Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mary Myla Andamon, Senior Lecturer, School of Property, Construction and Project Management, RMIT University

Victorian students are learning in classrooms with very poor air quality. Our year-long analysis of Victorian primary and secondary school classrooms has found the amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂) often far exceeds the maximum acceptable standard.

Studies in other states have found similar levels of poor air quality in classrooms.

Elevated CO₂ concentrations can cause headache, drowsiness and lethargy. Children under 15 are particularly vulnerable to poor air quality. Pollutant exposure during developmental stages may produce lifelong issues such as respiratory infections.

Australian students spend at least 25 hours in classrooms per week, or in excess of 1,075 hours indoors, in school buildings, annually. Australia’s National Construction Code (NCC) specifies CO₂ concentration levels of less than 850 parts per million (ppm), averaged over eight hours, for acceptable air quality.

In our analysis, the CO₂ concentrations in Victorian classrooms ranged from 912 to 2,235 ppm. During certain times of occupied hours, levels reached up to 5,000 ppm. These concentration levels indicate very poor ventilation and slow air exchange between indoor and outdoor air.

Good ventilation inside classrooms also protects students against airborne transmission of diseases such as COVID-19. Improving ventilation inside classrooms will help schools respond to potential outbreaks.

Read more: Keeping indoor air clean can reduce the chance of spreading coronavirus

What is indoor air quality?

Indoor air quality is a measure or analysis of the physical, chemical and microbiological makeup of the air in rooms.

Indoor air quality impacts health, comfort and performance. Breathing conditioned but re-circulated air continuously, without adequate fresh outdoor air, has been linked to reduced health and school performance.

Indoor air quality is usually maintained by controlling airborne pollutants (such as dust or carbon monoxide), introducing adequate outdoor air into, and distributing it throughout, the room and by maintaining acceptable temperature and relative humidity.

There are prescribed standards for minimum ventilation rates, which achieve indoor air quality. Good ventilation practices ensure adequate dilution of indoor air and avoidance of build-up of airborne pollutants including viral contaminants.

Australian school design complies with the National Construction Code. This requires spaces be naturally or mechanically ventilated with outdoor air to maintain adequate air quality.

For natural ventilation, with a floor area requirement of 2 square metres (m²) per student, classroom window area (or other openings) for ventilation must be 12.5% of the classroom floor area. But there is no requirement nor directive on how much and how often these windows should be open.

Opening windows may also not be possible during extreme weather conditions such as extreme heat, cold and thunderstorm asthma events.

For mechanically ventilated classrooms, the same floor area of 2m² per student requires ventilation rates of 10-12 litre per second (L/s) of outdoor air per person.

A typical classroom size of 81m², with a ceiling height of 3m and occupied by 25 students should have at least 3.7-4.4 air changes per hour. This is the measure of air volume added to or removed from a room in one hour relative to the volume of the room. Higher values of air change rates correspond to better ventilation.

During a pandemic, the number of air changes per hour should be higher than usual. The World Health Organisation recommends six air changes per hour.

Read more: How to use ventilation and air filtration to prevent the spread of coronavirus indoors

What we found

Because the occupants of a building breathe out carbon dioxide, the CO₂ concentration is used to evaluate air quality and ventilation.

Outdoor CO₂ concentration levels are at just over 400 ppm in Australia. A 450 ppm concentration difference indoors (of less than a total of 850 ppm) is regarded as best practice. CO₂ levels of less than 400 ppm above outdoor concentrations is classified as “high indoor air quality”.

Our analysis of ten classrooms in five schools shows the CO₂ concentrations in Victorian schools are far over the less than 850 ppm prescribed by the National Construction Code. This indicates very poor ventilation.

Read more: We can’t afford to ignore indoor air quality – our lives depend on it

In our analysis, average classroom ventilation rates ranged between 1.8 to 9.9 L/s per person which are far below the 10-12 L/s per person requirement. Around 80% of classrooms had ventilation rates below this requirement.

Some classrooms we saw were fitted with air conditioning systems but were stuffy and not provided with adequate outdoor air.

Schools comply with the NCC specifications but most classroom use is controlled by teacher preferences which could work against code requirements and result in poor indoor conditions.

This could mean operation of air conditioning systems, closing and opening of windows and leaving doors closed or wide open may contribute to the fluctuations and peak levels of CO₂ concentration and slow air exchange.

What about the rest of the country?

Similar results as ours were found in a study in New South Wales where classrooms had average CO₂ concentration during autumn ranging from 442 ppm to 1,510 ppm, and 718 ppm to 2,114 ppm in winter. Maximum CO₂ concentrations exceeded 2,900 ppm during the occupied period.

Conditions in Victorian school classrooms were also similar with those found in New Zealand primary classrooms, where CO₂ concentrations ranged from 1,032 ppm to 2,122 ppm with maximum levels exceeding 4,000 ppm during school hours in winter.

However, a study of naturally ventilated schools in Brisbane showed median indoor CO₂ concentrations during school hours were generally lower than the guideline concentration. But average concentrations for some classrooms still ranged from 1,043 to 1,370 ppm.

Poor classroom air doesn’t only affect health. It has other social and economic consequences such as student performance and staff productivity. Improving school education is a priority in Australia. This means there is a strong incentive to improve indoor conditions in schools.

– ref. Australian children are learning in classrooms with very poor air quality – https://theconversation.com/australian-children-are-learning-in-classrooms-with-very-poor-air-quality-154950

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

By unilaterally revoking the citizenship of the 26-year-old woman detained in Turkey this week, Australia has potentially left her two children in diplomatic limbo.

Known only as “S.A.” (but named by the ABC as Suhayra Aden from Melbourne), she was the subject of an Interpol blue notice, according to the Turkish Ministry of National Defence, which alleges she was a terrorist with Islamic State.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacdina Ardern responded sternly to Australia’s actions, saying it amounted to their dumping the problem on New Zealand’s doorstep.

The mother had dual New Zealand and Australian citizenship, but left New Zealand for Australia at the age of six, and travelled to Syria from Australia.

It would now appear Australia is also seeking to shut the door on the two children. To paraphrase the old saying, the sins of the mother are being visited upon the children.

The ‘privileges’ of citizenship

The stripping of citizenship as a counter-terrorism measure seeks to address the threat posed by individuals suspected of, or engaged in, terrorist activity.

It’s a tactic used by many countries to prevent citizens from returning when they’re perceived as a risk to national security.

Read more: New Zealand is violating the rights of its children. Is it time to change the legal definition of age discrimination?

These types of legal balancing acts between an individual’s human rights and national security are not uncommon. As Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has stated more prosaically, his job is to protect Australians from terrorists “enjoying privileges” of citizenship.

But that view overlooks the situation of two other individuals. Aged five and under, they are presumably not suspected of terrorist activity. Legally, this raises questions about the justification for limiting their citizenship rights.

Where do the children stand?

In spite of the seeming intractability of the row between the two countries, the situation facing these children needs resolving.

Key to that will be the recognition that children enjoy the same human rights protections as adults under the general framework of international human rights law. They also have particular and specific protection under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989.

Both Australia and New Zealand have accepted these international legal obligations, meaning a number of the provisions of this convention must inform both countries’ decisions in this case.

The convention opens by stating that the family is “the fundamental group of society” and the child should grow up in a family environment.

Similarly, involuntary separation is to be avoided, unless it is in the child’s best interests.

The right to a nationality

Children have a right to a nationality. As far as possible, they also have the right to know and be cared for by their parents.

This right is particularly important in the current situation. Children born overseas to Australian citizens can claim Australian citizenship upon application. So too can the children of New Zealanders born overseas.

However, the children of Australian citizens who have had their citizenship revoked can themselves lose their citizenship rights.

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child highlighted the potential impact on the citizenship of Australian children. It called for Australia to ensure no child is deprived of citizenship on any ground regardless of the status of his or her parents.

Human rights versus national security

The case also raises questions around the balancing of national security and human rights. For the children involved, a number of the convention’s guiding principles underpin these rights.

As part of the prohibition of discrimination, states are required to ensure the child is protected against all forms of discrimination or punishment on the basis of the status or activities of the child’s parents.

Read more: ‘The Australian government is not listening’: how our country is failing to protect its children

The best interests of the child should govern all decisions relating to them, and the child has a right to be heard in all proceedings affecting them.

The child also has the right to life, survival and development. Given reports that a third sibling has died of pneumonia, this right and guiding principle takes on real significance.

In essence, then, the rights of the child must inform any decisions about the future of these children. As part of that process, the maintenance of relationships with the wider family unit — if not their mother — is still key and the child’s best interests must be taken into account.

These are rights, not privileges.

– ref. With their mother’s Australian citizenship cancelled over alleged ISIS-links, how will NZ deal with her children? – https://theconversation.com/with-their-mothers-australian-citizenship-cancelled-over-alleged-isis-links-how-will-nz-deal-with-her-children-155385

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eileen Baldry, Professor of Criminology, UNSW

This week, the royal commission into the violence, abuse and neglect of people with disability will begin hold hearings on a shameful subject that has long been neglected: the indefinite detention of people with cognitive impairments and/or mental illness in our criminal justice systems.

Indefinite detention is what happens to defendants in criminal cases when they are deemed unfit to stand trial.

In common law, this “unfitness test” is based on whether the accused has sufficient mental or intellectual capacity to understand the proceedings and make an adequate defence.

If a person is found unfit to plead, they can instead be detained in a prison or forensic unit for the purposes of treatment. This detention can be indefinite if the person is deemed to be a risk of harming themselves or others and is not seen to improve.

While every state and territory has indefinite detention, not every jurisdiction collects or publishes statistics on how many people are being held or for how long.

Australians for Disability Justice, an advocacy group, believes over 1,000 people with cognitive impairments and/or mental illness are indefinitely detained in Australia every year. According to the group, up to 30% of these people are Indigenous.

This is supported by research from UNSW, which shows Indigenous people are significantly over-represented among those with disability in Australian prisons.

Governments put on notice

Federal, state and territory governments have been put on notice about this practice before.

In 2016, a Senate inquiry recommended significant reforms to the use of indefinite detention, especially when it came to those with cognitive impairments.

The report was particularly concerned about “the sometimes arbitrary nature of such detention”, particularly “in a criminal justice facility”.

The UN Committee for the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD) has also formally asked Australia twice now to dismantle its indefinite detention regime. Scotland leads the world in doing away with the practice, and many European countries are following suit.

Read more: Here’s how we can stop putting Aboriginal people with disabilities in prison

Disability justice advocates have also long pushed for change in Australia. For example, the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute reviewed the law in that state and recommended significantly limiting the use of indefinite detention.

Most jurisdictions have a review tribunal process to determine whether people being held indefinitely can eventually be released with the help of medication or behaviour support. However, all reviews are based narrowly on the risk these people pose to themselves or the community, not on whether a person can live safely in the community with support.

Many people with mental health disorders also do not respond to medications or other therapies. And crucially, there is no “cure” for a person with cognitive impairment, such as an intellectual disability or acquired brain injury.

Abuse in detention

Another concern is that indefinite detention is often disproportionate to the offence alleged to have been committed.

For example, people can be held indefinitely for minor crimes, such as threatening behaviour. Those without disability who are convicted of a crime like this receive a sentence with a definite release date.

This means there are two different forms of justice being meted out in Australia — one for people with disability and another for those without disability. In other words, justice is not being served.

Read more: People with cognitive disability shouldn’t be in prison because they’re ‘unfit to plead’. There are alternatives

In one notable case, the UN CRDP found the Australian government violated the rights of an intellectually disabled Yamatji man, Marlon Noble, who was held for 10 years without being convicted of a crime.

The committee noted that Noble had no idea how long he would be held. It wrote

the whole judicial procedure focused on his mental capacity to stand trial without giving him any possibility to plead not guilty and test the evidence submitted against him.

Making matters even worse, people with cognitive impairment and mental illness who are indefinitely detained also experience serious human rights violations in prisons or forensic units.

Time and again, the Australian Human Rights Commission has found that Indigenous people with cognitive disability have experienced cruel and unusual punishment in detention, such as being held in isolation and without disability support.

In 2016, the ABC featured the story of a young Arrente man who had been placed into a restraint chair and injected with tranquillisers up to 17 times by staff at the Alice Springs Correctional Centre.

Despite serious objections from his guardians, the young man remains indefinitely detained in the Northern Territory. His case, along with others, has been referred to the UN.

His family and guardians will also present evidence at the royal commission hearings, detailing his experience in indefinite detention.

Noble, the Arrente man and many others have experienced abuse and violence in their lives due to their disability, including during their time in detention. They, and thousands like them, have been subjected to forced medications and restraints even though these are clearly not therapeutic for people with cognitive disability.

It’s shameful this is happening in a country as affluent as Australia, which has ample capacity to care for people with disability, even those who require highly complex support.

Read more: Aboriginal people with disabilities get caught in a spiral of over-policing

What needs to change

In dismantling our indefinite detention system, the key is to provide more disability-focused support to those at risk of coming into contact with criminal justice systems.

Besides this, other reforms are also urgently needed:

1. Reforming the law to provide other justice options for defendants who are deemed unfit to stand trial, including diverting them from court and potential detention. The length of detention should also be proportionate to the crimes they are alleged to have committed.

2. Establishing a community-based, culturally safe accommodation and treatment system for people with disability accused of crimes to serve as an alternative to prison, as is done in Scotland.

3. Providing additional legal support to people deemed unfit to stand trial, giving them a voice in the process.

It is inhumane to hold anyone with disability in indefinite detention in such an arbitrary manner. We hope that by sharing the stories of these people with the royal commission, this deplorable exercise will finally be put to an end.

– ref. Over 1,000 Australians with cognitive disability are detained indefinitely each year. This shameful practice needs to stop – https://theconversation.com/over-1-000-australians-with-cognitive-disability-are-detained-indefinitely-each-year-this-shameful-practice-needs-to-stop-153724

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris James, ARC DECRA Fellow, Centre for Hypersonics, School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering, The University of Queensland

This month has been a busy one for Mars exploration. Several countries sent missions to the red planet in June last year, taking advantage of a launch window. Most have now arrived after their eight-month voyage.

Within the next few days, NASA will perform a direct entry of the Martian atmosphere to land the Perseverance rover in Mars’s Jezero Crater.

Read more: As new probes reach Mars, here’s what we know so far from trips to the red planet

Perseverance, about the size of a car, is the largest Mars payload ever — it literally weighs a tonne. After landing, the rover will search for signs of ancient life and gather samples to eventually be returned to Earth.

The mission will use similar hardware to that of the 2012 Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission, which landed the Curiosity rover, but will have certain upgrades including improved rover landing accuracy.

Curiosity’s voyage provided a wealth of information about what kind of environment Mars 2020 might face and what technology it would need to survive.

Mars: a most alien land

As Mars is a hostile and remote environment with an atmosphere about 100 times thinner than Earth’s, there’s little atmosphere for incoming spacecraft to use to slow down aerodynamically.

Rather, surviving entry to Mars requires a creative mix of aerodynamics, parachutes, retropropulsion (using engine thrust to decelerate for landing) and often a large airbag.

Also, models of Martian weather aren’t updated in real time, so we don’t know exactly what environment a probe will face during entry. Unpredictable weather events, especially dust storms, are one reason landing accuracy has suffered in previous missions.

Read more: Mars missions from China and UAE are set to go into orbit – here’s what they could discover

NASA engineers call the entry, descent and landing phase (EDL) of Mars entry missions the “seven minutes of terror”. In just seven minutes there are myriad ways entry can fail.

Thermal protection

The 2012 MSL spacecraft was fitted with a 4.5-metre-diameter heat shield that protected the vehicle during its descent through Mars’s atmosphere.

It entered the Martian atmosphere at around 5,900m per second. This is hypersonic, which means it’s more than five times the speed of sound.

Mars 2020 will be similar. It will rely heavily on its thermal protection system, including a front heat shield and backshell heat shield, to stop hot flow from damaging the rover stowed inside.

At hypersonic speeds, Mars’s atmosphere won’t be able to get out of the spacecraft’s way fast enough. As a result, a strong shock wave will form off the front.

In this case, gas in front of the vehicle will be rapidly compressed, causing a huge jump in pressure and temperature between the shock wave and the heat shield.

The hot post-shock flow heats up the surface of the heat shield during the entry, but the heat shield protects the internal structure from this heat.

Since the MSL 2012 and Mars 2020 missions use relatively larger payloads, these spacecrafts are at higher risk of overheating during the entry phase.

But MSL effectively circumvented this issue, largely thanks to a specially-designed heat shield which was the first Mars vehicle ever to make use of NASA’s Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator (PICA) material.

This material, which the Mars 2020 spacecraft also uses, is made of chopped carbon-fibre embedded in a synthetic resin. It’s very light, can absorb immense heat and is an effective insulator.

Guided entry

All entries before the 2012 MSL mission had been unguided, meaning they weren’t controlled in real-time by a flight computer.

Instead, the spacecraft were designed to hit the Mars’s “entry interface” (125km above the ground) in a particular way, before landing wherever the Martian winds took them. With this came significant landing uncertainty.

The area of landing uncertainty is called the landing ellipse. NASA’s 1970s Viking Mars missions had an estimated landing ellipse of 280x100km. But both MSL and now Mars 2020 were built to outperform previous efforts.

The MSL mission was the first guided Mars entry. An upgraded version of the Apollo guidance computer was used to control the vehicle in real time to ensure an accurate landing.

With this, MSL reduced its estimated landing ellipse to 20×6.5km and ended up landing just 2km from its target. With any luck, Mars 2020 will achieve similar results.

Supersonic parachuting

A parachute will be used to slow down the Mars 2020 spacecraft enough for final landing manoeuvres to be performed.

With a 21.5m diameter, the parachute will be the largest ever used on Mars and will have to be deployed faster than the speed of sound.

Deploying the parachute at the right time will be critical for achieving an accurate landing.

A brand new technology called “range trigger” will control the parachute’s deployment time, based on the spacecraft’s relative position to its desired landing spot.

State-of-the-art navigation

About 20 seconds after the parachute opens, the heat shield will separate from the spacecraft, exposing Perseverance to the Martian environment. Its cameras and sensors can begin to collect information as it approaches ground.

The rover’s specialised terrain-relative navigation system will help it land safely by diverting it to a stable landing surface.

Perseverance will compare a pre-loaded map of the landing site with images collected during its rapid descent. It should then be able to identify landmarks below and estimate its relative position to the ground to an accuracy of about 40m.

Terrain-relative navigation is far superior to methods used for past Mars entries. Older spacecraft had to rely on their own internal estimates of their location during entry.

And there was no way to effectively recalibrate this information. They could only guess where they were to an accuracy of about 2-3km as they approached ground.

Read more: Mars InSight: why we’ll be listening to the landing of the Perseverance rover

The final touchdown

The parachute carrying the Mars 2020 spacecraft can only slow it down to about 320km per hour.

To land safely, the spacecraft will jettison the parachute and backshell and use rockets facing the ground to ease down for the final 2,100m. This is called “retropropulsion”.

And to avoid using airbags to land the rover (as was done in missions prior to MSL), Mars 2020 will use the “skycrane” manoeuvre; a set of cables will slowly lower Perseverance to the ground as it prepares for autonomous operation.

Once Perseverance senses its wheels are safely on the ground, it will cut the cables connected to the descent vehicle (which will fly off and crash somewhere in the distance).

And with that, the seven minutes of terror will be over.

– ref. ‘7 minutes of terror’: a look at the technology Perseverance will need to survive landing on Mars – https://theconversation.com/7-minutes-of-terror-a-look-at-the-technology-perseverance-will-need-to-survive-landing-on-mars-155046

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rick Sarre, Emeritus Professor of Law and Criminal Justice, University of South Australia

Australia’s long-awaited COVID vaccine rollout is scheduled to begin on Monday.

New laws have just been passed mandating the recording of COVID-19 vaccine information on the Australian Immunisation Register. The changes to the Australian Immunisation Register Act 2015 will mean vaccination providers, such as GP clinics, will need to report to the government who was given the COVID-19 vaccine, both within and outside of Australia.

The act introduces penalties for providers who don’t comply with requests for information. Before these changes were made, the Australian Immunisation Register, which records inoculations (such as for seasonal influenza) under school-based programs and those given privately, was maintained on a voluntary basis.

Now vaccine providers will have no choice but to add personal information to the register about people’s vaccination status. This information can be accessed by authorised government officials for health and other purposes.

The federal government has also announced that Australians will be able to provide proof of vaccination through an app on their phone.

The idea is that this will allow those who have been vaccinated access to services such as air travel. It may also bestow certain privileges, such as being eligible to attend sports stadiums and theatres.

These announcements appear to give rise to a very satisfactory result: mandatory reporting of inoculations will give authorities accurate information about who has received the jab, and those people in turn can prove their vaccinated status on a readily accessible app if need be. Lots of Australians will happily download the app; some might even see it as their civic duty.

But there will be many who will baulk at these arrangements. So what are their rights?

In a country like ours, without a constitutional Bill of Rights, can you refuse to be vaccinated and so be denied a service, preference or privilege? Who has the legal power to ask you to prove you have been vaccinated? And can you refuse to answer the vaccination question?

Will you need to prove you’ve had a vaccine to travel?

Consider an airline that refuses to carry a person who has not been vaccinated. Businesses can generally set out the terms and conditions that apply to the provision of their services. But they cross the legal line if their terms or conditions discriminate against a person on the grounds of a personal attribute such as gender, race or disability.

A disability can include a range of physical, medical and psychological features that may affect a person’s decision to be vaccinated. For example, discriminating against people who are not vaccinated against COVID-19 because of a serious medical condition could constitute disability discrimination under federal law.

This means that if an airline wanted to make vaccination a condition of flight, it would need to have a strategy to accommodate people with disabilities who were not vaccinated. The airline could also offer options to those who choose for any reason not to be vaccinated by insisting travellers distance themselves from other travellers by buying three seats (or two business class seats). There is no legislative protection, incidentally, for discriminatory practices that target the less well-off.

Keep in mind the federal government could legislate to mandate that a person cannot fly into Australia without having been vaccinated. A new law like this could override existing anti-discrimination laws, giving airlines the green light to refuse service to anyone without proof of vaccination on inbound international flights.

Whatever Australian laws might be made in this regard, many countries are likely to adopt strict vaccination entry requirements, making it very unwise to leave this country without a vaccination.

Read more: Herd immunity is the end game for the pandemic, but the AstraZeneca vaccine won’t get us there

In the workplace

State and federal laws allow managers to make reasonable demands that staff comply with certain conditions and impose obligations to ensure workplaces are safe. For those whose job requires looking after others (such as aged care, childcare, health work or quarantine operations), vaccinations could become mandatory by law. This is because that would be a reasonable requirement for a safe workplace for both worker and visitor.

In jobs that don’t require close contact with other people, employers will not be able to mandate vaccinations unless new laws are passed. Even without such new laws, workers who are not vaccinated can reasonably expect accommodations will be made for them, such as facilitating working from home or working separately from colleagues.

Read more: Can the government, or my employer, force me to get a COVID-19 vaccine under the law?

Do you have a “right to silence” about vaccination?

The changes to the Australian Immunisation Register Act mean your vaccine status will now be recorded on the register. This information can be accessed by you through your myGov app or Medicare account, as well as by authorised officials.

The act also includes a broad power for the health minister (or their delegate) to authorise a person to access and use personal vaccination information, if they are satisfied it is in the public interest to do so. This could include authorising a public servant from a state or territory department to access the register when responding to a COVID-19 outbreak, but may be broad enough to authorise access beyond healthcare responses, for example to provide access to schools or childcare centres.

Under section 11(2) of the act, it is possible for a person to formally request their identifying information on the register not be shared with others. This has the potential to provide some privacy protections for those savvy enough to make the required application before their identifying information has been shared.

The changes to the act do not yet give private companies or private service providers direct access to the register. Any alteration to these protocols would require more amendments, or a specific authorisation to be given by the health minister. If that were to happen there would be significant implications for the general right Australians have to information privacy.

The potential for the Australian Immunisation Register to be accessed by a broad range of people for a broad range of purposes was considered by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights when it looked into the recent changes. The committee raised questions about whether the privacy protections currently contained in the act were sufficient, but did not provide a “concluded view” on the human rights compatibility of the amending legislation. Despite the committee’s ambivalence, the changes are now law.

In Australia, we rely on our elected officials to make the final decision on whether measures to promote public health are proportionate to their impact on other rights, freedoms and interests.

As we race to roll out the vaccine, we can only hope our elected representatives pause to heed advice from a range of quarters, including from human rights advocates, on whether they have got the balance right.

– ref. The COVID vaccine is here. When and to whom will we need to prove we’ve had it? – https://theconversation.com/the-covid-vaccine-is-here-when-and-to-whom-will-we-need-to-prove-weve-had-it-155122

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sue Jackson, Professor, Australian Rivers Institute, Griffith University

It’s widely understood that rivers, wetlands and other waterways hold particular significance for First Nations people. It’s less well understood that Indigenous peoples are denied effective rights in Australia’s water economy.

Australia’s laws and policies prevent First Nations from fully participating in, and benefiting from, decisions about water. In fact, Indigenous peoples hold less than 1% of Australia’s water rights.

A Productivity Commission report into national water policy released last week acknowledged the demands of First Nations, noting “Traditional Owners aspire to much greater access to, and control over, water resources”.

The commission suggested a suite of policy reforms. While the recommendations go further than previous official reports, they show a lack of ambition and would ensure water justice continues to be denied to First Nations.

No voice, no justice

First Nations people have almost no say in how water is used in Australia. This denies them the power to prevent water extraction that will damage communities and landscapes, and in many cases means they’re unable to fulfil their responsibilities to care for Country.

It also means First Nations are excluded from much of Australia’s agricultural wealth, which is tied to access to water for irrigation.

In the New South Wales portion of the Murray-Darling Basin, for example, our research found Indigenous peoples are almost 10% of the population yet comprise only 3.5% of the agricultural workforce. First Nations also own just 0.5% of agricultural businesses and receive less than 0.1% of agricultural revenue.

Read more: Aboriginal voices are missing from the Murray-Darling Basin crisis

Piecemeal water reform

The National Water Initiative – a blueprint for water reform signed by all Australian governments in 2004 – committed to consulting with Traditional Owners in water planning, accounting for native title rights to water and including cultural values in water plans.

The Productivity Commission report said progress towards these commitments “has been slow and objectives have not been fully achieved”.

The report contains several welcome recommendations, including that:

• a new water policy be devised, with a dedicated objective and targets to improve First Nations access to water and involvement in water management

• the recently formed Committee on Aboriginal Water Interests “co-design” new provisions relating to First Nations’ water interests, and have direct dialogue with water ministers

• a First Nations-led model of water reform be adopted, centred on the concept of “cultural flows”. This concept calls for substantial increases to First Nations’ water access and more control in decision-making.

Cause of injustice ignored

Sadly, the Productivity Commission does not address the structural problems underlying inequities in Indigenous water rights.

In particular, it wrongly assumes policy success should be measured in terms of efficiency and the integrity of water markets, rather than justice for First Nations.

Water sold on markets goes to the highest bidder. This rewards large agricultural enterprises and others who historically held land and water rights, gained through the dispossession of First Nations people. And it penalises First Nations peoples who are unlikely to own productive farming land, or who don’t always wish to use water for irrigated agriculture.

In some cases, poorly funded Indigenous organisations have traded away their water rights to keep afloat, and will find it near-impossible to buy the water back. Our research shows this pattern drove a 17% decline in Indigenous water holdings in the Murray-Darling Basin over the past decade.

Read more: Australia has an ugly legacy of denying water rights to Aboriginal people. Not much has changed

The commission’s recommendations rely heavily on policy architecture and legal foundations that fail First Nations.

For example, in 1998 the Howard Government legislated to exclude water infrastructure and entitlements from parts of the Native Title Act. This means that infrastructure and licensing can proceed without negotiation with native title holders.

The Productivity Commission overlooked ways to correct this injustice – such as the Law Reform Commission’s proposal to change the law so native title holders can benefit from commercial use of water.

The commission’s response to conflict over developments such as dams is also inadequate. Rather than transfer final decision-making power to First Nations groups, it proposes that developments be more “culturally responsive”.

This will not protect cultural heritage. Case in point is the NSW government’s plan to raise the Warragamba Dam wall, creating a flood that threatens more than 1200 Indigenous cultural sites. Statutory protections are needed to head off such proposals.

Stronger models for reform

The United Nations’ Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is clear: Indigenous peoples should have the power to decide on development proposed on their lands and waters.

An agreement between the Ngarrindjeri nation and the South Australian government in the lower Murray River region shows how even modest rights can both empower Traditional Owners and lead to successful environmental management.

The agreement enables a co-management approach where authority in developing natural resource management policy is shared. Unfortunately, reforms of this type are beyond the ambition of the Productivity Commission report.

Addressing water injustice also requires returning water to First Nations, such as by buying back water entitlements and guaranteeing cultural flows in water plans. The Productivity Commission outlines how this might occur, but falls short of recommending this vital measure.

The current policy framework has allowed some advances. But if water justice to Indigenous peoples is to be realised, changes to policy and laws must go far deeper.

Read more: Victoria just gave 2 billion litres of water back to Indigenous people. Here’s what that means for the rest of Australia

– ref. Water injustice runs deep in Australia. Fixing it means handing control to First Nations – https://theconversation.com/water-injustice-runs-deep-in-australia-fixing-it-means-handing-control-to-first-nations-155286

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richelle Butcher, Veterinary Resident at Wildbase, Massey University

Plastic in the ocean can be deadly for marine wildlife and seabirds around the globe, but our latest study shows single-use plastics are a bigger threat to endangered albatrosses in the southern hemisphere than we previously thought.

You may have heard of the Great Pacific garbage patch in the northern Pacific, but plastic pollution in the southern hemisphere’s oceans has increased by orders of magnitude in recent years.

We examined the causes of death of 107 albatrosses received by wildlife hospitals and pathology services in Australia and New Zealand and found ocean plastic is an underestimated threat.

Plastic drink bottles, disposable utensils and balloons are among the most deadly items.

Albatrosses are some the world’s most imperiled seabirds, with 73% of species threatened with extinction. Most species live in the southern hemisphere.

We estimate plastic ingestion causes up to 17.5% of near-shore albatross deaths in the southern hemisphere and should be considered a substantial threat to albatross populations.

Read more: These are the plastic items that most kill whales, dolphins, turtles and seabirds

Magnificent ocean wanderers

Albatrosses spend their entire lives at sea and can live for more than 70 years. They return to land only to reunite with their mate and raise a single chick during the warmer months.

Although the world’s largest flying birds are rarely seen from land, human activities are driving nearly three quarters of albatross species to extinction.

Each year, thousands of albatrosses are caught as unintended bycatch and killed by fishing boats. Introduced rats and mice eat their chicks alive on remote islands and the ocean where they spend their lives is becoming increasingly warmer and filled with plastic.

Young Laysan albatrosses with their bellies full of plastic are not just a tragic tale from the remote northern Pacific. Albatrosses are dying from plastic in the southern oceans, too.

When a Royal albatross recently died in care at Wildbase Hospital after eating a plastic bottle, it was not an isolated incident.

Single-use plastics hit albatrosses close to home

Eighteen of the world’s 22 albatross species live in the southern hemisphere, where plastic is currently considered a lesser threat. But the amount of discarded plastic is increasing every year, mostly leaked from towns and cities and accumulating near the shore.

Single-use items make up most of the trash found on coastlines around the world. Seven of the ten most common items — drink bottles, food wrappers and grocery bags — are made of plastic.

When albatrosses are found struggling near the shore in New Zealand, they are delivered to wildlife hospitals such as Wildbase Hospital and The Nest Te Kōhanga. A recent spate of plastic-linked deaths spurred us to dig a little deeper into the risk of plastic pollution to these magnificent ocean wanderers.

A thousand cuts: plastic and other threats

Of the 107 albatrosses of 12 species we examined, plastic was the cause of death in half of the birds that had ingested it. In the cases we examined, plastic deaths were more common than fisheries-related deaths or oiling.

We compared these cases with data on plastic ingestion and fishery interaction rates from other studies. Based on our findings, we used statistical methods to estimate how many albatrosses were likely to eat plastic and might die from ingesting it, and how these figures compared to other major threats such as fisheries bycatch.

We found that in the near-shore areas of Australia and New Zealand, the ingestion of plastic is likely to cause about 3.4% of albatross deaths. In more polluted near-shore areas, such as those off Brazil, we estimate plastic ingestion causes 17.5% of all albatross deaths.

Read more: Plastic poses biggest threat to seabirds in New Zealand waters, where more breed than elsewhere

Because albatrosses are highly migratory, even those birds that live in less polluted areas are at risk as they wander the global ocean, travelling to polluted waters. Our results suggest the ingestion of plastic is at least of equivalent concern as long-line fishing in near-shore areas.

For threatened and declining albatross species, these rates of additional mortality are a serious concern and could result in further population losses.

Deadly junk food for marine life

Not all types of plastic are equally deadly when eaten. Albatrosses can regurgitate many of the indigestible items they eat.

Soft plastic and rubber items (such as latex balloons), in particular, can be deadly for marine animals because they often become trapped in the gut and cause fatal blockages, leading to a long, slow death by starvation. Plastic is difficult to see with common scanning techniques, and gut blockages often remain undetected.

Albatrosses like to eat squid, and inexperienced young birds are especially prone to mistaking balloons and other plastic for food, with potentially lethal consequences.

We recommend that wildlife hospitals, carers and biologists consider gastric obstruction when sick albatrosses are presented. Our publication includes a checklist to help in the detection of gastric blockages.

Global cooperation to reduce leakage of plastic items into the ocean — such as the Basel Convention and the recommendations by the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy — are first steps towards preventing unnecessary deaths of marine animals.

Read more: We need a legally binding treaty to make plastic pollution history

Stronger adherence to multilateral agreements, such as the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels which aims to reduce the impact of activities known to kill albatrosses, would help prevent the decline of breeding populations to unsustainably low levels.

If populations fall to critically endangered levels, intensive remediation including the expansion of chick and nest protection programmes, invasive species eradication and seabird translocations, may be required to prevent species extinction.

We would like to acknowledge our New Zealand and Australian colleagues who contributed to this research project. Veterinarians Baukje Lenting and Phil Kowalski care for injured seabirds and other wildlife at The Nest Te Kōhanga at Wellington Zoo. Veterinarian Megan Jolly cares for injured wildlife at Wildbase Hospital and vet pathologist Stuart Hunter provides a nationwide wildlife pathology service at Wildbase pathology at Massey University. David Stewart conducts threatened species research and monitoring at the Queensland state government’s Department of Environment and Science.

– ref. Plastic in the ocean kills more threatened albatrosses than we thought – https://theconversation.com/plastic-in-the-ocean-kills-more-threatened-albatrosses-than-we-thought-154925

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Angela Lehmann, Honorary Lecturer, College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University

A petition from more than 17,000 international students asking for exemptions to the border closure was presented to the Australian parliament last week. The latest available figures show about 20% of Australia’s enrolled international students were stranded offshore. Of the 92,191 in this position, 70% were Chinese.

We worked with Chinese international students to collect 28 written accounts of what their life has been like over the past year. Those that responded were male and female at varying stages of their studies.

The stories we collected in our ongoing research paint a picture of anxiety, embarrassment and shame. Many feel the burden of placing financial pressure on their parents. Some female students are under pressure to give up their study plans and focus on traditional gendered expectations to earn money and get married before their late 20s.

Feeling shame and embarrassment

Shen is a first-year student from rural China. It had been her dream to study abroad since she first heard about the possibility from a distant relative.

When the borders closed, she struggled to convince her parents to pay the fees. With COVID-19 cases easing in China, she reassured them it was only a matter of time before the borders were open. Twelve months later, Shen is feeling embarrassment and shame. She says:

Finally, they relented and agreed to pay the tuition on the condition that, as a backup plan, I would also prepare for the gaokao [China’s college entrance exam]. I accepted their terms and at the end of April my father sent the tuition fee of 150,000 yuan; half of their savings from the last decade. The rest of my fees would be paid through the selling of the family convenience store and any extra money I made at my part-time job.

Shen passed her exam and now faces pressure to study at home. Part of her decision to study abroad was to explore alternative visions of her future. Her dream was about “a chance to experience a new way of learning and a new way of life”.

Many students wrote about the shame they felt being stuck in China. Some recounted neighbours and their local community questioning and making fun of their ambition to study abroad during the pandemic.

One student wrote about how she desperately hoped she could leave before the Chinese New Year celebrations:

A barrage of criticism from disapproving relatives surely awaits me over Chinese New Year. More importantly, this time reserved for family reunion raises the question, where is home for an outsider that never quite fits?

Tensions within families and communities

The students’ accounts tell of increasing family tensions about finances and delayed career paths in particular.

Jing had always dreamt of studying clinical medicine abroad and was due to start in Australia in 2020. Her parents were not sold on the idea to begin with and now she faces pressure to study in China instead. She recounts what they tell her:

Your classmates are already in their third year of university; you have no work experience and only a high school diploma. Who could possibly want you? We have already waited a year for Australia. What if it is another three years, what if it’s five, will you still wait then? You’re running down a dead end. Are you going to just keep going until you hit a wall? Will your dreams pay your bills?

They say: “Darling, it’s all our fault. We should never have let you go in the first place.”

Jing says she feels she is drifting apart from her parents.

Fighting to hold onto their dream

A recent University of Melbourne study followed 50 female Chinese students over five years. It found studying abroad allowed them to delay marriage by a few years while they built a sense of individualism and identity. Studying abroad was seen as “time out” from a standard feminine life script hinging on marriage and family and allowed young women to experience alternative futures.

The written accounts we analysed describe the pandemic and border closures as putting a stop to this experience. Some now face pressure to give up plans to study abroad and instead conform to expectations to enter the workforce and marriage.

Mei is a medical student who says her “life has come to a standstill”. She writes:

I live in a city in the middle of nowhere, a place where people don’t see the value of education, especially for girls. There is a common adage here: rather than studying well a girl is better off marrying well. Even my parents urge me to give up on studying abroad and instead find a stable job and get married […]

Both my parents come from humble backgrounds and supporting my aspiration to study abroad has been just one more pressure in their lives […] Nowadays, even spending a few dollars on milk tea makes me anxious that I am only affirming their belief that I am freeloading off my parents.

Many of these young women are determined to wait for borders to reopen and fulfil their ambition. One wrote:

Pandemic or not, I will stick to my plan.

These students need support

These stories demonstrate the intimate ways Australia’s higher education sector is linked with the everyday lives of young people globally. During the pandemic, being “stuck at home” has affected not only students, but also their families and their relationships with their communities.

These stories highlight the diverse experiences of international students while Australia’s borders are closed and offer a different take on the importance and role of international education.

Connecting these students to Australian counterparts to help with social relationships – albeit digitally for now – could go some way to ensuring these young people, and their families, are supported and reassured.

Their stories also suggest government messaging about Australia’s border closures should be aimed at families – not individuals. And it should be targeted, empathetic and, for this particular cohort, in Mandarin.

– ref. ‘You’re running down a dead end’: stranded students feel shame and pressure to give up study – https://theconversation.com/youre-running-down-a-dead-end-stranded-students-feel-shame-and-pressure-to-give-up-study-155207

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cameron Tonkinwise, Professor, School of Design, University of Technology Sydney

Our cities, designed for one set of climatic ranges, are increasingly “out of place” as average temperatures rise. The days above 40℃ and nights above 30℃ are increasing, especially in the expanding suburbs of Australian cities. This presents us with a massive redesign project.

Our Cooling the Commons research project, funded by Landcom, has launched a new approach using design patterns to guide how we design, and redesign, how we live in response to a changing climate.

A design pattern is first an observation: “People in that kind of designed situation tend to do this sort of thing”. It is then possible to design an intervention that redirects those tendencies. If that intervention succeeds, it can become a recommended pattern to help other designers: “If you encounter this kind of situation, try to make these kinds of interventions”.

Based on an international survey of what has worked well elsewhere, we have compiled a bank of patterns. These range from current patterns that increase heat and discomfort, through to remedial patterns for improving existing urban areas, to ideal patterns for new developments.

Read more: Cities could get more than 4°C hotter by 2100. To keep cool in Australia, we urgently need a national planning policy

The problems with current approaches

Conventionally, designing is done in three ways:

1. a designer can try to (re)design everything all at once and for all time, an approach closest to current planning practices, particularly of “greenfield” sites involving building from scratch

2. a designer can seek a technical solution that can be widely replicated – think of mass-produced products, from phones to cars

3. a designer can produce a bespoke design for each client, crafting context-specific solutions one at a time. This is often how architects work.

Given the scale of our cities, we are not in a position to start again – though climate change might force large numbers of people to move.

Some places in China and the Middle East are experimenting with building wholly new cities. However, such total designs can prove unable to adapt to changing circumstances like climatic shifts that demand cities be remade – “metrofitting”. It is better to have modular designs that piece together, can pull apart and aim to remain modifiable over time.

The second, technical approach is what many people expect of designers these days. But this often adds to the problem by missing important differences from one place or community to another.

Air conditioners are a good example. While they may offer immediate relief in buildings that weren’t designed to promote natural ventilation, they also create problems.

Not everyone can afford to buy and run air conditioners, which greatly increase energy use. And many buildings are not designed to be air-conditioned efficiently. There are also social impacts such as blowing heat on neighbours and pedestrians, noisy external fans, and people being isolated in their homes on hot days.

Read more: If planners understand it’s cool to green cities, what’s stopping them?

We need more systemic solutions than one-size-fits-all technologies like air conditioning.

However, the third kind of designing – creating tailored solutions for each unique situation – is too slow in the face of already changed climates.

This means designers need to adopt a fourth approach, known as pattern thinking. It helps designers to see what is not working well, where and when, and so how to redirect those situations toward more preferable ones.

How does pattern thinking work?

One kind of pattern is a set of rules specifying something that can be repeated over and over. This is the meaning of pattern normally associated with decorative forms, or with making clothes, templates for furniture, or blueprints for buildings.

But the patterns we are talking about, context-specific interactions between people and things, are more like habits. They are tendencies that lead to repeated actions. For example, consider the patterns of car-oriented urban development.

Hard-surfaced roads and driveways are major sources of urban heat. Car-oriented planning downplays patterns of walking, through the lack of footpaths, shade and pedestrian-oriented night lighting, or the distances between shops, schools and work. This means people who can afford it might get into the habit of staying in air-conditioned houses, only occasionally going in their air-conditioned cars to air-conditioned shopping malls.

To counter this, we need to create patterns for street shading along footpaths and around public transport stops. Generic tree plantings to meet abstract canopy coverage targets are not enough. They must take into account the soil and moisture conditions of different neighbourhoods, and different use patterns, including patterns of tree care.

Read more: A solution to cut extreme heat by up to 6 degrees is in our own backyards

Related adaptive patterns might shift daytime activities into cooler night times. Some places already have these patterns: night markets and night-time use of outdoor spaces.

If locally adapted versions of these patterns encourage people to adopt new habits, other patterns will be needed. These will include, for example, ways to remind those cooling off outdoors in the evening that others might be trying to sleep with their naturally ventilating windows open. Such interlinked patterns point to the way pattern thinking moves from the big scale to the small.

To make the time to adapt each pattern to its local context, and then ensure those designs establish a pattern of long-lasting practice, requires a different pattern of planning. Planners need to be thinking about “staying with” what they plan, helping what they design to adapt to changing conditions and communities. For example, developers of build-to-rent sites could hire “community liaison officers” to help tenants establish sustainable patterns of living.

Read more: Keeping the city cool isn’t just about tree cover – it calls for a commons-based climate response

In addition to the authors, the Cooling the Commons research team includes: Professor Katherine Gibson, Associate Professor Louise Crabtree, Dr Stephen Healy and Dr Emma Power from the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) at Western Sydney University (WSU), and Emeritus Professor Helen Armstrong from Queensland University of Technology (QUT).

– ref. How new design patterns can enable cities and their residents to change with climate change – https://theconversation.com/how-new-design-patterns-can-enable-cities-and-their-residents-to-change-with-climate-change-152749

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Glyn Davis, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

The United States Post Office has just announced the 33rd stamp in its literary arts series – a striking image of novelist and essayist Ursula Le Guin.

Behind the portrait is artwork depicting a scene from The Left Hand of Darkness, Le Guin’s 1969 novel. It features the Gethenians, a species which is generically asexual, but randomly become male or female during estrus.

Le Guin predicted such a society would avoid any gender-specific roles and invent shared ways to raise children. The radical premise of the novel is captured in its best-known line – the king was pregnant.

Such an idea emphasises the role of chance in our lives. We are born into bodies, families, health, ethnicities and societies we did not choose.

These accidents shape much about the lives that follow, inviting us to consider how we treat those born into extreme disadvantage – what are our obligations to counterbalance the misfortunes created by the lottery?

Try applying the veil of ignorance test

Le Guin was replaying, with characteristic subtlety, an ancient debate about whether to accept unfairness as inevitably — “the poor you will always have with you” – or use institutions to create a more equitable distribution of life chances.

Her novel anticipated by a few years what may be the most famous thought experiment in modern philosophy — the veil of ignorance.

Imagine you can shape the laws of the nation but must make the decisions before knowing anything about your identity. You might turn out to be poor or rich, able-bodied or infirm. Gendered or not, young or old, talented or less gifted — all these conditions are hidden as you decide the rules of your society.

In his 1971 book A Theory of Justice, philosopher John Rawls suggested people behind such a veil would value justice above all.

Ignorance and self-interest dictate fairness

When identity is veiled, self-interest dictates equality. Slave owners would think carefully about supporting servitude if they might become slaves. As Abraham Lincoln is said to have asked when addressing claims that slavery was justified – what is this good thing that no man wants for himself?

Rawls sees two principles as essential to fairness: liberty, so we can make our own choices as long they do not harm others, and acceptance of difference so that opportunities are open to all, regardless of circumstances. The world should not be carved out only for the clever and the already fortunate.

Read more: Disability and single parenthood loom large in inherited poverty

The prescription has been much debated. Some see the cost of such equality as too high. Others object to a notion of justice defined around material goods, noting that inequality is only about wealth and not also about power, respect, voice and control.

The radical implications of Rawlsian justice are not apparent in the ways Australia and other nations deal with poverty in their midst.

Australia has never been particularly fair

The Melbourne Institute’s long sequence of HILDA household income and labour dynamics surveys point to a strong correlation between poverty in childhood and poverty in adult life – a situation where poverty begets poverty.

Australian rates of poverty slightly exceed OECD averages, meaning the poor are indeed always with us.

Our response to poverty began with private charity, but early in the twentieth century moved to government programs, principally payments. Senior and invalid pensions began in 1909 followed by unemployment benefits, pensions for veterans, and support for mothers and children and health after World War I.

Read more: Land of the ‘fair go’ no more: wealth in Australia is becoming more unequal

Australia has never pursued a substantial redistribution of wealth. Benefit payments remain modest and usually means-tested.

Elections consistently suggest Australians are comfortable with limits to public generosity; we choose governments that tax and spend slightly more than in the United States but a good deal less than in Europe. As a result, many Australians grow up in poverty, and a significant number pass it on to their children.

Even a single year in poverty during childhood harms likely income in adulthood, and the longer someone is in poverty in childhood the less chance they have of escaping poverty in adulthood.

A long-tailed lottery

This makes the lottery of birth a lifelong inheritance, with consequences for access to education, health, employment and social capital.

For those who find Rawls too confronting, there are other ways of thinking about our responsibilities toward those less fortunate. One is to look through the lens of what Nobel Laureate economist Amartya Sen labels “capability”, an approach at one time adopted by Australia’s treasury.

Capability is the powerful idea that each citizen should be equipped to lead a life they have reason to value. Investment through public provision – schools, hospitals, pensions and so on – is part of ensuring capability.

Practically, this might mean a national disability insurance scheme rather than a pension. But improvements through public investment can be hard to deliver in practice. Capability means recognising and responding to individual needs, but personalising services is expensive and sometimes problematic. “Why are you treating me differently from others?” is a reasonable question.

New Zealand points to a way out

Traditional public administration emphasises equal treatment for all and so employs standardised models and allocation principles.

By dealing with everyone in the same way, government agencies achieve technical (Rawls-like) fairness but not always the right (Sen-like) response to individual circumstances.

Yet there are encouraging signs of greater flexibility. New Zealand is using performance indicators based around people.

Jacinda Ardern’s predecessor as prime minister, National Party leader Bill English, reshaped his cabinet’s mission statements to focus on individuals.

In assigning ministers a shared requirement to reduce the number of assaults on children, he chose a target he said was “deliberately designed to be difficult”.

It would “require significant focus on the customer by multiple agencies”.

Similar thinking influenced Our Public Service Our Future, the 2019 review of the Australian Public Service led by David Thodey. It embraced the idea of using technology to personalise responses, and commended recent state and federal initiatives to coordinate services around each citizen.

I expand on this in On Life’s Lottery, published last month by Hachette, examining ways in which communities, governments and charities can work together to improve choices for people born into disadvantage.

Reflections on our obligations to others, and pathways to tailor support, are central to an essential goal: how we ensure the ticket we get at birth does not solely determine the journey ahead.

– ref. Good news on life’s lottery: we’re better able to improve Australian lives than before – https://theconversation.com/good-news-on-lifes-lottery-were-better-able-to-improve-australian-lives-than-before-155211

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dr Jamie Q Roberts, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, University of Sydney

Alice! A childish story take
And with a gentle hand
Lay it where Childhood’s dreams are twined
In Memory’s mystic band,
Like pilgrim’s withered wreath of flowers
Plucked in a far-off land.

What is it that draws us back to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Alice for short), both individually and collectively? What is it that makes Alice, in the words of literary critic, Harold Bloom, “a kind of Scripture for us” — like Shakespeare?

For we are drawn back. Since the publication of Lewis Carroll’s story, in England in 1865, it has never been out of print and has been translated into around 100 languages.

There have been numerous movie adaptations and many other works inspired by the story. Perhaps the greatest is a little-known, 1971 short film by the US Department of Health, Education and Welfare encouraging children not to do drugs.

One fears the film might not have had the desired effect: while the speed-addicted March Hare provides a salutary example of how poorly things can go on his drug of choice, the Mad Hatter’s performance on LSD is a little too compelling.

Beyond the page and screen, a quick Google search reveals Alice-inspired art — from graffiti to Dali — tattoos, music, video games and shops.

Alice has strong mainstream appeal; this was entrenched by Disney’s 1951 movie Alice in Wonderland (which is also responsible for people getting the title of the book wrong). However, Alice has become iconic for many subcultures, especially those with darker proclivities. Try exploring “zombie Alice” or “goth Alice”, or watching the new Netflix series, Alice in Borderland, which is set in Tokyo. (Alice is big in Japan).

And this brings us again to the beginning of the conversation (Alice reference here for the boffins): What draws us back?

Read more: Guide to the Classics: The Secret Garden and the healing power of nature

Striking a blow against the adult world

The story begins with bored, seven-year-old Alice sitting on a riverbank with her older sister. Alice doesn’t care for the book her sister is reading because it doesn’t have pictures. She falls asleep and follows a dapper but flustered rabbit down a rabbit hole and into Wonderland.

In Wonderland she moves through a series of surreal vignettes in which she verbally tussles, but struggles to connect with, a stream of characters, such as the hookah-smoking Caterpillar, the Duchess, the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat and the Queen of Hearts.

We are drawn back to the book by the first-rate banter between Alice and these memorable characters. Consider the following from the Mad Hatter’s tea party:

“Then you should say what you mean,” the March Hare went on.
“I do,” Alice hastily replied; “at least — at least I mean what I say — that’s the same thing, you know.”
“Not the same thing a bit!” said the Hatter. “You might just as well say that ‘I see what I eat’ is the same thing as ‘I eat what I see’!”
“You might just as well say,” added the March Hare, “that ‘I like what I get’ is the same thing as ‘I get what I like’!”
“You might just as well say,” added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, “that ‘I breathe when I sleep’ is the same thing as ‘I sleep when I breathe’!”
“It is the same thing with you,” said the Hatter[.]

Notably, many of the creatures Alice meets stand for the real adults in her life, in that they scold her, order her about, try to teach her morals and make her recite poetry.

It is this transformation of the adult world into a mad place and the elevation of the viewpoint of the child that also draw us back. When we read Alice, not as children, but as adults, we strike a blow against the adult world, which some of us, at least, have never quite adjusted to.

The Cheshire Cat provides the greatest indictment of Wonderland-as-adult-world when he says to Alice, “we’re all mad here”. The cat is the only creature in the book who connects with Alice. Mark this, reader: It is the one who can connect with children who is also able to see the world for what it is — mad!

A champion of childhood

The West does have a long history of romanticising childhood. Wordsworth, in his 1807 Immortality Ode, writes:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy.

But even if the “romantic childhood” is a creation of bourgeois 19th century England — of the likes of Wordsworth and Carroll — it is a powerful and arguably noble notion. So let us follow it a little farther down the rabbit hole.

While Alice is the child-hero of the story because she pushes back against the mad adults in Wonderland, she herself is on the cusp of adulthood.

This tragedy is alluded to in the poem, dedicated to the real Alice — Alice Liddell — with which the book begins (the key stanza appears at the start of this article).

Liddell was, in her childhood, Carroll’s friend. The first version of Alice was told to Liddell and her two sisters in 1862 on a boat ride along the Thames in Oxford.

The tragedy of growing up is reinforced in the story itself. While Alice’s imagination is able to create Wonderland, it cannot sustain it. In the final scene in Wonderland, Alice is watching a trial where many of the characters are playing cards. Frustrated by the illogical trial, she shouts, “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!” and is transported back to the real world.

This leads us to think Wonderland itself is the hero of Alice: the champion of childhood. It is in Wonderland that time has stopped — as we learn at the Mad Hatter’s tea party — and where authority is impotent. Despite the Queen’s repeated edict, “Off with her/his head”, no one ever really dies.

‘The Carroll myth’

However, beyond Alice and Wonderland is Carroll himself. As Karoline Leach writes, in her remarkable book about “the Carroll myth”, at the centre of Alice lies, “the image of Carroll; a haunting presence in the story, a shifting dreamy impression of golden afternoons, fustiness, mystery, oars dripping in sun-rippling water.”

Lewis Carroll is the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (not easy to say quickly, unlike “Lewis Carroll”), who taught mathematics at Oxford.

The “Carroll myth”, which was as appealing in the 19th century as it is now, is that Dodgson, through his alter ego Carroll, and his many (chaste) relationships with children, in particular, Alice Liddell, found a way back to the immortality of childhood that Wordsworth spoke about.

So, when we read Alice, we are ultimately communing with this mythical Carroll, and this is no small thing.

Read more: Guide to the classics: Orwell’s 1984 and how it helps us understand tyrannical power today

Trolling pieties

Beyond the banter and the homage to childhood, we are drawn back to Alice because it contains a timeless contribution to the 1860s version of our own culture wars. Where we have political correctness, the 19th century Anglophone world had its own buzz-killing piety, at times foisted upon children — and adults — through verse.

David Bates, a 19th century American poet, is likely responsible for the now thankfully forgotten poem, Speak Gently (“Speak gently to the little child!/Its love be sure to gain/Teach it in accents soft and mild:/It may not long remain.)

Carroll’s glorious parody, which is spoken in Chapter 6 by the Duchess, a negligent mother, is:

Speak roughly to your little boy,
And beat him when he sneezes:
He only does it to annoy,
Because he knows it teases.

Here, and in other Alice poems such as “You Are Old Father William”, Carroll is trolling all those for whom piety is a mask for power. And like the pious, the politically correct are more concerned with their own superiority than with doing good.

To cement the link between then and now, it is worth quoting from Stephen Fry’s recent objection to political correctness. It is as if Fry is providing us with the key to Alice and even to Carroll himself. “I wouldn’t class myself as a classical libertarian,” Fry says,

but I do relish transgression, and I deeply and instinctively distrust conformity and orthodoxy. Progress is not achieved by preachers and guardians of morality but […] by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels and sceptics.

We are drawn back to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland because when we read it, we become the heretics, dreamers and rebels who would change the world.

– ref. Guide to the classics: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland — still for the heretics, dreamers and rebels – https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-alices-adventures-in-wonderland-still-for-the-heretics-dreamers-and-rebels-152816

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

It was supposed to be a week totally dominated by the arrival of the vaccine. Instead attention has been partially diverted by the revelation of an alleged 2019 rape in a minister’s Parliament House office – that Scott Morrison was not told about.

An angry Morrison on Tuesday publicly rebuked Defence Minister Linda Reynolds for failing to inform him, as he tried to contain the fallout from her former staffer Brittany Higgins’ explosive account.

Morrison told the House he only learned of the rape allegation early Monday, shortly before the story was posted by Samantha Maiden on news.com.au.

He didn’t mince words. Asked whether it was acceptable that the defence minister hadn’t informed him or his office of a “reported serious crime”, he said: “It is not – and it shouldn’t happen again”.

Higgins says she was assaulted in March 2019 by a colleague, on the minister’s couch, after she fell into a drunken sleep when the pair returned from a function. She woke up “mid-rape”, with the man on top of her.

The alleged perpetrator was quickly sacked for the security breach, but the alleged rape only came out in Higgins’ discussions with Reynolds’ acting chief of staff Fiona Brown in subsequent days.

Reynolds, who was defence industry minister at the time, urged Higgins to go to the police. Higgins did speak to them but, concerned about her career, decided against lodging a complaint. She remained working for the government – later in minister Michaelia Cash’s office – until early this year.

She has said in interviews this week she did not feel adequately supported through a horrific ordeal.

Morrison’s handling of the issue changed markedly between Monday and Tuesday.

After saying on Monday he was deeply distressed by Higgins’ account but obviously trying to keep the reaction low key, on Tuesday he was in full damage control, with a flurry of action.

He and Jenny had talked about the matter on Monday night, he said. “And she said to me, ‘you have to think about this as a father first. What would you want to happen if it were our girls?’

“Jenny has a way of clarifying things – always has.” So he’d reflected on that overnight, listening to what Brittany had said.

Casting his response as the father of girls evoked some immediate cynicism. That may or may not be the reaction among the public generally.

Morrison said he’d concluded that despite “the genuine good intentions” of all those who tried to provide support to Higgins, “by what she said last night, at the end of the day, she did not feel that way. And that is not OK.”

Cabinet had discussed the issue late Monday, as the magnitude of the extraordinary affair sank in.

The PM asked Western Australian Liberal backbencher Celia Hammond, a former vice-chancellor of Notre Dame University, “to identify ways that standards and expectations and practices can be further improved” in the parliamentary workplace.

He also asked Stephanie Foster, a deputy secretary of his department, to advise him on better processes “to support people when incidents of this nature arise”.

He was even open to Anthony Albanese’s proposal for an external review, by an “eminent Australian”, of Parliament House’s “workplace culture”. We’ll see whether that goes anywhere.

There was also a flurry of “sorries” to Higgins, especially over her being called to a meeting in the very office, with its couch, where the alleged rape occurred.

In the Senate Reynolds gave an unreserved apology. Reynolds said she thought at the time she and Brown were doing everything they could to support Higgins but she’d clearly felt unsupported. “At all times, my intent and my aim were to empower Brittany and let her determine the course of her own situation,” she said.

Morrison apologised over the site of the meeting.

Controversy swirled around what and when the PM’s staff knew. Brown, who’d worked in the PM’s office before acting as Reynolds COS and later moved back, obviously knew everything. But, with the incident seemingly in the past, apparently she didn’t think to mention the rape allegation.

Higgins claimed Morrison’s principal private secretary, Yaron Finkelstein, had checked in on her welfare after last year’s ABC 4 Corners program reporting ministerial sexual misbehaviour. There is no record of a phone conversation and Finkelstein cannot recall making any contact.

Morrison told Parliament his office only became aware of the rape allegations on February 12.

Morrison’s office said its involvement in the Higgins matter at the time had related only to the ecurity breach.

Tuesday’s prime ministerial blitz included a lecture to the government parties meeting. “We must do better. We cannot have an environment where anyone feels unsafe in their workplace, or a young woman is left in a vulnerable situation,” Morrison told his troops.

He’s not the first recent PM to denounce bad behaviour in this most privileged of workplaces. Remember Malcolm Turnbull’s “bonk ban”. And a number of women have highlighted conduct that would not be tolerated in other workplaces. The rape allegation, however, has shaken people because it takes things to another level – if proven, a criminal one.

Higgins, meanwhile, said in a statement that Morrison’s announcement of an investigation “into the culture in Parliament House is a welcomed first step, though it is long overdue.” She asked for her privacy to be respected and said she wouldn’t be making further comment.

The fallout from the cluster bomb she’d tossed – in media terms, a highly organised operation with a kit of information circulated to news organisations – has wounded Reynolds (who’s previously called out bad behaviour) and put the heat on Morrison.

Just maybe, it will prompt another step towards Parliament House becoming a workplace where the standards of behaviour demanded of occupants resemble those observed in the world outside.

But what will happen to the alleged rapist? That depends on whether Higgins lodges a formal complaint with the police, a course which remains open to her.

– ref. View from The Hill: Linda Reynolds feels the lash after Scott Morrison says he was blindsided by rape allegation – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-linda-reynolds-feels-the-lash-after-scott-morrison-says-he-was-blindsided-by-rape-allegation-155400

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Meru Sheel, Epidemiologist | Senior Research Fellow, Australian National University

As the Holiday Inn cluster in Melbourne continues to grow, the Victorian government and the media are regularly publicising new exposure sites.

An exposure site is a location a person who has tested positive to COVID-19 visited while they were potentially infectious. These locations are generally identified through contact tracing, where the person provides a detailed history of their contacts and places they visited up to three days before they developed symptoms (or tested positive, if they didn’t have any symptoms).

You might have seen these exposure sites classified as either tier 1, tier 2 or tier 3. But what does this mean?

Read more: What can you expect if you get a call from a COVID contact tracer?

The three Cs

Contact tracers and public health professionals carry out risk assessments to classify exposure sites. These risk assessments determine whether a particular place is a high-, medium- or low-risk setting for transmission.

We know SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is more likely to spread in certain environments. Typically, settings that constitute one or more of the “three Cs” are considered high-risk:

• crowded places (indoors carry a greater risk than outdoors)

• close-contact settings (especially where people have close-range conversations, such as in a bar)

• confined and enclosed spaces (this specifically refers to indoor spaces with poor ventilation).

We’ve often seen high-risk settings associated with super-spreading events, such as the Crossroads Hotel cluster in New South Wales last year, where one exposure site led to several new cases.

In determining how to classify a site, health experts will also consider the amount of time the positive case spent there. We know the risk of COVID spread is related to the length of exposure — that is, the greater the time spent in close contact, the higher the risk.

Finally, the risk level of the site may be influenced by the nature of the location and the sort of activity the positive case conducted there. For example, as we saw during the second wave in Victoria, working in abattoir where physical distancing may be difficult, the virus can spread faster and more readily. In contrast, an infectious person walking in a park or in a workplace with no direct contact with others may carry a lower risk.

Read more: 10am brunch, 1pm Kmart: when the media pokes fun at someone’s lifestyle, it’s harder for the next person to get COVID tested

A tiered system

In Victoria, these high-, medium- and low-risk sites are being classified as tier 1, tier 2 and tier 3 sites respectively.

Tier 1 represents exposure sites where people attending are at greatest risk of catching the virus and passing the infection to others. As such, people who have visited a tier 1 site during the time specified must immediately get tested and isolate for 14 days — regardless of their result.

We would theoretically regard people who have been at a tier 1 site in the relevant time period as “close contacts”.

There have been several examples of tier 1 exposure sites during the current Victorian outbreak. Last night, the Victorian government listed Sacca’s Fruit World in Broadmeadows as a tier 1 site for anyone who visited between 12.30 and 1pm on Tuesday February 9.

People who visited tier 2 and tier 3 sites are at lower risk of being exposed to a positive case, and therefore less likely to contract and spread the virus.

For tier 2, the public health directive is to get tested and isolate until you receive a negative result. People who visit tier 2 sites during the relevant time period could be regarded as “casual contacts”.

The Sunbury Square shopping centre, for example, was listed as a tier 2 exposure site after a case attended multiple stores between 3.40pm and 4:30pm on February 5. The entire shopping centre was placed on alert, possibly to cast a wide net rather than focusing on a few stores.

Read more: How long are you infectious when you have coronavirus?

Tier 3 sites appear to be precautionary and present the smallest risk — and are potentially places where positive cases have just passed through. But they’re still important to prevent onward transmission. If you’ve visited a tier 3 site during the time specified, you should monitor for symptoms and get tested immediately if you do develop any symptoms.

As an example, Broadmeadows Central (that’s the shopping centre where Sacca’s Fruit World is located) has been listed as a tier 3 exposure site between 12.15pm and 1.15pm on February 9.

Classifying exposure sites is an important public health tool

Other jurisdictions use similar approaches to swiftly identify as many people as possible who may have been exposed to COVID-19, and therefore limit the spread of virus.

In New South Wales, contacts are alerted based on exposure sites, and then categorised as: close contacts who must get tested immediately and self-isolate for 14 days; casual contacts who must get tested immediately and self-isolate until they receive a negative result; and people who must monitor for symptoms (similar to Victoria’s tiers 1, 2 and 3 respectively).

Using public health alerts and media outlets to communicate exposure sites to the wider public can hasten the process of contact tracing, increase targeted testing and enable rapid identification and isolation of cases — ultimately to slow the spread of COVID-19.

These strategies are also useful when resources and time are limited. Contact tracers can prioritise actively following up people who visited tier 1 sites first.

– ref. Tier 1, tier 2, tier 3? Victoria’s COVID exposure sites explained – https://theconversation.com/tier-1-tier-2-tier-3-victorias-covid-exposure-sites-explained-155291

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alex Reilly, Adjunct professor, University of Adelaide

Priya and Nades Murugappan and their two children Kopika and Tharunicaa have been seeking protection visas in Australia since 2012. Nearly a decade later, they are still waiting.

The family was removed from their home in the Queensland town of Biloela and put in detention in Melbourne more than 1,000 days ago. In August 2019, they were moved to Christmas Island while their case was proceeding slowly through the courts.

Keeping them in detention on the island has cost the government $1.4 million in the past year alone.

The federal court today upheld a ruling that the government had denied the youngest member of the family, Australian-born Tharunicaa, procedural fairness in the handling of her visa application.

However, the court also ruled that the home affairs minister did not, in fact, have an obligation to allow Tharunicaa to make an application for protection at all.

The court action prevents the family’s removal from Australia — for now. But it changes little for their immediate situation.

They will remain in detention unless the government heeds calls from their lawyers and supporters to let them return to their community while the long court process plays out, or simply grants them a visa to stay in Australia, cutting through the interminable legal process.

Background of the case

Nadesalingam (Nades) sought asylum in Australia in 2012 and made an application for a permanent protection visa on the basis he was associated with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam, which had fought a long war against the Sri Lankan government.

An officer in the Department of Immigration refused the claim in September of that year, noting that Nades had travelled to and from Sri Lanka between 2004 to 2010 on several occasions without incident, and there was no evidence his family had been targeted for persecution.

Challenges to this decision were refused in numerous tribunals and courts from 2013–15, as well as through direct ministerial intervention.

Read more: How the Biloela Tamil family deportation case highlights the failures of our refugee system

The Labor government’s refugee and asylum seeker policy was in disarray at the time. When the Christmas Island detention centre had filled beyond capacity in 2010, people were moved to detention on the mainland. And when those centres began to reach capacity, the government released most asylum seekers into the community on bridging visas.

This group of asylum seekers was dubbed by the Coalition as Labor’s “legacy caseload”.

Nades’s wife, Priya, arrived in Australia separately in 2013, one of among 25,000 people who came by boat that financial year.

Her claim was finally processed under a different legal regime introduced by the Abbott government in December 2014. Under this system, people arriving by boat and seeking asylum could apply only for temporary protection, and review rights were limited to a new “fast track” process.

Priya was not interviewed by an officer in the Department of Home Affairs until February 2017 (when she was eight months pregnant with Kopika). Her application was refused months later.

While all these legal proceedings were working their way through tribunals and courts, Priya and Nades got on with their lives. They were married and settled in Biloela in 2014, and had two children.

Making sense of Australia’s protection obligations

From the government’s point of view, the family has exhausted their legal claims for asylum in Australia.

But the situation is complicated because of the length of time it has taken to exhaust their legal rights. There are now the legal rights of the children to consider.

It is incumbent on Australia to ensure the children of asylum seekers are not at risk of serious harm if the family is returned to Sri Lanka.

Kopika was included in Priya’s claim from protection, but Tharunicaa was not, so a separate application was made to the minister on her behalf. The basis for the claim is that the family’s circumstances have changed since they arrived in Australia, making it more likely they would face persecution if they were returned to Sri Lanka.

Read more: Could the Biden administration pressure Australia to adopt more humane refugee policies?

In particular, the intense media attention of their situation has made them more prominent in Sri Lanka and highlighted their purported connections to the LTTE.

On the other hand, the political situation in Sri Lanka has changed since Priya and Nades first came to Australia, raising questions of whether they are still at risk of serious harm on return.

Now that the federal court’s ruling that Tharunicaa was denied “procedural fairness” has been upheld, new submissions can be made on whether the minister should lift the bar and allow her to make an application for a protection visa.

The minister may decide, however, not to raise the bar, thus blocking a path to applying for a protection visa. Their future in Australia remains very uncertain.

The politics and ethics of refugee protection

The whole saga raises difficult questions of law and policy.

There is a paradox at play. On the one hand, Australia’s highly evolved review rights for asylum seekers has allowed the Murugappan family to hold government decision-making to the highest standards. On the other hand, it has left them languishing in a state of limbo for years.

There is also an underlying ethical question that plagues our response to asylum seekers. Even if asylum seekers ultimately fail to convince the government they deserves protection, does the length and condition of their stay in Australia (or in offshore detention) create new obligations on the part of the government?

Read more: With our borders shut, this is the ideal time to overhaul our asylum seeker policies

For example, should asylum seekers be granted protection on the basis their rights have been violated in Australia while they have waited for years for their claims to be processed, or simply because they have become part of the Australian community?

There comes a point where our hardline response to asylum seekers is not appropriate anymore.

Arguably this point was reached long ago in relation to the Murugappan family — it is not longer morally, practically or financially appropriate to continue denying them a visa. We need to stop the cycle of appeals and cross-appeals on technical legal questions — and let them build a life.

– ref. It’s time to give visas to the Biloela Tamil family and other asylum seekers stuck in the system – https://theconversation.com/its-time-to-give-visas-to-the-biloela-tamil-family-and-other-asylum-seekers-stuck-in-the-system-155354

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

The government has capitulated to crossbench pressure to drop its plan to enable the suspension of the Better Off Overall Test for COVID-affected businesses.

Industrial Relations Minister Christian Porter announced the backdown because it has been clear for some time the legislation would not get the needed crossbench support in the Senate with the weakened BOOT.

Pauline Hanson said on Monday the change to the BOOT needed to be scrapped for negotiations with One Nation (which has two Senate votes) to continue on the bill generally.

The government needs three out of the five Senate non-Green crossbenchers to pass the legislation.

The plan was that the BOOT could be bypassed for agreements concluded during the next two years where the business was affected by COVID. The government claimed this would not apply widely, a claim strongly contested by Labor and the unions.

The retreat on the BOOT is likely to ensure the bill passes the second reading in the Senate, despite Labor declaring it will oppose its second reading.

That would complicate the issue for Labor which, if the second reading is passed, will have to engage with the detail of the bill, such as the crackdown on wage theft and the proposed pathway for casuals to convert to permanent positions. But Labor maintains its opposition to the whole bill.

In his statement, Porter acknowledged the government was acting “as a result of ongoing consultation with members of the Senate crossbench”.

The legislation will be debated in the House of Representatives this week, where the government will amend the bill.

Porter continued to defend the now-dropped BOOT change as modest, and said it was only an extension of a provision Labor had inserted in the Fair Work legislation.

“While we continue to believe this was a sensible and proportionate proposal in light of the current challenges our economy is facing, we also understand that this measure had the potential to distract from other elements of the package which will help employers and employees recover from the economic impacts of the pandemic,” Porter said.

Porter told parliament the government was taking a “practical, pragmatic approach” in amending the bill.

The opposition spokesman on industrial relations, Tony Burke, said Scott Morrison and Porter had made it clear “they are only ditching their plan to scrap the Better Off Overall Test because they cannot get it through the Parliament – not because they recognise it’s unfair”.

“They are retreating this time for the sake of political expediency.

“But clearly this is what they want to do. They want to cut workers’ take home pay – and if they get another chance they’ll try again,” Burke said.

“When the government first announced it was planning industrial relations changes Labor set a very simple test: we would support the legislation if it delivered secure jobs with decent pay. The government’s legislation still fails that test.

“Labor has always made it clear that while the BOOT change was the most egregious attack on job security and workers’ pay in the government’s bill – it is certainly not the only one.”

ACTU secretary Sally McManus tweeted: “The Government will try & pull the wool over the media & cross-bench Senator’s eyes by removing one small aspect of their IR Omnibus changes & spin it that they have “fixed” it. Removing the BOOT for two years is only one problem – there are PERMANENT changes that hurt workers.“

– ref. Government drops BOOT change but Labor and ACTU will still fight workplace legislation – https://theconversation.com/government-drops-boot-change-but-labor-and-actu-will-still-fight-workplace-legislation-155372

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jen Purdie, Senior Research Fellow, University of Otago

As fossil fuels are phased out over the coming decades, the Climate Change Commission (CCC) suggests electricity will take up much of the slack, powering our vehicle fleet and replacing coal and gas in industrial processes.

But can the electricity system really provide for this increased load where and when it is needed? The answer is “yes”, with some caveats.

Our research examines climate change impacts on the New Zealand energy system. It shows we’ll need to pay close attention to demand as well as supply. And we’ll have to factor in the impacts of climate change when we plan for growth in the energy sector.

Demand for electricity to grow

While electricity use has not increased in NZ in the past decade, many agencies project steeply rising demand in coming years. This is partly due to both increasing population and gross domestic product, but mostly due to the anticipated electrification of transport and industry, which could result in a doubling of demand by mid-century.

The graph (below), based on a range of projections from various agencies, shows demand may increase by between 10TWh and 60TWh (Terawatt hours) by 2050. This is on top of the 43TWh of electricity currently generated per year to power the whole country.

_{^{SOURCES: Historical generation data, Meridian Energy Ltd, internal modelling, Transpower, MBIE, BEC, CCC.}}

It’s hard to get a sense of the scale of the new generation required, but if wind was the sole technology employed to meet demand by 2050, between 10 and 60 new wind farms would be needed nationwide.

Read more: Power play: despite the tough talk, the closure of Tiwai Point is far from a done deal

Of course, we won’t only build wind farms. Grid-scale solar, rooftop solar, new geothermal, some new small hydro plant and possibly tidal and wave power will all have a part to play.

Managing the demand

As well as providing more electricity supply, demand management and batteries will also be important. Our modelling shows peak demand (which usually occurs when everyone turns on their heaters and ovens at 6pm in winter) could be up to 40% higher by 2050 than it is now.

But meeting this daily period of high demand could see expensive plant sitting idle for much of the time (with the last 25% of generation capacity only used about 10% of the time).

This is particularly a problem in a renewable electricity system when the hydro lakes are dry, as hydro is one of the few renewable electricity sources that can be stored during the day (as water behind the dam) and used over the evening peak (by generating with that stored water).

Demand response will therefore be needed. For example, this might involve an industrial plant turning off when there is too much load on the electricity grid.

Read more: How to cut emissions from transport: ban fossil fuel cars, electrify transport and get people walking and cycling

But by 2050, a significant number of households will also need smart appliances and meters that automatically use cheaper electricity at non-peak times. For example, washing machines and electric car chargers could run automatically at 2am, rather than 6pm when demand is high.

Our modelling shows a well set up demand response system could mitigate dry-year risk (when hydro lakes are low on water) in coming decades, where currently gas and coal generation is often used.

Instead of (or as well as) having demand response and battery systems to combat dry-year risk, a pumped storage system could be built. This is where water is pumped uphill when hydro lake inflows are plentiful, and used to generate electricity during dry periods.

The NZ Battery project is currently considering the potential for this in New Zealand.

Almost (but not quite) 100% renewable

Dry-year risk would be greatly reduced and there would be “greater greenhouse gas emissions savings” if the Interim Climate Change Committee’s (ICCC) 2019 recommendation to aim for 99% renewable electricity was adopted, rather than aiming for 100%.

A small amount of gas-peaking plant would therefore be retained. The ICCC said going from 99% to 100% renewable electricity by overbuilding would only avoid a very small amount of carbon emissions, at a very high cost.

Our modelling supports this view. The CCC’s draft advice on the issue also makes the point that, although 100% renewable electricity is the “desired end point”, timing is important to enable a smooth transition.

Despite these views, Energy Minister Megan Woods has said the government will be keeping the target of a 100% renewable electricity sector by 2030.

Impacts of climate change

In future, the electricity system will have to respond to changing climate patterns as well. The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research predicts winds will increase in the South Island and decrease in the far north in coming decades.

Inflows to the biggest hydro lakes will get wetter (more rain in their headwaters), and their seasonality will change due to changes in the amount of snow in these catchments.

Our modelling shows the electricity system can adapt to those changing conditions. One good news story (unless you’re a skier) is that warmer temperatures will mean less snow storage at lower elevations, and therefore higher lake inflows in the big hydro catchments in winter, leading to a better match between times of high electricity demand and higher inflows.

Read more: New Zealand wants to build a 100% renewable electricity grid, but massive infrastructure is not the best option

The price is right

The modelling also shows the cost of generating electricity is not likely to increase, because the price of building new sources of renewable energy continues to fall globally.

Because the cost of building new renewables is now cheaper than non-renewables (such as coal-fired plants), renewables are more likely to be built to meet new demand in the near term.

While New Zealand’s electricity system can enable the rapid decarbonisation of (at least) our transport and industrial heat sectors, certainty is needed in some areas so the electricity industry can start building to meet demand everywhere.

Bipartisan cooperation at government level will be important to encourage significant investment in generation and transmission projects with long lead times and life expectancies.

Infrastructure and markets are needed to support demand response uptake, as well as certainty around the Tiwai exit in 2024 and whether pumped storage is likely to be built.

Our electricity system can support the rapid decarbonisation needed if New Zealand is to do its fair share globally to tackle climate change.

But sound planning, firm decisions and a supportive and relatively stable regulatory framework are all required before shovels can hit the ground.

– ref. As NZ gets serious about climate change, can electricity replace fossil fuels in time? – https://theconversation.com/as-nz-gets-serious-about-climate-change-can-electricity-replace-fossil-fuels-in-time-155123

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

If I offered you money for something, an offer you didn’t have to accept, would you call it a grab?

What if I actually owned the thing I offered you money for, and the offer was more of a gentle inquiry?

Welcome to the world of television, where the government (which actually owns the broadcast spectrum) can offer networks the opportunity to hand back a part of it, in return for generous compensation, and get accused of a “spectrum grab”.

If the minister, Paul Fletcher, hadn’t previously worked in the industry (he was a director at Optus) he wouldn’t have believed it.

Here’s what happened. The networks have been sitting on more broadcast spectrum (radio frequencies) than they need since 2001.

That’s when TV went digital in order to free up space for emerging uses such as mobile phones.

Pre-digital, each station needed a lot of spectrum — seven megahertz, plus another seven (and at times another seven) for fill-in transmitters in nearby areas.

It meant that in major cities it took far more spectrum to deliver the five TV channels than Telstra plans to use for its entire 5G phone and internet work.

Digital meant each channel would only need two megahertz to do what it did before, a huge saving Prime Minister John Howard was reluctant to pick up.

His own department told him there were

better ways of introducing digital television than by granting seven megahertz of spectrum to each of the five free-to-air broadcasters at no cost when a standard definition service of a higher quality than the current service could be provided with around two megahertz

His Office of Asset Sales labelled the idea of giving them the full seven a

de facto further grant of a valuable public asset to existing commercial interests

Seven, Nine and Ten got the de facto grant, and after an uninspiring half decade of using it to broadcast little-watched high definition versions of their main channels, used it instead to broadcast little-watched extra channels with names like 10 Shake, 9Rush and 7TWO.

Micro-channels are better delivered by the internet

TV broadcasts are actually a good use of spectrum where masses of people need to watch the same thing at once. They use less of broadcast bandwidth than would the same number of streams delivered through the air by services such as Netflix.

But when they are little-watched (10 Shake got 0.4% of the viewing audience in prime time last week, about 10,000 people Australia-wide) the bandwidth is much better used allowing people to watch what they want.

Read more: Broad reform of FTA television is needed to save the ABC

It’s why the government is kicking community television off the air. Like 10 Shake, its viewers can be counted in thousands and easily serviced by the net.

The government’s last big auction of freed-up television spectrum in 2013 raised A$1.9 billion, and that was for leases that expire in 2029.

Among the buyers were Telstra, Optus and TPG.

The money on offer, and the exploding need for spectrum, is why last November Fletcher decided to have another go.

Rather than kick the networks off what they’ve been hogging (as he is doing with community TV) he offered them what on the face of it is an astoundingly generous deal.

Any networks that want to can agree to combine their allocations, using new compression technology to broadcast about as many channels as before from a shared facility, freeing up what might be a total of 84 megahertz for high-value communications. Any that don’t, don’t need to.

All the networks need to do is share

The deal would only go ahead if at least two commercial licence holders in each licence area signed up. At that point the ABC and SBS would combine their allocations and the commercial networks would be freed of the $41 million they currently pay in annual licence fees, forever.

That’s right. From then on, they would be guaranteed enough spectrum to do about what they did before, except for free, plus a range of other benefits

The near-instant reaction, in a letter signed by the heads of each of the regional networks, was to say no, they didn’t want to share. The plan was “simply a grab for spectrum to bolster the federal government’s coffers”.

And sharing’s not that hard

It’s as if the networks own the spectrum (they don’t) and it is not as if they are normally reluctant to share — they share just about everything.

For two decades they’ve shared their transmission towers, and for 18 months Nine and Seven have been playing out their programs from the same centre.

That’s right. Nine and Seven use the same computers, same operators, same desks, to play programs.

One day it is entirely possible that a Seven promo or ad will accidentally go to air on Nine, just as a few years back some pages from the Sydney Morning Herald were accidentally printed in the Daily Telegraph, whose printing plants it makes use of.

All the minister is asking is for them to share something else, what Australia’s treasury describes as a “scarce resource of high value to Australian society”.

There’s a good case for going further, taking almost all broadcasting off the air and putting it online, or sending it out by direct-to-home satellite, removing the need for bandwidth-hogging fill-in transmitters.

Seven, Nine and Ten have yet to respond. Indications are they’re not much more positive than their regional cousins, although more polite. They’re standing in the way of progress.

– ref. The TV networks holding back the future – https://theconversation.com/the-tv-networks-holding-back-the-future-155220

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Damian Lettoof, PhD Candidate, Curtin University

Australia’s wetlands are home to a huge range of stunning flora and fauna, with large snakes often at the top of the food chain.

Many wetlands are located near urban areas. This makes them particularly susceptible to contamination as stormwater, urban drainage and groundwater can wash metals — such as arsenic, cadmium, lead and mercury — into the delicate ecosystem.

We know many metals can travel up the food chain when they’re present in the environment. So to assess contamination levels, we caught highly venomous tiger snakes across wetlands in Perth, and repurposed laser technology to measure the metals they accumulated.

In our new paper, we show metal contamination in wild wetland tiger snakes is chronic, and highest in human-disturbed wetlands. This suggests all other plants and animals in these wetlands are likely contaminated as well.

34 times more arsenic in wild wetland snakes than captive snakes

Urban growth and landscape modification often introduces metals into the surrounding environment, such as mining, landfill and waste dumps, vehicles and roadworks, and agriculture.

When they reach wetlands, sediments collect and store these metals for hundreds of years. And if a wetland’s natural water levels are lowered, from agricultural draining for example, sediments can become exposed and erode. This releases the metals they’ve been storing into the ecosystem.

This is what we suspect happened in Yanchep National Park’s wetland, which was supposed to be our “clean” comparison site to more urban wetlands. But in a 2020 study looking at sediment contamination, we found this wetland had higher levels of selenium, mercury, chromium and cadmium compared to urban wetlands we tested.

And at Herdsman Lake, our most urban wetland five minutes from the Perth city centre, we found concentrations of arsenic, lead, copper and zinc in sediment up to four times higher than government guidelines.

Read more: Does Australia really have the deadliest snakes? We debunk 6 common myths

In our new study on tiger snake scales, we compared the metal concentrations in wild wetland tiger snakes to the concentrations that naturally occurs in captive-bred tiger snakes, and to the sediment in the previous study.

We found arsenic was 20-34 times higher in wild snakes from Herdsman Lake and Yanchep National Park’s wetland. And snakes from Herdsman Lake had, on average, eight times the amount of uranium in their scales compared to their captive-bred counterparts.

Tiger snakes usually prey on frogs, so our results suggest frogs at these lakes are equally as contaminated.

We know for many organisms, exposure to a high concentration of metals is fatally toxic. And when contamination is chronic, it can be “neurotoxic”. This can, for example, change an organism’s behaviour so they eat less, or don’t want to breed. It can also interfere with their normal cellular function, compromising immune systems, DNA repair or reproductive processes, to name a few.

Snakes in general appear relatively resistant to the toxic effects of metal contamination, but we’re currently investigating what these levels of contamination are doing to tiger snakes’ health and well-being.

Our method keeps snakes alive

Snakes can be a great indicator of environmental contamination because they generally live for a long time (over 10 years) and don’t travel too far from home. So by measuring metals in older snakes, we can assess the contamination history of the area they were collected from.

Typically, scientists use liver tissue to measure biological contamination since it acts like a filter and retains a substantial amount of the contaminants an animal is exposed to.

But a big problem with testing the liver is the animal usually has to be sacrificed. This is often not possible when studying threatened species, monitoring populations or working with top predators.

In more recent years, studies have taken to measuring metals in external “keratin” tissues instead, which include bird feathers, mammal hair and nails, and reptile scales. As it grows, keratin can accumulate metals from inside the body, and scientists can measure this without needing to kill the animal.

Our research used “laser ablation” analysis, which involves firing a focused laser beam at a solid sample to create a small crater or trench. Material is excavated from the crater and sent to a mass spectrometer (analytical machine) where all the elements are measured.

This technology was originally designed for geologists to analyse rocks, but we’re among the first researchers applying it to snake scales.

Laser ablation atomises the keratin of snake scales, and allowed us to accurately measure 19 contaminants from each tiger snake caught over three years around different wetlands.

We need to minimise pollution

Our research has confirmed snake scales are a good indicator of environmental contamination, but this is only the first step.

Further research could allow us to better use laser ablation as a cost-effective technology to measure a larger suite of metals in different parts of the ecosystem, such as in different animals at varying levels in the food chain.

This could map how metals move throughout the ecosystem and help determine whether the health of snakes (and other top predators) is actually at risk by these metal levels, or if they just passively record the metal concentrations in their environment.

Read more: Our toxic legacy: bushfires release decades of pollutants absorbed by forests

It’s difficult to prevent contaminants from washing into urban wetlands, but there are a number of things that can help minimise pollution.

This includes industries developing strict spill management requirements, and local and state governments deploying storm-water filters to catch urban waste. Likewise, thick vegetation buffer zones around the wetlands can filter incoming water.

– ref. We tested tiger snake scales to measure wetland pollution in Perth. The news is worse than expected – https://theconversation.com/we-tested-tiger-snake-scales-to-measure-wetland-pollution-in-perth-the-news-is-worse-than-expected-153797

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Indigo Holcombe-James, Postdoctoral research fellow, RMIT University

“Nobody is a technical specialist,” one committee member at an artist-run initiative (ARI) told me about moving their activities online under COVID lockdowns.

The [volunteer] who is doing our website content at the moment is a contemporary art photographer.

Galleries run by artists, for artists, ARIs provide critical space for artists to develop creatively and professionally.

These galleries run on the smell of an oily rag, reliant on multiple funding sources from government, philanthropy and income earned from exhibition fees. Few employ paid staff.

As the COVID-19 pandemic swept around the world, cultural bodies closed their doors and turned digital. With these closures and the loss of minimal income from physical exhibition fees, online activities offered ARIs a vital lifeline to maintaining their existence — but it often wasn’t easy.

In a newly published report, I share insights from representatives of 73 Australian galleries and museums on how they weathered the demand for digital services in 2020. This report reveals stark, yet unsurprising institutional inequalities across the sector.

Institutions that invested heavily in digital activities before 2020 had a vital resource for engaging with and maintaining audiences.

Organisations like ARIs, who weren’t able to make these investments, struggled.

It’s all about staff and skills

Unsurprisingly, state and national galleries already equipped with staff focused on digital activities were much better positioned to move online and engage with audiences.

As the marketing manager of one large institution told me, pre-pandemic they already had a team of three graphic designers, three video producers, and three people in “digital communications”, as well as their marketing team.

Another institution I spoke with had a digital department headed by four managers, three producers, and a user experience design specialist.

Mid-sized institutions, such as council run, public not-for-profit or university galleries, typically described at least one staff member working on digital activities — often constrained by time and abilities.

The marketing and communications coordinator at a regional public gallery was employed four days a week, but during lockdown they became responsible for all of the gallery’s audience outreach.

“There is only so much I can do; and there are only so many skills I have,” they said.

Read more: Coronavirus: as culture moves online, regional organisations need help bridging the digital divide

I spoke with representatives of galleries in the university sector where the lone marketing staff member had no expertise in social media. Their background in traditional advertising and media communications restricted the institution’s capacity for innovative audience engagement.

This lack of internal expertise, the gallery director told me, had “been a real challenge”.

Prior to 2020, digital activities had been considered by some institutions as “add ons”, focused on marketing outcomes. But under COVID-19, digital activities became central, and pressure disproportionately fell on overstretched, under-trained marketing staff.

Internet access alone is not enough for digital inclusion. Access to devices, high-quality websites, and up-to-date software are critical.

“Our resources were stretched before we even added that digital layer,” the general manager at a public gallery told me.

One large institution told me how they could live stream major events editing between multiple cameras on the fly, with similar capabilities as a television studio. Some of these skills were found in house, but the financial resourcing underpinning this institution meant they were able to contract in a highly skilled editor.

This capacity – both in terms of skills and in terms of financing – was well beyond that of smaller institutions.

Digital benefits

Many people I spoke to acknowledged the benefits of the new digital focus. Digital programs increase the sector’s accessibility, enhancing inclusion of disabled and geographically distant audiences.

As the digital manager of a large institution told me, prior to COVID-19, they had been aiming to create more inclusive experiences, both digitally and physically. The COVID-19 lockdowns enabled this institution to “push the boundaries” of the work they could do in this area.

As an ARI member also told me, the conversations about how programs can enable people to “engage with art in a way that doesn’t ask them to come into a physical space” were really valuable, and would inform their future programming.

“We’re really hoping to continue past COVID, whatever that looks like,” they said. “[We will now] include more digital programming alongside our physical exhibitions”.

But digital activities do not come cheap and their contribution to the sector needs to be valued and resourced appropriately.

Ensuring these benefits are retained will require an adjustment in how digital activities are perceived and funded as doors reopen.

The accelerated transformations we saw in 2020 demonstrated digital inequities confronting the cultural sector were bigger than previously thought.

For well resourced institutions, digital activities provided valuable audience connection and engagement, as well as enhancing inclusivity. These benefits should not lightly be abandoned. But we need to make sure the whole sector catches up.

If we don’t, we run the risk of further disadvantaging underfunded and under-resourced institutions and neglecting the diverse perspectives and practices that such institutions support.

– ref. ‘Only so much I can do’: COVID-19 cast a harsh light on the digital divide of Australian art galleries – https://theconversation.com/only-so-much-i-can-do-covid-19-cast-a-harsh-light-on-the-digital-divide-of-australian-art-galleries-151483

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Meade, Research Fellow in Economics, and in Social Sciences & Public Policy, Auckland University of Technology

Faced with a COVID-19 pandemic of unknown severity and duration, governments around the world are looking for effective and sustainable ways to maintain economic confidence and employment.

Even New Zealand, where lockdowns have been few and short-lived, is confronting the reality of repeated lockdowns, especially since the United Kingdom variant has now been detected in community cases.

With vaccines likely to require all of 2021 to be rolled out in significant numbers, more economic disruption has to be expected this year, with each successive shock further testing economic resilience.

For many countries, targeted wage subsidies of some form have been the principal tool for maintaining employment and economic confidence, often complemented by small business loans. While these have clearly been useful, they also have clear limitations — not least their cost.

This raises questions about the ongoing viability of wage subsidies and small business loans as the economic response measures of choice.

My recently published policy paper proposes an alternative approach, modelled on student loans schemes such as those operating in New Zealand, Australia and the UK.

Rather than attempting to support firms and households to pay wages, rents and other expenses, this alternative enables firms and households whose incomes have fallen due to the pandemic to take out government-supported “COVID loans” to restore their pre-pandemic income levels — a form of “revenue insurance”.

I argue this alternative approach will be not just more affordable and sustainable, but will also be more effective and more equitable.

Lowering the burden on future taxpayers

Insuring small business and household revenues means they should be able to meet all their outgoings, not just wages and rents which are subject to selective support measures under the current approach.

Borrowers can simply determine which outgoings they need to prioritise, and access the resources they need to meet those costs.

Read more: Close contact test results will be crucial to whether Auckland’s level 3 lockdown is extended beyond three days

This also simplifies administration, since only one support scheme is required, rather than multiple schemes. With student loan schemes already in place in many countries, experience and infrastructure are available to support the rollout of the proposed loans.

Just as importantly, firms and households that take out COVID loans would effectively be borrowing against their own future incomes. This places less of a burden on future taxpayers than wage subsidies financed through extra government debt.

In turn this makes the approach more equitable than debt-financed wage subsidies, since that extra government debt is a charge against future generations.

More affordable for governments

In terms of affordability, loans to make up drops in income would be repaid via tax surcharges on those taking out loans, as and when their future incomes allow. This means would-be borrowers need not be deterred by fixed repayment deadlines in times of ongoing economic uncertainty.

Furthermore, since any firms and households borrowing against their own future incomes will ultimately be repaying their debt, COVID loans represent an asset on government balance sheets.

This offsets the extra liabilities governments take on by borrowing to finance these loans — something wage subsidies do not do. This increases the affordability of a loans-based approach from a government perspective (even allowing for defaults and subsidies implicit in student loan schemes).

Read more: It’s still too soon for NZ to relax COVID-19 border restrictions for travellers from low-risk countries

Using illustrative data for New Zealand, my paper shows COVID loans are 14% cheaper than wage subsidies (and small business loans) in terms of their impact on net government debt.

More importantly, they are almost 2.5 times as effective in terms of the level of support they offer. And since 67% of the cost of COVID loans ultimately falls to those who make use of them (allowing for defaults and implicit subsidies), they place less of a burden on future taxpayers than deficit-funded wage subsidies.

Maintaining economic confidence

Affordability is also enhanced by a subtle feature of the proposed scheme. By making COVID loans generally available to all firms and households, the scheme sustains economic confidence.

Firms and households are assured the other firms and households they rely on for their own economic prospects have access to the same effective financial lifeline throughout the pandemic.

Households can therefore keep spending confidently, and employers can confidently keep employing. This means the loans might actually not need to be used to any great extent. Their strength lies in preventing economic decline — much like a vaccine’s strength lies in preventing disease.

Finally, COVID loans are not just a sustainable policy tool for minimising the economic harm of COVID-19. They also provide a benchmark for assessing how cost-effective other support measures such as wage subsidies have been, and a possible solution for future pandemics.

– ref. Would ‘COVID loans’ be a more affordable and sustainable way to support national economies? – https://theconversation.com/would-covid-loans-be-a-more-affordable-and-sustainable-way-to-support-national-economies-155296

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Kamradt-Scott, Associate professor, University of Sydney

The number of reported global weekly COVID cases is falling and has dropped nearly 50% this year, the World Health Organization (WHO) said overnight. This incredibly encouraging news shows the power of public health measures — but we must remain vigilant. Letting our guard down now, when new variants are emerging, could easily reverse the trend.

According to a WHO press release:

“Last week saw the lowest number of reported weekly cases since October”, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) told journalists at a regular press briefing in Geneva.

Noting a nearly 50% drop this year, he stressed that “how we respond to this trend” is what matters now.

While acknowledging that there is more reason for hope of bringing the pandemic under control, the WHO chief warned, “the fire is not out, but we have reduced its size”.

“If we stop fighting it on any front, it will come roaring back”.

Read more: Are vaccines already helping contain COVID? Early signs say yes, but mutations will be challenging

This welcome news shows that when governments respond rapidly by putting in place public health measures, we reap the benefits even before widespread vaccine rollouts. That’s a really important message now, and for when the next pandemic hits (and another one eventually will).

As good as this news is, though, we are still seeing infections in fairly large numbers worldwide. And, as we have regrettably seen in the past, subsequent waves of infection can easily emerge.

We also now have a series of variants to contend with. Even as begin to understand how the variants now circulating will affect the effectiveness of current vaccines, it’s possible we could see yet another new variant emerge that would reverse the downward trend. This remains a real risk when there are still so many new infections worldwide and when so few countries have been able to start vaccinating.

It’s too early to see vaccine effect

Some countries, such as Israel and the United Kingdom, have already vaccinated huge swathes of their population. That’s a tremendous achievement and we will start to see the benefits in the coming months. But fundamentally, it’s too early to see the effect of the vaccine rollout in widespread reduction of infection.

On the other hand, we have recently seen a much greater focus on public health measures in places such as Europe, the Middle East and the United States. These places have been significantly affected by COVID outbreaks and are dealing with third waves, as some are preparing for their fourth.

It’s likely these public health measures — such as lockdowns, physical distancing, mask-wearing and increased hygiene measures — are what’s driving the global downward trend. That shows the benefit when leaders do engage and bring their populations with them.

To keep that trend going in the right direction, we need high levels of public compliance with those public health measures and more equitable access to vaccines globally.

Unequal global access to vaccines is a major risk

Very few low-income countries have started a widespread vaccine rollout, and many are struggling to secure doses. Having unequal access globally to vaccines is obviously morally wrong and dangerous — but it also represents a great economic risk to high income countries like Australia.

Having high-income countries buying up all the stock of vaccines and leaving poorer nations with little recourse will prolong the pandemic. And that’s bad news for the global economy, with estimates suggesting the pandemic will cost US$16 trillion dollars.

Even if Australia were able to maintain its success so far, having the pandemic run out of control in other countries means no travel, will continue to make it hard for Australians to return home, and could lead to shortages of products and materials from other countries. As the global financial crisis showed, economic strife in other parts of the world can have profound impact locally, even when Australia is doing relatively OK.

The risk this poses to lives and to the global economy is one reason the WHO has called for vaccine rollouts to begin in all countries in the first 100 days of 2021, and for health-care workers in lower- and middle-income countries to be protected first.

The WHO has issued a vaccine equity declaration calling for, among other things, world leaders to increase contributions to the UN-led vaccine equity initiative, COVAX, and to share doses with COVAX even as they roll out their own national campaigns.

We also clearly need to upscale vaccine research and manufacturing capacity around the world, which would also help us respond to the next pandemic, too.

There’s still a lot of work to be done.

Relaxing too soon can undo our progress

As the WHO’s Director-General said overnight, the fire is not out and “if we stop fighting it on any front, it will come roaring back”.

That’s why sticking to the fundamentals of infection control is so important. That means keeping up with the hand-washing and physical distancing. It means wearing a mask if you can’t physically distance and complying with lockdowns and other public health orders. Yes, it’s hard to maintain a high level of commitment, but the alternative is far worse.

When people start to hear that global case numbers are improving, there’s a tendency to relax — and that’s risky. Now is the time we need to work together to see this contained, and ideally suppressed.

We may never completely eradicate this virus. But if we stick with the public health measures, and vaccinate as many people as possible worldwide, we can keep the trend going in the right direction.

Read more: UK, South African, Brazilian: a virologist explains each COVID variant and what they mean for the pandemic

– ref. Global weekly COVID cases are falling, WHO says — but ‘if we stop fighting it on any front, it will come roaring back’ – https://theconversation.com/global-weekly-covid-cases-are-falling-who-says-but-if-we-stop-fighting-it-on-any-front-it-will-come-roaring-back-155355

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jan Kabatek, Research Fellow, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, University of Melbourne

Children with same-sex parents get higher scores on standardised tests than children with different-sex parents. This is the key finding from our study published today in the journal Demography.

We also found children with same-sex parents to be slightly more likely to graduate from high school, and much more likely to enrol in university than children with different-sex parents.

Our results challenge common arguments against same-sex parenting, and lend support to other scholarly perspectives that emphasise the benefits of being raised by a same-sex couple.

Same-sex parenting remains controversial

Over the last 50 years, there have been dramatic changes in social attitudes and legislation toward same-sex relations. Within this relatively short time frame, many countries have moved from criminalising same-sex relations to enabling same-sex couples to be formally recognised, marry and adopt children.

Despite these developments, same-sex parenting remains a highly controversial and politicised issue. And many people around the world still believe same-sex couples are incapable of being as good parents as different-sex couples.

These beliefs are often justified by “common wisdom” arguments. For instance, some argue that children need both male and female parental role models, that non-biological parents invest less effort in parenting their children, or that children with same-sex parents are subjected to shame and bullying.

But these arguments are rarely backed by solid empirical evidence.

Previous research has been problematic

In 2012, Mark Regnerus, a sociologist based at the University of Texas, Austin published a study that claimed people raised by same-sex parents had worse health and socioeconomic outcomes as adults than people raised by different-sex parents.

Since these conclusions were at odds with the bulk of previous research findings, other researchers attempted to replicate Regnerus’s results using the same data. Their re-analyses demonstrated the Regnerus study was plagued by an array of analytical problems.

Correcting for these issues, there were in fact minimal differences between the children raised by same-sex parents and married opposite-sex parents.

Read more: FactCheck: are children ‘better off’ with a mother and father than with same-sex parents?

But still, the damage of the study was done. Its spurious findings received substantial international media coverage and became a go-to resource for activist groups lobbying against same-sex marriage.

The study’s findings were also presented in US courts in an attempt to prevent the introduction of same-sex marriage legislation.

To be sure, the Regnerus study constitutes an outlier in the broader literature on same-sex parenting. The majority of studies on the topic have found same-sex parents provide their children with as healthy and nurturing home environments as different-sex parents.

But even these studies are routinely called into question. The most common criticism is that their analyses tend to rely on “convenience” samples. These are small and selective samples of same-sex-parented families, who may be approached at LGBT events or recruited through mailing campaigns.

Critics (rightfully) argue such families may differ from the broader population of same-sex families, which can distort the reliability of the studies and their conclusions.

Our new research

We conducted our study in the Netherlands because it is one of only a few countries in the world that allows researchers to link anonymous administrative data from multiple population registers on children and their families.

Thanks to these data, we were able to overcome the limitations of existing research, both in terms of the sample size and the accuracy of the information.

Leveraging the records of 13 consecutive cohorts of primary school students, we compared the academic outcomes of all children raised by different-sex couples (more than 1.4 million children) with those of all children raised by same-sex couples (3,006 children).

We statistically accounted for pre-existing characteristics that may be different between families with same-sex and different-sex parents. These include the higher average education and lower average incomes of same-sex parents.

We found children in same-sex-parented families got higher scores on national standardised tests. Their advantage amounted to 13% of a standard deviation, which is comparable to the advantage of children whose parents are both employed as opposed to being out of work. The advantage manifested across all test modules, including language, mathematics and general learning ability.

Read more: In families with same-sex parents, the kids are all right

We also found children with same-sex parents to be slightly more likely (1.5%) to graduate from high school, and much more likely (11.2%) to enrol in university, than children with different-sex parents.

Our data did not enable us to pinpoint the specific reasons why same-sex-parented children tend to outperform their peers. The literature, however, offers some plausible theoretical mechanisms.

For example, it could be because same-sex couples face more substantive barriers to parenthood (including social scrutiny, greater costs of conceiving a child and legislative hurdles) and overcoming these barriers may strengthen their commitment to parental roles.

Combined with the fact same-sex couples face minimal odds of becoming parents through accidental pregnancies, this can result in more positive parenting practices.

What does it all mean?

The Netherlands features high levels of public approval of same-sex relations. It also provides robust legislative support structures for same-sex couples, such as the right to adopt children, equal access to IVF treatments and formal recognition of both parents.

For these reasons, the Dutch institutional context may represent a best-case scenario concerning the achievement of children with same-sex parents.

Read more: Why education about gender and sexuality does belong in the classroom

Same-sex parents in other countries may be subject to environmental hurdles that remain out of their control and that may negatively affect their children. These include a lack of access to the social institution of marriage and more profound experiences of stigma and discrimination.

By undertaking our analyses in the Netherlands, we were able to retrieve findings that are more likely to reflect the influence of same-sex parenting itself, and less likely to reflect external influences that stem from non-inclusive institutional environments.

Therefore, our findings portray a viable scenario of what could happen in countries with more restrictive institutions, should they direct comparable efforts towards the inclusion of sexual minorities.

Altogether, the message stemming from our findings is clear: being raised by same-sex parents bears no independent detrimental effect on children’s outcomes. In social and political environments that provide high levels of legislative and public support, children in same-sex-parented families thrive.

– ref. Children with same-sex parents do better at school than their peers – https://theconversation.com/children-with-same-sex-parents-do-better-at-school-than-their-peers-155205

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Blair, Emeritus Professor, ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery, OzGrav, University of Western Australia

In 2017, astronomers witnessed the birth of a black hole for the first time. Gravitational wave detectors picked up the ripples in spacetime caused by two neutron stars colliding to form the black hole, and other telescopes then observed the resulting explosion.

But the real nitty-gritty of how the black hole formed, the movements of matter in the instants before it was sealed away inside the black hole’s event horizon, went unobserved. That’s because the gravitational waves thrown off in these final moments had such a high frequency that our current detectors can’t pick them up.

Read more: At last, we’ve found gravitational waves from a collapsing pair of neutron stars

If you could observe ordinary matter as it turns into a black hole, you would be seeing something similar to the Big Bang played backwards. The scientists who design gravitational wave detectors have been hard at work to figure out how improve our detectors to make it possible.

Today our team is publishing a paper that shows how this can be done. Our proposal could make detectors 40 times more sensitive to the high frequencies we need, allowing astronomers to listen to matter as it forms a black hole.

It involves creating weird new packets of energy (or “quanta”) that are a mix of two types of quantum vibrations. Devices based on this technology could be added to existing gravitational wave detectors to gain the extra sensitivity needed.

Quantum problems

Gravitational wave detectors such as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) in the United States use lasers to measure incredibly small changes in the distance between two mirrors. Because they measure changes 1,000 times smaller than the size of a single proton, the effects of quantum mechanics – the physics of individual particles or quanta of energy – play an important role in the way these detectors work.

Two different kinds of quantum packets of energy are involved, both predicted by Albert Einstein. In 1905 he predicted that light comes in packets of energy that we call photons; two years later, he predicted that heat and sound energy come in packets of energy called phonons.

Photons are used widely in modern technology, but phonons are much trickier to harness. Individual phonons are usually swamped by vast numbers of random phonons that are the heat of their surroundings. In gravitational wave detectors, phonons bounce around inside the detector’s mirrors, degrading their sensitivity.

Read more: Australia’s part in the global effort to discover gravitational waves

Five years ago physicists realised you could solve the problem of insufficient sensitivity at high frequency with devices that combine phonons with photons. They showed that devices in which energy is carried in quantum packets that share the properties of both phonons and photons can have quite remarkable properties.

These devices would involve a radical change to a familiar concept called “resonant amplification”. Resonant amplification is what you do when you push a playground swing: if you push at the right time, all your small pushes create big swinging.

The new device, called a “white light cavity”, would amplify all frequencies equally. This is like a swing that you could push any old time and still end up with big results.

However, nobody has yet worked out how to make one of these devices, because the phonons inside it would be overwhelmed by random vibrations caused by heat.

Quantum solutions

In our paper, published in Communications Physics, we show how two different projects currently under way could do the job.

The Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen has been developing devices called phononic crystals, in which thermal vibrations are controlled by a crystal-like structure cut into a thin membrane. The Australian Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems has also demonstrated an alternative system in which phonons are trapped inside an ultrapure quartz lens.

We show both of these systems satisfy the requirements for creating the “negative dispersion” – which spreads light frequencies in a reverse rainbow pattern – needed for white light cavities.

Both systems, when added to the back end of existing gravitational wave detectors, would improve the sensitivity at frequencies of a few kilohertz by the 40 times or more needed for listening to the birth of a black hole.

What’s next?

Our research does not represent an instant solution to improving gravitational wave detectors. There are enormous experimental challenges in making such devices into practical tools. But it does offer a route to the 40-fold improvement of gravitational wave detectors needed for observing black hole births.

Astrophysicists have predicted complex gravitational waveforms created by the convulsions of neutron stars as they form black holes. These gravitational waves could allow us to listen in to the nuclear physics of a collapsing neutron star.

For example, it has been shown that they can clearly reveal whether the neutrons in the star remain as neutrons or whether they break up into a sea of quarks, the tiniest subatomic particles of all. If we could observe neutrons turning into quarks and then disappearing into the black hole singularity, it would be the exact reverse of the Big Bang where out of the singularity, the particles emerged which went on to create our universe.

– ref. A tiny crystal device could boost gravitational wave detectors to reveal the birth cries of black holes – https://theconversation.com/a-tiny-crystal-device-could-boost-gravitational-wave-detectors-to-reveal-the-birth-cries-of-black-holes-155125

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University

The Trump era might not yet be over. But the Trump presidency – or at least one Trump presidency – certainly is. For the United States, it’s time to clean up the wreckage. For the rest of us, there’s also damage to undo.

Yet, just as Australia managed to emerge from the global financial crisis in better shape than any country had the right to expect, so it emerges from the Trump presidency in surprisingly reasonable shape – especially considering the global calamities still unfolding around us.

Just how much credit Australia’s federal government deserves for that result is worth considering. Australia had two prime ministers during the Trump era, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison.

Read more: The king, the fires and the fever: a fairytale finish to 2020

Early in Trump’s presidency, Turnbull had a now infamous phone conversation with Trump, which was duly leaked to the media. In it, Turnbull tried to persuade a deeply disgruntled president to fulfil the American end of a bargain involving a refugee swap. The US would take asylum-seekers stuck on Manus Island and Nauru, in return for Australia taking refugees from Central America.

Turnbull tried to address Trump as one transactional businessman to another. The effort was probably as effective as it could have been in the circumstances. Turnbull reported in his memoir A Bigger Picture that in dealing with the “narcissistic bully”, it’s advisable to stand up for yourself.

Morrison, who is transactional but no businessman, seemed less worried about appearing close to Trump. The images of the two of them with Australian businessman Anthony Pratt at the opening of an Ohio box factory looked like a Make America Great Again Rally. Morrison scored a state dinner on that visit, in September 2019. It all seemed pretty chummy. As Trump left office, he took time out from fomenting a violent insurrection to award Morrison a legion of merit.

Yet the image of Morrison as Trump-lite has never been fully convincing. Trump delights in revving up his “base”, but Morrison’s political strategy has been to appeal to the “quiet Australians”. He makes a virtue of political disengagement. Morrison is a political entrepreneur if nothing else, always on the hunt for whatever it takes. His brief and mild flirtation with Trumpist populism – in the form of complaints about “negative globalism” in a lecture to the Lowy Institute in October 2019, just after his US visit – needs to be seen in this context.

Trumpism did have its effects on Australian domestic politics. When Turnbull won the prime ministership from Tony Abbott in September 2015, he promised “a style of leadership that respects the people’s intelligence”. But then came the 2016 election, which reduced the Coalition’s margin to a hair’s breadth. It also saw the return of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation to the Senate. The Brexit referendum, signalling the rise of right-wing populism in Britain, occurred during the Australian election campaign. But Trump’s victory later that year did more to embolden Australia’s political right.

That combination of near-defeat and rising right-wing populism in Australia’s two major Anglophone allies was fatal to Turnbull. Never popular among conservatives, the narrative was repeatedly hammered home by the Murdoch media, think tanks, conservative magazines and on the right wing of the Coalition parties both in parliament and out of it. In comparing Turnbull to his Labor counterpart Bill Shorten, conservative legal academic James Allan complained

We have two parties led by men whose core views cannot be separated by a piece of paper.

Trump’s political success managed to convince a large section of the political right that history was on their side. This new confidence had many manifestations.

The timing of Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton’s criticism of the Fraser Coalition government for allowing the immigration of Lebanese Muslims to Australia in the 1970s – surely one of the most sordid remarks by a senior government minister in decades – came just a fortnight after Trump’s victory. In January 2018, Dutton claimed Melburnians were too frightened to go to restaurants at night because of the danger posed by African street gangs. Two months later, he called for South Africa’s white farmers to be given refugee status, a popular cause on the far right.

After Barnaby Joyce’s career as Nationals leader imploded, he produced a badly written memoir that represented his effort – ham-fisted as it was – to articulate the persona of an angry white man and a populist vision for the “poor whites” of the bush.

Then, in October 2018, a motion from Pauline Hanson that contained the slogan “it’s OK to be white” – one popular among racists – attracted the votes of Coalition senators, before they backtracked and voted against it the following day.

When the move against Turnbull’s leadership came in August 2018, it was predictably over energy policy – attachment to coal and oil remains de rigueur for Australia’s right – and it came from Dutton. The prime minister won a leadership spill by 48 votes to Dutton’s 35 but in the vote for the leadership later in the week, the margin was closer still. In the final round, Morrison defeated Dutton by just five votes. This was Australia’s nearest flirtation with Trumpism.

Morrison seems to have been occasionally tempted by a mild Trumpian populism early in the pandemic, but he quickly recognised that fewer deaths would result from a more consensual approach attuned to scientific advice. Morrison’s stated desire to open up the economy – often well before prudence appeared to dictate – might have been ill-judged, but it was hardly indebted to Trump.

No serious Australian politician has been able to regard the US or UK as worthy of emulation in dealing with COVID-19. The disintegration of the Trump presidency during 2020, and especially its violent denouement, seems to have deterred all but a small core of true believers.

Read more: As Trump exits the White House, he leaves Trumpism behind in Australia

Australia’s harder line toward China in 2020 owes something to US policy and close relations between the countries’ intelligence communities. But it also has other roots – in long-standing Australian anxieties about domination by Asian powers as well as the growing force of a local critique of China’s record on human rights and international relations.

Nor did Australia’s Coalition government need Trump to reinforce its go-slow on climate policy. Australia is quite capable of doing that all on its own. It will find life less congenial under a Biden presidency.

– ref. ‘Trumpism’ in Australia has been overstated — our problems are mostly our own – https://theconversation.com/trumpism-in-australia-has-been-overstated-our-problems-are-mostly-our-own-154949

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Margie Rogers, Lecturer, Early Childhood Education, University of New England

Scientists don’t know exactly what percentage of the population will need to get a COVID vaccine to achieve herd immunity. Some diseases, such as whooping cough, need very high rates of vaccination between 90-95%.

The rise of new, more infectious coronavirus variants might mean even more people may need to be vaccinated against COVID than we initially thought.

One question therefore becomes crucial: how will governments convince enough people to get vaccinated to achieve herd immunity?

Read more: Herd immunity is the end game for the pandemic, but the AstraZeneca vaccine won’t get us there

One method might be to use emotional storytelling to sway people who aren’t convinced by fact-based logical messaging.

Appeals to logic or emotive stories?

Many people will say yes to being vaccinated. One international survey, published in October last year, found an average of 71.5% of participants (from 19 countries) would be likely to accept a COVID vaccine.

But some people who would normally be pro-vaccination might have concerns about the speed of the approvals of these vaccines.

Read more: COVID vaccines have been developed in record time. But how will we know they’re safe?

To deal with such fears, the Australian government has crafted public health messages that appeal to logic using facts, figures and explanations about how the process has been done safely.

Read more: The government is spending almost A$24m to convince us to accept a COVID vaccine. But will its new campaign actually work?

However, other people, particularly those who are unlikely to get vaccinated, may not necessarily respond well to these messages.

Evidence suggests vaccine-hesitant groups are less likely to respond to factual information particularly from “pro-vaccine” sources.

But they may respond more to personal stories about the effects of the virus. In my area of research, we call these stories “cultural health narratives”.

Within the anti-vax movement, these narratives are often powerful stories of people negatively affected by vaccinations, or what they believe are vaccine-related side effects. These emotional accounts are very powerful because we’re attracted to narratives and we live our lives through them.

We tell stories about our lives to ourselves, our friends and families through conversations, photo diaries and social media. We consume other people’s stories through novels, news, movies and so on.

What’s more, some countries have done very well controlling the virus using low-technology health measures, such as hand washing, social distancing, border shutdowns and quarantining.

This might sound like a digression, but stay with me — the downside for these countries is that most people in the population don’t know anyone who has had COVID nor lost anyone to the disease. This might mean they are less likely to see the need to be vaccinated.

This also means there’s a lack of personal COVID health stories within those countries, including Australia. Anti-vax messages often use emotional stories for their own ends, and their messages can fill these gaps if governments don’t report their own real health stories.

How could governments use storytelling?

When we hear a story, we often lower our guard and tend to start responding emotionally to the characters. Parents, educators and religious leaders have long used this as a way of teaching.

Governments could use storytelling to potentially improve COVID vaccination rates particularly among those who are unlikely to get the jab.

Governments could add emotional health stories to their vaccination messages.

These narratives could show the negative effects of the virus on people’s lives, and/or they can be used to show the positive effects of vaccinations to help avoid disease.

These could be targeted towards those that might be more likely to be influenced by stories, using traditional and social media platforms.

These true, personal video accounts could include:

Do health stories work?

Emotional and personal health narratives can be a powerful way of communicating health messaging, and the benefits of vaccination.

One study, conducted by Professor Julie Leask and colleagues, showed 37 parents both anti-vaxxer health stories and medical pro-vaccination stories.

The pro-vaccination stories included footage of children with measles and whooping cough. Every focus group recalled the footage, with some parents labelling it “shocking” and “devastating”. The authors noted that parents, when voicing support of vaccination, leaned on stories in the decision process — not just facts.

The authors concluded that “stories about people affected by vaccine-preventable diseases need to re-enter the public discourse”.

Another study highlighted the positive effects of first-person narratives on young people to help them avoid Type 2 diabetes. In this study, personal narratives told by people who had the disease were most effective in persuading the participants to change their lifestyle to avoid Type 2 diabetes.

Social media will be challenging

People get information about vaccination from health workers, relatives, friends, and social and traditional media.

Social media platforms can be problematic because if someone clicks an article with vaccine misinformation, more articles with even more misleading ideas are likely to appear in their news feeds. The opposite also occurs; if someone clicks on pro-vaccination information, more pro-vaccination information is fed to them. This can lead to polarisation within the community.

Dealing with misleading health messages about COVID vaccines will be very important for governments, and it’ll be vital for them to stay in front of anti-vax COVID messaging. Factual information will be essential, but true, personal health stories are another tool to convince particular groups.

It seems the federal government is not yet specifically targeting these groups, but may need to in the race for COVID herd immunity.

– ref. Why telling stories could be a more powerful way of convincing some people to take a COVID vaccine than just the facts – https://theconversation.com/why-telling-stories-could-be-a-more-powerful-way-of-convincing-some-people-to-take-a-covid-vaccine-than-just-the-facts-155050

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jenny Davis, Professor, Research Institute for Environment & Livelihoods, Charles Darwin University, Charles Darwin University

There aren’t many parts of the world where you can discover a completely new assemblage of living creatures. But after sampling underground water in a remote, arid region of northern Australia, we discovered at least 11, and probably more, new species of stygofauna.

Stygofauna are invertebrates that have evolved exclusively in underground water. A life in complete darkness means these animals are often blind, beautifully translucent and often extremely localised – rarely living anywhere else but the patch they’re found in.

The species we discovered live in a region earmarked for fracking by the Northern Territory and federal government. As with any mining activity, it’s important future gas extraction doesn’t harm groundwater habitats or the water that sustains them.

Our findings, published today, show the importance of conducting comprehensive environmental assessments before extraction projects begin. These assessments are especially critical in Australia’s north, where many plants and animals living in surface and groundwater have not yet been documented.

When the going gets tough, go underground

Stygofauna were first discovered in Western Australia in 1991. Since then, these underground, aquatic organisms have been recorded across the continent. Today, more than 400 Australian species have been formally recognised by scientists.

Stygofauna are the ultimate climate change refugees. They would have inhabited surface water when inland Australia was much wetter. But as the continent started drying around 14 million years ago, they moved underground to the relatively stable environmental conditions of subterranean aquifers.

Read more: Hidden depths: why groundwater is our most important water source

Today, stygofauna help maintain the integrity of groundwater food webs. They mostly graze on fungal and microbial films created by organic material leaching from the surface.

In 2018, the final report of an independent inquiry called for a critical knowledge gap regarding groundwater to be filled, to ensure fracking could be done safely in the Northern Territory. We wanted to determine where stygofauna and microbial assemblages occurred, and in what numbers.

Our project started in 2019, when we carried out a pilot survey of groundwater wells (bores) in the Beetaloo Sub-basin and Roper River region. The Beetaloo Sub-basin is potentially one of the most important areas for shale gas in Australia.

What we found

The stygofauna we found range in size from centimetres to millimetres and include:

• two new species of ostracod: small crustaceans enclosed within mussel-like shells

• a new species of amphipod: this crustacean acts as a natural vacuum cleaner, feeding on decomposing material

• multiple new species of copepods: tiny crustaceans which form a major component of the zooplankton in marine and freshwater systems

• a new syncarid: another crustacean entirely restricted to groundwater habitats

• a new snail and a new worm.

These species were living in groundwater 400 to 900 kilometres south of Darwin. We found them mostly in limestone karst habitats, which contain many channels and underground caverns.

Perhaps most exciting, we also found a relatively large, colourless, blind shrimp (Parisia unguis) previously known only from the Cutta Cutta caves near Katherine. This shrimp is an “apex” predator, feeding on other stygofauna — a rare find for these kinds of ecosystems.

Protecting groundwater and the animals that live there

The Beetaloo Sub-basin in located beneath a major freshwater resource, the Cambrian Limestone Aquifer. It supplies water for domestic use, cattle stations and horticulture.

Surface water in this dry region is scarce, and it’s important natural gas development does not harm groundwater.

The stygofauna we found are not the first to potentially be affected by a resource project. Stygofauna have also been found at the Yeelirrie uranium mine in Western Australia, approved by the federal government in 2019. More research will be required to understand risks to the stygofauna we found at the NT site.

Read more: It’s not worth wiping out a species for the Yeelirrie uranium mine

The discovery of these new NT species has implications for all extractive industries affecting groundwater. It shows the importance of thorough assessment and monitoring before work begins, to ensure damage to groundwater and associated ecosystems is detected and mitigated.

Where to from here

Groundwater is vital to inland Australia. Underground ecosystems must be protected – and not considered “out of sight, out of mind”.

Our study provides the direction to reduce risks to stygofauna, ensuring their ecosystems and groundwater quality is maintained.

Comprehensive environmental surveys are needed to properly document the distribution of these underground assemblages. The new stygofauna we found must also be formally recognised as a new species in science, and their DNA sequence established to support monitoring programs.

Many new tools and approaches are available to support environmental assessment, monitoring and management of resource extraction projects. These include remote sensing and molecular analyses.

Deploying the necessary tools and methods will help ensure development in northern Australia is sustainable. It will also inform efforts to protect groundwater habitats and stygofauna across the continent.

Read more: Victoria quietly lifted its gas exploration pause but banned fracking for good. It’s bad news for the climate

– ref. Blind shrimps, translucent snails: the 11 mysterious new species we found in potential fracking sites – https://theconversation.com/blind-shrimps-translucent-snails-the-11-mysterious-new-species-we-found-in-potential-fracking-sites-155137

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

Reports that Britain’s prime minister Boris Johnson is considering calling for carbon border levies at the G7 summit to be held in London in June have produced a predictable reaction from the Australian government.

The levies would impose tariffs on carbon-intensive goods from countries such as Australia that haven’t adopted a carbon price or a 2050 net-zero emissions target.

Appearing to be shocked by the news, Energy Minister Angus Taylor declared that Australia is “dead against” carbon tariffs.

They were a “new form of protectionism designed to shield local industries from free trade”.

In fact they are already the policy of the European Union and the US, where President Joe Biden calls them a “carbon adjustment fee against countries that are failing to meet their climate and environmental obligations”. Canada, which has an economy-wide price on carbon, isn’t worried.

Saying you’re dead against something doesn’t stop it, and nor does asserting that it is anti free trade, when it is just as arguable that it is pro fair trade because it denies exporters from countries that aren’t taking action against climate change an unfair advantage.

Australia not the primary target

The mining industry itself made this point during the Gillard government’s introduction of Australia’s short-lived carbon price.

It would leave Australian exporters at a “disadvantage compared with international competitors”.

Australia isn’t the primary target in any event. The main aim of carbon tariffs would be to encourage China’s leader Xi Jinping to shift his country’s zero emissions date from 2060 to 2050, benefiting the rest of the world.

Read more: Vital Signs: a global carbon price could soon be a reality – Australia should prepare

If Xi Jinping does it, he’ll be on a level playing field with much of the world, although not with Australia, whose fate, like that of Britain’s Admiral Byng in 1757 would be used “to encourage the others”.

Complaining won’t much help. The International Monetary Fund has endorsed the idea, saying

in the absence of an agreement on carbon pricing – which would be by far preferable – applying the same carbon prices on the same products irrespective of where they are produced could help avoid shifting emissions out of the EU to countries with different standards

The World Trade Organisation, which has in the past has pushed back against environmental considerations in trade, is neutered.

World Trade Organisation powerless

In the late 1990s the WTO struck down a range of environmental restrictions imposed by the United States that required imported tuna to be labelled “dolphin safe” and required shrimp catchers to take action to protect turtles.

These decisions proved disastrous for the WTO, producing bitter hostility from the environmental movement and contributing to mass protests at the 1999 WTO meeting, which became known as the Battle of Seattle and ultimately killed the Doha round of trade negotiations.

Right now the WTO is in the organisational equivalent of an induced coma. By refusing to fill vacancies as they arose, the Trump Administration denied its appellate panel a quorum, forcing it to stop hearing cases.

The result is that any appeal to the WTO against carbon border tariffs would be left in limbo. US President Joe Biden has agreed to the appointment of a new WTO director general, stalled by Trump, but is in no hurry to re-establish the appellate body.

Instead, he will first try to refashion the WTO into an organisation that supports his own policies, among them stronger environmental measures, carbon tariffs and “Buy American” provisions. When reformed, the appellate body will give complaints from Australia’s government short shrift.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has shown some signs of recognising these realities, making baby steps towards announcing a 2050 zero emissions target.

But time is short. Morrison will have to either face down the denialists and do-nothingists on his own side of politics, or set himself, and Australia, up for a series of humiliations on the international stage, with real and damaging consequences.

– ref. No point complaining about it, Australia will face carbon levies unless it changes course – https://theconversation.com/no-point-complaining-about-it-australia-will-face-carbon-levies-unless-it-changes-course-155200

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

Pauline Hanson has told the government it should drop its proposed watering down of the Better Off Overall Test (BOOT) if it wants One Nation to continue negotiations on the industrial relation legislation.

One Nation holds two of the five crossbench Senate votes the government needs to pass its legislation, which contains a raft of reforms.

In a letter to Industrial Relations Minister Christian Porter delivered late Monday, Hanson said that while she and her party’s industrial relations spokesman Malcolm Roberts were available “for an open discussion” on reform, “it makes the task difficult if the Government maintains its plan to suspend the Better Off Overall Test for a further two years”.

“Therefore we strongly encourage you” to remove the relevant parts of the legislation “to continue the good faith negotiations and consideration of the Bill by One Nation Senators”.

Hanson wrote that One Nation had long supported improved and simplified IR legislation for small businesses and their more and 2.2 million workers.

But the bill in its current form was “inequitable and severely undermines the Better Off Overall Test (BOOT) that protects workers from the small number of deceitful employers,” she said.

Under the current BOOT, workers must be better off overall under a proposed enterprise agreement compared with the relevant modern award.

The legislation, now before parliament, proposes the BOOT would not have to be met if the Fair Work Commission decided this was appropriate given the impact of COVID on the enterprise.

The commission would also need to take into account the views of the workers, expressed in a vote.

The provision for suspending the BOOT would only apply to agreements made in the next two years, although the agreements themselves could run much longer.

The government has made it clear it will ditch its plan for the BOOT change if that is necessary to get its legislation through and has given every indication it expects to have to do so.

The Hanson demand may bring the argument about the BOOT to an early head, because there is also disquiet about the change among the other crossbenchers.

– ref. Pauline Hanson puts her foot down over government’s changes to the BOOT – https://theconversation.com/pauline-hanson-puts-her-foot-down-over-governments-changes-to-the-boot-155326

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maria Maley, Senior Lecturer in Politics, Australian National University

Brittany Higgins’ allegation she was raped in a minister’s office at Parliament House is just one of a number of recent stories of bullying, sexual harassment and sexual misconduct that have exposed the dark side of working conditions for some political staffers.

As a researcher of political staff in Australia, I am trying to understand why this behaviour exists within the working culture of parliament, why it is reaching the public eye now and what needs to be done about it.

Over the summer, I interviewed eight former political staffers about their experiences working in ministers’ offices and electorate offices — both at the federal and state level.

They described instances of bullying and sexual harassment by other staffers and their bosses. It is hard to know how common this is, as the world they inhabit is secretive. The identities of staffers are not publicly known, let alone how many make complaints and how they are dealt with.

Read more: Is Canberra having a #metoo moment? It will take more than reports of MPs behaving badly for parliament to change

The culture in Canberra

Work as a political staffer can be exciting and rewarding, as well as combative and competitive. Work is dominated by the needs and demands of a boss who is under constant scrutiny.

In her 2016 book, former staffer Niki Savva described her job this way:

The hours were long, the demands never-ending, the stress phenomenal and the fear of stuffing up overwhelming.

But along with the stress comes the prestige and thrill of being close to power and having an impact on public decisions. Most staffers describe their jobs as a privilege. It is their “dream job”.

Many staffers are young and female. I researched a group of federal political advisers working from 2010-17 and found almost 50% of them were recruited in their 20s. Over 75% were recruited before they turned 40.

Over 90% of administrative staff in the study were female, and 40% of the political and policy advisers were women.

Read more: Why a code of conduct may not be enough to change the boys’ club culture in the Liberal Party

The combination of long hours, being away from home and the constant presence of alcohol can be diabolical, creating risks for staffers.

Some described to me a hard-drinking culture, in which bar hopping was seen as a way to wind down and deal with stressful days. One staffer said she kept drinking on some nights to ensure her boss stayed out of trouble, helping him get into a taxi at the end of the night.

Another former staffer claimed the MP he worked for would begin drinking mid-afternoon on most days and when drunk, staff would have to deal with unwanted sexual advances. Repeatedly.

They didn’t complain out of loyalty. They just dealt with it. For years.

Few options for staffers to report misconduct

When they experience sexual harassment or bullying at work, political staffers face high stakes decisions about making complaints.

If they complain, they could lose their jobs or their career prospects. Their jobs are precarious and can be terminated at any time.

One legal reason for termination, according to the federal Department of Finance, can be if the senator or member “has lost trust or confidence in the employee”.

Read more: Thirty-five voices, one movement: a new book examines #MeToo in Australia

While staffers are covered by the Fair Work Act, invoking the workplace protections that exist for them is perilous. If they make a formal complaint, they could be sacked or seen as a troublemaker, jeopardising future work for their parties.

Loyalty to the politician and party is a paramount condition of their employment. As a result, the instinct for many is to protect the party. But tolerating poor conduct can mean bad behaviour becomes normalised.

Staffers are also not confident about raising these issues through party organisations. Those I interviewed said they believe the party’s priority is always its reputation, the likelihood of MPs being re-elected and factional power plays — leaders seeking to protect people with whom they are aligned. The well-being of staff is seen as collateral damage.

Accountability is lacking

Some of the people accused of misconduct are political staff, whose behaviour is governed by a code of conduct.

But we never hear about breaches of the code because it is policed internally by senior figures in the government, the members of the shadowy Government Staffing Committee.

When Labor was in government from 2007-13, it provided the dates on which the committee met and the number of investigations it conducted, but nothing about the nature of those investigations.

Since coming to power in 2013, the Coalition government has refused to provide any details about the work of the committee.

According to the ex-staffers I’ve interviewed, allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct are not new. Such behaviour has been going on for years. The same inequalities of power have long existed.

Why we are hearing about them now might be because the #MeToo movement has emboldened people to speak out. Like Brittany Higgins, the people who spoke to me were fuelled by anger that no one was held accountable for what happened to them and a desire to bring about change.

While these cases might be rare, something clearly needs to be done. Prime Minister Scott Morrison reacted to questions about Higgins’ allegation by saying the case was “deeply distressing” and the government takes “all matters of workplace safety very, very seriously.”

But it is leadership from the top that is needed to change a culture that enables and tolerates poor conduct.

We need independent mechanisms for handling complaints, job protections for staff who speak up and a front-foot commitment to maintaining a safe workplace, which means investigating and disciplining members of parliament and staffers when serious allegations are made.

This can only come from the prime minister himself and other party leaders at the top.

– ref. Why political staffers are vulnerable to sexual misconduct — and little is done to stop it – https://theconversation.com/why-political-staffers-are-vulnerable-to-sexual-misconduct-and-little-is-done-to-stop-it-155300

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tess Newton Cain, Adjunct Associate Professor, Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University

It has been a bruising couple of weeks for the Pacific Islands Forum after five Micronesian countries announced they were leaving the region’s key intergovernmental body. But rumours of its demise have been somewhat exaggerated.

We may also look back at February 2021 as a turning point in Pacific regionalism , or the processes that foster cooperation and solidarity among Pacific island countries.

With increased attention on the forum and how it works, this could prompt change for the better.

What is the Pacific Islands Forum?

The Pacific Islands Forum has 18 members, including Australia and New Zealand.

Founded in 1971, it was established by Pacific leaders who were denied a space to talk politics by the colonial powers in what was then the South Pacific Commission (now the Pacific Community).

The forum is where leaders meet as equals to address the biggest issues affecting individual nations and the Pacific as a whole, such as the response to COVID-19 and climate change.

In 2018, the leaders signed the Boe Declaration, which established climate change as the most important threat to the security of the region.

The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands was conducted with the backing of the forum. The collective political will of its membership also delivered the Treaty of Rarotonga, making the Pacific a nuclear-free zone.

The Pacific Islands Forum is run by a secretariat based in Suva, headed up by a secretary-general. Since 2014, that position has been held by Papua New Guinea’s Dame Meg Taylor.

Determining her successor is the spark that led to the current conflict.

What caused the split?

Normally the secretary-general position is determined by informal exchanges and possibly some horsetrading, with focus on consensus.

But because of COVID-19, this was all reduced to a Zoom meeting. A marathon session, involving two rounds of confidential voting, was used to decide the new secretary-general.

After this, former Cook Islands Prime Minister Henry Puna narrowly beat diplomat Gerald Zackios of Marshall Islands by nine votes to eight (New Caledonia was unable to take part thanks to the government having resigned a few days earlier).

This triggered a rapid and explosive response, with the Micronesian grouping – Palau, Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, and Nauru — announcing they will quit the forum.

This should not have come as a surprise. Ahead of the meeting, the Micronesian leaders had stated that under the terms of a “gentlemen’s agreement” the position of secretary-general should rotate among the sub-regions, and this was their turn.

Not only that, they had clearly warned if they did not get their way, they would see no value in staying with the forum.

Transform Aqorau, a legal adviser to Marshall Islands, says the rest of the region may have underestimated Micronesia’s resolve here and as a result, the forum now has a “totally unprecedented situation” to deal with.

This is not the first time regional cooperative action has been tested, but it is probably the most serious existential threat yet to the Forum, and a major test for our leaders.

What happens now?

All is not lost. The Micronesian leadership has left the door ajar as each country will pursue its own exit strategy according to their national processes. This means that each of the five can pursue their own path and have the option to change position if they see fit.

Importantly, the forum agreement sets out 12 months from when an intention to leave is announced to when it actually takes effect.

It is clear the forum wants all members to stay inside the tent. And work is already underway to ensure communication remains open.

As forum chair, Tuvalu Prime Minister Kausea Natano, said last week,

The Forum Family will not be complete without its Micronesian brothers and sisters […] For the sake of our Pacific people, we should remain open to all opportunities for talanoa or dialogue as has always been the Pacific Way.

We can expect a lot of conversations and use of experts and advisers to seek a way forward over the coming weeks and months.

There is no doubt this puts an added wrinkle in the geopolitical fabric of the region.

Read more: How might coronavirus change Australia’s ‘Pacific Step-up’?

It also creates added hurdles for members of the forum (including Australia and New Zealand) and other partners (such as China, the United States, and the United Kingdom) who are seeking to increase their influence and range of Pacific relationships.

And it places an additional burden on the forum ahead of the expected meeting in August, where critical issues such as the regional position for COP 26 (the United Nations climate change conference) and the Blue Pacific 2050 strategy (the region’s shared priorities) need to be front of mind.

What does this mean for Australia?

The Pacific Islands Forum is too easily written off as a “talkfest” with colourful shirts.

But when it comes to the security of our region, there is much to be gained by acting collectively. For that, political debate and accommodation is required. And it is through the forum that these things happen.

Australia’s membership of the forum gives it privileged access to the leaders of the near neighbourhood. But this has not always been valued as highly as it should have been. In the region, there continues to be a healthy degree of scepticism about just how committed Australia is to the region.

Read more: Pacific Island nations will no longer stand for Australia’s inaction on climate change

This situation now requires Australia to work with other nations, not on its own.

Australia therefore needs to act with humility and listen to those with more knowledge about regional and sub-regional dynamics. Across the region there are people whose experience, credibility, and “mana” qualify them to take delicate negotiations forward. Some of them are leaders and ministers and others are not.

This is an opportunity for some creative diplomacy.

A turning point?

The forum leaders have already asked the secretariat to review the secretary-general appointment/selection process.

This may well be a starting point for some bigger, deeper conversations about the purpose and objectives of the Pacific Islands Forum and regional cooperation, and how they can be better articulated for the benefit of Pacific peoples.

Let’s hope that with some commitment and energy, the forum actually becomes stronger as a result of these latest ructions.

– ref. With five countries set to quit, is it curtains for the Pacific Islands Forum? – https://theconversation.com/with-five-countries-set-to-quit-is-it-curtains-for-the-pacific-islands-forum-155133

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Quigley, Associate Professor of Earthquake Science, University of Melbourne

A 7.1 magnitude earthquake was recorded off the coast of Fukushima Prefecture in northeastern Japan on Saturday night, injuring around 100 people, closing roads and trains, and leaving almost a million people without electricity overnight.

It came almost 10 years after the nearby Tohoku quake of March 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake that caused a catastrophic tsunami and resulted in thousands of deaths and a nuclear reactor meltdown.

In the hours after Saturday’s quake, there were several aftershocks up to magnitude 5, and officials warned there could be more to come.

The Japan Meteorological Agency said the quake itself was an aftershock of the 2011 event. That might seem odd, but aftershocks of a major earthquake can persist for years and even decades.

How do you know if it’s an aftershock?

The earthquake occurred in what’s a called a “subduction zone”, where the Pacific tectonic plate slides under the plate on which northern Japan sits at a rate of 7 to 10 cm per year. It’s an area where there are a lot of earthquakes. It was a structurally simple earthquake: what’s called a “thrust” or “reverse slip” quake, in which rock above the fault moves up and over the rock below the fault.

In areas with low seismic activity, we can recognise aftershock patterns for years and decades after a major quake. The Christchurch earthquake of 2016, for example, was an aftershock of the 2010 quake. Some scientists think aftershock sequences in regions like the eastern USA and Australia may persist for centuries.

In these seismically quiet places, it’s relatively easier to spot aftershocks. The main hallmark is that the rate of quakes in an area is higher after a major quake than it was before. When the rate of quakes has dropped back to what it was originally, we say the aftershocks have stopped.

However, in places like Japan with high seismic activity, it can be hard to say whether one earthquake is an aftershock of another.

On one hand, the rates of aftershocks reduced to pre-2011 rates within about 3 years of the Tohoku earthquake and thus the sequence may have concluded.

On the other hand, rates of seismic activity were continuing to decrease in a fashion consistent with an ongoing aftershock sequence. And Saturday’s earthquake appears to have occurred in an area that generated fewer immediate aftershocks following the 2011 event, suggesting this earthquake could have occurred as rupture of a remaining “sticky part” of the 2011 fault that generated the Tohoku earthquake.

Read more: Underground sounds: why we should listen to earthquakes

So was this an aftershock?

It’s certainly plausible that Saturday’s quake was an aftershock.

The 2011 quake was enormous — the largest ever recorded in Japan, and the fourth-largest worldwide since modern record-keeping began around 1900. It released around 1,000 times as much energy as Saturday’s earthquake, and created a rupture more than 500 km long with 10s of meters of slip. But the slip on the fault was not uniform and seismic activity continued in some areas that did not fail entirely in that earthquake.

Given all this, it’s almost certain there will be some relationship between the two quakes.

What’s more, there have been relatively few aftershocks of the 2011 quake close to where this one happened. This suggests it might have been a “balancing out” of stresses.

On the other hand, there have been several magnitude 7 quakes over the past century within 100 kilometres or so of this one, so it’s hardly out of the ordinary.

A definite answer on whether this was an aftershock or not will require detailed analysis of the quake and others in the region.

What we can learn from this

A quake like this one can be a valuable reminder of how important it is to learn the lessons of a disaster.

The earthquake generated very strong shaking in areas of Japan that were severely affected by the 2011 earthquake shaking and tsunami. Effects such as liquefaction are likely to have occurred again.

People sometimes think a big quake relieves stress built up in Earth’s crust and you can relax afterwards. In reality, it’s the opposite. When you have a big quake, there’s a higher probability you’ll have more to come. Subsequent earthquakes, whether they adhere to statistical definitions of aftershocks or not, can induce recurrent hazards that cause more damage to buildings and infrastructure and present risks to human life.

After a disaster, it is critical to act to reduce future exposure and vulnerability to future disasters through actions such as more considered land-use planning informed in part by better maps of seismic hazards, enhancing coastal protection through engineering of sea-walls and breakwaters and using vegetation, and making sure that warning and evacuation protocols are efficient and effective.

Japan is a world leader in many of these aspects, and the lessons learned from Tohoku are likely to have generated outcomes that minimised some of the loss and damage that could have otherwise occurred from Saturday’s earthquake.

Read more: Japan’s latest tsunami reaction shows lessons learned from previous disasters

– ref. The Fukushima quake may be an echo of the 2011 disaster — and a warning for the future – https://theconversation.com/the-fukushima-quake-may-be-an-echo-of-the-2011-disaster-and-a-warning-for-the-future-155293

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Agathe Lise-Pronovost, McKenzie Research Fellow in Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne

About 41,000 years ago, something remarkable happened: Earth’s magnetic field flipped and, for a temporary period, magnetic north was south and magnetic south was north.

Palaeomagnetists refer to this as a geomagnetic excursion. This event, which is different to a complete magnetic pole reversal, occurs irregularly through time and reflects the dynamics of Earth’s molten outer core.

The strength of Earth’s magnetic field would have almost vanished during the event, called the Laschamp excursion, which lasted a few thousand years.

Earth’s magnetic field acts as a shield against high-energy particles from the Sun and outside the solar system. Without it the planet would be bombarded by these charged particles.

We don’t know when the next geomagnetic excursion will happen. But if it happened today, it would be crippling.

Satellites and navigation apps would be rendered useless — and power distribution systems would be disrupted at a cost of between US$7 billion and US$48 billion each day in the United States alone.

Obviously, satellites and electric grids didn’t exist 41,000 years ago. But the Laschamp excursion — named after the lava flows in France where it was first recognised — still left its mark.

We recently detected its signature in Australia for the first time, in a 5.5 metre-long sediment core taken from the bottom of Lake Selina, Tasmania.

Within these grains lay 270,000 years of history, which we unpack in our paper published in the journal Quaternary Geochronology.

Read more: Explainer: what happens when magnetic north and true north align?

How sediment can record Earth’s magnetic field

Rock and soil can naturally contain magnetic particles, such as the iron mineral magnetite. These magnetic particles are like tiny compass needles aligned with Earth’s magnetic field.

They can be carried from the landscape into lakes through rainfall and wind. They eventually accumulate on the lake’s bottom, becoming buried and locking in place. They effectively become a fossil record of Earth’s magnetic field.

Scientists can then drill into lake beds and use a device called a magnetometer to recover the information held by the lake sediment. The deeper we drill, the further back in time we go.

In 2014 my colleagues and I travelled to Lake Selina in Tasmania with the goal of extracting the area’s climate, vegetation and “paleomagnetic” record, which is the record of Earth’s magnetic field stored in rocks, sediment and other materials.

Led by University of Melbourne Associate Professor Michael-Shawn Fletcher, we drilled into the lake floor from a makeshift floating platform rigged to two inflatable rafts.

The first Australian evidence of Laschamp

Our dating of the core revealed that the biggest shift in magnetic pole positions and the lowest magnetic field intensity at Lake Selina both occurred during the Laschamp excursion.

But for a core that spanned several glacial periods, no single dating method could be trusted to precisely determine its age. So we employed numerous scientific techniques including radiocarbon dating and beryllium isotope analysis.

The latter involves tracking the presence of an isotope called beryllium-10. This is formed when high-energy cosmic particles bombard Earth, colliding with oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the atmosphere.

Read more: New evidence for a human magnetic sense that lets your brain detect the Earth’s magnetic field

Since a weaker magnetic field leads to more of these charged particles bombarding Earth, we expected to find more beryllium-10 in sediment containing magnetic particles “locked-in” during the Laschamp excursion. Our findings confirmed this.

The interaction between charged cosmic particles and air particles in Earth’s atmosphere is also what creates auroras. Several generations of people would have witnessed a plethora of spectacular auroras during the Laschamp excursion.

Building on work from the 1980s

Only two other lakes in Australia — Lake Barrine and Lake Eacham in Queensland — have provided a “full-vector” record, wherein both the past directions and past intensity of the magnetic field are obtained from the same core.

But at 14,000 years old, the records from these lakes are much younger than the Laschamp excursion. Four decades later, our work at Lake Selina with modern techniques has revealed the exciting potential for similar research at other Australian lakes.

Currently, Australia is considered a paleomagnetic “blind spot”.

More data from lake sediments, archaeological artefacts, lava flows and mineral cave formations, including stalagmites and stalactites, could greatly improve our understanding of Earth’s magnetic field.

With this knowledge, we may one day potentially be able to predict the next geomagnetic excursion, before our phones stop working and the birds overhead veer off-course and crash into windows.

Our dating of the Lake Selina core is just the start. We’re sure there are more secrets embedded beneath, waiting to be found. And so we continue our search.

This work was carried out in collaboration with La Trobe University, the Australian National University, The University of Wollongong, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and the European Centre for Research and Teaching in Environmental Geosciences (CEREGE).

– ref. We found the first Australian evidence of a major shift in Earth’s magnetic poles. It may help us predict the next – https://theconversation.com/we-found-the-first-australian-evidence-of-a-major-shift-in-earths-magnetic-poles-it-may-help-us-predict-the-next-155040

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

New Zealand’s latest community cases, the first to be infected with the more infectious B.1.1.7 variant of COVID-19, have a plausible link to the border through one person’s workplace at LSG Sky Chefs, a business that deals with laundry and catering from international flights.

But it is not a definitive link. Indeed, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced this morning that genome sequencing was not able to link the new infections to any cases we have seen recently in returned travellers.

Worryingly, this leaves the possibility of a more widespread community outbreak.

Even if a connection to the workplace can eventually be established, it may not be a direct human-to-human link. The LSG Sky Chefs worker is not thought to have had face-to-face contact with air crew or international travellers.

This means there may well be other cases in the chain of transmission between the border and the worker, and these cases could have sparked additional community transmission chains.

This makes the situation potentially more dangerous than the recent cases associated with the Pullman hotel managed isolation facility, which had a clear and direct link to the border.

Read more: It’s still too soon for NZ to relax COVID-19 border restrictions for travellers from low-risk countries

More contagious variant

Auckland returned to level 3 lockdown conditions at midnight on Sunday following the announcement of the three new cases. The rest of the country moved to alert level 2, with both restrictions in place until at least Wednesday this week.

Genome sequencing has revealed the new community cases have the more infectious B.1.1.7 lineage. This variant (also known as VOC-202012/01) was first identified in the UK late last year. Since then it has rapidly become dominant across England.

It has also sparked outbreaks that have led to short, sharp restrictions in the Australian states of Queensland, Western Australia, and most recently Victoria.

Read more: Yes, another lockdown in Victoria hurts. But it might be our only way to avert a third wave

The UK has one of the best COVID-19 genomic surveillance systems and this has allowed scientists to track the spread of B.1.1.7. Multiple lines of evidence now point to an increase in the reproductive number of the virus.

This number, often called R0, is the average number of people each infected person will go on to infect. Researchers in the UK recently estimated R0 to be 43-82% higher for B.1.1.7 than for previous variants.

This is why moving Auckland to alert level 3 was the right thing to do. Given the highly infectious nature of the B.1.1.7 variant, and the chance these infections may have come from a source other than the family member’s workplace, there may be another cluster of cases out there that we don’t know about yet.

We know that some family members travelled to New Plymouth, in the Taranaki region, during the Waitangi weekend. There is a risk they passed the virus on to others, but there is also a reasonable chance this was before their infectious period.

At this point, it would seem unnecessary to place the Taranaki region under stricter lockdown conditions. We will know more later in the week, once results are in from tests of people who visited locations of interest in Taranaki.

Short lockdown or bigger outbreak

There are two main questions that need to be answered before we can consider relaxing alert levels for Auckland and the rest of the country. Firstly, we need to find out whether any of the three known cases passed the virus on to others in the community.

Anyone who lives in Auckland or Taranaki, or has travelled through Auckland or Taranaki in the last week should check the Ministry of Health website to see if they were at any of the locations of interest at the times listed.

If so, exposure to the virus is possible and anyone should follow the instructions on the website. If all those who may have been exposed can be identified quickly, the government will feel more confident about relaxing alert levels in the next few days.

But secondly, we also need to know if there are other chains of transmission stemming from cases in between the border and the family. Testing of close and “casual plus” contacts of the three cases will help answer this over the coming days. Testing of people connected with the LSG Sky Chefs workplace and Papatoetoe High School will be particularly important.

Finally, if there are cases that were infected prior to the three cases announced on Sunday, the virus could have been spreading in the community undetected for several weeks. Modelling shows that if there are additional cases upstream of the LSG Sky Chefs worker, the outbreak may already have infected more than 50 people.

But if we can rule this out by establishing a direct link to the source of infection, the outbreak is likely to be much smaller.

If we find significant community transmission, we need to be prepared for alert level 3 restrictions to last several weeks. Because we are dealing with a more transmissible variant, it is even possible we might need to move to alert level 4 to contain and eliminate the outbreak.

– ref. Close contact test results will be crucial to whether Auckland’s level 3 lockdown is extended beyond three days – https://theconversation.com/close-contact-test-results-will-be-crucial-to-whether-aucklands-level-3-lockdown-is-extended-beyond-three-days-155289