Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Doctor of Botany, University of Melbourne

Australia is sweltering through another heatwave, and there will be more in the near future as climate change brings hotter, drier weather. In some parts of Australia, the number of days above 40℃ will double by 2090, and with it the tragedy of more heat-related deaths.

In the complex world of plant ecology, however, heatwaves aren’t always a bad thing. Rolling days of scorching temperatures can kill off plant pests, such as elm beetles and mistletoe, and even keep their numbers down for years.

This is what we saw after the 2009 heatwave that reached a record 46.4℃ in Melbourne and culminated in the catastrophic Black Saturday bushfires. Years later, the trees under threat from the pest species were thriving. Here are a few of our observations.

Saving red gums from mistletoe

In the days following Black Saturday, botanists, horticulturists and arborists noticed a curious heatwave side-effect: the foliage of native Australian mistletoes (Amyema miquelii and A. pendula species) growing on river red gums lost their green colour and turned grey.

The two species of mistletoe are important in the ecology of plant communities and to native bird and insect species. But infestation on older trees can lead to their deaths, particularly in drought years.

Australian mistletoe is not related to the northern hemisphere mistletoes of Christmas kissing fame. They are water and nutrient parasites on their host tree and can kill host tissues through excessive water loss.

Often mistletoes go largely unnoticed, only becoming obvious when they flower. This is because many have evolved foliage with a superficial resemblance to the host species, a phenomenon known as host mimicry or “crypsis”.

During the Black Saturday heatwave, many mistletoes growing on river red gums died. The gums not only survived, but when record rains came in 2010, they thrived. A decade on, the mistletoe numbers are gradually increasing, but they’re still not high enough to threaten the survival of older, significant red gums.

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

We want both mistletoes and red gums to persist. But often the old red gums are last survivors of larger populations that have been cleared — a seed source for future regeneration.

Under-appreciated elms

In many parts of Australia, the exotic English and Dutch elms are important parts of the landscapes of cities and regional towns. Elms provide great shade, are resilient and often low-maintenance. They also provide important environmental services, such as nesting sites for native mammals and birds.

Indeed, as Dutch elm disease decimates elm populations across North America and Europe, Australia can claim to have many of the largest elms and the grandest elm avenues and boulevards in the world, which we often under-appreciate.

But sadly, over the past 30 years the grazing of the elm leaf beetle, Xanthogaleruca luteola, has threatened the grandeur of our elms. These beetles can strip leaves to mere skeletons, and while the damage doesn’t usually kill the tree, it can make them look unsightly.

On Black Saturday, tens of thousands of elm leaf beetles fell from trees after prolonged exposure to high temperature. So many died, they formed what looked like a shadow under the tree canopies. Beetle numbers remained low for at least five years after that.

Read more: Why there’s a lot more to love about jacarandas than just their purple flowers

Control programs, which often involve spraying chemical pesticides, were not required in that five year period. This was good for the environment as the chemicals can affect non-target sites and species. And we calculated that this saved well over A$2 million for Melbourne alone, money that could be better spent on parks and gardens (and of course, the elms looked splendid!).

Our iconic Moreton Bay figs

Then there are our magnificent, iconic Moreton Bay figs (Ficus macrophylla). Their large, glossy leaves, huge trunks, veils of aerial roots and massive canopies spread for more than 40 metres, and make them an Australian favourite.

Moreton Bay figs are prone to insect infestations of the psyllid, Mycopsylla fici, which can seriously defoliate trees under certain conditions. The fallen leaves can also stick to the shoes of pedestrians, causing a slipping hazard.

In Melbourne, psyllid numbers that were high before Black Saturday fell to undetectable levels in the following month.

Once again, a heatwave and hot windy weather had done an unexpected service. The incidence of psyllids has remained low for a decade or more now and, as with elm leaf beetles, control measures proved unnecessary and money was saved.

Winners and losers

Many urban trees are renowned for their resilience to stress, both natural and human-caused. Climate change is proving a significant stress to be overcome, but we’ve observed how the stress can affect pests and disease species more than their hosts.

This gives the species growing in very tough urban conditions, where they lack space and are often deprived of water and good soils, a slight advantage, which may be the difference between living and dying under climate change.

Read more: Tree ferns are older than dinosaurs. And that’s not even the most interesting thing about them

Climate change is bringing far more losses than gains. But, occasionally, there will be wins, and those managing pests in our urban forests must take advantage when they present.

If insect pest numbers fall we can direct resources to establishing more trees and ensuring our trees are healthier. The best way to avoid pests and diseases attacking trees is by providing the best possible growing conditions. That way we avoid problems before they arise rather than treating symptoms.

So as you swelter during this heatwave, remember it may not be all bad news for our urban and natural environments. Sometimes, positive outcomes arise when and where we least expect them.

Read more: As heatwaves become more extreme, which jobs are riskiest?

– ref. An unexpected consequence of climate change: heatwaves kill plant pests and save our favourite giant trees – https://theconversation.com/an-unexpected-consequence-of-climate-change-heatwaves-kill-plant-pests-and-save-our-favourite-giant-trees-148919

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Véronique Duché, A.R. Chisholm Professor of French, University of Melbourne

In this series, writers pay tribute to fictional detectives on the page and on screen.

When I first heard that Rowan Atkinson was to put on Maigret’s velvet-collared overcoat, I wondered if it was une farce. Johnny English in the role of Paris’s best-known detective, a bulky, stocky and rather taciturn policeman! What a terrible miscast, I thought.

When I watched the film, I was expecting at any time for Mr Bean to take over – sticking out his tongue or exploding his pipe.

I grew up with Maigret, Georges Simenon’s character. I was introduced to him via television, with actors such as Jean Richard or Bruno Cremer. Then I hungrily read his books. Not all of them – the writing of the Maigret saga extends over more than 40 years, presenting the commissaire in 103 novels and short stories, swiftly translated into 41 languages.

Prolific and ambitious

A prolific writer, Simenon published on average six novels per year. He could write a book in 11 days: eight days for the composition and three for the correction. (Simenon, prolific in more ways than one, claimed to have slept with more than 10,000 women.)

Simenon wrote accessible texts, with short sentences and simple vocabulary. He explained in a 1975 interview:

It is better to use as few words as possible and especially as few abstract words as possible.

He employed a classic trick to catch the reader: stopping a chapter in the middle of the action, to keep them reading the following chapter.

Born in 1903, Simenon died more than 30 years ago, but his books are still selling. He started as a journalist in 1930s Belgium and wrote pulp fiction. Then the Maigret books became a bridge between popular potboilers and the more serious books he aspired to write, what he called his romans durs, or hard novels.

He was mentored by French author and trailblazer Colette. André Gide was a lifelong fan, as were William Faulkner and Muriel Spark. All up, he wrote nearly 200 novels, over 150 novellas, autobiographical works, articles, in addition to his early pulp fiction under pseudonyms. Roughly 550 million copies of his works have been printed.

Read more: Friday essay: the meaning of food in crime fiction

An intuitive investigator

“Comprendre et ne pas juger” (understand and judge not), was said to be Simenon’s motto. Accordingly, he built his oeuvre around psychological investigations. The motto can be applied as well to his detective hero. Biographer Lucille Becker notes Simenon writes “impressionistic notations of subtle psychological states, sensory impressions, and minute details of everyday life”.

Sucking on his pipe, Maigret observes from a distance, inhaling the soul of people and places. Then he slowly closes in. He does not use forensic science and is more intuitive than procedural — to the disappointment of a Scotland Yard detective wanting to study “Maigret’s methods”.

“Je pense si peu vous savez,” he confesses, meaning “I think so little”.

When he is ready to confront the killer, he invites them to his office at the Police judiciaire, 36 quai des Orfèvres and prepares six pipes which he aligns on his desk in preparation for a long exposition.

While Penguin Classics just finished the six-year project to reissue the Maigret series in its entirety — all fresh new translations — radio plays and comics continue to promote the investigations of the legendary sleuth.

The movie industry from the start was interested — with directors such as Jean Renoir or Claude Autant-Lara, and actors such as Jean Gabin and Brigitte Bardot involved. But it is in television that Maigret gives the best of himself, in a “happy alliance between genre and medium” writes academic Barbara Stone.

In France as well as in UK, Italy or Germany, and Japan, the Maigret series are successful. Actors Jean Richard (92 episodes), Bruno Cremer (54 episodes), Michael Gambon (12 episodes), Rupert Davies (52 episodes), Jan Teulings (12 episodes), Gino Cervi (16 episodes), Kinya Aikawa (25 episodes), and even Rowan Atkinson (4 episodes) have introduced the audience to the guilty secrets of Paris and small-town France.

Read more: My favourite detective: why Vera is so much more than a hat, mac and attitude

So Frenchy, so simple

Screen adaptations rarely modernise the setting. Apart from the French director Claude Barma who translated Maigret in the contemporary 1970s, they offer period pieces of picturesque nostalgia set in the 1950s.

Simenon’s world “of second-class hotels and third-class railway carriages, of drifters, bargemen, tarts and luckless creditors” is rendered in a misty and gloomy atmosphere where ambiguity reigns.

Maigret shifts chameleon-like between a broad range of social groups. A defender of bourgeois values, he acts as a mediator and arbitrator between conflicting social classes.

Social criticism however is limited to individual cases and Maigret demonstrates a real empathy for the victim and for the petites gens (small people). That’s why Maigret is still relevant today.

Writer and critic Ian Thomson positions him as the “archetypal fictional detective of the 20th century and a template for Inspector Morse, Kurt Wallander and any pensive sloggers on the beat”.

Read more: My favourite detective: Kurt Wallander — too grumpy to like, relatable enough to get under your skin

Maigret has an avuncular role as patron to his underlings, is a good husband to Madame Maigret and enjoys a beer with his preferred meal, veal stew, at the Brasserie Dauphine. Nothing flamboyant or exuberant about him. Maigret, the French detective.

– ref. My favourite detective: Jules Maigret, the Paris detective with a pipe but no pretense – https://theconversation.com/my-favourite-detective-jules-maigret-the-paris-detective-with-a-pipe-but-no-pretense-150747

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tauel Harper, Lecturer, Media and Communication, UWA, University of Western Australia

With a vaccine rollout impending, key groups have backed calls for the Australian government to force social media platforms to share details about popular coronavirus misinformation.

An open letter was put forth by independent group Reset Australia. It was endorsed by the Doherty Institute, Immunisation Coalition and Immunisation Foundation of Australia, along with the research group I’m working with, Coronavax — which reports community concerns about the COVID-19 vaccination program to government and health workers.

The issue of coronavirus and vaccine-related misinformation should not be understated. That said, big tech companies need to be engaged the right way to help the Australian public avoid what could potentially be a lifetime of health problems.

A leaderboard for COVID myths

We’re living in a dangerous time for both journalism and public education. We don’t have the legal infrastructure or public forums required to address the spread of coronavirus misinformation. Reset’s proposal intends to address these shortcomings, to better regulate this content in Australia.

It states there should be a mandate given to internet service providers to provide more details on the highest trending online posts spreading misinformation about COVID.

These “live lists” would be updated in real time and would let politicians, researchers, medical experts, journalists and the public keep track of who is spreading coronavirus and vaccine-related lies and what the major stories are.

The proposal suggests the eSafety commissioner should determine how the information is shared publicly to help prevent the potential victimisation of particular individuals.

Conspiracies can slip through the cracks

Many people rely on news (or what they think is news) presented on social media. Unlike traditional journalism, this isn’t fact-checked and has no editorial oversight to ensure accuracy. Moreover, the vast scale of this misinformation extends beyond platforms’ best efforts to curb it.

While social media analytic sites such as CrowdTangle provide some insight for researchers, it’s not enough.

For example, the data CrowdTangle shares from Facebook is limited to public posts in large public pages and groups. We can see engagement for these posts (numbers of likes and comments) but not reach (how many people have seen a particular post).

Reset’s open letter recommends extending access provision to data across the entire social networking site, including (in Facebook’s case) posts on people’s personal profiles (not to be confused with private conversations via Facebook Messenger).

While this does raise privacy concerns, the system would be set up so personal identifiers are removed. Instead of paying social media platforms in exchange for data, we would be putting pressure on them via the law and, at base, their “social license to operate”.

Taking down extremists isn’t the goal

Far-right conspiracy group QAnon has managed to entrench itself in certain pockets in Australia. Its believers claim there is a “deep state” plot against former US President Donald Trump.

This group’s conspiracies have extended to include the bogus claim that COVID is an invention of political elites to ensure compliance from the people and usher in oppressive rules. As the theory goes, the vaccine itself is also a tool for indoctrination and/or population control.

Read more: Why QAnon is attracting so many followers in Australia — and how it can be countered

Public figures have further amplified the conspiracies, with celebrity chef Pete Evans seemingly spearheading the celebrity faction of the QAnon “cause” in Australia.

The real value of Reset’s policy recommendation, however, is not in trying to change these peoples’ views. Rather, what researchers require are more details on trends and levels of engagement with certain types of content.

One focus would be to identify groups of people exposed to misinformation who could potentially be swayed in the direction of conspiracies.

If we can figure out which particular demographics are be more involved in the spreading of misinformation, or perhaps more vulnerable to it, this would help with efforts to engage with these communities.

We already know young people are generally less confident about receiving a COVID vaccine than people over 65, but we’ve less insight on what their concerns are, or whether there are particular rumours circulating online that are making them wary of vaccinations.

Once these are identified, they can be prioritised in the minds of health workers and policy makers, such as by creating educational content in a group’s specific language to help dispel any myths.

Read more: Why social media platforms banning Trump won’t stop — or even slow down — his cause

Pressure on platforms is mounting

There is the argument that sharing links to online misinformation could help spread it further. We’ve already seen unscrupulous journalists repeat popular terms from online conspiracists (such as “Dictator Dan”, in reference to Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews) in their own coverage to engage a particular audience.

But ultimately, the information being highlighted is already out there, so it’s better for us to take it on openly and honestly. It’s also not just a matter of monitoring misinformation, but also monitoring legitimate public concern about any vaccine side effects.

The increased visibility of the public’s concerns will force government, researchers, journalists and health professionals to engage more directly with those concerns.

The goal now is to invite Facebook, Twitter and Google to help us develop a tool that highlights public issues while also protecting users’ privacy.

Compelled by Australian law, the platforms will likely be concerned about their legal liabilities for any data passed into the public domain. This is understandable, considering the Cambridge Analytica debacle happened because Facebook was too open with users’ data.

Then again, Facebook already has CrowdTangle and Twitter has also been relatively amendable in the fight against COVID misinformation. There are good reasons to suggest these platforms will continue to invest in fighting misinformation, even if just to protect their reputation and profits.

Like it or not, social media has changed the way we discuss issues of public importance — and have certainly changed the game for public communication. What Reset Australia is proposing is an important step in addressing the spread and influence of COVID misinformation in our communities.

– ref. Laws making social media firms expose major COVID myths could help Australia’s vaccine rollout – https://theconversation.com/laws-making-social-media-firms-expose-major-covid-myths-could-help-australias-vaccine-rollout-153887

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Kirkness, Postdoctoral research fellow, Macquarie University

As government COVID updates have become a daily part of our lives over the past 12 months, so too has the sight of sign language interpreters on our screens.

This has understandably had a huge impact on the lives of Deaf Australians — it means they have access to critical health and safety information in their first language, Australian Sign Language, or Auslan.

Read more: Explainer: what is sign language?

But this upswing in accessibility has had other unexpected impacts.

The Deaf Society and Deaf Services reports enrolments in Auslan courses have risen by more than 400% since the pandemic began. They attribute this directly to COVID and the increased visibility of signing on the national stage.

But we need to make sure the increased focus on Auslan is more than a mere curiosity or trend. We should use the opportunity to see Auslan recognised as an official language.

The personal and the political

My grandparents are deaf. I grew up signing as a child but stopped during my early school years. Though proud of their Deaf culture, my grandparents felt signing in public drew attention to their difference. It made them targets for ridicule.

During my childhood, I heard people use the word “spastic” to describe their movements. Now, when I sign in public or talk about my grandparents, people sit upright. They mention the interpreters they’ve seen on the news or in viral videos. Some exclaim about the beauty of the language and liken it to a dance.

They’re not wrong. But there is an alarming tokenism to some people’s interest. Some interpreters have gained a cult-like following as a result of their regular appearances at press conferences. One Melbourne interpreter was recently dubbed a “quiet Adonis” after he attracted the attention of admirers online.

But Auslan is more than a faddish hobby, like crocheting or baking sourdough. It is a vital means of communication and a point of cultural pride.

Deaf people have long felt the double-edged sword of other people’s intrigue. When interpreters appear in concerts and live performances, their videos go viral. The unintended but uncomfortable truth here is that while sign is thrust to the fore, Deaf people often remain in the background.

Still not a national language

About 30,000 deaf people use Auslan to communicate. But widespread Auslan coverage is a relatively new phenomenon. Though in many states, interpreters have appeared in emergency broadcasts since 2011, others have only recently adopted the practice. There is no legislation that mandates Auslan interpreting in news programs.

While this is exclusionary, it is not unsurprising, given Auslan is still not a national language. The Australian government recognised it as a “community language” in 1987, and it will be counted in the 2021 Census as a language option, but the deaf community continues to lobby for greater recognition.

Full status for Auslan as an official language — like in New Zealand — would provide both legal safeguards and important recognition for Deaf Australians.

Auslan’s fraught history

The fact Australia lags behind in this regard speaks to the the fraught and overlooked history of Deaf people in our nation. For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, signing was banned in schools for deaf children.

For more than 200 years, deaf people were seen as “unfortunates” in need of cure and were forced to rely on speech, lip-reading, and auditory training — where children were taught to listen using the little hearing they had. This is because sign language was deemed primitive and deaf people were told to put their hands away.

Auslan is the first language of many Deaf Australians and while captions and lip-reading are handy tools, they’re no substitute for sign, especially since captions are often riddled with errors.

What does it mean to be an ally?

For members of the Australian Deaf community, this is a critical time. Advocates continue to lobby MPs and broadcasters for interpreting to be included in all press conferences, emergency broadcasts and breaking news, so Deaf Australians can access vital information. They also want to see wider recognition and use of sign language.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Labor leader Anthony Albanese and Greens senator Larissa Waters are among MPs who have made videos in Auslan in support of International Day of Sign Languages.

Emma Wiggle is also a high profile supporter of the Deaf community, regularly including Auslan in her programs and performances.

Participation of this kind provides great opportunity, but equally, raises the difficult question of what it means to be an ally. More than learning a few phrases, it’s crucial that we support the campaign for meaningful recognition of Auslan.

Recognise deaf people, not just their language

In addressing the new-found interest in Auslan, The Deaf Society stresses the importance of showing respect to Deaf people and their language. This means if you are learning Auslan, signing up with a registered training organisation where Deaf history is part of the course.

But even more important is that Deaf people’s lives and their stories are recognised in the public eye — not just their language.

The Deaf community is mourning the shock loss of Deaf Society and Deaf Services executive manager Leonie Jackson, who died earlier this month. Leonie was a tireless advocate for the community. Recently, she explained to me the importance of properly recognising Deaf Australians:

For a long time, Deaf people’s voices have not been heard. It is important that we raise the profile of everyday Deaf people, so that everyone knows that Deaf people can achieve and lead extraordinary lives.

– ref. COVID has brought Auslan into the spotlight, but it would be wrong to treat the language as a hobby or fad – https://theconversation.com/covid-has-brought-auslan-into-the-spotlight-but-it-would-be-wrong-to-treat-the-language-as-a-hobby-or-fad-151667

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Dwyer, Associate Professor, Department of Media and Communications, University of Sydney

Executives from Google and Facebook have told a Senate committee they are prepared to take drastic action if Australia’s news media bargaining code, which would force the internet giants to pay news publishers for linking to their sites, comes into force.

Google would have “no real choice” but to cut Australian users off entirely from its flagship search engine, the company’s Australian managing director Mel Silva told the committee. Facebook representatives in turn said they would remove links to news articles from the newsfeed of Australian users if the code came into effect as it currently stands.

Read more: Expect delays and power plays: Google and Facebook brace as news media bargaining code is set to become law

In response, the Australian government shows no sign of backing down, with Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg both saying they won’t respond to threats.

So what’s going on here? Are Google and Facebook really prepared to pull services from their Australian users rather than hand over some money to publishers under the bargaining code?

Is news valuable to Facebook and Google?

Facebook claims news is of little real value to its business. It doesn’t make money from news directly, and claims that for an average Australian user less than 5% of their newsfeed is made up of links to Australian news.

But this is hard to square with other information. In 2020, the University of Canberra’s Digital News Report found some 52% of Australians get news via social media, and the number is growing. Facebook also boasts of its investments in news via deals with publishers and new products such as Facebook News.

Google likewise says it makes little money from news, while at the same time investing heavily in news products like News Showcase.

So while links to news may not be direct advertising money-spinners for Facebook or Google, both see the presence of news as an important aspect of audience engagement with their products.

On their own terms

While both companies are prepared to give some money to news publishers, they want to make deals on their own terms. But Google and Facebook are two of the largest and most profitable companies in history – and each holds far more bargaining power than any news publisher. The news media bargaining code sets out to undo this imbalance.

What’s more, Google and Facebook don’t appear to want to accept the unique social role of news, and public interest journalism in particular. Nor do they recognise they might be involved somehow in the decline of the news business over the past decade or two, instead pointing the finger at impersonal shifts in advertising technology.

The media bargaining code being introduced is far too systematic for them to want to accept it. They would rather pick and choose commercial agreements with “genuine commercial consideration”, and not be bound by a one-size-fits-all set of arbitration rules.

Read more: Changing the rules to control monopolies could see the end of Facebook domination

A history of US monopolies

Google and Facebook dominate web search and social media, respectively, in ways that echo the great US monopolies of the past: rail in the 19th century, then oil and later telecommunications in the 20th. All these industries became fundamental forms of capitalist infrastructure for economic and social development. And all these monopolies required legislation to break them up in the public interest.

It’s unsurprising that the giant ad-tech media platforms don’t want to follow the rules, but they must acknowledge that their great wealth and power come with a moral responsibility to society. Making them face up to that responsibility will require government intervention.

Online pioneers Vint Cerf (now VP and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google) and Tim Berners-Lee (“inventor of the World Wide Web”) have also made submissions to the Senate committee advocating on behalf of the corporations. They made high-minded claims that the code will break the “free and open” internet.

Read more: Web’s inventor says news media bargaining code could break the internet. He’s right — but there’s a fix

But today’s internet is hardly free and open: for most users “the internet” is huge corporate platforms like Google and Facebook. And those corporations don’t want Australian senators interfering with their business model.

Independent senator Rex Patrick hit the nail on the head when he asked why Google wouldn’t admit the fundamental issue was about revenue, rather than technical detail or questions of principle.

How seriously should we take threats to leave the Australian market?

Google and Facebook are prepared to go along with the Senate committee’s processes, so long as they can modify the arrangement. The don’t want to be seen as uncooperative.

The threat to leave (or as Facebook’s Simon Milner put it, the “explanation” of why they would be forced to do so) is their worst-case scenario. It seems likely they would risk losing significant numbers of users if they did so, or at least having them much less engaged – and hence producing less advertising revenue.

Google has already run small-scale experiments to test removing Australian news from search. This may be a demonstration that the threat to withdraw from Australia is serious, or at least, serious brinkmanship.

People know news is important, that it shapes their interactions with the world – and provides meaning and helps them navigate their lives. So who would Australians blame if Google and Facebook really do follow through? The government or the friendly tech giants they see every day? That’s harder to know.

For transparency, please note The Conversation has also made a submission to the Senate inquiry regarding the News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code.

– ref. Is news worth a lot or a little? Google and Facebook want to have it both ways – https://theconversation.com/is-news-worth-a-lot-or-a-little-google-and-facebook-want-to-have-it-both-ways-153787

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Morag Kobez, Associate lecturer, Queensland University of Technology

In this series, our writers explore how food shaped Australian history – and who we are today.

The history of cheese in Australia has, until recent decades, been a rather tasteless affair. Not so long ago our choice was either “vintage” or “tasty”.

We associate Italy with salty wedges of Parmigiano-Reggiano. France is synonymous with pillowy-soft triple bries and intensely aromatic Roquefort. Paneer is the cheese of Indian curries. Queso Oaxaca is quintessentially Mexican, while the humble cheddar is named for the English village in which it was first produced.

Australia’s most well-known cheese, on the other hand, is not recognised for its remarkable flavour or texture but rather its brand name, which was recently changed to Cheer following campaigning of many years against its racist connotations.

Great cuisines — and their cheeses — have arisen from peasant societies. As the historian Keith Hancock wrote in 1930, Australia “has not inherited a village civilisation nor love of the soil, but she has inherited factories and factory farms”.

Early provisions

Cheese is listed among the provisions aboard the First Fleet. Even convicts received a weekly cheese ration — albeit, less than that of officers and seamen.

Ensuring access to cheese upon arrival also seems to have been a priority for the white settlers, acquiring seven cows on the fleet’s final stop in The Cape of Good Hope. However, the plan to begin cheesemaking was thwarted when the cows escaped soon after they arrived in what they called New South Wales.

It took a further eight years for another herd to be assembled, and the first dairy was built in Rose Hill in 1796, near the banks of the Parramatta River. The fledgling industry expanded with the foundation of Van Diemen’s Land in 1804. By 1820 the weekly produce market was offering cheese for sale at two shillings a pound.

Given that cheddar was by far the most common cheese being produced in England at the time this cheese was most likely a rudimentary cheddar.

Australia’s first commercial cheese factory — the Van Diemen’s Land Company — was established in Tasmania in the 1820s. Not long after, farmers from the NSW district of Illawarra began to send their cheese and butter to Sydney by sea. As more ports opened, dairying extended all the way down to Bega in southern NSW.

Industrialisation

Henry Harding arrived in Bodalla on the south coast of New South Wales from England in 1853. The son of the “father of Cheddar cheese”, Joseph Harding, Henry shared his father’s dictum that: “cheese is not made in the field, nor in the byre [cowshed], nor even in the cow, it is made in the dairy”.

This began a long era of commercialisation and industrialisation in which consistency, ease of storage and distribution and longevity were foremost considerations. The blue and yellow boxes of Kraft processed cheddar which travelled so well became a fixture of our cheese landscape.

Before the 1980s, most of the cheese made in Australia were cheddars from big factories. But in that decade we begin to see some European varieties introduced — though virtually all white-mould cheeses sold in Australia until the mid 1980s were tinned camemberts and bries, mass produced in Europe and stabilised to survive long periods in transit.

Read more: An ode to mac and cheese, the poster child for processed food

This cheese bore very little resemblance to those available in Europe, and stand in stark contrast to the vast range of artisan cheeses on offer in Australia today: delicate, hand-tied pouches of cow’s milk mozzarella with their oozy filling of stracciatella made by Vannella Cheese; nutty, aged French-style washed-rind from Holy Goat made with organic goat milk or biodynamic quark and feta from Mungalli Creek Dairy produced without fertilisers or pesticides.

To what then, can we attribute the rise of this vibrant cheese industry?

Broadly speaking, there was a cultural and political shift towards more ethical practices in food production and a backlash against industrial food systems.

The values and meaning we associate with mass-produced food have changed.

Food cultures

Perhaps it started with the tree-change hippies in the 1970s. A small, decaying dairy in Nimbin was resurrected following the counter-cultural Aquarius Festival of 1973, bringing with it an ethos of sustainability, community, resilience and simplicity.

Read more: Nimbin before and after: local voices on how the 1973 Aquarius Festival changed a town forever

Then there is the slow food movement founded in Italy in 1989. It espouses ideals of good-quality flavoursome food, clean production that does not harm the environment, fair accessible prices for consumers and fair conditions and pay for producers.

More recently, we’ve seen an “artisanal turn” with its critical focus on the industrialisation of food. The proliferation of food media, celebrity-driven television cooking shows and social media have taught us good food is small-scale, artisan, local, connected – and the antitheses of factory-produced sliced cheddar.

Three decades ago, low cost cheddar accounted for around 70% of the cheese we consumed. These days, we eat a diversity of fresh, mouldy, semi-hard and stretched cheese — almost half of the cheese we consumed in 2019.

We may not have a national cheese but we have certainly developed a distinctly Australian food culture. Central to this culture is the emphasis on quality over quantity. There is certainly something to cheer in that.

– ref. It gets better with age: a brie(f) history of cheese in Australia – https://theconversation.com/it-gets-better-with-age-a-brie-f-history-of-cheese-in-australia-153377

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

Heat is more dangerous than the cold in most Australian regions. About 2% of deaths in Australia between 2006 and 2017 were associated with the heat, and the estimate increases to more than 4% in the northern and central parts of the country.

In fact, Australian death records underestimate the association between heat and mortality at least 50-fold and chronic heat stress is also under-reported.

The risk is higher in some regions but where you live is not the only factor that matters. When it comes to heat, some jobs are much more dangerous, and put workers at higher risk of injury.

Read more: Heat kills. We need consistency in the way we measure these deaths

Who is most at risk?

One study compared workers’ compensation claims in Adelaide from 2003 to 2013. It found workers at higher risk during extremely hot temperatures included:

• animal and horticultural workers
• cleaners
• food service workers
• metal workers
• warehouse workers.

The authors noted hot weather “poses a greater problem than cold weather. This is of particular concern as the number of hot days is projected to increase”.

Another study involving many of the same researchers looked at the impact of heatwaves on work-related injuries and illnesses in Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane. It found vulnerable groups included:

• males
• workers aged under 34 years
• apprentice/trainee workers
• labour hire workers
• those employed in medium and heavy strength occupations, and
• workers from outdoor and indoor industrial sectors.

A study of work-related injuries in Melbourne between 2002 and 2012 found

Young workers, male workers and workers engaged in heavy physical work are at increased risk of injury on hot days, and a wider range of worker subgroups are vulnerable to injury following a warm night. In light of climate change projections, this information is important for informing injury prevention strategies.

A study using data for Adelaide between 2001 and 2010 concluded male workers and young workers aged under 24 were at high risk of work-related injuries in hot environments. The link between temperature and daily injury claims was strong for labourers, tradespeople and intermediate production and transport workers (who do jobs such as operating plant, machinery, vehicles and other equipment to transport passengers and goods).

Industries with greater risk were agriculture, forestry and fishing, construction, as well as electricity, gas and water.

A systematic review and meta-analysis of 24 studies on the links between heat exposure and occupational injuries found

Young workers (age < 35 years), male workers and workers in agriculture, forestry or fishing, construction and manufacturing industries were at high risk of occupational injuries during hot temperatures. Further young workers (age < 35 years), male workers and those working in electricity, gas and water and manufacturing industries were found to be at high risk of occupational injuries during heatwaves.

The fact that apprentices or trainees had greater heat-related injuries in the workplace may surprise many, as heat tolerance deteriorates with age. Exposure to labour intensive work, less experience in managing heat stress, and a propensity to avoid acknowledging they’re affected by heat may contribute to the higher risk for younger workers.

Other factors that increase risk

A growing body of international research shows extreme heat can cause severe health issues.

Other factors that increase vulnerability to heat include age (especially being older or very young), low-socioeconomic status, and homelessness. Regions also matter; there are differences between climate zones and increased heat-related morbidity in rural settings.

Underlying health conditions increase the risk of heat-related illness and death. These health conditions include

• diabetes
• high blood pressure
• chronic kidney disease
• heart conditions and
• respiratory conditions.

Chronic heat exposure is dangerous and has been linked to serious health problems, including chronic and irreversible kidney injury. A range of studies have linked higher temperatures with increases in suicide rates, emergency department visits for mental illness, and poor mental health.

We need to better understand the problem

Most of the studies mentioned here focused on worker’s compensation claims. That data includes only those injuries for which compensation claims were actually made. In reality, the problem is likely more widespread.

The Australian studies primarily focused on the milder climatic regions of Australia, but the rate of injuries and ill health is greater in hot and humid regions. And the dangers may be worse in regional and remote areas, particularly when and where workforces are transient.

We also need more research on the relationship between the length of exposure to higher temperatures (in hours or days) and worker health.

National studies or studies in other regions should assess whether rates of injury differ by occupation, climate zone and remoteness. Capturing data on all types and severity of workplace injuries (not just those that led to a compensation claim) is crucial to understanding the true extent of the problem.

As the climate changes and heatwaves become more frequent and severe, it’s vital we do more to understand who is most vulnerable and how we can reduce their risk.

Read more: Caravan communities: older, underinsured and overexposed to cyclones, storms and disasters

This story is part of a series The Conversation is running on the nexus between disaster, disadvantage and resilience. You can read the rest of the stories here.

– ref. As heatwaves become more extreme, which jobs are riskiest? – https://theconversation.com/as-heatwaves-become-more-extreme-which-jobs-are-riskiest-151841

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Dyer, Associate Professor, RMIT University

At a dinner party, or in the schoolyard, the question of favourite colour frequently results in an answer of “blue”. Why is it that humans are so fond of blue? And why does it seem to be so rare in the world of plants and animals?

We studied these questions and concluded blue pigment is rare at least in part because it’s often difficult for plants to produce. They may only have evolved to do so when it brings them a real benefit: specifically, attracting bees or other pollinating insects.

We also discovered that the scarcity of blue flowers is partly due to the limits of our own eyes. From a bee’s perspective, attractive bluish flowers are much more common.

A history of fascination

The ancient Egyptians were fascinated with blue flowers such as the blue lotus, and went to great trouble to decorate objects in blue. They used an entrancing synthetic pigment (now known as Egyptian blue) to colour vases and jewellery, and semi-precious blue gemstones such as lapis lazuli and turquoise to decorate important artefacts including the Mask of Tutankhamun.

Read more: Feeling blue? Get acquainted with the history of a colour

Blue dye for fabric is now common, but its roots lie in ancient Peru, where an indigoid dye was used to colour cotton fabric about 6000 years ago. Indigo blue dyes reached Europe from India in the 16th century, and the dyes and the plants that produced them became important commodities. Their influence on human fashion and culture are still felt today, perhaps most obviously in blue jeans and shirts.

Renaissance painters in Europe used ground lapis lazuli to produce dazzling works that captivated audiences.

Today many blues are created with modern synthetic pigments or optical effects. The famous blue/gold dress photograph that went viral in 2015 not only shows that blue can still fascinate — it also highlights that colour is just as much a product of our perception as it is of certain wavelengths of light.

Why do humans like blue so much?

Colour preferences in humans are often influenced by important environmental factors in our lives. An ecological explanation for humans’ common preference for blue is that it is the colour of clear sky and bodies of clean water, which are signs of good conditions. Besides the sky and water, blue is relatively rare in nature.

What about blue flowers?

We used a new online plant database to survey the the relative frequencies of blue flowers compared to other colours.

Among flowers which are pollinated without the intervention of bees or other insects (known as abiotic pollination), none were blue.

But when we looked at flowers that need to attract bees and other insects to move their pollen around, we started to see some blue.

This shows blue flowers evolved for enabling efficient pollination. Even then, blue flowers remain relatively rare, which suggests it is difficult for plants to produce such colours and may be a valuable marker of plant-pollinator fitness in an environment.

We perceive colour due to how our eyes and brain work. Our visual system typically has three types of cone photoreceptors that each capture light of different wavelengths (red, green and blue) from the visible spectrum. Our brains then compare information from these receptors to create a perception of colour.

For the flowers pollinated by insects, especially bees, it is interesting to consider that they have different colour vision to humans.

Read more: Inside the colourful world of animal vision

Bees have photoreceptors that are sensitive to ultraviolet, blue and green wavelengths, and they also show a preference for “bluish” colours. The reason why bees have a preference for bluish flowers remains an open field of research.

Why understanding blue flowers is important

About one-third of our food depends on insect pollination. However, world populations of bees and other insects are in decline, potentially due to climate change, habitat fragmentation, agricultural practices and other human-caused factors.

The capacity of flowering plants to produce blue colours is linked to land use intensity including human-induced factors like artificial fertilisation, grazing, and mowing that reduce the frequency of blue flowers. In contrast, more stressful environments appear to have relatively more blue floral colours to provide resilience.

For example, despite the apparent rarity of blue flower colours in nature, we observed that in harsh conditions such as in the mountains of the Himalaya, blue flowers were more common than expected. This shows that in tough environments plants may have to invest a lot to attract the few available and essential bee pollinators. Blue flowers thus appear to exist to best advertise to bee pollinators when competition for pollination services is high.

Knowing more about blue flowers helps protect bees

Urban environments are also important habitats for pollinating insects including bees. Having bee friendly gardens with flowers, including blue flowers that both we and bees really appreciate, is a convenient, pleasurable and potentially important contribution to enabling a sustainable future. Basically, plant and maintain a good variety of flowers, and the pollinating insects will come.

Read more: Our ‘bee-eye camera’ helps us support bees, grow food and protect the environment

– ref. The mystery of the blue flower: nature’s rare colour owes its existence to bee vision – https://theconversation.com/the-mystery-of-the-blue-flower-natures-rare-colour-owes-its-existence-to-bee-vision-153646

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Megan Davis, Pro Vice-Chancellor Indigenous UNSW and Professor of Law, UNSW

We are on the eve of the nation’s annual ritual of celebrating the arrivals, while not formally recognising the ancient peoples who were dispossessed.

Each year the tensions spill over, rendering Australia Day/Invasion Day/Survival Day a protest as much as a celebration.

But there is a quiet process underway, aimed at achieving substantive recognition of the First Nations that has so far eluded Australia.

A new report on an Indigenous Voice

This process of constitutional recognition is now in its second decade — yes, it has been ten years since the process began. In early January, to kick off the second decade, Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt released the Indigenous Voice Co-design Process Interim Report.

It runs to almost 300 pages and offers First Nations peoples about three months to provide a response.

The genesis for the Voice lies in the historic 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart and First Nations’ preference for a constitutionally enshrined Voice.

The report is a solid first run at designing a Voice. It brings Australia a step closer to realising the Uluru Statement. But it falls short of the Voice to parliament sought by those consulted in the lead up to the Uluru Statement and the statement itself.

A Voice for the voiceless

Previously, I have set out the lengthy and complex process that has led us to this point.

I have also explained why First Nations people chose a constitutionally protected Voice as both symbolic and substantive recognition — and why a legislated voice is not able to deliver the transformative change communities so desperately need.

The push for a Voice came from the voiceless — those less likely to be afforded a seat at the table in Indigenous affairs — because the regional dialogues privileged their participation.

It was their view that those who filled the leadership vacuum left by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (abolished in 2005) were unrepresentative. This includes ever-present and overbearing Commonwealth bureaucracy on Indigenous affairs and other organisations who purport to represent community but are not accountable back to community.

In 2018, the joint parliamentary committee on the Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Peoples — chaired by Labor’s Pat Dodson and Liberal MP Julian Leeser — found the Voice was the only viable constitutional option. But it also found the concept required more meat on the bones before Australians could vote at a referendum. It said this should be done through “co-design” with First Nations peoples.

The 2019 budget saw $7.3 million for a co-design process for the Voice and $160 million for a future referendum once a model is determined. The Coalition’s 2019 election policy also reflected the two-step approach:

A referendum will be held once a model has been settled, consistent with the recommendations of the [Dodson/Leeser] Committee.

The interim Voice report is the settling of that model.

A Voice to government only?

Wyatt has been clear in the past he is only designing a “Voice to government”, which aligns with his worldview as a career public servant.

However, the Voice interim report expressly sets out two components for comment: a Voice to government and a Voice to parliament.

Read more: Ken Wyatt’s proposed ‘voice to government’ marks another failure to hear Indigenous voices

The Voice to government component is one for First Nations communities to contemplate.

Only First Nations people on the ground can tell the inquiry whether the various local and regional mechanisms function in the way the report suggests they do. Only they can tell the government whether they feel their voices are represented effectively by the structures and entities that exist. This is why their input is so crucial to this report.

It is important to note that at the regional dialogues that led to the Uluru Statement, there was not a single existing entity that communities identified as representing their voices. National peak bodies and constituent organisations, were expressly singled out in regional dialogues as not representing grassroots voices.

Read more: Constitutional recognition for Indigenous Australians must involve structural change, not mere symbolism

They were also criticised for being unaccountable and not reporting back to communities about what they say and do in Canberra.

Even so, the interim report has some alignment with the Uluru dialogue’s deliberative method , this includes the proposed transitional arrangements for local and regional entities, allowing communities to conceive of and design new entities.

However, it is difficult to gauge whether this can give voice to the voiceless.

Voice to parliament falls short

The Voice to parliament component of the interim report opens the door to submissions on a constitutional Voice. There is no other way to assess the efficacy of the legislated approach, which unsurprisingly falls short of the voice sought by delegates at the regional dialogues, the national constitutional convention and in the Uluru Statement.

This is because the Uluru Statement sought a mandated place at the table with the force of law. The interim report falls short of this by studiously avoiding power.

While the proposal suggests there is an “obligation to consult” on race power matters and “expectation to consult” on broader matters, there is no power that animates an actual obligation.

After all, it is based on legislation that can be overridden by subsequent legislation, which is par for the course in Indigenous affairs. Media reports talk of the “obligation to consult” on race power as if it is hard law, but this Voice is mediated by the government of the day and therefore the antithesis of what people sought.

It carefully crafts a process that still renders the voice supine to government. This is both in terms of reporting to a parliamentary committee and the transparency mechanisms, where inevitably, the government becomes the Indigenous Voice to parliament.

Read more: Australia Day, Invasion Day, Survival Day: a long history of celebration and contestation

The most prominent misalignment with the dialogues was they wanted a voice protected by the Constitution via a referendum, so it could survive successive governments and avoid being subject to the whim of the government of the day.

This would give our communities the certainty and security they need to make long-term plans for the future. First Nations peoples understand our affairs are a political football. And that our working and community lives are subject to a three-year cycle of one government to the next. It is a driver of disadvantage.

This is why so many Indigenous organisations are expressing disappointment at this proposal. The “anything is better than nothing” approach does not apply when the change is akin to the status quo; it just looks more officious with more squiggly flow charts.

A path to friendship

This is now an opportunity for Australians and First Nations peoples to make their views clearly heard. It is only an interim report, and it requires the feedback of many.

All Australians want to find a way through the annual debates about Captain Cook, the First Fleet and national identity, to a more inclusive and nuanced narrative of who we are.

Read more: An Indigenous ‘Voice’ must be enshrined in our Constitution. Here’s why

Survey research shows a clear majority of Australians want to recognise a First Nations Voice in the Constitution.

As we approach yet another national day replete with swirling toxicity, the path to friendship offered by the Uluru Statement — an expression of peace — provides a roadmap for Australia.

This is not about changing the date, but changing the nation.

– ref. Toxicity swirls around January 26, but we can change the nation with a Voice to parliament – https://theconversation.com/toxicity-swirls-around-january-26-but-we-can-change-the-nation-with-a-voice-to-parliament-153623

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Bright, Senior Lecturer of Addiction, Edith Cowan University

While the public focus remains on COVID vaccines, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) continues to evaluate a range of proposals around the provision of medical treatments in Australia.

The regulatory body is currently considering whether psychiatrists should be allowed to prescribe MDMA and psilocybin to treat mental illness. The TGA will announce its interim decision on February 3, and will make a final ruling on April 22.

Psychedelic drugs for the treatment of mental illness represent a promising area. And any new treatment which could help people suffering — particularly in the wake of the pandemic — may seem like a good thing.

But until Australia engages in further research into the therapeutic potential of these drugs, we believe it’s too soon to make them available as medicines.

The application

Increasing research evidence suggests MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy, could be an effective adjunct to psychotherapy for people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PSTD).

Meanwhile, clinical trials of psilocybin, the psychoactive component of magic mushrooms, show it could assist psychotherapy in the treatment of anxiety and depression, addiction, and a range of other mood disorders.

On this basis, in July 2020, an organisation called Mind Medicine Australia made an application to the TGA requesting MDMA and psilocybin be classified as Schedule 8 controlled medicines.

MDMA and psilocybin are currently classified as Schedule 9 prohibited drugs. Other examples of Schedule 9 drugs include heroin and methamphetamine.

As Schedule 8 controlled medicines, MDMA and psilocybin would sit alongside drugs like dexamphetamine, morphine and some forms of medical cannabis. Some of these and other Schedule 8 drugs such as ketamine and cocaine are used recreationally.

If the TGA reclassifies MDMA and psilocybin, Australia would be the first country in the world to recognise these drugs as legitimate medicines.

Read more: Psychedelics to treat mental illness? Australian researchers are giving it a go

Is Australia ready?

Early research suggesting psychedelics had therapeutic potential lapsed after 1971, when the drugs were made illegal around the world. But it resumed early in the 2000s, manifesting into an international renaissance in psychedelic science.

Australia was a little later to get involved than some countries, but in the past 18 months we’ve succeeded in initiating clinical research locally.

Edith Cowan University, Monash University, the University of Melbourne, and St Vincent’s hospitals in Melbourne and Sydney all have research on psychedelic-assisted therapies either in the pipeline or already underway. The trial at St Vincent’s hospital in Melbourne is the first to have started recruiting participants.

These trials aim both to contribute to the research happening globally, and to demonstrate that Australia has the regulatory processes, people and infrastructure to provide these treatments safely and effectively.

Read more: Weekly Dose: ecstasy, the party drug that could be used to treat PTSD

But we’re not there yet

There are three key reasons why Australia is not yet ready for MDMA and psilocybin to be rescheduled as medicines by the TGA.

1. No accredited training

Australia has very few health-care professionals trained to provide psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. These drugs produce powerful changes in consciousness that could lead to psychological harm, rather than healing, when given to unsuitable patients, or by health-care workers without the necessary training.

2. Prohibitive costs

Medical cannabis is only legally available in pharmaceutical formulations — the actual plant is not available as a medicine. This makes medical cannabis expensive. Only 3.9% of Australians using cannabis for medical reasons access it legally. We expect pharmaceutical-grade MDMA and psilocybin will also be expensive to access.

3. Going underground

Like medical cannabis, we’re concerned that lack of access and prohibitive costs will mean more people will access existing unregulated MDMA and psilocybin treatment services. This puts people at risk, since there’s no quality control of either the drugs or the therapists.

Should these issues arise, our efforts over recent years to finally establish psychedelic medicine in Australia could be undone.

What will the TGA decide?

Given these concerns, we believe it’s highly unlikely the TGA will decide to reschedule MDMA and psilocybin as medicines at this stage.

And while emerging evidence is continuing to suggest these drugs can be effective adjuncts to psychotherapy, we believe the application was made without sufficient regard to the universally accepted process of new drug approval.

We need to see Phase 3 clinical trials completed before any informed decisions can be made (the trials in Australia have not yet reached Phase 3). This approval process is important so we know the drugs are effective and safe, including understanding any side effects.

By way of comparison, we know Pfizer wouldn’t apply for TGA approval for a new antidepressant before completing Phase 3 research. Even the COVID-19 vaccines Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna are fast-tracking internationally have been required to complete stringent, widely scrutinised Phase 3 trials.

Read more: How will COVID-19 vaccines be approved for use in Australia?

Where to from here?

Current and future Australian research in this space will offer a crucial pathway for therapists to learn how to provide psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. This is an important step before Australia is ready for MDMA and psilocybin to be approved as medicines.

Moving forward, we anticipate Australian health-care professional registration boards will come to acknowledge psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy as a speciality area of training, and will need to develop accredited training programs to meet the demand for appropriately qualified therapists.

Notably, none of the current research into psychedelic-assisted treatments for mental illness in Australia is receiving government funding. Government support will be important to extend this research beyond the early-phase trials, and ultimately will be crucial for the widespread rollout of this treatment.

Finally, to ensure equitable access, psychedelic-assisted therapies will need to be embedded within the public health-care system and supported by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

Our submission to the TGA, along with others, will be made public on February 3, when the TGA announces its interim decision on the rescheduling of psilocybin and MDMA.

– ref. Will Australia legalise ecstasy and magic mushrooms to treat mental illness? Here’s why it’s still too soon – https://theconversation.com/will-australia-legalise-ecstasy-and-magic-mushrooms-to-treat-mental-illness-heres-why-its-still-too-soon-150448

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sara Wilkinson, Professor, School of the Built Environment, University of Technology Sydney

Many of us who endured lockdowns in Australia are familiar with the surge in energy bills at home. But for older Australians who depend on the Age Pension for income, lockdowns drove many deeper into “energy poverty”. Some faced up to 50% higher bills than in 2019, as a result of COVID.

Energy poverty involves low-income households restricting their energy consumption by avoiding certain activities like showering, spending high proportions of their income on energy and, sometimes, being unable to pay bills.

A 2015 report from the Brotherhood of St Laurence found an estimated 28% of Australian households experience energy poverty on at least one measure. A third of this was made up of older households (headed by someone aged 65 or older) on the measure of income versus energy spending.

For our ongoing qualitative research, we interviewed 22 older (65 plus) low-income Australians in NSW and Victoria and analysed their bills, before and during COVID lockdowns. They present a heartbreaking picture of energy poverty and the loneliness that comes with it. It remains a neglected consequence of the pandemic.

The consequences of energy poverty

Prior to COVID, energy costs were a major concern for older Australians with many having to use a substantial proportion of their income to remain connected.

During COVID, many older Australians spent almost all their time at home. Our research, which is not yet published, found lockdowns caused their energy consumption and bills to swell 15-50% higher than in 2019, making a bad situation even tougher for already vulnerable community members.

Energy poverty has serious consequences for quality of life. To compensate for potentially higher bills, people changed their behaviour and cut consumption of other essential, and non-essential items.

For example, COVID severely curtailed their social activities through the closure of community centres, which intensified their feelings of loneliness and social exclusion.

Iris, aged 78, said prior to COVID she kept her bills low by spending time at her community centre.

I try to go out so that I don’t need to use energy […] If I don’t stay [at home], and then I don’t use it. If I become too hot, I go to common room [with] the air conditioner.

In response to COVID, the community centre closed. Iris has health issues and is reluctant to go out. Her energy bill increased by A$50 to $60 per quarter. She told us:

Before COVID, I used to be extremely social. I’d be outside my home every day. Now I think the increase in my energy costs are being compensated by not going out anymore and not socialising, as I’m still afraid of exposing myself to the virus.

I’m old you know. I can’t [afford to] get sick. But even though I’m saving some money by not socialising, I can’t save money for potential emergencies as before. With the higher electricity bills and the new medical expenses, my capacity to save [has] reduced a lot.

People may also reduce their heater use in winter, and fan or air-conditioning use in summer. This is major problem during extreme weather events such as heatwaves or storms, which can have serious health consequences for older people at home. In turn, public health infrastructure is tested as more people need to see their GP or require emergency treatment.

Another overlooked problem is the connection between energy poverty and food insecurity. With a limited Age Pension income, vulnerable households may have to choose between heating or eating healthily.

Read more: Too many Australians have to choose between heating or eating this winter

We identified three reasons why. First, they try to buy the cheapest, usually unhealthy, food. Second, they purchase food that is easily prepared, which is usually more processed, to avoid using electricity or gas in cooking. And third is the need to get food from charities and food banks which, in many cases, is food that’s unwanted by others.

‘Since COVID has come in, everything has gone up, up, up’

Many of those we interviewed between February and December 2020 confirmed their bills had increased during COVID lockdowns. This included Vania, 67, who had difficulty linking her higher bills to increased consumption.

This issue of energy literacy and ability to engage with the energy market recurred in the interviews. She told us:

I think since COVID has come in, everything has gone up, up, up. I don’t understand what the bill [says]. Why are they [the energy bills], you know, going up so high? Doesn’t make sense to me.

Anthony, 69, changed his lifestyle dramatically in response to COVID.

I went from eating out, every hot meal was eating out. And then from March onwards, every hot meal was eating in […] I was out of the house one hour a week in March, April, May and June. I was home 167 hours a week.

His energy consumption increased significantly, despite trying to minimise usage. For instance, to compensate for a 15-50% increase in energy usage on heating, cooling and cooking, Anthony reduced hot water consumption by around 12%, by showering less.

His remarkably accurate records in the graphs below show consumption for different uses (he had separate meters) before and during COVID in summer, autumn and winter.

A good quality of life for pensioners

Energy poverty is a complex, multifaceted problem with no single, easy solution.

We need to advocate for increased government pensions that ensure a good quality of life for pensioners, one that guarantees pensioners aren’t living below the poverty line after housing and energy costs are deducted.

Government schemes to retrofit existing houses with better energy efficiency are also urgently needed. This could be through installing solar panels or retrofitting secondary glazing for insulation.

Read more: As power prices soar, we need a concerted effort to tackle energy poverty

There are also many ways to reduce energy costs for older people who may be spending unnecessary amounts.

First, reducing confusing paperwork so older low-income households can access rebates on domestic appliance replacements. The range of appliances should include portable heaters and coolers.

Second, a low and fair single rate for low-income households across all energy retailers should be established, to ensure they’re on the best possible energy scheme. It should not depend on an individual’s energy literacy.

And finally, energy literacy training online and offline among older low-income households through community centre events and organisations, such as Council on the Ageing (COTA) NSW would be beneficial.

Read more: If you need a PhD to read your power bill, buying wisely is all but impossible

– ref. ‘I can’t save money for potential emergencies’: COVID lockdowns drove older Australians into energy poverty – https://theconversation.com/i-cant-save-money-for-potential-emergencies-covid-lockdowns-drove-older-australians-into-energy-poverty-153096

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael P. Cameron, Associate Professor in Economics, University of Waikato

Population growth plays a role in environmental damage and climate change.

But addressing climate change through either reducing or reversing growth in population raises difficult moral questions that most people would prefer to avoid having to answer.

The English political economist Thomas Robert Malthus laid out a compelling argument against overpopulation in his famous 1798 book, An Essay on the Principle of Population.

He argued that increases in food production improved human wellbeing only temporarily. The population would respond to greater wellbeing by having more children, increasing population growth and eventually over-running the food supply, leading to famine.

But his essay could not have been timed worse, coming near the beginning of the longest period of sustained global population growth in history. This was driven in part by vast improvements in agricultural productivity over time.

Read more: Worried about Earth’s future? Well, the outlook is worse than even scientists can grasp

This idea of hard environmental limits to population growth was resurrected in the 20th century in publications such as The Population Bomb, a 1968 book by Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich, and The Limits to Growth, a 1972 publication commissioned by the Club of Rome think-tank.

The implication of these treatises on the perils of population growth suggest population control is an important measure to limit carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions and global climate change.

Four key drivers of global emissions

Population growth is not the only driver of global CO₂ emissions and climate change.

The Kaya identity, an equation introduced by the Japanese energy economist Yoichi Kaya in the 1990s, relates the total emissions of CO₂ to four factors:

1. total population
2. GDP per person
3. energy use per unit of GDP
4. CO₂ emissions per unit of energy.

CO₂ emissions can be addressed by reducing any one (or more) of those four factors, provided the other factors are not growing even faster than those reductions.

Not all of the factors are equally easy to affect though. That explains why to date, most countries have concentrated on reducing energy intensity (such as with home insulation to increase the efficiency of energy consumption) and reducing carbon intensity (such as with wind and solar as greener energy production methods).

But the rate of progress in slowing global CO₂ emissions has not been sufficient as yet to achieve agreed targets.

Restricting economic growth

Many people have argued we should target lower economic growth to curb environmental damage.

Globally, the trend is for GDP per person to increase generally over time. Reducing this growth, or moving into managed economic decline, would contribute to reducing CO₂ emissions.

But achieving reductions in CO₂ emissions through reducing economic growth comes with unavoidable distributional consequences, both within and between countries.

Not all countries have shared equally in past economic growth. Low-income countries could persuasively argue it is unfair for their current low level of development to be locked in by reducing their ability to continue to grow their economies.

The moral dilemma of population control

That leaves population control, but the issues here are no less challenging. Government-led population control presents serious moral questions for democratic countries.

That’s why the only country to have undertaken a (moderately) successful form of population control is China, through the One Child Policy that ran from 1979 to 2015. Over that period, the total fertility rate in China roughly halved.

But an unintended consequence of the policy is an accelerated rate of population ageing in China, which now has one of the oldest populations in Asia.

The most challenging aspect of using population control to reduce CO₂ emissions is ethical.

If our concern about climate change arises because we want to ensure a liveable future world for our grandchildren, is it ethical to ensure that pathway is achieved by preventing some grandchildren from ever seeing that world because they are never born?

That is a very difficult question to answer.

Population declines in some countries

Public policy initiatives to control population growth are probably not even necessary.

All high-income countries currently already have below-replacement fertility, with fewer children being born than are necessary to maintain a constant population.

In the year to June 2020, New Zealand experienced its lowest total fertility rate ever, with 1.63 births per woman (replacement fertility needs at least 2.1 births per woman).

Other countries are also seeing their populations decreasing. For example, the population of Japan peaked in 2010 and has declined by more than 1.4 million people over the past decade.

Future population growth is projected by the United Nations to peak at around 11 billion in 2100 and then to slip into slow decline after that.

So if we can get through this century without catastrophic environmental effects, then population may start to decline as a contributor to climate change.

Of course, there is a lot of uncertainty about future population growth, so only time will tell whether the UN’s predictions hold true.

Other solutions

There are many ways to tackle climate change, and not all focus on emissions. We could attempt to mitigate its impacts, or adapt to environmental changes, or use technology to remove CO₂ directly from the atmosphere.

Read more: Net-zero, carbon-neutral, carbon-negative … confused by all the carbon jargon? Then read this

On the emissions side, we could look to reduce further the energy intensity or carbon intensity of the economy (the final two factors in the Kaya Identity).

Innovations in any of these areas are likely to be the most fruitful avenues for dealing with climate change, in large part because they avoid the most difficult moral questions.

But if we are unwilling or unable to make those changes work, and soon, then managing population and economic growth may become our only recourse. At that point, humanity will have to confront increasingly difficult moral questions.

– ref. Curb population growth to tackle climate change: now that’s a tough ask – https://theconversation.com/curb-population-growth-to-tackle-climate-change-now-thats-a-tough-ask-153382

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julie Sonnemann, Fellow, School Education, Grattan Institute

School is back for 2021, and some students will get extra help this year. Students who fell behind in their learning during the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020 will be eligible for extra tutoring in Victoria and New South Wales.

Governments have invested more than half a billion dollars in our two biggest states to help kids bounce back. Data released late last year showed after almost two months of learning from home, NSW students had fallen, on average, three to four months behind in year 3 reading, and two to three months behind in year 5 reading and numeracy. Year 9 students were up to four months behind in numeracy.

Disadvantaged students are likely to have been hardest hit. A Grattan Institute report estimated the achievement gap between disadvantaged students and the rest widens three times more quickly during remote schooling.

Here’s what we know about these new tutoring schemes.

Evidence shows tutoring works

A lot of money has been invested in the new schemes: $250 million in Victoria and $337 million in NSW. They will be rolled out in both primary and secondary schools, and are expected to reach about 200,000 students in Victoria and 290,000 in NSW.

The new programs should be worth it. Evidence from the UK and US suggests a good tutoring program can provide students with around four months of additional learning over one to two school terms.

Read more: Kids shouldn’t have to repeat a year of school because of coronavirus. There are much better options

And they can help to close the pre-existing achievement gap for disadvantaged students, which is much greater than the gap caused from the losses during COVID-19 disruptions. In Australia, disadvantaged students from families where parents’ education is low are, on average, about three years behind their more privileged peers by Year 9.

How the new schemes will work

All government schools — and a small number of non-government schools — have been given funding for tutoring, with more money going to disadvantaged schools with many students from low socioeconomic backgrounds.

About one in five students — targeted to those who need it most — will get tutoring.

Small groups of up to five students will work with tutors each week at school. Schools will determine whether sessions are run either in or outside of class time, and in NSW we understand there is a possibility of after-school sessions as well.

Teachers will select the students, which means parents don’t need to think about whether their child needs the tutoring or not.

If parents have concerns about their child either missing out or not wanting to participate, they should discuss this with their school.

How to get the most out of the tutoring program

Teachers will need to accurately identify which students have been struggling and why. They will need to make judgements using a range of assessments, including student tests, classroom observations or student interviews.

Even though teachers make these assessments every day in regular teaching, it is hard to do well. Some teachers will need extra support to do this, such as guidance from expert teachers or assessment specialists. It is a key step to get right.

Next, rigorous selection of tutors, and good training for them, will be key.

Evidence shows intensive tutoring will work best, with short (for example 30 minutes) but regular sessions (between 3-to-5 times a week), over a sustained period (between 10-to-20 weeks).

Close working relationships between tutors and teachers will help ensure students get the support they need.

And perhaps most importantly, the quality of the teaching by the teacher and tutor will be critical. Teachers are likely to be swamped this year, and education departments should provide extra support to help teachers guide tutors as needed.

Guidance could include information on structured literacy and numeracy programs to help teachers and tutors adopt good practice, especially for students who have complex learning needs.

Programs include well-specified training, materials and teaching approaches. For literacy, for example, these programs can provide extra support on proven ways of teaching oral language skills or certain aspects of reading.

Read more: Victoria’s money for tutors is necessary, but there are 5 things it needs to do to ensure they’re successful

Education departments will need to keep an eye on the quality of candidates coming forward for tutoring roles, given a big workforce is being recruited fast with tight constraints on who can apply. If the pool of tutor candidates needs to be made bigger, evidence shows university graduates from a range of fields, not just education, can be good tutors too.

Schools will also need to take care to ensure students do not feel stigma about being identified for tutoring. Teachers will need to pay attention to student confidence, and avoid negative messaging or separating students on an ongoing basis, which can have negative impacts (also known as streaming).

Parents can explain to their child that extra tutoring support will help them catch up and feel more confident at school.

The tutoring schemes are an opportunity for governments to learn

The NSW and Victorian governments have taken on a mammoth task. Almost 10,000 tutors will be mobilised at short notice. And there are still many aspects of the tutoring program design where the evidence is not clear, such as around the exact nature of tutoring training.

It will not be a failure if some of the programs don’t work well. But it will be a problem if we don’t learn why.

Read more: From WW2 to Ebola: what we know about the long-term effects of school closures

Australia now has an opportunity to trial a promising initiative and to understand how it can work best. The tutoring schemes of the 2021 school year should be rigorously evaluated. Where possible, education departments should also run small-scale trials which test different tutoring approaches.

South Australia has also announced a small ($3.6 million) maths tutoring program, which provides a good opportunity for teachers to compare the tuition approaches in different states.

– ref. Victoria and NSW are funding extra tutors to help struggling students. Here’s what parents need to know about the schemes – https://theconversation.com/victoria-and-nsw-are-funding-extra-tutors-to-help-struggling-students-heres-what-parents-need-to-know-about-the-schemes-153450

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Duffy, Lecturer, School of Business, Western Sydney University

Australia Day used to be an obvious and uncontroversial occasion for brands to endear themselves to Australian consumers. No longer.

There has been a decided shift over the past decade in commercial attitudes to January 26, acknowledging the problematic nature of the date’s choice as our day of national celebration to our First Nations.

Nothing demonstrates this more conclusively than Cricket Australia dropping references to Australia Day in its promotions of Big Bash League fixtures.

It’s a significant step. The BBL doesn’t need to appease inner-urban lefties. Its customer base is as middle-Australia as you can get. Nor can this be dismissed as corporate timidity, running for cover lest woke activists on social media make a fuss. Indeed the decision has likely excited more controversy than would have business as usual.

“Well, it’s not cricket,” declared Prime Minister Scott Morrison when asked about the move. “I think Australian cricket fans would like to see Cricket Australia focus a lot more cricket and a lot less on politics.”

News Corp’s outrage machine has been running even hotter. “The greatest betrayal of this country by a sporting body,” fumed Sky News host Chris Smith.

Both Morrison and News Corp know something about appealing to core audiences. In this case, Cricket Australia’s attunement to its stakeholders is probably a better barometer of national feeling.

Identity commerce

Brands have never been shy about using national holidays for commercial gain.

Take Anzac Day – a date (on April 25) far less controversial than Australia Day, but one still fraught with sensitivities.

The Australian Football League has leveraged the “Anzac spirit” since 1995 through its Anzac Day match betweeen Collingwood and Essendon. Though not without its critics, the league has mostly managed to avoiding running afoul of community sentiments in balancing commodification with commemoration.

Other brands have not been so artful. Woolworths, for example. In 2015 the “Fresh Food People” ran an Anzac Day campaign involving an image generator by which people could upload a photo of a relative who served in World War I “or a more recent war” to create a social media profile picture – overlaid with the phrase “Fresh in our Memories” and a Woolworths logo.

Woolworths executives were shocked to discover many people thought this distasteful, and quickly dropped the promotion.

But it generally takes a lot for brands to back away from commercialisation opportunities. Carlton & United Breweries also copped criticism in 2015 over its Victoria Bitter beer brand’s “Raise a Glass” campaign (running since 2009) but was unapologetic.

It defended its association with Anzac Day – citing a photo of Australian soldiers serving in Egypt during World War II who made a “VB” made out of Victoria Bitter beer bottles, and the money it contributed to the Returned & Services League and Legacy.

It did, however, drop the campaign in 2016. And now, of course, CUB is owned by Japanese conglomerate Asahi, which makes such promotions somewhat awkward.

Read more: Should we be consuming more than just patriotism on national days?

Cashing in on Australia Day

This may explain why VB has clung to its Australia Day promotions.

It used January 25 in 2018 to launch “Knock Off Times” campaign. Last year it marketed VB-branded thongs – the “ultimate fashion accessory for the Australia Day long weekend”.

The reason is simple: it’s a sales opportunity.

The national public holiday is a day to have a party with family and friends. Barbecues are popular. It’s a useful date for alcohol brands and others to time promotional campaigns that position themselves as dinky-di.

Coopers, now the largest Australian-owned brewery, has also used the day to promote its true-blue credentials. In 2017 it ran a national billboard campaign with the slogan: “Australia Day. Australian-owned. Perfect.”

Even brands with tenuous connections to barbecues (or Australia) have gotten in on the act. A Mercedes-Benz promotion in 2018 featured sausages on a grill in the style of the German luxury car brand’s three-pointed badge

Shifting sentiments

But for brands attuned to middle Australia, waving the flag around Australia Day is losing its explicit appeal as community attitudes change.

Let’s not forget the date has never been universally embraced. Marking the date of arrival of the First Fleet at Port Jackson in 1788, January 26 was only nationally adopted as Australia Day in the mid-1930s. Given the date’s association with colonisation and dispossession, Indigenous Australians have lamented the choice ever since. In 1938 the first Aboriginal Day of Mourning and Protest was held in Sydney. Counter-commemorations of the day as Survival Day and Invasion Day are hardly new.

Follow the lamb

To appreciate how attitudes have shifted, think about lamb.

No advertiser has leveraged Australia Day more adroitly than Meat and Livestock Australia. It has pegged its advertising campaign promoting lamb as the “national meat” to the holiday for two decades, with former AFL player and “lambassador” Sam Kekovich fronting the campaign from 2005 to 2014.

The longevity of the campaign’s timing with January 26 indicates the strategy’s success.

The campaigns have been consistently irreverent, appealing to the larrikan sense of humour. But in recent years they’ve also become far less “politically incorrect”. Gone are explicit appeals to nationalism and skewering of easy targets such as vegans. Instead their messages are about sharing and togetherness.

This year’s campaign, “Make lamb, not walls”, is a comical take on border closures. Notably it makes no mention of Australia Day.

Waning attachment

Last week pollster Essential Research, which has been surveying Australians annually since 2015 about their feelings of Australia Day – and celebrating it on January 26 – published data showing 53% of Australians regard it as just another public holiday (compared with 40% in January 2015).

Opposition to moving Australia Day to another day is still quite significant (35%) but, tellingly, just 17% of those aged 18-35 are opposed, compared with 55% of those 55 or older. Even among Coalition voters, more support a separate day than oppose it (49% to 45%).

The waning attachment of market-sensitive mainstream brands such as MLA to the day may be just as telling, in the same way betting markets are a useful adjunct to polls to accurately measure the popular mood.

Read more: New research reveals our complex attitudes to Australia Day

Reading the room

Cricket Australia’s detachment may be the most significant of all barometers. It’s hard to think of a brand more acutely aligned with Australian identity.

True, not all the BBL’s franchise teams are on board. The commercial and marketing manager of the two Melbourne teams, Nick Cummins, is batting on with promoting this year’s January 26 fixtures at the MCG as Australia Day matches. It was, he said “a complex issue that needs time and extensive engagement”.

But the writing is on the wall. As Indigenous cricketer Dan Christian put it, there comes a time to “to read the room”.

– ref. It’s not just cricket: Australia Day isn’t the commercial winner it used to be – https://theconversation.com/its-not-just-cricket-australia-day-isnt-the-commercial-winner-it-used-to-be-153633

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joanna Mendelssohn, Principal Fellow (Hon), Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, University of Melbourne

In January 1971, Art News published Linda Nochlin’s Why have there been no great women artists?

Her essay was both a clarion call for a new generation of women and a signal to change the institutions that shape the understanding of art.

Nochlin was not writing from the perspective of an artist, frustrated at the lack of recognition, nor was she simply claiming that past women geniuses had seen their work relegated to the attic.

Rather, as one of the great authorities on 19th century European art, she gave a scathing and detailed analysis of how and why white bourgeois men were “great” while women and people of colour were not.

She wrote:

… the question of women’s equality — in art as in any other realm — devolves not upon the relative benevolence or ill-will of individual men, nor the self-confidence or abjectness of individual women, but rather on the very nature of our institutional structures themselves and the view of reality which they impose on the human beings who are part of them.

Instead of falling into the popular trap of claiming that minor women artists in the canon of art history should simply be reclassified as major, Nochlin deftly gave an account of the circumstances under which art was made, and artists taught.

Until the 19th century gave us the romantic cult of the individual, art came from studios with masters, apprentices and assistants. Women weren’t artists for the same reason we weren’t carpenters. As with other trades, skills were passed down through generations.

Some women worked in their fathers’ studios. The Italian painter, Orazio Gentileschi, actively supported the career of his daughter Artemisia Gentileschi, so she became known as an artist.

Others preferred to keep their daughters in the background. This is perhaps why Tintoretto insisted his studio assistant daughter, Marietta Robusti, not leave his household in his lifetime. After she died in childbirth his prodigious output was somewhat diminished in both quantity and quality.

By the late 19th century, most art students were women, so in theory a barrier had been broken. However, as Nochlin points out, professional artists need a studio, materials and models. Women students were not allowed access to nude models. Rosa Boneheur, the daughter of a drawing master, avoided the issue by painting animals.

Training for ‘good wives’

1973, when I first read Nochlin’s essay, was the year the Art Gallery of New South Wales organised the first major exhibition of the Australian modernist painter Grace Cossington Smith.

For many years the Australian art establishment had rejected modernism — which may be why so many modernist artists were women, making art that was rejected for its style, not the gender of the artist. Although it was good to see her so honoured in her 81st year, younger women were not so lucky.

In the same year the same gallery and the same curator presented Recent Australian Art, a major contemporary survey, “an attempt to show us the reality of the world”. There was only one work by a woman: Ewa Pachucka’s crocheted Landscape and Bodies.

Read more: How our art museums finally opened their eyes to Australian women artists

The men who ran the art schools, who gave the opportunities, who ran the exhibiting galleries and wrote the exhibition reviews did not see the many women art students as future artists. Some were told their presence at art school would make them “good wives” to future artists and architects. Others saw them as future patrons of their own art.

Nochlin reminds her readers of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963) and how most women absorbed the message their “real” work was to serve their family, seeing their proper place as subordinate.

This social conditioning is now known as the Pygmalion Effect, where numerous research studies have shown that people are inclined to become what others see them to be. In pointing out the artificiality of this syndrome Nochlin enabled all those who do not fit the norm of “pale, male and stale” to consider that they too might reach for the stars.

She proclaimed:

Disadvantage may indeed be an excuse; it is not, however, an intellectual position.

It was time to change.

The work continues

50 years later, there have been transformations in the structures that govern fame.

Women are in leadership positions in some major art galleries and museums. We head several art schools and otherwise hold positions of power. It is no longer a novelty to see a woman art critic. Women artists are no longer invisible.

Australia’s Indigenous artists are now very much in the public eye. In 2016, the Ken Family Collaborative, five sisters from the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands, were awarded the Wynne Prize, a signal that great art is sometimes a group enterprise.

In 2008, Elvis Richardson founded the Countess Report, a running statistical record of how Australian institutions treat women artists — and a tool in calling them to account.

Its 2019 report showed that, while there was a 10%-20% increase of women’s work being exhibited across all publicly available venues, there was a decrease of 36.9% to 33.9% in state run art museums from 2016-2019. The National Gallery of Australia’s 2020 Know My Name initiative should progress those figures, but we still have a long way to go.

Nochlin didn’t so much write an essay as a battle plan.

Read more: Beauty and audacity: Know My Name presents a new, female story of Australian art

– ref. Why weren’t there any great women artists? In gratitude to Linda Nochlin – https://theconversation.com/why-werent-there-any-great-women-artists-in-gratitude-to-linda-nochlin-153099

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Terry, Professor of Psychology, University of Southern Queensland

The challenge of bringing the world’s best tennis players and support staff, about 1,200 people in all, from COVID-ravaged parts of the world to our almost pandemic-free shores was always going to be a big ask.

Soon after this star-studded Australian Open entourage arrived in Melbourne, ten cases of COVID-19 were identified (some later reclassified as being old infections). As a result, 72 players classified as close contacts were confined to hotel rooms with no access to what they thought they had been promised — a daily five-hour session on the practice courts within the quarantine bubble.

Meanwhile, the superstars of the sport (Novak Djokovic, Rafa Nadal, Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka among them) were apparently enjoying much better conditions in Adelaide.

Social media turned white hot.

Spanish world number 13 Roberto Bautista Agut described conditions as like prison “but with wifi”.

Meanwhile Kazakhstan’s Yulia Putintseva wished she had she been warned about the potential for hard lockdown and sharing her room with a mouse.

The flames were fanned by Novak Djokovic’s list of demands for improved conditions, admittedly on behalf of his fellow players and which he later said were just suggestions, which Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews immediately rejected.

Then, the backlash started

Fellow players waded in, with Nick Kyrgios labelling Djokovic “a tool” on Twitter and savaging Bernard Tomic’s partner as having “no perspective” for complaining about having to wash her own hair.

Condemnation of players who complained about being in quarantine, when the population of Melbourne had recently endured 112 days of lockdown, was swift and universal.

The consensus was that, instead of complaining, the self-entitled prima donnas should be grateful for the opportunity to play in one of the world’s great sporting events, pocketing between A$100,000 and $2.75m in prize money (for the singles) after their all-expenses paid trip down under.

When we put people on a pedestal

This looks like a clear case of pedestal syndrome backfiring, a term popularised in sport psychology by Jeffrey Bond, who worked with tennis legend Pat Cash when he won Wimbledon in 1987.

It’s not a clinical diagnosis, but refers to the tendency to exalt those we admire to a position where we (and they) perceive they can do no wrong.

After all, when the world treats you like something special, feted and adored wherever you go, is it any wonder you start to believe the normal restrictions of a pandemic, indeed of life, do not apply to you?

Maybe the Australian Open should not have been held at all this year, as some prominent health experts have advised.

However, once the decision to proceed with the tournament next month was confirmed, wasn’t it incumbent upon the organisers to create a level playing field for competitors?

There is little doubt those in hard lockdown may be disadvantaged come tournament time.

Is lockdown treating all players equally?

With several of the world’s top players having greater freedom to train in Adelaide compared with those in Melbourne quarantine, some players are also questioning if they’ll be at an advantage when the tournament starts.

The better deal for those in Adelaide includes having a larger support team available, use of the hotel gym, and the opportunity to play exhibition matches.

As Austrian doubles specialist Philipp Oswald, in Melbourne quarantine, described it:

It’s not apples and apples here, but apples and pears — and I caught the sour lemon.

Players risk losing fitness

Research by university colleague Professor Tim Gabbett would predict the decline in fitness among those in hard lockdown will be significantly greater than among those allowed to train outdoors for up to five hours a day.

More than that, the rapid increase in training once released from lockdown will significantly increase injury risk and diminish capacity to maintain performance over the course of a five-set match. In short, advantage all those who escaped hard lockdown.

Read more: Get a grip: the twist in the wrist that can ruin tennis careers

Then there is the issue of players’ psychological state leading into the tournament. My own research has highlighted the significant mood disturbance associated with COVID-19 restrictions, which were less restrictive than the hard lockdown many players are currently enduring.

It is well established that mood states affect performance in sport, and the negative moods likely engendered by lockdown will not encourage tournament success.

There could be benefits

However, there may be an upside for some players, especially those arriving with niggling injuries or excessively fatigued. The enforced rest may help them heal and freshen up before resuming normal training.

Lockdown also provides them with ample time to work on the mental side of their game, especially visualisation and mindfulness training. This may help them reframe their time in quarantine from a frustrating interruption into a productive period of mental preparation.

Read more: We studied mental toughness in ultra-marathon runners. Mind over matter is real — but won’t take you all the way

What happens when players leave quarantine?

Some players will undoubtedly emerge from hard lockdown anxious about their physical condition and irked they were the ones who got the short straw.

Romanian player Sorona Cirstea said she will need “at least three weeks after [isolation] in order to be in decent form again”.

Unfortunately, she’ll have less than two weeks to regain her fitness and find her form post-lockdown.

No reasonable person would suggest tennis players be allowed to skip quarantine but perhaps spare a thought for those in hard lockdown who feel the playing field is ever so slightly tilted against them.

– ref. Self-entitled prima donnas or do they have a point? Why Australian Open tennis players find hard lockdown so tough – https://theconversation.com/self-entitled-prima-donnas-or-do-they-have-a-point-why-australian-open-tennis-players-find-hard-lockdown-so-tough-153631

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Geoffrey Browne, Research Fellow in International Urban Development, University of Melbourne

The Victorian government has committed to removing 75 road/rail level crossings across Melbourne by 2025. That’s the fastest rate of removal in the city’s history. The scale of the investment — at least A$14.8 billion — and the project’s ripple effects mean it could do more to transform the city’s public transport system than the Metro Tunnel project.

Read more: Rail works lift property prices, pointing to value capture’s potential to fund city infrastructure

All infrastructure projects change the determinants of health — the “causes of the causes” of good health — to some extent. Despite this, the public health impacts of the level-crossing removals have been neglected. Our research aims to quantify the health impacts of major infrastructure, using level-crossing removals on the Upfield line as a case study, and to encourage governments to consider these when designing and building.

The two most frequently stated reasons for the project are:

• to reduce traffic congestion caused by having to give way to trains

• to increase safety by eliminating the temptation for drivers, cyclists and pedestrians to cross tracks when boom gates are lowered.

A third reason is to create jobs in the construction sector.

However, the impacts on public health are significant too. The level crossing removals have an opportunity to ensure that changes to the built environment make healthy behaviours the “easy option”. Such changes are generally more effective and equitable and can yield more sustained health benefits than health promotion programs.

This means government investment in health through improvements to the built environment is both an ethical responsibility and a prudent social investment. All infrastructure projects, especially when publicly funded like the level-crossing removals, should contribute to demonstrable and equitable improvements in public health that are proportional to the scale of the investment.

Read more: Why transport projects aren’t as good for your health as they could be

A case study: the Upfield line

Each level-crossing removal in Melbourne has unique challenges and opportunities.

The Bell-to-Moreland project on the Upfield line, for example, involves removing four level crossings and building two new train stations. To remove the crossings, the rail has been elevated to create “sky rail” over a 3km stretch.

The land below can then be re-purposed for linear parks, recreation and active transport such as walking and cycling.

While the government emphasises such uses, these appear to be incidental reasons for the project. “Level-crossing removal” rather than, say, “rail upgrade” or “linear park project”, suggests its main purpose is to ease traffic congestion.

The problem is that projects that aim to do this often have unintended rebound effects that actually increase car use. This, in turn, is linked to increases in health problems, including inactive lifestyles, excess weight and chronic disease.

The work on the Upfield line has also led to construction noise, the loss of over 150 mature trees and heritage structures, and loss of cyclists’ serendipitous “greenwave”, whereby north-south cycle travel on the adjacent path could be coordinated with the boom gates. Community dissatisfaction with the consultation processes has also been significant.

Read more: The ‘sky rail’ saga: can big new transport projects ever run smoothly?

Each of these problems is known to make health worse. Will the benefits of the new open spaces — “two MCGs worth” — and better transport interchanges at the new Moreland and Coburg stations be realised and outweigh the negative impacts? How can we be sure major infrastructure, like the Upfield level-crossing removal, represents a prudent investment in public health?

Making the links between liveability and health

Health impact assessment is an established set of protocols for measuring the effects of a project on public health. Extensive consultation and modelling are used to understand the opportunities and threats to public health arising from a proposed project.

At the same time, liveability is increasingly mentioned in urban policies and plans. The term is often used to promote Melbourne to the world.

However, liveability is not consistently defined. And contrary to what many would assume, the term is often used to emphasise city image and global economic competitiveness, rather than equitable access to healthy urban environments.

Melanie Lowe and colleagues recognised the potential for liveability to be redefined and used to improve decision-making for health equity. Their review of 82 peer-reviewed papers and government reports examined how these have used the concept. They found a liveable place, irrespective of its global location, is:

[…] safe, attractive, socially cohesive and inclusive, and environmentally sustainable, with affordable and diverse housing linked to employment, education, public open space, local shops, health and community services, and leisure and cultural opportunities; via convenient public transport, walking and cycling infrastructure.

Initial research for a comprehensive health impact assessment has shown the Upfield level-crossing removal will affect most of these elements of liveability to some degree. Some impacts will be positive, some negative. Transport, public open space, natural environment, social cohesion and local democracy are likely to be most affected.

Read more: How do we create liveable cities? First, we must work out the key ingredients

These findings illustrate the pervasive yet subtle impacts on public health that major infrastructure projects can have.

Closer examination of the Upfield project will involve gathering data and modelling the impacts on health. The results will provide valuable evidence for formulating recommendations that enhance the public health benefits of this project and others like it, locally and internationally.

Importantly, demonstrating the links between major infrastructure, liveability and the determinants of health will help ensure decision-makers understand the public health potential and risks of such publicly funded projects.

– ref. Level-crossing removals: a case study in why major projects must also be investments in health – https://theconversation.com/level-crossing-removals-a-case-study-in-why-major-projects-must-also-be-investments-in-health-149820

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW

In an age of hyperpartisan politics, the Biden presidency offers a welcome centrism that might help bridge the divides.

But it is also Biden’s economic centrism that offers a chance to cut through what has become an increasingly polarised approach to economic policy.

On the Republican side of politics, there is strong support for neoliberal economic policies – that is, economic policies that don’t just emphasise the importance of markets but represent a kind of free-market fanaticism. Ronald Reagan aptly expressed this view in his 1981 inaugural speech, in which he said “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem”.

On the Democratic side, the centrism of the Bill Clinton era (1993- 2001) has given way to much more left-wing policies. Indeed the democratic socialism of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been in the ascendancy for several years.

If you have any doubt about this, consider two facts.

First, Sanders came very close to being the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee in 2016. Second, the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries were dominated by candidates with similar views – such as Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Biden, of course, ran on a much more centrist economic platform.

This was perhaps best captured by his approach to health care – seeking to build on Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act) and insure more people, rather than adopt the “Medicare for All” policy advocated by Sanders and Warren.

In a whole range of areas Biden and his nominees for important cabinet posts have signalled the new administration’s economic policies will be responsive to the demands of the left but still be sensitive to the concerns of the right.

Read more: Who’s who in Joe Biden’s cabinet

Big spending, but within limits

One of the most important things the administration will do in its early days is to orchestrate a large spending package to help deal with the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.

This will include spending on the vaccine roll-out, helping schools reopen, extending unemployment insurance and cheques to households.

So the spending package is likely to be huge. But the administration is not going to spend with complete abandon and without acknowledging constraints.

As Biden’s pick for Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, said in her confirmation hearing:

Neither the president elect, nor I, proposed this release relief package without an appreciation for the country’s debt burden. But right now, with interest rates at historic lows, the smartest thing we can do is act big. In the long run, I believe the benefits will far outweigh the costs, especially if we care about helping people who’ve been struggling for a very long time.

Read more: Vital Signs: Janet Yellen, the very model of a modern Madam Secretary

Treading cautiously on health care

Sanders and others’ “Medicare for All” plan involves single-payer (i.e. the government) universal coverage and ending private health insurance. This would be similar to the approach in Scandinavia, Canada and Britain.

Biden has strongly resisted this on two fronts.

One, it would be incredibly expensive, costing US$30-40 trillion over a decade. Two, it would involve more than 150 million Americans losing their current insurance.

Instead, Biden wants to expand the Affordable Care Act with more incentives to push towards truly universal coverage. This is something Mitt Romney (the Republicans’ 2012 presidential candidate) might easily have proposed. Don’t forget that as governor of Massachusetts (from 2003 to 2007) he enacted a plan almost identical the Affordable Care Act – an idea championed by the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Likewise with tax reform

Biden’s tax plan certainly involves raising taxes but not to anywhere near the levels called for by the democratic socialist wing of his party. Nor will he embrace a wealth tax like Warren championed. Under her plan, people with assets of more than US$50 million would be taxed 2% of that amount a year (and 3% for more than US$1 billion).

But he does plan to raise the top income tax rate (on income more than US$400,000) from 37% to 39.6%. He will raise the flat 21% corporate tax rate introduced by Trump to 28%.

US companies will need to pay a minimum tax of 21% on foreign income – addressing the issue of companies avoiding taxes through legal set-ups in low-tax overseas jurisdictions (such as Apple in Ireland).

Biden will even introduce a tax penalty on companies that move jobs overseas if their products are sold in the US.

This is not a package any Republican administration would be likely to introduce. On the other hand, it falls dramatically short of what Sanders, Warren and Ocasio-Cortez want.

Responsive but responsible

The Biden economic plan is responsive to the current – almost shocking – state of the US economy. His health care and tax policies are sensitive to concerns about inequality.

Read more: Joe Biden sends a clear message to the watching world – America’s back

His approach acknowledges, rightly, that with interest rates at historic lows there is room for considerably more spending than in the past, despite already huge deficits. But it also acknowledges there are limits to what the government can or should do.

In that sense it is something even conservative Republicans ought to be able to live with – and common ground is something the US desperately needs to find.

– ref. Vital Signs: Biden’s economic centrism isn’t exciting, but right for these divisive times – https://theconversation.com/vital-signs-bidens-economic-centrism-isnt-exciting-but-right-for-these-divisive-times-153647

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Stevens, Lecturer in History, University of Waikato

In a year of surprises, one of the more pleasant was the recent runaway viral popularity of 19th century sea shanties on TikTok. A collaborative global response to pandemic isolation, it saw singers and musicians layering harmonies atop an original recording of Soon May the Wellerman Come by Scottish postie Nathan Evans.

Spread via TokTok and other social media, it has become the most popular song in the “ShantyTok” trend. What many fans possibly didn’t realise at first, though, was that the Wellerman shanty is an old New Zealand composition.

More than that, it is a window into an earlier era of global interconnection that shaped the social and economic history of our southern coasts.

The lyrics speak of men’s collective labour at sea. But behind the story of the whale hunt is one of cross-cultural interaction central to the success of the whaling industry, and critical in shaping the settlement of early 19th century New Zealand.

Whaling in the 19th century world

Whaling brought newcomers to Aotearoa New Zealand in significant numbers from the early 1800s. Once predominantly American-based crews had exploited Atlantic whale populations, they moved into the Pacific to seek new hunting grounds.

These men sought profit in the form of oil and bone. Whale oil provided industrial lubrication and lighting for growing cities in Europe and the US. Baleen from whale jaws was used in much the way plastic is now.

New Zealand was one of their destinations. The Wellerman shanty refers to the heyday of whaling in the South Island. The Sydney-based Weller brothers established their first whaling station at Ōtākou (Otago) in 1831.

They and others such as Johnny Jones oversaw stations ranging from a few households to nearly 100 residents. These new settlements were dotted around the southern coasts from the late 1820s, often located near the paths of migrating right whales.

Read more: ShantyTok: is the sugar and rum line in Wellerman a reference to slavery?

Unlike deep-sea whaling in the Atlantic and northern Pacific, these newcomers practised shore-based whaling which required land to process the whales caught. The “tonguing” in the Wellerman lyrics refers to cutting strips of blubber to render into oil in large “try pots” — a challenging process aboard ship. The crew also required land on which to live and cultivate food.

Whalers in the Ngāi Tahu world

These shore whalers entered a Māori world. The success of a station was dependent on their relationships with local iwi as tangata whenua — in this case, Ngāi Tahu.

Newcomers had to negotiate access to coastal land and resources, and stayed for months, years, sometimes even decades. Because the industry was based on settlement rather than short refuelling stops, shore whaling fostered more intensive cross-cultural interactions in southern New Zealand than elsewhere in New Zealand or abroad.

Differing cultural expectations and miscommunication occasionally led to violence. More often, however, Ngāi Tahu and newcomers negotiated a relationship of mutual benefit. Whaling connected Ngāi Tahu to the global economy in the early 19th century, providing new and sometimes mana-enhancing opportunities for trade, employment, and travel.

Read more: Rock art shows early contact with US whalers on Australia’s remote northwest coast

At the same time, Ngāi Tahu communities sought to incorporate whaling men into the rights and responsibilities of whanaungatanga (relations, connectedness). Intimate relationships and marriage were key features of this process, as historian Angela Wanhalla has shown.

Over 140 men had married Māori women in southern New Zealand by 1840, with these couples producing over 500 children. Edward Weller himself married Paparu, daughter of Tahatu and Matua. After her early death, Weller remarried Nikuru, daughter of rangatira (chief) Taiaroa, but left New Zealand without his wife and daughters after the Otākou station’s closure in 1841.

Ngāi Tahu in the whaling world

Many whaling stations became kin-based economies, with mixed families central to the labour and prosperity of both ship and station. As wives and partners, Ngāi Tahu women produced the food that sustained the station and supplemented the business of whaling.

While the Wellerman shanty’s “sugar and tea and rum” were imported as rations, potatoes, flax and pigs were locally produced, consumed, and exported for profit alongside whale oil and bone. Male relations also frequently worked in the industry, either on shore or as whaling crew.

Marriage also provided newcomers with access and ties to the land through their Ngāi Tahu whānau. Whaling captain John Howell’s first marriage to Kohikohi, the daughter of rangatira Horomona Patu, gave him access to 50,000 acres near Riverton.

This right to land for stations and settlement was based on principles of kaitiakitanga (guardianship). But in later decades the colonial government caused land dispossession through conversion to individual titles and Crown purchases.

Read more: Why it’s time for New Zealanders to learn more about their own country’s history

As the whaling industry declined from the 1840s, some whalers (like Edward Weller) proved transient visitors. Many others, like Howell, remained with their families, though most were not as wealthy.

Former whalers turned to fisheries, agriculture and trade. Their mixed communities formed the basis for settlements around the southern region: Bluff, Riverton, Moeraki, Taieri, Waikouaiti.

These early and intense interactions had a lasting legacy in Ngāi Tahu’s whakapapa (genealogy) and collective identity. The sustained contact between Ngāi Tahu and whalers also complicates the myth of whaling as simply a transient and masculine pursuit.

Whaling was indeed a gendered industry; crew were almost exclusively male. But they were also diverse. Native American, Aboriginal Australian and Pacific Islanders all found opportunities aboard ship and in New Zealand alongside Māori and Europeans.

Many of them, we must assume, would have sung or heard shanties like Soon May the Wellerman Come — though none might have expected their descendents in the 21st century to be humming them too.

– ref. The viral ‘Wellerman’ sea shanty is also a window into the remarkable cross-cultural whaling history of Aotearoa New Zealand – https://theconversation.com/the-viral-wellerman-sea-shanty-is-also-a-window-into-the-remarkable-cross-cultural-whaling-history-of-aotearoa-new-zealand-153634

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher Sainsbury, Senior Lecturer Composition, Australian National University

Despite having different cultural backgrounds and experiences — Indigenous composers with an Indigenous mentor, and a pianist descended from Anglo-colonial history — it is nevertheless possible to create a project that can serve as a focus for unification and strength.

In our instance, the trigger was a relic of the past. Specifically, an historical object made at a time of great significance for Australia: a square piano built around 1770, housed in the keyboard archives of the School of Music at ANU.

Its place of manufacture was Alsace in western Europe, a small body of land that has at times been claimed by Germany, at other times by France. The disputed nature of the territory serves as an ironic parallel to our project.

Given the historical importance of the time of manufacture — when James Cook was charting the eastern coast of Australia — we asked four Indigenous composers, all of whom have been through the Moogahlin Performing Arts and Ngarra-burria First Nations composers program, to write new music for the piano. The brief was simple: write something for the instrument, with the option of one other instrument or voice, to a length of around five minutes.

All four composers interpreted the project in thoroughly different ways, reflecting their unique artistic approaches and perhaps highlighting issues relating to previous attempts at addressing and improving the situation created by the past. Today, recordings of their works on Ngarra-burria Piyanna are being released for streaming and download.

The instrument

The piano was built by Henri Henrion in a small village near to Sareguemines. Little is known about the builder, except that he eventually became involved in politics and got swept up in the events of the French Revolution.

Similar to other square pianos, including the instrument that came out on the First Fleet, it creates a sound that is far lighter than that of a modern piano.

From the outset, it was clear there could be challenges. It is undeniably confronting to ask people whose culture was so thoroughly subjugated to “get creative” with an object that could be seen as crucially symbolic of white history. It was joked that the creativity might take the form of matches and a chorus for a bonfire!

The compositions were recorded in Canberra last year, and were featured in a podcast broadcast on ABC radio, whose generous funding under the auspices of a Fresh Start Fund grant made it all possible.

Read more: It’s time to properly acknowledge – and celebrate – Indigenous composers

From rap to gothic vampires and protest songs

Rhyan Clapham, who works as a rapper with the pseudonym DOBBY, is the only composer who also performs their track, both on the square piano and vocals.

He set his goal as delivering a 250-year history of Australia, from the time the piano was made to the present. He enjoyed the process.

The team produced this unique project effectively and respectfully. There was a certain feeling shared by all of us that something quite special was happening.

The work by music student Elizabeth Sheppard, called Kalgoorli Silky Pear, draws on the history of her ancestors who resided in Western Australia generations before. It also incorporates an element of her Scottish lineage, through a hint of a lullaby towards the end. As a composer familiar with older musical styles, she has incorporated elements of Indigenous polyphony in a thoughtful way.

In Lupe’s Waltz, Tim Gray has imagined the pianist as a vampire. He has written a vocal line for a witch, all dreamed up in a gothic throwback to a Romanian grand ball. While we often look to Indigenous composers for cultural insights, there are less apparent metaphors in Tim’s music that may pass us by. This subtlety is part of the magic of the piece.

In writing about her work, The Binary, songwriter and storyteller Nardi Simpson (also a student at the School of Music) has been powerfully honest in recounting her initial reaction to the commission.

Read more: Together we rise: East Arnhem Land artists respond to COVID-19 with the gift of music

This piano — such a reminder of the horrors of colonisation for Indigenous peoples — was perhaps a foe and not a friend. So, ingeniously, Nardi took eight popular protest chants and coded them into complex rhythmic patterns. These then mingle and overlay. They create a transcendent and deeply meaningful musical landscape.

Rather than mask the sounds of the mechanical inner working of the instrument, the pieces were recorded with complete authenticity. In a sense, this decision stands as a symbol for the project: with honesty, authenticity, and a shared passion, music can show a way forward to a brighter future.

Read more: Terra nullius interruptus: Captain James Cook and absent presence in First Nations art

– ref. Four Indigenous composers and a piano from colonial times — making passionate, layered, honest music together – https://theconversation.com/four-indigenous-composers-and-a-piano-from-colonial-times-making-passionate-layered-honest-music-together-152080

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

With new, more infectious variants of COVID-19 detected around the world, and at New Zealand’s border, the risk of further level 3 or 4 lockdowns is increased if those viruses get into the community.

These include a variant called B.1.1.7 that has spread very quickly within the UK, with other new variants now observed in South Africa and Brazil.

Changes in the genetic code of viruses like COVID-19 occur all the time but most of these mutations don’t have any effect on how the disease spreads or its severity.

These changes can be useful because they leave a signature in the virus’s genetic code that allows us to trace how the virus has spread from one person to another.

Read more: The big barriers to global vaccination: patent rights, national self-interest and the wealth gap

But the new variant detected in the UK is more transmissible than the original virus that was dominant in 2020. That means it spreads more easily from one person to another.

The good news is it does not cause more severe illness or have a higher fatality rate than the original variant. Evidence so far suggests vaccines will still be effective against it.

But the bad news is because it spreads more easily, it has the potential to infect many more people, causing more hospitalisations and deaths as a result.

Why variants that spread more easily are so dangerous

The average number of people an infected person with COVID-19 passes the virus on to — the so-called R number — is 40%-70% higher with B.1.1.7 than the original variant.

As the graph below shows, the mathematics of exponential growth means that even a small increase in the transmission rate gets compounded over time, quickly generating enormous growth in the number of cases.

A variant like B.1.1.7 with a higher transmission rate is actually more dangerous than one with a higher fatality rate.

Sure, a 50% increase in the fatality rate would cause 50% more deaths. But because of exponential growth, shown in the graph, a 50% increase in transmissibility causes 25 times more cases in just a couple of months if left unchecked.

That would lead to 25 times more deaths at the original mortality rate.

How do we know the new variant is more transmissible?

The number of cases of the B.1.1.7 variant has risen rapidly relative to the original variant.

This can happen for a number of reasons. The new variant might simply happen to be present in a part of the country or group of people who are spreading the virus more rapidly for some other reason.

It could have become resistant to immunity, meaning it could more easily re-infect people who have already had COVID-19. Or it might cause people to become infectious more quickly.

Researchers in the UK used mathematical models to test these hypotheses.

They found the explanation that fitted best with the data was that the new variant really is more transmissible. And they estimated a person with the new variant infects 56% more people on average than a person with the original variant.

Contact tracing data from the UK also showed more of the close contacts of someone with the new variant go on to be infected.

Patients with the new variant have also been found to carry more of the virus. Together, this provides strong evidence the B.1.1.7 variant is between 40% and 70% more transmissible than the original variant.

The variants found in South Africa and Brazil share some of the same mutations as the B.1.1.7 variant. There is some evidence they may also be more transmissible or better able to evade immunity.

But there is more uncertainty about these variants, partly because the data quality isn’t as high as in the UK, which is very good at doing genome sequencing.

What does this mean for New Zealand’s border controls?

The new variants have been detected in many countries, including in people in New Zealand’s managed isolation facilities.

There have previously been several cases of people working in these facilities picking up infections from recent arrivals.

The more transmissible variants arriving at the New Zealand border increase the risks to these workers, who in turn have a higher chance of passing the virus onto others in the community, amplifying the risk of a community outbreak.

In response, the government says international arrivals will require a negative test in the 72 hours prior to departure. They will also be required to take an arrival day test when they get to New Zealand.

These measures provide an extra layer in our defences against COVID-19.

How can we manage the risk?

The new variants spread in the same way as the original one: through close contacts between people, especially in crowded or poorly ventilated environments.

This means all the tools we have developed to fight the virus will still work. These include testing, contact tracing, masks and physical distancing.

But any variant that is more transmissible has a higher R number. To control an outbreak, we need to bring the R number under 1 and so we may need to use more of these tools to achieve this.

Read more: With COVID-19 mutating and surging, NZ urgently needs to tighten border controls

For example, in the Auckland outbreak in August 2020, alert level 3 was enough to contain and eventually eliminate the outbreak. Our analysis showed alert level 3 reduced R to about 0.7.

If we had a similar outbreak with the new variant, R could be 50% higher which would mean it is above 1. In other words, we would likely need to use alert level 4 to contain an outbreak, and it might take longer to eliminate the virus than it has previously.

To give our contact tracers the best possible chance of containing a new outbreak without needing alert level 3 or 4, we all need do our bit. This means looking for QR codes when out about and using the app to scan them, as well as turning on Bluetooth. And it means staying at home and getting tested if you feel sick.

– ref. Why the COVID-19 variants are so dangerous and how to stop them spreading – https://theconversation.com/why-the-covid-19-variants-are-so-dangerous-and-how-to-stop-them-spreading-153535

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachel Hogg, Lecturer in Psychology, Charles Sturt University

Horse racing is an ethical hotbed in Australia. The Melbourne Cup alone has seen seven horses die after racing since 2013, and animal cruelty protesters have become a common feature at carnivals.

The latest event to spark protests was the Gold Coast Magic Millions last Saturday, one of the most anticipated horse races in Australia. Unlike some other Australian racing carnivals, Magic Millions focuses on two-year-old horses, the youngest age a horse can be raced in Australia.

Yearling (two year old) sales during the carnival eclipsed previous records, with bidders spending a whopping A$200 million for young horses by Sunday.

There have always been inherent risks when it comes to racing horses, but these risks may be amplified when horses as young as two are placed under the intense physical stress of racing. Horse racing should be reformed so limited financial incentives are attached to racing two-year-old horses. Let’s explore why.

Exercise is good for horses, but how much is too much?

Musculoskeletal (soft tissue) injuries are a major threat to the health and welfare of racehorses. This is because their bones, joints, tendons and ligaments are placed under significant stress during physical pre-race training and races.

Read more: Horse racing must change, or the court of public opinion will bury it

Physical stress is not necessarily bad for the horse. Research conducted in 2012 suggests the equine musculoskeletal system may benefit from early exposure to exercise, where “bone remodelling” occurs in response to physical stress. This means bone may become thicker and stronger from exercise for young horses, helping to protect them from future injury.

What’s not yet known, however, is just how much exercise is best for the developing young horse and at what age they should be exposed to certain intensities of physical training.

So are two-year-olds really at greater risk of injury?

The answer is not a simple one. Let’s look at what some of the research says.

Australian research from 2013 compared the career lengths of 117,000 horses and showed horses that started racing at the age of two had longer careers than those that started racing later in life.

Another longitudinal Australian study found yearlings outperformed older racehorses. However, of the horses that began racing at two or three years of age, only 46% were still racing two years later. This suggests high rates of “wastage” (when horses leave racing prematurely).

Read more: Who’s responsible for the slaughtered ex-racehorses, and what can be done?

In keeping with this, UK research suggests two-year-old horses and horses older than five may be at a higher injury risk than those aged between three and five.

Research in 1990 indicates between 40-80% of two year olds develop shin soreness, a painful condition for horses. And research 20 years later found three-year-old horses had shin soreness half as often as two year olds.

While shin soreness is not typically a career-ending condition, it does raise questions about the quality of the horse’s racing life.

Like racing a 13-year-old child

Then, there’s the issue of whether it’s acceptable to race a “physically immature” horse. Horses don’t fully mature physically until around the age of six.

The research in general indicates the risk of injury may increase as a horse gets older. But this must be considered in light of two things: the cumulative effect of musculoskeletal strain across a horse’s racing lifespan, and the impact of early training and racing on a horse’s injury trajectory.

Most horses begin training at 18 to 20 months of age, well before their skeleton has reached full maturity.

As a young horse matures, the cartilage on either end of each bone will fuse, with the horses’ knees typically fusing at around the age of two. This makes their knees vulnerable to injury.

Likewise, the horse’s spine — which controls the horse’s physical coordination and running style — is vulnerable, as it matures last.

As Deb Bennett, an authority on the biomechanics and anatomy of horses, writes:

the higher the speed, and the greater the physical effort, the more important it is that the animal have all of its joints mature and in good working order.

In the end, engaging two-year-old horses in the intensive physical conditioning required to prepare for competitive racing is a bit like asking a 13-year-old child to perform at the peak of their athletic potential. Such efforts may help to build physical strength and stamina, but intensive training may have long-term, negative consequences.

This comparison isn’t a perfect one, as it doesn’t fully highlight the physical maturation patterns of horses. But it does give a sense of the physical status of two-year-old racehorses and their vulnerabilities.

If yearlings are vulnerable, why do we race them?

Yearlings aren’t necessarily faster or more successful than older racehorses, despite the bone conditioning effects outlined earlier. Research suggests peak speed is usually reached at 4.5 years of age.

So if two-year-old horses are not faster and may be at increased risk of injury, why race them at all?

One simple justification is the younger a horse begins its racing career, the earlier the owner and any investors will receive financial returns, with greater potential return on investment across the horse’s career.

Read more: 10 reasons to stop whipping racehorses, including new research revealing the likely pain it causes

An early return on investment may be offset if the longevity of the horse’s career is curtailed. So, if financial prerogatives rest at the heart of horse racing, early financial returns may be seen as justifying the risks. If animal welfare is core to the sport, however, financial considerations lose their relevance.

Given the generous prize money currently on offer in many two-year-old horse races, such as the A$2 million at Magic Millions, and the inherent uncertainty around the longevity of any racehorse, owners may choose to race juvenile horses.

The Conversation reached out to Magic Millions, but the race declined to comment on the arguments in this article.

What can be done?

The racing industry and the general public must carefully consider the sustainability of racing two-year-old horses. Some say the practice should be banned. But evidence to support a ban is inconclusive, so the move is unlikely.

Instead, incentives for racing young horses should be reduced. This could mean lowering prize money for, or banning gambling on, two-year-old races.

Read more: Over 20% of Australian horses race with their tongues tied to their lower jaw

An independent veterinarian should evaluate a horse’s legs and spine before it begins its racing career, and routinely check these things until it turns four, as a compulsory practice.

There’s also scope for more research into new technologies to monitor horses with veterinary assistance. Any technological advancements should be used as early as possible to detect physiological abnormalities that might impact a horse’s welfare.

There is no one prescribed training regime for racehorses in Australia, and there are perils of a “one-size-fits-all” approach. Still, given what we know about the physical vulnerabilities of two-year-old racehorses, some regulations may be helpful in reforming the sport.

Many age-related reforms would be relatively simple to enforce, if the racing community is prepared to make animal welfare its core priority.

Read more: We could reduce the slaughter of racehorses if we breed them for longer racing careers

– ref. Racing 2-year-old horses is lucrative, but is it worth the risks? – https://theconversation.com/racing-2-year-old-horses-is-lucrative-but-is-it-worth-the-risks-152228

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tilman Ruff, Honorary Principal Fellow, School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne

Today, many around the world will celebrate the first multilateral nuclear disarmament treaty to enter into force in 50 years.

The UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) was adopted at the United Nations in 2017 and finally reached the milestone of 50 ratifications in October. The countries that have signed and ratified include Austria, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, Nigeria and Thailand.

The treaty completes the suite of international bans on all major weapons considered unacceptable because of their indiscriminate and inhumane effects, including anti-personnel landmines, cluster munitions, biological and chemical weapons.

The countries that have signed the TPNW were fed up with over half a century of the nuclear-armed states flouting their obligation to rid the world of their weapons. They have asserted the interests of humanity and global democracy in a way the nuclear-armed states were powerless to stop.

It is certainly long overdue for the most cruel and destructive weapons of all — nuclear weapons — to be banned. But this treaty is a sign of hope — a necessary and important step toward a less destructive planet.

Read more: ‘I still cannot get over it’: 75 years after Japan atomic bombs, a nuclear weapons ban treaty is finally realised

What will the treaty do?

The aim of the treaty is a comprehensive and categorical ban of nuclear weapons. It binds signatories not to develop, test, produce, acquire, have control of, use or threaten to use nuclear weapons.

States also cannot “assist, encourage or induce” anyone to engage in any activity prohibited under the treaty — essentially anything to do with nuclear weapons.

The TPNW strengthens the current nuclear safeguards found in the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons by requiring all states that join to have comprehensive provisions in place and not allowing states to weaken their existing safeguards.

The treaty provides the first legally binding multilateral framework for a process by which all nations can work toward eliminating nuclear weapons.

For instance, states with another nation’s nuclear weapons stationed on their territory must remove them.

States with nuclear weapons can “destroy then join” the treaty, or “join then destroy”. They must irreversibly dismantle their weapons, as well as the programs and facilities to produce them, subject to agreed timelines and verification by an international authority.

Further, the TPNW is the first treaty to commit member nations to provide long-neglected assistance for the victims of atomic bombs and weapon testing. It also calls for nations to clean up environments contaminated by nuclear weapons use and testing, where feasible.

Nuclear-armed states have been put on notice

Currently, 86 nations have signed the TPNW, and 51 have ratified it (meaning they are bound by its provisions). The treaty now becomes part of international law, and the number of signatories and ratifications will continue to grow.

However, none of the nine [nuclear powers](https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohaswhat#:~:text=The%20nuclear%2Dweapon%20states%20(NWS,nuclear%20weapons%20by%20the%20NPT.) — the US, China, Russia, France, the UK, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea — have yet signed or ratified the treaty.

Many other countries that rely on other nations’ nuclear weapons for their security, such as the 27 members of NATO, Australia, Japan and South Korea, have also not signed.

So, why does the treaty matter given these states currently oppose it? And what effect can we expect the treaty to have on them?

While any treaty is technically only binding on the states that join it, the TPNW establishes a new international legal standard against which all nuclear policies will now be judged.

The treaty, in short, is a game-changer, and the nuclear-armed and dependent countries have been put on notice. They know the treaty jeopardises their claimed right to continue to threaten the planet with their weapons, as well as their plans to modernise and maintain their nuclear arsenals indefinitely.

The strength of their opposition is a measure of the treaty’s importance. It will have implications for everything from defence policies and military plans to weapons manufacturing to financial investments in the companies that profit from making now illegal nuclear weapons.

For example, a growing number of banks, pension funds and insurance companies around the world are now divesting from companies that build nuclear weapons.

These include the Norwegian Pension Fund (the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund), ABP (Europe’s largest pension fund), Deutsche Bank, Belgium’s largest bank KBC, Resona Holdings, Kyushu Financial Group and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group in Japan, and the Japanese insurance companies Nippon Life, Dai-ichi Life, Meiji-Yasuda and Fukoku Mutual.

Read more: Ban the bomb: 70 years on, the nuclear threat looms as large as ever

A ‘dangerous’ belief nuclear weapons enhance security

Would joining the treaty mean nations like Australia, Japan, South Korea and NATO members would have to end their military cooperation with nuclear-armed states like the US?

No. There is nothing in the TPNW that prevents military cooperation with a nuclear-armed state, provided nuclear weapons activities are excluded.

Countries like New Zealand and Kazakhstan have already demonstrated that joining the treaty is fully compatible with ongoing military cooperation with, respectively, the US and Russia.

In a recent letter urging their governments to join the treaty, 56 former presidents, prime ministers and defence and foreign ministers from these nations said

By claiming protection from nuclear weapons, we are promoting the dangerous and misguided belief that nuclear weapons enhance security.

As states parties, we could remain in alliances with nuclear-armed states, as nothing in the treaty itself nor in our respective defence pacts precludes that.

But we would be legally bound never under any circumstances to assist or encourage our allies to use, threaten to use or possess nuclear weapons. Given the very broad popular support in our countries for disarmament, this would be an uncontroversial and much-lauded move.

The signatories include two former NATO secretaries-general, Willy Claes and Javier Solana.

Ban treaties have been proven to work with other outlawed weapons — landmines, cluster munitions and biological and chemical weapons. They have provided the basis and motivation for progressive efforts to control and eliminate these weapons. They are now significantly less produced, deployed and used, even by states that haven’t joined the treaties.

We can achieve the same result with nuclear weapons. As Hiroshima survivor Setsuko Thurlow said at the UN after the treaty was adopted,

This is the beginning of the end of nuclear weapons.

– ref. The nuclear weapons ban treaty is groundbreaking, even if the nuclear powers haven’t signed – https://theconversation.com/the-nuclear-weapons-ban-treaty-is-groundbreaking-even-if-the-nuclear-powers-havent-signed-153197

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gabrielle Appleby, Professor, UNSW Law School, UNSW

This year has already seen significant progress in the government’s commitment to establish a body – a “Voice” – that would allow Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to have a say when the government and parliament make decisions and laws that affect them.

In pursuing that Voice, it has released the Interim Report to the Australian Government on Indigenous Voice Co-Design Process. This latest report is anchored in the historic Uluru Statement from the Heart, which called for “the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution”.

However, concerns have emerged from those involved in the co-design process and public law experts that the Uluru Statement’s call for constitutional enshrinement – or protection – of the Voice, is going unheeded.

Read more: ‘A worthwhile project’: why two chief justices support the Voice to parliament, and why that matters

What does constitutional enshrinement mean?

To say the Voice is “constitutionally enshrined” does not mean all of the detail of its design is put into the Constitution. It also does not mean it can only be with a referendum.

Rather, it means the core function of the Voice should be included in the Constitution, alongside a power enabling the Commonwealth parliament to determine its composition, powers and procedures in legislation.

As former Chief Justice of Australia Murray Gleeson explained, the Voice would be “constitutionally entrenched but legislatively controlled”.

This establishes a balance between a constitutional protection of the Voice while allowing it to be adapted to future circumstances.

Why hasn’t the government committed to it yet?

In 2018, a parliamentary committee considering proposals for constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people concluded that a Voice was the only serious reform proposal on the table. This is unsurprising.

An increasing majority of Australians want to change the Constitution to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The government has committed to holding a referendum to do just this.

Successive processes have emphasised how important it is that the form of recognition accord with the wishes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Through the process that led to the Uluru Statement, a constitutionally enshrined Voice is the only reform that has garnered the collective endorsement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Read more: Ken Wyatt’s proposed ‘voice to government’ marks another failure to hear Indigenous voices

However, the parliamentary committee recommended more detail be added to the concept of the Voice before a decision was made as to whether it be constitutionally protected or established only through legislation.

This “two-stage” approach is the genesis of the government’s current process. The government has appointed three groups to assist it to develop the detail of what a Voice would look like and how it could work. The interim report is almost 400 pages. Public submissions are open until the end of March. The working groups have undertaken significant work in the lead up to this consultation. Some matters of design appear relatively settled in the report; others have been narrowed down to a couple of options for feedback.

The terms of reference for the national Voice specifically excluded making recommendations about constitutional recognition. This accords with the committee’s advice to do more work on the design first, before deciding about whether to constitutionally protect the Voice.

Nonetheless, they have invited comment on this issue by stating their model fulfils the function of being a Voice to both the parliament and government.

Why the government must commit to constitutional enshrinement

The government’s attempt to defer deciding whether the Voice will be constitutionally protected has received a large amount of push-back. For instance, late last year, it was reported the national working group was divided on whether it could finalise its work without making a recommendation about constitutional protection.

In a submission to the co-design process, more than 40 public law experts from across Australia have argued that if the government is serious about establishing a Voice with the objective of providing the views of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to the government and parliament, it must commit to it being protected in the Constitution. Without constitutional enshrinement, the Voice will not have legitimacy. It will not be able to achieve its objectives and perform its functions.

The interim report gives the Voice the right and responsibility on behalf of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians to advise parliament and the government on matters of national significance to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians.

Its success in doing this will turn on the legitimacy and authority of the Voice, and how seriously its role is taken by parliament and the government.

Constitutional enshrinement will require a referendum, which will educate Australians on the role of the Voice, and provide their endorsement of it. A Voice simply established by legislation, without this public support, runs the real risk of being ignored or abolished by parliament. Constitutional enshrinement also confers constitutional status on the Voice, which signals that it is a foundational institution, establishing its legitimacy into the future.

Read more: Constitutional recognition for Indigenous Australians must involve structural change, not mere symbolism

To perform its role, the Voice will also need constitutional protection to give it stability and certainty, while still allowing for flexibility in its design into the future. Constitutional protection is needed to prevent the parliament from abolishing the Voice. It also prevents chilling of its performance because it faces the on-going possibility of abolition.

Constitutional enshrinement is vital for the Voice’s effectiveness. The possibility that a decision on constitutional enshrinement might be put off until after the Voice is designed, or even until after it is initially established by legislation, risks enshrinement from occurring in the future.

Indeed, legislating first would dissipate the current popular momentum for constitutional enshrinement of the Voice, and likely set it up to fail.

– ref. An Indigenous ‘Voice’ must be enshrined in our Constitution. Here’s why – https://theconversation.com/an-indigenous-voice-must-be-enshrined-in-our-constitution-heres-why-153635

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

With the spread of COVID-19 steadily worsening in Japan since the onset of winter — daily records for infections and deaths continue to be broken — the fate of the Tokyo Summer Olympics is again very much in doubt.

This week, former International Olympic Committee vice-president Kevan Gosper caused consternation in Japan when he suggested the United Nations might have to decide whether the Olympics and Paralympics can go ahead this year.

Japanese medical experts are also increasingly uncertain about the feasibility of the games being held. Even if vaccinations proceed around the world, it would still be extremely risky to allow in over 15,000 foreign athletes, plus tens of thousands of coaches, officials, sponsors and members of the media.

The Japanese public seems to agree. A recent poll by public broadcaster NHK showed 77% of those surveyed want the Tokyo Games either cancelled or postponed again.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has nevertheless reaffirmed the government’s determination to hold the Olympics beginning on July 23. In his opening speech for the first session in the Japanese parliament on Monday, Suga vowed the government would bring the pandemic under control as soon as possible.

So, why is the government clinging to the hopes of holding the Olympics in the face of such challenges — and what are the potential costs?

Suga’s leadership is off to a bad start

Put simply, Suga’s political fortunes depend on it. If the Tokyo Olympics are cancelled, his premiership is almost certainly doomed and his ruling Liberal Democratic Party would no doubt face a harsher electoral challenge from the more organised opposition parties.

It has been a rough start for Suga since he took over from Shinzo Abe last September, largely due to his poor handling of the pandemic.

Read more: Yoshihide Suga – who is the man set to be Japan’s next prime minister?

The conservative LDP government has consistently prioritised the economy over public health. With the backing of the Japan Business Federation, the powerful lobby group of Japan’s large corporations, for instance, Suga continued Abe’s “Go To Travel” campaign, which subsidised domestic tourism and support for the hospitality sector. He reluctantly suspended the program last month after it was blamed for spreading COVID-19 around the country.

Suga has also resisted taking stronger action to control the pandemic. He was finally forced to yield to pressure from local leaders and reintroduce a state of emergency for the Tokyo metropolitan region on January 7. This has since been expanded to other major urban areas, covering half of Japan’s population until at least February 7.

But this is less extensive than the month-long national state of emergency declared last April. The new measures still rely on voluntary cooperation by the public and businesses, with people being urged to stay home, and restaurants and bars asked to close by 8pm. Because the restrictions are not mandatory, some restaurants have started to break ranks.

Legislation is being considered in the Diet to introduce penalties such as imprisonment or fines for non-compliant individuals and businesses, but opposition parties have objected to any punitive enforcement measures.

The Suga government has also been criticised for a relatively low rate of testing, poor contact tracing and the slow roll-out of a vaccine, which is not due to start until the end of February.

To counter these concerns, Suga has appointed the ambitious administrative reform minister Taro Kono to take charge of distributing the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for the entire population.

One in six people in ‘relative poverty’

The economy has not been faring much better. While the official unemployment rate is around 3%, at least half a million Japanese have lost their jobs in the past six months. One in six are considered to be in “relative poverty”, with incomes less than half the national median.

About 40% of workers are employed in lower-wage, non-regular jobs, especially in the service industries, and have been the most vulnerable in the pandemic-related recession. Women, in particular, have been hit hard.

While the economy showed signs of growth in the last six months, it is expected to slow down again in the first quarter of 2021 before stabilising. However, the IMF is expecting a “gradual recovery” for the year, thanks to stimulus measures implemented by the government.

Read more: Why haven’t the Olympics been cancelled from coronavirus? That’s the A$20bn question

The Olympics loom over upcoming elections

Hosting the Olympics has always held an immense amount of political prestige, so failing to do so would be yet another blemish for the new government and could doom its prospects in the next national election, due by October 21.

Suga will also face another ballot for his party leadership on September 30. There are some rumours that a power-broker in the party, Toshihiro Nikai, could withdraw his support for Suga in favour of another candidate. One name being floated as a possible replacement is [Seiko Noda][https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/01/03/national/politics-diplomacy/suga-leadership-longevity/], who could become the first female prime minister of Japan if this came to pass.

If the Olympics are cancelled, this would also have major implications for the popular Tokyo governor, Yuriko Koike, a fierce backer of the games. She was re-elected in a landslide last year, but her party could suffer in local elections this July if the games don’t go ahead.

Then there is the financial cost to the country. After the postponement last March, the official cost of the games rose by 22% to US$15.4 billion, though audits by the government have shown the true cost to be $25 billion.

The government, too, is responsible for all of the costs, with the exception of $6.7 billion in a privately funded operating budget.

This would add to the huge fiscal deficit and public debt the government has run up due to its stimulus spending to counter the pandemic. The draft budget submitted to the Diet this week was estimated at a record 106.6 trillion yen, or US$1 trillion.

Read more: Sweden and Japan are paying the price for COVID exceptionalism

The Olympic torch relay is due to start in Fukushima on March 25, which presents a deadline for a final decision on whether the games can proceed.

The IOC has said the Olympics cannot be delayed any further and will have to be cancelled if they cannot begin safely in July.

Unless the Suga government can quickly tackle the pandemic more effectively, it may soon find hosting the games has slipped beyond its control — and its political fate along with it.

– ref. Why are Japan’s leaders clinging to their Olympic hopes? Their political fortunes depend on it – https://theconversation.com/why-are-japans-leaders-clinging-to-their-olympic-hopes-their-political-fortunes-depend-on-it-153533

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Taylor, Early Career Research Leader, Emerging Viruses, Inflammation and Therapeutics Group, Menzies Health Institute Queensland, Griffith University

All eyes are on COVID-19 vaccines, with Australia’s first expected to be approved for use shortly.

But their development in record time, without compromising on safety, wouldn’t have been possible without the development of other vaccines before them.

These existing vaccines are some of the greatest achievements of medical science, preventing the spread of infectious disease, saving millions of lives around the world each year.

Here’s what we’ve learned from other vaccines over the past 200 years or so that allowed us to go from discovery of the virus we now know as SARS-CoV-2, to regulatory approval in some countries in less than a year.

1. Smallpox

Vaccination as we know it started over 200 years ago. Edward Jenner, an English physician, noticed people exposed to cowpox virus, which caused only mild illness, were protected from the severe disease caused by smallpox.

Cowpox and smallpox are part of the poxvirus family. Both share characteristics the immune system recognises. By inoculating people with cowpox, Jenner produced cross-protection against smallpox infection.

With successive development of smallpox vaccines, in 1979 smallpox became the first human infectious disease to be eradicated by vaccination.

Read more: A short history of vaccine objection, vaccine cults and conspiracy theories

2. Polio

Poliovirus is a highly infectious virus that spreads through close contact with infected people, particularly in areas with poor hygiene. Infection can lead to paralysis, typically affecting infants.

The first widely used polio vaccines were developed in the 1950s using newly available methods, known as tissue culture, to grow the virus in the lab.

Tissue culture allowed researchers to grow and inactivate poliovirus, or grow a live form of the virus that was attenuated (or weakened), to form the basis of vaccines that could be given orally. These were distributed in the late 50s.

Researchers still use variants of these early tissue culture techniques to research and develop vaccines today.

The success of mass vaccination in developed countries led to the launch of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. Poliovirus is now close to global eradication with only two countries (Afghanistan and Pakistan) reporting low numbers of new infections.

Read more: Explainer: ridding the world of polio

3. Measles

The measles virus is highly contagious, and is spread by through the air when someone coughs and sneezes, as well as via direct contact with fluid from a person’s coughs or sneezes.

Before the development of a measles vaccine in 1963, measles was one of the most lethal infectious agents, causing an estimated 2.6 million deaths each year.

In Australia, the vaccine can be given with mumps, rubella and varicella (chickenpox) vaccines to give the combination MMRV vaccine.

Global action to eliminate measles via vaccination resulted in a 73% drop in measles deaths worldwide between 2000 and 2018.

Despite this, global coverage of measles vaccines is not enough to prevent outbreaks. Deaths from measles rose from 140,000 in 2018 to 207,500 in 2019.

And in many countries, including Australia, measles outbreaks continue to occur in areas where vaccination rates have fallen.

Engineered versions of the measles vaccine are now being developed to deliver pieces of other viruses, including dengue and HIV, into the body to generate a protective immune response.

Read more: Measles in Samoa: how a small island nation found itself in the grips of an outbreak disaster

4. Diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (whooping cough)

Diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (or whooping cough) are three separate diseases all caused by different bacteria.

Inactivated toxins produced by these bacteria, and pieces of the bacteria that are safe and mount an effective immune response, have been used since the 1940s in combination to vaccinate against all three diseases.

The diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP) vaccine was the first combination vaccine. In other words, it was the first vaccine to prevent against multiple diseases. Combination vaccines continue to provide benefits to immunisation schedules by reducing the number of injections required.

These DTP combination vaccines are part of the Australian National Immunisation Program Schedule, and further vaccines have since been added to the mix.

DTP vaccines can now be delivered as a single injection with Haemophilus influenzae type b and poliovirus vaccine. Other combination DTP-based vaccines are also available.

Read more: Vaccines to expect when you’re expecting, and why

Which brings us to COVID-19

On January 10, 2020, Chinese and Australian scientists provided open access to the newly discovered genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus we now know as SARS-CoV-2.

Australian scientist Eddie Holmes then tweeted a link to the SARS-CoV-2 genome:

This simple act of open science kick-started vaccine development at a rapid pace. On December 2, less than a year later, the Pfizer vaccine became the first fully-tested COVID-19 vaccine to be approved for emergency use, in the UK.

Read more: What do we know about the Novavax and Pfizer COVID vaccines that Australia just signed up for?

What’s next?

Despite extensive efforts to develop vaccines, diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis still kill millions of people each year.

As we enter the next generation of vaccine design, we can look forward to trialling technologies such as mRNA vaccines, which clinical trials show to be successful against COVID-19, to combat other diseases of global importance.

Read more: COVID-19 isn’t the only infectious disease scientists are trying to find a vaccine for. Here are 3 others

– ref. 4 of our greatest achievements in vaccine science (that led to COVID vaccines) – https://theconversation.com/4-of-our-greatest-achievements-in-vaccine-science-that-led-to-covid-vaccines-153307

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Obadiah Mulder, PhD Candidate in Computational Biology, University of Southern California

Australia is in the midst of tropical cyclone season. As we write, a cyclone is forming off Western Australia’s Pilbara coast, and earlier in the week Queenslanders were bracing for a cyclone in the state’s far north (which thankfully, didn’t hit).

Australia has always experienced cyclones. But here and around the world, climate change means the cyclone threat is growing – and so too is the potential damage bill.

Our recent research shows 54 cyclones struck Australia in the 50 years between 1967 and 2016, causing about A$3 billion in damage. We found the damages would have totalled approximately A$30 billion, if not for coastal wetlands.

Wetlands such as mangroves, swamps, lakes and lagoons bear the brunt of much storm damage to coast, helping protect us and our infrastructure. But over the past 300 years, 85% of the world’s wetland area has been destroyed. It’s clear we must urgently preserve the precious little wetland area we have left.

A critical buffer

National disasters cost Australia as much as A$18 billion each year on average. About one-quarter of this is due to cyclone damage.

Wetlands can mitigate cyclone and hurricane damage, by absorbing storm surges and slowing winds. For example in August 2020, Hurricane Laura hit the United States’ midwest. Massive damage was predicted, including a 6.5-metre storm surge extending 65 kilometres inland.

However the surge was one metre at most – largely because the storm drove straight into a massive wetland that absorbed most of the predicted flood.

In Australia, wetlands are lost through intentional infilling or drainage for mosquito control, or to create land for infrastructure and agriculture. They’re also lost due to pollution and upstream changes to water flows.

Putting a price on cyclone protection

Our research set out to determine the financial value of the storm protection provided by Australia’s wetlands.

We examined the 54 cyclones that struck Australia in the five decades to 2016. We gathered data including:

• physical damage wrought in each storm swath (or storm path)
• gross domestic product (GDP) in the storm’s path
• maximum windspeed during each storm, which helps predict damage
• total area of wetlands in each swath.

Using a powerful type of statistics called Bayesian analysis, we estimated the extent to which GDP, windspeed and wetland area affected total damage. This allowed us to estimate damage caused in the absence of wetlands.

We found for every hectare of wetland, about A$4,200 per year in cyclone damage was avoided. This means the A$3 billion in cyclone damage over the past 50 years would have totalled approximately A$30 billion, if not for coastal wetlands.

Read more: Restoring a gem in the Murray-Darling Basin: the success story of the Winton Wetlands

Importantly, the percentage of damage averted falls rapidly as wetland area decreases. And the protection afforded by a single hectare of wetland increases drastically if there are fewer other wetlands in the path of the storm. This makes protecting remaining wetland even more critical.

If the average cyclone path in Australia were to contain around 30,000 hectares of wetlands, it would avert about 90% of potential storm damage. If the wetland area dropped to 3,000 hectares, only about 30% of damage would be averted.

Climate change is making cyclones worse. By 2050, Australia’s annual damage bill could be as high as A$39 billion, assuming current levels of wetlands are maintained.

Seawalls and other artificial structures can be built along the coast to protect from storms. However, research in China has found wetlands are more cost-effective and efficient than man-made structures at preventing cyclone damage.

Unlike man-made structures, wetlands maintain themselves. Their only “cost” is the opportunity cost of not being able to use the land for something else.

Keeping wetlands safe

According to recent analysis by the authors, which is currently under peer review, global wetlands provide US$447 billion (A$657 billion) worth of protection from storms each year.

Of course, wetlands provide benefits beyond storm protection. They store carbon, regulate our climate and control flooding. They also absorb waste including pollutants and carbon, provide animal habitat and places for human recreation.

Wetlands are an incredibly important resource. It’s critical we protect them from development and keep them healthy, so they can continue to provide vital services.

Read more: Our new model shows Australia can expect 11 tropical cyclones this season

– ref. Wetlands have saved Australia $27 billion in storm damage over the past five decades – https://theconversation.com/wetlands-have-saved-australia-27-billion-in-storm-damage-over-the-past-five-decades-153638

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lynette Vernon, School of Education – VC Research Fellow, Edith Cowan University

When the holidays end, barring a fresh outbreak of COVID-19, teenagers across Australia will head back to school. Some will bounce out of bed well before the alarm goes off, excited to start a new school year, but many others will drag themselves to the shower or reach for caffeine to shake themselves awake.

Many will not have had enough sleep to tackle the trials and tribulations of their new school day.

Read more: 5 tips to help ease your child back into school mode after the holidays

I remember back to my days as a high school science teacher, when some of my students started falling asleep in class. My immediate thoughts were: have I lost my touch? Am I that boring?

Over-tiredness can also lead to misbehaviour. One of my usually good kids filled a disposable glove with water and hurled it around her head spraying water and ruining the work of other students. An investigation determined a string of very late nights perusing social media and texting friends. It was possible her over-tiredness led to an inability to regulate her behaviour.

How phones close to bed affect sleep

With widespread school closures of 2020, and a reduction of face-to-face contact in 2020, teenagers used mobile phones more frequently to engage with their peers and online learning.

Teenagers need friendship networks to help them cope with stress and foster resilience.

Teens use devices to keep up to date with their friends’ activities on social media, or they may connect with a mate for an online gaming session, or phone a friend. Just like their parents, when teens aren’t connecting with their friends they are likely to use their smartphone like a mini-computer to stream videos and TV, listen to music, shop or catch up on news.

Of concern is that many of these activities occur into the night and in the confines of the teenager’s bedroom. This may not be a worry in the holidays when teens can sleep in but getting enough good quality sleep can be challenging when they have to be somewhere first thing in the morning.

Read more: Why screen time before bed is bad for children

Unfortunately, the constant use of technology can be at the expense of sleep with many teens missing out regularly on the required 8-10 hours a night.

Using a mobile phone into the night not only displaces sleep. Viewing screen-light also suppresses melatonin (the natural hormone that regulates our sleep-wake cycle), and provides content that may overstimulate the brain.

For teenagers, the pathway from increased late-night screen use leading to disrupted sleep and then contributing to increased depressed mood, behaviour problems, low self-esteem and difficulty coping can become well established.

Having enough sleep means teenagers brain cells will be alert during the school day. Sleep helps with the ability to think critically, and process and store new information, so teenagers become satisfied with their achievements at school.

Enough sleep also helps ward off daytime sleepiness and provides more energy to participate in vigorous physical exercise — an activity that helps ensure a good night’s sleep in itself.

Helping your teen get a good sleep

The first thing you could do is locate or purchase an alarm clock (with no internet connection). You could then remove devices from the bedroom the night before school starts and set the alarm.

But still, teenagers’ routine of falling asleep late into the night during the holidays isn’t magically going to revert to an early bedtime.

Read more: Health Check: how can I make it easier to wake up in the morning?

On the first school night teens will probably lie awake (perhaps with heightened anxiety about their first day) and get frustrated. They will finally fall asleep, but be rudely awoken by the alarm. A grumpy start to the new year is to be avoided at all costs.

The message to teenagers and their parents is: understand the need for social connections but set curfews. Beyond setting such curfews on the phone itself, it’s important to remove it from the bedroom 30 minutes to an hour before sleep as wind-down time. Teenagers must learn to manage their own schedules by going to bed at a time that ensures when the alarm goes off they will have achieved between 8 to 10 hours sleep.

Here are some things that could make this easier:

• at least a week before school starts, set the alarm 5-10 minutes earlier each day until the school day alarm time is reached

• set earlier, regular bedtimes so as not to confuse the body clock

• take all electronic devices out of all bedrooms (yes, set an example) and charge them in a place children can’t sneak out and access during the night

• avoid caffeine, alcohol, energy drinks and large meals well before bedtime

• exercise earlier in the day as this will increase tiredness. Make sure exercise isn’t too close to bedtime as this raises body temperature and increases cortisol (the stress hormone) making it harder for some people to fall asleep

• try to get ahead of the problem by having conversations with your child before they reach their teens to make sure they understand the effects of not getting enough sleep

• during the holidays, use sleep tracking apps to monitor sleep and set up the bedroom to be conducive to a good night’s sleep (no illuminated power cords, good airflow and a comfortable pillow and bedding).

– ref. Back to school: how to help your teen get enough sleep – https://theconversation.com/back-to-school-how-to-help-your-teen-get-enough-sleep-153624

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW

In an age of hyperpartisan politics, the Biden presidency offers a welcome centrism that might help bridge the divides.

But it is also Biden’s economic centrism that offers a chance to cut through what has become an increasingly polarised approach to economic policy.

On the Republican side of politics, there is strong support for neoliberal economic policies – that is, economic policies that don’t just emphasise the importance of markets but represent a kind of free-market fanaticism. Ronald Reagan aptly expressed this view in his 1981 inaugural speech, in which he said “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem”.

On the Democratic side, the centrism of the Bill Clinton era (1993- 2001) has given way to much more left-wing policies. Indeed the democratic socialism of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been in the ascendancy for several years.

If you have any doubt about this, consider two facts.

First, Sanders came very close to being the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee in 2016. Second, the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries were dominated by candidates with similar views – such as Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Biden, of course, ran on a much more centrist economic platform.

This was perhaps best captured by his approach to health care – seeking to build on Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act) and insure more people, rather than adopt the “Medicare for All” policy advocated by Sanders and Warren.

In a whole range of areas Biden and his nominees for important cabinet posts have signalled the new administration’s economic policies will be responsive to the demands of the left but still be sensitive to the concerns of the right.

Read more: Who’s who in Joe Biden’s cabinet

Big spending, but within limits

One of the most important things the administration will do in its early days is to orchestrate a large spending package to help deal with the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.

This will include spending on the vaccine roll-out, helping schools reopen, extending unemployment insurance and cheques to households.

So the spending package is likely to be huge. But the administration is not going to spend with complete abandon and without acknowledging constraints.

As Biden’s pick for Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, said in her confirmation hearing:

Neither the president elect, nor I, proposed this release relief package without an appreciation for the country’s debt burden. But right now, with interest rates at historic lows, the smartest thing we can do is act big. In the long run, I believe the benefits will far outweigh the costs, especially if we care about helping people who’ve been struggling for a very long time.

Read more: Vital Signs: Janet Yellen, the very model of a modern Madam Secretary

Treading cautiously on health care

Sanders and others’ “Medicare for All” plan involves single-payer (i.e. the government) universal coverage and ending private health insurance. This would be similar to the approach in Scandinavia, Canada and Britain.

Biden has strongly resisted this on two fronts.

One, it would be incredibly expensive, costing US$30-40 trillion over a decade. Two, it would involve more than 150 million Americans losing their current insurance.

Instead, Biden wants to expand the Affordable Care Act with more incentives to push towards truly universal coverage. This is something Mitt Romney (the Republicans’ 2012 presidential candidate) might easily have proposed. Don’t forget that as governor of Massachusetts (from 2003 to 2007) he enacted a plan almost identical the Affordable Care Act – an idea championed by the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Likewise with tax reform

Biden’s tax plan certainly involves raising taxes but not to anywhere near the levels called for by the democratic socialist wing of his party. Nor will he embrace a wealth tax like Warren championed. Under her plan, people with assets of more than US$50 million would be taxed 2% of that amount a year (and 3% for more than US$1 billion).

But he does plan to raise the top income tax rate (on income more than US$400,000) from 37% to 39.6%. He will raise the flat 21% corporate tax rate introduced by Trump to 28%.

US companies will need to pay a minimum tax of 21% on foreign income – addressing the issue of companies avoiding taxes through legal set-ups in low-tax overseas jurisdictions (such as Apple in Ireland).

Biden will even introduce a tax penalty on companies that move jobs overseas if their products are sold in the US.

This is not a package any Republican administration would be likely to introduce. On the other hand, it falls dramatically short of what Sanders, Warren and Ocasio-Cortez want.

Responsive but responsible

The Biden economic plan is responsive to the current – almost shocking – state of the US economy. His health care and tax policies are sensitive to concerns about inequality.

Read more: Joe Biden sends a clear message to the watching world – America’s back

His approach acknowledges, rightly, that with interest rates at historic lows there is room for considerably more spending than in the past, despite already huge deficits. But it also acknowledges there are limits to what the government can or should do.

In that sense it is something even conservative Republicans ought to be able to live with – and common ground is something the US desperately needs to find.

– ref. Biden’s economic centrism isn’t exciting, but right for these divisive times – https://theconversation.com/bidens-economic-centrism-isnt-exciting-but-right-for-these-divisive-times-153647

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gary Mortimer, Professor of Marketing and Consumer Behaviour, Queensland University of Technology

Twenty years ago, on January 25 2001, a virtually unknown German supermarket chain quietly opened its first stores in Australia.

The two stores – one in Sydney’s inner-west suburb of Marrickville, the other in the outer south-west, near Bankstown Airport – were small, about a quarter the size of a mainstream supermarket. Each stocked just 900 products, 90% of which were unknown brands.

Shoppers had to bring and pack their own bags themselves. To use a trolley required a “gold coin”. They didn’t seek to entice customers with “loyalty” rewards or other gimmicks.

Few Australian supermarket executives at the time would have considered them models for success. They couldn’t imagine the impact Aldi would have on Australia’s retail sector and shopping habits.

Aldi’s history

Aldi’s story began in 1913, when Anna Albrecht opened a small grocery store in 1913 in the city of Essen, western Germany.

Her two sons, Karl and Theo, took over the business after World War II. In the impoverished conditions that followed Germany’s defeat, they focused on keeping costs, and prices, low. Among their strategies were to stock only the most popular items and avoid perishable items.

By the end of the decade they had more than a dozen stores, and by the end of the 1950s more than 300.

The brothers adopted the the name Aldi – combining the first two syllables of Albrecht Diskont (“discount” in German) – in 1961 (though accounts differ on the year).

At about the same time (again, accounts differ on the year) they had a major disagreement over whether to sell cigarettes. They resolved the dispute by splitting the business into two geographic entities: Aldi Nord (“North”), run by Theo (and selling cigarettes), and Aldi Süd (“South”), run by Karl. The split was amicable, and they managed the two divisions collaboratively.

From the late 1960s Aldi began to expand across Europe, beginning with the acquisition of Austrian grocery chain Hofer. It opened its its first US store, in Iowa City, in 1976, and its first British store, in Birmingham), in 1990.

So by the time Aldi opened its first stores in Australia, it was a booming multinational. It now has more than 10,000 stores in 20 countries, including China.

Aldi’s growth in Australia

In coming to Australia, Aldi pounced on a gap in the grocery retail market.

The “food discounter” model had been dominated by now defunct Franklins and Bi-Lo (owned by Coles). By the late 1990s, however, these chains had messed with their “no-frills” model through attempts to go upmarket. It proved disastrous. Franklins went into terminal decline. Coles abandoned the Bi-Lo brand in 2006.

Aldi expanded quickly. By mid-2003 it had 38 stores in New South Wales and six in Victoria. By 2011, it had 251 stores. By early 2013, more than 280, and had expanded to Canberra.

It overtook the IGA group to become the third-biggest player in Australia’s supermarket sector by the end of 2013 – taking 10.3% of all grocery dollars (with Coles having 33.5% and Woolworths 39%). Its first stores in South Australia and Western Australia came in 2016.

It now has more than 500 stores and a 12.4% share of Australia’s A$110 billion food and grocery sector (according to the most recent data from Roy Morgan).

In 2020 Aldi was named Australia’s best supermarket by consumer review website Canstar Blue (the seventh time in a decade), and second-most trusted brand (after Bunnings) by Roy Morgan.

Its practices have influenced how the other supermarkets do business. In particular it has forced competitors to increase their own “private label” (or home-brand) products, introduce “phantom brands”, and promote ever-changing “special buy” general merchandise ranges.

Private and phantom labels

In 2004 private labels comprised an estimated 9% of the products Coles and Woolworths stocked. By 2019 they made up 30% of Coles’ sales. Woolworths has similarly increased its private-label range, due explicitly to pressure from Aldi’s arrival and expansion.

Read more: Love them or loathe them, private label products are taking over supermarket shelves

Notably, Aldi sells no “ALDI” branded products. Instead it trades in phantom brands, such as “Belmont” ice cream, “Radiance” cleaning product and “Lacura” skin care. These brands are intended overcome perceptions of private label items being lower quality.

In 2016, Woolworths launched its own range of phantom brands. Coles followed suit in 2020 with brands including “Wild Tides” tuna and “KOI” toiletries.

Read more: Phantom brands haunting our supermarket shelves as home brand in disguise

Special buys

The bigger supermarkets have also been forced to emulate Aldi’s drawcard of bi-weekly “special buys” – heavily discounted items not normally sold in supermarkets. These have included televisions, lawn mowers, vacuum cleaners, motorcycle jackets, luggage and (curiously for a country like Australia) ski gear.

There are always limited quantities and shoppers regularly experience disappointment. Despite this – indeed because of this – shoppers will queue and keep coming back. These quirky, seasonal, limited-stock items create excitement and FOMO – fear of missing out.

In June 2020, Coles launched its own fortnightly “special buys”.

Unapologetically Aldi

While its competitors have emulated Aldi in several ways, the German chain remains a very different no-frills operation.

It hasn’t bothered with investing in the self-service checkouts that are now ubiquitous in other stores. It continues to offer only long conveyer belts and seated register operators.

Read more: The economics of self-service checkouts

Nor does Aldi have plans to facilitate online deliveries, in which the two supermarket giants have invested heavily.

It never had to cope with customer backlash over phasing out free single-use plastic bags either. Because it never offered free shopping bags, always charging 15 cents for them.

So Aldi continues to be an exception to the rule in Australian supermarket retailing. It history suggests that’s a recipe for continued success.

– ref. The rise and rise of Aldi: two decades that changed supermarket shopping in Australia – https://theconversation.com/the-rise-and-rise-of-aldi-two-decades-that-changed-supermarket-shopping-in-australia-152822

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Liz Giuffre, Senior Lecturer in Communication, University of Technology Sydney

Bluey is easily the most successful Australian television show of the last decade. A record-breaking success for its local broadcaster the ABC, as well as production partners BBC Studios and Screen Australia, Bluey now has a global stage via Disney.

There are many factors behind Bluey’s success, including beautiful animation, nuanced storytelling, and insightful reflections of family life. One element that is integral but not spoken about enough is the show’s music.

Many children’s programs approach music and sound with a directness and lack of complication — think Play School’s wonderfully simple piano.

Bluey is distinct because it sounds rich and intertextual. Finally, fans of the Bluey sound can appreciate it fully, with the soundtrack released today.

Composer Joff Bush and his colleagues have created a world of original and repurposed works that develop characters, plot and narrative across episodes. The music, like the visuals, provides hooks to keep audiences of all ages engaged.

Here are three musical signatures to listen for:

1. The opening theme

The best television themes of any genre set the mood and expectation of the show, as well as introducing the characters. In this case, the tune literally tells us who’s coming, singing “Mum! Dad! Bluey! Bingo!” along with the characters on screen.

Bush’s musical economy is brilliant, immediately setting the mood for the show. The theme instantly indicates something childlike with the melodica, an instrument second only to the recorder in the way it recalls primary school music rooms. The melody dances up and down the scale as the show’s characters dance on screen, punctuated with the delightful roll call of names and the show’s title.

Read more: TV’s top ten ear worms, from a television tragic

The new soundtrack album features three versions of the show’s opening theme tune, including an extended version and an instrument parade, adding a list of instruments for listeners to respond to. After “Mum!, Dad! Bingo! Bluey!” come new calls, like “violins!” and “trumpet!”.

2. Character themes

In an early episode, Grannies, Bluey and Bingo dress up as grannies “Rita” and “Janet” to keep themselves amused while their parents complete household chores.

With Bush’s character theme for the girls’ dress ups, the episode becomes something more than a story of play and distraction. The music is catchy, but also cheeky and a bit naughty, setting up the episode to sound more like a mainstream sitcom than a children’s show.

The Grannies theme works in short sharp bursts throughout the episode, similar to American sitcom soundtracks — like the quirky wonderfulness David Schwartz brought to Arrested Development (2003-19) — and the unusual (and funny) tempo and instrument combinations used by Ronny Hazelhurst BBC comedies like Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em (1973-78) and The Two Ronnies (1971-87).

Throughout the series, Bush’s music isn’t simply used as colour. Instead, Bluey uses music to advance story, place and character. The grannies theme comes and goes as Bluey and Bingo move in and out of their fantasy world, and returns in a later episode where the girls play the game again.

Using the soundtrack in this way rewards adult viewers who know this screen soundtrack recall technique: the Imperial March is sonic shorthand for everything Darth Vader; Isobel Waller-Bridge’s choral theme for the Priest in season two of Fleabag (2016-19).

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

3. Classical references

Bluey’s season two finale, Sleepytime, was named by the New York Times as one of the Best Television Episodes of 2020.

Mum puts little sister Bingo to bed by reading a bedtime story about space, followed by a dream sequence where the solar system story comes to life.

In this episode, Bush uses Gustav Holst’s Jupiter as the main theme. The music instantly takes us out of the normal Bluey world, supporting the visuals as Bingo leaves earth, too.

The scale of the orchestrated sounds reflects the scale of the story of the child and parenting learning to leave each other at night. The soundtrack also serves a musical joke — what sounds like the solar system but Holst?

Other episodes also use existing music in nuanced ways. Ice Cream references Fantasia with a hilarious appearance of Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers as the girls twirl around dripping ice cream cones; Fancy Restaurant uses Vivaldi’s Spring for atmosphere as the girls create a well-meaning (but doomed) date night for their parents; The Magic Xylophone uses Mozart’s Ronda Alla Turca for a game of musical statues.

Much of Bluey’s success is in the way it is designed for children and adults watching together. In Bush’s composition, children are given original and iconic music that satisfies story and character in a way that is new to them, while older viewers are given musical reminders of a variety cultural favourites from television and film.

Of course, the genius of Bluey is that all audiences can pick up any of the musical clues at any time, with repeat viewing revealing more and more.

– ref. The subtle sophistication of Bluey’s soundtrack helped propel it to stardom – https://theconversation.com/the-subtle-sophistication-of-blueys-soundtrack-helped-propel-it-to-stardom-153102

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marco Rizzi, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Western Australia

Some Australians could be receiving a COVID-19 vaccine within weeks.

Amid the continued spread of the virus and emergence of highly contagious variants, the federal government has accelerated the start of the roll out — initially set for March 2021 — to February.

Read more: The Oxford vaccine has unique advantages, as does Pfizer’s. Using both is Australia’s best strategy

Other countries, who have been less successful in containing the virus, have already begun vaccination programs. While this has been met by celebration around the world, there have also been concerns about possible side-effects.

It is expected the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) will approve the Pfizer vaccine for use in Australia any day now. Approval for the AstraZeneca vaccine is expected in early February.

Given the uncertainty surrounding the virus and the speed at which vaccines have been developed, what processes are in place to assure Australians’ safety?

What is the TGA?

The TGA is part of the federal Health Department. Its job is to regulate any product that carries a therapeutic claim. This includes prescription drugs, medical devices, certain food supplements, and of course vaccines.

It maintains the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods (ARTG), which records every therapeutic good available in the country.

The TGA regulates therapeutic goods in two main ways. First, it authorises products so they can be put on the ARTG and distributed. This involves its experts reviewing safety and efficacy data.

It then monitors products once they are in use. This includes collecting, analysing and reacting to data from health-care providers, patients, manufacturers, and overseas regulatory authorities.

How does it work?

The TGA says it adopts a “risk-based approach”. That is, it must be satisfied a vaccine or medication’s benefits outweigh its risks.

The TGA therefore is not tasked with the impossible goal of avoiding all risks. Rather, it must make sure that only products carrying acceptable risks can be marketed.

Read more: Bad reactions to the COVID vaccine will be rare, but Australians deserve a proper compensation scheme

So, for example, common minor side effects (such as a stomach ache) associated with certain painkillers are deemed acceptable compared to their benefit. Similarly, a severe but rare side effect can be acceptable where the medical benefit is significant. This is the case with vaccines.

Along with internal scientific and medical staff, the TGA is advised by seven committees, providing independent expert advice on scientific and technical matters. There includes a specific committee for vaccines.

Vaccine approval under ‘normal’ circumstances

The TGA requires a manufacturer or importer (the “sponsor”) to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of their product.

That is, companies need to show not only that their product is not harmful, but it does what it is supposed to do.

Sponsors must submit a substantive body of clinical data, gathered according to Good Clinical Practice guidelines, which are developed in keeping with world’s best practice.

The TGA also reviews the data using internationally recognised guidelines from the European Medicines Agency.

Read more: Australia’s vaccine rollout will now start next month. Here’s what we’ll need

The key data for approval arises from the third phase of clinical trials. These test a new product on very large groups, which can number in the tens of thousands. The TGA review can take up to eleven months.

If a therapeutic good is approved, but a problem later emerges, the TGA can recall it.

Special provisions for COVID-19 vaccines

The devastating speed of the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted regulatory authorities across the world to speed up approval processes.

Almost all have used existing special provisions to fast-track their reviews. Importantly, clinical trials have been conducted at unprecedented speed thanks to unlimited funding and motivated volunteers.

The scientific consensus is that the rigour of clinical evaluation has not been compromised.

Similarly, the TGA can conduct a speedier review of clinical data.

Instead of reviewing all the data prior to registration, the TGA conducts a preliminary assessment. This is followed by rolling submission of clinical data, leading to provisional registration. In other words the process is accelerated by allowing the TGA to look at data on an ongoing basis.

This special pathway is in place for treatments or vaccines for life-threatening diseases.

A provisional registration means the vaccine is approved for a set period of time (to be determined by the TGA), during which vaccinations can start under close monitoring. Following this, the vaccine proceeds to full registration.

Benefits outweigh risk

Both the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines have conducted phase three trials on tens of thousands of participants. Additionally, the TGA stresses it will only approve provisional registrations when the data so far makes clear

the benefit of early availability of the medicine outweighs the risk inherent in the fact that additional data are still required.

In the context of COVID-19 vaccines, provisional registration reduces bureaucratic hurdles, while maintaining the highest possible scientific rigour.

Working with the international community

The TGA does not operate in a vacuum either.

Regulatory authorities worldwide and the World Health Organisation have committed to work together on COVID-19 vaccines and medicines to improve “regulatory alignment”.

The TGA is a member of the International Coalition of Medicines Regulatory Authorities, which has committed to full cooperation and transparency between its members, particularly with regard to sharing data.

The TGA is also part of the Access Consortium alongside regulatory authorities from Singapore, Canada, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

So, while the speed of development of the first COVID-19 vaccines is unprecedented, so is the level of global monitoring over their safety and efficacy.

– ref. How will COVID-19 vaccines be approved for use in Australia? – https://theconversation.com/how-will-covid-19-vaccines-be-approved-for-use-in-australia-153640

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Euan Ritchie, Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University

Australia’s Threatened Species Strategy — a five-year plan for protecting our imperilled species and ecosystems — fizzled to an end last year. A new 10-year plan is being developed to take its place, likely from March.

It comes as Australia’s list of threatened species continues to grow. Relatively recent extinctions, such as the Christmas Island forest skink, Bramble Cay melomys and smooth handfish, add to an already heavy toll.

Now, more than ever, Australia’s remarkable species and environments need strong and effective policies to strengthen their protection and boost their recovery.

So as we settle into the new year, let’s reflect on what’s worked and what must urgently be improved upon, to turn around Australia’s extinction crisis.

Read more: Let there be no doubt: blame for our failing environment laws lies squarely at the feet of government

How effective was the first Threatened Species Strategy?

The Threatened Species Strategy is a key guiding document for biodiversity conservation at the national level. It identifies 70 priority species for conservation, made up of 20 birds, 20 mammals and 30 plants, such as the plains-wanderer, malleefowl, eastern quoll, greater bilby, black grevillea and Kakadu hibiscus.

These were considered among the most urgent in need of assistance of the more than 1,800 threatened species in Australia.

The strategy also identifies targets such as numbers of feral cats to be culled, and partnerships across industry, academia and government key to making the strategy successful.

The original strategy (2015-20) was eagerly welcomed for putting the national spotlight on threatened species conservation. It has certainly helped raise awareness of its priority species.

However, there’s little evidence the strategy has had a significant impact on threatened species conservation to date.

The midterm report in 2019 found only 35% of the priority species (14 in total) had improving trajectories compared to before the strategy (pre-2015). This number included six species — such as the brush-tailed rabbit-rat and western ringtail possum — that were still declining, but just at a slower rate.

On average, the trends of threatened mammal and bird populations across Australia are not increasing.

Other targets, such as killing two million feral cats by 2020, were not explicitly linked to measurable conservation outcomes, such as an increase in populations of threatened native animals. Because of this, it’s difficult to judge their success.

Read more: Feral cat cull: why the 2 million target is on scientifically shaky ground

What needs to change?

The previous strategy focused very heavily on feral cats as a threat and less so on other important and potentially compounding threats, particularly habitat destruction and degradation.

For instance, land clearing has contributed to a similar number of extinctions in Australia (62 species) as introduced animals such as feral cats (64).

In fact, 2018 research found agricultural activities affect at least 73% of invertebrates, 82% of birds, 69% of amphibians and 73% of mammals listed as threatened in Australia. Urban development and climate change threaten up to 33% and 56% of threatened species, respectively.

Read more: The buffel kerfuffle: how one species quietly destroys native wildlife and cultural sites in arid Australia

Other important threats to native Australian species include pollution, feral herbivores (such as horses and goats), very frequent or hot bushfires and weeds. Buffel grass was recently identified as a major emerging threat to Australia’s biodiversity, with the risk being as high as the threat posed by cats and foxes.

Five vital improvements

We made a submission to the Morrison government when the Threatened Species Strategy was under review. Below, we detail our key recommendations.

1. A holistic and evidence-based approach encompassing the full range of threats

This includes reducing rates of land clearing — a major and ongoing issue, but largely overlooked in the previous strategy.

2. Formal prioritisation of focal species, threats and actions

The previous strategy focused heavily on a small subset of the more than 1,800 threatened species and ecosystems in Australia. It mostly disregarded frog, reptile, fish and invertebrate species also threatened with extinction.

To reduce bias towards primarily “charismatic” species, the federal government should use an evidence-based prioritisation approach, known as “decision science”, like they do in New South Wales, New Zealand and Canada. This would ensure funds are spent on the most feasible and beneficial recovery efforts.

3. Targets linked to clear and measurable conservation outcomes

Some targets in the first Threatened Species Strategy were difficult to measure, not explicitly linked to conservation outcomes, or weak. Targets need to be more specific.

For example, a target to “improve the trajectory” of threatened species could be achieved if extinction is occurring at a slightly slower rate. Alternatively, a target to “improve the conservation status” of a species is achieved if new assessments rate it as “vulnerable” rather than “endangered”.

4. Significant financial investment from government

Investing in conservation reduces biodiversity loss. A 2019 study found Australia’s listed threatened species could be recovered for about A$1.7 billion per year. This money could be raised by removing harmful subsidies that directly threaten biodiversity, such as those to industries emitting large volumes of greenhouse gases.

The first strategy featured a call for co-investment from industry. But this failed to attract much private sector interest, meaning many important projects aimed at conserving species did not proceed.

5. Government leadership, coordination and policy alignment

The Threatened Species Strategy should be aligned with Australia’s international obligations such as the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals and the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (which is also currently being reviewed). This will help foster a more coherent and efficient national approach to threatened species conservation.

There are also incredible opportunities to better align threatened species conservation with policies and investment in climate change mitigation and sustainable agriculture.

The benefits of investing heavily in wildlife reach beyond preventing extinctions. It would generate many jobs, including in regional and Indigenous communities.

Protecting our natural heritage is an investment, not a cost. Now is the time to seize this opportunity.

Read more: Scientists re-counted Australia’s extinct species, and the result is devastating

– ref. It’s not too late to save them: 5 ways to improve the government’s plan to protect threatened wildlife – https://theconversation.com/its-not-too-late-to-save-them-5-ways-to-improve-the-governments-plan-to-protect-threatened-wildlife-147669

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Arosha Weerakoon, Lecturer, General Dentist & PhD Candidate, The University of Queensland

Baby teeth, or milk teeth, act like lighthouses to guide the adult ones to their correct destination. A baby tooth will become wobbly and fall out because the adult tooth that follows pushes through to break down the roots of the baby tooth.

To lose baby teeth, particularly the first one, is a rite of passage for children. And while most baby teeth do fall out, some kids won’t lose all their baby teeth.

Sometimes, the adult teeth simply don’t form. In an average class, one or two students, or 6% of children, will not form at least one adult tooth (this doesn’t include those with missing wisdom teeth). A missing adult tooth will often mean the baby tooth remains in place into adulthood.

For this and other reasons, it’s important to look after your child’s baby teeth. Healthy baby teeth are paramount to children’s health and well-being both in the present and into adulthood.

Kids get cavities too

Just like in adult teeth, baby teeth can develop cavities (holes). Factors including cavity-causing bacteria in the mouth, regular consumption of sugary drinks and snacks, and not brushing well can make cavities more likely.

Untreated cavities can grow to affect or even kill the nerves and blood vessels inside the tooth. If this happens, your child can suffer from severe toothache and infection. These are among the most common preventable reasons for children to require dental treatment under general anaesthetic.

In some instances, it may be necessary to remove a baby tooth if it’s infected or has a very large cavity. This can potentially cause overcrowding.

If a baby tooth is lost before the adult successor is ready, the teeth on either side drift into the space. Lacking space, the adult tooth may eventually come through in the wrong place. In such cases, your child is more likely to need braces.

Read more: Curious Kids: why do we lose our baby teeth?

Dental problems can lead to bigger problems

Left untreated, infected baby teeth can affect your child’s health and well-being.

Children with healthy smiles fare better at school relative to those who suffer with dental problems. Children who experience dental pain may lose sleep, have difficulty concentrating and participating in class, and miss school altogether.

Poor dental health also affects children’s physical development. Children with sore teeth may skip meals or eat less, which can affect their nutrition and growth.

We also know cavities in baby teeth are associated with an increased risk of suffering from the same issues into adulthood.

Some signs your child may have dental problems

A child will describe and experience a toothache differently to adults, but there are a few signs you can look out for. Your child may:

• complain of a sharp poking pain, an annoying, sore or itchy tooth, or even an earache

• avoid hot, cold, sweet or hard, chewy foods

• take longer than usual to finish a meal

• complain about food getting stuck in their teeth

• have difficulty brushing their teeth

• have trouble falling asleep or wake up during the night more often than usual

• be too tired to participate in class

• perform poorly at school

• experience difficulty socialising and speaking

• be more irritable or grumpy than usual.

Read more: Do I need to floss my teeth?

The good news is, once children’s dental issues are diagnosed, most if not all problems can be fixed or managed.

Visiting the dentist

You should book a dental check-up when your child’s first tooth comes through, or by their first birthday — whichever comes first.

After that, schedule check-ups regularly, depending on how frequently your dentist recommends. While your child’s teeth may be OK, frequent visits will help them get comfortable with the dentist, and allow for any issues to be dealt with early.

It’s no secret some children (and even adults) find the prospect of visiting the dentist daunting. It’s important parents of young children establish the dentist in a positive light.

These tips can help you and your child prepare for their first and subsequent visits:

• use positive, child-friendly terms when referring to the dentist, such as “the tooth fairy’s friend”

• avoid emotionally laden words such as “needle”, which may frighten children

• avoid threatening children with consequences for poor behaviour

• avoid sharing poor dental experiences

• make the visit fun by role playing going to the dentist at home beforehand, or likening the visit to a play date.

Read more: Child tooth decay is on the rise, but few are brushing their teeth enough or seeing the dentist

Dental care at home

Alongside regular dental checks, it’s important to set up good habits with your children around looking after and brushing their teeth:

• talk about teeth and why they’re important

• help your children brush their teeth with a soft, age-appropriate toothbrush

• let your children have fun (for example, use toothbrushes that feature their favourite characters).

Generally, Australian guidelines recommend you use fluoridated toothpaste by the time the child reaches 18 months (before this, you can just use water). But you can discuss which toothpaste is appropriate for your child at their next dental appointment.

Parents who have dental issues may worry their child will suffer the same fate. But as a parent or guardian, you can influence your child’s dental habits and attitudes to help them now and into their future.

– ref. Yes, baby teeth fall out. But they’re still important — here’s how to help your kids look after them – https://theconversation.com/yes-baby-teeth-fall-out-but-theyre-still-important-heres-how-to-help-your-kids-look-after-them-148190

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tama Leaver, Professor of Internet Studies, Curtin University

The inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, has raised concerns that Australia’s proposed News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code could fundamentally break the internet as we know it.

His concerns are valid. However, they could be addressed through minor changes to the proposed code.

How could the code break the web?

The news media bargaining code aims to level the playing field between media companies and online giants. It would do this by forcing Facebook and Google to pay Australian news businesses for content linked to, or featured, on their platforms.

In a submission to the Senate inquiry about the code, Berners-Lee wrote:

Specifically, I am concerned that the Code risks breaching a fundamental principle of the web by requiring payment for linking between certain content online. […] The ability to link freely — meaning without limitations regarding the content of the linked site and without monetary fees — is fundamental to how the web operates.

Currently, one of the most basic underlying principles of the web is there is no cost involved in creating a hypertext link (or simply a “link”) to any other page or object online.

When Berners-Lee first invented the World Wide Web, he effectively gave it away for free to ensure nobody would or could charge for using its protocols.

He claims if the code sets a legal precedent allowing someone to charge for linking, then the genie would escape the bottle — and plenty more attempts to charge for linking to content would appear.

If the precedent was set that people could be charged for simply linking to content online, it’s possible the underlying principle of linking would be disrupted.

As a result, there would likely be many attempts by both legitimate companies and scammers to charge users for what is currently free.

While supporting the “right of publishers and content creators to be properly rewarded for their work”, Berners-Lee asks the code be amended to maintain the principle of allowing free linking between content.

Read more: Google News favours mainstream media. Even if it pays for Australian content, will local outlets fall further behind?

Google and Facebook don’t just link to content

Part of the issue here is Google and Facebook don’t just collect a list of interesting links to news content. Rather the way they find, sort, curate and present news content adds value for their users.

They don’t just link to news content, they reframe it. It is often in that reframing that advertisements appear, and this is where these platforms make money.

For example, this link will take you to the original 1989 proposal for the World Wide Web. Right now, anyone can create such a link to any other page or object the web, without having to pay anyone else.

But what Facebook and Google do in curating news content is fundamentally different. They create compelling previews, usually by offering the headline of a news article, sometimes the first few lines, and often the first image extracted.

For instance, here is a preview Google generates when someone searches for Tim Berners-Lee’s Web proposal:

Evidently, what Google returns is more of a media-rich, detailed preview than a simple link. For Google’s users, this is a much more meaningful preview of the content and better enables them to decide whether they’ll click through to see more.

Another huge challenge for media businesses is that increasing numbers of users are taking headlines and previews at face value, without necessarily reading the article.

This can obviously decrease revenue for news providers, as well as perpetuate misinformation. Indeed, it’s one of the reasons Twitter began asking users to actually read content before retweeting it.

A fairly compelling argument, then, is that Google and Facebook add value for consumers via the reframing, curating and previewing of content — not just by linking to it.

Can the code be fixed?

Currently in the code, the section concerning how platforms are “Making content available” lists three ways content is shared:

1. content is reproduced on the service
2. content is linked to
3. an extract or preview is made available.

Similar terms are used to detail how users might interact with content.

If we accept most of the additional value platforms provide to their users is in curating and providing previews of content, then deleting the second element (which just specifies linking to content) would fix Berners-Lee’s concerns.

It would ensure the use of links alone can’t be monetised, as has always been true on the web. Platforms would still need to pay when they present users with extracts or previews of articles, but not when they only link to it.

Since basic links are not the bread and butter of big platforms, this change wouldn’t fundamentally alter the purpose or principle of creating a more level playing field for news businesses and platforms.

Read more: It’s not ‘fair’ and it won’t work: an argument against the ACCC forcing Google and Facebook to pay for news

In its current form, the News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code could put the underlying principles of the world wide web in jeopardy. Tim Berners-Lee is right to raise this point.

But a relatively small tweak to the code would prevent this, It would allow us to focus more on where big platforms actually provide value for users, and where the clearest justification lies in asking them to pay for news content.

For transparency, it should be noted The Conversation has also made a submission to the Senate inquiry regarding the News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code.

– ref. Web’s inventor says news media bargaining code could break the internet. He’s right — but there’s a fix – https://theconversation.com/webs-inventor-says-news-media-bargaining-code-could-break-the-internet-hes-right-but-theres-a-fix-153630