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

When he went out to denounce Anthony Albanese’s industrial relations policy on Wednesday, minister Christian Porter claimed it would put a “$20 billion tax burden” on business.

Just in case anyone missed the number, Porter said it 20 times during his doorstop.

Never mind that it was based on the policy going further than Labor says it actually intends (although its wording was imprecise). Porter’s costing was for “extending paid leave and long service leave entitlements to casual employees and independent contractors”.

Exaggerations and scares are the default positions when industrial relations reforms are debated.

So we now have two sets of workplace changes in the political marketplace, complete with two scare campaigns. As a hardened observer put it, “everyone is reverting to their normal battle stands”.

Industrial relations is one of the most complicated policy areas, so the heat and claims and counter claims are particularly confusing for workers and employers, many of them already hit for six by the pandemic.

The government has before parliament a clutch of measures to put more flexibility into workplace arrangements. They are generally seen as favouring employers, despite the inclusion of tougher provisions on “wage theft”.

The most controversial proposal would allow the Better Off Overall Test (BOOT) that agreements must satisfy to be put aside in certain circumstances. This would only apply to agreements made in the next two years, although the agreements themselves could run much longer.

Read more: Anthony Albanese’s plan to boost protections for Australians in insecure work

Labor says the government’s legislation – now before a Senate inquiry – is simply a plan to cut wages, and declares it will vote against its second reading stage in the Senate. If the bill passed that stage, however, it would re-engage on the detail.

The union movement, after months of tripartite talks organised by the government, is also fighting the legislation, with an advertising campaign that’s being stepped up.

The Coalition’s attitude is that it will try to get what it can of the bill through the Senate – if necessary jettisoning the BOOT part – but won’t invest serious political capital in the effort.

Porter is negotiating with the crossbenchers, who regard the bill as a mixed bag. He needs three of the five non-Green crossbench votes. One Nation (with two votes) will want substantial alteration to the legislation and isn’t keen on the BOOT changes.

Once the upper house has had its say – the vote will be in the week of March 15 after the committee reports on March 12 – that’s it, from the government’s point of view. It is not comfortable defending an industrial relations policy. WorkChoices was a long time ago, but is still a nasty memory in Coalition minds.

It’s a different story for Albanese. Labor regards industrial relations as good campaigning ground, where it wants to have a fight. The IR blueprint is the latest of only a few policies he’s put out – the most notable of the others is on childcare.

The workplace policy is designed to be, and needs to be, one of Albanese’s central planks for the election. He must be able both to sell its positives and defend it from critics. Immediately after its release, the task of defending suddenly became the more pressing.

The policy is centred on extending to people in insecure work more rights and protections, with enhanced rewards and conditions.

A better deal is promised for workers in the “gig” economy, including minimum rates of pay, delivered via the Fair Work Commission. There would be a definition of a “casual” worker; portability-of-entitlements arrangements where practical for those in insecure work; and pay guarantees for labour hire workers.

What the policy doesn’t cover is significant – wage theft and fixing an enterprise bargaining system that is clearly no longer fit for purpose.

If the government gets through its measure on wage theft, Labor won’t have to bother with that. But whatever happens with the proposed changes to enterprise bargaining, one would think this is an area where Labor will need its own policy.

On the face of it, Labor’s proposals around insecure work should be attractive to many voters. The pandemic has highlighted job insecurity. And the gig economy has spread in recent years (of course many gig workers won’t be voters – they are international students and others on visas).

But in practice the policy is likely to be a tough “sell” for Albanese, for several reasons.

First, its announcement has come without a lot of detail and initially with some sloppy drafting. It wasn’t a “clean” launch, which facilitated the “scare”.

Second, even discounting Porter’s figure, the changes would represent a substantial cost to enterprises. Just as the government’s legislation is, broadly, a policy for employers, so the opposition’s plan is a policy for workers. Therefore, as Labor anticipated, there has been a business backlash.

Third, it is nearly impossible for Labor to answer legitimate questions about this cost to business – or indeed the effect on prices of, for example, delivered food.

Read more: Low wage, low growth: Porter’s industrial relations bill is only good in parts

This is because so much would depend on exactly what the Fair Work Commission decided, how individual businesses responded, and other unknowns.

While it’s worse than petty to complain pizza prices could go up if the delivery person got a decent remuneration, such points will be pushed by opponents.

Labor is deploying various defences against the onslaught from government and business over cost. On the one hand it’s saying that the fundamental issue is fairness to workers and, on the other, insisting the policy has limits.

But uncosted policy is always dangerous for Labor, as we saw so clearly last election with the opposition’s climate change pitch.

Equally, if Labor made a stab at costing, that would carry its own risks.

In the absence of a costing, critics will have free range; if estimates were forthcoming, the debate would bog down in their detail.

Fourth, the preoccupation with COVID – among the public, the politicians and the media – remains nearly all-consuming, so it is very difficult for Labor to cut through with any policies. And that segues to the question of Albanese’s ability to get messages across.

Albanese finds himself caught both ways. He is increasingly under pressure to produce policies. But the COVID fog means their impact will be less than in normal times. How he performs on this one will be watched very closely by nervous colleagues.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: There’s no escape from scares when politicians debate industrial relations – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-theres-no-escape-from-scares-when-politicians-debate-industrial-relations-155150

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ryan Shannon, Associate Professor, Swinburne University of Technology, Swinburne University of Technology

Fast radio bursts are one of the great mysteries of the universe. Since their discovery, we have learned a great deal about these intense millisecond-duration pulses.

But we still have much to learn, such as what causes them.

We know the intense bursts originate in galaxies billions of light years away. We have also used these bursts (called FRBs) to find missing matter that couldn’t be found otherwise.

With teams of astronomers around the world racing to understand their enigma, how did we get to where we are now?

The first burst

The first FRB was discovered in 2007 by a team led by British-American astronomer Duncan Lorimer using Murriyang, the traditional Indigenous name for the iconic Parkes radio telescope (image, top).

Read more: Silence please! Why radio astronomers need things quiet in the middle of a WA desert

The team found an incredibly bright pulse — so bright that many astronomers did not believe it to be real. But there was yet more intrigue.

Radio pulses provide a tremendous gift to astronomers. By measuring when a burst arrives at the telescope at different frequencies, astronomers can tell the total amount of gas that it passed through on its journey to Earth.

The Lorimer burst had travelled through far too much gas to have originated in our galaxy, the Milky Way. The team concluded it came from a galaxy billions of light years away.

To be visible from so far away, whatever produced it must have released an enormous amount of energy. In just a millisecond it released as much energy as our Sun would in 80 years.

Lorimer’s team could only guess which galaxy their FRB had come from. Murriyang can’t pinpoint FRB locations very accurately. It would take several years for another team to make the breakthrough.

Locating FRBs

To pinpoint a burst location, we need to detect an FRB with a radio interferometer — an array of antennas spread out over at least a few kilometres.

When signals from the telescopes are combined, they produce an image of an FRB with enough detail not only to see in which galaxy the burst originated, but in some cases to tell where within the galaxy it was produced.

The first FRB localised was from a source that emitted many bursts. The first burst was discovered in 2012 with the giant Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico.

Subsequent bursts were detected by the Very Large Array, in New Mexico, and found to be coming from a tiny galaxy about 3 billion light years away.

In 2018, using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder Telescope (ASKAP) in Western Australia, our team identified the second FRB host galaxy.

In stark contrast to the previous galaxy, this galaxy was very ordinary. But our published discovery was this month awarded a prize by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Teams including ours have now localised roughly a dozen more bursts from a wide range of galaxies, large and small, young and old. The fact FRBs can come from such a wide range of galaxies remains a puzzle.

A burst from close to home

On April 28, 2020, a flurry of X-rays suddenly bashed into the Swift telescope orbiting Earth.

The satellite telescope dutifully noted the rays had come from a very magnetic and erratic neutron star in our own Milky Way. This star has form: it goes into fits every few years.

Two telescopes, CHIME in Canada and the STARE2 array in the United States, detected a very bright radio burst within milliseconds of the X-rays and in the direction of that star. This demonstrated such neutron stars could be a source of the FRBs we see in galaxies far away.

The simultaneous release of X-rays and radio waves gave astrophysicists important clues to how nature can produce such bright bursts. But we still don’t know for certain if this is the cause of FRBs.

So what’s next?

While 2020 was the year of the local FRB, we expect 2021 will be the year of the the far-flung FRB, even further than already observed.

The CHIME telescope has collected by far the largest sample of bursts and is compiling a meticulous catalogue that should be available to other astronomers soon.

Read more: How we closed in on the location of a fast radio burst in a galaxy far, far away

A team at Caltech is building an array specifically dedicated to finding FRBs.

There’s plenty of action in Australia too. We are developing a new burst-detection supercomputer for ASKAP that will find FRBs at a faster rate and find more distant sources.

It will effectively turn ASKAP into a high-speed, high-definition video camera, and make a movie of the universe at 40 trillion pixels per second.

By finding more bursts, and more distant bursts, we will be able to better study and understand what causes these mysteriously intense bursts of energy.

– ref. A brief history: what we know so far about fast radio bursts across the universe – https://theconversation.com/a-brief-history-what-we-know-so-far-about-fast-radio-bursts-across-the-universe-154381

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Quentin Grafton, Director of the Centre for Water Economics, Environment and Policy, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

Most Australians know all too well how precious water is. Sydney just experienced a severe drought, while towns across New South Wales and Queensland ran out of drinking water. Under climate change, the situation will become more dire, and more common.

It wasn’t meant to be this way. In 2004, federal, state and territory governments signed up to the National Water Initiative. It was meant to secure Australia’s water supplies through better governance and plans for sustainable use across industry, environment and the community.

But a report by the Productivity Commission released today says the policy must be updated. It found the National Water Initiative is not fit for the challenges of climate change, a growing population and our changing perceptions of how we value water.

The report’s findings matter to all Australians, whether you live in a city or a drought-ravaged town. If governments don’t manage water better, on our behalf, then entire communities may disappear. Agriculture will suffer and nature will continue to degrade. It’s time for a change.

A big job ahead

The report acknowledges progress in national water reform, and says Australia’s allocation of water resources has improved. But the commission makes clear there’s still much to be done, including:

• making water infrastructure projects a critical part of the National Water Initiative

• explicitly recognising how climate change threatens water-sharing agreement between states, users, towns, agriculture and the environment

• more meaningful recognition of Indigenous rights to water

• delivering adequate drinking water quality to all Australians, including those in regional and remote communities, especially during drought

• all states committing to drought management plans.

Busting water illusions

The commission’s proposal to make water infrastructure developments a much larger part of the National Water Initiative is a critical way to keep governments honest.

For years, state and federal governments have used taxpayers’ dollars to pay for farming water infrastructure that largely benefits the big end of town — large, corporate irrigators.

For example, the federal government last year announced an additional A$2 billion for its “Building 21 Century Water infrastructure” project. This type of funding represents a return to schemes like the discredited Bradfield scheme, a plan to redirect floodwater from Queensland’s north to the south, including to South Australia.

Read more: Australia’s inland rivers are the pulse of the outback. By 2070, they’ll be unrecognisable

Such megaprojects, even when relabelled or reconceived, perpetuate simplistic myths of the early 20th Century that Australia – the driest inhabited continent on Earth – can be “drought-proofed”.

As the report highlights, when governments in 2004 signed up to the National Water Initiative, they agreed to ensure investments in water infrastructure would be both economically viable and ecologically sustainable. But many proposed water infrastructure projects appear to be neither.

This includes the construction of Dungowan Dam in NSW. For this dam, the commission notes, “any infrastructure that improves reliability for one user will affect water availability for others” and the “prospect of ‘new’ water is illusory”.

The commission warned projects that are not economically viable or ecologically sustainable can “burden taxpayers with ongoing costs, discourage efficient water use and result in long-lived impacts on communities and the environment”.

Equally disturbing is that billions of dollars for water infrastructure are currently targeted primarily for primary industry (such as agriculture and mining) while communities in desperate need of drinking water that meets water quality guidelines miss out. Thousands of Australians in more remote communities still lack access to drinking water most Australians take for granted.

Water scarcity under climate change

Water availability under climate change features prominently in the report. The commission says droughts will likely become more intense and frequent and in many places, water will become scarce.

Read more: To help drought-affected farmers, we need to support them in good times as well as bad

The report says planning provisions were inadequate to deal with both the Millennium Drought and the recent drought in Eastern Australia.

The commission also said more work is needed to rebalance water use in response to climate change. One need only look to the 2012 Murray-Darling Basin Plan — one of the key outcomes of the National Water Initiative — which didn’t account for climate change when determining how much water to take from streams and rivers.

Overcoming past failures

As the commission report notes, one key policy failure since the 2004 National Water Initiative was signed was the federal government’s dismantling of the National Water Commission in 2015. It meant Australia no longer had a resourced, well-informed agency to “mark the homework” and make sure the reforms were being implemented as agreed.

The report offers ways to overcome a range of past policy water failures, including strengthening governance architecture for the National Water Initiative.

Importantly, the report also called for better recognition of the rights Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people hold over water.

Aboriginal communities and corporations own just 0.1% of the more than A$26 billion of water entitlements in the Murray-Darling Basin. Clearly, such gross inequities must be overcome.

What happens in the Murray-Darling Basin is key to national water reform. There is overwhelming evidence the basin plan needs fixing.

To start, subsidies for irrigation-related water infrastructure should be halted until a comprehensive audit is conducted to determine who gets water, when and how. And an independent, properly funded expert agency should be established to monitor, advise and implement the law for managing the Basin’s water resources.

The 800-page report of the 2019 South Australia Murray-Darling Royal Commission proposes many ways forward. Yet unfortunately, that substantial body of work is not mentioned in the Productivity Commission’s report.

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

We’re still waiting for change

In 2007, the worst year of the Millennium Drought, Prime Minister John Howard said the current trajectory of water use and management in Australia was not sustainable. He said:

In a protracted drought, and with the prospect of long-term climate change, we need radical and permanent change.

We are still waiting for that change. If Australia is to be prosperous and liveable into the future, governments must urgently implement water reform – including adopting recommendations from the Productivity Commission’s report.

If it fails to act, our landscapes will degrade, agriculture will become unsustainable, communities will disintegrate and First Peoples will continue to suffer water injustice.

– ref. Our national water policy is outdated, unfair and not fit for climate challenges: major new report – https://theconversation.com/our-national-water-policy-is-outdated-unfair-and-not-fit-for-climate-challenges-major-new-report-155116

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Quentin Grafton, Director of the Centre for Water Economics, Environment and Policy, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

Most Australians know all too well how precious water is. Sydney just experienced a severe drought, while towns across New South Wales and Queensland ran out of drinking water. Under climate change, the situation will become more dire, and more common.

It wasn’t meant to be this way. In 2004, federal, state and territory governments signed up to the National Water Initiative. It was meant to secure Australia’s water supplies through better governance and plans for sustainable use across industry, environment and the community.

But a report by the Productivity Commission released today says the policy must be updated. It found the National Water Initiative is not fit for the challenges of climate change, a growing population and our changing perceptions of how we value water.

The report’s findings matter to all Australians, whether you live in a city or a drought-ravaged town. If governments don’t manage water better, on our behalf, then entire communities may disappear. Agriculture will suffer and nature will continue to degrade. It’s time for a change.

A big job ahead

The report acknowledges progress in national water reform, and says Australia’s allocation of water resources has improved. But the commission makes clear there’s still much to be done, including:

• making water infrastructure projects a critical part of the National Water Initiative

• explicitly recognising how climate change threatens water-sharing agreement between states, users, towns, agriculture and the environment

• more meaningful recognition of Indigenous rights to water

• needing to deliver adequate drinking water quality to all Australians, including those in regional and remote communities, especially during drought

• all states committing to drought management plans.

Busting water illusions

The commission’s proposal to make water infrastructure developments a much larger part of the National Water Initiative is a critical way to keep governments honest.

For years, state and federal governments have used taxpayers’ dollars to pay for farming water infrastructure that largely benefits the big end of town — large, corporate irrigators.

For example, the federal government last year announced an additional A$2 billion for its “Building 21 Century Water infrastructure” project. This type of funding represents a return to schemes like the discredited Bradfield scheme, a plan to redirect floodwater from Queensland’s north to the south, including to South Australia.

Read more: Australia’s inland rivers are the pulse of the outback. By 2070, they’ll be unrecognisable

Such megaprojects, even when relabelled or reconceived, perpetuate simplistic myths of the early 20th Century that Australia – the driest inhabited continent on Earth – can be “drought-proofed”.

As the report highlights, when governments in 2004 signed up to the National Water Initiative, they agreed to ensure investments in water infrastructure would be both economically viable and ecologically sustainable. But many proposed water infrastructure projects appear to be neither.

This includes the construction of Dungowan Dam in NSW. For this dam, the commission notes, “any infrastructure that improves reliability for one user will affect water availability for others” and the “prospect of ‘new’ water is illusory”.

The commission warned projects that are not economically viable or ecologically sustainable can “burden taxpayers with ongoing costs, discourage efficient water use and result in long-lived impacts on communities and the environment”.

Equally disturbing is that billions of dollars for water infrastructure are currently targeted primarily for the primary industry (such as agriculture and mining) while communities in desperate need of drinking water that meets water quality guidelines miss out. Thousands of Australians in more remote communities still lack access to drinking water most Australians take for granted.

Water scarcity under climate change

Water availability under climate change features prominently in the report. The commission says droughts will likely become more intense and frequent and in many places, water will become scarce.

Read more: To help drought-affected farmers, we need to support them in good times as well as bad

The report says planning provisions were inadequate to deal with both the Millennium Drought and the recent drought in Eastern Australia.

The commission also said more work is needed to rebalance water use in response to climate change. One need only look to the 2012 Murray-Darling Basin Plan — one of the key outcomes of the National Water Initiative — which didn’t account for climate change when determining how much water to take from streams and rivers.

Overcoming past failures

As the commission report notes, one key policy failure since the 2004 National Water Initiative was signed was the federal government’s dismantling of the National Water Commission in 2015. It meant Australia no longer had a resourced, well-informed agency to “mark the homework” and make sure the reforms were being implemented as agreed.

The report offers ways to overcome a range of past policy water failures, including strengthening governance architecture for the National Water Initiative.

Importantly, the report also called for better recognition of the rights Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people hold over water.

Aboriginal communities and corporations own just 0.1% of the more than A$26 billion of water entitlements in the Murray-Darling Basin. Clearly, such gross inequities must be overcome.

What happens in the Murray-Darling Basin is key to national water reform. There is overwhelming evidence the basin plan needs fixing.

To start, subsidies for irrigation-related water infrastructure should be halted until a comprehensive audit is conducted to determine who gets water, when and how. And an independent, properly funded expert agency should be established to monitor, advise and implement the law for managing the Basin’s water resources.

The 800-page report of the 2019 South Australia Murray-Darling Royal Commission proposes many ways forward. Yet unfortunately, that substantial body of work is not mentioned in the Productivity Commission’s report.

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

We’re still waiting for change

In 2007, the worst year of the Millennium Drought, Prime Minister John Howard said the current trajectory of water use and management in Australia was not sustainable. He said:

In a protracted drought, and with the prospect of long-term climate change, we need radical and permanent change.

We are still waiting for that change. If Australia is to be prosperous and liveable into the future, governments must urgently implement water reform – including adopting recommendations from the Productivity Commission’s report.

If it fails to act, our landscapes will degrade, agriculture will become unsustainable, communities will disintegrate and First Peoples will continue to suffer water injustice.

– ref. Our national water policy is outdated, unfair and not fit for climate challenges – https://theconversation.com/our-national-water-policy-is-outdated-unfair-and-not-fit-for-climate-challenges-155116

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Barbara Jean Hayes, Honorary Academic, University of Melbourne

Every day, in every hospital, doctors and nurses respond to “code blue” situations. This is an emergency alert for when a patient’s heart stops beating, called a cardiac arrest.

To save the patient’s life, medical and nursing staff will often administer cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). CPR involves repeated chest compressions, artificial breathing, use of medications and an electric shock to jump-start the heart (defibrillation).

The aim is to restore a person’s heartbeat and blood pressure to normal, and in turn to restore life. CPR must be initiated quickly as brain cells rapidly die without blood and oxygen.

Patients admitted to hospital are often surprised when their doctors ask: “If your heart were to stop beating, would you want CPR or not?” But in every code blue doctors need answers to the same two questions. First, whether the clinical team considers CPR would be an effective treatment; and second, whether the patient wants CPR.

First response

If a person has a cardiac arrest outside hospital, it is usual, and expected, that bystanders begin CPR, use a defibrillator if available, and call an ambulance.

CPR is taught in first aid courses and defibrillators are widely available in public places such as airports and sports grounds. Time is of the essence, so having trained community members is important.

In a hospital setting, though, the decision to administer CPR is more nuanced. It’s built on a discussion around the patient’s medical condition and, importantly, takes into account their wishes.

Read more: In cases of cardiac arrest, time is everything. Community responders can save lives

Clinicians in Australia have provided examples of some different perspectives on this discussion:

Some of [the patients’ relatives] are absolutely aghast that we might even suggest not to resuscitate […] they bring their loved one into hospital to get better.

A lot of people […] just say, ‘No, I’ve had a good innings, just let me die.’ […] Often I find it’s families who have the objection.

A bit of background

CPR was developed and initially applied to resuscitate people with specific medical conditions such as an acute myocardial infarction (a heart attack).

When a cardiac arrest occurs because of a heart attack or other heart condition, there’s a reasonable chance CPR will re-start the heart and save the person’s life. A recent Australian study looking at people who had a cardiac arrest in hospital showed 41.5% of people who were admitted due to heart problems survived with good neurological function.

Expanding the use of CPR more broadly to every disease that causes the heart to stop beating seems like common sense. But this is not necessarily the case.

For older hospitalised patients (aged over 67 years in this research) with chronic diseases — such as heart failure, kidney disease, cancer or diabetes — their chance of surviving a cardiac arrest and leaving the hospital alive is around 11-15%. Chances of survival are slightly better in older patients without a chronic illness (17%).

For patients in the late stage of their life, due to advanced illness or severe frailty, their chance of survival is almost zero.

CPR is not always an appropriate treatment. The decision to perform it needs to be made carefully, especially when it’s highly unlikely to restore a patient’s heartbeat.

Outcomes after CPR

Unlike the popular media portrayal of CPR, not every survivor of cardiac arrest returns to their previous level of functioning.

Patients may survive but with some brain damage. This could range from minor damage with trivial functional effects such as being forgetful; to moderate damage with serious functional effects such as a change in personality and needing help with everyday activities; to severe damage with catastrophic functional impairment eventually leading to death.

CPR may revive a heart that has stopped beating, but it doesn’t always restore a person back to a life they had or want. It may also do harm by reviving a person who does not want to continue living and would have preferred their disease to follow its natural course. When CPR is performed on a patient who doesn’t want it, it disrupts a gentler dying process, transforming it into an impersonal medical event.

When a cardiac arrest happens, there’s no opportunity to ask the patient what they want at that time. In hospital, it’s routine to provide CPR for patients in cardiac arrest unless there is a medical order to withhold it, or if the patient has completed an advance care directive refusing CPR. This is often referred to as a “do not rescusitate” order.

Read more: It’s your choice: how to plan for a better death

Talk about it

Avoiding harm from inappropriate or unwanted CPR requires planning ahead and being prepared to have a difficult conversation.

We have launched an animated film, The Inappropriate Question, to help people better understand why these conversations are important.

Discussing CPR is upsetting for some patients, because raising the possibility of death is confronting. It’s also harder to discuss this when a person has just been admitted to hospital for treatment and is expecting to recover.

But patients have the right, and usually want, to be involved in their own treatment decisions. The challenge is how we reconcile this wanting to know and wanting to be involved in decisions, with not wanting to be upset by knowing.

Read more: Explainer: what happens during a heart attack and how is one diagnosed?

CPR is an important treatment. When used appropriately, it saves lives. But when applied injudiciously it can cause distress and avoidable harm.

Advance care planning is one way to start thinking about this long before a person is seriously ill. Particularly if you’re older and have chronic medical conditions, have that discussion with yourself, your loved ones and your medical team.

– ref. Do you want to be resuscitated? This is what you should think about before deciding – https://theconversation.com/do-you-want-to-be-resuscitated-this-is-what-you-should-think-about-before-deciding-105506

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maximilian de Courten, Professor in Global Public Health and Director of the Mitchell Institute, Victoria University

More than 130 million COVID vaccine doses have been administered worldwide already, according to the University of Oxford’s “Our World in Data” vaccination tracker.

Israel, the United Kingdom, the United States, the United Arab Emirates and China are leading this huge global effort.

COVID vaccines were initially tested and approved on their ability to reduce the severity of the disease.

However, the long-term goal of vaccination is to decrease infection rates and eliminate the virus.

Excitingly, early signs suggest vaccines are already helping drive down infection rates in some countries, including Israel and the UK.

In saying that, it’s early days, and some preliminary data suggest countries might have to update their vaccine strategies to deal with emerging variants of the virus.

Israel is leading the way

The US (43 million doses), China (40 million) and the UK (13 million) have administered the most doses in total.

However, these numbers don’t take into account population size, so looking at the number of doses injected per 100 people is more meaningful.

Here, the league table is currently topped by Israel, with around 67 vaccination doses administered per 100 people.

Almost 25% of the population are fully vaccinated with both doses. And all this in just five weeks.

Israel aims to vaccinate everyone over the age of 16 and reach at least 80% of its nine million people by May this year.

Reaching at least 70% of the population via vaccination (and/or natural infection) is needed for herd immunity for COVID, according to initial modelling by University of Chicago researchers in May last year.

However, given more infectious variants of the virus have emerged, we may need to vaccinate an even higher proportion of the population to reach herd immunity.

Infection rates are falling

So far, Israel is solely using the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. Interim reports from the country suggest the vaccine rollout is linked to a fall in infections in people over 60 years old.

It can be tricky to separate the effects of public health measures such as lockdowns versus the effects of vaccination.

But because the fall is most pronounced in older people who were first in line to receive the vaccine, data suggest this is also partly due to the vaccine, and not just the country’s current restrictions. A team of Israeli researchers found larger falls in infections and hospitalisations after the vaccinations than occurred during previous lockdowns.

Only 0.07% of the 750,000 over-60s vaccinated tested positive for COVID, according to Israeli Ministry of Health data released last week. And only 38 people, or 0.005%, fell ill and required hospitalisation. The chance of testing positive for COVID two weeks after receiving the first dose was 33% lower than in those not vaccinated.

The UK is also showing positive signs

The UK has administered 19.4 doses per 100 people. Around 13.2 million people (or one in five adults) have received the first dose, and 0.5 million have received the second dose.

It’s currently using both the Pfizer/BioNTech and Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccines in its rollout.

The infection rate appears to be decreasing substantially. The current daily infection growth rate is falling by between 2-5%, and the R number is estimated to be between 0.7 and 1 (an R number of less than 1 means daily new cases will decrease over time).

However, it’s difficult to determine whether these numbers are due to the lockdown or vaccinations. It’s too early to tell whether vaccines are slowing transmission, but the signs are encouraging.

According to data from the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine group, released as a preprint with The Lancet last week and yet to be peer reviewed, its vaccine is showing signs of reducing transmission. The shot was associated with a 67% reduction in transmission among vaccinated volunteers in clinical trials in the UK.

It’s early days, but authors of the study suggest the vaccine may have a “substantial” effect on reducing rates of transmission in the future.

In saying that, preliminary data suggest it offers minimal protection against mild or moderate illness caused by the South African variant.

Read more: South Africa has paused AstraZeneca COVID vaccine rollout but it’s too early to say Australia should follow suit

What threatens the successful rollout of vaccines?

There are three main problems that might hinder the success of this global vaccination drive.

1. Vaccine development, manufacturing, distribution and delivery

The world’s population over the age of five is currently estimated at seven billion people. If we need to vaccinate at least 70% of them to achieve herd immunity, we need to reach around five billion people.

This is an enormous undertaking, so vaccine production and availability are crucial. Many countries face the massive challenge of producing or securing enough vaccines to immunise all their citizens.

Generally, wealthier countries that could afford to make advanced purchase agreements with vaccine producers — or who could manufacture a vaccine domestically — have been the first to start COVID vaccinations.

Unfortunately, partial vaccination of the world’s population won’t achieve herd immunity. One modelling study suggests if high-income countries exclusively acquire the first two billion doses without regard for vaccine equity, the number of COVID deaths could double worldwide.

2. Administering, monitoring, and reporting adverse effects

Vaccinating a large number of citizens quickly can’t be done with existing health institutions alone.

It’s urgent we enable alternative sites such as halls and sporting venues to be used as mass vaccination sites. We also need to allow a range of health professions such as medical students, public health officials and pharmacists to administer doses to help speed up the process.

And once vaccines have been administered, it’s crucial we monitor efficacy and report on any adverse effects, which will require additional resources.

Read more: Australia must vaccinate 200,000 adults a day to meet October target: new modelling

3. Vaccine effectiveness and virus mutation

The effectiveness of vaccines can be hindered by mutations of the virus. COVID variants originating in Brazil, South Africa, and the UK have triggered huge concern worldwide.

There’s early evidence some of our current crop of COVID vaccines respond less effectively to certain variants, though most of these data are preliminary and are still emerging.

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

If vaccines become less effective, new vaccines will need to be developed either including a booster dose incorporating the region of the mutated virus, or reformulating existing vaccines to include the mutated strains.

This, however, isn’t uncommon — flu vaccines are required to be updated regularly in order to increase protective capacity against new mutated strains.

– ref. Are vaccines already helping contain COVID? Early signs say yes, but mutations will be challenging – https://theconversation.com/are-vaccines-already-helping-contain-covid-early-signs-say-yes-but-mutations-will-be-challenging-154479

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Bendall, Research Fellow, Gender and Women’s Research Centre, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University

Lingerie sales in 2020 surged as pandemic lockdowns saw online shoppers seek to escape the mundanity of sweatpants and spice up their sex lives. Such sales will likely increase ahead of Valentine’s Day, but the gift of intimate apparel is not a modern phenomenon.

In 17th and 18th-century England and France, intimate objects were also gifted during courtship or amorous liaisons as tokens of romantic intention and sexual desire.

The “busk”, a long piece of wood, metal or whalebone, was placed into a stitched channel between layers of fabric in the front of corset bodices or stays.

And garters — more of a novelty item today — were strips of fabric or ribbons tied around a woman’s lower thigh to keep her stocking in place.

Both were often inscribed or embroidered with intimate words of love. They were also charged with erotic connotations due to their intimate position on the female body next to breasts, groins and thighs.

Intimate tokens

In 1684, English poet and playwright Aphra Behn imagined a tree that for years had witnessed couples wooing under its branches. Her poem ends when the tree falls to the axe and …

My body into busks was turned:

Where I still guard the sacred store,

And of Love’s temple keep the door.

As busks were destined to sit on the body next to the heart, it was only fitting that wood from this tree was used to fashion them.

Several plays and poems refer to men who bought or made busks for their sweethearts. The sheer number of surviving busks that contain inscriptions of love testifies to their popularity.

One 17th-century French busk in The Met Museum’s collection exclaims, “Until Goodbye, My Fire is Pure, Love is United”.

Three engravings correspond with each line: a tear falling onto a barren field, two hearts appearing in that field and finally a house that the couple would share together in marriage with two hearts floating above it.

Similarly, surviving 18th-century garters contain embroidered sayings and verses. One 18th-century French pair proclaims, “same hearts, same thoughts”.

Another states, “My motto is to love you, It will never change”.

In February 1660, meanwhile, Samuel Pepys noted in his diary that he sent his wife “silk stockings and garters, for her Valentines.”

Read more: Dear Valentine, take another little piece of my heart, or hair

Erotic puns

Although busks and garters were commonly given as gifts, even on Valentine’s Day they were not socially ostentatious tokens like jewellery.

Their position within or underneath clothing meant that while giving and receiving could be public, the wearing was a matter of intimacy. This was exploited in erotic literature and on the objects themselves.

Some inscriptions found on busks spoke of men’s jealousy of the busks, giving these inanimate objects voices of their own.

A 17th-century French busk, engraved with a man’s portrait declares, “He enjoys sweet sighs, this lover / Who would very much like to take my place.” That “place” being between his lover’s breasts.

Like busks, garters also contained verses acknowledging their intimate place on the female body. A pair of French embroidered silk garters from 1780 proclaims, “United forever / I die where I cling.”

In this context, “where I cling” refers to a woman’s lower thighs, which were only accessible to those most intimate with her. It was also a euphemism for an orgasm.

The busk itself could also take on phallic connotations as it was likened to a lover’s erection in bawdy jokes.

By the late 18th century, busks and garters became less personalised and began to be produced on a large scale.

They tell the tales of both fickle human hearts and also of a changing European culture that embraced and then commodified love and desire — much like many Valentine’s gifts today.

– ref. ‘I die where I cling’: garters and ‘busks’ inscribed with love notes were the sexy lingerie of the past – https://theconversation.com/i-die-where-i-cling-garters-and-busks-inscribed-with-love-notes-were-the-sexy-lingerie-of-the-past-154645

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jon Whittle, Director, Data61

Artificial intelligence (AI) is learning more about how to work with (and on) humans. A recent study has shown how AI can learn to identify vulnerabilities in human habits and behaviours and use them to influence human decision-making.

It may seem cliched to say AI is transforming every aspect of the way we live and work, but it’s true. Various forms of AI are at work in fields as diverse as vaccine development, environmental management and office administration. And while AI does not possess human-like intelligence and emotions, its capabilities are powerful and rapidly developing.

There’s no need to worry about a machine takeover just yet, but this recent discovery highlights the power of AI and underscores the need for proper governance to prevent misuse.

How AI can learn to influence human behaviour

A team of researchers at CSIRO’s Data61, the data and digital arm of Australia’s national science agency, devised a systematic method of finding and exploiting vulnerabilities in the ways people make choices, using a kind of AI system called a recurrent neural network and deep reinforcement-learning. To test their model they carried out three experiments in which human participants played games against a computer.

The first experiment involved participants clicking on red or blue coloured boxes to win a fake currency, with the AI learning the participant’s choice patterns and guiding them towards a specific choice. The AI was successful about 70% of the time.

In the second experiment, participants were required to watch a screen and press a button when they are shown a particular symbol (such as an orange triangle) and not press it when they are shown another (say a blue circle). Here, the AI set out to arrange the sequence of symbols so the participants made more mistakes, and achieved an increase of almost 25%.

Read more: If machines can beat us at games, does it make them more intelligent than us?

The third experiment consisted of several rounds in which a participant would pretend to be an investor giving money to a trustee (the AI). The AI would then return an amount of money to the participant, who would then decide how much to invest in the next round. This game was played in two different modes: in one the AI was out to maximise how much money it ended up with, and in the other the AI aimed for a fair distribution of money between itself and the human investor. The AI was highly successful in each mode.

In each experiment, the machine learned from participants’ responses and identified and targeted vulnerabilities in people’s decision-making. The end result was the machine learned to steer participants towards particular actions.

What the research means for the future of AI

These findings are still quite abstract and involved limited and unrealistic situations. More research is needed to determine how this approach can be put into action and used to benefit society.

But the research does advance our understanding not only of what AI can do but also of how people make choices. It shows machines can learn to steer human choice-making through their interactions with us.

Read more: Australians have low trust in artificial intelligence and want it to be better regulated

The research has an enormous range of possible applications, from enhancing behavioural sciences and public policy to improve social welfare, to understanding and influencing how people adopt healthy eating habits or renewable energy. AI and machine learning could be used to recognise people’s vulnerabilities in certain situations and help them to steer away from poor choices.

The method can also be used to defend against influence attacks. Machines could be taught to alert us when we are being influenced online, for example, and help us shape a behaviour to disguise our vulnerability (for example, by not clicking on some pages, or clicking on others to lay a false trail).

What’s next?

Like any technology, AI can be used for good or bad, and proper governance is crucial to ensure it is implemented in a responsible way. Last year CSIRO developed an AI Ethics Framework for the Australian government as an early step in this journey.

AI and machine learning are typically very hungry for data, which means it is crucial to ensure we have effective systems in place for data governance and access. Implementing adequate consent processes and privacy protection when gathering data is essential.

Organisations using and developing AI need to ensure they know what these technologies can and cannot do, and be aware of potential risks as well as benefits.

Read more: Robots can outwit us on the virtual battlefield, so let’s not put them in charge of the real thing

– ref. AI can now learn to manipulate human behaviour – https://theconversation.com/ai-can-now-learn-to-manipulate-human-behaviour-155031

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

Scott Morrison has indicated he wants to embrace a 2050 target of net-zero emissions. That, however, requires bringing the Nationals on board, and a vocal group in that party is fighting a fierce rearguard action.

The Nationals deputy leader David Littleproud, who is Minister for Agriculture, is sympathetic to the target – so long as there is a credible path to get there, which won’t disadvantage rural Australians.

In this podcast Littleproud says he believes the pathway could be settled this year.

“That’s not in my remit. But there is a hope to accelerate that and to make sure that we can provide that [pathway] as quickly as we can. The money’s been set aside for a lot of that work and some of that work’s already been completed.”

As for that Nationals, “our position is we want to see the plan first. Our party room hasn’t got to a juncture of dismissing it. We want to see what the plan is and who pays for it.”

Asked whether agriculture would have to be exempted for the Nationals to sign up to the 2050 target, Littleproud says, “Well, with respect to ag, I think it cane be part of the solution”.

On the ANZ’s announcement this week it would stop lending to Australia’s biggest coal port, the Port of Newcastle, Littleproud is scathing:

“Well, they’re a pathetic joke… We had a banking royal commission and here we are, a bank telling the Australian people about how society should run. That is not their role. Their role is to provide capital.”

Additional audio

A List of Ways to Die, Lee Rosevere, from Free Music Archive.

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: David Littleproud on The Nationals and net zero – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-david-littleproud-on-the-nationals-and-net-zero-155121

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Caroline Daley, Associate Professor of History, Dean of Graduate Studies, University of Auckland

When Jacinda Ardern consoled members of the Muslim community after the Christchurch mosque attacks, she wore the hijab. Around the world, she was praised for her compassion and cultural sensitivity.

When she went to Buckingham Palace to meet the queen, she wore a kahu huruhuru, a feathered cloak. The press celebrated her choice, noting how regal she looked. The cloak was a visible sign of her mana.

People were proud that our prime minister looked so splendid and felt, by wearing the cloak, she honoured the indigenous culture of Aotearoa New Zealand.

So why have so many people been tied up in knots this week over a heitiki and a missing neck tie?

On Tuesday, parliament’s speaker, Trevor Mallard, expelled Rawiri Waititi from the House because the Māori Party’s co-leader refused to wear a tie, as per the requirements of standing orders.

Waititi likened a tie to a “colonial noose” around his neck. It was an image designed to grab attention, and international headlines.

Political power dressing

The stoush should not have surprised anyone. When he was sworn into the 53rd parliament, Waititi promised to challenge the status quo: “Ka tohe au! Ka tohe au! Ka tohe au!”

What might have puzzled some is that Waititi chose to challenge something so banal. The prime minister was surely right when she said there are far more important things to focus on than what a parliamentarian hangs around their neck.

Read more: New Zealand’s new parliament turns red: final 2020 election results at a glance

But, as Ardern knows only too well, clothes and accessories can be a very visible and powerful statement. For Waititi, being forced to wear something he does not consider part of his culture is an act of colonisation that must be resisted.

The colonial claim may be a step too far for some, but it’s clear many agree that neck ties are no longer required business attire and they’re not very comfortable.

End of an era

No matter what knot you favour, ties can be physically restrictive. I never enjoyed wearing one as part of my school uniform. Like Mallard, I’ve never learnt how to tie a tie. Like Waititi, I choose not to wear a tie.

The notion that men in one of the most diverse parliaments in the world should still be required to wear neck ties just seems ridiculous.

Read more: Two inquiries find unfair treatment and healthcare for Māori. This is how we fix it

And it appears the majority of the Standing Orders Committee now agrees that ties should no longer be a necessity. A decision on Wednesday night meant Waititi and other men in the House will not be required to wear one. Common sense has prevailed. Parliament can focus on more serious matters.

Except, of course, that at a certain level this was a serious matter. As Waititi said, this was about cultural identity, not a tie.

Feminists have long understood this. Women had to fight to wear trousers — in the House, and in the home. They are castigated by some (and objectified by others) if their skirt is “too short” or their top “too tight”.

The sartorial is political

But many still don’t understand the politics of women’s clothes and so were confused by Waititi’s musings on clothing and cultural identity. If a neck tie is a colonial noose, why did his party co-leader, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, very pointedly wear one in the House this week?

And if Waititi is concerned that the legacy of colonisation is suppressing the tangata whenua through clothing, why does he wear a cowboy hat so often that people refer to it as his trademark?

Like neck ties, cowboy hats signify a particular type of white, male power. The most prominent politician associated with wearing a cowboy hat was former US president Ronald Reagan. One might well argue there’s a certain white extremism associated with cowboy hats that also needs to be challenged.

Read more: The Crown is Māori too – citizenship, sovereignty and the Treaty of Waitangi

Regardless of where you stand on the neck tie divide, it’s clear that clothes and accessories are political. What we buy, how we choose to wear something, and what we refuse to wear all say something about us.

Waititi has adopted the cowboy hat and imbued it with a very different meaning to those who wore their cowboy hats as they stormed the US Capitol last month. Ngarewa-Packer knotted her tie with irony.

There is nothing wrong with politicians being playful with their clothes or refusing to conform to an outdated sartorial norm. But if that is all they do, their constituents will be very disappointed.

The Māori Party has only two MPs. It would be a shame if their legacy was confined to political sideshows.

– ref. The tie that binds: unravelling the knotty issue of political sideshows and Māori cultural identity – https://theconversation.com/the-tie-that-binds-unravelling-the-knotty-issue-of-political-sideshows-and-maori-cultural-identity-155109

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Meredith Nash, Associate Professor in Sociology, University of Tasmania

The icy continent has historically been a place for men. First “discovered” in 1820, Antarctica would not be visited by a woman for well over a century.

In 1935, Norwegian Caroline Mikkelsen, a whaler’s wife, became the first woman to do so, some 24 years after her compatriot Roald Amundsen had trekked all the way to the South Pole.

It wasn’t until the 1950s that women were finally allowed to participate in Antarctic science.

How had Antarctica come to be so dominated by men? Where were all the women?

In 2016, one of us (Meredith) took part in the largest non-scientific expedition of women to Antarctica in history.

Among the group were 77 women working in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine (STEMM), who took part in a three-week leadership program. As part of our study of this program, Meredith travelled with the group to Antarctica to gather women’s first-hand accounts of their experiences.

But in terms of unlocking Antarctica’s history, one of the biggest answers came from a surprising source: a map on the wall of the galley, where Meredith looked every morning to see where the ship was headed.

One morning, she spotted Marguerite Bay, on the Western Antarctic peninsula. It turns out there were women here, symbolically at least.

Who was Marguerite?

Marguerite’s name reached the Antarctic because her husband, Jean-Baptiste Charcot, leader of the French Antarctic Expedition in 1909, named a bay after her.

Author and environmentalist Carole Devine has been doing a mapping project to uncover the stories of women like Marguerite – she has found more than 200 places in Antarctica named after women.

The portrayal of Antarctica as a female body that must be mastered and penetrated by men is central to Heroic Era narratives of the continent. Given this framing, it is unsurprising women were long denied access to Antarctica.

Many polar institutes around the world have traditionally justified the exclusion of women by arguing there were no facilities such as toilets for them on stations.

It certainly wasn’t due to a lack of interest. In 1914, three British women named Peggy Pegrine, Valerie Davey and Betty Webster wrote to Ernest Shackleton to apply for his next expedition. They described themselves as “three sporty girls” and offered to wear men’s clothes if there were no suitable female ones available. They added:

…we do not see why men should have all the glory, and women none, especially when there are women just as brave and capable as there are men.

Shackleton’s reply noted his “regrets there are no vacancies for the opposite sex on the expedition”.

Coming in from the cold

Mikkelsen became the first woman to set foot on Antarctica in 1935. But it was not until 1956 that women began to be properly involved in Antarctic science.

Russian geologist Maria Klenova landed in Antarctica to make the first Soviet Antarctic Atlas. Women were finally charting maps, rather than just having their names written on them.

In 1969, an all-female group of US scientists led by Lois Jones landed in Antarctica. They wanted to collect their own samples from the McMurdo Dry Valleys — something they had so far been prevented from doing.

Pointing to the anxiety and scepticism surrounding the voyage, the New York Times described the expedition as “an incursion of females” into “the largest male sanctuary remaining on this planet”.

Read more: How to keep more women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)

From the 1980s, the Australian Antarctic Program and the British Antarctic Survey allowed women to stay on research stations and conduct land-based Antarctic fieldwork.

Today, women are more fully integrated into National Antarctic Programs and women often lead field teams. Nearly 60% of early career researchers in polar science internationally are women.

Yet while women’s participation in the Australian Antarctic Program is increasing, women still comprise only 24% of expeditioners. Women make up 33% and 30% of US and UK Antarctic expeditioners, respectively.

These low numbers are tied to the fact that women still face a range of barriers in a polar science career and especially during fieldwork, including:

• gender bias and discrimination

• caring responsibilities

• gender and sexual harassment

• lack of recognition such as prizes and awards

• physical barriers, such as field gear not being available in women’s sizes.

Why does this matter?

Antarctica is strategically important to Australia and many other nations. Yet the credibility of Australia’s Antarctic leadership is at risk without a substantial commitment to diversity and inclusivity.

Existing power relations may prevent women and those from other underrepresented groups (such as people of colour and LGBTIQ+ people) from participating, or even considering, the possibility of an Antarctic science career.

Read more: As China flexes its muscles in Antarctica, science is the best diplomatic tool on the frozen continent

Equity and inclusion in Antarctic science will not come about simply by waiting for more women to volunteer to become expeditioners.

Here is how we can proactively promote inclusion:

• Change the image of a polar scientist. The “typical” polar scientist is still assumed to be a straight, white man who works for many months away in Antarctica. Yet polar scientists work in a range of settings. In fact, many polar scientists work indoors at a computer!

• Grow the leadership pool. National Antarctic Programs must develop targeted recruitment campaigns, gender-neutral hiring practices, awareness of unconscious bias, training to be an “upstander” rather than a bystander, and parental leave policies and flexible work arrangements that can facilitate a woman’s ability to succeed in polar science.

Women are in Antarctica to stay. They play important roles in the scientific, logistical and managerial realms of Antarctic operations.

Making polar research more inclusive will enrich the diversity of the scientific community and have flow-on effects for the quality of Australia’s Antarctic science.

– ref. White continent, white blokes: why Antarctic research needs to shed its exclusionary past – https://theconversation.com/white-continent-white-blokes-why-antarctic-research-needs-to-shed-its-exclusionary-past-154944

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa Gowthorp, Assistant Professor of Sport Management, Bond Business School, Bond University

With COVID-19 still running rampant in many parts of the world, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has prepared “playbooks” for the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games, set to begin in July.

There are four books, each aimed at a specific group: international federations, athletes and officials, press, and broadcasters. The aim of these playbooks is to outline the rules that will ensure a safe and successful event.

Several commentators consider the games going ahead without a guarantee of safety as “irresponsible”. However, the IOC president, Thomas Bach, responded:

Our task is to organise Olympic Games, not to cancel Olympic Games.

Supporting this view is Tokyo 2020 president Yoshiro Mori, who insists Japan will hold the Olympic and Paralympic Games regardless of the situation with the pandemic.

As a result, the IOC playbooks outline safety precautions to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Here are the main rules and processes proposed for athletes and officials attending the games.

Read more: Why are Japan’s leaders clinging to their Olympic hopes? Their political fortunes depend on it

Before arriving in Japan

All athletes must take a COVID-19 test within 72 hours of departing their home country. Athletes are required to provide proof of a negative result before they depart their home country.

Prior to arriving in Japan, athletes must observe the playbook rules for 14 days (this includes, for example, minimising contact with others and practising good personal hygiene).

During the stay in Japan

Once in Tokyo, all individuals will require another COVID-19 test. Further regular COVID-19 testing and temperature checks will be done throughout their stay in Japan.

Australian athletes will arrive no earlier than five days before their event and depart a maximum of two days after their event is completed. To adhere to COVID-19 safe practices as outlined in the playbooks, the organisers will cut back on the number of athletes who attend the opening and closing ceremonies.

Athletes are asked to compile a list of all the people they expect to have close contact with during their stay in Tokyo. They must not visit games venues as a spectator nor visit tourist areas, shops, restaurants, bars or gyms.

Test, trace and isolate

Japan has created a “contact confirming app” – COCOA – for health reporting and monitoring COVID-19 test results. All athletes will have restrictions on the activities they can undertake, outlined in an activity plan. The IOC is due to publish these later. Further details are needed to ensure compliance with data protection principles, especially sensitive health information.

To minimise physical interaction, athletes and officials are reminded to: avoid hugs and handshakes; keep at least 2 metres apart from other athletes; avoid enclosed spaces; not use public transport (only use games transport); and follow their activity plan. All team members are required to wear face masks and supply enough masks for the duration of stay in Tokyo.

Athletes and officials will be screened and tested for COVID-19 at different times during their stay. Anyone with symptoms must self-isolate. Details of where and how self-isolation will work have not yet been explained.

Further, it is recommended to have insurance for costs of medical treatment in Japan and repatriation if sent home. Questions arise as to who will cover these costs, and whether such insurance cover is even available in these COVID-disrupted times.

If athletes test positive, they are to self-isolate immediately and will not be allowed to compete in the games. However, to mitigate the likelihood of false positives in testing, athletes will have to have a number of false tests before they are barred from competing, the specifics of which will be revealed in April.

Limited information is available on where those with positive tests would be quarantined and what medical support they would receive.

What about the vaccine?

There is debate about whether nations should vaccinate their athletes prior to attending the games. Several athletes, including Australian swimmer Cate Campbell, believe athletes should be prioritised for vaccinations if it saves the games from being cancelled.

However, Bach declared “we are not in favour of athletes jumping the queue”. Therefore, athletes will not be required to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to compete at the games.

So will the Olympics go ahead?

The IOC acknowledges that, despite all the care taken, risks and impacts may not be eliminated and therefore athletes agree to participate in the games at their own risk. Shifting the risk to athletes is problematic as it fails to take into account the vulnerability associated with performance-driven motivations and medal aspirations.

And as for local support, you’d be struggling to find a Tokyo resident who wants the games to go ahead, especially considering Japan has had over 400,000 cases and almost 6,500 deaths from COVID-19, with the majority of cases in the greater Tokyo area.

The first iteration of the playbook lacks the specific detail that is warranted when hosting 10,000 athletes at a global sport event. As the World Players Association says:

Comprehensive COVID-19 protections – not rudimentary statements – are essential if a safe and successful Olympiad is to be possible.

Hopefully, the publication of further details in April will ease concerns. In the meantime, if the games are to go on, we all have to wonder at what cost.

– ref. For now, the Tokyo Olympics will go ahead. But at what cost? – https://theconversation.com/for-now-the-tokyo-olympics-will-go-ahead-but-at-what-cost-154851

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hal Pawson, Professor of Housing Research and Policy, and Associate Director, City Futures Research Centre, UNSW

Australian governments acted to protect homeless people from COVID-19 in 2020 on an even larger scale than previously thought. In the first six months of the pandemic, the four states that launched emergency programs housed more than 40,000 rough sleepers and others.

The states were anxious about rough sleepers’ extreme vulnerability to virus infection and the resulting public health risk to the wider community. New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia acted fast to provide safe temporary housing, mainly in otherwise empty hotels.

Read more: The need to house everyone has never been clearer. Here’s a 2-step strategy to get it done

Drawing on previously unreleased official statistics, our newly published international comparative research reveals the people these programs helped in Australia outnumbered the 33,000 rough sleepers and others housed in England by the equivalent Everyone In initiative. Australia’s population is less than half that of England.

What happens when emergency housing ends?

The numbers Australia’s emergency housing program needed to shelter showed our homelessness problem is much larger than often imagined. The 8,200 people counted as sleeping rough on census night 2016 were only the tip of the iceberg.

Attempts to transfer people from emergency accommodation to longer-term tenancies have also generally been far less successful than in England. By the end of 2020, England’s local authorities had moved two-thirds of their former rough sleepers from temporary placements to more stable housing. As our research shows, despite determined efforts, Australian state governments managed this for less than a third of rough sleepers departing emergency hotel stays in 2020.

Many will have returned to the streets or to homeless shelters. Rough sleeper numbers once again increased in Adelaide and Sydney after mid-year.

To a great extent Australia’s poor showing reflects our growing social housing deficit, as well as inadequate rent assistance and other social security benefits (at their standard rates). All of these factors are barriers to helping low-income Australians into stable long-term housing.

Read more: Coronavirus lays bare 5 big housing system flaws to be fixed

Eviction bans and rent variations defer problems

Alongside protecting rough sleepers, Australian government actions to shield vulnerable renters who lost jobs and incomes in the pandemic were also relatively effective. These efforts include federal income protection (JobKeeper and Coronavirus Supplement) and state and territory restrictions on evictions.

The short-term success of these measures is clear. Despite a substantial rise in unemployment, there has been – as yet – no sign of any up-tick in homelessness.

At the same time, though, ministerial advice that tenants with COVID-triggered income losses should negotiate rent reductions with landlords came with few ground rules on how to reach such settlements.

Survey evidence shows many property owners refused to reduce rents. At least one in four renters lost income during the pandemic, but no more than 16% (and possibly as few as 8%) got a rent variation. And many variations were only in the form of rent deferrals, not reductions.

The survey data imply at least 75,000 tenants, and possibly as many as 175,000, have been accumulating deferral-generated arrears. These mounting debts could put some at risk of losing their home when eviction moratoriums end. That’s early in 2021 in most states and territories.

Read more: Cutting JobSeeker payments will cause crippling rental stress in our cities

Hands-off Commonwealth makes things worse

Our research also highlights the unusually small direct contribution of the Australian government to protecting homeless people during the pandemic. Even in other federations – Canada and the United States – national governments played a significant role.

In Australia, the Commonwealth government made no direct input to covering the substantial costs involved. Nor did it play any part in even monitoring, let alone co-ordinating, the remarkable efforts of the active states.

Canberra has also steadfastly rejected calls for a social housing stimulus program for national economic recovery. This disengagement fits with a now-familiar refrain from federal ministers. Housing and homelessness, they repeat time and again, are constitutional obligations of state and territory governments.

Read more: Why the focus of stimulus plans has to be construction that puts social housing first

Read more: Why more housing stimulus will be needed to sustain recovery

Granted, that’s an accurate statement for housing and homelessness service delivery. But, especially given the Commonwealth’s control of the vital policy levers of tax and social security, the two levels of government must in reality share responsibility for housing outcomes.

The Victorian government’s A$5.4 billion Big Housing Build shows states may commit to investment in social rental housing on a scale far beyond what had been thought possible. But the fact remains that state and territory governments have much less financial firepower than our national government. It’s fanciful to imagine significant programs being widely initiated or maintained without hefty federal backing.

Read more: Victoria’s $5.4bn Big Housing Build: it is big, but the social housing challenge is even bigger

For all of these reasons, when the pandemic has finally subsided, it’s only with federal government leadership that we can effectively tackle the fundamental flaws in Australia’s housing system. These have been glaringly exposed by the public health crisis of the past 12 months. Without purposeful re-engagement by our national government, Australia’s housing policy challenges will only continue to intensify.

Read more: Australia’s housing system needs a big shake-up: here’s how we can crack this

– ref. States housed 40,000 people for the COVID emergency. Now rough sleeper numbers are back on the up – https://theconversation.com/states-housed-40-000-people-for-the-covid-emergency-now-rough-sleeper-numbers-are-back-on-the-up-154059

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Stewart, John Bray Professor of Law, University of Adelaide

The government’s Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia’s Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill presently before parliament was drafted at the end of a six-month consultative process that brought together employer and employee representatives to chart what the prime minister hoped would be “a practical reform agenda, a job making agenda”.

The agenda seems to have been confined to matters the government and business had already marked for attention.

Whatever potential there might have been for consensus on several important issues has plainly not been realised.

Nevertheless, in a submission to the Senate inquiry into the bill, and with the backing of 18 other labour law academics, we have expressed support for many of its provisions, even though there are details we are disappointed with and elements we strongly oppose, not least for their potentially negative impacts on wage growth and job security.

To be supported are greater penalties for employers who underpay workers, including criminal liability for dishonest and systematic conduct, and a new small claims process that would enable the Fair Work Commission to resolve payment disputes more quickly and cheaply, which we think could be improved.

We concentrate here on three concerns – the changes to agreement-making; to certain forms of employer-driven flexibility; and to the regulation of casual employment.

Enterprise agreement-making

The most contentious proposal is a new exception to the “better off overall test” (BOOT), which ordinarily ensures enterprise agreements cannot set pay and other conditions below award standards.

At present, the Commission can approve agreements that fail the BOOT, but only when they are not contrary to the public interest and only in “exceptional” circumstances.

The new exception would operate much more broadly, with no requirement to show unusual circumstances, pandemic or not. Although the exception would last for only two years, agreements approved under it could operate indefinitely.

Read more: So much for consensus: Morrison government’s industrial relations bill is a business wish list

We characterise the change as “tearing a gaping hole in the award safety net”.

Even if the Fair Work Commission took a narrow view of the exception, advisers would be lining up to encourage employers to give it a go, dangling the enticing prospect of “simplifying” pay and rostering , and reducing labour costs.

The bill also proposes to “simplify” the agreement-making process and make it harder for unions and others not directly involved to object to their approval.

This would weaken the few procedural safeguards that the Fair Work Act provides for workers, especially since there is no requirement for bargaining or negotiation to take place.

There would be no clear process for ensuring an agreement was genuinely made, and it would be harder to identify substandard deals, or to challenge the approval of agreements approved by small and unrepresentative groups of workers.

Read more: Five questions (and answers) about casual employment

The sunsetting of agreements made before the Rudd government’s 2009 Fair Work Act (some of them made under “WorkChoices” is welcome and long overdue.

The bill would also allow “greenfields agreements” of up to eight years in duration – rather than the usual four – for construction work on certain major projects.

Employees engaged during that period would have no say on their pay and conditions and no right to strike – and some of these “agreements” could be made without union consent.

Under International Labour Organisation principles of freedom of association, workers in this position have to be afforded access to timely mediation and arbitration to resolve disputes, something the bill does not do.

New forms of flexibility for employers

Two other worrying proposals would permit certain employers to enter into “simplified additional hours agreements” with permanent part-time employees, and to issue “flexible work directions”.

The former are a method of contracting out overtime pay rates, and would disproportionately affect women, who are almost three times more likely than men to be working part-time.

Even if some ended up being offered extra hours of work, they would come without the usual compensation for antisocial or irregular hours – and they would most likely be taken from casuals, meaning a net reduction in wage bills.

The proposed “flexible work directions” would extend and expand some of the special powers granted to employers under JobKeeper to redeploy workers.

But they could be used in situations which need have nothing to do with recovery from the pandemic, including by employers who were never eligible for JobKeeper.

While both changes would initially be limited to certain industries, the bill allows them to be extended by regulation to all award-covered workers.

No compelling evidence has been presented to justify they are needed. Nor has the government explained why the Fair Work Commission should not continue to be responsible for managing these issues on an industry by industry basis through awards.

Casual employment

Casual employment fell during the initial stages of the pandemic, but then rebounded strongly. Around one in four Australian employees works as a casual, lacking benefits such as paid annual leave or sick leave, but generally entitled in return to a pay loading of 25%.

In practice, many casuals have long-term engagements, with none of the features usually associated with casual work. Among them are labour hire workers deployed not as “temps”, but to work at host firms alongside (or instead of) directly-hired employees with much higher pay and conditions.

The bill’s provisions respond to recent court decisions which have raised the prospect of billions of dollars in unpaid leave entitlements being due to workers misclassified as casuals.

Read more: What defines casual work? Federal Court ruling highlights a fundamental flaw in Australian labour law

The bill proposes to determine whether a worker is a casual purely by reference to what their contract says, not the reality of their engagement. And it would allow employers who have misclassified casuals to deduct from what they now owe their employees any loading they have previously paid.

After 12 months in a job, casuals would need to have their employment assessed. In certain circumstances, the employer would have to offer to make them permanent.

We agree on the need for a clear definition of “casual”, but the definition proposed would entrench the practice of “permanent casuals” doing jobs which are not truly casual, without necessarily preventing legal challenges to some of those arrangements.

Read more: The truth about much ‘casual’ work: it’s really about permanent insecurity

Long-term casual employment does indeed suit many workers. But their lack of job security may have both individual and societal consequences.

That has been made clear during the pandemic, when workers without paid leave entitlements in “essential” jobs (such as cleaning and security for quarantine hotels, or aged care) have had to keep working with adverse consequences for public health.

We also note that the bill will substantially increase administrative costs for employers, in support of a right to convert to permanent that few long-term casuals are likely to even try to exercise, given the loss of loading typically involved.

In our submission to the Senate inquiry, we have suggested that the bill could be improved in a number of ways, including by making the definition of casual employment genuinely objective, requiring offers of conversion to permanent employment after six months rather than 12, and not shielding an employer from liability if it should have known it was misclassifying a permanent worker as casual.

Getting wages moving in the right direction

Even before the pandemic, it was widely accepted that wage stagnation was sapping the Australian economy. Whatever the reasons, it was clear that something needed to be done to get wages growth back above 3%.

If anything, the need is even greater now as we try to rebuild confidence and boost consumer spending.

Yet at a time when the share of national income going to profits rather than labour is still continuing to rise, the government is proposing changes that would not just suppress wage growth, but actually allow employers to cut some forms of pay and conditions.

The reforms would also entrench casual work – one of the largest forms of insecure employment.

As Labor’s new platform on job security recognises, this is a challenge that business, organised labour and government ought to be working together to tackle rather than exacerbate.

Whatever the positive elements of the new industrial relations bill, its crackdown on “wage theft” among them, its overall effect would be to take Australia even more firmly down the road of low-wages and low-growth.

It is not the road we should be taking.

– ref. Low wage, low growth: Porter’s industrial relations bill is only good in parts – https://theconversation.com/low-wage-low-growth-porters-industrial-relations-bill-is-only-good-in-parts-155033

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lawrence Uren, Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of Melbourne

More than ever as we emerge from the crisis we are going to have to get the most out of our economy.

Swapping stamp duty for land tax as the ACT government is doing (over 20 years) and the NSW government is planning (using an opt-in arrangement), is one of the best ways the tax system can help.

This graph from the federal treasury’s 2015 tax discussion paper makes the point.

It says the “marginal excess burden” (damage) done by real estate stamp duty amounts to 70 cents for each dollar raised.

It discourages people and businesses from changing addresses as often as they should, meaning workers live further away from their work than they would and are reluctant to move to where there is better work.

In contrast, treasury found the marginal excess burden of land tax was negative. Land tax makes sure land was used for its most useful purpose and not left idle.

Efficiency-wise it makes sense to swap one for the other, but as with all changes there will be winners and losers, some of them surprising.

In our just-published study, we use real-world data on living arrangements from the Melbourne Institute’s Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey and data on house prices and stamp duty rates from the Real Estate Institute Australia in an attempt to work out who the winners and losers will be.

Good for the young, and the old

We find that overall the swap should reduce the purchase price for home buyers, increase the sale price for sellers, increase the total number of transactions and reduce the degree of mismatch in housing.

It should also increase the rate of home ownership.

Young adults, particularly those who are currently having difficulty saving for a deposit would be better off.

Current homeowners would generally be worse off.

Renters would benefit because they are currently excluded from home ownership.

Older landlords, perhaps surprisingly, would also benefit. In many cases the increase in the value of their houses would outweigh the cost of the land tax.

Our findings raise a challenge for governments.

Read more: Axing stamp duty is a great idea, but NSW is going about it the wrong way

In the long run the swap would improve the working of the economy, but in the short run it will hurt many current voters.

A gradual transition – either through a very long phase in (of the kind adopted by the ACT) or by allowing households to select into different tax systems (as NSW is planning) would help make the switch more palatable.

But the sooner we start, the better.

– ref. Identifying the losers (and surprising winners) from phasing out stamp duty – https://theconversation.com/identifying-the-losers-and-surprising-winners-from-phasing-out-stamp-duty-154935

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

It is 25 years since Australian auteur Baz Luhrmann released his gloriously spectacular version of Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes as the doomed lovers.

While some praised the film as “clever and well-executed” and “genuinely inventive”, others labelled it “a very bad idea” and “a monumental disaster”. How could one film be so polarising?

Lurhmann was not presenting us with a reinterpretation of the stage play, but a complete re-imagining of its universe. Gone was the sense of theatre. Gone were the long soliloquies. Gone were the 16th century costumes. Instead of Verona, Italy, we are on Verona Beach, California.

The Capulet and Montague patriarchs do business in adjacent skyscrapers while the younger generation wage a vicious war on the streets. Tattoos, gold chains, loud Hawaiian shirts, leather vests, and silver teeth adorn them. Swords are replaced with Uzis and pistols.

The soundtrack dispenses with classical strings, replaced by 90s bands such as Radiohead and Garbage. Even the “and” in the title was replaced with a + sign. In every way Lurhmann made this film scream “gangsta”. It feels dangerous.

Read more: Marx, Freud, Hitler, Mandela, Greer… Shakespeare influenced them all

Fast and loose

Many critics compared the film to Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 version of Romeo and Juliet. While Zeffirelli’s film is visually sumptuous, it still plays it safe with the material, with few changes in tone or historical period.

Lurhmann, in contrast, plays fast and loose with every element of his production. To me, the films are in different stratospheres in their approach to the material and thus totally incomparable.

Shakespeare adaptations set in different time periods had happened before Lurhmann. As You Like It (1992) was performed in an industrial wasteland. Richard III (1995), was set in 1930s Britain; and Twelfth Night, made in the same year as Luhrmann’s film, was set in Victorian times.

However, Lurhmann didn’t just take the words and characters from the stage play and insert them into new environments. He created a completely stylised pastiche of visuals, dialogue, character and action.

It’s all quite over the top, as exemplified by the scene where a drag-queened Mercutio dances to Young Hearts Run Free. This is really Shakespeare for a specific demographic — youth. Some have argued Luhrmann’s film was beloved by attention deficit teenagers who later regarded it as “embarrassing” in adulthood . But I think this simplifies things.

I can understand why traditionalists, who didn’t mind the other adaptations set in modern times, don’t like this one. Much of the humour is pure slapstick, the acting can be over-exaggerated and lines are over-emphasised. There are large parts of the film which don’t have any dialogue at all, it’s all just visuals and music.

But the onscreen chemistry between Danes and DiCaprio is electric. Their scenes are genuinely emotionally charged, often heightened by the musical accompaniment.

And Lurhmann was making a film that would appeal to those who loved or loathed, or were indifferent, to traditional Shakespeare. A Shakespeare accessible to everyone.

This can be seen in the dialogue delivery of actors such as John Leguizamo, who plays Tybalt. As he venomously spits out, in modern gangsta rap style, lines like, “Now by the stock and honour of my kin, To strike him dead I hold it not a sin”, you actually forget you are listening to words written 500 years ago.

Read more: Shakespeare had fewer words, but doper rhymes, than rappers

My favourite scene has always been Mercutio’s death. In the minutes leading up to, during and after he dies, Lurhmann dispenses with glitz and glamour, concentrating solely on the engagement between DiCaprio, Harold Perrineau (Mercutio) and Leguizamo. This is raw, visceral acting, no exaggeration, no contrivance.

Fluid works

Some have argued making such radical changes to the text is unnecessary and harms the essence of Shakespearean drama. The nuance and poetry of Shakespeare’s language is lost in all the flash and sparkle.

But pop culture critic Tori Godfree contends that Lurhmann’s incorporation of contemporary jokes, music and pop culture into his film is exactly what Shakespeare did in the original play. Shakespeare’s works should not be treated as sacrosanct icons but as fluid works open to reconstruction and modernisation.

Read more: Friday essay: 50 shades of Shakespeare – how the Bard sexed things up

Luhrmann’s approach worked. The film grossed over ten times its $14.5 million dollar budget. No other direct Shakespeare adaptation has come close to this sort of monetary success. Others have since embraced gangsta style violence in their own Shakespeare adaptions, notably Australian director Justin Kurzel, with Macbeth, and David Michod’s The King.

Romeo + Juliet catapulted Luhrmann into the A-list, where he was given free reign on his next film, Moulin Rouge. Unfortunately, I think Lurhmann’s love of visual excess overwhelmed this and his further films, which were much more focused on screen imagery and design than story, character or meaning.

Perhaps the difference with Romeo + Juliet is that Luhrmann had a great script to start with. One can justly say of this lush, loud film, “For I never saw true beauty till this night”.

Romeo + Juliet is being re-released in selected cinemas from February 11 to mark its 25th anniversary.

– ref. Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet at 25: is this the best Shakespeare screen adaptation? – https://theconversation.com/baz-luhrmanns-romeo-juliet-at-25-is-this-the-best-shakespeare-screen-adaptation-154801

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

Beach trips are a traditional part of our summers, but for some Kiwis and their family members living with a disability it can be a limiting experience.

Around 1 in 4 New Zealanders have a disability. Their disability arises not from their impairments but from having to live in world designed by people who think everyone is the same.

It is society, not the individual’s impairment, that is disabling. Thus, it is society that should be enabling.

Examples of enabling measures are seen in efforts to provide beach access for those with disabilities with the installation of beach mats for wheelchairs, or the provision of beach wheelchairs.

But after an able-bodied woman suffered a significant leg injury on a beach mat, there are now concerns that Auckland City Council, and other councils across the country, might review the provision of such such mats.

Disabled rights

Any such decisions must take the rights of people with disabilities into account. These rights are to be found in international human rights law, and New Zealand’s own law.

Read more: Bilingual road signs in Aotearoa New Zealand would tell us where we are as a nation

The rights of people with disabilities are protected by international human rights law generally, which recognises that everyone is born equal and all have to the right to be free from discrimination.

More dedicated protection is found in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2006, which New Zealand accepted in 2008.

The convention prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability, which it describes as the interaction of people with disabilities and attitudinal and environmental barriers.

It also requires countries should take action to ensure accessibility to a range of spaces and services for people with disabilities on an equal basis with those of non-disabled people.

Let’s be reasonable

These rights, like most other rights, must be weighed up with other considerations. A key concept here is reasonable accommodation.

This means that necessary and appropriate changes should be made that allow people with disabilities to enjoy their rights on an equal basis with others. But such changes should not impose a disproportionate or undue burden.

An Optional Protocol to the convention was also adopted in 2006, which means complaints can be made by individuals to the UN. New Zealand accepted this agreement in 2016.

The New Zealand International Human Rights Action Plan 2019-2023 also prioritises the country’s leadership role in advocacy for the rights of people with disabilities.

At the domestic level, the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 says everyone has the right to be free from discrimination and the Human Rights Act 1993 prohibits discrimination on the grounds of disability.

Domestic law also includes the Health and Disability Commissioner Act 1994, which established both the role of the Health and Disability Commissioner and a Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers’ Rights.

One of the purposes of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000 is to promote the inclusion, societal participation and independence of people with disabilities. The Disability (United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities) Act 2008 was passed with the aim of giving effect to New Zealand’s obligations under the UN Convention.

The New Zealand Disability Strategy 2016-2026 guides the work of government agencies on disability issues.

The strategy is informed by the the UN Convention. It is also informed by Te Tiriti o Waitangi, reflecting the cultural importance of whānau and a whānau-centred approach of concepts of family and disability.

The Disability Action Plan 2019-2023 seeks to implement the Disability Strategy and the UN Convention.

Design public spaces for all

These legal obligations and policy measures also extend to local authorities. The decisions of such authorities regarding access to public spaces can have a profound impact on the rights of people with disabilities.

The provision of beach mats and/or wheelchairs is one practical example that provides people with disabilities with access to the sand and the sea.

But councils can think bigger by also providing mobility spaces that fits all users, appropriately designed footpaths and kerb ramps that lead to accessible seating, shade areas and picnic areas, as well as public toilets that can be used by those with disabilities and their carers.

There is particular room for improvement with the latter and calls for councils to build fully accessible bathrooms to cater to people with multiple or complex disabilities.

Read more: Why Aotearoa New Zealand’s early Polynesian settlement should be recognised with World Heritage Site status

Cost may well be a concern but access to the beach for people with disabilities should not be presented as an optional extra. Ensuring the safety of all beach users will be a paramount consideration, as will the protection of the natural environment.

A diverse and inclusive society means everyone should be treated with dignity and respect at all times. A failure to do so brings its own costs.

New Zealand Herald readers just voted Ōhope beach as New Zealand’s best beach in 2021. One of the reasons given was that everyone — from paddleboarders to kitesurfers to those in wheelchairs — is welcome at Ōhope.

For many New Zealanders, a dip in the ocean on summer days is a simple pleasure but for some, it is simply life-changing.

– ref. We need beach access for everyone, and that includes people with a disability – https://theconversation.com/we-need-beach-access-for-everyone-and-that-includes-people-with-a-disability-154158

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brian Oliver, Research Leader in Respiratory cellular and molecular biology at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research and Professor, Faculty of Science, University of Technology Sydney

A nebuliser — a medical device that turns a liquid into a fine mist, typically to deliver inhaled medication — may have spread the coronavirus in Melbourne’s hotel quarantine.

Victoria’s Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said earlier today this was the “working hypothesis” to explain why three people became infected at the airport’s Holiday Inn hotel.

How could this have happened? And what are the implications for people who use nebulisers outside hotel quarantine, such as those with asthma?

Read more: Another hotel worker tests positive in Melbourne. It’s time to move hotel quarantine out of cities

What is a nebuliser?

A nebuliser creates a fine mist from a liquid, usually using compressed air or oxygen, or via ultrasonic vibration. A nebuliser is different to a vaporiser, which uses heat to produce a mist.

Nebulisers are often used to deliver life-saving drugs. Patients inhale them via a mask they put over their nose and mouth. Sometimes the mist alone is sufficient to provide a treatment. For example, nebulised saline is used to treat the lung condition cystic fibrosis. Sometimes people with asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are also treated with drugs via a nebuliser.

Read more: I’m an asthmatic: what should I do during the coronavirus pandemic?

How could a nebuliser potentially spread COVID-19?

When we breathe in and out, the very small airways and the air sacs in our lungs open and close. This generates particles. These particles, along with water vapour, are what are commonly referred to as exhaled aerosols. Think back to breathing out on a cold day; the mist was aerosols from your lungs.

When we have a viral respiratory infection, the virus can be contained in the particles we exhale, and this is how aerosol transmission occurs. It is now widely accepted that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, can be spread via aerosols, as well as via larger droplets when we cough and sneeze.

Any activity that increases the amount of aerosols, for example singing or exercising, can increase the amount of aerosolised virus, thereby increasing the risk of transmission.

Read more: This video shows just how easily COVID-19 could spread when people sing together

When people use a nebuliser, two things happen. The first is they often take in big breaths and exhale more forcefully than normal. This alone increases the amount of particles generated. The second is they breathe in a fine mist, not all of which is absorbed in the lung. This too is exhaled.

And when a nebuliser is used to loosen mucus in the lungs, this mucus could also be exhaled. This could be as particles or coughed out.

So whatever the mechanism, someone with COVID-19 who uses a nebuliser is at risk of inadvertently spreading the virus to others.

Read more: How the coronavirus spreads through the air: 5 essential reads

Don’t we already know this?

We know that using a nebuliser in COVID-19 patients is not a good idea, especially as many drugs can be delivered in other ways.

For example, the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care states:

Nebulisation is NOT recommended in patients with COVID-19 as it may contribute to the spread of the virus.

However, it acknowledges that in some circumstances using a nebuliser is unavoidable, for instance, in children.

Was a nebuliser responsible for the spread at the Holiday Inn?

This question is very difficult to answer definitively without making actual measurements.

For example, some so-called super spreaders are highly contagious.

However, if a COVID-positive person was using a nebuliser, and the spread of the virus was limited to those in relatively close proximity to that person, it is highly likely the nebuliser would have contributed to the spread.

In Sutton’s announcement earlier today, he said that in the case of transmission at the Holiday Inn, the theory that a nebuliser was the route of infection:

…makes sense in terms of the geography and it makes sense in terms of the exposure time.

So what does this mean for people using nebulisers?

People using a nebuliser for medical reasons should not be frightened by these developments. They should talk to their health-care provider about any concerns.

The bigger question relates to the use of nebulisers by people in hotel quarantine, which Western Australia says it will now ban.

However, it is highly likely a person using a nebuliser in hotel quarantine needs it to provide life-saving medication. So it’s not as simple as banning their use altogether. We’re more likely to see more consideration around how they are used in our quarantine hotels. For example, they might be restricted to particular areas or only used when there is no other medical alternative.

– ref. What are nebulisers? And how could they help spread COVID-19? – https://theconversation.com/what-are-nebulisers-and-how-could-they-help-spread-covid-19-155032

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Bennett, Chair in Epidemiology, Deakin University

Over the past week, three returned travellers — one in New South Wales and two in Victoria — have tested positive to COVID-19 shortly after leaving hotel quarantine.

The cases in Victoria appear almost certainly to have been acquired in hotel quarantine. The individuals had quarantined at the Holiday Inn, where eight staff members and guests have been now infected. Authorities are investigating.

But genomic sequencing has now indicated the NSW case was not picked up in hotel quarantine. So it’s possible either the person was still shedding virus from an earlier infection they contracted overseas, or that they incubated the virus for longer than 14 days.

The incubation period is the time between the point at which someone is exposed to the virus and the onset of symptoms (bearing in mind of course that not everyone who tests positive to COVID-19 will develop symptoms).

Theoretically, it is possible for a person to incubate the virus for longer than 14 days. But how likely is it?

The evidence

Most people who are exposed to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, will not go on to develop an infection. Sometimes the dose is not high enough, and/or the person can mount a successful immune response to prevent the virus establishing itself in their system.

But of those who do develop an infection, the evidence suggests almost all will return a positive test within 14 days of being exposed to the virus. A review summarising data from 21 studies reported only 1% of people incubated the virus beyond two weeks.

It’s important to note this review is a preprint, so it hasn’t received the same scrutiny as other published research.

Read more: Viral incubation: why do bugs hide before they strike?

But it found the average incubation period to be 5.9 days, which aligns with peer-reviewed research indicating the incubation period for COVID-19 is within the range of five to six days.

This is similar to other coronaviruses, notably SARS and MERS. Average incubation periods of other acute respiratory viral infections vary; 1.4 days for influenza A, 0.6 days for influenza B, and 12.5 days for measles.

The ‘day 16’ test

For the small minority of people who incubate the virus beyond 14 days, this can be related to underlying conditions, especially those that weaken a person’s immune response.

Over the weekend, NSW began testing returned travellers on day 16 — that is, two days after they finish hotel quarantine. This is how the latest case in NSW was detected.

The test is not compulsory and if the person doesn’t have symptoms, they don’t need to isolate until receiving their result.

This day 16 test is designed to pick up infections that may develop after the expected maximum 14-day incubation period on which Australia’s quarantine period is based.

Other states are reported to be considering implementing this measure too. This is a good safety net because, not only could it pick up the very rare case where a person might incubate the virus for longer, it could also catch missed cases of the virus being contracted in quarantine.

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

Some places even have a shorter quarantine period than 14 days. The UK, for example, has just started a hotel quarantine program to try to protect against arrival of other new variants. The quarantine period is ten days.

So Australia is erring on the more cautious end of the spectrum.

Could the new variants affect the incubation period?

Most of the data we have on the incubation period for COVID-19 don’t capture the emerging variants of the virus. For example, most of the studies included in the review I mentioned above were conducted in China, and all were carried out in June 2020 or earlier.

If anything, it’s possible the new variants might have a shorter incubation period.

The accelerated rise in case numbers we’ve seen around the world with new variants means a greater proportion of people become infected following an exposure to these new strains, as we know these new variants can be more infectious. But a shortened incubation period could also be contributing.

These new variants are more efficient at establishing infections, we’re told, with the virus better at binding to, and invading, our cells. We might therefore assume a more efficient virus wouldn’t wait 14 days before establishing an infection. It would get on the job of replicating more quickly.

Although we need more information on these new variants before we can draw any conclusions, we can be reassured Australia’s two-week quarantine period should be ample time to detect the vast majority of cases.

This may change once we see what post quarantine testing reveals over the next while, but for now the priority must be making sure any cases within hotel quarantine don’t escape into the wider community.

Read more: Another hotel worker tests positive in Melbourne. It’s time to move hotel quarantine out of cities

– ref. Yes, a 16-day incubation period for COVID is possible. But it’s extremely rare – https://theconversation.com/yes-a-16-day-incubation-period-for-covid-is-possible-but-its-extremely-rare-155027

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa Portolan, PhD student, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University

The “meet cute” is the moment in which two unlikely people encounter each other while going about their ordinary lives, and something extraordinary begins.

In the romantic comedy The Holiday (2006), Arthur (Eli Wallach) describes it thus to Iris (Kate Winslet):

It’s how two characters meet in a movie. Say a man and a woman both need something to sleep in, and they both go to the same men’s pyjama department. And the man says to the salesman, “I just need bottoms”. The woman says, “I just need a top”. They look at each other, and that’s the meet cute.

The meet cute is a magical moment of happenstance. The people involved aren’t looking for love (at least, not right then).

In 1991, Roger Ebert rather prosaically described the meet cute as:

a comic situation contrived entirely for the purpose of bringing a man and a woman together, after which they can work out their destinies for the remainder of the film.

However you describe it, the meet cute is unexpected. It happens when romance is the furthest thing from the characters’ minds. But in real life, in the age of online dating, more Australians meet their partner online than through friends and work (let alone, while buying pyjamas).

So can you have a meet cute when you are looking for love? Is it possible to have a meet cute on a dating app?

Searching for romance

Driven by new year’s resolutions, holiday break-ups, and the desire for a Valentine’s Day date, the “busy” period for dating apps in Australia spans from Christmas Day through to mid-February. Across this period in 2020, Australians sent over 52.8 million messages on dating app Bumble.

In many ways, finding a valentine is easier than ever. But dating apps aren’t conducive to stumbling into just the right person precisely when you weren’t looking for them.

They rely on a logic of active choice: you sign up to the app in pursuit of some form of coupledom. In interviews one of us, (Lisa), conducted with dating app users, many described these apps as pre-meditated and strategic.

When talking about what they might want in a relationship, many participants specifically desired a “Hollywood moment”, but felt this could never happen via a dating app.

Read more: Loving Captivity review: a delightful rom-com captures life under coronavirus

Simultaneously, many felt meet cutes weren’t something that could ever happen to them: meet cutes were reserved for “special” people, not ordinary ones.

People seeking romance on dating apps are caught between two opposing forces: they feel apps provide the best opportunity to meet someone, but also that apps close down the possibility of a rom-com-style romance they dream of.

How fictional meet cutes adapted to online dating

In the most famous rom-com featuring online dating, You’ve Got Mail (1998), Joe (Tom Hanks) and Kathleen (Meg Ryan) don’t meet on a dating site. They meet in an over-30s chatroom and pursue a correspondence, not realising they’re business rivals in real life.

They might have met online, but neither was looking for love – and their business rivalry makes them very unlikely lovers.

More recently, Netflix’s Love, Guaranteed (2020) pairs a man suing a dating site for failing to find him love (Damon Wayans Jr) with his lawyer (Rachael Leigh Cook). They meet because of the site — but because they’re suing it, not because they matched on it.

We see similar patterns in popular romance fiction. In Christina Lauren’s My Favorite Half-Night Stand (2018), the heroine finds love via online dating — but with her best friend, who she already knew.

In Kristin Rockaway’s How to Hack a Heartbreak (2019), the heroine creates her own dating app, but her happily ever after is with the guy who sits in the next cubicle.

Some romance novels are beginning to emerge where the protagonists do meet solely because of apps, such as Alisha Rai’s The Right Swipe (2019), where the protagonists meet via an app — and then meet again in the boardroom.

Conflict or compatibility?

Meeting someone via an app might never feel exactly like the Hollywood rom-com meet cute participants in Lisa’s research were looking for — but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Romance narratives are driven by conflict. There’s usually a reason the two people can’t be together, a conflict they spend the whole story overcoming.

In Notting Hill (1999), Will (Hugh Grant) and Anna (Julia Roberts) have a classic meet cute when they bump into each other and he spills his orange juice all over her. But then they have to overcome the obstacles posed by the very different lives they lead in order to be together.

On dating apps, those looking for a relationship are searching for compatibility and chemistry, not conflict — for someone they could build a connection with, not the most unlikely person possible.

In other words: finding a valentine via an app is a lot more likely than running into them on the street or getting trapped in a lift with them.

And if it doesn’t feel quite like a rom-com, it might just be because we haven’t quite worked out how to tell that kind of story yet.

– ref. You can’t have a Hollywood meet cute on a dating app — but is that such a bad thing? – https://theconversation.com/you-cant-have-a-hollywood-meet-cute-on-a-dating-app-but-is-that-such-a-bad-thing-153454

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gavin Brown, Professor in Educational Assessment, University of Auckland

Recent news about New Zealand’s declining position in international educational assessment rankings has been treated as if it is a new phenomenon requiring drastic changes to the school system.

But some suggested solutions, such as the Principals Federation’s call for greater involvement by the Ministry of Education in curriculum decisions, seem simplistic. Problems in education are more complex and relate to the relationship of schooling to society in general.

It’s worth noting that when these international large-scale assessments (e.g. PISA and TIMSS) were first deployed in the 1990s, New Zealand scored in the top five or 10 of all participating countries at year 5, year 8 and year 11. Since then scores have fallen to the middle of the pack, although slightly above average.

This is disappointing, but before we become overly concerned, a number of factors need to be considered.

Being good at tests counts

The international tests can only test those things that are readily evaluated on either paper or a screen with text. Of all the things that are valuable to our children, these tests measure a very narrow, albeit important, slice of the school curriculum.

While the international test agencies do everything they can to ensure test content is valid for every society, it is clear that routinely taking tests makes a small contribution to greater success. Practice always improves performance.

Unfortunately, by the time New Zealand children reach 15 (PISA measurement age) they will have had very little opportunity to take multiple-choice tests at school.

Read more: Stressed out: the psychological effects of tests on primary school children

Many schools conduct yearly standardised tests provided by the New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER) or the electronic assessment tools for teaching and learning (e-asTTle) system.

But that is very little compared to children from countries with a heavy use of testing to motivate and select students, such as China, Japan, Korea and India. Most of the world’s children get tested; New Zealand’s not so much.

Expectation and performance

Research shows that when New Zealand students take tests of little personal consequence, they tend not to try very hard. This is true of students in Nordic countries, too.

In contrast, research is showing that students in Shanghai, for example, treat a test that matters to their country’s reputation nearly as seriously as tests with individual consequences.

New Zealand’s lower scores may simply reflect lower effort on a test that doesn’t personally matter to students.

Although international rankings have declined over the past two decades, it was clear from an overview of New Zealand achievement data some 15 years ago that there was a large discrepancy between what the New Zealand curriculum expected of children and their actual performance.

This was most notable for Māori and Pasifika children and for those in lower decile schools. Despite the 2007 curriculum review, little has been done in New Zealand to close this gap before students enter secondary schooling.

Schooling and society

Families’ socio-economic resources heavily influence educational achievement. This has been established since the mid-1960s as an important causal factor in performance.

Families with good jobs, educated parents, warm and dry homes and access to reasonably priced health care produce children who do well at school. Since the 1990s, New Zealand has become a society increasingly unable to ensure such conditions for all children.

Read more: A-level debacle has shattered trust in educational assessment

This means New Zealand is faced with a choice when looking at higher-scoring societies for possible solutions. A clear-eyed examination of those nations may give us some insight into what we could do.

Among the most successful are the high-testing regions of East Asia (Hong Kong, Singapore, China, Korea, Japan, Macau). These jurisdictions regularly test children to rank and sort them even before they enter school.

However, my own research has shown large psychological and emotional consequences for systems that rank and reward the winners. The tragedy is that creating a test-based system is relatively simple and cost-effective, but the human cost is not one I would wish on my own children and grandchildren.

The Finland model

A standout alternative to this approach is offered by Finland, which has decided that solving educational achievement problems cannot be separated from health, welfare, housing and employment policies.

The Finns expect government agencies to co-ordinate with each other to ensure the socio-economic determinants of achievement were put in place for all children, in conjunction with action taken by schools and their education ministry.

This means not blaming schools and teachers for poor student performance when that performance was a consequence of hunger, unemployment, poor health or myriad other social ills that schooling alone cannot solve.

Seeing educational outcomes as a canary in the coalmine of social well-being has meant all government policy works together to ensure educational equity.

Read more: They believe in teachers and in education for all: why Finland’s kids often top league tables

Also, it’s perhaps startling from the perspective of New Zealand’s tradition of experience-based teacher education that all Finnish teachers require masters degrees and to be trained in evidence-based practices before being deployed as schoolteachers.

Those teachers are well paid and have became highly regarded professionals in their community.

The challenge for New Zealand is that Finland’s solution is expensive. It requires great political will and constant attention to the changing factors that undermine societal equity.

Nonetheless, Finland has shown it is possible to change educational outcomes in a coherent and meaningful way.

– ref. Test or invest? NZ’s sliding international student assessment rankings are all about choices – https://theconversation.com/test-or-invest-nzs-sliding-international-student-assessment-rankings-are-all-about-choices-154729

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kirsty Short, Senior Lecturer, The University of Queensland

Australia has recently seen SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) escape several times from hotel quarantine, including in Brisbane, Perth and Melbourne.

These incidents have been particularly concerning because they involved people infected with “variants” of the virus.

But what exactly are these variants, and how concerned should we be?

What’s a variant?

Viruses can’t replicate and spread on their own. They need a host, and they need to hijack the cells of the host to replicate. When they replicate in a host, they face the challenge of duplicating their genetic material. For many viruses, this isn’t an exact process and their offspring often contain errors — meaning they’re not exact copies of the original virus.

These errors are referred to as mutations, and viruses with these mutations are called variants. Often, these mutations don’t affect the biological properties of the virus. That is, they don’t have any effect on how the virus replicates or causes disease.

Read more: Perth is the latest city to suffer a COVID quarantine breach. Why does this keep happening?

Some mutations can impair the virus’s ability to replicate and/or transmit. Variants with such mutations are quickly lost from the viral population.

Occasionally, however, variants emerge with an advantageous mutation, one that means it’s better at replicating, transmitting, and/or evading our immune system. These variants have a selective advantage (in biological terms, they are “fitter” than other variants) and may rapidly become the dominant viral strain.

There’s some concern we’re seeing a growing number of variants with advantageous mutations, contributing to the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Here’s a look at the main three variants you might’ve heard about in the media.

The ‘UK variant’ — B.1.1.7

This variant was first detected in the United Kingdom towards the end of 2020. It has a large number of mutations, many of which involve the virus’ spike protein, which helps the virus invade human cells.

It has spread rapidly throughout the UK since it emerged, and to at least 70 other countries, including Australia.

The fact it has spread so rapidly, and quickly replaced other circulating variants, suggests it has some sort of selective advantage over other variants.

After examining the evidence surrounding the new variant, the UK New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG) concluded it “had moderate confidence” the variant is substantially more infectious than other variants.

This may be the result of one of the mutations in the spike protein of the variant — a mutation called “N501Y”. One preprint manuscript, uploaded last month and yet to be peer reviewed, found N501Y is associated with increased binding of the virus to a receptor found on the surface on many of our cells, called “ACE2”. This could mean the variant is even more efficient at entering our cells.

Although initially the variant wasn’t associated with more severe COVID symptoms, more recent data have led NERVTAG to conclude there’s “a realistic possibility” that infection with the variant “is associated with an increased risk of death” compared with non B.1.1.7 viruses.

However, the group acknowledged there are limitations of the available data, and this remains an evolving situation.

The ‘South African variant’ — B.1.351

This variant was first detected in Nelson Mandela Bay, South Africa, in October 2020. Since then it has been found in more than 30 countries.

Similar to the UK variant, it quickly outcompeted other SARS-CoV-2 variants in South Africa. It now accounts for more than 90% of SARS-CoV-2 samples in South Africa that undergo genetic sequencing.

Like the UK variant, it also has the N501Y mutation in the spike protein, meaning it’s more efficient at gaining access to our cells to replicate. This may help to explain its rapid spread.

It also contains several other concerning mutations. Two of these, called “E484K” and “K417N”, are bad news for our immune system. They can reduce how well our antibodies bind to the virus (though this is also based on preprint data awaiting peer review).

But there’s no evidence yet to suggest the South African variant is more deadly than the original variants.

The ‘Brazilian variant’ — P.1

This variant was first detected in Japan in a group of Brazilian travellers in January 2021.

It’s now highly prevalent in the Brazilian state of Amazonas, and has been detected in countries including South Korea and the United States.

Like the South African variant, the Brazilian variant has the spike protein mutations N501Y, E484K and K417N (as well as numerous other mutations).

While there’s no evidence this variant causes more severe disease, there’s concern it has facilitated a wave of reinfections in Manaus, the largest city in Amazonas, which was thought to have reached “herd immunity” in October last year.

What does this mean for vaccines?

Major vaccine developers are testing the efficacy of their vaccines against these and other variants. Generally, the currently licensed vaccines protect relatively well against the UK variant.

But recent phase 2/3 data from both Novavax and Johnson & Johnson suggest reduced protection against the South African variant. The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine group also released data over the weekend suggesting its vaccine offers only minimal protection against mild-moderate disease caused by this variant.

Read more: South Africa has paused AstraZeneca COVID vaccine rollout but it’s too early to say Australia should follow suit

However, it’s important to recognise reduced protection doesn’t mean no protection at all, and that data are still emerging.

What’s more, numerous vaccine manufacturers are now investigating whether tweaks to the vaccines can improve their performance against the emerging variants.

The take-home message is that variants will emerge, and we need to closely monitor their spread. However, there’s every indication we’ll be able to adapt our vaccine strategies to protect against these and future variants.

– ref. UK, South African, Brazilian: a virologist explains each COVID variant and what they mean for the pandemic – https://theconversation.com/uk-south-african-brazilian-a-virologist-explains-each-covid-variant-and-what-they-mean-for-the-pandemic-154547

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tanya Hill, Honorary Fellow of the University of Melbourne and Senior Curator (Astronomy), Museums Victoria

Three new spacecraft are due to arrive at Mars this month, ending their seven-month journey through space.

The first, the United Arab Emirates’ Hope Probe, should have made it to the red planet this week. It will stay in orbit and study its atmosphere for one complete Martian year (687 Earth days).

China’s Taiwen-1 mission also enters orbit this month and will begin scouting the potential landing site for its Mars rover, due to be deployed in May.

If successful, China will become the second country to land a rover on Mars.

These two missions will join six orbiting spacecraft actively studying the red planet from above:

The oldest active probe – Mars Odyssey – has been orbiting the planet for 20 years.

Read more: How to get people from Earth to Mars and safely back again

The third spacecraft to reach Mars this month is NASA’s Perseverance rover, scheduled to land on February 18. It will search for signs of ancient microbial life but its mission also looks ahead, testing new technologies that may support humans visiting Mars one day.

Laboratories on wheels

NASA has an impressive track record for landing on Mars. It has operated all eight successful missions to the Martian surface.

What began with the two Viking landers in the 1970s continues today with the InSight lander, which has studied the daily weather on Mars and detected Marsquakes for the past two years.

Perseverance will be the fifth rover to arrive on Mars that’s capable of venturing across the surface of another planet.

These amazing laboratories on wheels have extended our knowledge of a faraway world. Here’s what they’ve told us so far.

The first rover – Sojourner

Twenty years after Viking 1 & 2 landed stationary probes on Mars, a third spacecraft finally reached the planet, but this one could move.

On July 4, 1997, NASA’s Pathfinder literally bounced onto the Martian surface, safely enclosed in a giant set of airbags. Once stable, the lander released the Sojourner rover.

The first rover on Mars could move at a maximum speed of 1cm a second and was about as long (63cm) as a skateboard — smaller than some of the boulders it encountered.

Sojourner explored 16 locations near the Pathfinder lander, including the volcanic rock “Yogi”. Pictures of its landing site, Ares Vallis, showed it was littered with rounded pebbles and conglomerate rocks, evidence of ancient flood plains.

The geologists – Spirit and Opportunity

A pair of upsized rovers arrived on Mars in early 2004. Spirit and Opportunity were geologists, searching for minerals within the rocks and soil, hidden clues that dry, cold Mars may once have been wet and warm.

Spirit landed in Gusev Crater, a 150km-wide crater created billions of years ago when an asteroid crashed into Mars.

Spirit discovered evidence of an ancient volcanic explosion, caused by hot lava meeting water. Small rocks had been thrown skyward but then fell back to Mars. Examination of the impact or “bomb sag” showed the rock had landed on wet soil.

Even when things went wrong, Spirit made new discoveries. While dragging a broken front wheel, Spirit churned up a track of soil revealing a patch of white silica.

This mineral usually exists in hot springs or steam vents, ideal environments where life on Earth tends to flourish.

The rover that kept on going

Opportunity arrived on Mars three weeks after Spirit. Its original three-month mission was extended to 14 years as it travelled almost 50km across the Martian terrain.

Landing in the small Eagle Crater, Opportunity went on to visit more than 100 impact craters. It also found a handful of meteorites, the first to be studied on another planet.

The rover was descending into Endeavour Crater when a dust storm ended its mission. But it was along the crater’s edge that Opportunity made its biggest discoveries.

It found signs of ancient water flows and discovered the crater walls are made of clays that can only form where freshwater is available — more evidence that Mars could well have been a place for life.

The chemist – Curiosity

Curiosity landed in Gale Crater on August 6, 2012, and continues to explore the region today. During the coronavirus pandemic, scientists and engineers have been commanding the rover from their homes.

In a first for space exploration, NASA’s Curiosity was lowered to the Martian surface using a “sky crane”. After a successful soft landing, the crane’s cables were cut and the spacecraft’s descent stage flew away to crash elsewhere.

Curiosity is a fully equipped chemical laboratory. It can shoot lasers at rocks and also drill into the soil to collect samples. It’s confirmed ancient Mars once had the right chemistry to support microbial life.

Curiosity also found evidence of ancient freshwater rivers and lakes. It seems that water once flowed towards a basin at Mount Sharp, a central peak that rises 5.5km from within Gale Crater.

From being on the surface of Mars, we’ve learned it was once very different to the dry, dusty planet it is today.

Read more: The Conversation Weekly podcast Ep #1 transcript: Why it’s a big month for Mars

With flowing water, possible oceans, volcanic activity and an abundance of key ingredients necessary for life, the red planet was once much more Earth-like. What happened to make it change so dramatically?

It’s exciting to consider what the Perseverance and Taiwen-1 rovers may discover as they explore their own patch of Mars. They might even lead us to the day when humans are exploring the red planet for ourselves.

– ref. As new probes reach Mars, here’s what we know so far from trips to the red planet – https://theconversation.com/as-new-probes-reach-mars-heres-what-we-know-so-far-from-trips-to-the-red-planet-153791

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicholas Patrick Taylor, PhD Candidate, Deakin University

The “floor price” for alcohol introduced by the Northern Territory in 2018 reduced the consumption of cask wine by half, without significantly impacting sales of other types of alcohol, according to our new analysis of the policy’s effectiveness.

On October 1, 2018, the NT introduced a minimum price of A$1.30 per unit (equivalent to 10 grams of pure alcohol or one “standard drink”) on alcohol, in a bid to tackle problem drinking.

The price was chosen to target cheap wines that have historically been an issue throughout the NT, while not influencing other liquor types.

Alcohol has been ranked as the most harmful drug to Australian communities, and the greatest harm of all comes from heavy drinking. In Australia an estimated three-quarters of all alcohol is consumed by the top 20% of its heaviest drinkers, a group that the alcohol industry depends on and actively targets, labelling them as super consumers.

Nowhere in Australia are the harms of alcohol more stark than in the Northern Territory, where alcohol-attributable harm costs the community an estimated A$1.4 billion a year. Alcohol-related deaths in the territory are two to ten times higher than the national average.

The Northern Territory

Our study, published today in The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, examined overall alcohol consumption as well as consumption within specific liquor categories, most importantly cask wine. Cask wine represents less than 5% of the liquor consumed in the NT, but because it offers lots of alcohol for a low price, it contributes inordinately to alcohol problems among vulnerable drinkers and disadvantaged communities.

We split our analysis into two regions: the entire NT, and the Darwin/Palmerston area. The Darwin and Palmerston analysis is particularly important, as other regions of the NT were subject to a change in levels of police intervention at the point of sale during the period examined. The impact of these changes in policing could not be fully controlled for, whereas changes in Darwin/Palmerston can be reliably attributed to the effect of the minimum alcohol price.

In the year following the introduction of the minimum unit price, there was a 48.84% reduction in cask wine consumption in Darwin and Palmerston, and a 50.57% reduction across the NT. No significant reduction in non-wine liquor consumption was found in Darwin and Palmerston or across the NT.

This suggests implementing a minimum price on alcohol can help heavy drinkers reduce their consumption, while not adversely affecting moderate or occasional drinkers.

Read more: The NT is putting a minimum floor price on alcohol, because evidence shows this works to reduce harm

We found no evidence to indicate heavy drinkers had moved from cask wine to other liquor types in response to the floor price. While there was an increase in spirits sales, this trend began before the introduction of the minimum price.

Members of the community had expressed fears the minimum price would negatively impact beer sales. However, full-strength beer, the most consumed liquor type in the NT, saw no significant change in response to the minimum price.

Time for a national rollout?

Considering the effectiveness with which this policy reduced consumption of cask wine in the NT, it is time for other state and federal governments to consider following suit. Internationally, minimum pricing policies have already been implemented in Scotland and Wales, and the Republic of Ireland has also passed legislation to implement a floor price at a later date.

Other potential benefits of a minimum unit price for alcohol include higher tax revenue, and various social benefits from lower alcohol consumption. Both of these could conceivably help Australia recover from the financial burden of COVID-19.

In the past, the alcohol industry has persistently undermined efforts to reform alcohol regulations, and attempted to dominate the discussion around alcohol policy.

Read more: How big alcohol is trying to fool us into thinking drinking is safer than it really is

Not surprisingly, the alcohol industry is one of the largest political donor groups in Australia.

Notably, after the release of the first evaluation of the minimum unit price policy in the NT, industry group Retail Drinks Australia claimed consumption actually increased. Our latest study directly refutes this.

It will be important for policy-makers throughout Australia to discuss the merits of this policy without being unduly influenced by the alcohol industry, which depends on the profits earned from problem drinkers.

– ref. A minimum price for alcohol helped curb problem drinking in the Northern Territory — is it time for a national rollout? – https://theconversation.com/a-minimum-price-for-alcohol-helped-curb-problem-drinking-in-the-northern-territory-is-it-time-for-a-national-rollout-154829

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Legge, Professor, Australian National University

Australia is teeming with cats. While cats make great pets, and can bring owners emotional, psychological and health benefits, the animals are a scourge on native wildlife.

Cats kill a staggering 1.7 billion native animals each year, and have played a major role in most of Australia’s 34 mammal extinctions. They continue to pose an extinction threat to at least another 120 species.

A recent parliamentary inquiry into the problem of feral and pet cats in Australia has affirmed the issue is indeed of national significance. The final report, released last week, calls for a heightened, more effective, multi-pronged and coordinated policy, management and research response.

As ecologists, we’ve collectively spent more than 50 years researching Australia’s cat dilemma. We welcome most of the report’s recommendations, but in some areas it doesn’t go far enough, missing major opportunities to make a difference.

Night curfews aren’t good enough

The report recommends Australia’s 3.8 million pet cats be subject to night-time curfews. This measure would benefit native nocturnal mammals, but won’t save birds and reptiles, which are primarily active during the day.

Pet cats kill 83 million native reptiles and 80 million native birds in Australia each year. From a wildlife perspective, keeping pet cats contained 24/7 is the only responsible option.

It’s clearly possible: one third of Australian pet cat owners already keep their pets contained all the time.

Stopping pet cats from roaming is also good for the cats, which live longer, safer lives when kept exclusively indoors. It would also substantially reduce the number of people falling ill from cat-dependent diseases each year.

Read more: Cats carry diseases that can be deadly to humans, and it’s costing Australia $6 billion every year

Other strategies for improving pet cat management proposed in the report include pet cat registration, subsidised programs for early age desexing, public education campaigns to promote responsible pet cat ownership, and improving the consistency of rules and legislation nationally.

The report is also unambiguously opposed to “trap-neuter-release” programs, in which un-owned cats in urban areas are desexed and then released. We agree with this finding, as these programs aren’t effective at reducing the population of stray cats, nor preventing those cats from killing wildlife and spreading disease.

We need more wildlife havens

One of the inquiry’s flagship recommendations is a national conservation project dubbed “Project Noah”. This would involve an ambitious expansion of Australia’s existing network of reserves free from introduced predators, both on islands and in mainland fenced areas. The reserves provide havens — or a fleet of “arks” — for vulnerable native wildlife.

This measure is vital. 2019 research found Australia has more than 65 native mammal species and subspecies that can’t persist, or struggle to persist, in places with even very low numbers of cats or foxes. This includes the bilby, numbat, quokka, dibbler and black-footed rock wallaby.

Australia already has more than 125 havens, 100 of which are islands. These have prevented 13 mammal species from going extinct, such as boodies and greater stick-nest rats. In total, these havens have protected populations of 40 mammal species susceptible to cats and foxes.

This is a good start, but we need more investment in havens to prevent extinctions. More than 25 species are highly sensitive to cat and fox predation, but aren’t yet protected in the haven network. This includes the central rock-rat, which is more likely than not to become extinct within 20 years without new action.

What’s more, some species, such as the long-nosed potoroo, exist in just one haven. To avoid issues such as inbreeding and to ensure disasters like a fire at any single haven don’t take out an entire species, each species should be represented across several havens, in reasonable population sizes.

The report didn’t specify how the havens network should be expanded. But 2019 research found to get each species needing protection into at least three havens, Australia requires at least 35 new, strategically located islands or mainland fenced areas.

What about the rest of the country?

Havens cover less than 1% of Australia. So what we do in the other 99% of the landscape — including across conservation reserves like national parks — is vital.

Yet the parliamentary inquiry report lacks clear recommendations to expand cat control more broadly, including at important conservation sites such as in Kakadu National Park.

The report reaffirms the need to cull feral cats, and to set new targets for culling, without specifying what those targets are. We agree some culling is important, especially at sites with very vulnerable threatened wildlife.

But in many parts of Australia, broad-scale habitat management is a more cost-effective way to reduce cat harm. This involves making habitat less suitable for cats and more suitable for native wildlife, for example, by reducing rabbit numbers, fire frequency and grazing by feral herbivores such as cattle and horses.

Research has shown fewer rabbits leads to fewer cats. Rabbits are a favoured prey of many cats, so they boost feral cat numbers, which then also hunt native wildlife.

Read more: One cat, one year, 110 native animals: lock up your pet, it’s a killing machine

And cats gravitate to areas with less vegetation because it’s easier to catch prey. These areas include those with frequent fires, or where feral herbivores have reduced vegetation through grazing and trampling.

Better habitat with more vegetation gives native animals places to hide from predators, and more food and shelter. It’s a bit like giving the last little pig a house of bricks instead of trying to fist-fight the wolf.

A major step forward

Over the past two decades, Australia has slowly woken up to the damage cats cause to nature. This has led to more research, management and policy to address the problem.

Some state governments, environment groups and scientists have worked hard to develop feral cat control options, and the 2015 Australian Threatened Species Strategy did much to focus national attention and resourcing to the issue.

Read more: Don’t let them out: 15 ways to keep your indoor cat happy

The parliamentary inquiry is a major step forward, and many recommendations are sound. But overall, its recommendations call for incremental improvement.

Australia’s laws clearly fail to provide a safety net for wildlife. The cat issue is part of a larger problem with how we manage habitat, biodiversity and threats to nature – and fixing that requires wholesale change.

– ref. Australia must control its killer cat problem. A major new report explains how, but doesn’t go far enough – https://theconversation.com/australia-must-control-its-killer-cat-problem-a-major-new-report-explains-how-but-doesnt-go-far-enough-154931

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lucinda McKnight, Senior Lecturer in Pedagogy and Curriculum, Deakin University

Students across Australia have started the new school year using pencils, pens and keyboards to learn to write.

In workplaces, machines are also learning to write, so effectively that within a few years they may write better than humans.

Sometimes they already do, as apps like Grammarly demonstrate. Certainly, much everyday writing humans now do may soon be done by machines with artificial intelligence (AI).

The predictive text commonly used by phone and email software is a form of AI writing that countless humans use every day.

According to an industry research organisation Gartner, AI and related technology will automate production of 30% of all content found on the internet by 2022.

Some prose, poetry, reports, newsletters, opinion articles, reviews, slogans and scripts are already being written by artificial intelligence.

Literacy increasingly means and includes interacting with and critically evaluating AI.

This means our children should no longer be taught just formulaic writing. Instead, writing education should encompass skills that go beyond the capacities of artificial intelligence.

Back to basics, or further away from them?

After 2019 PISA results (Programme for International Student Assessment) showed Australian students sliding backwards in numeracy and literacy, then Education Minister Dan Tehan called for schools to go back to basics. But computers already have the basics mastered.

Three major reports — from the NSW Teachers’ Federation,the NSW Education Standards Authority and the NSW, QLD, Victorian and ACT governments — have criticised school writing for having become formulaic, to serve NAPLAN (the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy).

Read more: Too many adjectives, not enough ideas: how NAPLAN forces us to teach bad writing

In some schools, students write essays with sentences fulfilling specified functions, in specified orders, in specified numbers and arrangements of paragraphs. These can then be marked by computers to demonstrate progress.

This template writing is exactly the kind of standardised practice robot writers can do.

Are you scared yet, human?

In 2019, the New Yorker magazine did an experiment to see if IT company OpenAI’s natural language generator GPT-2 could write an entire article in the magazine’s distinctive style. This attempt had limited success, with the generator making many errors.

But by 2020, GPT-3, the new version of the machine, trained on even more data, wrote an article for The Guardian newspaper with the headline “A robot wrote this entire article. Are you scared yet, human?”

This latest much improved generator has implications for the future of journalism, as the Elon Musk-funded OpenAI invests ever more in research and development.

Robots have voice but no soul

Back at school, teachers experience pressure to teach writing for student success in narrowly defined writing tests.

But instead, the prospect of human obsolescence or “technological unemployment” needs to drive urgent curriculum developments based on what humans are learning AI cannot do — especially in relation to creativity and compassion.

AI writing is said to have voice but no soul. Human writers, as the New Yorker’s John Seabrook says, give “colour, personality and emotion to writing by bending the rules”. Students, therefore, need to learn the rules and be encouraged to break them.

Read more: ‘I’m in another world’: writing without rules lets kids find their voice, just like professional authors

Creativity and co-creativity (with machines) should be fostered. Machines are trained on a finite amount of data, to predict and replicate, not to innovate in meaningful and deliberate ways.

Purposeful writing

AI cannot yet plan and does not have a purpose. Students need to hone skills in purposeful writing that achieves their communication goals.

Unfortunately, the NAPLAN regime has hampered teaching writing as a process that involves planning and editing. This is because it favours time-limited exam-style writing for no audience.

Students need to practise writing in which they are invested, that they care about and that they hope will effect change in the world as well as in their genuine, known readers. This is what machines cannot do.

AI is not yet as complex as the human brain. Humans detect humour and satire. They know words can have multiple and subtle meanings. Humans are capable of perception and insight; they can make advanced evaluative judgements about good and bad writing.

There are calls for humans to become expert in sophisticated forms of writing and in editing writing created by robots as vital future skills.

Robots have no morality

Nor does AI have a moral compass. It does not care. OpenAI’s managers originally refused to release GPT-3, ostensibly because they were concerned about the generator being used to create fake material, such as reviews of products or election-related commentary.

AI writing bots have no conscience and may need to be eliminated by humans, as with Microsoft’s racist Twitter prototype, Tay.

Critical, compassionate and nuanced assessment of what AI produces, management and monitoring of content, and decision-making and empathy with readers are all part of the “writing” roles of a democratic future.

Skills for the future

As early as 2011, the Institute for the Future identified social intelligence (“the ability to connect to others in a deep and direct way”), novel and adaptive thinking, cross-cultural competency, transdisciplinarity, virtual collaboration and a design mindset as essential skills for the future workforce.

In 2017, a report by The Foundation for Young Australians found complex problem-solving skills, judgement, creativity and social intelligence would be vital for students’ futures.

Read more: What my students taught me about reading: old books hold new insights for the digital generation

This is in stark contrast to parroting irrelevant grammar terms such as “subordinate clauses” and “nominalisations”, being able to spell “quixotic” and “acaulescent” (words my daughter learnt by rote in primary school recently) or writing to a formula.

Teaching and assessment of writing need to catch up to the real world.

– ref. To succeed in an AI world, students must learn the human traits of writing – https://theconversation.com/to-succeed-in-an-ai-world-students-must-learn-the-human-traits-of-writing-152321

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Rademaker, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Research Centre for Deep History, Australian National University

The Australian film High Ground, set mostly at a mission in Arnhem Land in the 1930s, blends stories (and languages) from Indigenous Nations across the region.

It is a fictionalised story, inspired, says director Stephen Maxwell Johnson, by “true history”. At times, the film resembles a shoot-em-up Western. But it gets a lot right.

High Ground was written by Chris Anastassiades and co-produced by Witiyana Marika, (a founding member of Yothu Yindi), who appears in a supporting role as Grandfather Dharrpa and was the film’s senior cultural advisor. It tells of a police massacre of Aboriginal people and the repercussions that follow.

Massacres at the hands of police and settlers were tragically common through northern Australia. The opening scene, depicting a massacre beside a waterhole in 1919, echoes the 1911 Gan Gan Massacre in which mounted police killed more than 30 Yolngu people in a “punishment expedition”.

The mission

In the film, a young boy, Gutjuk, who survives the massacre of his family, is taken to a mission. The Roper River Mission (now Ngukurr), established in 1908 and run by the Church Missionary Society, really did take in Aboriginal children who had either lost kin, or been forcibly removed from their families.

By the 1920s, there were so many children at Roper River that the society established a new mission just for them on Groote Eylandt. Another mission opened at Oenpelli (now Gunbalanya) in 1925, the subject of our recent book.

Parts of High Ground were shot in the vicinity of Oenpelli, which likely inspired the mission in the film.

The real station

Before it was a mission, Oenpelli was a cattle station and buffalo shooters’ camp run by a man named Paddy Cahill. In the film, a young woman, Gulwirri, who fights to defend her people, has worked as a “house girl” on a station and speaks of the violence she experienced.

Cahill had a reputation for brutality. He wrote of chaining Aboriginal people by the neck. The community remembers how he used to shoot people’s dogs, and his son was known to give workers a “hiding”. There are rumours, too, that Paddy was involved in a massacre.

Provoked by his behaviour, traditional owners instigated a plot to take out Cahill and his household. In 1917, strychnine was mixed into the family’s butter, killing their dog, and making Paddy’s wife Maria and two Aboriginal housemaids, Marealmark and Topsy seriously ill. Punishment for those Cahill suspected to be responsible was swift and violent.

In High Ground, the police officers’ earlier experience as soldiers fuels their bloody tactics. After Cahill left Oenpelli in 1922, caretaker Don Campbell managed the station until missionaries arrived. Campbell, too, was a returned serviceman, described as violent. Incoming missionary, Rev Alf Dyer wrote:

There are plenty [of Aboriginal people] about. Mr. Campbell said he had about 300 last Christmas. His policy has been to hunt them, because of the cattle killing; as you read between the lines you will see plenty of problems for the Superintendent of Oenpelli — we will have an uphill fight.

The real missionaries

In High Ground, the mission is run by a young brother and sister team. The latter, Claire, speaks the local language.

The original missionaries at Oenpelli were an older, socially awkward couple with prior experience: Alf and Mary Dyer.

Some have questioned whether a missionary woman would have learned language in the 1930s. But the character of Claire resembles the real figure of Nell Harris, who arrived at Oenpelli in 1933, aged 29.

Read more: Friday essay: dreaming of a ‘white Christmas’ on the Aboriginal missions

Thanks to her Aboriginal teachers, Harris quickly began learning Kunwinkju and, together with local women Hannah Mangiru and Rachel Maralngurra, translated the Gospel of Mark.

The real Gutjuk

In the film, Gutjuk (played as an adult by Jacob Junior Nayinggul), grows up at the mission. He uses this affiliation to work for the interests of his kin in defending themselves against the police, who come looking for his uncle, Baywara, a warrior and survivor of the 1919 massacre.

This reminds us of a real historical figure, Narlim. Narlim was eldest son of senior traditional owner of the land at Oenpelli — Nipper Marakarra. Narlim was born in 1909, making him around the same age as the fictional Gutjuk.

Narlim grew up at the mission because, after working for Cahill, Nipper saw strategic value in an alliance with missionaries. He also wanted his children to learn to read and speak English. This alliance was a way to ensure continued life on Country and to maintain sovereignty as traditional owners.

But, as in the film, missionary cooperation with police was disastrous for Narlim. When a policeman visited in the late 1930s, he found Narlim had an infectious disease. The policeman handcuffed Narlim, intending to chain him with a group of others to be sent to Darwin.

The missionaries said the chains were unnecessary as Narlim “would behave”, but they did not save him. Narlim was exiled from the mission and his country under police escort, baby daughter on one shoulder and spears on the other, never to return.

His daughter, Peggy eventually came home and became a strong community leader.

The real ‘punishment’ and ‘peace’ expeditions

In 1932, Yolngu warriors killed a party of Japanese pearlers trespassing on their country. Constable Albert McColl was sent in; he too was speared. So police proposed a “punishment expedition”, not unlike those depicted in High Ground.

Read more: How Dr G.Yunupiŋu took Yolŋu culture to the world

After a humanitarian outcry, the society proposed a “peace expedition” instead. The expedition went unarmed to the Yolngu warriors. Unlike events depicted in the film, three were convinced to come to Darwin for trial. The men were found guilty but eventually released. Yet one, Dhakiyarr, disappeared after his release. The open secret in Darwin was that Dhakiyarr was drowned in the harbour in an extra-judicial police killing.

The film gets right the ambiguous missionary relationship to violence. Missions were meant to be a refuge from inter-tribal and settler violence. Missionaries understood their humanitarian and evangelistic work as seeking to atone for the bloodshed of colonisation.

But they also relied upon and enabled the ongoing violence of settler authorities. As “Aboriginal Protectors” missionaries functioned as local sheriffs and carried guns. Missionaries would send Aboriginal people for trial in Darwin, or else implement their own punishments.

As portrayed in the film, missionaries joined expeditions to capture supposed lawbreakers. Alf Dyer, for instance, led the so-called “peace expedition” to convince Yolngu men to face trial in white courts.

The historical record

High Ground also shows how self-conscious white authorities were creating a historical record.

The chief of police, played by Jack Thompson, seems to be always directing a photographer to take portraits. These images were good for fund raising, for impressing officials. They do not reflect the full story of the community. But they do give us a glimpse of the complex relationships in Arnhem Land in the 1930s.

High Ground, of course, is a highly dramatised piece of art. But, as the filmmakers have said, it’s closer to uncomfortable historical truths than we might expect. By showcasing such stories, the film will hopefully encourage broader reflection on Australia’s violent history, and its enduring legacies.

– ref. How historically accurate is the film High Ground? The violence it depicts is uncomfortably close to the truth – https://theconversation.com/how-historically-accurate-is-the-film-high-ground-the-violence-it-depicts-is-uncomfortably-close-to-the-truth-154475

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

Anthony Albanese will risk a backlash from employers when he releases an industrial relations policy promising a Labor government would substantially increase the legal rights and protections for Australians in insecure work.

Wednesday’s policy unveiling will ensure industrial relations is a major political battleground in coming months, with the opposition already declaring it will vote against the government’s workplace legislation now before parliament.

In his speech, issued ahead of its delivery in Brisbane, Albanese pledges Labor would legislate to make “job security” a key objective of the Fair Work Act, and to give “gig” economy workers more protection and benefits, in pay and conditions.

The policy promises “a crack down on cowboy labour hire firms”, to guarantee workers placed through them received the same pay as directly-employed workers performing the same job.

While Labor anticipates aspects of the policy will be unpopular with employers, it argues the IR settings are skewed unfairly against workers in insecure jobs.

Albanese accuses the government of using the pandemic “as a cover to cut pay and make work even less secure”.

Labor would scrap the Australian Building and Construction Commission – the so-called cop-on-the-beat in the construction industry which has been a political football for years.

It would also do away with the Registered Organisations Commission, which Albanese describes as discredited and politicised.

Albanese says that changing the Fair Work Act would require the Fair Work Commission “to bring a sharp focus to jobs security when making decisions”.

Also, Labor would “legislate to ensure more Australian workers have access to employee protections and entitlements currently denied to them by the narrow, outdated definition of an ‘employee’”.

The powers of the Fair Work Commission would be extended “to include employee-like forms of work”, so it could make orders for minimum standards for those in the gig economy.

“Labor will ensure that the independent umpire has the capacity to inquire into all forms of work and determine what rights and obligations should apply.”

Albanese promises a national approach on the portability of entitlements. A Labor government would work with states and territories, unions and industry “to develop portable entitlements for annual leave, sick leave and long service leave” for those in insecure work.

It would legislate for a “fair test” to determine the definition of a casual worker.

A limit would be put on the number of consecutive fixed term contracts an employer could offer for the same role.

While acknowledging a valid place for such contracts, Albanese says “what’s not right is when employees are put on an endless treadmill of fixed-term contracts by employers who want to avoid giving them permanent status”.

The limits for the same role would be 24 months or no more than two consecutive contracts, whichever came first.

“Once that limit is reached, the employer will be required to offer a permanent position – either part time or full time.”

Labor would “call time” on the “relentless outsourcing” in the public service. And more secure employment would be provided in the public service “where temporary forms of work are being used inappropriately”.

Government procurement policy would be used to uphold Labor’s work values “by supporting bids from companies and organisations that are themselves providers of good, secure jobs”.

Albanese says there has been a “creeping expansion of insecure work. Indeed, fewer Australians can access the basic entitlements and protections earlier generations took for granted.

“Nearly a third of Australian workers are in arrangements with unpredictable, fluctuating pay and hours. They endure few or no protections such as sick and holiday leave, or superannuation benefits.”

The opposition leader invokes the spirit of the Hawke and Keating governments’ approach to industrial relations.

“The best governments in our history have understood the need for a compact between capital and labour to advance their mutual interests.

“The Labor governments of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating are a prime example. Collaboration between workers, employers and the government of the day delivered genuine enterprise bargaining and the conditions that created 30 years of continuous economic growth.”

Albanese says a government he led would “always respect the central importance of successful businesses as job creators”.

He accuses Scott Morrison of being “all smirk and mirrors” on industrial relations, saying the Prime Minister wanted to scrap the Better Off Overall Test while hoping “people won’t notice it’s a plan to leave workers worse off”.

The government’s legislation contains “the worst workplace changes” since John Howard’s WorkChoices, Albanese says.

– ref. Anthony Albanese’s plan to boost protections for Australians in insecure work – https://theconversation.com/anthony-albaneses-plan-to-boost-protections-for-australians-in-insecure-work-154953

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charles Livingstone, Associate Professor, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University

After months of hearings, characterised by spectacular admissions including threats of violence, the report of the Bergin Inquiry into the probity of Crown Sydney Gaming, a subsidiary of Crown Resorts Limited, has been tabled in the NSW parliament.

Crown Resorts runs the Crown casinos in Melbourne and Perth.

The Inquiry found that Crown Sydney Gaming was “not a suitable person” to operate the Sydney casino.

It also found the parent, Crown Resorts Limited, was “not suitable to be a close associate of the licensee”.

The serious corporate failures relate to

• Crown’s operations in China and the arrests of the employees in October 2016 with “numerous failures to escalate indicators of real risks to the staff”

• the infiltration and exploitation of Crown’s Melbourne and Perth operations by “criminal elements, probably including international criminal organisations”

• the probability of money laundering in the accounts of two Crown subsidiaries “and in the casino premises with hundreds of thousands of dollars brought into the casino in cooler bags and shopping bags and exchanged for chips and plaques”

• Crown’s failures to ensure it only had commercial associations with Junket operators of good repute

Other matters relate to “the structures in place that have contributed to the corporate failures” including:

• the existence and operation of a Controlling Shareholder Protocol

• Crown’s relationship with James Packer and his company Consolidated Press Holdings

• Crown’s risk management structures and their resourcing.

The report says it is clear each director understood as at 2019 that Crown had given an undertaking to the NSW Government and the Authority that it would not allow the late organised crime figure Stanley Ho to acquire a direct, indirect or beneficial interest in Crown.

Undertakings not honoured

Yet it found the late Mr Ho’s associated entity had an interest in Melco Resorts & Entertainment to whom Packer agreed to sell his company’s Crown shareholding and “thereby obtained an indirect interest in Crown”.

Speaking ahead of the tabling of the report, NSW Treasurer Victor Dominello said that at the heart of the inquiry was concern over organised crime, money laundering, and gambling.

Commissioner Bergin also recommended that a new Independent Casino Commission with the powers of a standing Royal Commission be given sole authority over licensing and disciplinary issues.

Tabling the report in parliament, and invoking parliamentary privilege, is reportedly intended to circumvent the possibility of defamation action by directors and executives of Crown arising from the report.

No confidence in directors

Commissioner Bergin concluded the Independent Liquor & Gaming Authority

would be justified in concluding that it cannot have any confidence in dealing with Mr Barton as a director of the Licensee or Crown

Ken Barton is the chief executive of Crown Resorts Limited.

Another director, Michael Johnston,

should not have been involved in any managerial role with Crown nor on any board Committees particularly relating to corporate governance or risk management

He should “conclude his tour of duty as soon as possible”.

In regards to another director, former AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou, the report found

The Authority would be justified in lacking confidence in placing reliance upon Mr Demetriou in the future

It concluded that

in the circumstances of the findings against Mr Barton, Mr Johnston and Mr Demetriou, the Authority would be justified in entertaining very serious doubts that Crown could be converted into a suitable person under the Casino Control Act whilst they remain as directors

Another director, Harold Mitchell, should

further reflect on the need to refresh the Crown board and take steps to expedite that process

Remote management by Packer

The report describes a confused culture within Crown, with some directors and executives more loyal to Mr Packer, who is no longer a director, than the company itself.

The stewardship of long-time Packer associate John Alexander, chairman and chief executive between February 2017 and January 2020, led “to disastrous consequences”.

This included processes that exposed its directors to conflicts of interest and remote management by Mr Packer and a failure to protect Crown’s casino licensees from the infiltration of criminal elements through, at the very least, its lack of robust junket approval processes and a lack of proper oversight and monitoring of risks to money laundering in its subsidiaries’ bank accounts.

Bergin suggests the NSW Casino Control Act be amended to prevent any person from holding more than 10% of any licensee or holding company.

The Independent Liquor & Gaming Authority will consider the report and determine its own path forward.

It’s hard to see how Crown, as currently structured, can open the Sydney casino in the near future.

Read more: If Crown is unfit to hold a Sydney casino licence, what about Melbourne, and Perth?

Although the Sydney Barangaroo building is complete, gambling facilities have not been permitted to open.

The report raises obvious questions for the Victorian and Western Australian regulators.

To date there has been little to suggest that Victoria’s Commission for Gambling and Liquor Regulation has the wherewithal to take on Crown.

That has to change. As Greens spokesperson on gambling Senator Rachel Siewert said on reading the report, “we need to know what’s going on in Perth and Melbourne”.

– ref. ‘Not suitable’: where to now for James Packer and Crown’s other casinos? – https://theconversation.com/not-suitable-where-to-now-for-james-packer-and-crowns-other-casinos-154938

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elena Collinson, Senior Project and Research Officer, Australia-China Relations Institute, University of Technology Sydney

Australia-China relations, which have been spiralling downward for some time, continue to sink. The latest blow comes in the form of the formal arrest of Australian journalist and former business anchor for Chinese state media outlet China Global Television Network (CGTN), Cheng Lei.

Cheng was first detained by Chinese state authorities on August 13 last year.

Chinese officials have offered scant explanation for her arrest, with the Australian government simply stating it had been advised Cheng had been arrested “on suspicion of illegally supplying state secrets overseas”.

Foreign Minister Marise Payne told ABC radio that Australia was currently “not privy to [the] evidence” supporting Beijing’s move. She said Australia was “seeking further advice in relation to the charges”.

The arrest is itself not tantamount to a formal charge, but is indicative of Beijing’s intent to plough ahead with a full-scale criminal investigation into the matter. Should a formal charge be laid, the prospect of acquittal is slim.

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

A challenge mounted through China’s courts would also likely yield an unhappy outcome. While China’s courts, on paper, are bound to “follow legal provisions to independently exercise the power of adjudication”, the very nature of China’s domestic system means there is no institutional guarantee for this.

This was made explicit in 2017, when China’s Chief Justice Zhou Qiang said:

[China’s courts] must firmly resist the western idea of ‘constitutional democracy’, ‘separation of powers’ and ‘judicial independence’. These are erroneous western notions that threaten the leadership of the ruling Communist Party and defame the Chinese socialist path on the rule of law.

As Colin Hawes, associate professor of law at University of Technology Sydney points out:

In criminal cases, despite recent reforms to protect accused defendants, the system is heavily weighted in favour of the prosecution.

It would be difficult to argue that the detention and formal arrest of Cheng Lei is divorced from the tensions that have crept into nearly every aspect of the Australia-China relationship.

Asked in August last year whether he thought “Cheng Lei is a pawn in a worsening relationship between China and Australia”, then-Trade Minister Simon Birmingham replied it would not be particularly helpful “to try and draw that link”.

However, the timing of Cheng’s arrest and the seeming parallels of her case with those of fellow Australian citizen Yang Hengjun and Canadian citizens Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, seem to point to an alarming trend of Beijing using individuals to communicate political dissatisfaction.

Read more: Australia has a great chance to engage in trade diplomacy with China, and it must take it

Even allowing for circumstances in which there may be substantive merit to the case brought against Cheng, it is evident Beijing has secured another card in its political game with Australia.

It would not be beyond the realm of possibility that Beijing would seize on this particular matter to exert pressure on Australia with respect to decisions that are contrary to Chinese state interests. For example, it could be used to try to force concessions, or simply dissuade Australia from future unfavourable actions.

While the Australian government has pledged to continue to advocate for Cheng – and rightly so – there are limits to what it can do. But continuing, at the very least, to press strongly for basic standards of justice, procedural fairness and humane treatment to be met in accordance with international norms is paramount.

Read more: Australian government must act urgently on detention of journalist Cheng Lei in China

– ref. Australia must continue to press for humane treatment of journalist Cheng Lei after her arrest in China – https://theconversation.com/australia-must-continue-to-press-for-humane-treatment-of-journalist-cheng-lei-after-her-arrest-in-china-154937