Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matt Nurse, PhD researcher, Australian National University

Australians love a fiery contest, whether on the sporting field or in the corridors of Canberra. Which is why this week’s spat between Tanya Plibersek and Craig Kelly, which played out in front of cameras still rolling from the former’s media conference, blew up into a big story about the latter.

Plibersek was busy taking Kelly to task for spreading COVID-19 misinformation, and calling on Prime Minister Scott Morrison to stop him doing it, when it became apparent Kelly was standing just metres away.

In the ensuing three minutes, the two accused each other of spreading misinformation, misrepresenting the science, and failing to protect the Australian community from the COVID pandemic.

Just for the record, Kelly is in the wrong about a lot of the science. During the pandemic he’s become a prolific Facebook spruiker of unproven coronavirus treatments such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, while casting doubt on COVID vaccines.

But we’re not here to mark report cards. Instead, we want to ask: was Plibersek’s approach a sensible way to deal with misinformation?

Win-win for the combatants, but not for science

In political terms, both protagonists scored a win of sorts. Kelly, who is battling to retain his seat, got to look like a fighter who sticks up for his beliefs (which are presumably sincerely held but are way out of step with the science). Plibersek, meanwhile, landed an indirect blow on Morrison, who reacted to the scuffle by briefing the media that he had finally hauled Kelly into line.

Read more: View from The Hill: Craig Kelly set to face preselection reckoning – without prime ministerial protection

Plibersek has no doubt seen how QAnon-inspired conspiracies have divided the US Republican Party, and presumably relishes the chance to sow similar division among the Coalition. (She also pointed out her mother lives in Kelly’s electorate, and as such would be vulnerable to the effects of misinformation on his constituents.)

But it’s hard to see how any of this really helps the wider public, who need timely and relevant information to help negotiate the pandemic.

As researchers who investigate the intersection between science, communication and politics, we know many of the scientific “debates” prosecuted by Kelly and his fellow contrarians aren’t actually aimed at getting to the truth.

As we saw during the interminable climate policy wars, these debates are often matters of personal pugilism rather than objective consideration of the evidence.

A better way

Here are some pointers, informed by the evidence, on what to do next time you’re faced with a COVID contrarian on your Facebook feed, at a family barbeque, or while roaming the parliamentary press gallery (OK, the latter is probably fairly unlikely).

• Check yourself. We all fall for misinformation sometimes. So before critiquing other people’s claims, audit what you think you know to see whether the evidence and the experts back your views. Look at the evidence like a scientist, not a barrister. Barristers are great when you need someone to back you up in court, but their approach typically involves gathering all the evidence to support a particular claim. Good scientists, in contrast, look at all the evidence first, come up with a hypothesis, then test it by looking at all the evidence against it. If this sounds like a lot to manage by yourself, you could see whether the claim has already been fact-checked by a trustworthy source, or ask whether a scientist will check it for you.

• Have a specific behavioural objective and tailor your approach accordingly. Are you trying to get someone to wear a mask in crowded places? To get vaccinated? To stop posting false claims on the internet? Having a specific outcome in mind will help you focus your efforts and measure success.

• Don’t play misinformation whack-a-mole. You could spend years trying to debunk the dodgy claims about COVID-19. Instead, familiarise yourself with the common themes, and learn to recognise the techniques and cognitive tricks that can make misinformation appealing to some people .

• Don’t just hit them with facts. Facts, while crucial for good policy, are less persuasive than you might think, as any exasperated climate scientist will confirm. Instead, show them how much you care about the issue and focus on earning their trust, which can be far more potent than expertise at changing someone’s mind.

Read more: Facts won’t beat the climate deniers – using their tactics will

• Admit when you don’t know something. Don’t pretend you’re an expert on every facet of the pandemic — nobody is. Instead, use one of the most powerful phrases in science: “I don’t know. Let’s find out together”.

• Show you’re really listening. You might be surprised to learn that listening can make you more persuasive. Be open to finding out new things, even if all you learn is where your crazy uncle gets his wacky ideas. And ask questions — research shows even this simple act can encourage people to adopt more healthy behaviours.

• Keep politics and personal insults out of it. Calling people Sheeple or Karens doesn’t win hearts or minds. Treat it as a dialogue, not a slanging match, and be aware things can rapidly become adversarial on social media (and in Canberra corridors).

Read more: To get conservative climate contrarians to really listen, try speaking their language

• Don’t be impatient. Changing people’s behaviours is hard. Otherwise the world wouldn’t be in this pickle. It might take a few attempts over the course of a few weeks, or months or years. Or, you know, you might never get there.

• Finally, have a pre-prepared exit strategy. If you’ve realised you’re butting your head against a brick wall, bail out gracefully. Honestly, life’s too short.

– ref. How to deal with the Craig Kelly in your life: a guide to tackling coronavirus contrarians – https://theconversation.com/how-to-deal-with-the-craig-kelly-in-your-life-a-guide-to-tackling-coronavirus-contrarians-154638

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

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

This week Michelle and Paddy discuss the first parliamentary sitting week of the year, including the government’s plan to vaccinate the populace by October, the prime minister’s appearance before the press club outlining his plans for the year, and the unexpected problem backbencher Craig Kelly has created for the liberal party.

– ref. VIDEO: Michelle Grattan on vaccinating the nation, the prime minister at the press club, and Craig Kelly – https://theconversation.com/video-michelle-grattan-on-vaccinating-the-nation-the-prime-minister-at-the-press-club-and-craig-kelly-154738

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katrina Schmid, Associate Professor, Queensland University of Technology

Why do we see different colours when we close our eyes? — Anais, aged 7

Hi Anais, thanks for your great question!

The first thing to say is that seeing colours when we close our eyes is totally normal. It doesn’t mean there’s a problem with your eyes (unless what you see changes drastically, but we’ll talk about that later).

There are a few different situations that can cause you to see colours with your eyes closed. The first one is if you shut your eyes in the daytime, in a bright room or outside. Some light does go through your closed eyelids. So you might see a dark reddish colour because the lids have lots of blood vessels in them and this is the light taking on the colour of the blood it passes through.

But often we see different colours and patterns when we close our eyes in the dark.

I certainly do! When I first shut my eyes in the dark, I see a pattern that’s full of dots and sparkles. Then when I’m in the dark for a longer time, I see swirls and waves of coloured dots travelling through my vision.

I know what I’m seeing is not made by something real, because it’s always changing and seems very random.

You can also see these with your eyes open, particularly when you’ve been in the dark for a while, maybe when you have woken up in the middle of the night (if there isn’t too much stray light coming in from the window or elsewhere).

These perceptions are what scientists call “phosphenes” — the sensation of light that’s not actually caused by light. They can start in the eye or the brain, but the ones you are talking about are usually due to the normal functioning of the retina. The retina is the layer that lines the inside of the back of your eye that detects light.

Why does it happen?

These phosphenes are a normal part of how our eyes work. Our eyes don’t turn off in the dark, but instead they create very weak internal signals that mimic light.

These signals are constantly being made by the cells at the back of your eyes.

The swirls and waves we see are made by changes in activity from these cells. The blobs may be coloured because the cells in your eyes that detect colour also show this activity.

These signals are transmitted to the brain, and the brain interprets this random activity. Your brain doesn’t know they weren’t produced by real light, so we think we’re seeing coloured lights and patterns that are not there. It’s a kind of illusion!

And what about when you rub your eyes?

You might also see colours when you rub your eyes. This is because pushing (softly!) on your eyeballs causes physical force to be applied to the light detectors at the back of your eyes. This force can then create the phosphenes we’ve spoken about. You might see a dark circle surrounded by a ring of light where you have pushed on your eye.

Some people notice flashes of light when they move their eyes quickly, particularly if they’ve gotten up in the middle of the night in a dark room. As we get older, the clear jelly in the back section of the eye gets more watery. This fluid can move around a bit when the eye is moved quickly. It can tug on your eyes’ light detectors and causes you to see a flash of light.

Is there something wrong with us?

Seeing colours when you close your eyes is totally normal. It’s just part of the way your eyes work. Some people notice them, and some do not.

However, much more obvious phosphenes can occur in some eye diseases.

If what you’re seeing has changed, and the patterns of light become much more noticeable or hang around for longer, it could indicate a problem.

For example, bright flashing can be caused by a detached retina, which is where your retina partially comes away from the back of your eyeball, and which needs to be treated as an emergency.

Also, some people get a “visual aura” when they have a particular kind of headache called a migraine. High pressure inside your eyeballs can also cause phosphenes.

If what you’re seeing has drastically changed, or you’re worried about what you’re seeing, it’s best to visit your eye care provider, a doctor or an optometrist.

Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au

– ref. Curious Kids: why do we see different colours when we close our eyes? – https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-why-do-we-see-different-colours-when-we-close-our-eyes-154378

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Brown, Professor, School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, UNSW

I awoke one morning late last year to find a bright red bauble at the foot of my bed. It wouldn’t have looked amiss adorning a Christmas tree. But it felt ready to explode. It was my big toe, and this was my first encounter with gout.

In good company

With a history spanning more than 4,500 years, gout is among our earliest recorded diseases. Hippocrates, traditionally regarded as the father of medicine, called it “the unwalkable disease”, because it was very painful for people with gout to walk.

Many famous historical figures suffered with gout, including Christopher Columbus, Henry VIII, Benjamin Franklin and Beethoven. It became known as “the disease of kings”.

This moniker also reflects the fact gout has historically been associated with indulging in rich food and excessive alcohol. Scientific evidence today suggests this may have something to do with it, though the common belief drinking port specifically causes gout is unfounded.

Today, no longer just a disease of kings, the prevalence of gout is increasing around the world. Almost one in 20 Australians have had at least one attack of gout.

And some stigma still clings to the condition. Often gout is seen as being self-inflicted, a mark of overindulgence. But living with gout has far-reaching implications, hampering a person’s ability to participate in everyday life.

Read more: Got gout? Here’s what to eat and avoid

What is gout?

Gout is the most common form of inflammatory arthritis. It’s caused by sodium urate crystals forming in the joints. While the big toe is particularly susceptible, gout can also affect the ankles, knees, elbows, wrists and fingers.

Urate, or uric acid, is an end-product of the breakdown of biochemicals called purines, which are both components of your DNA and absorbed into the body through the foods you eat. Urate levels reflect how much is made in the liver and how much is flushed out when you go to the toilet.

If your urate levels become too high, the urate turns into crystals. When urate crystals form in the fluid cushioning a joint, the body’s defence forces see them as foreign invaders. Inflammation and debilitating pain follow.

What causes gout?

A high level of urate in the blood is the greatest risk factor for gout. But what causes high levels of urate? While we don’t know exactly, several factors certainly contribute.

A tangled web links urate, gout and other metabolic diseases, including type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. Being overweight is a common factor.

Gout can run in families, with genetics playing a key role in determining urate levels. For example, genetic differences can impair urate excretion, thereby increasing blood urate levels.

Gout is also more common in males — almost 80% of people with gout are male. One reason for this is the female sex hormone oestrogen lowers urate levels, and is therefore protective against gout in pre-menopausal women.

And gout is more common the older you get. It affects 0.2% of Australian men in their 20s, increasing to 11% over the age of 85.

Read more: Arthritis isn’t just a condition affecting older people, it likely starts much earlier

Management and prevention

You should ice and raise the affected joint and minimise contact with it — even a light bedsheet can cause excruciating pain.

Attacks of gout can last for days or weeks. If you think you have gout, you should see your doctor.

Anti-inflammatory drugs can ease gout attacks. Your doctor might prescribe colchicine, or you can get ibuprofen over the counter.

It’s easy to stop exercising, but swimming and cycling are two ways you can comfortably continue moving during a gout flare.

Many people who have one gout attack will go on to have more. In one study, 70% of people who had an attack of gout went on to have another within a year.

If you suffer two or more attacks, management of chronic gout involves taking a urate-lowering therapy such as allopurinol or febuxostat.

If you’ve had gout once and want to prevent it coming back, it’s worth thinking about lifestyle changes. As with other metabolic diseases, losing weight helps.

You might also consider minimising consumption of purine-rich foods, which include meat, seafood and yeast products, like Vegemite.

But as with any diet, sticking to a low-purine diet can be challenging. Evidence for particular foods to favour or avoid for gout is weak, and overall, diet contributes very little to variation in urate levels.

So rather than purely focusing on purine-rich foods, consuming less in total can better control urate levels while improving your overall health. Limiting alcohol is also a good idea.

Epilogue

With a red bauble stuck on the end of your foot, you learn to appreciate how important your big toe is for mobility.

Eventually, I managed to drop my COVID kilos, by watching portion sizes, not going back for seconds, replacing unhealthy snacks with fruit, and cutting back on alcohol.

And with that, I’m hoping my first encounter with gout might be my last. Although keeping off the kilos will require constant vigilance, the memory of that painful red bauble should be a powerful motivator.

Read more: Not feeling motivated to tackle those sneaky COVID kilos? Try these 4 healthy eating tips instead

– ref. ‘The disease of kings?’ 1 in 20 Australians get gout — here’s how to manage it – https://theconversation.com/the-disease-of-kings-1-in-20-australians-get-gout-heres-how-to-manage-it-151759

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher Drovandi, Professor of Statistics, Queensland University of Technology

When you ask that question, three names come to mind: Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic.

A simple way to compare tennis players is to look at how many grand slam tournaments they have won. That includes victories at the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon in the UK and the US Open.

But this doesn’t take into account how many tournaments they’ve played, which tournaments they’ve played, how far they progressed in each tournament, and who they played against.

Probably the best player

My method estimates the probability of a player winning a match in a grand slam tournament. The player with the highest estimated probability of winning a match is then deemed the best player.

Using probability naturally accommodates how many matches and tournaments the player has played, and acknowledges the strong performance of a player who makes a final but doesn’t win the tournament.

Read more: Self-entitled prima donnas or do they have a point? Why Australian Open tennis players find hard lockdown so tough

The method builds a statistical model to estimate winning probabilities for each player from grand slam data.

By using a technique called regression modelling, it accounts for the fact the winning probability may depend on the quality of the opposition and the grand slam played. For example, some players have preference for hard courts (used at the Australian and US Opens) over clay (used at Roland Garros, home of the French Open).

The opposition quality is inferred from their ranking, and we consider five groups: the top 10, top 20, top 50, top 100 and outside the top 100. These group choices are consistent with terminology used by commentators and pundits.

Another advantage of using a statistical model is that we can make the most of the available data, which is quite small given there are only four grand slam tournaments per year.

For example, if the data support it, the model can enforce a similar pattern of performance against the quality of opposition across tournaments. This is a form of “borrowing of strength” to increase the accuracy of probability estimates from small datasets.

Oh, the uncertainty

Using a statistical approach allows us to quantify the uncertainty in probability estimates. Here we communicate uncertainty as an interval (lower and upper limit), that contains the true winning probability with a 95% chance.

So, for example, if the estimated winning probability for a player is 0.77 with an interval of 0.63 to 0.86, it means that our best guess of the winning probability is 0.77. But there is a 95% chance the actual winning probability is between 0.63 and 0.86. This tells us how much uncertainty there is about our best guess.

The amount of uncertainty depends on the number of matches played and the winning probability. There will naturally be more uncertainty if the actual winning probability is around 0.5, that means an even chance of winning or losing.

The results are shown in the figures (below). Each square represents the best probability estimate for Federer, Nadal and Djokovic, and the vertical line represents the uncertainty interval.

The winner is …

For the Australian Open, there is evidence to suggest that Djokovic is the top-performing male player.

But given the overlapping uncertainty intervals in the probability estimates with the other players, it is difficult to definitively state this.

It is difficult to separate the three players at the US Open. Wimbledon appears to be the tournament that Federer shines the most relative to the other players, but again there is significant overlap in the intervals.

Although there is some evidence that Nadal is the worst-performing player at the Australian Open and at Wimbledon (which is played on grass courts), he is the undisputed champion at the French Open.

Incredibly, Nadal has an estimated probability around 0.93 to win a game against a top 10 player at this tournament. This clearly shows Nadal’s dominance on clay courts. The French Open is a relative Achilles’ heel for Federer.

The analysis reveals some other interesting results. For example, the results suggest Nadal performs similarly against top 20 and top 50 players, as does Djokovic.

But there is generally a big drop in winning probability against top 10 players.

Apart from some cases (Nadal at the French Open, Djokovic at the Australian Open and Federer at Wimbledon), the chance that one of these champion players beats a top 10 player in a grand slam isn’t much better than a coin toss.

And the best player is …

On the women’s side, it’s widely accepted that Serena Williams is the top player in the modern era, and possibly of all time. Williams has won the most grand slams of any player, male or female.

Read more: All that slipping and sliding on tennis courts prevents injuries: a biomechanics expert explains how

For the men it’s less so clear. So in response to the question of who is the best male tennis player of the modern era, the answer is “it depends”.

If pressed for an answer, it’s hard to go past Rafael Nadal. He has dominated a grand slam (French Open) unlike the other players, while remaining competitive in the other three slams.

A more comprehensive analysis would consider data from all tournaments, not just grand slams, and this would help to reduce uncertainty in the winning probability estimates.

It should also be noted that these are retrospective winning probability estimates, and cannot be used to predict outcomes for future tournaments. Predictive statistical models would focus on more recent tennis data.

– ref. Who is (probably) today’s best male tennis player? – https://theconversation.com/who-is-probably-todays-best-male-tennis-player-154185

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Douglas, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Western Australia

What are the biggest domestic news stories you remember from the last few years?

Apart from all the natural disasters, I think of stories about George Pell, the coverage that led to the Banking Royal Commission, the SAS in Afghanistan and because I am a law nerd, the reporting on former High Court Justice Dyson Heydon.

Many of these stories are the product of investigative journalism. This is not the sort of “journalism” you see in a tabloid rag or a late-night rant on Sky News. It is the type of high-quality journalism that takes time and patience.

According to the United Nations, investigative journalism is:

the unveiling of matters that are concealed either deliberately by someone in a position of power, or accidentally, behind a chaotic mass of facts and circumstances — and the analysis and exposure of all relevant facts to the public.

Investigative journalism is not about making friends

In many cases, investigative journalism means calling out wrongdoing. Predictably, those on the receiving end of journalists’ investigations may not like it.

For example, last November, the ABC’s Four Corners aired “Inside the Canberra bubble”.

The included allegations of MPs, including Attorney-General Christian Porter, behaving inappropriately towards female staff.

In response, Porter flagged legal action.

given the defamatory nature of many of the claims made in [the] program, I will be considering legal options.

One of those options is to sue the ABC, and the journalists behind the story, in defamation.

Chau Chak Wing

Another powerful man who was on the receiving end of a Four Corners story is Chau Chak Wing.

In 2017, Four Corners reported on the dealings of the Chinese-Australian businessman and philanthropist.

Over the years, Chau has donated huge sums of money to various charitable causes and political parties in Australia.

The “Power and Influence” program implied Chau had used his power to pursue China’s interests in Australia in an improper way.

The story was a culmination of a joint investigation by the ABC and Fairfax (now owned by Nine), and involved investigative journalist Nick McKenzie, among others.

Chau sued the ABC, Fairfax and McKenzie in defamation. Earlier this week, he had a big win, with the Federal Court awarding him $A590,000 in damages.

Justice Steven Rares decided the program conveyed the idea Chau had knowingly bribed a United Nations official, and was a member of the Chinese Communist Party, among other things. The allegations in the program were “seriously defamatory”, justifying a large damages award.

Documents in parliament

Media and free speech advocates did not like this decision.

For example, after the judgment was released, Liberal MP Tim Wilson used the legal shield of parliamentary privilege to table FBI documents relating to the allegations considered in the defamation case.

Read more: Journalists have become diplomatic pawns in China’s relations with the West, setting a worrying precedent

These documents were not public before the case was handed down. However, in my opinion, if the documents were publicly available a few years ago, and if they were admissible in Chau’s defamation action, they may have changed some of the court’s findings on the defendants’ liability.

That is because the documents are relevant to the allegation Chau had paid money to the UN official, John Ashe.

But, as Justice Rares explained in 2018, material covered by parliamentary privilege – including documents tabled in parliament – can’t be used in this way. The Parliamentary Privileges Act provides you can’t use these sorts of documents in a court proceeding to establish the credibility of a person, like a journalist.

Chau has never been charged with any criminal offence and there is no suggestion by The Conversation or the author that he has engaged in any criminal conduct.

Isn’t truth a defence?

It is. Australia’s uniform defamation laws have a “defence of justification”, which means you are not liable if you can prove the substantial truth of what you have said.

In the Chau case, the Federal Court decided in 2018 the media defendants couldn’t rely on justification. The defendants appealed, and lost. The reasons were technical, but to summarise: the defendants could not show they could prove the facts to justify the program.

Read more: Cutting the ABC cuts public trust, a cost no democracy can afford

At one stage of the proceedings, the media defendants relied on a defence called “qualified privilege”. This is like a public interest defence, which might help in cases where you report something defamatory out of some duty.

The media defendants abandoned their qualified privilege defence in 2020. The defence requires the conduct of the defendant was “reasonable in the circumstances” — they may have been worried the judge would not have thought they were reasonable.

Law reform ahead to protect public interest journalism

Chau’s case highlights the difficult situation facing Australian investigative journalists. They want to uncover dirt, but in doing so expose themselves to significant litigation risk. And if they get it wrong, that risk can come back to bite them.

Read more: Australia’s ‘outdated’ defamation laws are changing – but there’s no ‘revolution’ yet

Journalists need to have the facts to support not just what they say explicitly, but what their work implies. This requires a lot of work and time, and is not helped by the significant job losses in the media industry. Reporters’ time is precious. But so are reputations.

A new defence will make journalists’ lives easier. In 2020, the states and territories agreed to reform the uniform defamation laws. Although the agreed amendments are not yet in force, they should be in 2021.

The changes include a new defence of “publication of matter concerning an issue of public interest”.

This defence will allow the media to rely more heavily on editorial judgement in publishing their investigative work. The defendant will not be liable if they “reasonably believed that the publication of the matter was in the public interest”.

Would this have made a difference in the Chau case? Perhaps.

But even once this new law is in force, journalists will still need to tread carefully. As long as they are speaking truth to power, investigative journalism will remain a risky business.

– ref. Chau Chak Wing’s $590,000 defamation win shows investigative journalism is risky business – https://theconversation.com/chau-chak-wings-590-000-defamation-win-shows-investigative-journalism-is-risky-business-154543

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pete Dupen, PhD Student, University of Technology Sydney

An independent expert panel today rejected a proposal to expand the operations of the Dendrobium coal mine under Sydney’s drinking water catchment. This is a significant and welcome decision. However, flawed environmental laws that enabled the proposal to get so far must be overhauled.

The mine’s proponents had been seeking to extract 78 million additional tonnes of coal out to 2048. The New South Wales Department of Planning, Industry and Environment (DPIE) had recommended the mine be approved. The backing came despite grave concerns over the mine’s impact on drinking water supplies.

We are experts in environmental regulation and one of us, Pete Dupen, is a former mining manager for the state government agency WaterNSW. Our research shows the damage mining causes to Sydney’s water supplies is unsustainable, and regulation in Australia has largely failed to set firm limits on cumulative damage to the environment.

The problem is rife in both state and federal laws, and must urgently be addressed.

‘Unacceptable’ damage

NSW’s Independent Planning Commission (IPC) was tasked with assessing the Dendrobium mine proposal due to the high number of objections received.

The multinational company that owns the mine, South32, wanted to extend underground longwall mining at the operation until 2048.

Coal from Dendrobium, located west of Wollongong, is used in steel-making in Australia and overseas. South32 argued the expansion would deliver a net economic benefit of A$2.8 billion.

Read more: Be worried when fossil fuel lobbyists support current environmental laws

The extension would have allowed 78 million tonnes of coal to be extracted from two new areas comprising 21 “long wall” panels, 18 of which would have been more than 300 metres wide.

The panels would have been dug out from beneath a so-called “Special Area” – land where, under law, stored water must be protected and ecological integrity maintained. The area covered by the proposed expansion supplies drinking water to much of Greater Sydney.

In its verdict released on Friday, the IPC said the project would cause “unacceptable” damage and should be refused.

Among the reasons for the decision were:

• the risk of significant “subsidence” or sinking of the ground’s surface resulting from the longwall mine design. This would degrade 25 watercourses and swamps

• potentially significant surface water losses into the groundwater system, damaging ecological processes and contribute to increased concentrations of metals in drinking water

• the impact of past and existing longwall mining in the catchment, including the (as yet unquantified) loss of surface water flows from some sections of rivers and streams

• uncertainty around managing mine water inflow (surface waters permanently diverted underground) after mine closure.

No line in the sand

Thankfully in this case, the IPC took into account cumulative damage to water supplies when making its decision. But as precedent shows, that consideration is not a given.

Australian laws tend to focus on the impacts of individual projects in isolation. Crucially, they fail to use clear thresholds of unacceptable cumulative environmental impact – a line in the sand, beyond which damage will not be tolerated.

The failing is reflected in the recommendation by NSW planning officials that the Dendrobium extension be approved. If cumulative damage was properly considered earlier, the proposal would have been scuppered years ago.

Climate change and drought have crippled urban water supplies in recent years. Yet underground coal mines have been allowed to eat away at Sydney’s water catchments, Pac-Man like, for decades.

Our research shows existing coal mines in the catchments of Sydney’s “Metropolitan Special Area” have, or will, divert 450 billion litres of drinking water into underground fractures. That’s almost as much water as is contained in Sydney Harbour.

A NSW government-appointed expert panel recently examined the risk mining activities posed to the water quantity in Greater Sydney’s water catchments. Among its recommendations was an interagency taskforce to determine how much water loss due to mining was acceptable.

Yet even as the IPC assessed the Dendrobium proposal, this question had not yet been answered. This is despite the NSW government in April last year accepting all 50 of the panel’s recommendations.

The draft conditions for the expansion, set by DPIE, would not have addressed cumulative impacts before approval was granted.

Several years ago, WaterNSW developed cumulative impact criteria to be applied to mining developments before approval. But the document remains a draft and has not been published, for reasons unknown.

A national problem

The problems we raise are not isolated to NSW environment law. At a federal level, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act needs an urgent overhaul.

The Morrison government last week released an independent review of the laws by Professor Graeme Samuel. Among the report’s many scathing criticisms were that “cumulative impacts on the environment are not systematically considered”.

Samuel said Commonwealth environment authorities assess development proposals only when they meet certain criteria.

Read more: A major report excoriated Australia’s environment laws. Sussan Ley’s response is confused and risky

Even when the Commonwealth does scrutinise a proposal, decisions are made only on a project-by-project basis, rather than as part of an “integrated system of environmental management that ensure cumulative impacts are well managed”, Samuel said.

Weaknesses in Australian federal and state laws, and enforcement, often means cumulative effects are not considered on paper or in practice.

For example, the Victorian Auditor-General recently found measures designed to mitigate the cumulative effect of residential developments on Melbourne’s urban fringe were not being implemented.

Shoring up our drinking water

Few environmental problems are more pressing than permanent impacts on a major city’s water supply. But protecting water resources from cumulative harm requires the following

• well-defined thresholds, set with rational justification and able to be changed as new information arises

• robust measurements to assess if thresholds are being approached or exceeded

• clear conditions for developers that require concrete actions if thresholds are crossed

• transparency and trust in how the decisions are being made.

Clearly, the law and associated planning processes must consider the accumulating damage stressing the natural world. Otherwise, we may reach irreversible tipping points without even realising it.

Read more: World-first mining standard must protect people and hold powerful companies to account

– ref. A major coal mine expansion was knocked back today, but where’s the line in the sand? – https://theconversation.com/a-major-coal-mine-expansion-was-knocked-back-today-but-wheres-the-line-in-the-sand-154173

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pete Dupen, PhD Student, University of Technology Sydney

An independent expert panel today rejected a proposal to expand the operations of the Dendrobium coal mine under Sydney’s drinking water catchment. This is a significant and welcome decision. However, flawed environmental laws that enabled the proposal to get so far must be overhauled.

The mine’s proponents had been seeking to extract 78 million additional tonnes of coal out to 2048. The New South Wales Department of Planning, Industry and Environment (DPIE) had recommended the mine be approved. The backing came despite grave concerns over the mine’s impact on drinking water supplies.

We are experts in environmental regulation and one of us, Pete Dupen, is a former mining manager for the state government agency WaterNSW. Our research shows the damage mining causes to Sydney’s water supplies is unsustainable, and regulation in Australia has largely failed to set firm limits on cumulative damage to the environment.

The problem is rife in both state and federal laws, and must urgently be addressed.

‘Unacceptable’ damage

NSW’s Independent Planning Commission (IPC) was tasked with assessing the Dendrobium mine proposal due to the high number of objections received.

The multinational company that owns the mine, South32, wanted to extend underground longwall mining at the operation until 2048.

Coal from Dendrobium, located west of Wollongong, is used in steel-making in Australia and overseas. South32 argued the expansion would deliver a net economic benefit of A$2.8 billion.

Read more: Be worried when fossil fuel lobbyists support current environmental laws

The extension would have allowed 78 million tonnes of coal to be extracted from two new areas comprising 21 “long wall” panels, 18 of which would have been more than 300 metres wide.

The panels would have been dug out from beneath a so-called “Special Area” – land where, under law, stored water must be protected and ecological integrity maintained. The area covered by the proposed expansion supplies drinking water to much of Greater Sydney.

In its verdict released on Friday, the IPC said the project would cause “unacceptable” damage and should be refused.

Among the reasons for the decision were:

• the risk of significant “subsidence” or sinking of the ground’s surface resulting from the longwall mine design. This would degrade 25 watercourses and swamps

• potentially significant surface water losses into the groundwater system, damaging ecological processes and contribute to increased concentrations of metals in drinking water

• the impact of past and existing longwall mining in the catchment, including the (as yet unquantified) loss of surface water flows from some sections of rivers and streams

• uncertainty around managing mine water inflow (surface waters permanently diverted underground) after mine closure.

No line in the sand

Thankfully in this case, the IPC took into account cumulative damage to water supplies when making its decision. But as precedent shows, that consideration is not a given.

Australian laws tend to focus on the impacts of individual projects in isolation. Crucially, they fail to use clear thresholds of unacceptable cumulative environmental impact – a line in the sand, beyond which damage will not be tolerated.

The failing is reflected in the recommendation by NSW planning officials that the Dendrobium extension be approved. If cumulative damage was properly considered earlier, the proposal would have been scuppered years ago.

Climate change and drought have crippled urban water supplies in recent years. Yet underground coal mines have been allowed to eat away at Sydney’s water catchments, Pac-Man like, for decades.

Our research shows existing coal mines in the catchments of Sydney’s “Metropolitan Special Area” have, or will, divert 450 billion litres of drinking water into underground fractures. That’s almost as much water as is contained in Sydney Harbour.

A NSW government-appointed expert panel recently examined the risk mining activities posed to the water quantity in Greater Sydney’s water catchments. Among its recommendations was an interagency taskforce to determine how much water loss due to mining was acceptable.

Yet even as the IPC assessed the Dendrobium proposal, this question had not yet been answered. This is despite the NSW government in April last year accepting all 50 of the panel’s recommendations.

The draft conditions for the expansion, set by DPIE, would not have addressed cumulative impacts before approval was granted.

Several years ago, WaterNSW developed cumulative impact criteria to be applied to mining developments before approval. But the document remains a draft and has not been published, for reasons unknown.

A national problem

The problems we raise are not isolated to NSW environment law. At a federal level, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act needs an urgent overhaul.

The Morrison government last week released an independent review of the laws by Professor Graeme Samuel. Among the report’s many scathing criticisms were that “cumulative impacts on the environment are not systematically considered”.

Samuel said Commonwealth environment authorities assess development proposals only when they meet certain criteria.

Read more: A major report excoriated Australia’s environment laws. Sussan Ley’s response is confused and risky

Even when the Commonwealth does scrutinise a proposal, decisions are made only on a project-by-project basis, rather than as part of an “integrated system of environmental management that ensure cumulative impacts are well managed”, Samuel said.

Weaknesses in Australian federal and state laws, and enforcement, often means cumulative effects are not considered on paper or in practice.

For example, the Victorian Auditor-General recently found measures designed to mitigate the cumulative effect of residential developments on Melbourne’s urban fringe were not being implemented.

Shoring up our drinking water

Few environmental problems are more pressing than permanent impacts on a major city’s water supply. But protecting water resources from cumulative harm requires the following

• well-defined thresholds, set with rational justification and able to be changed as new information arises

• robust measurements to assess if thresholds are being approached or exceeded

• clear conditions for developers that require concrete actions if thresholds are crossed

• transparency and trust in how the decisions are being made.

Clearly, the law and associated planning processes must consider the accumulating damage stressing the natural world. Otherwise, we may reach irreversible tipping points without even realising it.

Read more: World-first mining standard must protect people and hold powerful companies to account

– ref. Coal mine expansion refused over water concerns, but where’s the line in the sand? – https://theconversation.com/coal-mine-expansion-refused-over-water-concerns-but-wheres-the-line-in-the-sand-154173

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By DB Subedi, Postdoctoral research fellow, University of New England

Myanmar has once again returned to military rule, with a year-long state of emergency declared by the army.

When military dictators ruled Myanmar from 1962 to 2010, they were able to maintain tight control over the people through the country’s extensive intelligence apparatus and harsh tactics such as imprisonment, torture and mass killings. As a result, Myanmar’s people lived in virtual silence for decades.

After a decade-long political transition that brought Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) to power, Myanmar is now a changed place. What used to be a pariah state is increasingly connected to the world. Civil society has begun to be established and public awareness about freedom, democracy, human rights and development has increased drastically.

Given this, many are closely watching how people will react to the military taking back control of the country and tossing aside a government that won a massive popular mandate only a few months ago.

Already, we are seeing signs of non-violent protests and civil disobedience against the coup, particularly on social media. At least one public protest has also been reported in Myanmar’s second-biggest city. For the military, maintaining “social control” may not be as easy as it was before.

More internet access, but surveillance continues

The internet and social media undoubtedly shape social interactions and everyday life today in Myanmar — a massive change from even just a decade ago when SIM cards for mobile phones cost over US$1,000.

Today, around 90% of Myanmar’s 54 million people have access to a phone with internet connectivity, and according to one estimate, nearly 22 million people use Facebook as their primary source of online news and information.

However, the ubiquity of social media has not guaranteed freedom of expression. In fact, in recent years, it has gotten worse.

Under the country’s former dictatorship, a vast intelligence apparatus underpinned the military’s rule. Indeed, the country could best be described as an “intelligence state”.

This did not substantively change when Suu Kyi came to power as the country’s de facto leader in 2016.

The dramatic increase in the use of mobile phones and the internet, for instance, allowed the authorities to use widespread digital surveillance to maintain social control. And in 2018, the president’s office formed a team of social media monitors, whose work some opponents have questioned.

The NLD also did not liberalise the media. In fact, media freedom surprisingly was not a priority for the party. Journalists have been jailed, arrested and harassed in recent years, and hundreds of news sites have been blocked, ostensibly for spreading “fake news”.

Moreover, the state maintains control over the leading broadcasters and publications and a monopoly on telecommunications.

Given this, the military leaders were quick to order local telecom firms to temporarily block Facebook following the coup, while the Myanmar state broadcaster, Myanmar Radio and Television (MRTV), has beamed out military propaganda for the first time in years.

Laws cracking down on free speech since 2010

In addition, the military already has in place numerous laws to enforce social control. For example, the controversial Telecommunications Law, passed in 2013, empowers the government to temporarily suspend and restrict telecommunication services and collect data from people.

It also makes defamation a criminal offence, which has been used numerous times in recent years for criticising or insulting the government and military. One youth activist described the chill this has caused:

It makes us censor ourselves. It creates fear in the youth community. We are still living in fear.

Those wishing to hold an assembly or protest must also adhere to the Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession Law, passed in 2011. Demonstrators have been arrested for failing to comply with the law or violating the vaguely phrased limits placed on speech by the statute.

Section 505(b) of the penal code is another overly broad law that prohibits speech that may cause “fear or alarm in the public” and lead others to “upset public tranquillity”. The law has long been used to curtail speech critical of the government. Even monks holding sit-in protests have been targeted.

Public reactions so far: symbolic and spontaneous

Despite these draconian laws and state repression, young people have embraced nonviolent movements and campaigns to challenge the military’s rule in the past.

And public defiance is already being seen following this week’s coup. For instance, people have honked car horns and banged pots and pans to “drive out” the military in the same way they scare evil spirits from their homes.

Several organisations are releasing statements on social media condemning the coup, while many NLD supporters are turning their Facebook profiles black or replacing them with a red portrait of Suu Kyi.

Civil disobedience and boycotts are also gathering steam. Health workers at 70 hospitals and medical departments boycotted work this week, while others are tweeting images of red ribbons, the campaign’s symbol of resistance.

And in the capital, about 70 recently elected lawmakers convened a symbolic opening of the new parliament at a government guesthouse.

The huge Myanmar diaspora can also become a powerful resistance group worldwide. This week, migrant workers protested against the coup in Thailand, chanting “Shame on you, dictator”“. Similar protests have taken place in Japan, Australia and Canada.

The diaspora was effective in the past in bringing visibility to the harsh rule of the dictatorship in Myanmar and helping rally global support behind Suu Kyi.

Although the military rulers violently cracked down on nonviolent protests on many occasions in the past, including the famous Saffron Revolution of 2007, they failed to crush the people’s aspirations for democracy and justice.

As the public defiance this week illustrates, the people of Myanmar are refusing to be silenced again. Because their actions appear to be spontaneous, however, it remains to be seen how effective a longer-term resistance campaign will be in the face of the state’s sophisticated surveillance apparatus.

This will require organisation and leadership on the ground. And with the detention of Suu Kyi, as well as scores of other activists, lawmakers and other NLD officials, the opposition may struggle to replace the central command needed to lead protesters in this way.

The international community will also need to continue to support the pro-democracy activists and put pressure on the military leaders, particularly as the initial outrage over the coup subsides.

The public has demonstrated its resilience before. They’ll need to show bravery and determination again to make the military feel vulnerable in its claims of legitimate rule.

– ref. Myanmar’s military has used surveillance, draconian laws and fear to stifle dissent before. Will it work again? – https://theconversation.com/myanmars-military-has-used-surveillance-draconian-laws-and-fear-to-stifle-dissent-before-will-it-work-again-154474

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

Relaxing border restrictions for travellers from low COVID-19 risk countries would increase the risk of community cases in New Zealand by around 25%, says an article published today in the New Zealand Medical Journal.

This might not sound like a big increase in risk, but it means breaches like the one at the Pullman Hotel in Auckland last month will occur 25% more frequently.

This increases the chance of a community outbreak and the possibility that an alert level change would be needed to contain it.

With new more transmissible variants and more COVID-19 cases worldwide than ever before, this adds up to a significant risk.

Risk from isolation facilities

The work in the article builds on a mathematical model (originally developed by our team) to estimate the chances of community cases arising from our managed isolation facilities.

Read more: If we’re to defend our borders from the pandemic, what do we mean by borders?

There is a small risk an infected traveller might arrive in managed isolation, return two negative tests, but be released after 14 days while still infectious.

The gold-standard nasal swab PCR test is good, but it can miss cases, especially in people who are early or late in the course of their infections.

So far, we haven’t seen this happen in New Zealand’s managed isolation system even though more than 100,000 people have passed through.

Risk from new arrivals

Instead, New Zealand’s problems in managed isolation have been caused by infected arrivals who go on to infect other guests or workers in the facility. Someone who picked up an infection in the last few days of their stay would leave the facility at their most infectious.

This is what happened last week at the Pullman, where during their stay several people were infected with the B.1.351 variant first identified in South Africa. We were lucky this incident didn’t spark a community outbreak.

Right now, we believe we need to do everything we can to reduce the risk of this type of breach. Otherwise another lockdown will become an inevitability.

The authors of the study claim the recent requirement for a pre-departure test will mitigate this risk. But pre-departure tests are not perfect and many travellers have already been taking these because they were required to by their airline or the country through which they transited. This alone is not enough.

We need the vaccinations

Once vaccines start to be more widely available, cases worldwide should start to drop to levels where a risk analysis like the one laid out in this new article will become useful. This will need to be accompanied by high vaccination rates here in New Zealand so our population is protected against the virus.

But we would not recommend using this recent risk analysis because it uses COVID-19 case numbers and fatality rates to estimate how prevalent the virus is in different countries.

This is not a reliable approach because it tells us how prevalent COVID-19 was two to three weeks ago, and by taking a country-wide average it could mask major variations within a country.

If we had been using this methodology last winter, Melbourne’s outbreak in June may well have spread here by the time border restrictions were brought back.

Instead, it would be better to use other indicators that give a more up-to-date and precise picture of COVID-19 hotspots. These would need to include how reliable a country’s COVID surveillance system was.

It will also be crucial to recognise the risk of people catching COVID-19 on their journey to New Zealand.

In-flight passenger transmission

The new study uses a very low estimate of the risk of in-flight transmission, whereas we know it is possible for a significant number of passengers to get infected on a long-haul flight.

People travelling from a low-prevalence country will often be on the same plane as others from high-prevalence countries, and this means there is a significant infection risk for everyone on the flight.

Many of us with friends and family across the Tasman have been looking forward to a travel bubble with Australia. Air New Zealand — which helped fund this new study — would also like to see an increased flow of travellers.

Read more: Frontline border workers to be vaccinated first as New Zealand approves Pfizer vaccine

At the moment, we could allow visitors from Australia to enter with little extra risk as there are very few cases in the community there.

But — and it’s a big but — a travel bubble with Australia would free up places in managed isolation that might be filled by travellers from higher-risk countries. This would increase the chances of a serious border breach.

Right now, a travel bubble with Australia would need to be accompanied by a reduction in managed isolation capacity to not increase the risks of a community outbreak here in New Zealand.

It makes sense to have a risk-based border system based on the current rate of COVID-19 in different countries and we will need a framework of this type to relax border restrictions once the world begins to emerge from the pandemic.

But COVID-19 is more prevalent now than at almost any point in the past. At the moment, we need to do everything we can to reduce the risk of importing COVID-19 into the community, rather than take on additional risk.

As more dangerous variants of COVID-19 emerge, many other countries are tightening their border restrictions not relaxing them.

– ref. It’s still too soon for NZ to relax COVID-19 border restrictions for travellers from low-risk countries – https://theconversation.com/its-still-too-soon-for-nz-to-relax-covid-19-border-restrictions-for-travellers-from-low-risk-countries-154643

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nick Wilson, Professor of Public Health, University of Otago

The world must decide what needs to change to prevent events like the COVID-19 pandemic happening again, according to the former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark.

Currently co-leading an independent international review of the global response, the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, Clark wryly described the job as something of a “hospital pass”.

The review’s full recommendations are due in May, but she spoke about the panel’s interim report at the University of Otago Public Health Summer School on February 1. Clark painted a grim picture of the findings to date, including:

• pre-existing shortcomings in pandemic preparedness

• a lack of appetite by nations to comply with the basic provisions of the International Health Regulations

• no mechanisms for co-operation or financing when a crisis hits

• key metrics such as the Global Health Security Index possibly giving false reassurances due to leadership and political factors.

‘One failure leading to another’

The review committee is developing an authoritative chronology of COVID-19. It’s a timeline of virus spread, knowledge acquisition, recommendation sharing and actions taken. Clark said this “will speak for itself” about the deadly delays the world suffered.

The big questions arising from that chronology are:

• why it took a month and two meetings for the WHO’s Emergency Committee to declare a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) — in a densely interconnected world where hours may be the difference between catastrophic spread and containment

• why travel restrictions were specifically recommended against at that time, seeming to undercut the gravity of the PHEIC declaration

• why the world stood around like “stunned mullets” while disaster unfolded.

The New York Times described the review committee’s interim report as a “bleak recounting” of “one failure leading to another” and a “slow, cumbersome pandemic alert system” with “obstructive responses of national governments”.

Global preparedness vital

The substance of Clark’s Otago University address hinted that the review’s final recommendations might include the need to:

• reduce global barriers to a precautionary approach

• fund and power the WHO at levels matching the role the world expects of it

• overcome geopolitical tensions to empower the UN Security Council to declare a pandemic threat to global security and mobilise appropriate resources

• ensure a revamped pandemic alert system is fit for purpose

• enhance the speed of PHEIC declarations when appropriate.

We agree strongly with this final point. We note that WeChat searches for “SARS” spiked on December 1 2019 and there was most likely a positive “SARS coronavirus” laboratory report in Wuhan on December 30 2019.

What if COVID-19 had been worse?

Given that the International Health Regulations specifically identify SARS coronaviruses as pathogens of major concern to be reported within 24 hours, a PHEIC should arguably have been declared there and then.

Wuhan is a huge city, multiple cases were apparent, and we already knew SARS can spread from person to person. Responses were simply too small and too slow.

Furthermore, initial and ongoing advice by the WHO (such as no travel restrictions), though possibly in line with evidence at the time for some countries, was completely inappropriate for others, such as small island nations.

If SARS-CoV-2 had the fatality risk of SARS-CoV-1 (around 10%) or higher, it would have turned the disaster of the COVID-19 pandemic into a catastrophic global threat. It could have completely overwhelmed human systems and killed tens or hundreds of millions of people. We simply cannot allow such a threat to ever take hold.

We argue that the most important future distinction will be between declaring a PHEIC with, or without, accompanying global catastrophic biological risk (GCBR).

Early reports put the case fatality risk of COVID-19 at several percent. This was later downgraded. But had it been that high, far more stringent measures would have been justified to contain the virus. An initial overreaction can always be swiftly downgraded as information comes to light, but the reverse is not possible.

No one can go it alone

If initial reports indicate some future emerging highly contagious respiratory pathogen has a case fatality risk of 10, 20 or 50%, then PHEIC with GCBR potential must be declared, without any mitigating language about cautious approaches or unrestricted travel.

As Helen Clark asserted, no measures will succeed unless the world learns to co-operate on threats that affect us all. The whole point of creating global institutions such as the UN and WHO was to deal with issues that no single country can deal with themselves.

If we do not use these institutions to govern the response when something threatens “the health of everyone in the entire world”, Clark asked, then when would we ever defer to them?

Countries must stop trying to go it alone. There is a strong case for multilateralism and the world needs to remove the obstacles to a precautionary approach. It should be of major concern that future pandemics may be bigger. Our responses simply must be better and faster.

– ref. No more acting like ‘stunned mullets’ — bigger, better, faster responses needed to meet future bio-threats – https://theconversation.com/no-more-acting-like-stunned-mullets-bigger-better-faster-responses-needed-to-meet-future-bio-threats-154719

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jeffrey Shima, Professor of Ecology, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

At night on any one of hundreds of coral reefs across the tropical Pacific, larval fish just below the sea surface are gambling on their chances of survival.

Our latest research shows the brightness of the Moon could play a major role in that struggle for survival by affecting the availability of prey and keeping predators away.

Understanding how that works could help in fisheries management, specifically the prediction of changes to harvested fish stocks that allow us to anticipate how many adult fish can be taken without destabilising the fishery.

Many fish populations experience boom-and-bust cycles largely because parents routinely produce millions of offspring that have very low, but fluctuating, survival rates.

The large number of larval fish that are produced means any environmental conditions — for example, increased nutrients — that improve survival odds even only marginally can lead to a big influx in the number of surviving offspring.

When the Sun goes down

In the past we failed to take into account the influences the night may have on fish development.

In our research we found the daily growth rates of the larvae of sixbar wrasse (Thalassoma hardwicke) around the island of Mo’orea, in French Polynesia, are strongly linked to phases of the Moon.

Read more: The viral ‘Wellerman’ sea shanty is also a window into the remarkable cross-cultural whaling history of Aotearoa New Zealand

Their growth appears to be maximised when the first half of the night is dark and the second half of the night is bright.

Cloudy nights obscure the Moon, and thus allowed us to check our models by contrasting growth on cloudy versus clear nights, which confirmed the effect of moonlight on growth of these fish.

Phases of the Moon

We found that on the best nights of the lunar month for sixbars, around the last Quarter Moon when the Moon rises around midnight, larval fish grew about 0.012mm a day more than average.

But on the worst nights, around the first Quarter Moon when the Moon is overhead at sunset and sets around midnight, they grew about 0.014mm a day less than average.

For a typical larval sixbar of 37.5 days old, that means its growth is 24% more on the best night than on the worst one. This is important, as growth is inextricably linked to survival and ultimately fisheries productivity.

We think the Moon affects larval growth in this way because of how it changes the movements of deeper-dwelling animals, those that migrate into shallow water each night to hunt for food under the cover of darkness.

Zooplankton — potential prey for larval sixbars — respond quickly to the arrival of darkness, and move into the surface water to supplement the diets of sixbars.

Micronekton, such as lanternfishes, which hunt larval fishes, may take much longer to reach surface waters and seek out their prey, due to their migration from much deeper depths.

As a consequence, prey availability for sixbars in surface waters may be hindered by early nocturnal brightness while the arrival of predators may be impeded by late nocturnal brightness.

Thus, larval fish grow best when their predators are absent but their prey are abundant — around the last Quarter Moon.

In contrast, around the first Quarter Moon, prey are suppressed but predators are not, leading to the slowest growth.

During the New Moon, when the surface waters remain dark throughout the night, influxes of both prey and predators may be high, with the latter preventing the larval fish from enjoying the increased numbers of prey.

On the other hand, during the Full Moon, when surface waters are well-lit, the movement of prey and predators may be suppressed, reducing the risk to the fish but also eliminating their food.

Impact on fishing

More research is needed to quantify these lunar effects on other marine populations. But our findings to date are good news for those working to strengthen fisheries management, given that phases of the Moon are predictable and cloud cover that can modify moonlight is being measured by satellites.

This makes the incorporation of moonlight into existing fisheries management models relatively simple.

We think this will have implications around the world, not just in the tropics. This is because the nightly upward movements of deep-water animals is ubiquitous — it is the largest mass migration of biomass on the planet, and it happens everywhere.

The suppressive effect of moonlight on this movement of potential predators and prey is also a global phenomenon.

We evaluated effects of the Moon on growth of larval temperate fish in an earlier study and found a similar effect (moonlight enhanced growth).

Read more: Coral reefs: climate change and pesticides could conspire to crash fish populations

The effect is stronger and more nuanced in our latest study, most likely because the waters in the tropics are comparatively clear.

Our findings also hint that other factors which affect night-time illumination of the sea may disrupt marine ecosystems. This includes the reflection of artificial lights from coastal cities, suspended sediments in the water column, and changes in cloud cover due to climate change.

In the future, we may be able to harness this extra information to help forecast fish population change to better guide the management and conservation of fisheries around the world.

– ref. Under the moonlight: a little light and shade helps larval fish to grow at night – https://theconversation.com/under-the-moonlight-a-little-light-and-shade-helps-larval-fish-to-grow-at-night-153192

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dominic O’Sullivan, Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences, Auckland University of Technology, and Associate Professor of Political Science, Charles Sturt University

The recent controversy over a decision by the Tauranga City Council to establish a Māori ward reminds us that arguments about Māori political representation are nothing new.

In this latest case, the Hobson’s Pledge lobby group helped organise a petition to overturn the council decision. It would have created an electoral district (or ward) where only those on the Māori parliamentary electoral roll could vote for the representatives.

By the end of January the petition had achieved enough support to force a referendum under rules set out in the Local Government Act 2002.

These rules allow councils to create new wards. But when these new wards are for voters on the Māori parliamentary electoral roll, citizens can petition the council to have the decision overturned by referendum.

Council decisions can’t be overturned like this in any other circumstances. Minister of Local Government Nanaia Mahuta called it “fundamentally unfair”.

As Waitangi Day on February 6 approached, Mahuta announced proposed law changes that would remove the process for overturning such decisions and therefore make guaranteed Māori representation more likely. This would bring councils into line with central government where Māori seats in parliament have given Māori a distinctive political voice since 1867.

Room for Māori to be Māori

Hobson’s Pledge takes its name from New Zealand’s first governor, William Hobson, who signed the Treaty of Waitangi on behalf of the crown. After signing, Hobson greeted each of the chiefs with the words “he iwi tahi tatau”.

Hobson’s Pledge translates this phrase as “we are one people”, to support the argument that New Zealand should be a politically homogeneous state. It shouldn’t separate “ratepayers into ‘Maori’ and the ‘rest of us’”. Unity is the product of sameness.

However, political homegeneity inevitably also means cultural homogeneity. There would be no room for Māori to be Māori.

While the treaty doesn’t specify distinctive representation, it does help give effect to the rights and privileges of citizenship the agreement promised.

In turn, this helps Māori ensure council decisions uphold the rights of rangatiratanga — the Māori right to authority over their own affairs — that the treaty also promised.

Since 2002, 24 councils have voted to establish Māori wards but referendums have overturned many of those decisions. At the next local government elections in 2022 there will (so far) be nine councils that elect members from Māori wards.

In the absence of Māori wards, Māori citizens vote as part of the general population. But their distinctive concerns are often obscured and subsumed by those of the non-Māori majority.

Read more: Explainer: the significance of the Treaty of Waitangi

The tyranny of the majority

The arguments for and against distinctive Māori representation are well rehearsed. On the one hand, “one person, one vote of equal value” demands that political rights be expressed in identical fashion.

Equality doesn’t allow for difference. It doesn’t matter if other voters’ racism stops Māori being elected, or if other voters just don’t share culturally framed Māori views of what councils should achieve. Democracy requires the “tyranny of the majority” to prevail.

On the other hand, democracy developed precisely because people bring different values and perspectives to public life. Culture and colonial experiences influence people’s aspirations. They influence what people expect politics to achieve.

Read more: The Treaty of Waitangi and its influence on identity politics in New Zealand

Democracy’s potential is to mediate, not to suppress these different perspectives. All people should be able to say they have had fair opportunities to influence the society in which they live. In this sense, democracy’s potential is to assure each person a voice rather than just a vote of equal value.

As my book Sharing the Sovereign: Indigenous Peoples, Recognition, Treaties and the State argues, substantive political voice is a right of self-determination. It means all people have a share in the political authority of the state, which helps democracy work better for everybody.

A worldwide movement

Self-determination is a political right that belongs to all people, not just to ethnic majorities or to the descendants of settler populations. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), which John Key’s government accepted as aspirationally significant, defines it like this:

Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and strengthen their distinct political, legal, economic, social and cultural institutions, while retaining their right to participate fully, if they so choose, in the political, economic, social and cultural life of the State.

Indigenous peoples’ active participation in public life is also a matter of important public debate in Australia and Canada.

In Australia, successive public opinion polls have supported an Indigenous aspiration for a constitutionally entrenched elected body to act as a “voice to parliament”. In British Columbia, the UNDRIP is required to be implemented by law.

Each case has lessons for New Zealand, just as the New Zealand experience is informing debates overseas — especially in Victoria, Queensland and the Northern Territory where treaty negotiations are beginning.

The right to a political voice

New Zealand is not an international outlier in saying it wants to strengthen Indigenous participation in public life. However, nobody participates as an abstract being devoid of culture and uninfluenced by political experiences like colonialism.

The Treaty of Waitangi and the UNDRIP imagine non-colonial societies. That requires a substantive political voice, not through other people’s tolerance, but as a matter of right.

Read more: Can colonialism be reversed? The UN’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples provides some answers

Democracy is strengthened if Māori candidates for public office can present themselves to Māori voters and be evaluated by Māori voters, in ways that make cultural sense and are responsive to the particular circumstances of prior occupancy, colonisation and culture.

There is still the question of whether distinctive representation should be a right of all Māori who want it, or just those who descend from the particular local government region (mana whenua). Also, should the choice to vote on the Māori parliamentary electoral roll automatically constitute a choice to vote on a Māori local government roll?

But from now on these points can be debated with the knowledge it won’t be possible for non-Māori voters to decide Māori can’t have a distinctive voice.

– ref. Guaranteed Māori representation in local government is about self-determination — and it’s good for democracy – https://theconversation.com/guaranteed-maori-representation-in-local-government-is-about-self-determination-and-its-good-for-democracy-154538

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Archa Fox, Associate Professor and ARC Future Fellow, University of Western Australia

The first mRNA vaccines approved for use in humans — the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines — are being rolled out around the world.

These vaccines deliver mRNA, coated in lipid (fat), into cells. Once inside, your body uses instructions in the mRNA to make SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins. The immune response protects around 95% of people vaccinated with either vaccine from developing COVID-19.

Such mRNA vaccines have many benefits. They are quick to design, so once the manufacturing platform is set up, mRNA vaccines can be designed to target different viruses, or variants, very quickly. The vaccine manufacturing is also fully synthetic, and doesn’t rely on living cells like chicken eggs, or cultured cell lines. So this technology is here to stay.

However, there are still issues we need to improve on to help make mRNA vaccines become more practical and affordable for the entire world, not just first-world countries. Here are four areas mRNA vaccine researchers are working on.

1. How to make them more stable at higher temperatures

We know mRNA and its lipid coat is relatively unstable in a fridge or at room temperature. That’s because RNA is more sensitive than DNA to enzymes in the environment that will degrade it.

To overcome this, researchers are working on testing what happens when different types of additives are included, hoping they will extend the vaccines’ shelf life. These additives have been used in vaccines before and include, for example, small amounts of common sugars.

Another approach is to freeze-dry mRNA vaccines into a powder for storage. The idea is to then add water to “reconstitute” the vaccine powder before injection. California-based company Arcturus is trialling this strategy in a phase III clinical trial in Singapore.

CureVac, which is also developing an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, has already overcome some of these challenges. It has produced a vaccine stable for three months at fridge temperature.

Read more: How mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna work, why they’re a breakthrough and why they need to be kept so cold

2. How to reduce the amount of vaccine in each shot

The current mRNA vaccine doses range from 30 micrograms (Pfizer/BioNTech) to 100 micrograms (Moderna). In phase I clinical trials, lower doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine were also active.

Could we go lower than this? CureVac has developed a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine with a dose of 12 micrograms through a combination of innovations in mRNA sequence and lipid formulations. However, the details of this remain proprietary.

Self-amplifying mRNA is another approach to reduce vaccine doses. Self-amplifying mRNA is engineered to make more copies of itself once delivered into cells. This means only a small initial dose is needed.

Researchers at Imperial College London and Arcturus are using this method to develop COVID-19 vaccines, although trials have only recently completed phase I stage.

While more research will be needed to understand self-amplifying mRNA vaccines, this could reduce costs, as less material is needed.

Read more: Not sure about the Pfizer vaccine, now it’s been approved in Australia? You can scratch these 4 concerns straight off your list

3. How to switch from two doses to one

Current mRNA COVID-19 vaccines need “boosting”. This is where the first injection primes the immune system, then a second one, three to four weeks later, boosts the immune response.

It would be much simpler if a single shot could give the same efficacy. And if COVID-19 remains with us, in the future we will need to boost the immune response regularly, such as with yearly flu vaccines.

In this case, a once-a-year booster shot will be a single injection, rather than the current strategy.

Read more: Why it takes 2 shots to make mRNA vaccines do their antibody-creating best – and what the data shows on delaying the booster dose

Again, self-amplifying mRNA may be useful. Arcturus announced encouraging results from a single injection of a self-amplifying mRNA vaccine.

In research involving mice, posted online but not yet formally published in a journal, a single injection of a self-amplifying mRNA vaccine showed a robust immune response.

Another approach was developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for protein vaccines. This uses micro-spheres of polymer that can release the vaccine into the body at day one and day 21. This could “boost” in a single injection. A similar micro-sphere approach could be used with mRNA vaccines.

4. How to keep ahead of viral variants and have boosters ready

We know mRNA vaccine technology is well suited to rapidly responding to emerging viral variants. That’s because the chemical and physical properties of mRNA remain the same, even with small sequence changes required to match viral mutants. This means making modified mRNA vaccines for mutants is quick and simple.

The main hurdle for a varied sequence will be regulatory approval. However, in a recent interview, the US Food and Drug Administration suggested mRNA vaccines against mutated versions may be accepted with a small clinical trial (or no trials for future mutations). We don’t know if Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration will take a similar approach.

– ref. 4 things about mRNA COVID vaccines researchers still want to find out – https://theconversation.com/4-things-about-mrna-covid-vaccines-researchers-still-want-to-find-out-154160

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joe Fontaine, Lecturer, Environmental and Conservation Science, Murdoch University

February has already been a bad month for Perth. Bushfire has destroyed 81 homes and burned more than 10,000 hectares northeast of the city. Residents in the midst of a COVID-19 lockdown were told to abandon their homes and seek shelter as the bushfire raged.

The disaster calls to mind the unprecedented Black Summer fires that devastated eastern Australia last summer. But the tragedies are very different beasts.

Obviously, the Black Summer fires were much more widespread, prolonged and lethal than what Western Australia is experiencing. The east coast fires were largely triggered by lightning, while that’s not thought to be the case in the Perth fire. Wind and temperature also played different roles in the two disasters.

So let’s examine the drivers of the Perth fire, and consider what the rest of Australia can learn as we face a future of worsening bushfires.

Anatomy of a fire

The fire was first reported at noon on Monday near the town of Wooroloo, on Perth’s fringe. Authorities don’t yet know how it began, but say “no criminality” has been identified.

The absence of lightning at the time of ignition, and the proximity to residential areas, suggests the fire was accidentally caused by humans. The location of the fire near homes also meant it destroyed property far more quickly than if had begun in a remote area.

Fire science breaks fire behaviour into three main components: fuels, topography and weather. And of course, an ignition is needed to set it off.

The bushfire started in an area of large, privately owned blocks of land. This area mostly consists of scattered trees in grassy paddocks which, in summer, are dry and burn easily. Fences and trees then ignite and winds carry embers forward, starting spot fires.

Read more: Underinsurance is entrenching poverty as the vulnerable are hit hardest by disasters

The land area now burning is one of the most hilly parts around Perth. Fire spreads faster uphill, and the slopes redirect winds, adding more complexity to fire suppression. The topography and location of the fire on private properties also made fire-fighting access difficult.

Weather played a major role. The fire started during one of Perth’s typical summer easterly wind events, involving strong gusts, high temperatures and low relative humidity. Most bushfires that burn out of control near Perth begin during these events.

To make matters worse, a tropical low tracking down Australia’s west coast means the windy conditions are expected to last up to six days – longer than the typical two to three days. This presents a major challenge for emergency response personnel.

The areas burning today are well known for their bushfire risk. In 2009, a fire outside the town of Toodyay destroyed 38 homes under similar weather conditions.

How WA differs to the east coast

Along Australia’s east coast, the bushfire season can start as early spring and in some parts, extend into autumn. Last summer’s horrific conditions were a combination of long-term drought and an intensely hot, dry spring. In contrast, almost all bushfires in southwestern Australia have historically occurred in the dry summer period.

Western Australia has more pronounced seasonal rainfall than the eastern states. In particular, the southwest corner of Australia has a Mediterranean-like climate. Every summer is dry, increasing the bushfire risk. In contrast, eastern Australia typically has a wet, humid summer with rain spread throughout the year.

Read more: ‘I felt immense grief’: one year on from the bushfires, scientists need mental health support

La Niña conditions have brought much rain to Australia’s east in recent months. Western Australia had some La Niña moisture in November, but winter rain was below-average and the summer has so far been dry.

And as southwestern Australia continues to warm and dry under a changing climate, the period of bushfire risk is now getting longer. That means bushfires in spring and autumn will become more common.

And the shifting climate will bring make bushfires worse both in the west and across Australia. Bushfires may escape more quickly, burn more intensely, resist control and occur over a greater part of the year. Plants will have drier foliage, further increasing bushfire intensity.

Preparing for worse fires

Bushfire is a part of life in Australia and these tragedies will happen again. Fortunately for Perth residents, there have been no fatalities and minimal injuries so far.

Looking ahead in WA, new bushfire knowledge hubs and university-government collaborations will open important new conversations about the future bushfire risk and its management.

But we must continue to improve land-use planning, building codes and mitigation strategies to ensure we’re prepared for worse bushfires under climate change.

Read more: Asking people to prepare for fire is pointless if they can’t afford to do it. It’s time we subsidised fire prevention

– ref. As Perth’s suburbs burn, the rest of Australia watches and learns – https://theconversation.com/as-perths-suburbs-burn-the-rest-of-australia-watches-and-learns-154544

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ping Tian, Honorary Associate, Department of Linguistics, University of Sydney

Early exposure to diverse story characters, including in ethnicity, gender and ability, helps young people develop a strong sense of identity and belonging. It is also crucial in cultivating compassion towards others.

Children from minority backgrounds rarely see themselves reflected in the books they’re exposed to. Research over the past two decades shows the world presented in children’s books is overwhelmingly white, male and middle class.

A 2020 study in four Western Australian childcare centres showed only 18% of books available included non-white characters. Animal characters made up around half the books available and largely led “human” lives, adhering to the values of middle-class Caucasians.

In our recent research of award-winning and shortlisted picture books, we looked at diversity in representations of Indigenous Australians, linguistically and culturally diverse characters, characters from regional or rural Australia, gender, sex and sexually diverse characters, and characters with a disability.

From these, we have compiled a list of recommended picture books that depict each of these five aspects of diversity.

Read more: In 20 years of award-winning picture books, non-white people made up just 12% of main characters

Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander characters

Tom Tom, by Rosemary Sullivan and Dee Huxley (2010), depicts the daily life of a young Aboriginal boy Tom (Tommy) in a fictional Aboriginal community — Lemonade Springs. The community’s landscape, in many ways, resembles the Top End of Australia.

Tom’s 22 cousins and other relatives call him Tom Tom. His day starts with a swim with cousins in the waters of Lemonade Springs, which is covered with budding and blossoming water lilies. The children swing on paperbark branches and splash into the water. Tom Tom walks to Granny Annie’s for lunch and spends the night at Granny May’s. At preschool, he enjoys painting.

Through this picture book, non-Indigenous readers will have a glimpse of the intimate relationship between people and nature and how, in Lemonade Springs, a whole village comes together to raise a child.

Characters from other cultures

That’s not a daffodil! by Elizabeth Honey (2012) is a story about a young boy’s (Tom) relationship with his neighbour, Mr Yilmaz, who comes from Turkey. Together, Tom and Mr Yilmaz plant, nurture and watch a seed grow into a beautiful daffodil.

The author uses the last page of the book to explain that, in Turkish, Mr Yilmaz’s name does not have a dotted “i”, as in the English alphabet, and his name should be pronounced “Yuhlmuz”.

While non-white characters, Mr Yilmaz and his grandchildren, only play supporting roles in the story, the book nevertheless captures the reality of our everyday encounters with neighbours from diverse ethnic backgrounds.

Read more: 5 reasons I always get children picture books for Christmas

Characters from rural Australia

All I Want for Christmas is Rain, by Cori Brooke and Megan Forward (2017), depicts scenery and characters from regional or rural Australia. The story centres on the little girl Jane’s experience of severe drought on the farm.

The story can encourage students’ discussion of sustainability.

In terms of diversity, it is equally important to meet children living in remote and regional areas as it is to see children’s lives in the city.

Gender non-conforming characters

Granny Grommet and Me, by Dianne Wolfer and Karen Blair (2014), is full of beautiful illustrations of the Australian beach and surfing grannies.

Told from the first-person point of view, it documents the narrator’s experiences of going snorkelling, surfing and rockpool swimming with granny and her grommet (amateur surfer) friends.

In an age of parents’ increasing concern about gender stereotyping (blue for boy, pink for girl) of story characters in popular culture, Granny Grommet and Me’s representation of its main character “Me” is uniquely free from such bias.

The main character wears a black wetsuit and a white sunhat and is not named in the book (a potential means of assigning gender).

This gender-neutral representation of the character does not reduce the pleasure of reading this book. And it shows we can minimise attributes that symbolise stereotypes such as clothing, other accessories and naming.

Read more: Teen summer reads: 5 books to help young people understand racism

Characters living with a disability

Boy, by Phil Cummings and Shane Devries (2018), is a story about a boy who is Deaf.

He uses sign language to communicate but people who live in the same village rarely understand him. That is, until he steps into the middle of a war between the king and the dragon that frightens the villagers.

He resolves the conflict using his unique communication style and the villagers resolve to learn to communicate better with him by learning his language.

– ref. Empathy starts early: 5 Australian picture books that celebrate diversity – https://theconversation.com/empathy-starts-early-5-australian-picture-books-that-celebrate-diversity-153629

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

We are hearing an unusual amount from the Reserve Bank this week.

On Tuesday, after its first board meeting for the year, the bank outlined plans to spend another A$100 billion it didn’t have (“created money”), to buy government bonds in order to keep interest rates down – so-called quantitative easing.

On Wednesday Governor Philip Lowe said he expected to keep the closely-watched inter-bank cash rate at its present all-time low of 0.10% for at least another three years.

And on Friday Lowe will give evidence to the parliament’s economics committee in Canberra while in Sydney bank staff release updated forecasts.

Lowe told the press club that while Australia had a long way to go with its recovery, its economy had bounced back earlier and stronger than he expected.

He identified two key reasons. One was Australia’s success in containing the virus.

As is increasingly clear from our experience in Australia and the experience elsewhere around the world, the health of the population and the health of the economy are linked.

The second was spending by Australian governments amounting to 15% of GDP.

It has provided a welcome boost to incomes and jobs and helped front load the recovery by creating incentives for people to bring forward spending.

But there’s no necessary reason to assume these successes will continue.

Lowe is optimistic about household spending, while acknowledging that over the next six months household income is likely to decline as JobKeeper and the JobSeeker extension unwind.

“Normally when income falls, so does consumption,” he said, before adding that “we are not in normal times”.

The extra savings over the past six months and the bigger financial buffers can support future spending – people will have more freedom to spend as restrictions are eased and be more willing to spend as uncertainty recedes.

I’m not as sure.

Household saving ratio

Australian households have indeed been saving an unprecedented proportion of their income, but will they really unwind this and the process of repairing their balance sheets at a time when the global pandemic is far from over and its anyone’s guess when the next one comes.

Health risks aplenty

On the health front, there are reasons to be concerned about Australia’s vaccine rollout strategy, as Steven Hamilton and I outlined this week.

More than 100 million people in 77 countries have already been vaccinated. But none here, not until later this month.

On Thursday the prime minister announced that he had secured an extra 10 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, taking the total to 20 million, to which will be added 53.8 million doses of the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine and 51 million doses of the Novavax vaccine.

Read more: A little ray of sunshine as 2021 economic survey points to brighter times ahead

But to start with the rollout will be slow – only 80,000 Pfizer doses per week.

A slow rollout means a slow recovery. The bank is forecasting an unemployment rate not much better than the one we’ve got by the end of the year.

Economic risks continue

One thing the governor clarified in his address to the press is that he is committed to the present inflation-targeting regime that aims to keep consumer price inflation between 2% and 3% on average over time.

Economists Warwick McKibbin, John Quiggin and I have argued that the bank should instead target growth in nominal gross domestic product, which is easier to identify than inflation and more directly impacts living standards.

Read more: Reserve Bank Governor not for turning. No rate hike until unemployment near 4.5%

It looks as though Lowe doesn’t want to.

How effective our vaccine strategy turns out to be, and how quickly the economy bounces back from pandemic is an open question.

As the governor is increasingly fond of saying, “only time will tell”.

– ref. Vital Signs: We are on the way back, but there are risks at every turn – https://theconversation.com/vital-signs-we-are-on-the-way-back-but-there-are-risks-at-every-turn-154572

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marguerite Johnson, Professor of Classics, University of Newcastle

Rosaleen Norton, or “the witch of Kings Cross,” is finally receiving the attention she deserves. Born in Dunedin in 1917, emigrating with her family to Sydney in 1925, and dying in 1979, Norton was a trailblazing woman and under-appreciated cultural touchstone of 20th century Australia.

A self proclaimed witch, Norton experienced childhood visions. From around the age of 23, she practised trance magic and, later, sex magic in various flats and squats in inner-city Sydney.

Trance magic involved Norton meditating (sometimes with the assistance of various substances, ingested and/or inhaled) and raising her consciousness. The aim was to transcend her physical body and conscious mind to experience higher forms of existence.

Sex magic was developed by the infamous occultist, Aleister Crowley around 1904, and involves a complicated series of sexual rituals designed for a variety of perceived needs (depending on the practitioner), including spiritual awakening.

As an artist, Norton drew and painted her beliefs and the gods, goddesses, and spiritual beings who were central to it. She also lived free from societal expectations. Not only a witch, but openly bisexual, Norton robustly challenged a predominantly Christian Australia. But she was reviled for doing so, attacked by the media for her art, her beliefs, her lifestyle, and sometimes, her appearance. She experienced police surveillance and faced obscenity charges over her art.

Norton defied cultural norms and, though she did not identify as a feminist, was a powerfully unconventional woman. Poor but not without imaginative style, she had distinctive arched eyebrows, sometimes dressed in male attire, and was often photographed wearing all black. With a new film about her life being released next week, it is timely to look at her legacy.

Freedom and creativity

Norton’s story has fascinated me from the age of five, when I began to devour the 1970s tabloid newspapers and magazines that featured her. During those years, Norton had become something of a recluse, rarely appearing in public but graciously agreeing to be interviewed about her life. By this time, the legend of “the witch of Kings Cross” was entrenched. Norton was not averse to it, even donning a pointed hat for photos.

This passionate interest went on to inform my adult life. As a classicist, I have explored Norton’s occult belief system, which embraced the old gods. Beings such as Hecate, an ancient Greek goddess who presided over witches, Lilith, the ancient female demon originating in Mesopotamia, and the Egyptian goddess Isis, were at the heart of Norton’s magical practice.

But the Greek god Pan was at the centre of her pantheon. To the ancient Greeks, Pan was the god of nature, regularly associated with pastureland and its human and animal inhabitants.

Half-man, half-goat, Pan also embodied the sexual drive, the uninhibited urge to copulate. As the “High Priestess at the Altar of Pan”, Norton performed rituals both alone and with members of her inner magical circle in his honour.

In my own research, I have studied witchcraft through the ages and how, especially from Victorian times, it provided an outlet for unconventional women to leverage freedom (and sometimes power) and express their creativity. (Even as a child, I baulked at the media’s determination to cast Norton as a woman to be judged, feared or, worse still, mocked.)

Read more: Toil and trouble: the myth of the witch is no myth at all

As an academic, I extended my research into the worlds of Greece and Rome with a focus on sexual histories and belief systems — and explored Norton’s life through the same lens. Along the way, I acquired enough material to donate a personal archive on Norton to the library at The University of Newcastle.

Norton’s identity as a witch was formed early. As a child, she was drawn to the night, to nature, and to drawing and recording the preternatural world. In an article published in Australasian Post in January 1957, she describes visions from the age of five (a lady in a grey dress, a dragon) and trance states (which she called “Big Things and Little Things”) to capture the experience of her body growing in size as she “floated,” as if in a dream. She also records the appearance of “witch marks” on her left knee when she was seven (in the form of two small, blue dots).

Bored and frustrated by her middle-class life in Lindfield on the North Shore, Norton left home for inner-city Sydney at the age of 17 and never returned. She found employment as an artist model (including a stint modelling for Norman Lindsay), a pavement artist, and as a contributor to the avant-garde publication, Pertinent.

Eventually, she based herself in Kings Cross. There, she was free to explore and develop her beliefs and practices. In the late 1940s, it was where she met one of her companions in life and magic, the poet Gavin Greenlees (1930-1983).

Strands of magic

Norton and Greenlees practised several strands of magic, including trance magic, sex magic, and ceremonies combining and improvising elements from several traditions. These included Kundalini (the feminine, creative force of infinite wisdom that “lives” inside us, usually represented by a snake) and Tantra (encompassing esoteric rituals and practices from Hindu and Buddhist traditions).

Norton explained that she employed these practices to augment her unconscious, inspire and empower her art, and commune with entities on other planes.

Norton’s trance magic, in states of self-hypnosis, was a continuation of her childhood visions and visitations. In correspondence with a psychologist in 1949, she described experiencing deities and projecting her astral body to contact other practitioners in alternative spiritual spheres. The idea, she wrote, was “to induce an abnormal state of consciousness and manifest the results, if any, in drawing”.

Read more: A murky cauldron – modern witchcraft and the spell on Trump

These experiences informed and inspired her art. Norton’s paintings were produced for her own ritual spaces, as well as for exhibitions and publications. In a well-known photograph from the 1950s, Norton is shown crouching at the base of her altar to Pan, replete with a large portrait of the god.

Pan features in many other works. As Norton said in 1957, his “pipes are a symbol of magic and mystery”, while his “horns and hooves stand for natural energies and fleet-footed freedom”.

Norton’s worship of Pan reflected her passion for animals, insects and nature in general. While she did not publicly campaign for animal rights, she was, in some respects, a forerunner of the movement. Regularly the target of outrageous media allegations, she was particularly incensed when asked whether, as a witch, she performed animal sacrifice.

In 1954, 89.4% of the Australian population identified as Christian. Unfortunately for Norton, the ancient Greek god Pan also resembles Christian representations of Satan or the Devil. Indeed with his goat legs, pointed ears, and lascivious face, Pan most likely inspired early Christian images of Satan. Norton was regularly asked whether she was a Satanist. She wasn’t. But, accusations of Satanism haunted her.

Journalists accused her of Devil worship, police occasionally placed her and Greenlees under surveillance, and her private life became fair game. By the 1950s, the tabloid press’ preferred name for Norton — “the witch of Kings Cross” — had stuck. It featured in news stories on her even after her death.

Censorship and court proceedings

Norton’s run-ins with authorities are partly what make her such an important historical figure. Her early exhibitions were subject to media attention and sensationalism, censorship and court proceedings. During an exhibition of her art at Rowden-White Library, University of Melbourne, in 1949, the Vice Squad seized several works deemed to be profane. Norton appeared in court on obscenity charges — the first such case against a woman in Victoria.

While Norton was acquitted, more scandals erupted. Her collaboration with Greenlees on a book titled, The Art of Rosaleen Norton, with poems by Gavin Greenlees, published privately by Walter Glover in 1952, landed Glover and printer, Tonecraft Pty Ltd, in court on charges of producing an obscene publication.

Glover was fined £5 and Tonecraft £1. The book was subject to a customs ban (copies sent to New York were confiscated and burnt by United States Customs) and it became a prohibited import to Australia.

Norton’s Fohat (one of the book’s notorious images) was a representation of her beliefs. The goat, she said, “is a symbol of energy and creativity: the serpent of elemental force and eternity”. As with the images of Pan (and many other artworks), the meaning behind Fohat was misconstrued, deemed obscene and Satanic.

The case of Sir Eugene Goossens

Norton’s practice of sex magic was at the centre of one sensational court case. Her private rituals concerning the practice (including, among other acts, anal and oral sex, and sado-masochism) involved a discrete group of devotees. One of them was the revered composer and conductor Sir Eugene Goossens (1893-1962).

As director of the New South Wales State Conservatorium and chief conductor of the ABC’s Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the English-born Goossens was a cultural and social giant in a still very parochial Australia. Having seen a copy of the infamous book by Norton and Greenlees, Goossens sought out the couple and soon became part of their occult practices and personal lives.

Caught up in their world, Goossens became an unsuspecting target of police surveillance. In March 1956, returning from an overseas trip, he was confronted with officers waiting to search his luggage and subsequently charged with importing prohibited items, allegedly including “indecent works and articles, namely a number of books, prints and photographs, and a quantity of film”.

Goossens was besieged day and night at his home, and newspapers screamed headlines, such as “BIG NAMES IN DEVIL RITE PROBE”.

Goossens’ life and career were ruined. He pleaded guilty to pornography charges in absentia at a hearing in Martin Place Court of Petty Sessions, was fined £100, and returned to the United Kingdom a broken man.

While the media and some biographers of Goossens still tend to blame Norton for contaminating him by inducting him into her unholy cult of sex magic, this could not be further from the truth.

In fact, Goossens came to Australia with significant experience in occult practices, actively seeking out Norton and Greenlees. Personal correspondence from Goossens to Norton reveals his role in mentoring his new friends in more advanced magic, and hints at a network of practitioners in the UK and Europe. Three of the extant letters are signed with Goossens’ magical name, “Djinn”.

Later life

Norton retired from public view during the 1970s, living in a basement flat in Roslyn Garden, with her sister, Cecily Boothman (1905-1991), close by in the same apartment block. Frail, in poor health, but an artist and witch to the end, Norton practised her rituals, painted and communed with animals and nature.

She and Boothman were visited by Greenlees on his days of temporary release from the Alma Mater Nursing Home, Kensington, where he had been sectioned after a lengthy stay at Callan Park Mental Hospital at the age of 25.

At the age of 61, Norton was diagnosed with colon cancer. She died at the Sacred Heart Hospice for the Dying, in Darlinghurst, on 5 December 1979.

Norton has been the subject of biographies by Nevill Drury, a fictionalised account, Pagan, by Inez Baranay, and several plays (including a student production, on which I was dramaturg).

Rare footage also captures her at her rebellious best: ensconced in a Kings Cross cafe, talking about rejecting the ordinary life of wife and mother, the thought of which prompts her to say: “I’d go mad”.

Norton was more than a witch. When we look closer at a woman reviled by the media, we see a groundbreaking bohemian, committed to living freely and authentically, who challenged censorship.

In many ways, she helped to push Australia out of the safety of the Menzies era, into the civilising forces of the sexual revolution and the freedoms it brought.

The Witch of Kings Cross, written and directed by Sonia Bible, will be released on Amazon, iTunes, Vimeo and GooglePlay on 9th February and opens in selected cinemas from February 11.

– ref. Friday essay: why Rosaleen Norton, ‘the witch of Kings Cross’, was a groundbreaking bohemian – https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-why-rosaleen-norton-the-witch-of-kings-cross-was-a-groundbreaking-bohemian-154184