seek environmental sustainability in our densely populated world, we need to tell more evocative stories that inspire hope and capture the popular imagination.

Read more:
Empathy in conservation is hotly debated. Still, the world needs more stories like My Octopus Teacher

China’s wandering elephants also show us nature often needs large expanses of habitat to survive.

The potential habitat for elephants in China has been severely reduced and fragmented, and now totals less than 250,000 hectares overall in the critical Xishuangbanna region.

Globally, scores of large-bodied species such as elephants and apex predators such as tigers are in big trouble because of the fatal one-two punch of habitat destruction and human persecution. To sustain these iconic species, we urgently need to conserve Earth’s remaining large ecosystems.

Further, China’s homeless elephants could give us a glimpse into the future. On a planet where most native ecosystems are being sliced and diced to meet humanity’s needs, and where the climate is changing apace, wild animals like the Chinese elephants may increasingly need to pull up roots and move to new territories.

At great expense and effort, China is attempting to save its beleaguered band of elephants as they search for a new home.

But as the nation responsible for more habitat destruction, wildlife poaching and greenhouse-gas emissions than any other, China bears a special responsibility to promote sustainable development — not just inside China but overseas as well.

Let’s applaud China’s efforts to save its wandering elephants while we bear in mind that, as a nation and economic superpower, it has far more left to do to ensure our planet remains liveable for vulnerable wildlife — and for us too.

Read more:
‘Existential threat to our survival’: see the 19 Australian ecosystems already collapsing

Bill Laurance receives funding from the Australian Research Council and other scientific and philanthropic organisations. He is the director of the Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science at James Cook University and founder and director of ALERT–the Alliance of Leading Environmental Researchers & Thinkers.

– ref. China’s efforts to save its wandering elephants are laudable, but let’s not forget its bloody conflicts with the giants – https://theconversation.com/chinas-efforts-to-save-its-wandering-elephants-are-laudable-but-lets-not-forget-its-bloody-conflicts-with-the-giants-162767

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philip Laird, Honorary Principal Fellow, University of Wollongong

We have seen a succession of reviews, plans and election promises of faster and better train services for regional New South Wales, home to one third of the state’s population, in recent years. Yet little had been heard from the state government on track works to allow new trains to travel faster until April 29 this year. This was when Premier Gladys Berejiklian told a Sydney conference that serious regional development will need faster rail (trains moving at 150-200km/h on upgraded track with some straightening of track) and fast rail (speeds of 200-250km/h on new dedicated track).

The promised outcomes include Sydney to Newcastle by rail in an hour rather than two-and-a-half hours, 25 minutes taken off Sydney-Wollongong and Sydney-Gosford train trips and travel between Sydney and Goulburn in under an hour instead of two-and-a-half hours for express trains. Details are still awaited on which lines will take priority and the scope of this work.

Read more:
We can halve train travel times between our cities by moving to faster rail

These developments have been years in the making. In late 2018, the NSW government announced international expert Andrew McNaughton would advise the government how best to deliver a fast rail network to connect Sydney to regional centres. Four lines were identified:

• north to the Central Coast, Newcastle and beyond
• west via Lithgow to Orange/Parkes
• southern inland to Goulburn/Canberra
• southern coastal to Wollongong/Nowra.

This followed a 20-Year Economic Vision for Regional NSW (recently refreshed), which included a commitment to “make regional travel faster, easier and safer between and within regional centres, and to metropolitan areas”.

Transport for NSW also released a Greater Newcastle Future Transport Plan in 2018. The plan outlined track work to enable trains to travel at higher speeds (with new ones now being delivered). This work included “reducing track curvature, deviations and realignments, removal of level crossings, junction rearrangement and better segregation of passenger and freight services”.

There have also been three studies of NSW track upgrades co-funded by the National Faster Rail Agency.

In the lead-up to the March 2019 NSW election, funding was announced for a limited suite of track upgrades on the four main lines linking Sydney to regional NSW. The government also raised expectations of a new line from Eden to Cooma and the reinstatement of the line from Cooma to Canberra.

Read more:
How the NSW election promises on transport add up

Much slow running of regional trains on each of the four main lines from Sydney is on sections of track that, about 100 years ago, were reconstructed with less steep climbs than 19th-century track. This allowed steam locomotives to handle heavier loads, but came at the expense of extra length and more curves.

Such track now slows down modern electric and diesel trains. The table below shows the extent of the problem in NSW. It also shows indicative time savings from reverting to straighter track alignments (found in most cases by simulation work by my co-researcher, Max Michell).

Other states acted decades ago

Following track-straightening works between Brisbane and Cairns for faster and heavier freight trains, in 1998 Queensland Rail introduced a tilt train operating at speeds of up to 170km/h between Brisbane and Rockhampton. The train was well received and by 2002 had carried 1 million passengers.

In 2004, new Prospector diesel rail cars were introduced to allow Perth-Kalgoorlie services to operate up to 160km/h with an average of 100km/h.

Victoria’s Regional Fast Rail Project was mostly completed by 2006. Following track upgrades on four lines to Bendigo, Ballarat (with deviations to improve train times), Geelong and Gippsland, new V/Locity trains travel at 160km/h. Within five years, patronage on these services had doubled.

Victoria has followed up with two further extensive track upgrading programs, each with significant federal funding. The first was Regional Rail Link (2009-15). Currently, at a cost of over A$4 billion, Regional Rail Revival is upgrading every regional line in the state.

Read more:
This is how regional rail can help ease our big cities’ commuter crush

What about a decent service to Canberra?

Sydney-Canberra train services are too few and too slow. High-speed rail options with trains capable of 250km/h or more on dedicated track for Sydney to Canberra, and beyond, have been studied extensively since 1984. In 1998, SpeedRail received in-principle support from the Howard government but that did not extend to financial support.

The uptake of bus travel – one operator offers a service on the hour for 12 hours a day – suggests more and faster train services would be well received.

In 2020, Infrastructure Australia listed an upgrade of this rail link as a “priority initiative”.

The train service linking Australia’s largest city with the national capital has been taken to task by many commentators. It was recently well described as a “national disgrace”. By way of contrast, New York to Washington DC has many more trains, which are much faster than buses.

Back to New South Wales

NSW has a A$107 billion “infastructure pipeline”. However, on a population basis, Sydney with its metros and motorways is getting much more than its fair share. Regional NSW is getting left behind.

The imbalance is increasing. The late 2020 budget allocated billions for the Sydney West Metro and preconstruction work on the dubious Western Harbour Tunnel project.

Read more:
Is another huge and costly road project really Sydney’s best option right now?

Many NSW regional communities increasingly consider that their major party MPs haven’t had their best interests at heart. This is one reason for the election in 2019 of four lower house members from minor parties plus one independent. In the recent Upper Hunter byelection, the combined primary vote for the ALP and the Nationals was just over 50%.

Serious track work is now needed to lift NSW regional train speeds to those enjoyed in other states. As the Illawarra Rail Fail group sang in this YouTube video, regional NSW needs more trains and faster travel times to get us on our way.

Philip Laird owns shares in some transport companies and has received funding from the two rail-related CRCs as well as the ARC. He is affiliated, inter alia, with Action for Public Transport (NSW), the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, the Railway Technical Society of Australasia and the Rail Futures Institute. The opinions expressed are those of the author.

– ref. NSW on a slow track to fast trains: promised regional rail upgrades are long overdue – https://theconversation.com/nsw-on-a-slow-track-to-fast-trains-promised-regional-rail-upgrades-are-long-overdue-160932

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daryl Sparkes, Senior Lecturer (Media Studies and Production), University of Southern Queensland

For cinephiles, one of the greatest blows of the initial COVID lockdown was the closure of cinemas. While we all quickly shifted to the smaller screen in our lounge rooms it just didn’t feel the same. There is something magical about sitting in that darkened room, nestled into those oversized chairs, sharing the 50-foot wide experience with the scent of overly salty popcorn in the air.

For many of us, the cinema is our church.

Thankfully, during 2021 Australian cinemas have gradually reopened their doors. What started as a trickle of audiences has now turned into a flood with many cinemas now reporting high attendances.

But what of the films themselves?

Producers and distributors were wary to release their $100 million+ films to less than full capacity cinemas, and many major blockbusters still haven’t been released.

But with cinemas open — and with an almost two-year backlog of big budget and quality international films to be screened — what can we expect in the second half of this year?

We’ve had the cinema famine, now expect the feast.

The action (sequel)

For those needing their superhero fix, there is plenty in store, including the sequel to 2016’s Suicide Squad, the creatively named The Suicide Squad (out in August) which sees the return of Harley Quinn and a new band of super-crazy-super-villains trying to, once again, save the world.

Mel Gibson was one of many directors touted to write and direct before James Gunn eventually got the nod, after previous success in this genre with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 and The Belko Experiment. The first film was massively over-hyped and didn’t live up to expectations, even though it killed at the box office.

Hopefully, Gunn will not disappoint the demanding fan base.

Read more:
‘I didn’t have a superhero that looked like me’: Marvel’s new female, culturally diverse and queer protagonists mirror our times

The auteur director

As an avid Wes Anderson fan, I am very excited about his latest outing The French Dispatch, out in October. It’s his usual A-team ensemble cast of Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, Adrien Brody and Owen Wilson but with a few new faces.

The premise is about a bunch of quirky journalists coming together to publish a magazine where the stories come to life, but in true Anderson style it will surely prove to be much more than that. Full of the auteur’s saturated colours and geometrically balanced set pieces against a French backdrop, what’s not to love?

Australia on the silver screen

Also slated for October is The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson, following a pioneering woman and her four children eking out an existence in the bush.

Leah Purcell adapted Henry Lawson’s 1892 short story into an award-winning play in 2016, and then an acclaimed book in 2019. She will now write, direct and star in the film which will add an Indigenous woman’s perspective to the recent slate of great Australian Westerns dealing with the racial politics of colonial Australia.

Big, bigger, biggest

The four biggest holdovers have sent the internet movie chat rooms into a hot slather.

The new Bond thriller, No Time To Die, sees Daniel Craig in his last outing as the debonair yet ruthless secret agent. Its release has been announced numerous times since and then put back again and again. It’s been scheduled for an October release. Fingers crossed it comes off.

Read more:
James Bond is more than a (sexist) secret agent. He is a fertility god, a Dionysus of the modern era

The new Ghostbusters movie, Ghostbusters: Afterlife will be out in December, with the original cast reunited again for the first time since 1989’s (not so good) Ghostbusters II.

The first Ghostbusters is such a nostalgic favourite, even if this film is the limpest lettuce of a film out there no-one will care. We’ve waited 30 years for this — and a comedy with Murray and Ackroyd in the lead is something that’s desperately needed in these dark days.

Denis Villeneuve’s Dune has been hotly anticipated since it was revealed he was set to direct back in 2016. A lot rides on this production. There have been at least a half dozen abortive attempts to get a new version onto the big screen in the past 35 years since David Lynch’s widely disparaged 1984 adaptation.

But producers are confident Villeneuve has got the mix right this time — the rest of us will find out in October.

Down the rabbit hole

Towering over all these films is the monolith that is The Matrix 4.

The original trilogy earned over US$1.6 billion (A$2.1 billion) at the global box office and the fan base of the franchise has never dissipated. Storylines and production images have been kept under tight security but, considering main characters Neo and Trinity died in the last instalment and are back for this one, it may be more of a prequel than a sequel.

This could well be the biggest film of the year, and it’s out just a few days before Christmas.

Overall, we can expect a range of excellent films appearing before us over the next six months as they release the stopper on the film bottle that was 2020. It’s time to cry “Hallelujah!” and see you in church.

Daryl Sparkes 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. Bring out the popcorn: the best films set to roar into cinemas in the second half of 2021 – https://theconversation.com/bring-out-the-popcorn-the-best-films-set-to-roar-into-cinemas-in-the-second-half-of-2021-161405

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

The Nationals are in fresh chaos, with Michael McCormack’s leadership under intense pressure, as the party meets on Monday at the start of parliament’s last week before the winter recess.

Amid speculation about a possible challenge during what’s often dubbed the “killing season” for leaders, some Nationals sources on Sunday claimed former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce had majority support, after the defection of one McCormack supporter.

Former resources minister Matt Canavan, a strong Joyce supporter and blunt critic of McCormack, had a mixed message.

“My view is well known – the Nationals have an identity crisis because Michael has failed to deliver a clear vision,” Canavan said.

“Barnaby has mapped out such a vision and can again for the party. But I don’t think the numbers are there for him and I am just one vote. Still some of the commentary is taking on a self fulfilling character so maybe something will happen.”

McCormack told the ABC no one had told him a spill move was likely: “I’ve got no-one having called me and said, ‘It’s on.’ I have had no-one say to me, ‘There is a spill afoot.’”

He said in a weekend statement:

“I am focused as always on helping Australians to recover from the pandemic, rebuilding after the Victorian floods and the growth of regional Australia. If others within government think that they should be talking about themselves and their ambitions at this difficult and challenging time then that’s a matter for them. I’m concentrating on the issues that matter to ordinary, everyday Australians.”

Joyce told The Australian “I am not going to call a spill tomorrow.”

In a party of 21, it is proving hard for those assessing numbers to be sure of them, not least because they don’t trust all their colleagues.

There is a school of thought in the party that the speculation about an imminent leadership challenge was started as an anti-Joyce move.

McCormack came under renewed criticism within the Nationals last week when, as acting prime minister, he made some silly statements in parliament.

He said, “I would much sooner live in Australia than live anywhere else in this nation”.

In a burst of attempted sarcasm that backfired, he said in relation to the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, “I actually agree with PETA. [The mice] should be rehomed into their inner-city apartments so that they can nibble away at their food and their feet at night and scratch their children at night.”

More fundamentally, militant Nationals are angry that Scott Morrison has been allowed, as they see it, to walk all over the minor Coalition partner, taking McCormack for granted and refusing to give the Nationals credit for things that affect the party’s constituency.

They are also concerned that with McCormack as leader, Morrison could move to adopt a firm target of net zero emissions by 2050, which he has been sliding towards. This is despite McCormack telling The Conversation last Wednesday the party would not endorse the target.

Resources Minister Keith Pitt and former Nationals minister Bridget McKenzie both declared last week that net zero by 2050 was not the Nationals’ policy.

It was unclear on Sunday night whether, if there were a move against McCormack, Deputy Leader David Littleproud would be a candidate.

Littleproud would not have the numbers in a three-way contest against McCormack and Joyce. He would need McCormack’s votes. He has also said he would not run against McCormack.

But if a vote of no-confidence in McCormack were carried and McCormack stood aside, that would provide a pathway for Littleproud to run.

Morrison, who is in isolation at The Lodge and will do question time remotely this week, would be appalled at the thought of Joyce replacing McCormack. Joyce would differentiate the Nationals to the maximum extent and would oppose the firming up of the net zero commitment, which Morrison presently couches as “preferably” by 2050.

Littleproud would be tougher with the Liberals than McCormack, but would go along with the 2050 target, provided there was a positive deal for agriculture.

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: Nationals in crisis, with pressure on Michael McCormack’s leadership – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-nationals-in-crisis-with-pressure-on-michael-mccormacks-leadership-163067

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

Australia’s top economists overwhelmingly back government measures to speed the transition to electric cars in order to meet emission reduction targets.

An exclusive poll of 62 of Australia’s preeminent economists — selected by their peers — finds 51 back measures to boost the take-up of electric cars including subsidising public charging stations, subsidising the purchase of all-electric vehicles, and setting a date to ban the import of traditionally-powered cars.

Only 11 oppose such measures, three of them because they prefer a carbon tax.

Six of the 51 who supported special measures said they did so reluctantly, as their preferred alternative would be a carbon price or a carbon tax, rather than subsidising “one alternative out of many to reduce emissions”.

Cars account for roughly half of Australia’s transport emissions, making them about 8% of Australia’s total emissions.

Yet Australia’s take-up of electric vehicles is dwarfed by the rest of the world.

On one measure, all-electric cars accounted for just 0.7% of new car sales in Australia in 2020 compared to 5% in China and 3.5% in the European Union.

Australia has no domestic car industry to protect, meaning industry policy concerns needn’t hold back the transition.

Read more:
Going electric could be Australia’s next big light bulb moment

Norway plans to outlaw new petrol car sales from 2025; Denmark, the Netherlands, Ireland and Israel from 2030; and California and Britain from 2035.

Asked whether Australia should take action to speed the transition, eight in ten of the 62 economists selected by the Economic Society said it should.

The results represent a departure for a profession whose usual advice is to avoid interfering with markets.

One participant, University of NSW professor Gigi Foster said an important question needed to be answered in order to justify government intervention: “what is the market failure here?”

The market failure was pollution, imposing costs on the community beyond the drivers of conventionally-powered cars and on the planet by pushing up global temperatures.

Broad support: subsidies for charging points

If it wasn’t to be dealt with by a carbon price, measures that sped up the switchover to electric vehicles could achieve some of the same effect.

By far the most popular measure of six presented to the panellists who supported government action was subsidising public charging points, backed by 84%.

The next most popular was removing the luxury car tax from electric-only vehicles. At present the 35% tax applies to cars valued at more than $69,152, and $79,659 for fuel-efficient vehicles.

43% supported making charging points compulsory in new homes and new car parks. 39% supported setting a date to ban the import of petrol and diesel cars.

Matthew Butlin, who chairs South Australia’s Productivity Commission, noted that much of Australia was not urban and unlikely to be served by charging points for some time.

Without government measures to speed the installation of remote charging stations, many buyers would be reluctant to go electric, even if most of their driving was in cities.

When they were in place, there would be a good case for banning the import of petrol and diesel vehicles, but not until then.

Read more:
Could electric car batteries feed power back into the grid?

Others wanted to hold off on banning the import of conventionally-powered cars until Australia had a lower-emissions mix of electricity.

Macquarie University’s Lisa Magnani said that with three quarters of Australia’s electricity generated from coal, electric vehicles created considerable emissions.

The Grattan Institute’s Danielle Wood disagreed, saying “network effects” built a case for switching over early.

Network effects build on themselves

The more people switched, the more charging stations would be built and the lower electric vehicle prices would drop, driving more people to switch, and increasing the benefits of decarbonising the electricity supply.

The sooner Australia swapped over, the easier it would be to get to net zero emissions by 2050 without the need for a “cash for clunkers” style scheme to buy back polluting vehicles.

Setting 2035 as the date for banning imports of petrol-powered cars as recommended this year by the International Energy Agency would give buyers time to adjust while the charging infrastructure developed.

Read more:
Want an electric car? Here’s how to buy second-hand

Tax specialist John Freebairn said electric cars were already heavily subsidised by escaping the fuel excise used to fund roads, despite the efforts of some states to plug the gap.

Sydney University economist Stefanie Schurer argued on the other hand bulky and polluting sport utility vehicles were effectively subsidised because of the tax benefits they attracted when used for work.

Former Liberal Party leader John Hewson who heads the Crawford School of Public Policy said smoothing the transition had become urgent.

Smooth transition now “urgent”

It took only ten years from 1903-13 for the United States to switch from horse-drawn to petrol-driven vehicles, and technology take-up was quicker today, particularly in Australia.

Other economists surveyed noted that there was much that could be done to reduce harmful emissions in addition to going electric.

Sue Richardson said Australia should impose serious limits on the tailpipe emissions of new cars. Australia is unusual among developed nations in not having such a limit, making it a favoured market for high-emission cars.

Read more:
The trucking industry has begun to turn electric; cars will take longer

Rana Roy said a better approach would be to limit transport itself through remote working and efforts to encourage walking and cycling. Subsidies for electric cars could send such moves backwards.

When responses to the survey were weighted by the confidence respondents had in them on a scale of 1 to 10, support of special measures to drive the transition remained about as strong, backed by eight in ten of the economists surveyed.

Detailed responses:

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

– ref. Exclusive. Top economists call for budget measures to speed the switch to electric cars – https://theconversation.com/exclusive-top-economists-call-for-budget-measures-to-speed-the-switch-to-electric-cars-162883

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Horvath, Senior lecturer, La Trobe University

This piece is part of a new series in collaboration with the ABC’s Saturday Extra program. Each week, the show will have a “who am I” quiz for listeners about influential figures who helped shape the 20th century, and we will publish profiles for each one.

Andrei Sakharov was one of the most brilliant scientists of the nuclear age.

In the field of theoretical physics, he made an enduring contribution to our understanding of the universe. He also played a pivotal role in the creation of the first Soviet hydrogen bomb in 1953. A decade later, he helped instigate a move towards limiting these weapons – the atmospheric Test Ban Treaty.

Despite these achievements, Sakharov is best remembered today for another reason: his years as the Soviet Union’s most famous dissident and outspoken human rights defender.

No other individual rivals Sakharov’s contribution to the global human rights “boom” of the 1970s. When he began to discuss human rights in the late 1960s, the term was so esoteric that Western journalists often mistranslated it as “rights of man”.

His ideas about the link between human rights and international peace won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975 and helped to make human rights a central issue in superpower relations.

When Mikhail Gorbachev, then secretary general of the Communist Party, liberalised the Soviet system in the late 1980s, Sakharov became first a leader and then a symbol of Russia’s democratic movement.

A call to protect dissidents

Sakharov’s transformation from a pillar of the Soviet scientific establishment to persecuted dissident began in 1968 with his essay “Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom”.

In it, Sakharov argued the world could avoid nuclear apocalypse and ecological disaster through the “convergence” of the socialist and capitalist systems, which would each adopt the most humane features of the other.

What was needed to accomplish this historic transformation, Sakharov wrote, was intellectual freedom and an end to the crackdown unleashed in the USSR by the 1966 trial of the writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel.

Two years later, Sakharov joined a human rights committee created by the dissident Valery Chalidze. At Chaldize’s prompting, Sakharov started attending political trials and collaborating with others in the Moscow dissident milieu. He also began giving interviews to Western journalists and meeting visiting Western politicians.

The Soviet authorities retaliated in the summer of 1973. They unleashed a propaganda campaign against him that was reminiscent — in its virulence and scale — of the Stalin era.

Pushing the US to make human rights a priority

Undaunted by the intensifying harassment, Sakharov threw down the gauntlet to the Kremlin by addressing an open letter to the US Congress in support of a bold human rights initiative.

Under the terms of a proposed amendment to the 1974 Trade Act (called the Jackson-Vanik amendment), a US-Soviet trade agreement would be made conditional on the lifting of restrictions on Jewish emigration from the USSR.

This legislation, which was only repealed in 2012, was fiercely resisted by then-US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who regarded criticism of Soviet totalitarianism as a threat to improving US-Soviet relations.

In his letter, Sakharov argued that restricting emigration made the Soviet Union a closed society that was a danger to the world. This was a historic intervention.

As Kissinger later admitted, Sakharov’s letter “opened the floodgates.” The adoption of the amendment by Congress in 1974 became a turning point in the incorporation of human rights into US foreign policy.

It was no coincidence that Jimmy Carter, the first president to embrace human rights as a diplomatic priority, began his tenure in the White House in 1977 by exchanging letters with Sakharov.

Read more:
Jimmy Carter’s lasting Cold War legacy

Sakharov and the Helsinki Process

No less important was Sakharov’s influence on the Helsinki Process, a series of East-West conferences on security and cooperation in Europe.

Launched by the signing of the Helsinki Final Act in 1975, the Helsinki Process was widely perceived as a Western defeat because it appeared to recognise Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. Sakharov, however, saw it as an opportunity. In his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize that year, he drew attention to the fact the agreement contained

far-reaching declarations on the relationship between international security and the preservation of human rights.

This insight inspired a group of dissidents, including Sakharov’s wife Yelena Bonner, to establish the Moscow Helsinki Group (MHG), an organisation dedicated to monitoring the Soviet regime’s implementation of the human rights provisions of the Final Act.

For nearly eight years, the MHG sent meticulous reports about Soviet violations to the follow-up conferences of the signatory states, but its most compelling evidence was the brutal repression inflicted on its own members.

Thanks to these dissidents, the Helsinki Process became what one US diplomat called “a court trial in continuous session” of the USSR and its East European satellites.

Much of this contest focused on the fate of Sakharov himself after the Soviet regime finally moved to silence him in 1980. For speaking out against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he was arrested and banished to internal exile.

‘Our duty is to Sakharov’s name’

During his seven-year ordeal in the closed city of Gorky, Sakharov spoke to the world more often through hunger strikes than by words. His treatment cast a vast shadow over Soviet relations with both the US and Western Europe.

In response to the mounting pressure, Gorbachev astonished the world in 1986 by personally telephoning Sakharov and requesting he resume his “patriotic work”.

Read more:
World politics explainer: the Russian revolution

Two and a half years later, Sakharov dominated the debates of the first Congress of People’s Deputies, the Soviet Union’s first serious parliamentary experiment.

With a persistence that infuriated the Congress’ “aggressively obedient majority”, Sakharov challenged the constitutional supremacy of the Communist Party and urged his reformist colleagues to embark on the path of opposition.

They took that step in the aftermath of Sakharov’s death on December 14 1989. One day later, the future Russian president Boris Yeltsin declared:

We must come to the end of the path that Sakharov began. Our duty is to Sakharov’s name, to the persecution he suffered.

How Sakharov is remembered today

Each year, the European Parliament’s prestigious Sakharov Prize reminds rights defenders around the world of Sakharov’s tireless efforts to protect human rights.

In Russia, however, his legacy remains contested. The Putin regime marked the centenary of Sakharov’s birth this May with a commemorative coin and a statement that praised Sakharov’s contribution to national security, but ignored his years as a dissident. A public exhibition that was intended to draw attention to Sakharov’s activism was blocked by the Moscow authorities.

This obstructionism is a tribute to Sakharov’s enduring importance for many anti-Putin democrats, like the twice-poisoned Vladimir Kara-Murza, who honour Sakharov as the embodiment of Russia’s democratic tradition.

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

– ref. How Andrei Sakharov went from Soviet hero to dissident — and forced the world to pay attention to human rights – https://theconversation.com/how-andrei-sakharov-went-from-soviet-hero-to-dissident-and-forced-the-world-to-pay-attention-to-human-rights-157688