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

A frustrated Scott Morrison has been forced to publicly slap down Craig Kelly, after the Liberal backbencher got into a spectacular spat with Labor frontbencher Tanya Plibersek in Parliament House’s press gallery.

Wednesday morning’s corridor confrontation, in front of the cameras, and Kelly’s continued media blitz defending his advocacy of discredited or unproven alternative COVID treatments, were the last straw for Morrison, who feared Kelly’s behaviour could undermine the vital vaccine rollout due to start within weeks.

Plibersek had been attacking Kelly as a in comments to reporters, when he loomed up behind her.

In their subsequent heated exchange, she told him her mother lived in his electorate of Hughes and “and I don’t want her exposed to people who are not going to be vaccinated because of these crazy conspiracy theories that you’re spreading”.

Morrison had thought Kelly had agreed, when they spoke by phone on Tuesday, to avoid further provocative comments, which have centred in particular on his promotion of hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin.

Kelly was immediately hauled in for what the Prime Minister’s Office described as a dressing down.

This led to his issuing a statement saying, “The Prime Minister reinforced the importance of public confidence in the government’s vaccine strategy.

“I agreed to support the government’s vaccine rollout which has been endorsed by the medical experts.

“I have always sought to support the success of our nation’s public health response during the pandemic.

“I believe the spread of misinformation can damage the success of our public health response during the pandemic.”

In Wednesday’s question time, the opposition’s attempt to pursue the Kelly issue was again frustrated by being ruled out of order.

This meant Morrison did not have a readymade opportunity to distance himself from Kelly, as he had decided he needed to do – after avoiding doing so earlier in the week.

Following question time Morrison made a statement to the House “on indulgence”, declaring he disagreed with Kelly.

“A key principle of our government’s successful response to the pandemic … has been respect for the expert advice, the expert medical advice … and the institutions, those who have the responsibility under our system for providing that advice.”

He said it was true that Kelly’s views “do not align with my views or the views of the advice that has been provided to me by the Chief Medical Officer”.

Morrison said he had made his view very clear to Kelly in their discussion.

The vaccination program was the government’s primary responsibility this year, he said.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration was the authoritative body and it was respected around the world.

“So I can say to Australians – indeed, for the same reason that I and members of this place will take our own children, our own parents, to get that all-important vaccine – that our Therapeutic Goods Administration and the medical advice that guides my government’s policy on the pandemic … is the best in the world”

– ref. Scott Morrison gives Craig Kelly the rounds of the kitchen – https://theconversation.com/scott-morrison-gives-craig-kelly-the-rounds-of-the-kitchen-154574

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

Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe’s message to the nation today through the National Press Club today is that he means it.

He isn’t intending to push up interest rates – he most probably isn’t intending to even think about pushing up interest rates – until 2024, at the earliest.

That’s a full three years from now, at a time when, maybe, inflation will be strong enough to be “sustainably within” the Reserve Bank’s target band.

That’s the new benchmark, adopted by the bank in November.

It replaced an earlier loophole-ridden benchmark of “progress towards” an inflation rate of 2% to 3%, something that could have meant almost anything.

The bank will now need to see actual, sustainable, inflation of 2% to 3%, something those of us wanting some inflation haven’t seen for almost a decade.

Ultra-low rates til unemployment hits 4.5%

After the event I asked him what sort of unemployment rate we would need to see for that to happen. Was it still the 4.5% the bank has identified in the past, or had COVID pushed it up? Might less ambitious progress on unemployment do the trick?

He told he thought not. While it is impossible to be sure, something seemed to have changed internationally over the past ten years meaning it has become much harder to create inflation than it used to be. He doubted whether an unemployment rate above 4.5% could do the trick.

Read more: The Reserve Bank might yet go negative

Lowe told the press club that while unemployment had come down far more quickly than the bank expected when it produced its previous set of forecasts in November, its new forecasts had unemployment slipping only from 6.6% to 6% over the course of this year, and then taking another 18 months to reach 5.25%

An unemployment rate below 5% is beyond the bank’s forecasting horizon.

That’s why it has undertaken to buy as many government bonds as are needed to keep the three-year bond rate at the bank’s current cash rate target of 0.10%, to make it clear that the cash rate will “be where it is for the next three years”.

‘Creating money electronically’

And there’s another reason for buying government bonds – to restrain the Australian dollar. On Tuesday Lowe announced plans to use a separate program to buy an additional A$100 billion of bonds between April and September.

Combined, the two bond-buying programs will depress Australian long-term interest rates and make foreigners less likely to buy Australian dollars to take advantage of higher rates here than overseas.

Asked directly whether the bank was printing money in order to buy government bonds, Lowe said it was, with the caveat that the modern way of doing things means the bank “creates the money electronically”.

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

While Lowe accepts that the JobKeeper wage subsidy will end at the end of March (“the government made it clear this was a temporary program”) he is extremely keen for governments at all levels to keep spending on infrastructure, saying if weren’t for public projects, non-mining investment would be bad indeed.

While the economy is recovering, and the bank is forecasting slightly stronger economic growth than The Conversation forecasting panel of 3.5% this year and the next, the economy is unlikely to return to the trajectory it was on before the crisis, perhaps ever.

Reserve Bank GDP forecasts, February 2021 and February 2020

The bank is envisaging an economy being 4% smaller than it would have been. As Lowe put it: “it’s a big number, there’s a big gap there”.

The governor isn’t worried by a likely “blip” in unemployment when JobKeeper comes off in March, but he is worried about what will happen to employment beyond that. The unemployment rate is “higher today than it has been for almost two decades and many people can’t get the hours of work they want”.

Even when the unemployment rate was low (in NSW it got “as it was in 1973” before the crisis) wage growth was weak.

JobSeeker a”fairness issue”

It would help to permanently lift the rate of the JobSeeker unemployment benefit on which a million Australians rely and which is due to return to the poverty-line level of $40 per day in April, although Lowe sees that not so much as an economic question but as a “fairness issue”.

“Different people legitimately have different views on the level of support stopping – my own view is that some increase is justifiable,” he told the press.

Read more: Vital Signs: Any talk about raising interest rates is a huge mistake

The levers he can control, interest rates, will say low for as long as is necessary.

He isn’t “guaranteeing” to keep them low until 2024 or beyond, but he is guaranteeing to keep them low until inflation is sustainably near 3%, something he doesn’t think will happen until unemployment touches 4.5%, something he thinks is most unlikely to happen before 2024.

“I’m not pledging”, he told the national press, “but I am giving you my best guess”.

– ref. Reserve Bank Governor not for turning. No rate hike until unemployment near 4.5% – https://theconversation.com/reserve-bank-governor-not-for-turning-no-rate-hike-until-unemployment-near-4-5-154560

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Hanly, Research Fellow, UNSW

If R nought was the number on your lips last year, then the statistic du jour this year will be the daily number of vaccinations administered.

This is the key number that will determine when we can stop living under the shadow of COVID, the ongoing sporadic seeding events from hotel quarantine, and the necessary but disruptive lockdowns that inevitably follow.

The federal government’s COVID vaccine rollout is due to start in late February with a target of vaccinating all Australian adults by October. Vaccinating some 20 million adult Australians with two doses each in around eight months is an immense logistical challenge.

Based on our preliminary analysis, uploaded today as a preprint manuscript and still awaiting peer review, it will require the health system to rapidly get up to speed to deliver around 200,000 jabs a day, and to maintain this rate for several months.

200,000 vaccinations a day is a truly furious pace. It’s possible, but will require dedicated large-scale vaccination sites capable of delivering thousands of doses a week in addition to the enthusiastic participation of general practices and community pharmacies countrywide.

A slower rollout will result in a longer and larger epidemic

The opening act of the government’s rollout strategy will be to vaccinate the highest priority groups, including border workers, front line health-care staff, and aged-care staff and residents with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. Because the Pfizer vaccine needs to be stored at below -70℃, this phase will be delivered through hospital hubs with the necessary ultra-cold-chain storage facilities.

Pending approval from the Therapeutic Goods Administration, it seems likely most Australians will be vaccinated with the University of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine. This vaccine can be stored in a regular fridge, meaning it can be distributed through general practices and community pharmacies.

Read more: The Oxford vaccine has unique advantages, as does Pfizer’s. Using both is Australia’s best strategy

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has suggested the rollout capacity will start at around 80,000 doses per week and increase from there. That’s 16,000 a day (over five-day weeks), well short of the required 200,000 a day. The planned peak capacity hasn’t been announced, but even back-of-the-beer-mat calculation would suggest a minimum of 167,000 vaccines per day to give two doses each to 20 million Australians in the eight months between March and October 2021. The longer it takes to reach such capacity, the higher that daily number will get — or we will not reach the target vaccination percentage this year.

There are huge benefits to getting the job done quickly as statistical modelling suggests even 50,000 doses a day in NSW will result in a longer and larger epidemic than 120,000 or more doses a day.

We ran a series of projections to estimate how long it would take to vaccinate the Australian population.

Our estimates used varied assumptions about the rate of vaccinations, the timing of the second dose, and the proportion of the population that would refuse to take a vaccine.

Our analysis finds 200,000 daily vaccinations from March would comfortably meet the October 2021 deadline. On the other hand, a rate of 80,000 per day — still seven times the PM’s starting point — would see the rollout drag on until mid-2022.

Is it feasible to administer 200,000 vaccinations a day?

As a useful point of comparison, we can look at countries where the vaccination rollout is already underway. To make it easier to compare across countries, we can standardise by population size. On this scale, our 200,000 vaccinations per day translates to around 7,700 doses per million population per day.

This rate exceeds the best efforts of the majority of countries to date, including the United Kingdom and the United States, where the rate of vaccine administration has peaked at around 5,800 and 4,000 daily doses per million population respectively.

The outlier is Israel, where between 7,000 and 20,000 vaccinations per million population have been delivered daily throughout January, and one third of its population is now vaccinated. Several factors may have contributed to this success, including a young, largely urbanised population and a strong public health infrastructure.

Perhaps most important has been robust logistical planning, including coordination of delivery, ultra-cold-chain storage and staffing.

We need mass vaccination sites

Returning to Australia, applications to recruit 1,000 GPs and an as-yet-unknown number of community pharmacies to join the vaccination rollout effort are currently underway.

Even if half of the 5,800 pharmacies across Australia joined with the targeted 1,000 GPs, each location would still need to administer an average of 50 doses per day, seven days a week, for about six months. Taking into account the necessary screening and record-keeping involved in addition to their usual workload, this may be quite a stretch for all but the largest practices and pharmacies.

It seems clear that to deliver at the scale needed to meet government targets won’t be possible through GPs and pharmacies alone. What’s needed are mass vaccination sites as proposed in the 2018 NSW Health Influenza Pandemic Plan. In a dedicated centre, trained nurses could vaccinate at a rate of between 80-100 people per hour. A similar approach in the UK has seen conference centres, sports stadiums, churches and mosques all co-opted as mass vaccination hubs, to great effect.

A complementary approach would be to set up drive-through vaccine clinics similar to the model of drive-through testing sites.

In the interest of openness and reproducibility, the program code base for our analysis is freely available here under an open source license.

– ref. Australia must vaccinate 200,000 adults a day to meet October target: new modelling – https://theconversation.com/australia-must-vaccinate-200-000-adults-a-day-to-meet-october-target-new-modelling-154476

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Scott, Professor, University of Melbourne

Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt recently ruled out GP patients having to pay for bandages and dressings, despite a major Medicare review recommending it.

We won’t be putting in place extra charges for patients. I am ruling that out.

Hunt was commenting on a recommendation from the Medicare Benefits Schedule Review Taskforce to charge bulk-billed patients for bandages and dressings. The idea was to save patients some money at the pharmacy, where such products can be expensive. The recommendation also addressed some GPs’ concerns they were out of pocket by supplying these items. However, some people had called the recommendation to charge patients a “band-aid tax”.

Rather than charging patients, Hunt said he’d discuss “alternative sources of government support” for general practices and doctors to supply these items. Here are some options and what they could mean for you.

A thin end of the wedge?

Since 2015, the taskforce has been reviewing about 5,700 items on the Medicare Benefits Schedule to see which services you receive at your GP or specialist align with current evidence and practice, are safe and might benefit you.

Of its 1,400 or more recommendations, this one initially seems to be the thin end of the wedge. What would GPs charge you for next? Using equipment to take your blood pressure? The paper your bill is printed on? Luckily, separate charges for such items are illegal.

Read more: Medicare review must deal with ‘elephant in the room’ incentives

GPs can already choose to charge any amount for a consultation. And you would presume all GPs’ costs — including rent for their premises, equipment, office chairs, as well as consumables such as bandages and dressings — are considered when they decide on the level of fee to charge, or whether to bulk-bill. If the costs of supplies are increasing, then GPs can simply increase the consultation fee.

The recommendation also seemed inconsistent with the objectives of the review. This included trying to simplify the Medicare Benefits Schedule (not making it more complicated). The recommendation also seemed inconsistent with strong recommendations aimed at reducing patients’ out-of-pocket costs and making health care more affordable.

What was the taskforce thinking?

The taskforce argued people with chronic wounds, such as venous leg ulcers, often paid a lot for wound dressings they used at home.

Though GPs and practice nurses help dress wounds, patients still need to regularly manage and dress wounds themselves at home. So the taskforce was arguing these costs should be subsidised.

Read more: Curious Kids: how do wounds heal?

The recommendation to allow GPs to charge patients was where the consultation was bulk-billed. This seemed to assume this would be cheaper for patients rather than them buying their own dressings from pharmacies and supermarkets. So the intention was to reduce out-of-pocket costs overall.

However, this recommendation relies on GPs charging patients less than what pharmacies or supermarkets may charge and GPs would not try to profit from selling dressings to patients. However, the taskforce presented no evidence or data to show this would be the case, even though its recommendations are supposed to be evidence-based.

Managing wounds well has both health and economic benefits

Inadequate wound care can have debilitating effects and adversely influence people’s mobility and quality of life. Like any health-care treatment, keeping out-of-pocket costs low for patients can help improve access to health care and improve health outcomes. The issue is how to do this.

Treatment is also highly cost-effective. For instance, providing compression therapy products, such as compression bandages for leg ulcers, would cost the health system an additional A$270 million over five years. But it would save about $1.4 billion over the same period.

So it seems to make sense for new policies to try and reduce the costs GP practices and patients face for these supplies.

How do we reduce the costs?

Centralise purchasing

GP practices and pharmacies buy their supplies on the open market, and small GP practices may not be able to get good deals.

So the taskforce also recommended a Commonwealth-funded wound consumables scheme to centralise purchasing and price negotiation, as is done for medical devices and pharmaceuticals at the Commonwealth level. The idea is to keep prices low.

Offer discounts

Certain patients with chronic wounds could also be eligible for heavily discounted dressings from their pharmacy, though this may be difficult for less-mobile patients. GPs could “prescribe” which dressings are needed and for how long, and the pharmacies could “dispense” these for patients from the wound consumables scheme.

Rethink dispensing

GPs could also dispense these dressings themselves. For eligible patients who are not mobile and cannot easily visit pharmacies, GPs could provide and apply dressings for chronic wounds in the practice (or through practice nurses visiting patients at home). GPs could also provide dressings for patients to apply at home. Providing dressings at home or in the GP practice would require additional payments to general practices from Medicare.

This payment would need to provide incentives for GPs to manage the wounds more effectively and to buy high-quality, low-cost dressings, perhaps purchased via the wound consumables scheme.

What needs to happen?

For patients with chronic wounds that need long-term care (not just people wanting a band-aid), reducing the costs of bandages and dressings is likely to improve access and improve outcomes.

Examining the regulation of these markets could be a first step to ensure prices are as low as possible. This could include considering more centralised purchasing, followed by considering additional funding to subsidise these very cost-effective treatments.

– ref. Should GPs charge for bandages or dressings? Hunt says no to ‘band-aid tax’. So here are some other options – https://theconversation.com/should-gps-charge-for-bandages-or-dressings-hunt-says-no-to-band-aid-tax-so-here-are-some-other-options-154177

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Murdoch, Dean and Head of Campus, Christchurch, University of Otago

Today’s provisional approval of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine means New Zealand could start rolling out its COVID-19 immunisation programme as early as next month.

In announcing the approval, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said border workers and the people they live with, cleaners and nurses working at quarantine facilities, security and airline staff and hotel workers would be among the first to get the vaccine.

I have said 2021 is the year of the vaccine. It’s a full-year programme we have only just begun. We’re not in a race to be first, but to ensure safe and timely access to vaccines for all New Zealanders.

Unlike in other countries, the approval is not an emergency authorisation. Medsafe, the regulatory body for all therapeutic products in New Zealand, does not have the ability to grant emergency use authorisation.

Since the emergence of more easily transmittable variants of the coronavirus, the government has been under pressure to bring the vaccination programme forward.

But with no uncontained community transmission, the country is in a fortunate position to be able to establish a complex national programme carefully.

New Zealand’s vaccine portfolio

The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is one of four COVID-19 vaccines for which New Zealand has negotiated purchase agreements. The other vaccines, from AstraZeneca, Janssen and Novavax, have yet to complete the Medsafe evaluation process.

Collectively the four vaccines provide a mix of different technologies, manufacturing locations and supply chains.

The goal of this “diverse portfolio” approach is to provide some confidence that effective vaccines will be available to deliver a national vaccination programme in New Zealand and to purchase enough doses for neighbouring Pacific countries. The latter include New Zealand realm countries, Tokelau, Niue and the Cook Islands, as well as Tonga, Samoa and Tuvalu.

Managing the portfolio will be complex. Decisions will need to be made about how to deliver multiple vaccines that become available at different stages of the programme. Each vaccine has its own characteristics, including dosing schedule, storage conditions and efficacy data from clinical trials.

Needless to say, effective communication about details of the programme to health professionals and the New Zealand public will be vital to achieve sufficiently high population coverage.

Read more: How to talk to vaccine skeptics so they might actually hear you

Who goes first

The current plan is to sequence delivery to prioritise protection for those at highest risk of acquiring COVID-19 or those at greatest risk of poor outcomes from the disease. This plan is based on three scenarios, depending on the presence or level of COVID-19 community transmission.

New Zealand’s current situation, with two active cases in the community but no further community transmission, means frontline staff would be vaccinated first. This includes people working at the border and managed isolation and quarantine facilities, health care workers at highest risk of exposure to COVID-19, and the household contacts of these workers.

The next tier would include high-risk health, public sector and emergency service workers, and then the most vulnerable groups in the community, including older people and those with underlying medical conditions.

The current expectation is to start vaccination of higher-risk groups in March, with mass public vaccination starting later in the year. The aim is to complete the programme by the end of 2021.

The approvals process

The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine uses new mRNA technology, which hasn’t previously been used in human vaccines. Clinical trials have shown the vaccine to be safe and 95% efficacious in preventing COVID-19.

Mild and short-lived reactions, such as pain at the injection site or headaches, have occurred in less than 20% of people who have received the vaccine. Allergic reactions were rare and usually occurred in people with a past history of allergies.

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

Medsafe’s approval process ensures that all COVID-19 vaccines comply with both international standards and local requirements for quality, safety and efficacy, as well as being of the highest manufacturing quality.

Although Medsafe provides an independent evaluation process, it has close links with medicines regulatory bodies in other countries, such as the US Food and Drug Administration and European Medicines Agency.

New Zealand benefits from the sharing of information among regulatory authorities, and we can learn from the experiences of countries that are ahead in rolling out their vaccination programmes.

Seeing the roll out of COVID-19 vaccines in many other countries from late last year, often under emergency authorisation, has raised our expectations for New Zealand. Although there is strong motivation to start the roll out as soon as possible, we also need to have a system in place to complete the vaccination programme successfully.

The big question is when international borders may reopen. This remains difficult to predict and depends on many factors beyond the successful completion of a vaccination programme in New Zealand. Controlling COVID-19 is a global challenge, and for our borders to open we need to be sure that both New Zealanders and visitors are protected.

– ref. Frontline border workers to be vaccinated first as New Zealand approves Pfizer vaccine – https://theconversation.com/frontline-border-workers-to-be-vaccinated-first-as-new-zealand-approves-pfizer-vaccine-150720

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jason Potts, Professor of Economics, RMIT University

One of the most difficult problems in finance right now is figuring out the fundamental economic value of cryptocurrencies. And the past week has complicated this further.

For many cryptocurrency investors, the value of Bitcoin is based on the fact it is artificially scarce. A hard cap on “minting” new coins means there will only ever be 21 million Bitcoin in existence. And unlike national currencies such as the Australian dollar, the rate of release for new Bitcoin is slowing down over time.

Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency that takes its name and logo from a Shiba Inu meme that was popular several years ago, doesn’t have a cap. Launched in 2013, there are now 100 billion Dogecoin in existence, with as many as five billion new coins minted each year.

But how can a currency with a seemingly unlimited supply have any value at all? And why did Dogecoin’s price suddenly surge more than 800% in 24 hours on January 29?

At the time of publication, the “memecoin” was worth about A$5.6 billion on the stockmarket.

A long-running joke brought to life

Dogecoin is one of the original “altcoins”: cryptocurrencies released in the few years after the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto first released Bitcoin into the wild.

From a technical perspective, Dogecoin isn’t very innovative. Like many early altcoins, it’s based on the original source code of Bitcoin.

Or more technically, it’s based on Litecoin, which in turn was based on Bitcoin — but with some small modifications such as faster transactions and the removal of the supply cap. But Dogecoin is much more interesting when seen through a cultural lens.

Read more: Why is Bitcoin’s price at an all-time high? And how is its value determined?

The cryptocurrency was created by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer — although Palmer, an Australian, has since walked away from the project. They branded it with the Doge meme partly to be funny, but also to distance it from Bitcoin’s then questionable reputation as a currency for illicit transactions.

Now, Dogecoin has outlasted almost all the early derivative altcoins and has a thriving community of investors. In 2014, Dogecoin holders sponsored the Jamaican Bobsled Team. Soon after, they sponsored a NASCAR driver.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, is among the cryptocurrency’s high-profile advocates. In December last year, a tweet from Musk sent Dogecoin’s price soaring.

Collectivism leads to creativity

Reddit threads proclaim Dogecoin’s value as a new global currency. Musk himself shared a similar sentiment a few days ago. Speaking on the app Clubhouse, he said:

Dogecoin was made as a joke to make fun of cryptocurrencies, but fate loves irony. The most ironic outcome would be that Dogecoin becomes the currency of Earth in the future.

But Dogecoin is best thought of as a cultural product, rather than a financial asset. The reality is few cryptocurrency users hold it as a serious investment or to use in regular transactions. Instead, to own Dogecoin is to participate in a culture.

People buy it because it’s fun to have, is inherently amusing and comes with a welcoming and enjoyable community experience.

If we start thinking of the cryptocurrency as a cultural product, last week’s sudden jump in Dogecoin’s price makes sense. The boost came just after a meme-centric community managed to drive the share price of videogame retailer GameStop from US$20 to US$350 in mere days.

This swarm behaviour was unlike anything seen before — and it frightened global financial markets.

One particularly interesting aspect of the Reddit forum r/WallStreetBets — which coordinated the attack on the hedge fund that had effectively bet on GameStop’s share price falling — was how many users were having fun.

It’s no surprise activity surrounding Dogecoin has a similar vibe; it was designed to be fun right from the start.

Doge: icon of the internet

Some people participate in financial markets as a form of consumption — meaning for entertainment, leisure and to experience community — just as much as they do for investment.

Cultural assets such as Dogecoin are hard to systematically value when compared to financial assets, a bit like how we don’t have a fundamental theorem for pricing art.

Almost by definition, the demand for a memecoin will fluctuate as wildly as internet culture itself does, turning cultural bubbles into financial bubbles. RMIT professor and crypto-ethnographer Ellie Rennie calls these “playful infrastructures”.

By inspecting Dogecoin closely, we can learn a lot about the interplay of technology, culture and economics.

Moreover, cryptocurrencies are extraordinarily diverse. Some are built for small payments or to be resilient holders of value. Others protect financial privacy or act as an internal token to manage smart contracts, supply chains or electricity networks.

Under the hood, Bitcoin and Dogecoin look almost exactly the same. Their code differs in only a few parameters. But their economic functions are almost entirely opposite.

Bitcoin is a kind of “digital gold” adopted as a secure hedge against political and economic uncertainty. Dogecoin, on the other hand, is a meme people add to their digital wallet because they think it’s funny.

But in an open digital economy, memes move markets.

– ref. After GameStop, the rise of Dogecoin shows us how memes can move markets – https://theconversation.com/after-gamestop-the-rise-of-dogecoin-shows-us-how-memes-can-move-markets-154470

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Germana Nicklin, Senior Lecturer in Border and Resource Security, Massey University

Before COVID-19 hit New Zealand’s shores last year, most people’s understanding of defending a border would have come from watching TV reality show Border Patrol.

It is easy to understand — on the maps, our country is surrounded by an ocean moat, a natural border. This makes controlling risks arriving from overseas relatively easy as there are limited points at which they can enter New Zealand.

Since February 2, 2020, when a travel ban on non-citizens who had travelled through China was introduced, borders have been very much in the news.

Most recently, Northland iwi announced Te Tai Tokerau Border Control would be introducing check points in the region in response to a community case of COVID-19.

Those actions have been controversial, with the police subsequently closing down the check points on grounds of safety, even though they supported the same checkpoints in August 2020 during the Auckland community outbreak.

This raises the question of what sort of border is Te Tai Tokerau trying to control, and is it a border at all?

Read more: If border restrictions increase to combat new COVID-19 strains, what rights do returning New Zealanders have?

What’s a border anyway?

There are three important things to realise about borders — humans create them, they don’t just occur at the external edge of a state, and not all borders involve the government.

You may find the first idea challenging. We did not make up our physical geography. The ocean border is real. But humans did create the map that depicts our country.

We know from our history that the state of New Zealand originated from British colonisation, that its name is now often referred to as Aotearoa New Zealand, reflecting Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

The Realm of New Zealand includes other states and dependencies — Niue, Cook Islands, Tokelau and the Ross Dependency in Antarctica.

From this, we see that even our description of New Zealand can vary, depending on where we stand. By extension, our description of New Zealand’s border will vary.

We can now start to see that borders are more than lines on the map. Borders create spaces that can be used for different purposes, such as security or safety, with associated processes.

Borders define ‘us’ and ‘them’

Borders also have many effects, one of which is on our identity. For example, gated communities are bordered spaces, fenced and patrolled business premises are bordered spaces.

If we are inside a gated community, we will identify with that community and its desire for safety and privacy. Outside the gate is everyone else and, potentially, risk and insecurity.

To get inside the gated community, particular processes are needed such as membership of the community through ownership of property, or access to a gate key. The means of containment, the border, creates an “us” and “them”.

When we apply this thinking to the external border, our society is bordered by the controls at gateway sea ports and airports. Before foreign visitors pass through these controls, they are “them”.

After they enter New Zealand, we might not know them, but societally they become part of “us”, albeit temporarily.

Managing the COVID-19 threat has involved creating types of borders not familiar to New Zealanders, from societal lockdowns to the creation of specifically bordered spaces — for example, the Managed Isolation and Quarantine facilities (MIQs) and the land borders during the Auckland community outbreak in August.

Most significantly for the many people prevented from travelling internationally, government policy has bordered our lives by keeping us confined to our own island nation.

All these borders have had effects on New Zealand society.

One important effect has been to change whom we identify with — whom we see as “us” and “them”.

Achieving a COVID-free New Zealand has involved creating a range of borders that differentiate, and in some cases separate, the safe “us” from the risky “them”.

Even close family members can temporarily become “them”. We see this in reports of MIQ staff being isolated by their friends, family and business contacts when they are off duty.

The iwi borders

Let us now return to those iwi borders. What are they exactly?

Their stated purpose is to protect the iwi population, many of whom are at high risk from COVID-19, as well as provide a community service by preventing the virus spreading.

The former is certainly identifying with their tribal group and the particular needs and vulnerabilities of that group, but they are also identifying with the COVID-free New Zealand — the so-called team of five million.

This type of border raises a further question about who has, or should have, control of different types of borders.

It is hard to argue against Te Tai Tokerau’s case, but in New Zealand law they have no authority to limit the free movement of people. Only agencies of state have that.

Read more: NZ needs an evolving pandemic strategy if it’s to keep the public’s trust

Multiple borders have always existed in Aotearoa New Zealand. We just haven’t been aware of them before.

These examples start to reveal them. For some people, these new borders are restrictions, for others they provide a certain freedom — maybe not freedom from fear but freedom to move about within different sized bubbles in relative safety.

Seeing them as a part of New Zealand’s border landscape makes evident issues such as human rights, security, legal authority and equity. A bigger discussion about New Zealand’s borders is clearly needed.

– ref. If we’re to defend our borders from the pandemic, what do we mean by borders? – https://theconversation.com/if-were-to-defend-our-borders-from-the-pandemic-what-do-we-mean-by-borders-154176

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Don Driscoll, Professor in Terrestrial Ecology, Deakin University

The independent review of Australia’s main environment law, released last week, provided a sobering but accurate appraisal of a dire situation.

The review was led by Professor Graeme Samuel and involved consultation with scientists, legal experts, industry and conservation organisations. Samuel’s report concluded Australia’s biodiversity is in decline and the law (the EPBC Act) “is not fit for current or future environmental challenges”.

The findings are no surprise to us. As ecologists, we’ve seen first hand how Australia’s nature laws and governance failure have permitted environmental degradation and destruction to the point that species face extinction. Even then, continued damage is routinely permitted.

And the findings aren’t news to many other Australians, who have watched wildlife and iconic places such as Kakadu and Kosciuszko national parks, and the Great Barrier Reef, decline at rates that have only accelerated since the act was introduced in 1999. Even globally recognisable wildlife, such as the platypus, now face a future that’s far from certain.

To reverse Australia’s appalling track record of protecting biodiversity, four major reforms recommended by Samuel must be implemented as a package.

1. Setting standards

One of the many failings of Australia’s environmental laws is there has never been a point beyond which no further impacts are acceptable.

The government almost never says “enough!”, whether it’s undermining wetlands for a new mine, or clearing woodlands for agriculture. Species continue to suffer death by a thousand cuts.

Read more: Death by 775 cuts: how conservation law is failing the black-throated finch

For example, the original distribution of the endangered southern black-throated finch of southern and central Queensland has shrunk to less than 10% due to land clearing and habitat degradation. Yet, further clearing was approved for coal mines, housing developments and sugar cane farms.

Biodiversity offsets, which aim to compensate for environmental damage by improving nature elsewhere, have for the most part been dreadfully ineffective. Instead they have been a tool to facilitate biodiversity loss.

The centre piece of Samuel’s report are proposed new National Environmental Standards. These would provide clear grounds for drawing a line in the sand on environmental damage.

Legal, rigorous enforcement of these standards could turn around Australia’s centuries-long record of destroying its natural heritage, and curb Australia’s appalling extinction rate — while also providing clarity and certainty for business.

Vital features of the standards Samuel recommends include:

• avoiding impacts on the critical habitat of threatened species

• avoiding impacts that could reduce the abundance of threatened species with already small and declining populations

• no net reduction in the population size of critically endangered and endangered species

• cumulative impacts must be explicitly considered for threatened species and communities

• offsets can only be used as a last resort, not as a routine part of business like they are at the moment.

Under the proposed National Environmental Standards, any new developments would need to be in places where environmental damage is avoided from the outset, with offsets only available if they’re ecologically feasible and effective.

2. Greater government accountability

The federal environment minister can make decisions with little requirement to publicly justify them.

In 2014, then environment minister Greg Hunt controversially approved an exemption to the EPBC Act for Western Australia’s shark cull. This was despite evidence the cull wouldn’t make people safer, would harm threatened species and would degrade marine ecosystems. Hunt could shirk the evidence, deny the impacts and make a politically expedient decision, with no mechanisms in place to call him to account.

Samuel’s report states the minister can make decisions that aren’t consistent with the National Environmental Standards — but only as a “rare exception”. He says these exceptions must be “demonstrably justified in the public interest”, and this justification must be published.

Read more: Why we’re opposing Western Australia’s shark cull: scientists

We think this epitomises democracy. Ministers can make decisions, but they must be open to public and robust scrutiny and explain how their decisions might affect environments and species.

Improved accountability will be one of the many benefits of Samuel’s proposed independent Environment Assurance Commissioner, which would be backed up by an Office of Compliance and Enforcement. Samuel says these must be free from political interference.

These are absolutely critical aspects of the reforms. Standards that aren’t audited or enforced are as worthless as an unfunded recovery plan.

3. Decent funding

Samuel urges improved resourcing because to date, funding to protect species and the environment has been grossly inadequate. For example, experts recently concluded up to 11 reptile species are at risk of extinction in the next 50 years in Australia, and limited funding is a key barrier to taking action.

And it has been proven time and again that lack of action due to under-resourcing leads to extinction. The recent extinction of the Christmas Island forest skink, the Christmas Island pipistrelle, and the Bramble Cay melomys were all attributable, in large part, to limited funding, both in the administration of the threatened species listing process, and in delivering urgent on-ground action.

Read more: Vale ‘Gump’, the last known Christmas Island Forest Skink

We need only look to the COVID pandemic to know when faced with emergencies, the government can rapidly deploy substantial sums of money for urgent interventions. And we are well and truly in an environmental emergency.

Spending to care for the environment is not a cost that delivers no return. It’s an investment that delivers substantial benefits, from creating jobs to cleaner water and healthier people.

4. Increase ecological knowledge

Engaging experts is key to achieving Samuel’s long-overdue proposed reforms. He calls for the immediate creation of expert committees on sustainable development, Indigenous participation, conservation science, heritage, and water resources. This will help support the best available data collection to underpin important decisions.

Ultimately, though, much more investment in building ecological knowledge is required.

Australia has more than 1,900 listed threatened species and ecological communities, and most don’t even have active recovery plans. Ecologists will need to collect, analyse and interpret new, up-to-date data to make biodiversity conservation laws operational for most threatened species.

For example, while we know logging and fires threaten greater gliders, there’s still no recovery plan for this iconic forest possum. And recent research suggests there are actually three — not simply one — species of greater glider. Suspected interactions between climate change, fire and logging, and unexplained severe population declines, means significant new effort must be invested to set out a clear plan for their recovery.

Read more: Environment laws have failed to tackle the extinction emergency. Here’s the proof

Samuel recommends Regional Recovery Plans be adequately funded to help develop some knowledge. But we suggest substantial new environmental capacity is needed, including new ecological research positions, increased environmental monitoring infrastructure, and appropriate funding of recovery plans, to ensure enough knowledge supports decision making.

Cherry picking recommendations condemns our species

Samuel’s report has provided a path forward that could make a substantial difference to Australia’s shocking track record of biodiversity conservation and land stewardship.

But Environment Minister Sussan Ley’s response so far suggests the Morrison government plans to cherry pick from Samuel’s recommendations, and rush through changes without appropriate safeguards.

If the changes we outlined above aren’t implemented as a package, our precious natural heritage will continue to decline.

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

– ref. To fix Australia’s environment laws, wildlife experts call for these 4 changes — all are crucial – https://theconversation.com/to-fix-australias-environment-laws-wildlife-experts-call-for-these-4-changes-all-are-crucial-154273

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Karin Hammarberg, Senior Research Fellow, Global and Women’s Health, School of Public Health & Preventive Medicine, Monash University

People who want a baby and struggle to conceive often resort to in vitro fertilisation (IVF). While IVF has helped countless people have children, it’s expensive and comes with some risks.

But research shows some people with so-called “unexplained infertility” have a 30-40% chance of conceiving without treatment if they just keep trying for a bit longer.

So, how long should you wait before starting fertility treatment? This depends on a range of factors that might increase or decrease your chance of conceiving naturally, as well as your personal preferences for seeking treatment or not.

A new online guide can estimate your chance of conceiving with and without treatment. The free tool collects information based on what we understand to be the main factors affecting a woman’s chance of falling pregnant, with a view to informing decisions around fertility treatment.

Sometimes there’s no clear explanation

It’s recommended women who have tried unsuccessfully for a baby for 12 months, or six months if they’re over 35, seek medical advice. This is so the doctor can arrange for tests to determine whether there’s a reason for infertility.

If these tests show the woman’s fallopian tubes are blocked, or that the male partner has a very low sperm count, it’s best to go straight to IVF. In most cases, that’s the only way the couple will be able to get pregnant.

If your doctor finds no obvious problem, you have what’s called “unexplained” or “idiopathic” infertility.

Weighing up your options

It can be very frustrating to be told there’s nothing wrong, when month after month goes by without pregnancy happening.

Although IVF might seem like the fastest option, it can be expensive, costing most people thousands of dollars. And like any medical procedure, IVF carries risks, particularly for women.

If your tests come back normal, it might be worth considering giving nature a bit more time, or trying a simpler form of infertility treatment, such as intrauterine insemination (IUI). IUI involves insertion of the male partner’s (or a donor’s) sperm into a woman’s uterus at or just before ovulation.

So which path is right for you? This is where the new online guide can help.

Read more: I have PCOS and I want to have a baby, what do I need to know?

It’s built on evidence

Research tracking thousands of people with unexplained infertility has found many go on to have healthy babies naturally, or with the help of simple fertility treatment. In one study of more than 1,200 couples with unexplained infertility, 25% conceived naturally within 12 months.

Of course, for some women conception will be more likely, and for some women it will be less likely.

Experts used the data from this research to develop the online guide. The personalised calculations are based on four factors that evidence indicates are most likely to affect the chance of pregnancy.

The most important factor that affects a woman’s chance of having a baby — naturally or with IVF — is her age. So what’s labelled unexplained infertility may in fact be age-related. While pregnancy can still happen, by age 40 a woman’s fertility is about half the level it was when she was 30.

Other factors include how long she has been trying for a baby (the likelihood of conception decreases with the duration of trying), whether she’s been pregnant before (women who have never conceived before have a lower probability of achieving a pregnancy), and what proportion of the male partner’s sperm move normally (called “progressive motility” on a semen analysis report).

Read more: Considering using IVF to have a baby? Here’s what you need to know

How does it work?

The guide is designed for heterosexual couples and for women who are trying to get pregnant with a known sperm donor, where:

• the woman has regular menstrual cycles

• the woman has at least one open fallopian tube

• the woman is 42 or younger

• the man has had a sperm test.

Four questions ask about the four factors most likely to affect a woman’s chance of conception, described above.

The responses are then fed into the algorithm, which estimates the chance of pregnancy over the next 12 months in three different scenarios:

• you just keep trying

• you have six cycles of IUI

• you have two cycles of IVF.

This information can help people consider their options and decide about next steps.

If your estimated chance of spontaneous pregnancy in the next 12 months is 30% or more, you have a good chance of avoiding the need for expensive fertility treatments. But if you’re not pregnant after six months, the guide suggests seeking advice from a fertility specialist about the next steps.

If your estimated chance without treatment is less than 30%, it’s best to see a fertility specialist as soon as possible.

A word of caution

While the guide can help you explore your options and consider next steps, the estimates it gives are based on averages of data from large studies of people with unexplained infertility.

This means it shouldn’t replace advice from a fertility specialist, who will hopefully use the available evidence to recommend the best way forward for you, considering your personal circumstances and preferences.

Read more: Women’s fertility: does ‘egg timer’ testing work, and what are the other options?

– ref. Do you really need IVF? A new online tool can help you weigh up your options – https://theconversation.com/do-you-really-need-ivf-a-new-online-tool-can-help-you-weigh-up-your-options-153636

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kelly-Ann Allen, Senior Lecturer, School of Education, Monash University

Most academics regularly submit papers and compete for grants and promotions. These endeavours are necessary for their success but often end in rejection.

Responses to rejection in academia have typically been individually focused. Most discussions of the topic describe what academics themselves can do to cope with rejection.

For example, in a watershed tweet in 2017, Nick Hopwood posted a picture of his office wall papered with rejection letters. Academics were encouraged to celebrate rather than commiserate rejection, spawning the #NormaliseRejection hashtag.

Read more: Please reject me: a survivor’s guide to ‘publish or perish’

But, as we explored in our recent paper, persistent rejection is problematic, and focusing on the individual academic is not the whole solution.

Just how toxic is the rejection culture?

Academics’ careers are strongly linked to their success in publishing and funding applications. Unfortunately, rejection rates are high, ranging from 50% in general journals to 92% in prestigious outlets like Nature. The Conversation, too, rejects most submissions.

Read more: A guide to how we decide what to publish in Politics and Society

Such high levels of rejection have three adverse consequences.

First, it squanders a valuable opportunity for professional learning and development. Learning sciences show clearly described success criteria and constructive, task-specific feedback promote effective learning and development. Yet these are lacking in many decisions on publication or grant submissions.

In our teaching of students, we adopt this nuanced, incremental and developmental approach because it improves learning. In contrast, academic publication or funding decisions can be binary: submissions are rejected or accepted, with little or nothing in between. What’s missed in the process is a powerful learning and developmental opportunity for the academics whose work has presumably been assessed and evaluated.

Second, it wastes an inordinate amount of academics’ time, contributing to their well-documented excessive workload. One study showed that for one round of a funding scheme in Australia researchers altogether spent more than 500 years of their time preparing proposals. Most of their proposals did not get funded.

Third, rejection culture on top of excessive workloads contributes to stress and anxiety among academics. Mental health issues have significant impacts on their work satisfaction, productivity and general well-being.

Mental health problems among academics are already at an all-time high. These problems occur at twice the rate of the general population, an incidence higher even than among police or medical staff.

Read more: More academics and students have mental health problems than ever before

This is what institutions can do

Most papers on academic rejection focus on how the individual can improve their response – the so-called “suck it up” response. We argue, in contrast, that systemic or institutional responses can reduce the toxicity of the culture. Our recommendations for change fall into three main categories.

First, make success criteria clear prior to applications and provide timely and targeted feedback afterwards. The opportunity costs of applying for grants, funding and publications – time and effort that could have been invested in something else – would then be minimised.

This approach could involve pre-submission quality assessments. This can involve communities of academics assessing the quality of manuscripts before they are submitted for publication; journal editors would then only expend resources on the ones most likely to succeed. This would ensure academics pursue only submissions that are most likely to succeed.

When funders and editors approach researchers directly and “commission” proposals, that greatly reduces the opportunity costs. The MacArthur Foundation, for example, now commonly does this.

Second, the process of publication can be improved in several ways. For a start, editors can reduce the number of submissions forwarded for peer review.

Researchers have studied the benefits of providing authors with prompt decisions and specific feedback aimed at improving chances of future publication. When the submissions review history is included too, it ensures the incremental improvements from feedback are not wasted. Future reviewers also appreciate this as it avoids the problem of different reviewers rejecting for conflicting reasons.

Read more: Peer review has some problems – but the science community is working on it

Third, prioritising the mental health of academics at an institutional level will lessen the impacts of the rejection culture. Institutions can and should provide awards that recognise performance in writing and research – independent of publication metrics – ideally without any time-consuming application process.

Read more: Unis want research shared widely. So why don’t they properly back academics to do it?

Institutions can also take steps to maximise mentorship and collaboration among academics. The recruitment of peer mentors enhances professional learning, research productivity and community and social connection.

Some journals have already successfully adopted initiatives that involve the recruitment of peer mentors to journal editorial teams who, like peer reviewers, volunteer their time to work collaboratively with authors to improve their manuscripts for publication.

To maximise the benefits to society from the academy’s pursuit and dissemination of new knowledge, academics need to function at their best. The current culture of rejection doesn’t help them do this.

There is little point in relying on academics to just suck it up or celebrate their failure – institutions need to play their part. A cultural problem requires a cultural solution.

Read more: 2020 locked in shift to open access publishing, but Australia is lagging

– ref. Journal papers, grants, jobs … as rejections pile up, it’s not enough to tell academics to ‘suck it up’ – https://theconversation.com/journal-papers-grants-jobs-as-rejections-pile-up-its-not-enough-to-tell-academics-to-suck-it-up-153886

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Mossop, Dean of Design, Architecture and Building, University of Technology Sydney

As the climate changes, floods and extreme rainfall events will become more intense. In many cases, the most disadvantaged people are at highest risk from floods and least able to bounce back when their homes and businesses are inundated.

I saw that dynamic first-hand when I lived through Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Much of my work in its aftermath focused on finding new ways to allow the city to better absorb water, reducing flood risk and easing pressure on drainage systems.

How? By designing parks, open space and public infrastructure to hold excess water when flood strikes. That means better control of where floodwater ends up, reducing the risk to lives and property.

Read more: Disaster season is here — do you have a Resilience Action Plan? Here’s how the small town of Tarnagulla built theirs

A different way of looking at disasters

Hurricane Katrina left me with a very different way of looking at disasters; increasingly, I focused on where the disaster actually sits. For instance, the disaster was not Hurricane Katrina itself but the catastrophic failure of the New Orleans levee system.

When southeast Queensland and northern NSW floods, the problem isn’t just the greater frequency and intensity of storms. It’s that floodwater ends up in people’s houses and neighbourhoods because of changes we have made to drainage catchments.

So why is that happening — and what can we do to reduce it?

Slow rain, fast rain

In an undeveloped, naturally vegetated area, rain moves slowly; canopies and the naturally porous ground surface deflect and absorb the water.

When the surface is hard or impermeable, however, water cannot be absorbed; it runs off quickly and collects in large quantities downstream. That’s how water ends up in people’s homes and streets. It’s what happens when you clear and develop river and stream catchments and cover land with buildings, footpaths and concrete.

Our traditional approach has been to collect rainwater in gutters and move it quickly and efficiently downstream. But this deprives plants, animals and soil of much-needed water that would otherwise be absorbed.

It also raises the question: how do we dispose of large volumes of water when they collect in inconvenient places?

As these problems compound, we have to design larger and larger systems to try to dispose of the water. And when flooding overwhelms the system, the consequences can be deadly.

Traditionally, we have tried to armour rivers and waterfronts with levees, barriers and sea walls to keep all floodwaters out. Increasingly, however, planners, designers and engineers are looking to new approaches.

Instead of trying to keep all floodwaters out, we can design landscapes to accommodate the water without damaging cities or farmland.

Read more: Design for flooding: how cities can make room for water

Making room for rivers

The Room for the River Project in the Netherlands began in 2006 after serious flooding threatened the Rhine delta at the end of the 20th century.

The project (which encompasses the Rhine, the Meuse, the Waal and the IJssel) redesigns the river and floodplain by moving dikes further out and lowering floodplains and groynes. It creates “green rivers” (channels that allow floodwater to branch off from the main river) and removes obstacles from the channel so recurring floodwaters can spread out without causing damage.

A similar approach has been adopted in other places, such as the US state of Vermont.

Designing water into cities

Using a similar approach at a smaller scale, we can design cities to accommodate floods. When the Victoria Park neighbourhood in the Sydney suburb of Zetland was developed in the late 1990s, all its public spaces, streets and open space were designed with an integrated water management system in mind.

All park spaces were lowered to hold water after storms. Special vegetated channels called swales were constructed to slow down and absorb water.

Under the area’s central park (Joynton Park) is a water storage basin. Rainwater flowing into this underground basin has been filtered through the plants and soil of the swales, and is then re-used in local water features and for irrigation.

All these adjustments mean the area can flood in a way that causes minor inconvenience rather than disruption. By controlling where floodwater collects, we can reduce the damage.

Read more: Higher density in a flood zone? Here’s a way to do it and reduce the risks

Clever design to slow the flow

There are many examples around the world of buildings and landscapes where flooding is “designed in”. Here are three examples I know well, through the involvement of my firm Spackman Mossop Michaels.

For Sydney’s Moore Park Bus Interchange, we suggested large areas of paving be designed to let water through into a massive gravel bed underneath, where rainwater is stored before percolating into the area’s groundwater. This allows floodwater to be directed into and absorbed by the earth, rather than simply rushed into stormwater systems that can overflow.

In New Orleans, where land subsidence left the city below sea level and unable to drain naturally, the Rosa Keller Library was severely flooded when levees broke after Hurricane Katrina. Its redevelopment included a rain garden of native irises to store and hold stormwater before releasing it slowly into the stormwater system.

The New Orleans Redevelopment Authority has also built “rain gardens” on many of its vacant lots to store and filter stormwater.

Through clever design interventions like these, we can keep stormwater out of the drainage system for as long as possible, effectively increasing its capacity.

Read more: The PM wants to fast-track mega-projects for pandemic recovery. Here’s why that’s a bad idea

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

– ref. I lived through Hurricane Katrina and helped design the rebuild – floods will always come, but we can build better to prepare – https://theconversation.com/i-lived-through-hurricane-katrina-and-helped-design-the-rebuild-floods-will-always-come-but-we-can-build-better-to-prepare-153452

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lauren Gurrieri, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, RMIT University

You may have had heard of Vanessa Sierra, the Instagram model and reality TV contestant who adeptly used her time quarantining with boyfriend Australian tennis player Bernard Tomic to build her public profile.

Sierra is just one of the hundreds of thousands of “content creators” – most commonly young women – monetising content produced on social media platforms. She has been using these platforms to promote “subscription-only” content. Most “social influencers”, however, have a more traditional business model, using their position to promote brands.

Among Australia’s influencer megastars are fitness influencer Tammy Hembrow (11.9 million Instagram followers), who can reportedly charge as much as A$55,000 for a single post, and Kayla Itsines (12.7 million Instagram followers), whose workout app and deals with brands such as Apple and Adidas placed her 27th on the Australian Financial Review’s 2020 Young Rich List (estimated worth: A$209 million).

One report estimates there are more than 830,000 influencers on Instagram alone. It’s the wild west of marketing. Surreptitious and dubious practices have flourished. So too has the exploitation of overt sexual representation.

The new code of ethics for Australian advertisers, which came into effect on February 1, addresses one of these problems – lack of transparency in disclosing financial deals. It does a less adequate job with the other.

It has much improved on guidelines for gender representations in traditional advertising. It acknowledges, for the first time, advertisers’ responsibility to avoid harm to consumers and society. But it leaves a big loophole for commercialising sexualised imagery through social influencers.

What is the code of ethics

The Australian Association of National Advertisers’ code of ethics is a central part of the self-regulatory model that governs advertising standards in Australia.

It sets guidelines for “all advertising or marketing communication under the reasonable control of the advertiser”. It is used to adjudicate complaints about advertising (by AdStandards, formerly known as the Advertising Standards Bureau).

The new code makes a number of welcome improvements, replacing a code much criticised for its laxity in allowing adverts that reinforced gender stereotypes and exploited sexualised imagery for commercial gain.

Read more: Sexualised and stereotyped: why Australian advertising is stuck in a sexist past

Addressing gender stereotypes

One key change is prohibiting harmful gender stereotypes suggesting “skills, interests, roles or characteristics” uniquely associated with women or men.

Such stereotyping in advertising has equated women with domesticity and men in caring roles as “dumb dads”.

Now messages such as the “Put time back in your day” advert for leading cleaning brand Pine O Cleen (owned by British multinational Reckitt Benckiser) will be contrary to the code, because they allude to alleviating the domestic load only of women.

Overtly sexual imagery

Another important change is prohibiting the use of “overtly sexual” images in outdoor advertising or shopfront windows, and in any other advertising medium when “not relevant to the product or service being advertised”.

Accompanying the new code is a guide specifying what may be considered overtly sexual, including suggestive undressing or depictions in sheer clothing or lingerie that expose private body parts.

This mean brands such as automotive repair company Ultra Tune, long subject to public complaints, can no longer use overtly sexualised representations of women to advertise their services.

Research has consistently found exposure to such images are directly associated with a range of negative consequences, including higher levels of body dissatisfaction, greater support of sexist beliefs and greater tolerance of sexual violence toward women.

But what about influencer culture?

The new code’s approach to sexist stereotypes better reflects contemporary society and signals a move away from a “sex sells” mentality in advertising.

What it doesn’t really address, however, is the rise of influencer culture, where a highly sexualised aesthetic that borrows from pornographic imagery is the norm.

Across influencer culture there’s a rigid standard of idealised femininity known as the “Instagram face” – doe eyes, arched brows, high cheekbones, smooth skin and pouty lips. It is a look that sets unrealistic beauty standards for girls and women, manufactured through cosmetic enhancements and photo editing applications.

Advertising budgets

The proportion of corporate marketing budgets going to influencers is growing rapidly. In 2019 the advertising spend on influencers globally was an estimated US$8 billion. By next year it is predicted to be US$15 billion.

That spend reflects the growing value of influencers to marketers, who are seen as effective promoters of products to large, dedicated and highly engaged audiences likely to make purchases based on influencer recommendations.

The new code of ethics does oblige influencers to disclose their commercial relationships in a clear, upfront and easily understood manner.

But, significantly, the code’s standards (including for overtly sexual imagery) don’t apply to user-generated content “not within an advertiser’s reasonable control even if brands or products are featured”.

That’s a big loophole for advertisers. Influencers tend to make almost all creative decisions in crafting sponsored content. Indeed, a survey commissioned by influencer marketing platform Takumi in 2020 found influencers’ top concern when working with brands was retaining creative control. This includes choices about location, staging, lighting, posing, wardrobe, makeup, scripting and directing.

This leaves open various challenges to what can be seen to constitute “reasonable control” for advertisers.

Read more: How highly sexualised imagery is shaping ‘influence’ on Instagram – and harassment is rife

Worlds apart

The new code’s vision of advertising and the norms of influencer culture are therefore likely to remain worlds apart.

In an ever-evolving media landscape, ensuring advertising standards keep pace is an ongoing challenge. The new code is catching up with community expectations for “mainstream” advertising.

But this progress won’t count for much unless advertisers are also held to account for how corporate money helps to sustain sexist and sexualised stereotypes perpetuated through the influencer market.

– ref. Social influencers: new advertising code addresses hyper-sexualisation, but not where it’s needed most – https://theconversation.com/social-influencers-new-advertising-code-addresses-hyper-sexualisation-but-not-where-its-needed-most-154174

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Scott Davie, Lecturer in Piano, School of Music, Australian National University

It seems safe to assume a musical “masterpiece” would show compositional magnificence and garner universal acclaim — yet Maurice Ravel’s Boléro (1928) is conspicuously lacking in the first.

Writing to a friend shortly after finishing the work, Ravel described it as having “no form in the true sense of the word, no development, and hardly any modulation”. And to the Swiss composer Arthur Honegger, he confided, “I’ve written only one masterpiece – Boléro. Unfortunately, there’s no music in it”.

Despite these misgivings, Boléro’s instant success was a delightful surprise for the composer. A few years later, on entering the casino at Monte Carlo, he was asked if he would like to gamble. He declined by saying, “I wrote Boléro and won — I’ll let it go at that”.

Read more: New music composers face the age-old question: do they write for themselves or for mass appeal?

Ballet beginnings

The piece arose out of a commission for a new ballet from Ida Rubinstein, a prominent dancer formerly with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Originally, Ravel had planned to respond with an orchestration of Spanish composer Isaac Albeniz’s Iberia (1905–1908), but when copyright issues proved insurmountable, he decided to write his own Spanish-themed work.

The Spanish influence is not surprising in a work by France’s then-most-famous composer, as his mother was Basques. Nor are the obvious inflections of jazz, as the style was popular in many of the bars of Paris frequented by Ravel, and his four-month tour of the United States early in 1928 had heightened the attraction.

What is truly surprising is the singular premise on which Boléro is based: an experimental orchestral crescendo lasting a quarter of an hour, based exclusively on a two-bar rhythm repeated a staggering 169 times.

There are but two melodic ideas in the piece, each heard twice before alternating, and always given to a new instrument or group of instruments.

Indeed, for a composer famous for his orchestration — both in his own compositions and in his arrangement of works by others — it is a marvel of orchestral assignment, writing for each instrument (and instrumental group) in ways that highlight particular aspects unique to them.

It is amusing to imagine Ravel, a self-confessed “dandy”, who once played the melody on piano for a friend, dressed in a yellow dressing down and scarlet head cap. “Don’t you think this theme has an insistent quality?” he reportedly asked.

The second melody contrasts with evocative repeated notes that have a flattened quality to them, these blue-note intonations no doubt contributing to what Ravel’s friend, Hélène Jourdan-Morhange, believed were “obsessive, musico-sexual” underpinnings in the work.

The gamble pays off

Almost immediately, the work found success in the concert hall, with recordings by luminary conductors like Sergei Koussevitzky and Willem Mengelberg. The popularity of the work in the United States was aided through performances led by Arturo Toscanini. Ravel, however, did not hide his scorn for the conductor’s interpretation: at around 13 minutes long, Ravel believed that it was played too fast. The composer’s own recording lasts over 16 minutes.

Toscanini believed that the work needed “saving”, yet it is arguable that, at the slower speed requested by the composer, audiences are beguiled into a state of complete enthralment. The more moderate tempo also fits better with our understanding of the composer, who had a lifelong fascination with mechanical devices.

Read more: Performing Beethoven – what it feels like to embody a master on today’s stage

Indeed, Ravel’s original scenario for the ballet built on this mechanistic idea, with the action to have taken place within a factory. In Alexandre Benois’s designs for the first production, however, the ballet was set in a Spanish tavern.

The combination of sinuous melody, mesmeric rhythm, and slowly building orchestral crescendo has inspired the imagination of Hollywood. In 1934, a film starring George Raft and Carole Lombard titled Bolero made much of the simmering tension underpinning the work.

In 1979, the music was similarly used to illustrate Dudley Moore’s attraction to Bo Derek in 10.

And to universal acclaim, gold medal-winning ice-skating duo, Torvill and Dean, danced to a (considerably shortened) recording of the piece at the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics.

Detractors

Yet there is no escaping that the singular premise of Boléro fuels the claim it is a composition with little content. According to the composer’s brother Edouard, this criticism was evident at a first performance, where an old lady was heard shouting “Rubbish! Rubbish!” above the applause. On being informed of this, the composer responded sagely, saying, “That old lady got the message”.

Sarcastic remarks on Ravel’s works were made by the British composer, Constant Lambert. He claimed that in some of the composer’s pieces the repeated rhythms eventually grew tiresome. This was even more of a problem with Boléro, he stated, as it occurs “shortly after the beginning”.

Perhaps the funniest response to the work is Patrice Leconte’s short film, Le batteur do Boléro, first shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 1992. After the conductor walks to the stage and the orchestra begins, the camera pans to the back of the stage, the focus landing on the percussionist tasked with playing the incessantly repetitive rhythm. The facial movements of the drummer as he endures this undertaking amount to a farcical study of the difficulties of maintaining attention, and is endlessly amusing.

The ending

Sadly, the work was one of the composer’s last, an accident in a Paris taxi exacerbating what was possibly a latent neurological condition which drew his life to an end within a decade, incapacitated mentally and in pain.

While the work has proven easy to criticise, there is an element that nevertheless marks Boléro as deserving of lasting attention. Given the repetitive rhythm and the restricted melodic material, it would have been foremost in Ravel’s mind that monotony would be an issue, even with his carefully expanding orchestration. Especially in terms of its harmony, the piece is utterly welded to the key of C major.

Yet with a master’s understanding of the intricacies of timing, Ravel rachets the ending in two ways.

Firstly, he curtails the double statements of the two themes to single playings. And then, without warning, he moves the entire piece to the key of E major, a harmonically “distant” key with little relation to the home key of C major. And then, after eight glorious bars of peeling forth in this previously unimaginable harmonic region, he just as suddenly moves the music back again.

Given the unceasing momentum of all that has gone before, the momentary harmonic shift serves to satisfy our need for change, seemingly in an instant. And with this simple roll of the dice, Ravel likely guaranteed the lasting success of this masterpiece “without any music in it”.

Read more: Decoding the music masterpieces: Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances

– ref. Decoding the music masterpieces: Ravel’s Bolero — a sinuous and sexy composition with ‘no music in it’ – https://theconversation.com/decoding-the-music-masterpieces-ravels-bolero-a-sinuous-and-sexy-composition-with-no-music-in-it-149528

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By William Partlett, Associate Professor, University of Melbourne

Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny was today sentenced to two years, eight months in a prison colony for violating the probation terms of a suspended sentence on a 2014 conviction, which he claims was politically motivated.

This comes on the heels of a second weekend of unauthorised protests in which thousands of Russians took to the streets in support of Navalny.

This is an important moment for Russia. Now that Navalny faces a lengthy prison term, he could become a potent symbol of a lawless regime that is afraid of its people — and further energise the opposition.

To counter this, the Kremlin will seek to paint Navalny as a dangerous symbol of Western meddling in Russian politics.

The success of these competing messages will play a critical role in determining whether the opposition will be able to maintain its momentum moving forward.

A growing crackdown

For many years, Russia has been an unusual place for opposition politics. Despite dominating the messaging on traditional TV and (most) print media, the Kremlin has allowed a degree of free speech online. Navalny has taken advantage of this freedom, exposing high-level corruption first as a blogger and now as head of Russia’s leading anti-corruption organisation.

He and his team have produced voluminous reports and slickly produced viral videos detailing corruption at the highest levels of Russian politics. These videos have generated millions of clicks.

But last year it appeared this uneasy truce between the Kremlin and its online opponents was breaking down. Putin’s approval ratings fell to historic lows amid a stagnating economy and the government’s dysfunctional response to COVID.

In response, the Kremlin launched a large, stage-managed constitutional reform process aimed at projecting the image of strongman governance as the only way to avoid growing threats from a hostile Europe and United States.

In addition, the Kremlin has ramped up its targeting of government critics and human rights groups by pushing its claims they are “foreign agents” and restricting their operations. Navalny and his Anti-Corruption Foundation have also faced growing harassment.

Read more: Navalny returns to Russia and brings anti-Putin politics with him

Then, in August, Navalny was poisoned while visiting regional Russia to promote his “smart voting” system, which helps Russians vote tactically for opposition candidates, depriving the ruling United Russia party of votes and weakening its monopoly on power.

Perhaps anticipating his arrest after returning from Russia from his convalescence in Germany, Navalny personally appeared on YouTube describing a highly detailed report of a US$1.3 billion dollar palace allegedly built for Putin on the Black Sea.

This video has now been viewed more than 100 million times and has transformed the palace’s 700-euro toilet brushes — four times the average monthly pension in Russia — into a symbol of the protests.

Western agent or symbol of a new form of politics?

With Navalny now facing a lengthy prison time, two competing narratives are likely to emerge.

The government will seek to downplay his symbolic importance. For his part, Putin still refuses to call Navalny by name and has recently referred to him as “the Berlin patient”.

And to the extent the official state media do mention Navalny, the Kremlin has increasingly tried to characterise him as a Western agent intent on weakening Russia and unleashing revolutionary chaos.

Read more: Putin for life? Many Russians may desire leadership change, but don’t see a viable alternative

This image of Navalny fits with the Kremlin’s overall narrative that Russia is under threat from a hostile West seeking to undermine its stable development. This message has ironically been strengthened by European Union and US threats to impose additional sanctions on Russia for jailing Navalny.

The long-term success of this narrative in Russia, however, remains unclear. In contrast with Europe and the US, where Navalny is rapidly assuming the unambiguous status of “oppressed Russian dissident”, Russians have mixed views on Navalny. Many are uncertain whether they would vote for him if he could run for president. Others worry about his nationalist background.

But the protests suggest Navalny could come to symbolise something far more problematic for the Kremlin.

His jailing could galvanise Russians who want a form of politics no longer characterised by post-imperial nostalgia and a paranoid, siege mentality that constantly fears Western interference. Instead, they want to live in a country focused on building better schools, infrastructure and health care.

The protests show this narrative is particularly popular among young people, who ignore state media and instead get their news from social media posts that combine dark humour with criticism of the regime.

Some of these videos have sampled songs by activist musicians, such as IC3Peak’s Death No More, which mixes hard-core electronica and images of the singers pouring kerosene on themselves in front of government buildings and eating raw meat outside Vladimir Lenin’s tomb.

Further, the recent protests show this narrative is also gaining traction in regional cities in Siberia and the Far East, which have suffered from the Putin regime’s centralisation of power and money in Moscow over the last 20 years.

Finally, this narrative is popular among women. Navalny’s organisation is cultivating a new generation of female leaders and supporters, many of whom want to break away from the macho, strongman politics of the Putin era.

As Navalny (and many of his team) sit in jail, he is a reminder of the hypocrisy of many of the Russian political elite, who claim to be protecting Russian sovereignty, but own vast amounts of property in Europe.

Read more: Alexei Navalny has long been a fierce critic of the Kremlin. If he was poisoned, why now? And what does it mean?

The future of the protest movement

If the Kremlin successfully paints Navalny as a foreign agent who will only bring instability to Russia, the jailed activist may retreat from public view. If he does, the opposition will once again fail to place serious political pressure on the Kremlin.

But if Navalny comes to symbolise unjust oppression in the face of an increasingly corrupt, unaccountable and incompetent political elite, popular pressure will only increase on the Russian government.

It could take years for this narrative to gather steam. But if it does, Navalny will likely be correct when he stated in a recent court hearing,

right now brute force is on the state’s side, but that will not last forever.

– ref. By jailing Alexei Navalny, the Kremlin may turn him into an even more potent opposition symbol – https://theconversation.com/by-jailing-alexei-navalny-the-kremlin-may-turn-him-into-an-even-more-potent-opposition-symbol-154258

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Oli Wilson, Associate Professor of Music, Massey University

Recent accusations of harassment and coercion by leading figures in Aotearoa New Zealand’s music industry were shocking, but not surprising.

Last year, we released the Amplify Aotearoa report that revealed serious issues with gender diversity in the local music industry. Two main findings emerged:

• more than 70% of women reported experiencing gender discrimination, disadvantage and bias

• nearly half of women reported they had felt unsafe in places where music is made and/or performed.

While there are excellent initiatives encouraging inclusive and diverse cultures in music, women face a range of systemic barriers in the industry, including under-representation, earning less, receiving less airplay, winning fewer awards, and widespread harassment. These issues are experienced disproportionately by women of colour and gender-diverse people.

The recent revelations of abusive behaviour in the industry remind us that, beyond its career-limiting potential, discrimination involves a significant emotional cost to victims. This was a major motivation for our Amplify Aotearoa research.

Empowering the next generation

As curriculum developers and university educators in a music degree, we felt obligated to better understand the industry our students were entering. In the process, the project identified even more obligations.

It is not enough for the tertiary sector to “call out” the problems the music industry is facing. Rather, we must also reckon with the role music education should play in breaking down obstacles and empowering the next generation of Aotearoa’s music makers to lead cultural change.

Read more: Women take a hit for reporting sexual harassment, but #MeToo may be changing that

In recent years, many tertiary music providers have shifted their focus toward producing “real world” outcomes for their graduates. Music degrees have evolved with the goal of equipping students with proficiency across a variety of industry contexts. Work-integrated and project-based learning is prioritised, seeking to develop skills for career success and employability.

Such training aims to produce music graduates who are positioned to meet the demands of the industry, equipped with “realistic attitudes and intentions about their pending careers”.

Changing what and how we teach

What, then, should a “realistic” attitude entail, given the industry’s well-documented history of marginalisation, exploitation and harassment of women and gender-diverse people?

Training students for the reality of working in an industry in which they can expect to be targets of mistreatment risks complacency towards existing cycles of discrimination.

Read more: Nearly all sexual harassment at work goes unreported – and those who do report often see zero benefit

Encouraging students to develop “realistic” career intentions should mean empowering them not just to understand existing industry practices, but to have the tools to change them.

Part of the answer lies in what and how we teach. Critical theories that underpin our understanding of issues such as race, gender and sexuality allow us to engage with the ways music carries and constructs meaning in our society. In doing so, they provide us with the tools to understand the lived experiences of music industry workers.

But such approaches are at risk within the tertiary sector internationally. In Australia, staff and funding cuts have jeopardised courses that teach the critical skills essential to bring about cultural change.

Addressing the gender imbalance

Further urgent issues facing the tertiary music sector are barriers to access, and the lack of diversity in our student cohorts. Who are we training and graduating into the industry?

Tertiary Education Commission TEC data show music cohorts in Aotearoa are largely populated by young Pākehā men from high-decile school backgrounds. Women make up around 40% of enrolments in university music programs and courses. Women are also under-represented as staff across the sector.

This disparity is further amplified in the industry, with women representing 24.1% of APRA-AMCOS NZ members. That the imbalance we see in the industry is evident in university recruitment figures suggests problems with pre-tertiary education too. It seems fewer women than men see music as a viable pathway for study.

Educational institutions are also not immune to issues of sexual abuse and coercion, as recent allegations have shown. The tertiary sector must do more to foster diverse and inclusive cohorts and curriculums, and hold abuses of power to account.

Read more: In gender discrimination, social class matters a great deal

Change from within

For music educators, this means advocating for critical approaches to understanding music, even when this may not always align with institutional definitions of employability.

It also means leading by example in setting standards for respectful and inclusive behaviour, responsibly talking with our students about the epidemic of harassment in creative fields, and addressing disparities in recruitment through a better understanding of the social and economic factors that produce inequalities in student cohorts.

As researchers and educators, our aim is to forge a fairer and more inclusive environment for people to make and share music. But this comes with the immediate obligation of addressing how the wider tertiary sector must effectively engage staff and students in what it means to be a responsible member of a music community.

It is the responsibility of music education to empower students to challenge industry practices and organisations, rather than simply place students within them.

– ref. NZ music’s #MeToo moment is a wake-up call for educators: prepare graduates to challenge and change the industry – https://theconversation.com/nz-musics-metoo-moment-is-a-wake-up-call-for-educators-prepare-graduates-to-challenge-and-change-the-industry-154167

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

Few people expected the Reserve Bank to adjust its cash rate at its first meeting of the year today, and for good reason.

It has been saying loudly that it is “not expecting to increase the cash rate for at least three years”. Today it said the commitment extends to 2024.

But it isn’t a commitment not to cut the cash rate.

A further cut in the cash rate to take it below its present all-time low of 0.10% would turn the cash rate negative.

The cash rate is that rate that banks pay to borrow money from each other.

It has always been positive, at times very positive.

Ten years ago it was 4.75%. Then, as now, it was used to help set every other rate.

But there’s no reason why it couldn’t be negative. Borrowing (accepting deposits) entails costs. If the banks offered funds are offered more than they need, they’ll charge for accepting them.

Some rates are already negative

It’s already happened in the bond market. In several bond auctions, lenders to Australian government have agreed to pay for having the government accept their money.

Overseas, bond rates in Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, Slovakia, Denmark, Austria, Finland, Belgium, France, Ireland, Slovenia and Lithuania are negative. In Germany it means that someone lending the German government 105 euros agrees to get back only 100 euros when the loan expires ten years later.

In at least three countries, Japan, Denmark and Switzerland cash rates are also negative, at rates of -0.10%, -0.60% and -0.75%.

Read more: Negative rates explained: how money for (less than) nothing is helping out the budget

In two other countries, the Bank of England and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand are talking with banks about how to make negative cash rates work.

Calculations I carried out with colleague Timothy Anderson suggest that if Australia’s Reserve Bank acted in accordance with its previous behaviour, it would have turned Australia’s cash rate briefly negative in the second half of last year.

There’s a case for negative cash rate here

Our model, that accurately describes previous Reserve Bank behaviour, is that the bank has a view about the “neutral” cash rate, one that will leave the economy neither “too hot” (too much inflation) nor “too cold” (too much unemployment). If inflation remains too low (and/or unemployment too high) at the neutral rate it moves the cash rate below neutral until inflation climbs back up.

In August 2020 when the Bank was forecasting a dire outlook with unemployment peaking at 10% and inflation well below target our model suggests that if the bank was following previous practice it would have cut the cash rate to around -0.25%.

Read more: Sure, interest rates are negative, but so are some prices, and when you look around, they’re everywhere

By November 2020 when the bank’s forecasts were more positive, our model suggests a positive, but still extraordinarily low cash rate, of about the 0.10% it adopted.

Australia’s Reserve Bank has been remarkably reluctant to take rates negative, seeing a cut into negative territory as fundamentally different to a cut that leaves rates positive.

Governor Philip Lowe has repeatedly said that negative rates are “extraordinarily unlikely”.

But he has conceded he would have to consider them if the world’s other important central banks went negative, a contingency several of them are preparing for.

Economic studies suggest that the neutral rate has been heading downwards for decades and possibly centuries. If the trend continues, negative rates will eventually become widespread.

To not match negative rates elsewhere would be to invite an influx of “hot money” chasing higher rates in Australia than were available elsewhere, pushing the Australian dollar uncomfortably high.

For now, the Reserve Bank has adopted a suite of other unconventional measures, such as lending cheaply to banks and buying government bonds, that it believes will have much the same effects as taking the cash rate negative.

Today it extended announced a decision to buy an additional A$100 billion of bonds when the current bond purchase program expires in mid April.

Lowe will explain more in a televised address to the National Press Club on Wednesday.

Should things worsen here or overseas he might have to go further and overcome his reluctance to push the cash rate negative.

We don’t quite know what would happen

How a negative cash rate would play out depends on how the banks respond.

There are three possibilities.

First, the banks could adjust neither their deposit nor lending rates, meaning the negative cash rate had little effect.

Second, the banks adjust down both their deposit and loan interest rates, but this would mean charging depositors for placing funds with them, something banks haven’t done in other countries that have zero rates for fear of losing customers.

Read more: Negative interest rates could be coming. What would this mean for borrowers and savers?

Third, banks could lower lending interest rates only. This might avoid unpopularity among customers but would erode interest margins. Over time banks might become less keen to lend.

It’s not clear what bank customers would do. In 2015 a survey conducted for ING Bank asked what savers would do if the deposit interest rate fell to minus 0.5%.

Only 10% said they would spend more. 14% said that they would save even more. 42% said they would switch some or most of their savings to somewhere like the stock market. 21% would move it to “a safe place”.

– ref. The Reserve Bank might yet go negative – https://theconversation.com/the-reserve-bank-might-yet-go-negative-149267

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

Just before Tuesday’s House of Representatives question time, Scott Morrison rang Liberal maverick Craig Kelly. The PM wanted to be sure Kelly wasn’t an anti-vaxxer.

Kelly said no – his outspoken campaign on hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin was for additional treatment, not as an alternative to vaccination.

Kelly has had his neck saved by two prime ministers: Malcolm Turnbull before the 2016 election and Scott Morrison prior to the last one.

They had their political reasons at the time, but Kelly doesn’t deal in gratitude. In the climate wars, he worked for the demise of Turnbull, and now he’s embarrassing Morrison with his freelancing on COVID.

Kelly is a zealot over the usefulness of the two drugs in treating COVID, despite public health officials dismissing the case. He’s tangled with Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly.

He posted in January: “The claim that there’s is ‘no evidence’ that HCQ and Ivermectin reduce Covid infections, minimise hospitalisations and reduce death is one the most costly and most deadliest lies in history. … And those that have acted to deny sick people access to this medicine need to be held accountable.”

He was back on his hobby horse at Tuesday’s Coalition parties meeting. He quoted a review of the literature by immunologist Robert Clancy (emeritus professor at the University of Newcastle), complained again about state restrictions on the availability of these drugs and linked the issue to Liberal values.

No one responded in the meeting. Colleagues, and especially Morrison, don’t want to give him any more than the considerable oxygen he takes up.

Kelly’s posts on Facebook (where he has more than 90,000 followers) are highly provocative, and suddenly Morrison is finding himself put on the spot about what his backbencher is saying.

At the National Press Club on Monday, the prime minister was asked about his failure to “rein in” government MPs “who are spreading disinformation about both the virus and the vaccines on social media”.

Morrison said people should get their information from official government sites, not Facebook.

When a journalist chipped in with Kelly’s name, Morrison said, “He’s not my doctor and he’s not yours. But he does a great job in [his electorate of] Hughes.”

On Tuesday, the first day of this parliamentary sitting, Labor homed in on Kelly, moving (unsuccessfully) a motion noting his “repeated use of social media to spread damaging mistruths about COVID-19” and his comments about vaccinations “which have the potential to undermine public confidence in the upcoming rollout”.

It called on Morrison to condemn Kelly’s “irresponsible and dangerous comments”.

Labor’s health spokesman Mark Butler called Kelly “a dangerous menace” to the national Covid response.

Realistically, it’s unlikely Kelly would have much influence with the public. Despite his Facebook following, most people wouldn’t have heard of him, let alone be looking to him for guidance.

The government is using experts in its advertising about the vaccine for good reason – the public have faith in them in the time of COVID.

The latest evidence certainly suggests people’s ears are tuned to the official advice, and the Essential poll published Tuesday showed a high level of confidence in the coming vaccination rollout.

Essential found 68% were confident the rollout would be done efficiency and 72% believed it would be done safely.

At another level, the potential of Kelly to do damage to the Coalition government has declined compared to those months of minority government last term (although with a narrow majority, the Liberals wouldn’t want him jumping to the crossbench).

If he lost preselection and ran as an independent, he would not pose a threat in the seat.

Morrison would calculate his best course is to avoid a shouting match with Kelly (if he can) and let a preselection spell the end of his Liberal troublemaker.

Critics will say this is a cop out, but it is a politically effective one.

Hughes local Kent Johns, a councillor in the Sutherland Shire (Morrison territory), a former local mayor and a former president of the NSW Liberal party, was hunting Kelly before the previous two elections, though the prime ministerial interventions meant there were not preselection ballots.

Johns, who is ex-Labor and an industrial chemist with a committed position on climate change, was considered to have had the support to win ballots if they’d been held. He is expected to run again, and it is presumed the numbers haven’t changed. Even if Johns didn’t run, the “anybody but Kelly” feeling among the local Liberals would mobilise.

And this time, there’s no likely prime ministerial protection (apart from the standard letter of support for an incumbent).

Last weekend, the local Liberals in the Victorian seat of Menzies decided it was time to move on former minister Kevin Andrews. The prospect is strong the Hughes Liberals will move Kelly on.

Miracles don’t often come in threes.

– ref. View from The Hill: Craig Kelly set to face preselection reckoning – without prime ministerial protection – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-craig-kelly-set-to-face-preselection-reckoning-without-prime-ministerial-protection-154485

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Meese, Research fellow, RMIT University

Over the past few weeks, Google and Facebook have engaged in desperate attempts to avoid regulation under the Australian government’s proposed mandatory news media bargaining code.

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg even appealed to Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Communications Minister Paul Fletcher personally last week, hoping to shift the government’s hard stance.

Both platforms’ strategies have involved a mixture of user-focused advertising, political lobbying, and even threats to pull services from Australia.

But what may initially seem like a confident stance reveals itself, upon closer inspection, as a panicked approach — one spurred by a lack of earlier action.

A delayed reaction comes with a price

The government has largely ignored the threats and is pushing ahead with reform — with a determination that underlines Google’s and Facebook’s ongoing inability to make inroads in Canberra.

Both tech giants have sought to stop the implementation of the mandatory code, which would force them to pay Australian news companies for content that appears on their platforms.

It also requires they abide by certain minimum standards, including informing media companies about the type of data collected through users’ interactions with news, and providing advance notice of any algorithmic changes that affect news content.

Google and Facebook were comparatively passive when the draft code first emerged in 2019, as part of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Digital Platforms Inquiry.

But they intensified their efforts in recent months, upon realising the government wouldn’t yield. Both have threatened to remove Australian news from their platforms if the code is introduced in its proposed form.

Facebook has publicly considered withholding the launch of the official Facebook News service in Australia. This news tab feature is already available in the United Kingdom and will be rolled out to more countries over the next year.

Google’s goal to appeal to you

But perhaps the most noteworthy response was when Google threatened to withdraw Google Search from Australia.

Adding to this, the company’s national public relations campaign involved publishing an “open letter” to Australian users, through the Google homepage.

Perhaps Google was trying to leverage its significant Australian audience, or capitalise on a general mistrust in Australian media. But any attempt to establish itself as a trusted company seems doomed since Australians are also distrustful of Google.

The open letter was followed by on-site pop-ups and an ad featuring Google Australia’s managing director, Mel Silva.

Threatening to pull Australian content from its services was a logical step for Google. In the past it happily withdrew Google News from Spain and decided to not deliver content from certain German publishers that sued it over intellectual property rights.

That said, the heavy-handed approach this time around suggests Google and Facebook recognise Australia’s planned reforms as a turning point for platform regulation, which could embolden other governments to make their own costly demands.

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

Movement behind the scenes

Facebook has been less active than Google on the public relations front, but has joined its lobbying efforts — going as far as hiring experienced lobbyists who know Prime Minister Scott Morrison personally.

The chief executive of Alphabet (which owns Google), Sundar Pichai, along with other high-level executives, have also spoken with Morrison.

These last-ditch efforts suggest the platforms are clutching at straws, particularly as they have so far failed to make significant inroads into Australia’s political sphere.

There are multiple reasons for this. The first is their opponent is the Australian media. While politicians and the media have a testy relationship at times, the two institutions are still connected through the Canberra bubble.

The relationship between political leaders and media executives can be especially close, as shown by the appearance of Morrison and Frydenberg at News Corp co-chairman Lachlan Murdoch’s 2019 Christmas party.

There’s no conspiracy between the Australian government and media, but they do have a shared history and are in regular contact.

Read more: Google is leading a vast, covert human experiment. You may be one of the guinea pigs

Moreover, while Google and Facebook have invested sizeable sums in political lobbying overseas, crucially they have not done this here. Each year they spend millions of dollars on political lobbying in the United States.

They’ve even transformed politics in the European Union. Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft collectively injected €19 million (more than A$30,000,000) into liaisons with the European Commission and European Parliament during the first half of 2020, the New York Times reported.

Meanwhile in Australia, the companies indirectly contributed just A$34,700 (Google) and A$16,500 (Facebook) to the Labor Party over the past five financial years.

These donations were under the disclosure threshold (which ranged from A$12,800 to A$14,000) and voluntarily reported by Labor. The Liberal Party may have received similar contributions it wasn’t required to disclose them.

These sums are tiny compared with what has been spent in the US and Europe. They point to an overall lack of attention on Australia, despite the threat of the bargaining code.

Not enough of a foothold

Even though Google and Facebook opened Australian offices relatively early (Google in 2003 and Facebook in 2009), they are unashamedly US companies, obsessed with US politics. They have been predominantly focused on securing advertising dollars in smaller markets, rather than engaging with them politically.

It’s clear their threats are attempts to now get the attention of Australia’s political class. And if the platforms follow through with the threats, younger news consumers — who get most of their news from social media — may be significantly impacted.

Perhaps some of this could have been avoided if Google and Facebook had dedicated more time and energy to smaller countries, now emboldened by the prospect of reform.

For transparency, it should be noted The Conversation made a submission to the Senate inquiry regarding the News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code.

– ref. Google’s and Facebook’s loud appeal to users over the news media bargaining code shows a lack of political power – https://theconversation.com/googles-and-facebooks-loud-appeal-to-users-over-the-news-media-bargaining-code-shows-a-lack-of-political-power-154379

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert McLachlan, Professor in Applied Mathematics, Massey University

The Climate Change Commission’s draft advice on how to decarbonise New Zealand’s economy is refreshing, particularly as it calls on the government to start phasing out fossil fuels instead of relying on offsets and carbon trading.

Until now, New Zealand has relied heavily on its Emissions Trading Scheme, but the evidence is clear that it has failed to reduce emissions. The commission’s package includes carbon budgets out to 2035 and detailed pathways to achieve them across all sectors of the economy.

Read more: Climate Change Commission calls on New Zealand government to take ‘immediate and decisive action’ to cut emissions

For the transport sector, which is responsible for half of New Zealand’s energy-related emissions, the commission suggests a sweeping set of changes to electrify the country’s car fleet and to replace imported fuels with local renewable electricity.

It’s exciting to see a national-level plan that actually cuts emissions. But it raises two questions: is it feasible, and is it the best or only option?

Transforming the transport sector

Land transport was always going to be squarely in the commission’s sights. Its emissions have doubled since 1990, and, unlike agriculture, it’s not a protected export industry.

The commission calls for cuts in transport emissions of 47% by 2035, achieved by:

• a rapid shift to electric vehicles, with the market share for light vehicles rising from 2% today to 50% in 2027

• an end to imports of pure petrol or diesel cars by 2032, and a similar but later transition for trucks

• the development of an integrated national transport network that reduces travel by private car

• changes to urban planning leading to 7% less travel per person

• the development of policies to increase walking, cycling, and public transport by 25%, 95% and 120% respectively by 2030

• scaling up low-carbon fuels, such as biofuels, to 3% of all liquid fuels by 2035

• some decarbonisation of the rail network, lifting rail’s share of freight from 16% to 20%, and more coastal shipping.

To achieve this rapid electrification, New Zealand would need to produce more renewable electricity. Only one large wind farm, the 840 GWh/year Turitea wind farm near Palmerston North, is currently under construction.

In the commission’s proposed scenarios, New Zealand would need another renewable electricity plant like this every year from now on. At the moment, New Zealand has only 690 MW of wind turbines, and no utility-scale solar generation. The industry would need to scale up considerably.

Other live issues are the planned 2024 closure of the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter, which would make a lot of renewable electricity available, and the NZ Battery pumped-hydro project.

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

The promise of deep cuts to fossil fuels

The proposed shift away from fossil fuels is clearly feasible technically, but would need a quick and radical change in policy. Unfortunately, New Zealand doesn’t have a good track record of carrying out the sweeping regulatory changes that will be needed.

Apart from the proposed import ban on petrol cars from 2032, the EV plan involves a system of subsidies and fuel efficiency standards. Last week, the government introduced a refreshed fuel efficiency standard, with a target of 105 gCO₂/km by 2025.

But the car industry appears to have won several concessions, including a halving of penalties (to NZ$50 per vehicle per gram of CO₂ over the target), a delay in the standard’s introduction until 2023 and a separate target for utes.

The EU did not begin to see rapid EV uptake until 2020, when a new 95 gCO₂/km target kicked in, along with fines of €100/gCO₂/km and generous incentives. Achieving the Norway-like transformation of the car fleet the commission envisages will likely require more incentives and stronger oversight of the market.

Is this the only way?

The commission’s plan doesn’t question the overall structure of the transport system. In the view of some critics, the present system is inequitable and disadvantages people who can’t or don’t want to drive, including children, older people and people living with disabilities.

It has contributed to poor health and safety outcomes, traffic congestion and car-dominated city streets. At an annual cost of NZ$17,000 per household (not counting greenhouse gas emissions), it is also expensive.

The commission’s technical advisory panel included representatives from the car importing industry and other road transport groups, but no experts on walking, cycling, public transport, public health or urban planning.

The massive road-building programme undertaken by both National and Labour governments, set to continue far into the future, is not mentioned, despite considerable evidence that it increases transport demand, sprawl and emissions.

There is no requirement to reduce parking, a topic currently contested in urban forums and already being studied by the government. Nor are there any plans for passenger rail or improvements to inter-city public transport.

Changing the way cities grow

New Zealand’s housing crisis has already prompted a rewrite of urban plans throughout the country to enable higher densities, especially near transport hubs. The commission recommends that, before 2025, all levels of government should embed links between urban planning, design and transport so that communities have integrated and accessible transport options, including safe cycleways.

A glimpse of what can be possible comes from Ireland:

• walking and cycling receive 20% of the transport capital expenditure
• every local authority must develop a high-quality cycling policy, review road use and increase the number of children walking and cycling to school
• new public transport infrastructure must receive twice the funding of any new roads
• surburban and commuter rail is to be enhanced across the country, including high-speed intercity links.

You don’t need a complicated model to accept that these steps are more in tune with the required emission reductions.

Those who argue that infinite growth is not possible on a finite planet will not find much to agree with in the commission’s report. Other perspectives, such as those outlined in the recent book A Societal Transformation Scenario for Staying Below 1.5ºC critique the growth and technology biases in most climate scenarios.

Another model of the future could involve less energy, less travel and less consumption overall, but an equivalent or higher standard of living.

– ref. How to cut emissions from transport: ban fossil fuel cars, electrify transport and get people walking and cycling – https://theconversation.com/how-to-cut-emissions-from-transport-ban-fossil-fuel-cars-electrify-transport-and-get-people-walking-and-cycling-154363

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

Few people expected the Reserve Bank to adjust its cash rate at its first meeting of the year today, and for good reason.

It has been saying loudly that it is “not expecting to increase the cash rate for at least three years”. Today it said the commitment extends to 2024.

But it isn’t a commitment not to cut the cash rate before then.

A further cut in the cash rate to take it below its present all-time low of 0.10% would turn the cash rate negative.

The cash rate is that rate that banks pay to borrow money from each other.

It has always been positive, at times very positive.

Ten years ago it was 4.75%. Then, as now, it was used to help set every other rate.

But there’s no reason why it couldn’t be negative. Borrowing (accepting deposits) entails costs. If the banks offered funds are offered more than they need, they’ll charge for accepting them.

Some rates are already negative

It’s already happened in the bond market. In several bond auctions, lenders to Australian government have agreed to pay for having the government accept their money.

Overseas, bond rates in Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, Slovakia, Denmark, Austria, Finland, Belgium, France, Ireland, Slovenia and Lithuania are negative. In Germany it means that someone lending the German government 105 euros agrees to get back only 100 euros when the loan expires ten years later.

In at least three countries, Japan, Denmark and Switzerland cash rates are also negative, at rates of -0.10%, -0.60% and -0.75%.

Read more: Negative rates explained: how money for (less than) nothing is helping out the budget

In two other countries, the Bank of England and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand are talking with banks about how to make negative cash rates work.

Calculations I carried out with colleague Timothy Anderson suggest that if Australia’s Reserve Bank acted in accordance with its previous behaviour, it would have turned Australia’s cash rate briefly negative in the second half of last year.

There’s a case for negative cash rate here

Our model, that accurately describes previous Reserve Bank behaviour, is that the bank has a view about the “neutral” cash rate, one that will leave the economy neither “too hot” (too much inflation) nor “too cold” (too much unemployment). If inflation remains too low (and/or unemployment too high) at the neutral rate it moves the cash rate below neutral until inflation climbs back up.

In August 2020 when the Bank was forecasting a dire outlook with unemployment peaking at 10% and inflation well below target our model suggests that if the bank was following previous practice it would have cut the cash rate to around -0.25%.

Read more: Sure, interest rates are negative, but so are some prices, and when you look around, they’re everywhere

By November 2020 when the bank’s forecasts were more positive, our model suggests a positive, but still extraordinarily low cash rate, of about the 0.10% it adopted.

Australia’s Reserve Bank has been remarkably reluctant to take rates negative, seeing a cut into negative territory as fundamentally different to a cut that leaves rates positive.

Governor Philip Lowe has repeatedly said that negative rates are “extraordinarily unlikely”.

But he has conceded he would have to consider them if the world’s other important central banks went negative, a contingency several of them are preparing for.

Economic studies suggest that the neutral rate has been heading downwards for decades and possibly centuries. If the trend continues, negative rates will eventually become widespread.

To not match negative rates elsewhere would be to invite an influx of “hot money” chasing higher rates in Australia than were available elsewhere, pushing the Australian dollar uncomfortably high.

For now, the Reserve Bank has adopted a suite of other unconventional measures, such as lending cheaply to banks and buying government bonds, that it believes will have much the same effects as taking the cash rate negative.

Today it extended announced a decision to buy an additional A$100 billion of bonds when the current bond purchase program expires in mid April.

Lowe will explain more in a televised address to the National Press Club on Wednesday.

Should things worsen here or overseas he might have to go further and overcome his reluctance to push the cash rate negative.

We don’t quite know what would happen

How a negative cash rate would play out depends on how the banks respond.

There are three possibilities.

First, the banks could adjust neither their deposit nor lending rates, meaning the negative cash rate had little effect.

Second, the banks adjust down both their deposit and loan interest rates, but this would mean charging depositors for placing funds with them, something banks haven’t done in other countries that have zero rates for fear of losing customers.

Read more: Negative interest rates could be coming. What would this mean for borrowers and savers?

Third, banks could lower lending interest rates only. This might avoid unpopularity among customers but would erode interest margins. Over time banks might become less keen to lend.

It’s not clear how bank customers would respond. In 2015 a survey conducted for ING Bank asked how savers would respond if the deposit interest rate fell to negative 0.5%.

Only 10% said they would spend more. 14% said that they would save even more. 42% said they would switch some or most of their savings to somewhere like the stock market. 21% would move it to “a safe place”.

– ref. The Reserve Bank could still go negative – https://theconversation.com/the-reserve-bank-could-still-go-negative-149267

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jane McAdam, Scientia Professor and Director of the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW

More than a year since COVID-19 emerged, there are nearly 40,000 Australians overseas who want to come home.

Amid mounting stories of people desperate to return for financial, family and personal reasons, Australians are stuck because of government caps on international arrivals, transit-country restrictions and expensive and cancelled flights.

Prominent human rights barrister Geoffrey Robertson has suggested Australians stranded overseas could make a successful complaint to the United Nations Human Rights Committee.

In his view, Australia’s caps on the number of returning travellers are a clear violation of international law.

There is certainly an arguable case Australia’s travel caps constitute an arbitrary restriction on Australians’ right to come home.

The UN Human Rights Committee says, as general rule, there are

few, if any, circumstances in which deprivation of the right to enter one’s own country could be reasonable.

But could a complaint to the Human Rights Committee offer stranded Aussies a quick return home?

Unfortunately, the short answer is, no.

The UN Human Rights Committee

The UN Human Rights Committee is composed of 18 independent, highly qualified human rights experts.

Among its functions, the committee can consider individual complaints. The Australian government has agreed to this process.

Read more: Australians don’t have a ‘right’ to travel. Does COVID mean our days of carefree overseas trips are over?

This means any individual can lodge a complaint against Australia, arguing it has violated its human rights obligations towards them.

But even though this is free and legal representation is optional (albeit recommended), there are a number of other challenges.

Two big hurdles

Firstly, there is a procedural hurdle.

A person can only lodge a complaint with the committee if they have already exhausted all domestic remedies. That means they must have first gone through the Australian courts.

The committee can waive this requirement, but only if it is clear the local process cannot provide an effective remedy, or if proceedings have been unreasonably prolonged.

Secondly, the merits of the case are not quite as clear-cut as Robertson suggests.

There is no absolute right for a citizen to enter Australia — their entitlement is not to be “arbitrarily” deprived of that right. This means the right may be subject to brief, temporary restrictions that are necessary, reasonable, and based on clear legal criteria — such as protecting the general public from the risks of COVID-19.

What about the #AusOpen?

Even so, it may well be possible for individuals to argue their right to return home is being unlawfully denied. Australia’s travel caps are only justifiable under human rights law if there are no other, less restrictive measures that can be taken to safeguard public health.

So, the federal government needs to show why the caps remain necessary – especially when 1,200 tennis players and their entourage were recently allowed to fly to Australia.

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

Indeed, a Senate inquiry suggested late last year that the federal government consider expanding Commonwealth-funded quarantine facilities to help stranded Australians get home, especially given its constitutional responsibilities for quarantine.

Two more hurdles

A third challenge is that even if the Human Rights Committee did find Australia had violated its international human rights obligations, Australia couldn’t be compelled to bring people home.

The UN human rights system relies on countries acknowledging and rectifying their breaches, but it can’t force their hand.

Australia has a pretty consistent track record of disagreeing with the committee’s findings and refusing to follow its recommendations, especially concerning our treatment of asylum seekers.

A fourth challenge concerns the important issue of timing.

Even if a complaint were lodged today, it would take years before the committee could even consider its merits. As a matter of process, Australia would be given six months just to respond to the initial claim.

A glimmer of hope

There is one small window that could offer an earlier reprieve.

If a person could show that not being able to return to Australia would cause them “irreparable harm”, the committee might recommend “interim measures”.

This is not a finding of a violation, but an urgent measure to avoid potential harm. Interim measures are commonly granted to restrain a country from doing something — for example, to halt the deportation of someone who fears they will be tortured or killed.

It is an open question whether the committee would consider interim measures as a means of getting citizens home. If it did, they would apply only to people who could show a risk of irreparable harm, such as separated children, those whose visa is about to expire, those without employment or a place to live, or those who have underlying health concerns or other compassionate reasons for returning.

And Australia could still ignore the committee’s request — although this would be a very bad look on the world stage.

Why it is still worth lodging a complaint

Still, what a case like this could achieve is a detailed elaboration of what the right to return to one’s country actually entails, and the kinds of circumstances in which it can be lawfully restricted.

The committee’s views on these matters would provide a valuable and authoritative contribution to the international human rights jurisprudence. This could have a powerful influence on how countries treat their nationals in the future.

Read more: Can governments mandate a COVID vaccination? Balancing public health with human rights – and what the law says

If Australia was found to have violated its human rights obligations, then the committee’s opinion would also provide some vindication for those who have been stuck abroad.

Unfortunately, for those stranded now, though, it wouldn’t be the golden ticket home.

– ref. Should Aussies stranded overseas go to the United Nations for help to get home? – https://theconversation.com/should-aussies-stranded-overseas-go-to-the-united-nations-for-help-to-get-home-154372

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Doherty, ARC DECRA Fellow, University of Sydney

The COVID pandemic has shown us that disruptions to the way we move around, complete daily activities and interact with each other can shatter our wellbeing.

This doesn’t apply only to humans. Wildlife across the globe find themselves in this situation every day, irrespective of a global pandemic.

Our latest research published today in Nature Ecology and Evolution has, for the first time, quantified the repercussions of logging, pollution, hunting, and other human disturbances, on the movements of a wide range of animal species.

Our findings were eye-opening. We found human disturbances, on average, restricted an animal’s movements by 37%, or increased it by 70%. That’s like needing to travel an extra 11 km to get to work each day (Australia’s average is 16 km).

Disruptions cascade through the ecosystem

The ability to travel is essential to animal survival because it allows animals to find mates, food and shelter, escape predators and competitors, and avoid disturbances and threats.

Read more: It’s not too late to save them: 5 ways to improve the government’s plan to protect threatened wildlife

And because animal movement is linked to many important ecological processes — such as pollination, seed dispersal and soil turnover — disruptions to movement can cascade through ecosystems.

Our study involved analysing published data on changes in animal movement in response to different types of disturbance or habitat modification by humans. This included agriculture, logging, grazing, recreation, hunting, and pollution, amongst others.

All up, we looked at 719 records of animal movement, spanning 208 studies and 167 species of birds, mammals, reptiles, fish, insects and amphibians. The size of the species we studied ranged from the sleepy orange butterfly to the white shark.

What we found

We found changes in movement are very common, with two-thirds of the 719 cases comprising an increase or decrease in movement of 20% or more. More than one-third of cases changed by 50% or more.

Whether an animal increases or decreases its movement in response to disturbance from humans depends on the situation.

Animals may run away from humans, or move further in search of food and nesting sites. For example, a 2020 study on koalas found their movements were longer and more directed in areas where habitats weren’t well connected, because they had to travel further to reach food patches.

Likewise, the daily movement distances of mountain brushtail possums in central Victoria were 57% higher in remnant bushland along roadsides, compared to large forest areas.

Decreases in movement can occur where animals encounter barriers (such as highways), if they need to shelter from a disturbance, or can’t move as efficiently through altered habitats. In the United States, for example, researchers played a recording of humans talking and found it caused a 34% decrease in the speed that mountain lions move.

On the other hand, some decreases in movement occur where an animal actually benefits from habitat changes. A wide range of animals — including storks, vultures, crows, foxes, mongooses, hyenas and monitor lizards — have shorter movements around garbage dumps because they don’t have to move very far to get the food they need.

Huge changes in movement make animals vulnerable

Overall, we found the average increase in animal movement was +70% and the average decrease was -37%, which are substantial changes.

Imagine having to increase the distance you travel to work, the shops and to see family and friends, by 70%. You would spend a lot more time and energy travelling and have less time to rest or do fun things. And if you live in Melbourne, you know what substantial reductions in movement are like due to COVID-related lockdowns.

In addition to greater energy expenditure, increased movements can mean animals need to move through risky areas where they are more vulnerable to predation.

And decreases in movement can be harmful if animals can’t find adequate food or disperse to find mates, or if ecological processes such as seed dispersal are disrupted.

Read more: Predators, prey and moonlight singing: how phases of the Moon affect native wildlife

For example, flightless rails, birds native to New Zealand, are important for dispersing seeds. But research showed birds in areas of high human activity (campgrounds) moved 35–41% shorter distances than birds away from campgrounds. This could limit the population growth of plants if their seeds are not being dispersed as far.

When disturbances are unpredictable

We compared the effects of different disturbance types on animals by splitting them into two categories: human activities (such as hunting, military procedures and recreation like tourism) and habitat modification (such as agriculture and logging).

Both disturbance types can have severe impacts, ranging from a 90% decrease to 1,800% increase in movement for human activities, and a 97% decrease to a 3,300% increase for habitat modifications.

But we found human activities caused much stronger increases in animal movement distances (averaging +35%) than habitat modifications (averaging +12%).

This might be because human activities are more episodic in nature. In other words, animals are more likely to run away from these unpredictable disturbances.

Read more: Be still, my beating wings: hunters kill migrating birds on their 10,000km journey to Australia

For example, military manoeuvres in Norway led to 84% increase in the home range of moose. And when moose in Sweden were exposed to back-country skiers, their movement speed increased 33-fold.

In contrast, habitat modifications like logging generally represent more persistent changes to the environment, which animals can sometimes adapt to over time.

Reducing harms on wildlife

To reduce the harms we inflict on wildlife, we must protect habitats in relatively intact sea and landscapes from getting degraded or transformed. This could include establishing and managing new national parks and marine protected areas.

Where ecosystems are already modified, improving the connections between habitats and the availability of resources (food and water) can help animals move more easily and populations persist.

And with regards to human activities, which generally caused stronger increases in movement, better managing disturbances such as hunting, recreation and tourism can help to minimise or avoid impacts on animal movement. This could include, for example, establishing a no-take zone in a marine protected area, or enforcing restrictions to activities during breeding periods.

Read more: The buffel kerfuffle: how one species quietly destroys native wildlife and cultural sites in arid Australia

– ref. Humans force wild animals into tight spots, or send them far from home. We calculated just how big the impact is – https://theconversation.com/humans-force-wild-animals-into-tight-spots-or-send-them-far-from-home-we-calculated-just-how-big-the-impact-is-152619

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Merlin Crossley, Deputy Vice-Chancellor Academic and Professor of Molecular Biology, UNSW

The day a muddled mob stormed the US Capitol building, a team of American researchers published a paper in Nature that signified a landmark in gene therapy.

The head of the US National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins had joined forces with Harvard University professor David Liu and others to tackle progeria, a genetic disorder that causes children to age rapidly.

The achievement, successfully tested in mice, was made possible by Liu’s invention of a second-generation CRISPR gene-editing technology called “base editing”. With this, researchers may eventually be able to correct lifelong genetic diseases, including progeria, in humans.

A rare but devastating disease

Francis Collins, former leader of the Human Genome Project, had worked on progeria for many years before the breakthrough.

Children carrying the mutation for progeria have normal intelligence but show early signs of general ageing, including hair loss and hearing loss. By their teenage years they appear very old. Few live past the age of 13.

In 2003, Collins’s lab discovered progeria is caused by a mutation (which you can think of as a “misspelling”) in a gene that encodes a protein called Lamin A. Lamin A has a structural role in the cell’s nucleus.

Many of us carry mutations in various genes. But as we typically have two copies of genes (one from our mother and one from our father), we tend to have at least one good copy and that’s usually enough.

But the progeria mutation in Lamin A is different. While there may be a good copy present, the mutant copy generates a poisonous product that messes things up, like a spanner in the works. This type of mutation is called a “dominant negative mutation”.

The solution, ideally, would be to specifically correct the mutant copy using CRISPR. With this gene-editing tool, scientists can direct a pair of molecular “scissors” to any part of the genome (DNA). Unfortunately, first-generation CRISPR technologies — while good at cutting genes — do not have the level of surgical precision or efficiency needed to correct the Lamin A mutation.

Read more: Explainer: what is a gene?

Complications with mass cell editing

CRISPR scissors are good at finding their target and cutting, but the reconstructive surgery that comes after is left to the cell — and isn’t guaranteed to happen in every cell.

In the lab, researchers can usually manage by just correcting a few cells before growing them in a petri dish for further research.

But in humans we need to accurately correct most, if not all, cells. It would be pointless to correct the progeria mutation in five cells in a patient’s finger, while leaving the rest of the body unrepaired.

This is where David Liu’s work on “base editors” is critical. Liu identified the limitations of CRISPR technology very early and began developing molecular machines that could do more than operate only as targeted molecular scissors.

He started with naturally occurring enzymes, which can change one type of chemical base of the genetic code into another; for example, enzymes that can convert an A (adenine) to a G (guanine), or a C (cytosine) to a T (thymine).

Liu then modified the enzymes to make them more precise and fused them to CRISPR to create fusion proteins called “base editors”. Since CRISPR technology is good at reading DNA and finding a target, it can effectively deliver the editors to the gene that needs to be changed.

It’s important to highlight Liu deliberately developed base editors so that they change letters, but no longer sever DNA like CRISPR scissors. This is crucial, as cutting DNA increases the risk of larger chromosomal deletions, which can potentially damage cells.

Read more: The Resilience Project: finding those rare people with genetic disease mutations who are healthy

The differences of mice and men

Collins, Liu and their colleagues knew they would have to get base editors into all (or at least most) of the cells of a mouse with progeria to cure it. For this, they relied on using hollowed-out viruses as delivery vectors.

They used a vector based on the Adeno Associated Virus, or AAV. As students, we joked AAV stood for “almost a virus”, as it’s one of the smallest viruses and doesn’t cause any known disease.

Collins and Liu packaged the AAV virus particles with genes encoding the relevant base-editing enzyme and delivered them into the mice. The treated mice essentially avoided the disease and became indistinguishable from healthy mice.

But, of course, this all happened in mice — and humans are bigger. We don’t know how difficult it will be to upscale this gene-editing machinery to work reliably in humans. But in any case, Collins and Liu have taken an inspiring first step by showing it’s possible in mice.

Base-editing CRISPR tools are a dream come true for experts committed to gene therapy and for families afflicted by conditions such as progeria. Work on this front is just beginning. But in these dark pandemic times, it provides much-needed new hope.

– ref. New CRISPR technology could revolutionise gene therapy, offering new hope to people with genetic diseases – https://theconversation.com/new-crispr-technology-could-revolutionise-gene-therapy-offering-new-hope-to-people-with-genetic-diseases-153641

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Director, Health Program, Grattan Institute

The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety released new data overnight comparing hospitalisation rates from residential aged care facilities.

The report found 36.9% of nursing home residents presented to an emergency department at least once in 2018-19.

It’s one of many research papers specifically commissioned and published to inform the Royal Commission, which will release its final report by February 26 this year.

The findings are a welcome addition to the dearth of information about the quality of aged care in Australia. It’s unacceptable that it’s taken a Royal Commission in 2021 to uncover simple information about hospitalisation rates.

The report highlights key metrics about the sector’s performance. It points to the next stages in the journey where information about the performance of individual residential aged care facilities is published, and where further investigation is undertaken locally about improving the interaction between residential aged care, general practice, and hospitals.

Aged care in Australia suffers the same accountability deficit as other aspects of human services, but that is slowly changing.

Last week the Productivity Commission released data comparing states on a range of indicators including availability of federal government funded aged care and consumer satisfaction with aged care services.

Read more: 3 ways to transform our ‘Soviet-style’ aged-care mess into a system that puts older Australians first

What the data can tell us

The report found about 3.4% of residents were admitted to hospital for a pressure injury, about 2% for weight loss, and 0.5% for an adverse medication event in the same time period. These rates are just the tip of the iceberg, as they represent those who were serious enough to be hospitalised and don’t include people who were treated in the nursing home and didn’t require hospital admission.

Importantly, the report says there are many facilities which are outliers on one or more of these measures. There are some facilities where the residents have significantly higher rates of hospital admissions for pressure injuries, weight loss, or adverse medication events than others. The report does not identify these but, in the medium term, the public has a right to know which residential aged care facilities are of concern and which are managing these quality risks well.

The report also found 10.5% of residents were admitted to hospital in 2018-19 because of a fall, up from 8.5% in 2014-15, and 5.4% for a fracture.

The data can’t tell us everything

But we need to be cautious about these findings. We cannot use the rate of falls and other injuries as the only indicator of quality care.

One way residential aged care facilities can minimise the risk of falls leading to hospitals admission is by better care and assessment of residents. And on the other hand, facilities should resist the urge to overreact by stripping residents of their autonomy and not letting them move around, nor letting them take any risks at all. Quality care also means treating residents with dignity.

The data also cannot answer the question of how many emergency department presentations could be avoided with better staffing, nor whether involvement of GPs, geriatricians or health outreach from the emergency department could’ve prevented any of these presentations.

Another risk of these data is they’re very health-oriented. The health sector, and especially hospitals, have lots of good data and so it’s easy to develop measures relating to hospitalisations. As good as the published data are, the risk is that decision-makers will focus on what’s measurable, rather than what’s important.

Reform in the aged care sector must have a rights basis, as we at the Grattan Institute pointed out in our 2020 report on rethinking aged care. The full range of residents’ rights needs to be promoted and protected.

More work needs to be done on measuring whether the rights of older Australians are being upheld alongside these hospital-oriented measures, and resident-relevant measures of quality including use of agency staff, staffing ratios, and dealing with individual preferences and differences.

What now? The public needs access to aged care facility peformance

This report was prepared for the Royal Commission, so it mostly highlights issues and demonstrates what can be done. The next step is for the aged care regulator to pick up where the Royal Commission has left off.

In light of calls for increased transparency and accountability in aged care, the regulator should provide feedback to all nursing homes about where they stand on these metrics and then identify relative performance publicly.

Read more: If we have the guts to give older people a fair go, this is how we fix aged care in Australia

Now these data have been collected and shown to be relevant, it’s now unethical for the regulator to withhold this information from the public, especially when the rhetoric about aged care is about promoting choice in a market where people choose their residential facility. Although providers are asked to report against quality standards to the regulator, very little of this information is passed on to the consumer.

The aged care regulator should set a target of publicising performance metrics for the December quarter 2021, and do so on an ongoing basis.

Performance metrics should also go beyond hospitalisation rates, and include information about staffing numbers and ratios as is done in the United States with its star rating system. They should also include the number of complaints and assaults — information which is currently unavailable to older Australians needing care.

– ref. New aged care data on hospitalisation rates show significant problem areas in residential aged care – https://theconversation.com/new-aged-care-data-on-hospitalisation-rates-show-significant-problem-areas-in-residential-aged-care-154365

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Megan C Evans, Lecturer and ARC DECRA Fellow, UNSW

For many businesses, climate change is an existential threat. Extreme weather can disrupt operations and supply chains, spelling disaster for both small vendors and global corporations. It also leaves investment firms dangerously exposed.

Businesses increasingly recognise climate change as a significant financial risk. Awareness of nature-related financial risks, such as biodiversity loss, is still emerging.

My work examines the growth of private sector investment in biodiversity and natural capital. I believe now is a good time to consider questions such as: what are businesses doing, and not doing, about climate change and environmental destruction? And what role should government play?

Research clearly shows humanity is severely damaging Earth’s ability to support life. But there is hope, including a change in government in the United States, which has brought new momentum to tackling the world’s environmental problems.

Poisoning the well

An expert report released last week warned Australia must cut emissions by 50% or more in the next decade if it’s to meet the Paris Agreement goals. Meeting this challenge will require everyone to do their bit.

Climate change is a major threat to Australia’s financial security, and businesses must be among those leading on emissions reduction. Unfortunately, that’s often not the case.

The finance sector, for example, contributes substantially to climate change and biodiversity loss. It does this by providing loans, insurance or investment for business activities that produce greenhouse gas emissions or otherwise harm nature.

In fact, a report last year found Australia’s big four banks loaned A$7 billion to 33 fossil fuel projects in the three years to 2019.

A pushback for nature

Promisingly, there’s a growing push from some businesses, including in the finance sector, to protect the climate and nature.

Late last year, Australian banks and insurers published the nation’s first comprehensive climate change reporting framework. And the recently launched Climate League 2030 initiative, representing 17 of Australia’s institutional investors with A$890 billion in combined assets, aims to act on deeper emissions reductions.

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

Some companies are starting to put serious money on the table. In August last year, global financial services giant HSBC and climate change advisory firm Pollination announced a joint asset management venture focused on “natural capital”. The venture aims to raise up to A$1 billion for its first fund.

Globally too, investors are starting to wake up to the cost of nature loss. Last month, investors representing US$2.4 trillion (A$3.14 trillion) in assets asked HSBC to set emissions reduction targets in line with the Paris Agreement. And in September last year, investor groups worth over $US103 trillion (A$135 trillion) issued a global call for companies to accurately disclose climate risks in financial reporting.

Climate change is not the only threat to global financial security. Nature loss – the destruction of plants, animals and ecosystems – poses another existential threat. Last year, the World Economic Forum reported more than half of the global economy relies on goods and services nature provides such as pollination, water and disease control.

Efforts by the finance sector to address the risks associated with biodiversity loss are in their infancy, but will benefit from work already done on understanding climate risk

Of course, acknowledging and disclosing climate- and nature-related financial risks is just one step. Substantial action is also needed.

Businesses can merely “greenwash” their image – presenting to the public as environmentally responsible while acting otherwise. For example, a report showed in 2019, many major global banks that pledged action on climate change and biodiversity loss were also investing in activities harmful to biodiversity.

Getting it right

In the financial sector and beyond, there are risks to consider as the private sector takes a larger role in environmental action.

Investors will increasingly seek to direct capital to projects that help to reduce their exposure to climate- and nature-related risks, such ecosystem restoration and sustainable agriculture.

Many of these projects can help to restore biodiversity, sequester carbon and deliver benefits for local communities. But it’s crucial to remember that private sector investment is motivated, at least in part, by the expectation of a positive financial return.

Projects that are highly risky or slow to mature, such as restoring highly threatened species or ecosystems, might struggle to attract finance. For example, the federal government’s Threatened Species prospectus reportedly attracted little private sector interest.

That means governments and philanthropic donors still have a crucial role in the funding of research and pilot projects.

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

Governments must also better align policies to improve business and investor confidence. It is nonsensical that various Australian governments send competing signals about whether, say, forests should be cleared or restored. And at the federal level, biodiversity loss and climate change come under separate portfolios, despite the issues being inextricably linked.

Private-sector investment could deliver huge benefits for the environment, but these outcomes must be real and clearly demonstrated. Investors want the benefits measured and reported, but good data is often lacking.

Too-simple metrics, such as the area of land protected, don’t tell the whole story. They may not reflect harm to local and Indigenous communities, or whether the land is well managed.

Finally, as the private sector becomes more aware of nature and climate-related risks, a range of approaches to addressing this will proliferate. But efforts must be harmonised to minimise confusion and complexity in the marketplace. Governments must provide leadership to make this a smooth process.

The power to change

Last week, a major report was released highlighting grave failures in Australia’s environmental laws. The government’s response suggested it is not taking the threat seriously.

Businesses and governments hold disproportionate power that can be used to either delay or accelerate transformative change.

And although many businesses wield undue influence on government decisions, it doesn’t have to be this way.

By working together and seizing the many opportunities that present, business and government can help arrest climate change and nature loss, and contribute to a safer, more liveable planet for all.

Read more: You can’t talk about disaster risk reduction without talking about inequality

– ref. Taking care of business: the private sector is waking up to nature’s value – https://theconversation.com/taking-care-of-business-the-private-sector-is-waking-up-to-natures-value-153786

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katie Holmes, Professor of History, La Trobe University

This is a longer read. Enjoy

The speed with which the COVID-19 virus infected the world and the dramatic nature of its fallout is without parallel. Individually and collectively we have struggled to understand and process it. Early on in the pandemic, journalists looked to historians to help make sense of what was happening and to read from the past the possible impacts of this moment on the future. Experts on past pandemics tried to shed light on how we might recover, and on the prospective local and global consequences of this COVID-19 catastrophe.

Historians find remnants of the past in libraries and archives, in objects, monuments and buildings, in fields and forests, in music and art and images, in memories and stories. This is where we find the roads not taken, the possibilities foreclosed, the thinking that shapes a culture, the choices made that, sometimes through the slow accretion of time and action and sometimes suddenly and dramatically, change outcomes and “make history”.

The sense that a generation carries a distinct identity is forged by sharing the “experience of profound and destabilising events”. Those events have their greatest impact if people experience them young, typically in their late teens and early 20s.

Generational consciousness is shaped by the sharing of those dramatic events, their subsequent remembering and the recognition, often by older generations, of the distinctiveness of a generational experience or mode of self-representation.

What might the past offer us at this moment, and how will future generations reflect on this year? How will this present become the future’s past?

The COVID generation

The generation currently in their late teens and early 20s — the COVID generation — already had cause to be worried about their future.

In 2018 and 2019, hundreds of thousands of them had filled city streets to call for action on climate change and for an end to our dependence on fossil fuels.

In 2020, those young people found themselves stuck at home with remote learning, their rites of passage cancelled, their plans upended, their casual labour no longer required, their collective protests in city streets ruled illegal, their sense of agency curtailed by a microscopic virus with its origins in the ecological breakdown they fear.

Read more: No festivals, no schoolies: young people are missing out on vital rites of passage during COVID

Many joined the long unemployment queues snaking outside Centrelink offices.

While they are in the age bracket least likely to suffer serious health effects from the coronavirus, they are the generation most likely to struggle to find employment in the post-pandemic world, and the ones who, along with their younger siblings, will be carrying the debt burden of the government’s relief measures for the longest.

The fragility of their future is suddenly even more immediately apparent. Not since their great-grandparents were young has an Australian generation lived with such uncertainty, such a profound sense that the future is out of its control.

Collective memory

“Collective memory” is a term historians use to refer to the ways the public “remembers” an event or a period of time. It is the version that gets publicly told, endorsed and reworked through films and history books, commemorative activities, monuments and school curricula.

The further back in time an event occurred, the more abstracted the collective memory of it becomes.

Think Anzac, now one of our most carefully curated memories. In the immediate post-World War I period, understandings of what the war had meant for the nation were highly contested. Defeat at Gallipoli, 60,000 lives lost (the highest death rate among the Allied forces), a divided and grieving home-front community and an economy in shreds were not obvious raw materials from which to build a narrative about heroic manhood and the founding of the nation.

Read more: How Anzac Day came to occupy a sacred place in Australians’ hearts

Historians played a key role in creating that narrative. C.E.W. Bean crafted it carefully, selecting the stories that would best illustrate the history he wanted to tell, and then campaigning for a monument and museum that would house and celebrate that story — the Australian War Memorial.

Anzac provided a healing narrative that gave solace to grieving families and the nation alike. It helped make sense of unimaginable loss.

For the COVID generation, the return of overwhelming uncertainty cuts deeply in a cohort for whom anxiety and depression were already being described as a pandemic and in a context where mental health was a growing source of national disquiet. They might remember that feeling in their future — or it might not be mere memory.

In 50 years’ time, living with anxiety and uncertainty may be a normal part of the human experience, a consequence of the disruption and havoc of environmental degradation.

Which stories will the COVID generation remember from 2020 — 20, 30, 50 years from now?

An X-ray of inequality

They might remember their mothers. One of the fault lines of the pandemic has been gender. More jobs have been lost in female-dominated sectors than in male-dominated ones. Gender inequality is being further entrentched. While men’s participation in childcare has increased slightly with working-from-home arrangements, women have continued to carry the major load, as well as the bulk of the housework. The juggle of working while home-schooling their children has taken its toll on women.

Read more: Low-paid, young women: the grim truth about who this recession is hitting hardest

The COVID generation might also remember living in families where precarity and uncertainty were daily realities. The pandemic has functioned as an X-ray of inequality, revealing the cracks in our social fabric.

Will the image of Melbourne’s public housing towers — in which, as the Victorian premier admitted, some of the state’s most vulnerable communities lived — locked down and encircled by police, or the anxious face of a young child gazing from an upper-floor window, become part of the city’s collective memory?

Let them remember, too, alongside all the failures of our systems that have been exposed by the pandemic, the many examples of community strength and collective endeavour. For more than eight months, five million Victorians sacrificed personal freedoms to protect those most vulnerable to the virus.

Many thousands also acted with generosity and selflessness to support and care for those in need. Australians around the country made similar sacrifices.

The stories we tell ourselves matter

Historians know the stories a nation tells itself matter; collective memory can suppress competing versions of the past, while individual and family stories might hold conflicting memories. Our work has been crucial in shaping and dismantling, telling and retelling the narratives through which we have come to think of ourselves as a nation.

We have colluded in the silences of colonial dispossession, the erasure of women’s voices and the celebration of environmental-wreckage-as-progress, as much as we have, “in alliances with communities of action”, found voices that have challenged the racist and sexist hierarchies on which such histories were founded.

It’s important to note, however, that many of those stories have not been framed as “national”, but rather as histories of specific groups of people. Their essence has not been abstracted to a national stage and inflected with the power to carry us forward as Australians in periods of existential crisis.

Read more: White, male and straight – how 30 years of Australia Day speeches leave most Australians out

It is time to bring these marginalised group stories into the national story so we all learn from them as a nation: understand their morals and enact their lessons.

Such an embrace would provide the opportunity for a more honest reckoning with our past — including Indigenous histories — a more authentic reflection of our collective present and richer traditions from which to draw as we face an uncertain future.

The survivors from generations who lived through the Great Depression or World War II, many of them subsequently Australia’s postwar migrants, are among the COVID casualties from our aged-care facilities. They are the generation that helped create our contemporary world.

Daily obituaries in The Age told their stories, their experiences of mass unemployment, war, widespread rationing, poverty and few social services, and presented illuminating stories of hardship, endurance and the importance of community.

But beyond the COVID-19 case count, the exposure of an economic system contingent on precarity and inequality, and the incriminating tally of aged-care deaths, what memories might linger and take shape in the generations who live to look back on this watershed year?

An obituary to neoliberalism

It is far too early to predict where this particular historical tide will settle and how this moment of crisis will be recalled. We are still living this story, still captured by the drama of its unfolding, navigating our way along a shoreline none of us has walked before.

If 2020 does prove to be a rupture in our previous trajectory, that contingency will entirely depend on what happens next, be that further pandemics and climate catastrophes or a radical rewind of our carbon emissions and a restructuring of our economy.

Either way, the memories we take forward from this time will be a mix of stories. They will be drawn from individuals and families and gradually coalesce into a broader cultural narrative, one in turn shaped by more powerful forces seeking to draw national significance and meaning from the disaster.

The COVID generation will bring their own distinct memories to shape the national story.

The national stories we tell at this time are crucial. We need stories of adaptation and survival, of resilience and sacrifice, of rebuilding lives shattered by world events, of campaigning for justice, of hope and possibilities.

Too many obituaries have already been written as a result of this pandemic. But I hope for one more. I hope for an obituary to neoliberalism. When the COVID generation remember 2020 and the time that came just after, may they remember the power of community action, collective responsibility and the strength of our diverse body politic.

May they remember the way the passion for change that they carried onto the streets in 2018 and 2019 gradually infected us all, countering the poison of complacency and the power of the fossil-fuel industry alike.

Read more: Friday essay: COVID in ten photos

May they recall a government that, as in the postwar period, invested heavily in employment schemes, in the welfare state, in social housing and higher education; a government willing to make the connections between the droughts, fires and floods that have ravaged our land in the past three years and the pandemic that has ruptured our world, and to act in response — belatedly but definitively — to protect the future.

And may they celebrate and commemorate a community whose vision, sharpened by these unprecedented times, determined that the history they made and bequeathed would be infused with the values of care, stewardship and justice.

This is an edited version of an essay published in Griffith Review 71: Remaking the Balance

– ref. ‘The stories a nation tells itself matter’: how will the COVID generation remember 2020? – https://theconversation.com/the-stories-a-nation-tells-itself-matter-how-will-the-covid-generation-remember-2020-154367

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Madison Bland, PhD Candidate, Cities Research Institute, Griffith University

Shared mobility devices such as bicycles and electric scooters have experienced significant growth across the globe and Australia is no exception. In cities with such offerings, users are able to get around in more convenient and flexible ways.

The recent emergence of dockless shared e-scooters (i.e. Lime and Neuron) heralded a new-age of micromobility. In Brisbane, it signalled the end for the ten-year-old CityCycle bike-share scheme.

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

Not long after announcing CityCycle’s demise in late 2020, Brisbane City Council proposed its replacement with shared dockless e-bikes and the topic started trending. The question is: why will the e-bike scheme succeed where its predecessors in Brisbane and other Australian cities failed? (See below for a summary of the evolution of shared mobility schemes in Australia.)

Mobility is being offered more and more as a service. The uptake of share travel across Australian cities has undergone a transition from docked bikes to dockless e-mobility, aided largely by advances in technology and the proliferation of mobile devices. Sharing is being considered as an attractive alternative to owning a bike or car thanks to new ways to bundle mobility services into packages, in much the same way as we use entertainment streaming services instead of buying movies or records.

Read more: We subscribe to movies and music, why not transport?

What can we expect from e-bikes?

E-bikes are pedal-assisted bicycles offering users electric motor assistance up to speeds of 25km/h. A shared bike scheme with self-locking and smartphone connectivity offers an extremely flexible riding experience.

It isn’t yet clear how e-bikes will be deployed in Brisbane. What we do know is the scheme will be privately operated under a short-term tender. As with CityCycle, 2,000 bikes will be provided across Brisbane, similar to how e-scooters are managed.

The e-bikes can improve on both e-scooters and CityCycle’s docked bikes in several ways.

Trip flexibility: GPS tracking and smart lock technology remove the need to locate set docking stations. Users can start and end trips at places of their own choosing. This means they avoid the frustrations caused by docking stations reaching maximum capacity, especially in popular destinations such as the CBD.

Wider appeal: unlike e-scooters and their younger target market, e-bikes can attract a wider demographic more familiar with riding bikes. They also offer greater load-carrying capacity and are permitted for use on roads whereas e-scooters are restricted to footpaths or bikeways in Brisbane. In New South Wales and Victoria, e-scooters are banned altogether – though changes could be on the way for Victoria.

Assisted riding: electrically assisted bikes can make cycling easier and accessible for more people. For those who struggle to ride at the best of times, e-bikes can help overcome fitness issues, especially in Brisbane’s hot climate and hilly terrain.

Read more: Billions are pouring into mobility technology – will the transport revolution live up to the hype?

So, what punctured CityCycle?

CityCycle was launched in 2010 under a 20-year single-operator contract. The scheme failed to achieve ambitious patronage targets and the goal of paying for itself. Despite usage growing until 2018, a shifting market has since resulted in significant declines.

The reasons for the lack of use are clear:

1. CityCycle was delivered through a monopolised model lacking market competition, with the shared bike scheme a secondary focus for operator JCDecaux Group’s advertising juggernaut, and this once-novel model became dated when dockless bikes emerged.

2. a cumbersome payment system made renting bikes difficult, with only smartcards accepted at first, and while uptake increased once credit card payments were introduced, e-scooters’ mobile-based payment options are more convenient for walk-up users.

3. the arrival of e-scooter schemes in 2018 attracted many CityCycle users, as the chart below shows (click to enlarge), and the 2020 coronavirus pandemic wrote off the scheme when the city became deserted during the lockdown.

Read more: How coronavirus made 2020 the year of the electric bike

The path to success

As Brisbane moves towards a dockless e-bike scheme, its ability to outperform its predecessor will ultimately rest with decision-makers delivering a safe and convenient rider experience. This involves several key considerations.

Pricing and payment: the scheme will have to be competitive with current modes (particularly e-scooters), where registration and payment are integrated with existing systems. The rise of mobility as a service (MaaS) platforms can incorporate the service within shared mobility apps and bundle offers (packaging public transport and shared mobility services).

Read more: For Mobility as a Service (MaaS) to solve our transport woes, some things need to change

Availability: the dockless model, while more flexible, will require operators to actively manage bike distribution and avoid cluttering. The blocking of access ways and even dumping of bikes have been sources of public opposition to other bike-share schemes. Though repositioning bikes (using service vehicles) will take up significant time and money, it is crucial in maintaining a balanced and orderly network that maximises bike availability.

Initial launch: the scheme’s roll-out will be important, as positive perceptions are best achieved by people riding, rather than bikes sitting idle. Importantly, a winter launch should be avoided – as Melbourne found – when bike trips are at yearly lows.

Cycle infrastructure: As with cycling in general, providing safe and connected bicycle networks is paramount for increasing participation rates. For Australian cities, the historic lack of funding for cycle infrastructure has limited ridership growth. Much work remains to be done, though Brisbane City Council has committed to trial improvements to its CBD on-road bike lanes.

Read more: Cycling and walking are short-changed when it comes to transport funding in Australia

Ultimately, dockless shared e-bikes can deliver a more flexible mobility option as operators maximise user convenience and governments develop urban cycling infrastructure.

– ref. Why e-bikes can succeed where earlier bike-share schemes failed – https://theconversation.com/why-e-bikes-can-succeed-where-earlier-bike-share-schemes-failed-151844

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robbie Moore, Lecturer, University of Tasmania

The gleeful manipulation of GameStop’s share price is not the first time amateur investors have created a legitimacy crisis on Wall Street.

In the late 19th century, so-called “bucket shops” allowed the American public to gamble small amounts on the movement of stocks and commodities on the New York and Chicago exchanges.

In most cases, a bucket shop client wouldn’t own the stock they wagered on: the shop acted more like a bookmaker than a broker, with clients betting against the house that a certain stock would rise.

Historian David Hochfelder describes bucket shops as a “shadow market”. For American Studies scholar Peter Knight, they were a “financial netherworld”. Some bucket shops were outright confidence tricks. The house could manipulate the telegraphic feed of stock prices or arrange “wash sales” to tank heavily-favoured stocks.

Nonetheless, bucket shops were immensely popular.

By 1889, the volume of shares wagered in bucket shops was seven times larger than the volume of shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Bucket shops drew many more Americans — including women — into the thrill-ride of speculation.

In 1892, The Sun reported on one of Chicago’s women-only bucket shops, filled mostly with:

elderly maidens and widows, with an occasional married woman who dabbles in stocks without the knowledge of any one but her broker.

This was the beginning of the American middle class’s real and imaginative investment in high finance.

Between the sanctioned and the shadows

Bucket shops mimicked the operations of the club-like bastions of American finance. Increasingly backed by big money and arranged in national chains, their interiors were often fitted with plush furniture and seductive technologies such as stock tickers and telephones.

This mimicry threatened the legitimacy of stock speculation. Glorified gambling dens that resembled legitimate brokerages created a dangerous slippage between the sanctified activities of stock speculators and the shadowy activities of card sharps and confidence men.

Reddit and Robinhood create similarly dangerous slippages today, forcing the finance industry to distinguish between gamified market manipulation and the supposedly legitimate activities of hedge funds and short sellers.

Read more: GameStop: Wall Street short sellers are not villains but Reddit traders should be totally free to attack them

Writing on GameStop for the Washington Post, Sebastian Mallaby made the distinction between “rational investors” who work to stabilise the market and keep prices realistic and “honest”, and the “crazies” whose frenzied activity creates irrational prices.

We saw similar language used by the finance industry of a century ago, asserting the superior masculine equipoise and rationality of trained financial professionals compared to the “hysteria” of bucket shop amateurs.

The Sun, for instance, suggested amateur women traders become “oblivious to sentiment and careless of personal appearance, and absurdly superstitious”.

Dangerous allures

Just as hedge fund researcher Paul Rowady said the “frictionless and highly gamified environments” of the Robinhood app “ignite the basest instincts of human nature”, early 20th century commentators argued amateur traders were vulnerable to the dangerous allure of the telegraphic stock ticker, which began to replace Wall Street messenger boys in the 1870s.

Tickers transmitted stock information over telegraph lines, and were available for anyone to purchase. One pro-Wall Street journalist described the ticker as a “narcotic”, while a doctor writing for the Medical Times described the illness of “tickeritis”:

I have long held the theory that the constant ticking of the instruments in the broker’s office throws the majority of traders into a state of self-hypnosis.

Through trade journals, financial newspapers and guidebooks the finance industry argued professional brokers were immune to the ticker’s allure.

The professional brokers and trained tape readers who interpreted the stock market fluctuations were said to be silent, private, studious and affectless.

“The Tape Reader is like a Pullman coach,” wrote the pseudonymous Rollo Tape in his Studies in Tape Reading (1910):

which travels smoothly and steadily along the roadbed of the tape, acquiring direction and speed from the market engine, and being influenced by nothing whatever.

The NYSE itself helped to propagate the image of the ticker reader as a rational actor in an efficient marketplace. An official illustrated history published in 1919, writes historian Julia Ott, presented “photographs of empty, tidy trading floors and small groups of neatly attired clerks calmly operating pneumatic tubes, tickers, and telephones”.

In tandem, the NYSE challenged cultural representations of stock trading as a collective frenzy.

A 1914 film adaptation of Frank Norris’s The Pit (1903) was threatened with a libel suit for depicting the psychological dissolution of a power-mad commodities dealer in the eponymous pit at the Chicago Board of Trade.

Changes to the film were secured after the legal threat was issued.

Over 100 years ago, the NYSE established a false though rhetorically seductive dichotomy: the gambler, the amateur, the crowd and the hysteric stood in opposition to the professional broker, whose part-mechanical subjectivity is cool, self-regulating and immune to panic.

Read more: GameStop: how Redditors played hedge funds for billions (and what might come next)

Today, both sides of the GameStop struggle are likewise invested in mythmaking and false dichotomies: Robinhood vs The Man; the Rational vs the Rabble.

But it is clear that both sides are more similar and more entangled than they would care to admit. This poses difficult questions for the finance industry as it tries to shut out the rabble while maintaining the status quo.

– ref. Long before GameStop, bucket shops challenged the legitimacy of Wall Street – https://theconversation.com/long-before-gamestop-bucket-shops-challenged-the-legitimacy-of-wall-street-154268