Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fernando Gordillo-Altamirano, Medical Doctor, PhD Student, School of Biological Sciences, Monash University

Researchers have not discovered any new antibiotics in decades. But our new research, published today in Nature Microbiology, has found a way to give a second wind to the antibiotics we do have.

It involves the use of viruses that kill bacteria.

The problem

Hospitals are scary, and the longer you remain in them, the greater your risk. Among these risks, hospital-acquired infections are probably the biggest. Each year in Australia, 180,000 patients suffer infections that prolong their hospital stays, increase costs, and sadly, increase the risk of death.

It sounds absurd — hospitals are supposed to be the cleanest of places. But bacteria are everywhere and can adapt to the harshest of environments. In hospitals, our increased use of disinfectants and antibiotics has forced these bacteria to evolve to survive. These survivors are called “superbugs”, with an arsenal of tools to resist antibiotics. Superbugs prey on the most vulnerable patients, such as those in intensive care units.

Acinetobacter baumannii is a superbug responsible for up to 20% of infections in intensive care units. It attaches to medical devices such as ventilator tubes and urinary and intravenous catheters. It causes devastating infections in the lungs, urinary tract, wounds and bloodstream.

Treatment is difficult because A. baumannii can produce enzymes that destroy entire families of antibiotics. Other antibiotics never make it past its outer layer, or capsule. This outer layer — thick, sticky, viscous and made of sugars — also protects the superbug from the body’s immune system. In some cases, not even the strongest — and most toxic — antibiotics can kill A. baumannii. As a result, the World Health Organisation named it a critical priority for the discovery of new treatments.

Read more: Rising antibiotic resistance in UTIs could cost Australia $1.6 billion a year by 2030. Here’s how to curb it

A (somewhat) new solution

It’s said that the enemy of your enemy is your friend. Do bacteria have enemies?

Bacteriophages (or phages, for short) are the natural predators of bacteria. Their name literally means “bacteria eater”. You can find phages wherever you can find bacteria.

Phages are viruses. But don’t let that scare you. Unlike famous viruses — such as HIV, smallpox or SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID — phages cannot harm humans. They only infect and kill bacteria. In fact, phages are quite picky. A single phage normally infects only one type of bacteria.

Since their discovery in the early 1900s, doctors thought of an obvious use for phages: treating bacterial infections. But this practice, known as phage therapy, was largely dismissed after the discovery of antibiotics in the 1940s.

Now, with the alarming rise of antibiotic-resistant superbugs, and a lack of new antibiotics, researchers are revisiting phage therapy. In Australia, for example, a team lead by Professor Jon Iredell at Sydney’s Westmead Hospital reported in February the safe use of phage therapy in 13 patients suffering from infections by another superbug, Staphylococcus aureus.

We began our study by “hunting” for phages against A. baumannii. From waste water samples sourced from all over Australia, we successfully isolated a range of phages capable of killing the superbug. That was the easy part.

Erasing antibiotic-resistance

When mixing our phages with A. baumannii in the laboratory, they were able to wipe out almost the entire bacterial population. But “almost” was not good enough. Within a few hours, the superbug showed how wickedly smart it is. It had found a way to become resistant to the phages and was happily growing in their presence.

We decided to take a closer look at these phage-resistant A. baumannii. Understanding how it outsmarted the phages might help us choose our next attack.

We discovered that phage-resistant A. baumannii was missing its outer layer. The genes responsible for producing the capsule had mutated. Under the microscope, the superbug looked naked, with no sign of its characteristic thick, sticky and viscous surface.

To kill their bacterial prey, phages first need to attach to it. They do this by recognising a receptor on the surface of the bacteria. Think of it as a lock-and-key mechanism. Each phage has a unique key, that will only open the specific lock displayed by certain bacteria.

Our phages needed A. baumannii‘s capsule for attachment. It was their prospective port of entry into the superbug. When attacked by our phages, A. baumannii escaped by letting go of its capsule. As expected, this helped us decide our next attack: antibiotics.

We tested the action of nine different antibiotics on the phage-resistant A. baumannii. Without the protective capsule, the superbug completely lost its resistance to three antibiotics, reducing the dosage needed to kill the superbug. Phages had pushed the superbug into a corner.

We established a way to revert antibiotic-resistance in one of the most dangerous superbugs.

Looking forward

Phage therapy has already been used in patients with life-threatening A. baumannii infections, with successful results. This study highlights the possibility of using phages to rescue antibiotics, and to use them in combination. After all, two is better than one.

– ref. Superbugs have an arsenal of defences — but we’ve found a new way around them – https://theconversation.com/superbugs-have-an-arsenal-of-defences-but-weve-found-a-new-way-around-them-150536

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eliza Middleton, Invertebrate and behavioural ecology laboratory manager, University of Sydney

Around Australia, the buzz-saw siren of cicadas heralds the beginning of summer. With 237 recorded species of cicada in Australia, almost no area of the country is untouched by their song. Up to 800 species in Australia are still to be scientifically recognised.

Cicadas, however, aren’t unique to Australia: the insects are found all over the world, though they’re most common in tropical regions.

As the world’s loudest insects, the ear-splitting call from the males is a love song to draw their mates near. But humans, too, have been drawn to singing cicadas, with the insects featuring in ancient poetry and literature of different cultures for thousands of years.

So, as we settle into summer, let’s explore the curious life-cycle of cicadas, and how people in ancient Greece and China, in particular, revered them.

The sound of summer

The life of a cicada begins as one of up to 400 eggs laid by a female in the bark of a tree. A nymph (juvenile) cicada hatches, falls to the ground and tunnels into the dirt to begin the majority of its life.

Cicada nymphs will live in the soil for between one and five years, though different species may remain underground in the nymph stage for longer. In the US, for example, one species can live underground for up to 17 years before emerging.

When ready to become adults, nymphs must leave the soil to moult. A split opens along the back of the nymph’s exoskeleton and the adult cicada pushes its way out.

These cicada shells — the ghost of its youth — are often the only evidence we can find of the insect. As an adult, a cicada will eat, sing, mate and die, all in a few weeks.

Each species has its own unique call, and the noise can be truly deafening. For perspective, normal conversation between humans is recorded at about 60 decibels. But some cicada species, such as the Greengrocer cicada (Cyclochila australasiae) found along the coast of southeast Australia, can reach 120 decibels.

This is like standing beside emergency sirens. It’s also on the edge of causing pain or injury to human ears, which generally occurs at 130 decibels.

The noise is created by a structure called the tymbal, which works a bit like a drum. The tymbal is a thin membrane stretched across a number of “ribs” creating large chambers. These membranes vibrate rapidly through muscle action, which makes a clicking sound that’s amplified by their hollow abdomen.

There are more than 3,200 cicada species scientifically described, and many more waiting to be discovered. They belong to the superfamily called the Cicadoidea, which is part of a larger animal group — the order Hemiptera, or the “true bugs”.

Insects in the Hemiptera order, such as aphids, leafhoppers and bed bugs, alongside cicadas, are known for having sucking and piercing mouthparts. This allows them to feed on sap by piercing the tree and drinking from the xylem (plant tissue that transports water and nutrients from roots to stems). This is how both the nymphs and adult cicadas feed — the former feeds off the roots while the latter feeds from the trunk.

Read more: Photos from the field: zooming in on Australia’s hidden world of exquisite mites, snails and beetles

Symbolism and stories

For the people of ancient Greece and China, cicadas were the focus of many beliefs that, despite the separation of East from West, were surprisingly similar. Both cultures admired them.

For the Greeks, the “tettix” was carefree and harmless. For the Chinese, the “tchen” was noble, yet also humble.

Both societies loved the insects’ incessant call. Greek literature describes their call as “sweet”, such that a friendly cicada, legend says, once replaced the missing note when a string broke on a musician’s lyre. Like they do for us today, the cicadas’ hum also heralded the summer, especially the midday heat.

The Chinese of the Tang dynasty (618 to 906 AD) were so enamoured with the insects’ song, cicadas were caught and sold in small cages as pets. The Greeks may also have kept cicadas, as revealed by epitaphs written after their death, although the captive insects would have quickly died from starvation.

The esteem with which the cicada was held is also reflected in their association with the arts in both cultures.

They were the popular subject of Chinese poetry and paintings. And another Greek story tells us that when the Muses, goddesses of the arts, were born, an ancient race of men sang non-stop until they died, after which they transformed into cicadas.

Cicada biology was also noted in these ancient times. In the 4th century BC, Aristotle determined correctly that only the male cicada sings and the cicada’s call was produced by the movement of abdominal membranes. Chinese observers also noted the female’s lack of sound in the 6th century AD.

The insects’ life cycle was of enormous significance to both peoples. The nymphs’ emergence from the earth provided a powerful symbol of Greek “autochthony”, the belief a community had always lived in a particular place as the original inhabitants. And the moulted skin of adult cicadas was a sign of immortality.

Read more: This ancient Chinese anatomical atlas changes what we know about acupuncture and medical history

What’s more, cicadas held similar ornamental values in both ancient China and Greece.

During China’s Han Dynasty (206 BC to 220 AD), jade cicadas were placed in the mouths of the dead. The stone had supposed preservative qualities, while the insect offered the hope of resurrection.

The Greek elite are said to have worn gold cicadas in their hair to signal their ties to Athens. Such ornamentation was also associated with Chinese nobility, in which golden cicadas adorned the hats of Han Dynasty court officials. Intriguingly, this practice was said to have been introduced by outsiders.

We cannot yet say whether such similar beliefs stem from early East-West contact. But the prominent cultural role of the “tchen” and “tettix” is certainly testimony to humanity’s enduring summer love affair with the curious caterwauling cicada.

Read more: Want to teach kids about nature? Insects can help

– ref. The cicada’s deafening shriek is the sound of summer, and humans have been drawn to it for thousands of years – https://theconversation.com/the-cicadas-deafening-shriek-is-the-sound-of-summer-and-humans-have-been-drawn-to-it-for-thousands-of-years-152225

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kenneth Yin, Lecturer in law, Edith Cowan University

Colourful mining magnate Clive Palmer’s political ambitions appear to be in tatters. But what of his multibillion-dollar legal ambitions?

On Sunday he announced his United Australia Party will not contest Western Australia’s state election in March – a logical decision given his party attracted just 0.6% of the vote in the November election in his home state of Queensland.

But he has not withdrawn his defamation case in the Federal Court of Australia against Western Australian premier Mark McGowan, over statements including comments about Palmer’s claim for up to A$30 billion in damages from the WA government over a stalled iron ore project.

The damages claim has to do with the WA government imposing conditions in 2012 on a proposal by Palmer’s company Minerology Pty Ltd to develop the Balmoral South Iron Ore mine in the Pilbara. Those conditions, Palmer’s lawyers have argued, meant Minerology was unable to develop the mine, and thus suffered financial loss due to then being unable to sell the project to Chinese interests.

In arbitration proceedings Palmer’s lawyers have won several points in their bid to have these conditions declared invalid. The WA government was sufficiently worried about its exposure to hastily pass, in August 2020, unprecedented “emergency legislation” to prevent Palmer pursuing damages.

Read more: The WA government legislated itself a win in its dispute with Clive Palmer — and put itself above the law

Palmer has since applied to Australia’s High Court to have the WA legislation declared invalid.

But whether the High Court action goes ahead is not the bottom-line question. Even if it does hear his case, and declares the WA legislation invalid, it’s still far from certain Minerology could then go on to win damages.

The ‘first tier’ hurdle: who would buy from him

The legal precedent governing Palmer’s claim for damages are contained in a 1994 High Court decision in Sellars v Adelaide Petroleum. This involved an appeal by Mark Sellars, a director of mining company Poseidon Ltd, and Poseidon itself, against a Federal Court decision that awarded damages to minerals exploration company Adelaide Petroleum due to losses suffered as a result of misleading statements by Poseidon and Sellars.

The High Court ruled against Sellars and Poseidon. The significant point in the decision was the principle the judges explained in making their ruling. A court must, with the advantage of hindsight, look at everything that took place and ask if it was more likely than not (in other words, if there was a 51% chance or more) that, even if wrongdoing occurred, it led to a lost commercial opportunity.

This is the “first tier” to be overcome to recover damages.

Applying the Sellars v Adelaide Petroleum principle to Palmer’s claim, the issue becomes whether, because of the WA governent’s conditions, Minerology more likely than not lost the opportunity to sell the mine to Chinese interests. More pointedly, was it more likely than not Chinese interests would have bought the mine from Palmer?

Sour dealings with Chinese partners

With the benefit of “hindsight”, any court would need to consider Palmer’s history with Chinese business partners.

One of those is his long and bitter legal feud with CITIC Pacific Mining, the powerful state-owned enterprise that operates the Sino Iron project, Australia’s largest magnetite iron ore mine, on Minerology-controlled tenements.

In 2014, Palmer accused CITIC of dudding him on royalty payments. CITIC, in turn, accused Palmer of siphoning off funds to pay for his election campaigns. (Palmer won the Queensland seat of Fairfax at the 2013 federal election, and two UAP candidates, Glenn Lazarus and Jacqui Lambie, won Senate seats.)

China’s leading business publication, Caixin, quoted an unnamed CITIC executive as saying Palmer’s attempt “to swindle money from us” would “have grave consequences for foreign investors and in particular Chinese investors”.

The dispute led to several cases in WA’s Supreme Court. A 2017 ruling awarded Minerology A$200 million in back payments, as well as ongoing royalties then worth about A$400 million a year. (CITIC’s appeal was rejected in 2019). But in 2020 the court threw out Minerology’s case for about A$300 million more from CITIC as an “abuse of process”.

But just as damaging to Palmer’s dealings with the Chinese were his statements on national television in August 2014, in which he said the Chinese government wanted to “take over our ports and get our resources for free”, and called Chinese officials “bastards” and “mongrels”.

So even if the High Court clears the way for Minerology to pursue its damages claim against the Western Australian government, there’s an argument to be made that Chinese interests would have been more likely than not to decline to do business with Palmer.

If so, Palmer would recover no damages.

The ‘second tier’ hurdle: quantifying the loss

There is also a second-tier hurdle to overcome if a court decides, for all the bad blood, that Chinese interests would have let bygones be bygones and be prepared to deal with Palmer.

In assessing the plaintiff’s actual loss, the court will need to consider every contingency that might affect that loss. It was held in Sellars v Adelaide Petroleum that to calculate the actual damage, what is called the “degree of possibilities” approach must be applied.

Read more: How Clive Palmer could challenge the act designed to stop him getting $30 billion

This approach means the court must look at the price of iron ore at the time the mine would have been ready for sale, what a potential buyer would be prepared to pay for the mine, and thus what loss has been incurred. This cannot be a precise exercise; the court just does its best.

But it’s the first hurdle that Palmer needs to get over first.

So even if he chances his arm in the High Court, and wins, he and his lawyers still have a legal mountain to climb. Establishing his actual entitlement to damages is likely to prove troublesome.

– ref. What Clive Palmer must now ask himself: would China’s ‘bastards’ buy a mine from him? – https://theconversation.com/what-clive-palmer-must-now-ask-himself-would-chinas-bastards-buy-a-mine-from-him-152966

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jodi McAlister, Lecturer in Writing, Literature and Culture, Deakin University

Bridgerton, Netflix’s lush adaptation of Julia Quinn’s historical romance series, has been viewed by 63 million households since its December 25 premiere, and is Netflix’s fifth biggest original series debut.

On the surface, this is unsurprising — Bridgerton is executive produced by Shonda Rhimes, the mastermind behind hit shows Scandal (2012-18) and Grey’s Anatomy (2005–).

But Bridgerton is also unusual. Its source material is a mass market romance series, a genre largely ignored for screen adaptation.

There are several likely reasons why TV has snubbed romance fiction.

Although a billion-dollar industry, romance fiction is regularly dismissed as trashy, formulaic, and poorly written by people ill-acquainted with the genre.

Additionally, romance series usually feature a different central couple each book. This constant change of the protagonists is difficult to map to a TV series format, and is a challenge Bridgerton will need to navigate in future seasons, as each of the eight Bridgerton siblings has their time in the sun as a romantic lead.

But the disregard of romance fiction is short-sighted. There is a clear market for romance adaptations.

Starz’ Outlander (2014–), based on Diana Gabaldon’s books, is entering its sixth season. Netflix has also produced Virgin River (2019–) and Sweet Magnolias (2020–), based on the series by Robyn Carr and Sherryl Woods, respectively. There is even the streaming service Passionflix dedicated specifically to romance adaptations.

But Bridgerton seems to represent a tipping point. It has provoked an enormous amount of commentary: on diversity in casting (romantic hero Simon is reimagined as a Black man, and many other roles are played by people of colour), its historical accuracy (to which it has a playful relation – a string version of Ariana Grande’s Thank U Next plays early in the first episode), its relationship to 18th and 19th century romances (Bridgerton is very much not Jane Austen), and its problematic depiction of consent (heroine Daphne significantly violates hero Simon’s consent in one sex scene).

There is clearly a considerable appetite for more material adapted from romance fiction. So what other romance series are ripe for adaptation? Here are my five top picks.

Read more: To the mattresses: a defence of romance fiction

The Brothers Sinister, Courtney Milan

Just as each of Quinn’s Bridgerton books follows a different sibling, each book in Milan’s series follows a different member of the Brothers Sinister (Robert, Oliver, Sebastian and honorary member Violet), a club of friends who are all left-handed.

Set in Victorian Britain, these books pair deeply emotional romance with serious social issues and a strong feminist agenda: one heroine is a suffragette, another a brilliant scientist struggling to find a way for her work to be recognised.

Psy-Changeling, Nalini Singh

This iconic paranormal romance series by New Zealand author Nalini Singh is set in a fantasy world with three races: the Psy, who have immense mental powers but have been conditioned to eliminate emotions; the Changelings, shapeshifters characterised by passionate emotionality; and humans, caught in the battle between the two.

Each book features a new romance within or between members of the three groups, as well as an overarching fantasy plot which spans the series.

Forbidden Hearts, Alisha Rai

Rai’s trilogy of contemporary romance novels features a broad soap operatic framing. Once upon a time, the Chandlers and the Oka-Kanes ran a supermarket chain together. In the aftermath of an accident, the Chandlers cut out the Oka-Kanes.

A generation later, dynastic animosity persists, making the protagonists of the first book Hate to Want You, Nicholas Chandler and Livvy Kane, a kind of modern-day Romeo and Juliet. As the series progresses, we not only see three individual couples fall in love, but the two families work to heal the deep rift between them.

Reluctant Royals, Alyssa Cole

Alyssa Cole is currently one of the biggest names in romance fiction.

The Reluctant Royals books are contemporary royal romances: in the first book, A Princess in Theory, heroine Naledi is astonished to find that what she thought was a Nigerian prince scam email was in fact from a real-life African prince to whom she is unknowingly betrothed. The series comprises three novels and two novellas – the novella Once Ghosted, Twice Shy, where royal secretary Likotsi reunites with the woman who broke her heart, is a particular highlight.

Cole’s Loyal League trilogy of historical thrillers set during the US Civil War, focusing on spies seeking to undermine the Confederacy, could also make a brilliant transition to the small screen.

Captive Prince, CS Pacat

Unlike the series listed above, where each book follows a different couple, this fantasy romance trilogy by Australian author CS Pacat follows one couple throughout.

Damen, the eponymous captive prince, has been usurped and sent as a slave to the prince of an enemy nation, the icy, dangerous Laurent. The two princes have every reason to hate each other, even when they form an uneasy alliance, but they’re drawn to each other just the same. Their relationship is complex and prickly, burning slowly across the course of the series, leading to an epic conclusion, both personally and politically.

– ref. What’s next after Bridgerton? 5 romance series ripe for TV adaptation – https://theconversation.com/whats-next-after-bridgerton-5-romance-series-ripe-for-tv-adaptation-152811

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Maguire-Rosier, Honorary Associate, Department of Theatre and Performance Studies, School of Literature, Art, and Media, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sydney

Review: The Last Season, directed and choreographed by Danielle Micich, Force Majeure at Sydney Festival

The only moment bodies touch in Force Majeure’s austere The Last Season comes like an urgent heartbeat. But an embrace between an adult and a child that ought to comfort appears to suffocate and smother, the larger body controlling the other like a puppet.

This sinister touch feels all the more despairing in the context of a pandemic that prohibits tactile exchange, as if touch between people — our last recourse to feeling safe and loved — has lost its goodness.

If touching harms, is there still hope?

The Last Season, directed and choreographed by Danielle Micich in collaboration with Force Majeure’s Youth Company of dancers aged 9 to 14, explores themes of evolution, productivism and care (or rather, a lack of care — or a “crisis of care”, as feminist philosopher Nancy Fraser would put it).

The title is a nod to Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, to which the work is set and responds. But The Last Season is also a metaphor for the ending of life.

The world before the fall

Micich crafts a world of curious creation and ultimate destruction. Sublime live music by Kelly Ryall colours this world, and words by Tom Wright bring it into being. Damien Cooper’s lighting oscillates between a longing for tenderness and a sense of cold, harsh obstacles.

Pear-shaped sacks hang from the ceiling over the stage. Gentle string music caresses the expansive space, revealed by a soft wash of light: a dreamy new dawn.

The sacks swing like church bells or gumnuts in the wind. Like calves being released from the womb in an amniotic sac, children fall one after the other onto the floor. They wriggle and writhe on the ground.

And so the story starts.

The young performers move nonstop. Repetitive, pulsing and laborious thrusts characterise their movement. In fawn hooded unisex clothing by Marg Horwell, the children shed layers as they mature.

An ethereal figure, exquisitely played by Pamela Rabe, materialises centre-stage before the budding tribe. She floats across the stage. Her movement is balletic, her posture regal.

She instructs her students like an old fashioned headmistress or a strict grandmother: “Good. Very good. I am pleased with your learning,” she says.

Dictating the children’s steps, she teaches her class (and the audience) about her purported purpose — to educate these children, she says, into “forces of good.”

The children’s industrial, mechanic movement initially reminds me of Australian Dance Theatre’s cyborgian Devolution, but quickly conjures North Korean parades of civilian power.

When Rabe exclaims with joy “It’s a labour of love!” I am reminded of the philosopher Eva Feder Kittay’s writings on “dependency work.” Kittay argues dependency is a feature of the human condition: we are all interdependent.

In a lapse of attention, the grandmother character exposes her ego, foreshadowing a rebellion — the children’s dependence on her is doomed to shift.

Comic relief comes in the form of an androgynous weary diva performed with warmth and flair by Paul Capsis.

Later, a white-haired wise woman, stunningly portrayed by Olwen Fouéré, strikes the stage like lightning, her beaming white clothing with a black belt evoking a sensei.

She smokes a cigarette in the stillness.

Questions left unanswered

Realising her doomed future, Rabe comes to understand the children are not just hers to direct — they can make their own choices. “I think they can make,” she whispers.

But isn’t creating and producing ultimately good? Why the concern?

Then, I wonder what this production is really asking: where humankind’s over-productivity is causing climate change, is making bad?

In an interview, the director Micich said: “I’m interested in what things we remember and hold onto as value.”

While I am watching, I find myself asking what is the value of being productive? Who benefits? The teacher cares for the children and raises them to be productive but — crucially — on her terms. So what does the teacher value? Mimetic cooperation? No answers are forthcoming.

Ultimately, the ideas The Last Season explores are overly abstracted, making the work hard to follow.

But the process of children making art together with adults, as James Thompson explains in his theory of an “aesthetics of care”, is a demonstration of the interdependence that lends performance its strengths.

I wasn’t moved by the characters in this piece, but these performers, particularly the youth company, constituted the hope I was searching for: when the cast took their bows, I was delighted (and relieved) to see the children smile.

– ref. Sydney Festival review: politics of care in Force Majeure’s The Last Season – https://theconversation.com/sydney-festival-review-politics-of-care-in-force-majeures-the-last-season-152007

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kathomi Gatwiri, Senior lecturer, Southern Cross University

Highly skilled Black African professionals report experiences of racial microaggressions at work are common and are expressed in a variety of ways. My recent study published in the British Journal of Social Work has found workplaces can be “battlegrounds for racism”.

Microaggressions are defined as:

…brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioural and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights […] put-downs, or a pattern of disrespect.

Racial microaggressions in the workplace generally take covert or subtle forms, and may be conceptualised as “everyday” or “passive” racism that serve to invalidate or inferiorise the expertise of Black people while positioning white expertise as the standard of “best practice”.

I interviewed 27 Black African professional, most of whom held senior roles working in medicine, academia, nursing, teaching, banking and finance, IT, engineering and social work.

The participants reported feeling the workplace was a site of constant surveillance and scrutiny, where they were often assumed to be “out of place”.

Ongoing professional scrutiny and questioning

When participants were asked to describe their professional experiences in the workplace, including how their expertise was perceived (or responded to), many reported feeling like they were always viewed through a deficit lens. This contributed to their professional expertise being constantly scrutinised and questioned.

Wanjiru*, a senior nurse, reflected:

When (I) report to work […] I will introduce myself… [and say] I am so-and-so and I am working in this ward this afternoon or this morning or this night. They (would) already know… that there is a registered nurse coming. But you still find them questioning, which I don’t see happening – with Caucasian nurses; but they will question me two or three times. And even to make sure that I am [a] registered nurse, they will check my badge to see if my initials read ‘registered nurse’, so I still feel like they do not believe me.

Mukisa, a medical doctor, said when he moved to a regional town, patients would ask not to be treated by him.

The issue was at work [was] patients were refusing to see me because I am Black […]. It was a long time just adjusting, so I had to prove myself to be that kind of a doctor I am […] it took about 12-18 months to really prove that I had the skill that was equivalent with my colleagues or better than my (white) colleagues, so it takes that long. I always say if you are an African, you need to do things ten times better than the locals.

Nkandu, a senior accountant, reflected:

When you are Black and you are a professional, you have to prove yourself. Any person has to prove themselves, even white people have to prove themselves at work, but I think the biggest difference is with Africans or a Black person like myself, you always have to keep proving yourself, and sometimes that is [not enough].

The patterns of racial microaggressions at work

John, a senior finance expert described how the subtleness of racial microaggressions contributes to the difficulty of “naming the problem.”

There are some subtle discriminatory behaviours (in the workplace). They are so subtle that sometimes you question your mind whether, ‘Am I really seeing these or not?’

Unlike explicit racism, which is obvious and can be easily named, racial microaggressions are benign, hidden and implicit, and therefore harder to “call out” or decipher.

Sally, a microbiologist, said:

Sometimes somebody says something (at work), you think, ‘Oh! Is this because I am African?’ and it just brings that extra pressure [to constantly prove yourself] even when people do not [mean it] negatively.

Vera, a senior social worker, spoke of being left out of workplace group activities, such as an instance when a card being signed for a colleague’s baby shower was passed to everybody except to her.

Microaggressions are also expressed when experienced and highly qualified people of colour are passed over for promotions or to backfill senior positions when an opportunity was present. Julie said:

[…] those opportunities are not very easily given to people of colour unfortunately. I can tell you this, many a time you find [white] people coming from other places to come, fill that position for a month, and go back while you were there, and you are thinking I could do this role.

So, it tends to make you feel not valued and you kind of resolve back to doing the bare minimum because you feel like you may not want to do more because there is no reason for you to do that.

Some reported having to contend with the assumption that Black people in senior positions are hired to fill a “diversity quota”, not due to their qualifications and expertise. Awinja recalled an instance where she and a colleague of colour were told by a Caucasian colleague:

You are very lucky to be be managers … in this organisation’ […] I said, ‘Are we lucky or are we skilled?’ Right now, it is much better than it was before. In the beginning, I think, they saw me as an African or a CALD (culturally and linguistically diverse) person who had just been given a job.

The assumption is that their employment is an undeserved favour and not one that has been earned through merit.

‘As soon as they hear you speak’

Microaggressions are also enacted on accents, whereby African accents are considered undesirable in the workplace. The inability to speak colloquial Australian English often disadvantages them because racial stereotypes can summoned through speech.

Banji, a senior academic, reported instances in which:

… you may be speaking in a meeting, and because your accent is African, you can tell that as soon as they hear you speak, … they are quizzical. Looking at some people’s faces, sometimes you just get a sense that they are not taking what you are saying as seriously.

Accent discrimination is a well-documented phenomenon that closes economic doors – especially for immigrants of colour, where English is not their first language.

The race-free workplace?

Findings from this study reveal the often-accepted narrative of “race-free” workplaces is not supported by many Black African immigrants who report constant, subtle, and covert patterns of racial microaggressions in the workplace.

In their paper Blackness as Burden? The Lived Experience of Black Africans in Australia, researchers Virginia Mapedzahama and Kwamena Kwansah-Aidoo wrote that, for Black people in Australia:

Their [Black] skin, which follows them everywhere, causes them to be seen and treated in negative ways that often causes them discomfort.

This study, which revealed many Black African professionals experience the workplace as a battleground for covert and overt racism, builds on a growing body of research suggesting race complicates the professional identities of Black professionals in Australia – in ways not experienced by their white colleagues.

*Names and identifying features in this article have been changed to protect anonymity.

– ref. Battlegrounds: highly skilled Black African professionals on racial microaggressions at work – https://theconversation.com/battlegrounds-highly-skilled-black-african-professionals-on-racial-microaggressions-at-work-149169

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kathomi Gatwiri, Senior lecturer, Southern Cross University

Highly skilled Black African professionals report experiences of racial microaggressions at work are common and are expressed in a variety of ways. My recent study published in the British Journal of Social Work has found workplaces can be “battlegrounds for racism”.

Microagressions are defined as:

…brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioural and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights […] put-downs, or a pattern of disrespect.

Racial microaggressions in the workplace generally take covert or subtle forms, and may be conceptualised as “everyday” or “passive” racism that serve to invalidate or inferiorise the expertise of Black people while positioning white expertise as the standard of “best practice”.

I interviewed 27 Black African professional, most of whom held senior roles working in medicine, academia, nursing, teaching, banking and finance, IT, engineering and social work.

The participants reported feeling the workplace was a site of constant surveillance and scrutiny, where they were often assumed to be “out of place”.

Ongoing professional scrutiny and questioning

When participants were asked to describe their professional experiences in the workplace, including how their expertise was perceived (or responded to), many reported feeling like they were always viewed through a deficit lens. This contributed to their professional expertise being constantly scrutinised and questioned.

Wanjiru*, a senior nurse, reflected:

When (I) report to work […] I will introduce myself… [and say] I am so-and-so and I am working in this ward this afternoon or this morning or this night. They (would) already know… that there is a registered nurse coming. But you still find them questioning, which I don’t see happening – with Caucasian nurses; but they will question me two or three times. And even to make sure that I am [a] registered nurse, they will check my badge to see if my initials read ‘registered nurse’, so I still feel like they do not believe me.

Mukisa, a medical doctor, said when he moved to a regional town, patients would ask not to be treated by him.

The issue was at work [was] patients were refusing to see me because I am Black […]. It was a long time just adjusting, so I had to prove myself to be that kind of a doctor I am […] it took about 12-18 months to really prove that I had the skill that was equivalent with my colleagues or better than my (white) colleagues, so it takes that long. I always say if you are an African, you need to do things ten times better than the locals.

Nkandu, a senior accountant, reflected:

When you are Black and you are a professional, you have to prove yourself. Any person has to prove themselves, even white people have to prove themselves at work, but I think the biggest difference is with Africans or a Black person like myself, you always have to keep proving yourself, and sometimes that is [not enough].

The patterns of racial microagressions at work

John, a senior finance expert described how the subtleness of racial microagressions contributes to the difficulty of “naming the problem.”

There are some subtle discriminatory behaviours (in the workplace). They are so subtle that sometimes you question your mind whether, ‘Am I really seeing these or not?’

Unlike explicit racism, which is obvious and can be easily named, racial microaggressions are benign, hidden and implicit, and therefore harder to “call out” or decipher.

Sally, a microbiologist, said:

Sometimes somebody says something (at work), you think, ‘Oh! Is this because I am African?’ and it just brings that extra pressure [to constantly prove yourself] even when people do not [mean it] negatively.

Vera, a senior social worker, spoke of being left out of workplace group activities, such as an instance when a card being signed for a colleague’s baby shower was passed to everybody except to her.

Microagressions are also expressed when experienced and highly qualified people of colour are passed over for promotions or to backfill senior positions when an opportunity was present. Julie said:

[…] those opportunities are not very easily given to people of colour unfortunately. I can tell you this, many a time you find [white] people coming from other places to come, fill that position for a month, and go back while you were there, and you are thinking I could do this role.

So, it tends to make you feel not valued and you kind of resolve back to doing the bare minimum because you feel like you may not want to do more because there is no reason for you to do that.

Some reported having to contend with the assumption that Black people in senior positions are hired to fill a “diversity quota”, not due to their qualifications and expertise. Awinja recalled an instance where she and a colleague of colour were told by a Caucasian colleague:

You are very lucky to be be managers … in this organisation’ […] I said, ‘Are we lucky or are we skilled?’ Right now, it is much better than it was before. In the beginning, I think, they saw me as an African or a CALD (culturally and linguistically diverse) person who had just been given a job.

The assumption is that their employment is an undeserved favour and not one that has been earned through merit.

‘As soon as they hear you speak’

Microaggressions are also enacted on accents, whereby African accents are considered undesirable in the workplace. The inability to speak colloquial Australian English often disadvantages them because racial stereotypes can summoned through speech.

Banji, a senior academic, reported instances in which:

… you may be speaking in a meeting, and because your accent is African, you can tell that as soon as they hear you speak, … they are quizzical. Looking at some people’s faces, sometimes you just get a sense that they are not taking what you are saying as seriously.

Accent discrimination is a well-documented phenomenon that closes economic doors – especially for immigrants of colour, where English is not their first language.

The race-free workplace?

Findings from this study reveal the often-accepted narrative of “race-free” workplaces is not supported by many Black African immigrants who report constant, subtle, and covert patterns of racial microaggressions in the workplace.

In their paper Blackness as Burden? The Lived Experience of Black Africans in Australia, researchers Virginia Mapedzahama and Kwamena Kwansah-Aidoo wrote that, for Black people in Australia:

Their [Black] skin, which follows them everywhere, causes them to be seen and treated in negative ways that often causes them discomfort.

This study, which revealed many Black African professionals experience the workplace as a battleground for covert and overt racism, builds on a growing body of research suggesting race complicates the professional identities of Black professionals in Australia – in ways not experienced by their white colleagues.

*Names and identifying features in this article have been changed to protect anonymity.

– ref. Battlegrounds: highly skilled Black African professionals on racial microagressions at work – https://theconversation.com/battlegrounds-highly-skilled-black-african-professionals-on-racial-microagressions-at-work-149169

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Villeneuve, Associate Professor, University of Sydney

People with disability are disproportionately affected by disasters, but have fewer choices when emergencies unfold. Our previous research showed how, for people with disability, natural hazard disasters can mean:

• loss of power for life-sustaining equipment

• transportation challenges meaning people have to evacuate without equipment they need

• nowhere to go because warning information and environments (such as the homes of friends or family, or evacuation facilities) are inaccessible.

Disaster planning for people with disability matters. We perpetuate inequality with every step we don’t take, and risk entrenching disadvantage. And if you make things inclusive for people with disability, you tend to make it inclusive for large swathes of groups also at risk in emergencies, including older people, socially disconnected people and others. Many birds, one stone.

Here are three things that must be done to expand opportunity, choice and control for people with disability when disaster strikes.

Read more: ‘Nobody checked on us’: what people with disability told us about their experiences of disasters and emergencies

1. Listen to and learn from people with disability

It is astonishing how little this happens.

But we will never properly understand, much less remove, barriers that put people with disability at heightened risk during disaster unless we centre on their experience and expertise.

Disabled People’s Organisations can play a significant role in disaster policy, planning and interventions by representing their members and allowing their voices to be heard. These organisations already have in-depth understanding of the factors that increase risk for people with disability in emergencies.

We worked with the Queenslanders with Disability Network representatives from their Peer Leaders program to co-design a disaster preparedness planning guide for people with disability. It’s called the Person-Centred Emergency Preparedness (P-CEP) Workbook.

The guide helps people plan for their own support needs and work with government and emergency managers. This approach is already yielding fruitful new partnerships.

For example, after meeting Queenslanders with Disability Network Peer Leader Peter Tully, an emergency manager at Ipswich Council told us:

We have a lot of work to do with the disaster management team of council to make the emergency relief centres accessible. We want to break down barriers to improve disability-inclusive disaster management.

In partnership with VALID (the Victorian Advocacy League For Individuals With Disability) and Gippsland Disability Advocacy Inc, we are now replicating the Person-Centred Emergency Preparedness Peer Leadership Program in Victoria.

2. Bring community, health and disability support workers to the table

For people who rely on them, community, health and disability support workers can be a crucial asset. In emergencies, they often increase safety and well-being for people with disability.

Through their routine interactions in the community, these service providers know who needs what kind of support. They know the accessible places and spaces. They know what services are available and how people with disability can access them during and after disaster.

Too often, however, community and disability organisations are not adequately prepared for disaster themselves, nor are they integrated into emergency planning.

Government and emergency services can tap into the expertise of local service providers by:

This will develop capability of providers in emergency preparedness, improve service continuity and increase options for people with disability when disasters strike.

3. Local councils need to take a bigger role

Councils have excellent links to community groups that are crucial to building resilience for people with disability before, during and after disaster.

This year, Mackay Regional Council partnered with our research team, including a Queenslanders with Disability Network Peer Leader. Together, we introduced the Person-Centred Emergency Preparedness toolkit to community, health and disability service providers.

Read more: Bushfire planning leaves behind people with disabilities

Through this project, we identified three ways councils can better collaborate with people with disability and supporting services:

• create opportunities to learn from groups who have traditionally been left out of emergency management and disaster recovery planning. That means holding workshops and meetings where the aim is to listen to people with disabilities and their support networks.

• apply for grants to fund inclusive emergency management efforts. Councils often have on staff people who are expert at applying for and getting grants. Use the money to host training, or print and distribute Person-Centred Emergency Preparedness Workbooks. Mackay Regional Council libraries hosted regular events for people to learn about Person-Centred Emergency Preparedness. Council officers were on hand to assist people to make their emergency plan

• lead by example and use relationships with community groups, sports, schools, churches, and businesses to help residents learn about Person-Centred Emergency Preparedness. The Person-Centred Emergency Preparedness resources can also help people who are ageing at home, have a mental health conditions, a chronic health concern, and/or other support needs.

By adopting the Person-Centred Emergency Preparedness process, Mackay councillors and staff have embraced an inclusive way to build resilience.

Community-level emergency planning is now focused on working together with people with disability and the services that support them. This approach can only help address gaps in preparedness that put people at greater risk in emergencies.

Better systems for disability-inclusive disaster planning not only ensures people get support matched to their needs. It has the added bonus of freeing up the emergency services to focus on responding to the hazard. This keeps the whole community safe.

It increases disaster resilience for everyone.

This article was co-authored by Helen Styles, Resilience and Recovery Officer, Emergency Management at Mackay Regional Council.

– ref. 3 things we can do now to help people with disability prepare for disaster – https://theconversation.com/3-things-we-can-do-now-to-help-people-with-disability-prepare-for-disaster-151843

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Hoffmann, Professor of Economics and Chair of Behavioural Business Lab, RMIT University

Incredibly, a whole year has passed since the first emergence of COVID-19. What looked like a temporary inconvenience at first is turning into a permanent fixture that might forever change life as we knew it before 2020.

But how long will people continue to comply with the measures necessary to overcome the virus as complacency and fatigue set in?

As new outbreaks have cropped up in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland in recent weeks, governments have responded with stringent new measures to prevent the spread of the virus, including border closures, mask mandates and temporary lockdowns.

In response, there has been some pushback. In Sydney, anti-mask protests are making a comeback, while hundreds partied on Bronte Beach in violation of distancing regulations. Others have absconded from quarantine hotels and airports.

Are these isolated cases, or signs of an increasingly exhausted public growing less tolerant of restrictions with the knowledge of vaccines on the way?

And could this kind of complacency could cost us the war against the virus?

The importance of psychology to winning the war

The absence of medical science would surely lose us the war against COVID-19. But psychology is no doubt equally important if we’re going to win it.

What ultimately stops a highly infectious disease is people’s compliance with the measures that governments put in place. This is why self-isolation, social distancing, curfews, good hygiene and face masks have become ingrained in our daily lives over the past year.

One might think these hard-learned behaviours will become habits that stick no matter how long the pandemic continues. But behavioural science warns us that dashed hopes, uncertainty, changing goalposts and broken credibility can play a major role in how long people strictly follow rules and maintain good habits.

A battle of willpower

The sacrifices that governments are continuing to ask people to make require self-control. Willpower has been likened to a mental muscle that can tire. There is some evidence that exercising self-control takes so much mental effort, it can eventually deplete people’s willpower.

Evidence also shows that as willpower wanes, people are more likely to make decisions that can pose risks to themselves and harm others.

Participants in one study, for instance, were asked to perform a tedious task. For some of these participants, the task was also designed to require more concentration. These participants later registered a higher willingness to take risks.

Read more: Beyond the police state to COVID-safe: life after lockdown will need a novel approach

In another study, a tedious and complex task made participants more likely to behave dishonestly. Depleted willpower undermined their ability to tell right from wrong.

These controversial results from experimental situations may not be directly applicable to today’s circumstances — they may not tell us anything about people’s long-term determination to fight the virus.

However, they do show us how important psychology is when assessing people’s abilities to comply with rules that go against their natural instincts and inclinations.

Shifting goalposts and false hope

Performing a task, like following complex COVID rules and regulations, also depends on clear and achievable objectives. Vague or shifting goalposts and a lack of feedback on people’s progress toward a specific goal tend to undermine people’s motivation.

Shifting goalposts and mixed messages have been a consistent feature of governmental responses to COVID-19 — not just in Australia, but everywhere.

This is partly related to our evolving understanding of the virus and the most effective ways to stem transmissions. For instance, there has been much debate about the effectiveness of face masks, which has sown acrimony and confusion.

Governments have also made plenty of mistakes, such as providing incorrect COVID exposure sites to the public or mistranslated or out-of-date information to migrant communities.

All of this has can affect compliance. From a psychological standpoint, consistency plays an important role when it comes to people’s trust in authority and their willingness to follow rules, particularly when it comes to the type of long-term response required in a pandemic.

What people are willing to sacrifice also depends on their expectations. This is why optimism can be such a powerful tool to help people get through hard times. But if optimistic messages from governments begin to sound like false hope, this can have the opposite effect. Dejection can cause many to abandon good habits.

Anyone who took courage from Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s goal of making Australia “whole again by Christmas”, for example, may feel disheartened now that borders are once more closed, just a week into the new year. This could, in turn, sap people’s motivations to continue to behave in the right way.

Balancing the message

As we enter a new year with no end in sight to the pandemic, many will surely wonder what the endgame is. Yes, vaccines will hopefully bring a return to normal life, but this may take considerable time. We may be living with COVID restrictions longer than we think.

What is clear is that government messaging continues to matter greatly. People need to be informed how we are travelling in the fight against the virus and how long the journey will take.

Read more: Australia’s vaccine rollout will now start next month. Here’s what we’ll need

But this kind of messaging must be done with extreme care. Governments face the unenviable task of communicating enough positivity to motivate people to continue the fight without eventually losing credibility when unexpected bad news or delays occur.

With many more months of lockdowns, mask mandates and quarantining in our futures, we all need to manage our expectations appropriately, too. We need to remember the long game is what matters.

– ref. Even with a vaccine, we need to adjust our mindset to playing the COVID-19 long game – https://theconversation.com/even-with-a-vaccine-we-need-to-adjust-our-mindset-to-playing-the-covid-19-long-game-152686

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Margaret Kristin Merga, Senior Lecturer in Education, Edith Cowan University

Academics are increasingly expected to share their research widely beyond academia. However, our recent study of academics in Australia and Japan suggests Australian universities are still very much focused on supporting the production of scholarly outputs. They offer relatively limited support for researchers’ efforts to engage with the many non-academics who can benefit from our research.

One reason engagement is expected is that government, industry and philanthropic sources fund research. And when academics share their research with the public, industry and policymakers, this engagement is good for the university’s reputation. It can also lead to other benefits such as research funding.

Read more: Who cares about university research? The answer depends on its impacts

But the work involved in sharing our ideas beyond academia can be diverse and substantial. For example, when we write for The Conversation, it takes time to find credible sources, adopt an appropriate tone, communicate often complex ideas simply and clearly, and respond to editor feedback. We also need to be able to speak to the media about our findings, and respond to public comments when the piece comes out.

Unis don’t allow for the time it takes

However, as one respondent said in explaining why they were not sharing research with end users beyond academia:

It’s not recognised by uni. So, when it is not recognised, it means that I don’t have any workload for that, and obviously I’m work-loaded for other stuff, and that means that I don’t actually have enough time to do this.

Sharing our findings beyond academia isn’t typically seen as part of our academic workload. This is problematic for academics who are already struggling to find time to do all the things their complex workload requires of them.

Read more: Why the KPIs on university engagement need more thought

In our research, time and workload constraints were the most often-cited barriers to sharing research beyond academia. One respondent said they saw lots of opportunities to build partnerships with practitioners in their field, but added:

[I] just cannot do that, because I’m doing other things that, in my work, are a priority.

When we spend our time sharing our research with academic readers through journal articles, conference papers and academic books, our employers clearly value and expect these scholarly publications. These works, and how the scholarly community receives them, have more weight in evaluation of our performance. Last year an Australian academic nearly lost her job for failing to meet a target for scholarly publications.

Read more: What are universities for? If mainly teaching, can they sack academics for not meeting research targets?

Our research found Japan-based academics feel a greater weight of expectations than their Australian counterparts to engage with diverse audiences beyond academia. Universities clearly expect this engagement. Yet they often don’t back it up with support such as workload recognition, resourcing and training.

Universities need to offer better support if they wish to increase academics’ engagement with diverse audiences. They should also consider both the benefits and risks of this engagement.

Academics see the benefits of sharing research

The academics we spoke with valued the benefits of engaging with diverse audiences. They were pleased to see others putting their research to use. Sharing research often helped to secure funding.

They also saw engagement as an opportunity to learn from end users. This helped ensure their research was responding to real-world needs.

Even very early in their careers, many researchers look to engage with audiences beyond academia. In previous research, we found doctoral candidates may opt for a thesis by publication rather than a traditional thesis approach due to their desire to share findings.

Read more: When measuring research, we must remember that ‘engagement’ and ‘impact’ are not the same thing

What other problems do researchers face?

The early-career researchers we interviewed noted other barriers and risks in sharing their work with diverse audiences. Universities often did not help with these issues.

They described communication skill gaps when seeking to tailor research content for diverse audiences. For example, the way research is communicated to industry experts needs to be different to how it is shared with governments or the general public.

Researchers may need to learn to communicate their ideas in many different forms. They may have to be skilled in producing industry reports, doing television or radio interviews or presenting their findings in professional forums.

Some encountered frustrations when sharing research via the bureaucratic processes of government. For example, a respondent explained:

There’s still that much back and forth because there’s three or four different government departments that are involved in the process and it goes to different people. Some people don’t want it to be changed because they’re vested in the old way of doing things, and then they’ve got to bring ministers up to speed, and then all of a sudden you’re got a new state government that comes in, so that all changes.

Many felt unprepared to deal with the media.

One respondent described being cautious about overstating the impact of their research. In their field, they saw messages claiming: “This is the be all and end all. This will cure cancer.” They were “wary of accidentally going down that path and making a claim bigger than is true”.

Respondents also described risks in sharing controversial and sensitive research beyond academia.

What can universities do?

For respondents in both Australia and Japan, demanding and diverse workloads crowded out opportunities to share findings. Universities cannot just expect engagement responsibilities to be absorbed into an already swollen workload.

Read more: After coronavirus, universities must collaborate with communities to support social transition

If universities are serious about supporting the sharing of research beyond academia, they need to recognise these contributions in meaningful ways. For example, Australian academics usually must meet teaching, research and service requirements in their workloads. If sharing research with audiences beyond academia were counted toward service, academics could have this work properly taken into account in performance management and when seeking promotion.

Universities can do better at supporting academics to share their research with the public, industry and government. Improving access to training and mentoring to communicate research findings both in academia and beyond would be an important step forward.

– ref. Unis want research shared widely. So why don’t they properly back academics to do it? – https://theconversation.com/unis-want-research-shared-widely-so-why-dont-they-properly-back-academics-to-do-it-151375

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Meg Elkins, Senior Lecturer with School of Economics, Finance and Marketing, RMIT University

For many of us, one of the upsides of 2020 was being freed from the grind of the daily commute.

For the 40% of the workforce able to “telecommute”, COVID-19 social distancing measures saved us an average of about an hour a day – and much more for those of us living in the outer suburbs of cities.

Studies show the morning commute is the least favourite part of the day, and the commute home the third-least favourite (working is the second-least favourite).

Congestion, crowding and unpredictability increase stress and dissatisfaction. The longer it takes, and the more we have to do in the company of others, the more we dislike it.

But it’s also possible to miss aspects of that enforced time between work and home. For all its downsides, the daily commute does have some positives, acting as both a starter button and circuit breaker to differentiate work from home life.

As life returns to “normal” and employers ask us to return to the workplace, thinking consciously about those benefits can help make the most of your commute.

A commuting constant

Though we think of commuting as a modern phenomenon, spending time getting to and from work is as old as humanity. Hunting and gathering (going back 200,000 years), farming (about 10,000 years), and living in cities (about 5,000 years) all involved leaving and returning home. These routines seem to have ingrained in us an idea of acceptable travel times.

In 1994 an Italian physicist, Cesare Marchetti, wrote a paper, Anthropological Invariants in Travel Behaviour, on the “quintessential unity of travelling instincts around the world, above culture, race and religion”.

Drawing on the work of Israeli transport analyst Yacov Zahavi, Marchetti proposed humans had always been willing to spend about an hour a day travelling from and to home.

This idea of commuting time being 30 minutes each way has become known as Marchetti’s Constant. In a 2001 paper, travel researchers Lothlorien Redmond and Patricia Mokhtarian found most people’s ideal commute time was, in fact, less – an average of 16 minutes – but their results also confirmed the dislike of any commute longer than 35 minutes.

Read more: Defying the ‘one-hour rule’ for city travel, traffic modelling drives policy madness

A psychological buffer

The longer the commute times, the more stressed and dissatisfied we feel.

Yet without time between home and work, there’s also a downside. As Marchetti wrote: “Even people in prison for a life sentence, having nothing to do and nowhere to go, walk around for one hour a day, in the open.”

Commuting can be a ritual that helps us psychologically separate home life and work – switching off from personal concerns in the morning, and then detaching from work worries in the evening. A huge body of research over the past four decades show this “psychological distance” is crucial to well-being.

Read more: Exhausted by 2020? Here are 5 ways to recover and feel more rested throughout 2021

Research also shows that switching from our home to work “identities” carries cognitive demands. A buffer between the two can help make this transition.

It is possible to achieve this psychological distancing without a commute, of course – by going for a morning walk and changing into work clothes – but the demands of both family and work responsibilities often mean we don’t make that time.

Making the most of your commute

So we shouldn’t necessarily spurn the return to the daily commute. Yes, there are downsides, but being conscious of the psychological benefits enables you to maximise its benefits.

Rather than thinking of it as dead time, think of it as “me” time.

In the morning, use your commute to plan your day. Research has found this increases satisfaction at work and makes longer commutes more palatable. Maintaining small routines on the way has also been found to help.

In the evening, use the time to unwind with pleasurable activities such as reading, playing mobile games, calling a friend or family member, listening to music or a podcast. These are activities you won’t necessarily have time for once you get home.

Read more: COVID has proved working from home is the best policy to beat congestion

Doing nothing is good too. Many of us have little time for idle thoughts. Here’s a chance to let your mind wander. Free thought time helps to solve problems and inspire creativity.

And, of course, switch to walking or cycling if you can. Along with the “alone” time it gives you, physical activity is strongly associated with higher overall happiness.

You can’t necessarily control the amount of time you spend commuting, but you can control what you get out of it.

– ref. The commuter’s paradox: there’s something to gain in the space between home and work – https://theconversation.com/the-commuters-paradox-theres-something-to-gain-in-the-space-between-home-and-work-152887

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Maund, Research Affiliate, School of Architecture and Built Environment, University of Newcastle

In cities around the world, temperatures could rise by more than 4℃ by 2100 under a high-emissions climate change scenario, suggests research published this week in Nature Climate Change.

It comes as the Bureau of Meteorology’s annual climate statement, released today, shows 2020 was Australia’s fourth-warmest year on record, despite being an “El Niña” year, which usually leads to cooler temperatures.

Cities occupy just 3% of Earth’s surface. As this portion of land is so small, they’ve typically been left out of most climate models, which generally make projections on global scales.

Yet more than half the world’s population live in urban environments (set to jump to 70% by 2050). This is why the researchers call for “multi-model projections” of local climates for cities.

In the study, the researchers say their predictions on climate will give “urban planners and decision-makers in any city […] access to city-specific projections for any planning horizon they need”.

It’s important these planning horizons include the cooling and shading provided by green infrastructure — the network of green spaces such as street trees and green walls — in urban areas.

Read more: Here’s how green infrastructure can easily be added to the urban planning toolkit

For Australia, this means getting a national green infrastructure policy that provides for green spaces within our cities, open spaces and buildings to help with increasing density and rising global temperatures.

What the research found

Heat events, such as heatwaves, pose a significant health risk and can hit people harder in cities.

Cities are hotter than in surrounding regional areas due to “the urban heat island” effect, a result of heat created by all the densely packed people, vehicles and industries, and the heat retained among buildings and other infrastructure.

Despite having the highest population density, the researchers point out that urban areas aren’t often represented in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project. This project is important because it informs the global authority on climate change (the International Panel on Climate Change).

So the research authors built a statistical model emulating a complex climate model with urban regions. And they estimate that, by the end of the century, average warming across global cities will increase by 1.9℃ under an intermediate emissions scenario, and 4.4℃ with high emissions.

Urban warming would most affect mid-to-northern parts of the United States, southern Canada, Europe, the Middle East, northern Central Asia and northwestern China.

Read more: Smart urban design could save lives in future heatwaves

They also predict that the heat index would increase faster than air temperature alone over almost all cities. “Heat index” refers to how hot the human body actually feels, a combination of relative humidity and air temperature. This would mean urban residents would experience higher heat stress.

What does this mean for Australia?

While the research found most urban warming would occur in the northern hemisphere, Australian cities are also projected to continue to warm. But we need only look to the recent record-breaking years to realise climate change will result in more extremely hot days here.

2019 was Australia’s hottest (and driest) year on record. And today’s annual climate statement from the Bureau of Meteorology shows the highest temperature ever recorded in the Sydney Basin, at a whopping 48.9℃, occurred in 2020, on January 4. It also found the average national temperature for 2020 was 1.15℃ higher than normal.

These are nationwide findings, but how Australia manages climate in urban areas is particularly important as around 80% of population growth occurs in capital cities.

In fact, 2020 research found we’re increasingly facing more frequent and prolonged heatwaves that intensify urban heat islands in places such as Sydney, by raising inland temperatures by as much as 10℃ more than in coastal zones.

Keeping cities cool

The best way to ensure our cities are kept cool is through greening urban spaces. Green spaces can be developed by planting trees in streets, yards and parks for shade, recreation and relief from the heat. This will create cooler urban “microclimates” for social interaction and natural retreats from city life.

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

Greater Sydney, for example, has a welcome new policy to ensure five million more trees are planted by 2030. This is an important long-term goal as 2016 research from Canada found tree cover in daytime reduced air temperature by up to 4℃ in Montreal city.

The design of buildings and their immediate surroundings are also important to help manage increasing heat in our cities.

Our open spaces are places of exercise, retreat, relaxation and, in a new COVID world, socially distant interactions. The pandemic has allowed us to rediscover the importance of our community and local connections in these spaces.

Multi-storey buildings also provide opportunity for vertical greening. The Victorian government, for example, is seeking to increase the amount of green infrastructure in our urban areas to help us cope with predicted warmer conditions.

Australia needs a national planning policy

Urban planning and greening urban spaces is largely a local government responsibility, usually overseen by state and territory governments.

And there is national recognition of the importance of green cities through the federal government’s Smart Cities Plan. It states:

Green, sustainable cities […] improve the quality of air and water, reduce the heat island effect, protect biological diversity and threatened species, and enhance general amenity.

But what’s needed, urgently, is a national planning framework of green city principles so no regions get left behind. Climate change is a national issue, and all urban residents from all socioeconomic backgrounds should benefit from green cities.

Read more: Anatomy of a heatwave: how Antarctica recorded a 20.75°C day last month

This national planning policy would describe how our cities across the nation should develop appropriately spaced trees and other vegetation, to better manage and prepare for increasing density and greater activity as climate change brings hotter weather.

And importantly, more research is needed to better inform climate models. We need more information into the ways our climates will change within different land areas — whether rural, suburban or in cities — so we can develop better national plans for how we will live and work in the future.

Read more: In a heatwave, the leafy suburbs are even more advantaged

– ref. Cities could get more than 4°C hotter by 2100. To keep cool in Australia, we urgently need a national planning policy – https://theconversation.com/cities-could-get-more-than-4-c-hotter-by-2100-to-keep-cool-in-australia-we-urgently-need-a-national-planning-policy-152680

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Clift, Teaching Fellow and PhD candidate, University of Melbourne

Nearly overshadowed by the chaos in the US this week was a dramatic escalation of the crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong.

Authorities arrested more than 50 pro-democracy figures in early morning raids under the territory’s six-month-old national security law. The opposition lawmakers, activists and lawyers were accused of subversion for holding primaries for pro-democracy candidates for Hong Kong elections.

The Beijing-drafted law has previously been used to target protesters and the independent media in Hong Kong, but this week’s mass arrests marked a sobering turning point for the city.

They make political participation in Hong Kong not just futile but dangerous, and are likely to render the Legislative Council a rubber stamp along the lines of the National People’s Congress in Beijing, which has never challenged an initiative of China’s ruling party.

Britain’s foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, responded with outrage, saying China

deliberately misled the world about the true purpose of the national security law, which is being used to crush dissent and opposing political views.

Opposition politics now considered ‘subversion’

Those arrested were all linked to informal primaries convened by pro-democracy parties last year ahead of Legislative Council elections, which were ultimately postponed.

At the time, Beijing labelled the primaries “illegal” and Hong Kong authorities said they would investigate whether the opposition’s plan to win a legislative majority that could veto government initiatives violated the national security law. The law provides for penalties up to life imprisonment.

It is unsurprising Beijing views grassroots political organisation with suspicion. Its authoritarian political system precludes any challenge to the Communist Party’s rule.

In Hong Kong, only half of the legislature’s seats are elected by universal suffrage; the others are reserved for members of trades and industries. But it has still been possible for opposition figures to win election and exercise their rights to vote and, where numbers permit, veto actions.

The fact the Hong Kong authorities now classify such acts as “subversion of state power” confirms the national security law has redrawn Hong Kong’s constitutional landscape. Its enforcement is playing out according to the most pessimistic forecasts.

Read more: ‘We fear Hong Kong will become just another Chinese city’: an interview with Martin Lee, grandfather of democracy

Steady erosion of rights

While Hongkongers nominally enjoy a wide range of rights under the Basic Law, the outline of which was negotiated with Britain before the handover in 1997, some have come under severe pressure following the passage of the security law. These include freedom of speech, assembly and now electoral rights.

A key point of contention has been the progression to full democracy promised in the Basic Law but repeatedly withheld by Beijing. Chinese authorities have persistently misinterpreted the idea of Hong Kong self-government as a challenge to central authority and territorial integrity.

After the 2014 Umbrella Movement, the Hong Kong government told young democracy advocates to take their cause off the streets and into politics. But after many did so with remarkable success, that door has now been slammed shut.

In addition to aggressively prosecuting pro-democracy protesters, the Beijing and Hong Kong governments have orchestrated the disqualification of many pro-democracy candidates and elected officials in recent years. This culminated in the arbitrary removal last November of four sitting legislators, which triggered the resignation of the 15 remaining opposition members.

Around two-thirds of those arrested this week were former legislators or current district councillors. Other prominent opposition figures and members of civil society groups were also targeted. Police also reportedly seized documents from media and polling organisations.

Benny Tai, a longtime opposition figure who was among those arrested, said:

Hong Kong has entered a cold winter, the wind is strong and cold.

Why the world hasn’t done more

With rights and freedoms diminishing under Beijing’s vast national security apparatus, the outlook for Hong Kong is indeed bleak.

Hong Kong’s judiciary has been a bulwark against executive overreach, but it has been criticised by all sides for its decisions in political cases.

Its jurisdiction over national security matters is also constrained: judges are vetted by the executive government and can only apply, not interpret, the law. Cases can also be transferred to mainland courts.

The retiring chief justice recently pleaded for Hong Kong’s judicial independence to be respected, but the government’s fallacious insistence that Hong Kong, like China, has no separation of powers is one of several causes for concern as the baton passes to a new top judge.

Read more: Hong Kong activists now face a choice: stay silent, or flee the city. The world must give them a path to safety

Beijing has learned the lessons of the Tiananmen Square crackdown and sensibly opted to bring Hong Kong to heel by gradually escalating the authoritarian use of the law, rather than a military crackdown.

This makes the likelihood of international intervention — always a dim prospect — practically negligible.

Western democracies have criticised the erosion of Hong Kong’s democratic principles and rule of law, and Hongkongers can expect easier pathways to residency in some of those countries, but China’s economic power will deter most governments from doing more.

This should not mask the fact that true political repression is taking place in Hong Kong. Key opposition figures have been vilified by pro-establishment media and harassed by law enforcement, leading many to flee overseas. Some have had their assets subsequently frozen by a vindictive government.

The Chinese government’s approach to Hong Kong is consistent with its more assertive approach internationally — it is aggressively pursuing its own interests without apparent regard for the reputational cost.

Once the international community understands how China plays the game, governments can formulate diplomatic and economic policies to deter bad conduct and protect their own national interests, along with the interests of others who fall within China’s sphere of influence.

However, such is China’s determination to crush dissent and opposition that anyone, anywhere in the world who advocates for such policies can be charged under Hong Kong’s national security law.

Read more: Heavy hand of China is prompting fears for Hong Kong’s future as a major business hub

– ref. With mass arrests, running for office in Hong Kong is now not only futile, it can be criminal – https://theconversation.com/with-mass-arrests-running-for-office-in-hong-kong-is-now-not-only-futile-it-can-be-criminal-152755

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jordan McSwiney, PhD Candidate, University of Sydney

Hundreds of pro-Trump rioters today charged into the US Capitol, where Congress was set to certify Joe Biden’s presidency. Four people have reportedly died in relation to this protest, including a woman who was shot.

The protesters included “Proud Boys”, QAnon supporters and those who aren’t necessarily affiliated with a group but have engaged with these far-right ideologies.

The riot marked a disturbing escalation in the willingness and ability for the far right to mobilise against liberal democratic institutions, inspired by baseless claims peddled by the president: that this has been a stolen, fraudulent election.

It culminates years of President Donald Trump’s incitement and endorsement of these groups. Recall his endorsement of neo-Nazis in Charlottesville (“there are very fine people on both sides”) and his refusal to condemn the Proud Boys (“stand back and stand by”). He even affirmed the Capitol building protesters, calling them “very special” and “great patriots”.

Certainly the way Trump is responding has only served to embolden the protesters and inflame the situation.

While there’s no doubt that some of the protesters were individual citizens, members of far-right extremist groups played an important, visible role in the riots. So who are the far-right rioters, and why are they so angry?

Violence is their bread and butter

The Proud Boys are one of the significant groups driving the protests, known for using violence to achieve their political ends. They describe themselves as a men’s fraternity of “Western chauvinists”, but are effectively a white nationalist gang predicated on violence.

Read more: Why Australia should be wary of the Proud Boys and their violent, alt-right views

As Proud Boys founder Gavin McGuinnes described in 2017, to reach the highest level of the organisation’s hierarchy a member must “kick the crap out of an antifa” (anti-fascist).

However, the most direct antecedent to what we’re seeing today is the storming of the Michigan State House last month by armed men involved in militia groups and other Trump-supporting protesters.

The events in Michigan followed a series of tweets by Trump, one of which urged his followers to “LIBERATE MICHIGAN” in response to stay-at-home orders issued to combat rising numbers of COVID-19 infections.

Read more: Far-right groups have used COVID to expand their footprint in Australia. Here are the ones you need to know about

What’s fuelling their anger?

The general appeal of groups like the Proud Boys is the retaliation to a perceived loss of white male supremacy and the erosion of privileges that were exclusively for the white man.

More specifically, in relation to what’s happening in Washington, their anger is fuelled by Trump’s claims of election fraud and a stolen election, including the baseless “Dominion” theory — a QAnon-related conspiracy about voting machines from Dominion Voting Systems involving Hugo Chavez and George Soros.

There is a wide spectrum of messaging from Trump’s supporters in today’s riots in Washington and outside other statehouses around America, from the comparatively banal claims of election fraud to dangerously unhinged calls for violence.

For example, Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist podcaster and “Groyper” (a network of “alt-right” figures), yesterday called for his followers to kill legislators during a live stream.

But behind their anger is almost a perverse democratic sentiment. Many no doubt genuinely believe their democratic rights have been subverted by liberal elites and “traitor Republicans” who don’t buy into Trump’s messages.

And so along with anger, there is also a sense of fear: fear that American democracy has been overturned at the hands of their “opponents”, even as they themselves actively undermine liberal democratic values and institutions.

Read more: ‘Delighting in causing complete chaos’: what’s behind Trump supporters’ brazen storming of the Capitol

Misinformation, conspiracies and false flags

Already, conspiracy theories and misinformation about today’s protests are being widely disseminated online. In particular, the riots are being spun as a “false flag”, with claims the rioters were actually antifascist provocateurs wanting to make Trump look bad.

Crucially, this isn’t just fringe internet conspiracy, but one being pushed by people with institutional clout. For example, Lin Wood, an attorney who until recently was embedded in Trump’s legal team, has spread this particular theory on Twitter, while alternative news outlets such as Newsmax repeated this line in their live coverage of the protest.

Misinformation plays a huge role in garnering extremist right wing views, and is being distributed widely across Facebook and other social media, as well as in mainstream press. And it’s not only in the US. Sky News in Australia, to give a local example, has been repeating without any clarification Trump’s lies of election fraud.

Unfortunately, tech companies have shown they’re unwilling to address this tidal wave of misinformation in a meaningful way.

Twitter will now slap a warning on a Trump post, and recently suspended his account for 12 hours — a temporary move followed by Facebook and Instagram. But countless white supremacists are still on there. For example, American white supremacist and founding figure of the “alt-right” Richard Spencer is still active on Twitter.

Read more: Social media giants have finally confronted Trump’s lies. But why wait until there was a riot in the Capitol?

This a real danger, not only for the US, but for liberal democracies around the world, as misinformation continues to erode trust in institutions and stoke violent action.

So how do we begin addressing the far right?

To start, news and social media outlets must begin to take misinformation and hateful and extremist content seriously. This could be through more serious investment in content moderation for social media platforms, and refusing to uncritically publish patently false information, such as claims of voter fraud, for news media.

Similarly, a president who refuses to endorse organised white supremacists or conspiracy communities like QAnon would help reduce their legitimacy. As long as Trump continues speak of a “stolen election” and “very fine people”, the far right will feel validated in their violent actions and words.

Read more: Australia isn’t taking the national security threat from far-right extremism seriously enough

While it is important security agencies take the very real threat of far-right violence seriously, we should look to other approaches to address and disrupt the far right beyond policing.

In Germany, for example, there has been some success with intervention at the interpersonal level. Educating role models for young people such as teachers and sports coaches to act as circuit breakers in the radicalisation process will help stem the flow of new recruits.

Young people are often targeted by far-right groups for recruitment. So role models like teachers are given skills to identify early signs of radicalisation, such as certain symbols or even fashion brands. They can engage with an individual who may be on the precipice of extremism, and offer them another path.

Given the very real danger posed by the far right, there needs to be a more rigorous approach to combating the allure of far-right extremist misinformation.

Read more: Biden’s job gets easier after Senate wins in Georgia – but don’t expect a progressive revolution

– ref. Why were the Capitol rioters so angry? Because they’re scared of losing grip on their perverse idea of democracy – https://theconversation.com/why-were-the-capitol-rioters-so-angry-because-theyre-scared-of-losing-grip-on-their-perverse-idea-of-democracy-152812

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Htwe Htwe Thein, Associate professor, Curtin University

Myanmar’s transition from five decades of military rule is a work in progress.

Despite the junta’s formal dissolution in 2010, the release of political prisoners including opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and democratic reforms allowing National League Democracy to win government in 2015, the military (officially known as the Tatmadaw) retains huge political and economic power.

A quarter of parliamentary seats are reserved for military appointees. The Tatmadaw also controls several major commercial conglomerates with disproportionate economic influence, having prospered through years of cronyism and corruption.

The severe international sanctions imposed on Myanmar during junta rule have been lifted. However, United Nations human rights advocates have warned against doing business with the Tatmadaw due to its human rights atrocities.

Several reports in the past month suggest foreign companies are failing to take that direction seriously.

Two British banks, HSBC and Standard Chartered, have reportedly lent US$60 million to a Vietnamese company building a mobile network in Myanmar. The Tatmadaw-controlled Myanmar Economic Corporation owns 28% of the network, known as Mytel. An Israeli technology company, Gilat Satellite Networks, has also reportedly been doing business with Mytel.

The Australian government has also been indirectly implicated. Its Future Fund has invested A$3.2 million (about US$2.5 million) in a subsidiary of Indian multinational Adani, which is doing business with the Myanmar Economic Corporation.

The subsidiary, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zones, is funding the rail link to connect Adani’s controversial Carmichael coal mine in Queensland to a port on the Great Barrier Reef. It is also building a container port near Yangon on land owned by the Myanmar Economic Corporation.

Read more: Myanmar: weak leadership is prompting grassroots activists to make a difference

War crimes and other atrocities

The United Nations’ call to avoid doing business with the Tatmadaw stems from its 2016 operations against the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, the separatist Islamist insurgency based in the western state of Rakhine.

Rahkine is about one-third Muslim, mostly ethnic Rohingya, a group with its own distinctive culture and language.

The crackdown quickly deteriorated into a human rights crisis. About 350 Rohingya villages were destroyed, according to Human Rights Watch. Hundreds of thousands fled to Bangladesh. (Hundred of thousands were already living in refugee camps due to past persecution.)

In March 2017 the United Nations Human Rights Council appointed an independent fact-finding mission to investigate allegations of atrocities. The mission included former Australian Human Rights Commissioner Chris Sidoti, former Indonesian prosecutor general Marzuki Darusman and Sri Lankan human rights advocate Radhika Coomaraswamy.

They published their first full report in September 2018. Detailing the killing of thousands of Rohingya civilians, forced disappearances and mass gang rapes, it called for the Tatmadaw commander-in-chief, Senior-General Min Aung Hlaing, and five other commanders to be tried for genocide.

Read more: Explainer: why the UN has found Myanmar’s military committed genocide against the Rohingya

Call to sever economic ties

In September 2019 the mission published a report on the Tatmadaw’s economic interests. It recommended foreign businesses sever ties and cease all business dealings with Tatmadaw-controlled entities.

The report’s main focus was Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC) and another conglomerate, Myanmar Economic Holding Ltd (MEHL). These two corporations have profited from near-monopoly control over many activities and industries under the junta. They have amassed huge land holdings and businesses in manufacturing, construction, real estate, industrial zones, finance and insurance, telecommunications and mining.

They became public companies in late 2016, but their profits still mostly flow to the military.

The report names foreign companies in commercial partnerships with them, including Adani, Kirin Holdings (Japan), Posco Steel (South Korea), Infosys (India) and Universal Apparel (Hong Kong).

The report also recommended governments and institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) take action to economically isolate the Myanmar military.

Ethical responsibilities

It is important to note the UN report did not call for general disinvestment from Myanmar. It encouraged businesses to enter, invest and contribute to much-needed economic development – but without associating with the military.

The question of isolation versus engagement has been a longstanding one for Myanmar. Until 2011 the United States, the European Union and countries including Australia imposed broad trade and diplomatic sanctions.

However, foreign companies often found a way to do business in Myanmar through various low-profile strategies. Companies in neighbouring countries in particular largely operated on a “business as usual” basis.

Read more: Engaging in Myanmar: whose interest are we serving?

Doing business in Myanmar without doing business with Tatmadaw interests is no easy task. Access to land and property is especially thorny, given so much is owned by crony companies.

Adani, for example, has defended its port development as contributing to Myanmar’s economic development, stating:

While some nations, including Australia, have arms embargoes and travel restrictions on key members of the military in place, this does not preclude investment in the nation or business dealings with corporations such as MEC.

It notes its port investments in Myanmar are “held through Singapore-based entities and follow the strict regulations of the Singapore government”.

But doing business with the military conglomerates is less necessary than in the past. Creating separate subsidiaries does not shield investors from their ethical responsibilities to not help line the pockets of those responsible for genocide.

Read more: Australia must do more to ensure Myanmar is preventing genocide against the Rohingya

Whether avoidable or necessary, when high-profile international businesses choose to enter into such deals they will certainly continue to be observed and criticised for making these choices.

– ref. Ethical minefields: the dirty business of doing deals with Myanmar’s military – https://theconversation.com/ethical-minefields-the-dirty-business-of-doing-deals-with-myanmars-military-152318

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sophia Nimphius, Professor of Human Performance, Edith Cowan University

Review: Girls Can’t Surf, directed by Christopher Nelius

The documentary Girls Can’t Surf spans the 1980s and early 1990s as women surfers battled in and out of the ocean. It has the predictable surf movie elements — a countercultural vibe and lots of fluoro fashion — but its power comes from the untold stories of brave, tenacious and funny women who fought to be taken seriously in their sport.

In the 1980s, a fierce international group of determined women surfers decided enough was enough in the battle against sexism and unequal pay. The film highlights the fight on and off the waves that contributed to women surfers’ eventual 2019 equal pay deal with the World Surf League.

Read more: Women’s surfing riding wave towards gender equity

Christopher Nelius (director, writer and producer) and Julie Anne De Ruvo (co-writer) have sourced an unbelievable series of clips, likely dug out of garages the world over, combining previously unseen footage with brutally honest interviews.

The women interviewed include Australians Jodie Cooper, Pam Burridge and Layne Beachley; South African Wendy Botha and Americans Frieda Zamba, Lisa Andersen and Jorga and Jolene Smith. They speak frankly of the fight for equality in a chauvinistic time, their struggles in the surf and their own coming of age.

In the early years of competitive surfing, the sentiment of these women could be summarised as we will succeed despite. As the film tells, pioneering women surfers earned a tenth of the prize money and were at times relegated to holding contests during the men’s lunch breaks.

Inferior waves

The film highlights how much of the sport’s early focus was on how women looked. Speaking of women surfers in the 1980s, Damien Hardman, former surfing world champion, said, “I think they just need to look like women. Look feminine, attractive and dress well.”

Pam Burridge, the world champion in 1990, observes: “I got some flack that you girls need to lose weight or else the whole sport would fail.”

It was hard for competing women to get the chance to even surf proper waves. Jorja Smith, former pro surfer and rookie of the year in 1985-86, describes men surfing the best waves while women were left with “this shitty, hell-hole, scum pit [part] of the ocean” with onshore winds.

The surf conditions provided to these women were part of the bigger picture of respect and equality, or lack of it at the time. Although pay is the most visible topic in discussions of sports equality, broader respect for women’s competitions and the provision of support services are just as important.

You can’t help but cringe as the film flashes back to 1989, when organisers of the Huntington Beach OP Pro in California decided to drop the women’s event to provide more prize money to the top 30 male surfers. (But, of course, keep the bikini contest). After an outcry led by the Smith twins, the OP relented, reinstating the women’s event.

Read more: Hidden women of history: Isabel Letham, daring Australian surfing pioneer

‘Lacking permission’ but the tides will change

An oft-stated argument at the time was that women surfers didn’t bring in the money through sponsorships from companies such as clothing brands — they didn’t sell bikinis the way male surfers sold board shorts.

But in 1993, Quicksilver discovered there was a shortage of the smallest size of boardshorts — because women were buying and wearing the men’s gear. It started a dedicated women’s surf wear brand called Roxy, which turned over US$600 million in just four years.

This film shows how women in surfing faced sexism and social backlash as they advocated for their rights, better pay, visibility and sponsorship deals.

As surf writer Nick Carroll observes:

The girls who got into pro-surfing in the early 1980s were pretty much exactly the same as the boys. They had the same dreams, the same visions but they didn’t have the permission of the surf culture.

Girls Can’t Surf cements the idea that sport is a microcosm for society. The 1980s was a time of stark contrast: of bikini contests on the beach versus the “power suit”. For women surfers, the swimsuit was at the centre of their battle.

The skimpy bikinis they were required to wear in contests tended to go awry while competing, ending in “an enema so bad, I thought I was going to die”, in the unforgettable words of Jodie Cooper, an ex pro-surfer from West Australia, known for her ability to surf big waves. (Sadly, big waves were in short supply for women competing at that time).

Girls Can’t Surf has an ebb and flow, like the ocean’s tides. There is, at times, a sense of two steps forward, one step back. In 1999, for instance, at Jeffrey’s Bay in South Africa, women surfers were sent out to compete in a heat when there were no waves. They refused to paddle out — instead, collectively sitting at the water’s edge. This moment was regarded as a turning point.

Yet as these women show, a few passionate and dedicated people can be the start of a movement that changes history. At this year’s Tokyo Olympics, surfing events for both men and women will make their debut.

Girls Can’t Surf will premiere at the Perth Festival on January 11, at Sydney Film Festival on January 17 and be released in Australian cinemas nationally in March, 2021. The Sydney screening screening will be attended by special guests Layne Beachley, Jodie Cooper, Pam Burridge, Pauline Menczer, and Christopher Nelius.

– ref. Girls Can’t Surf shows how determined women battled sexism in their sport – https://theconversation.com/girls-cant-surf-shows-how-determined-women-battled-sexism-in-their-sport-151919

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mary-Louise McLaws, Professor of Epidemiology Healthcare Infection and Infectious Diseases Control, UNSW

Australia’s COVID vaccine rollout will now begin in mid- to late February. Vaccination will commence with workers dealing with international arrivals or quarantine facilities, frontline health workers and those living in aged care or with a disability.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the government “optimistically” aims to vaccinate 80,000 Australians a week, and four million by the end of March.

The first vaccine doses were initially planned for March, but the rollout has now been brought forward, pending the Therapeutic Goods Administration’s approval of the Pfizer vaccine, anticipated by the end of January. Morrison said it would take a further two weeks for the first shipments of vaccine to arrive after that.

The government envisages delivering the vaccine via 1,000 distribution points, including general practitioners and possibly pharmacists.

Department of Health Secretary Brendan Murphy described the rollout as “the most complex logistical exercise in our country’s history”.

Read more: Should Australians be worried about waiting for a COVID vaccine when the UK has just approved Pfizer’s?

If the government’s ultimate target is to still vaccinate a minimum 80% of Australians (widely viewed as the threshold for herd immunity) by October, time will be tight to give 21 million people the requisite two doses.

The biggest threat to this timetable will be continued COVID outbreaks that take up health workers’ valuable expertise and time.

NASA-like logistics

Executing the plan to vaccinate frontline workers, the vulnerable and then everyone else, will require NASA-like logistics. Intact delivery of Pfizer’s vaccine famously requires an ultra-cold chain of -70℃. Each “shipper box” holds 975 vials, each containing five doses.

According to Pfizer, once opened, a box requires dry ice every five days, delivered within 60 seconds of lifting the lid, to maintain its temperature. From the first opening of a box, the full contents of 4,875 doses must be injected within 30 days.

The next challenge is to have the right number of recipients at each vaccination session, arriving at the right time. Each vial takes between 30 minutes and 2 hours to defrost at room temperature, or 2-3 hours at normal refrigeration temperatures of 2-8℃. Defrosted vials must be used within 84 hours. The vaccine must be diluted with sodium chloride and then injected within 6 hours.

Before receiving the vaccine, each person must be pre-screened to rule out serious adverse reactions, medications, food allergies or other medical indications that might preclude them from receiving the injection. Pfizer also requires patients to give informed consent, having been advised of any risks, however small, associated with the vaccine.

For the vaccine to be effective, each recipient needs a second dose at the correct interval, 21 days according to Pfizer and Moderna, and 28 days for AstraZeneca Oxford and the same vaccine for the first and second dose in accordance with the protocols.

Getting better with practice

Logistical lessons learned will presumably make the subsequent rollout of the Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines potentially easier. We should certainly hope so, given the government’s target will necessitate vaccinating 21 million Australians within little more than 240 days.

The United Kingdom has vaccinated 944,539 people (1.4% of the population) since December 13, at a daily average rate of 67,467. Even at its peak daily rate of 87,174, it will take well over three years to vaccine 80% of the population.

The United States has vaccinated 5,306,797 people (1.6% of the population) since December 23. With its peak daily rate of 358,887, it will take 4 years to vaccinate 80% of people.

Israel has so far had the fastest rollout in relative terms, having vaccinated 1,482,307 people (16% of the population) since December 26, an average of 87,195 people per day. At its peak daily rate of 150,000, Israel will have vaccinated 80% of its population in just 39 days, and the entire population in 51 days.

Australia has a longer time frame for hitting 80%, but a population three times the size of Israel’s. Overall, an average of about 170,000 injections per day will be needed to deliver the necessary 42 million doses to 21 million Australians over 245 days (March to October).

Extrapolating from Israel’s 325 injecting sites we would need more of them. The Australian government has identified 1,000 injecting sites. One recipient injected every 15 minutes seems to be the standard.

To achieve 80% injection coverage (two injections for 21 million people) every 15 minutes, would require each injecting site to have at least eight injectors per day, or 8,000 across the 1,000 distribution sites nationwide.

In Israel, the strategy of using the care network, called kupot cholim, enables local branches to manage 75% of their local rollout.

Australia’s government plans to use GPs and pharmacies as injecting sites. Staff at each location will need to be trained for the logistics about timing and keeping record of the type of vaccination each recipient receives.

How do we protect frontline workers?

Protecting frontline workers by vaccinating them first is understandable, although evidence currently available indicates vaccines prevent symptomatic and severe infection. We need to wait to see if they also prevent asymptomatic infection.

Addressing the weaknesses in the return traveller program to suppress the virus circulating is our main threat to the vaccination rollout; this would mean fewer community clusters and less time spent by health workers attending COVID cases and outbreak management. Indeed, Israel’s speed of vaccination may be derailed by its third wave necessitating a protracted lockdown.

To prevent the vaccination rollout from derailing we must also quickly eliminate or at least severely suppress the current outbreaks in Greater Sydney and Melbourne. Eliminating the current spread rapidly as possible will deprive the virus of hosts and protect everyone.

Read more: Vaccines alone won’t keep Australia safe in 2021. Here’s what else we need to do

Even with the best-laid plans, the vaccine rollout could still be derailed if resources are drained by having to respond to new COVID clusters.

Ultimately, success hinges not just on vaccine logistics but also on tightening the remaining weaknesses in our processes for quarantine and handling returned travellers. Removing the distraction of outbreaks will give us the best chance of getting enough people successfully vaccinated.

– ref. Australia’s vaccine rollout will now start next month. Here’s what we’ll need – https://theconversation.com/australias-vaccine-rollout-will-now-start-next-month-heres-what-well-need-152612

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jordan McSwiney, PhD Candidate, University of Sydney

Hundreds of pro-Trump rioters today charged into the US Capitol, where Congress was set to certify Joe Biden’s presidency. Four people have reportedly died in relation to this protest, including a woman who was shot.

The protesters included “Proud Boys”, QAnon supporters and those who aren’t necessarily affiliated with a group but have engaged with these far-right ideologies.

The riot marked a disturbing escalation in the willingness and ability for the far right to mobilise against liberal democratic institutions, inspired by baseless claims peddled by the president: that this has been a stolen, fraudulent election.

It culminates years of President Donald Trump’s incitement and endorsement of these groups. Recall his endorsement of neo-Nazis in Charlottesville (“there are very fine people on both sides”) and his refusal to condemn the Proud Boys (“stand back and stand by”). He even affirmed the Capitol building protesters, calling them “very special” and “great patriots”.

Certainly the way Trump is responding has only served to embolden the protesters and inflame the situation.

While there’s no doubt that some of the protesters were individual citizens, members of far-right extremist groups played an important, visible role in the riots. So who are the far-right rioters, and why are they so angry?

Violence is their bread and butter

The Proud Boys are one of the significant groups driving the protests, known for using violence to achieve their political ends. They describe themselves as a men’s fraternity of “Western chauvinists”, but are effectively a white nationalist gang predicated on violence.

Read more: Why Australia should be wary of the Proud Boys and their violent, alt-right views

As Proud Boys founder Gavin McGuinnes described in 2017, to reach the highest level of the organisation’s hierarchy a member must “kick the crap out of an antifa” (anti-fascist).

However, the most direct antecedent to what we’re seeing today is the storming of the Michigan State House last month by armed men involved in militia groups and other Trump-supporting protesters.

The events in Michigan followed a series of tweets by Trump, one of which urged his followers to “LIBERATE MICHIGAN” in response to stay-at-home orders issued to combat rising numbers of COVID-19 infections.

Read more: Far-right groups have used COVID to expand their footprint in Australia. Here are the ones you need to know about

What’s fuelling their anger?

The general appeal of groups like the Proud Boys is the retaliation to a perceived loss of white male supremacy and the erosion of privileges that were exclusively for the white man.

More specifically, in relation to what’s happening in Washington, their anger is fuelled by Trump’s claims of election fraud and a stolen election, including the baseless “Dominion” theory — a QAnon-related conspiracy about voting machines from Dominion Voting Systems involving Hugo Chavez and George Soros.

There is a wide spectrum of messaging from Trump’s supporters in today’s riots in Washington and outside other statehouses around America, from the comparatively banal claims of election fraud to dangerously unhinged calls for violence.

For example, Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist podcaster and “Ggroyper” (a network of “alt-right” figures), yesterday called for his followers to kill legislators during a live stream.

But behind their anger is almost a perverse democratic sentiment. Many no doubt genuinely believe their democratic rights have been subverted by liberal elites and “traitor Republicans” who don’t buy into Trump’s messages.

And so along with anger, there is also a sense of fear: fear that American democracy has been overturned at the hands of their “opponents”, even as they themselves actively undermine liberal democratic values and institutions.

Read more: ‘Delighting in causing complete chaos’: what’s behind Trump supporters’ brazen storming of the Capitol

Misinformation, conspiracies and false flags

Already, conspiracy theories and misinformation about today’s protests are being widely disseminated online. In particular, the riots are being spun as a “false flag”, with claims the rioters were actually antifascist provocateurs wanting to make Trump look bad.

Crucially, this isn’t just fringe internet conspiracy, but one being pushed by people with institutional clout. For example, Lin Wood, an attorney who until recently was embedded in Trump’s legal team, has spread this particular theory on Twitter, while alternative news outlets such as Newsmax repeated this line in their live coverage of the protest.

Misinformation plays a huge role in garnering extremist right wing views, and is being distributed widely across Facebook and other social media, as well as in mainstream press. And it’s not only in the US. Sky News in Australia, to give a local example, has been repeating without any clarification Trump’s lies of election fraud.

Unfortunately, tech companies have shown they’re unwilling to address this tidal wave of misinformation in a meaningful way.

Twitter will now slap a warning on a Trump post, and recently suspended his account for 12 hours — a temporary move followed by Facebook and Instagram. But countless white supremacists are still on there. For example, American white supremacist and founding figure of the “alt-right” Richard Spencer is still active on Twitter.

Read more: Social media giants have finally confronted Trump’s lies. But why wait until there was a riot in the Capitol?

This a real danger, not only for the US, but for liberal democracies around the world, as misinformation continues to erode trust in institutions and stoke violent action.

So how do we begin addressing the far right?

To start, news and social media outlets must begin to take misinformation and hateful and extremist content seriously. This could be through more serious investment in content moderation for social media platforms, and refusing to uncritically publish patently false information, such as claims of voter fraud, for news media.

Similarly, a president who refuses to endorse organised white supremacists or conspiracy communities like QAnon would help reduce their legitimacy. As long as Trump continues speak of a “stolen election” and “very fine people”, the far right will feel validated in their violent actions and words.

Read more: Australia isn’t taking the national security threat from far-right extremism seriously enough

While it is important security agencies take the very real threat of far-right violence seriously, we should look to other approaches to address and disrupt the far right beyond policing.

In Germany, for example, there has been some success with intervention at the interpersonal level. Educating role models for young people such as teachers and sports coaches to act as circuit breakers in the radicalisation process will help stem the flow of new recruits.

Young people are often targeted by far-right groups for recruitment. So role models like teachers are given skills to identify early signs of radicalisation, such as certain symbols or even fashion brands. They can engage with an individual who may be on the precipice of extremism, and offer them another path.

Given the very real danger posed by the far right, there needs to be a more rigorous approach to combating the allure of far-right extremist misinformation.

Read more: Biden’s job gets easier after Senate wins in Georgia — but don’t expect a progressive revolution

– ref. Why are the Capitol rioters so angry? Because they’re scared of losing grip on their perverse idea of democracy – https://theconversation.com/why-are-the-capitol-rioters-so-angry-because-theyre-scared-of-losing-grip-on-their-perverse-idea-of-democracy-152812

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Graham, Senior Lecturer, Queensland University of Technology

Amid the chaos in the US Capitol, stoked largely by rhetoric from President Donald Trump, Twitter has locked his account, with 88.7 million followers, for 12 hours.

Facebook and Instagram quickly followed suit, locking Trump’s accounts — with 35.2 million followers and 24.5 million, respectively — for 24 hours.

The locks are the latest effort by social media platforms to clamp down on Trump’s misinformation and baseless claims of election fraud.

They came after Twitter labelled a video posted by Trump and said it posed a “risk of violence”. Twitter removed users’ ability to retweet, like or comment on the post — the first time this has been done.

In the video, Trump told the agitators at the Capitol to go home, but at the same time called them “very special” and said he loved them for disrupting the Congressional certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s win.

That tweet has since been taken down for “repeated and severe violations” of Twitter’s civic integrity policy. YouTube and Facebook have also removed copies of the video.

But as people across the world scramble to make sense of what’s going on, one thing stands out: the events that transpired today were not unexpected.

Given the lack of regulation and responsibility shown by platforms over the past few years, it’s fair to say the writing was on the wall.

The real, violent consequences of misinformation

While Trump is no stranger to contentious and even racist remarks on social media, Twitter’s action to lock the president’s account is a first.

The line was arguably crossed by Trump’s implicit incitement of violence and disorder within the halls of the US Capitol itself.

Nevertheless, it would have been a difficult decision for Twitter (and Facebook and Instagram), with several factors at play. Some of these are short-term, such as the immediate potential for further violence.

Then there’s the question of whether tighter regulation could further incite rioting Trump supporters by feeding into their theories claiming the existence of a large-scale “deep state” plot against the president. It’s possible.

Read more: QAnon believers will likely outlast and outsmart Twitter’s bans

But a longer-term consideration — and perhaps one at the forefront of the platforms’ priorities — is how these actions will affect their value as commercial assets.

I believe the platforms’ biggest concern is their own bottom line. They are commercial companies legally obliged to pursue profits for shareholders. Commercial imperatives and user engagement are at the forefront of their decisions.

What happens when you censor a Republican president? You can lose a huge chunk of your conservative user base, or upset your shareholders.

Despite what we think of them, or how we might use them, platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube aren’t set up in the public interest.

For them, it’s risky to censor a head of state when they know that content is profitable. Doing it involves a complex risk calculus — with priorities being shareholders, the companies’ market value and their reputation.

Read more: Reddit removes millions of pro-Trump posts. But advertisers, not values, rule the day

Walking a tightrope

The platforms’ decisions to not only force the removal of several of Trump’s posts but also to lock his accounts carries enormous potential loss of revenue. It’s a major and irreversible step.

And they are now forced to keep a close eye on one another. If one appears too “strict” in its censorship, it may attract criticism and lose user engagement and ultimately profit. At the same time, if platforms are too loose with their content regulation, they must weather the storm of public critique.

You don’t want to be the last organisation to make the tough decision, but you don’t necessarily want to be the first, either — because then you’re the “trial balloon” who volunteered to potentially harm the bottom line.

For all major platforms, the past few years have presented high stakes. Yet there have been plenty of opportunities to stop the situation snowballing to where it is now.

From Trump’s baseless election fraud claims to his false ideas about the coronavirus, time and again platforms have turned a blind eye to serious cases of mis- and disinformation.

The storming of the Capitol is a logical consequence of what has arguably been a long time coming.

The coronavirus pandemic illustrated this. While Trump was partially censored by Twitter and Facebook for misinformation, the platforms failed to take lasting action to deal with the issue at its core.

In the past, platforms have cited constitutional reasons to justify not censoring politicians. They have claimed a civic duty to give elected officials an unfiltered voice.

This line of argument should have ended with the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in August 2017, when Trump responded to the killing of an anti-fascism protester by claiming there were “very fine people on both sides”.

An age of QAnon, Proud Boys and neo-Nazis

While there’s no silver bullet for online misinformation and extremist content, there’s also no doubt platforms could have done more in the past that may have prevented the scenes witnessed in Washington DC.

In a crisis, there’s a rush to make sense of everything. But we need only look at what led us to this point. Experts on disinformation have been crying out for platforms to do more to combat disinformation and its growing domestic roots.

Now, in 2021, extremists such as neo-Nazis and QAnon believers no longer have to lurk in the depths of online forums or commit lone acts of violence. Instead, they can violently storm the Capitol.

It would be a cardinal error to not appraise the severity and importance of the neglect that led us here. In some ways, perhaps that’s the biggest lesson we can learn.

– ref. Social media giants have finally confronted Trump’s lies. But why wait until there was a riot in the Capitol? – https://theconversation.com/social-media-giants-have-finally-confronted-trumps-lies-but-why-wait-until-there-was-a-riot-in-the-capitol-152820

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jared Mondschein, Senior Advisor, US Studies Centre, University of Sydney

History took place in the United States today.

Two Democrats were announced the winners of the run-off elections for Georgia’s two Senate seats, allowing the Democrats to take back control of the chamber from the Republicans.

Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock were the first Democrats to win a Georgia Senate race in a quarter of a century. It also marked the first time since Herbert Hoover’s loss in 1932 that a president lost a re-election campaign and both chambers of Congress in a single term.

Also today, a number of Republicans in Congress launched their last-ditch effort to contest the outcome of a presidential election — just the third such formal objection in US history.

And thousands more people died from COVID-19, as the US continues to notch some of its highest single day death tolls since the pandemic began.

But today will be most remembered for something else entirely: the first attack on the US Capitol since the War of 1812 against the British.

Read more: ‘Delighting in causing complete chaos’: what’s behind Trump supporters’ brazen storming of the Capitol

Many warned that President Donald Trump’s violent and divisive rhetoric was inevitably going to lead to violence, though few would have predicted the Capitol itself would be overrun.

Today’s violence will remain a shocking moment for generations of Americans. Trump’s own former defence secretary, James Mattis, invoked the language of Franklin Delano Roosevelt to say that the political leaders who enabled the violence will “will live in infamy”.

No massive mandate for the Democrats

As Democrats prepare to take control of the presidency and both chambers of Congress, their attention must be focused on how to address the divisiveness and extreme partisanship that has become rooted in the US, allowing such a dramatic assault on democracy to take place.

Hoover’s landslide election loss to Roosevelt in 1932 similarly gave the Democrats control of the White House and Congress. The Democrats used this opportunity to launch the New Deal — a series of government programs and initiatives intended to lift the US out of the Great Depression. It was unprecedented in its size and ambition.

Many of these programs — ranging from Social Security (a government safety net for elderly Americans) to government regulatory agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation — were later expanded upon and continue through to today.

Read more: Even if Biden has a likely win, leading a deeply divided nation will be difficult

Unlike Roosevelt and his fellow Democrats in 1932, however, Joe Biden and his Democratic colleagues did not win landslide elections in 2020.

In fact, while Biden’s 306 Electoral College votes matched the total won by Trump in 2016, his pathway to victory was smaller.

Trump’s 2016 victory came from a combined 77,000 votes in the swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Biden’s 2020 win came as a result of a combined 45,000 votes in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin.

In other words, if merely 45,000 votes in those three states went for Trump, there would have been a tie in the Electoral College, likely resulting in a Trump win.

Similarly, the Democratic Senate candidates in Georgia did not win in landslides, either. And with the Senate now evenly divided by the parties, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will spend a lot of time breaking 50-50 ties of her former colleagues in the chamber.

And beyond the White House and Senate, the Democrats actually lost, on balance, a total of 10 seats to the Republicans in the House of Representatives, thereby slimming their majority to only four seats.

How Biden will navigate the new Congress

But there are still clear advantages for the Democrats taking control of the Senate.

With Republicans no longer controlling when, or even if, votes occur in the Senate, everything from Supreme Court justices and Cabinet appointments to major pieces of legislation will no longer be contingent on Republican Mitch McConnell, the outgoing Senate majority leader.

In such a narrowly divided chamber, though, the onus will be on the Biden administration not to lose a single Democrat.

In many ways, the most powerful position in the Senate switches from McConnell to Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, the two most conservative Democratic senators. They will likely prove to be the limits as to just how progressive a Biden agenda will be.

The Biden administration will need to get approval from a “large tent” of Democrats, including Manchin and Sinema, as well as progressives like Elizabeth Warren and the independent Bernie Sanders.

Ultimately, this slim hold on power will remain a hallmark of at least the first two years of the Biden administration.

That doesn’t, however, mean it will necessarily be divisive. In coming to the White House with more Washington experience than probably any other president in US history, Biden will need to prove that decades of experience as a “Washington insider” actually helps.

What will change for Biden — and what we can expect

Even before the Georgia races were called in the Democrats’ favour, Merrick Garland was tipped to be Biden’s choice for attorney general. Following four years of Trump’s blatant attempts to politicise the Department of Justice, no attorney general selection has been as consequential in decades.

This is particularly pertinent because Biden has vowed to restore the Justice Department’s independence, which would prove crucial if it faces public pressure to investigate the actions of the prior administration.

Garland is not only President Barack Obama’s former Supreme Court nominee, whom McConnell famously refused to allow a vote on. He’s also a circuit judge of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, one of the most consequential courts in the country.

It was the fact Biden can now replace Garland’s seat on this powerful bench with another Democrat — thanks to Democratic control of the Senate – that gave him the opportunity to make the selection.

Read more: Third time’s the charm for Joe Biden: now he has an election to win and a country to save

Derisively labelled by some a political “weather vane”, Biden is not known to be a particularly ideological politician. Unlike most other presidents, he was not elected with a well-known ideological or political slogans focused on the future (for example, “Build the wall”, “Yes, we can” or “It’s the economy, stupid”).

Instead, Biden’s most well-known 2020 slogan, “Restoring the soul of America”, seemed to herald a return to prior years.

While many Americans may be pining for more normalcy, Biden has already seemed to acknowledge that doing so would not address the root causes of the sort of mayhem that occurred on Capitol Hill.

The most pressing priorities, as defined by the Biden administration, are COVID-19, economic recovery, racial equity and climate change.

Taking control of the Senate, as well as the unprecedented unrest in Washington, will both widen the scope and redouble the urgency of the Biden team’s plans for addressing these issues.

But we shouldn’t expect a progressive revolution: the president-elect’s moderate tendencies are unwavering and unlikely to leave him simply because of Democrats eked out wins in Georgia. With that said, when the political spectrum has become stretched beyond conventional recognition, such moderation can often appear to be radical.

– ref. Biden’s job gets easier after Senate wins in Georgia — but don’t expect a progressive revolution – https://theconversation.com/bidens-job-gets-easier-after-senate-wins-in-georgia-but-dont-expect-a-progressive-revolution-152176

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daniel D’Hotman, DPhil Candidate, University of Oxford

The end of coal-fired generation in Australia is inevitable.

Zero marginal cost, zero emissions energy is now a reality. Wind and solar are cheaper sources of new electricity than coal in most cases, putting significant pressure on the profitability of the inflexible, ageing coal generators.

The only questions are when coal-fired power stations will close and how well Australia will manage that phasedown.

That’s why we need to talk about the role governments can play to ensure the transition is orderly, maintains energy security, avoids price spikes that have followed past closures, looks after affected workers and communities, and ensures Australia meets its commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 to 26-28% below 2005 levels.

At least halving emissions from coal-fired power stations (which account for about 90% of electricity sector emissions) by 2030 is an obvious route to achieve Australia’s international commitments.

Given most state governments are already committed to forcing renewables into the grid at record pace, that could happen even without federal action.

But continuing down the current path will be unnecessarily costly, and pose significant risks to supply and prices as coal-fired generators exit on sporadic timelines based on their viability. These risks are part of the reason why Australia’s Energy Security Board is considering mechanisms that facilitate an orderly transition from coal-fired generation to renewables as one of four priority reform areas.

Read more: ‘Unjustifiable’: new report shows how the nation’s gas expansion puts Australians in harm’s way

National leadership and careful policy design are needed to enable coal plant operators to bow out of the market gracefully, and in a manner that secures certainty for investors, consumers, workers and communities.

Learning from past closures

Past closures of South Australia’s Northern and Playford B power stations in Port Augusta (in 2016) and Victoria’s Hazelwood power station in the Latrobe Valley (in 2017) illustrate this point.

Price spikes followed the closure of these plants. In the case of Hazelwood, majority owner Engie gave barely five months’ notice of its closure in March 2017. With Hazelwood, a brown-coal-fired generator accounting for 20% of Victoria’s electricity supply and 5% of national output, the supply ramifications were significant. Victoria’s average electricity prices increased from A$60 to A$100 per megawatt hour (MWh).

These offer a stark warning to policy makers. The market requires adequate notice of coal-fired generator exits. Greater certainty provides investors with the assurance they need to build enough capacity to replace retiring coal plants, and the infrastructure to connect them to the grid. A haphazard transformation is in no one’s interests.

A new Coal-Generation Phasedown Mechanism

We outline a market-based mechanism to achieve just that in a report published by the Blueprint Institute, an Australian think tank established last year to promote rational, pragmatic policy proposals.

The Coalition has generally claimed to oppose market-based mechanisms — such as emissions trading schemes or carbon taxes — to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But the Abbott government in 2014 introduced an emissions trading scheme alongside its A$2.5 billion Emissions Reduction Fund, a mechanism the Morrison government rebadged in 2019 as the Climate Solutions Fund. A “Safeguard Mechanism” sets emissions caps for the country’s highest-emitting businesses, with emissions permits tradeable on the open market.

Read more: Australia’s new cap on emissions is a trading scheme in all but name

To facilitate the orderly phasedown of coal-fired electricity generation, we propose a “Coal-Generation Phasedown Mechanism” (CPM), leveraging the Safeguard Mechanism to establish sector emissions targets — for 2026, 2028 and beyond 2030.

A key component of the CPM is the use of auctions to achieve withdrawals of coal generation from the electricity market. Auctions are commonplace in commercial and government contexts. The federal government has long used auctions to allocate telecommunications spectrum, for example, and the Emissions Reduction Fund uses reverse auctions to buy the most cost-effective emissions abatement.

The CPM would set emissions targets to phase down coal-fired generation to halve current emissions by 2030. Under a well-designed auction system, the least profitable coal generators would withdraw from the market first, ensuring emissions reductions occur at minimum cost.

One possible scenario is shown in the graph below. Example generators have been chosen based on their operating costs and approximate remaining life. Those with higher costs and a shorter remaining life have greater incentives to bid for earlier exits.

The CPM should also be designed to ensure financial support for affected workers. This could be in the form of redeployment, retraining opportunities or generous remuneration in the case of retrenchment.

Who should pay?

A phasedown of coal-fired generation will come at a cost to someone — either taxpayers or investors in coal-fired generation. This cost can be made larger or smaller. It can be hidden from view. But it cannot be avoided. The proper role for government is to minimise and fairly distribute those costs.

We can’t predict exactly how much the phasedown will cost, because that depends on information known only to the generators. But a market-based mechanism is sure to minimise those costs.

The CPM can be designed to ensure the least viable plants close first. How much money generators receive to close or pay to stay open is an entirely separate question. The CPM can be designed to accommodate any financial commitment by taxpayers.

At one extreme, the federal government could pay generators to close by fully compensating auction participants for the loss of future profits, as has been adopted in Germany. But this would likely require a federal funding commitment significantly larger than under the existing Emissions Reduction Fund, which might make it politically unpalatable.

At the other extreme, the government could charge operators for the right to stay open. One significant advantage of this option is it would raise revenue that could then be used to support directly affected communities. This could be modelled on Western Australia’s “Royalties for Regions” program, which allocates a quarter of the state’s mining and petroleum royalties to programs benefiting regional and rural areas.

A funding allocation between these two extremes is also possible, decided through government negotiation with the industry.

Ultimately, the question of who pays is a political decision. But political difficulties shouldn’t be used as an excuse for delay. The economic rationale for the CPM stacks up either way.

We must avoid another Hazelwood or Port Augusta, and coordinate an orderly grid transformation that provides certainty to communities, workers, investors, and consumers alike.

– ref. How Australia can phase out coal power while maintaining energy security – https://theconversation.com/how-australia-can-phase-out-coal-power-while-maintaining-energy-security-152747

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jake Clark, PhD Candidate, University of Southern Queensland

How does the Sun make such pretty colours at sunsets and sunrises? — Aisling, age 7, Mount Gambier, South Australia

Hi Aisling. Thank you for this super interesting question!

We love watching all the pretty colours of sunsets and sunrises. But why does this happen, when most of the time the sky is just blue?

Well, it’s all because of light and the fact that light has colour. Believe it or not, the light around you is a combination of all the colours in the world.

But if this is true, why do we only see some colours in the sky at certain times, and not all of them?

To know this, we first need to know how day turns into night.

Earth goes dancing through space

Our planet, Earth, moves in space with seven other planets nearby. They all spin in circles on the spot, but also move in much larger circles around the Sun.

When the Sun is setting in Australia, this means our side of the planet is turning away from the Sun. During sunrise, we’re turning towards it.

Night time happens when we’re no longer facing the Sun at all. Daytime happens when we have twirled to face the Sun directly — so its sunbeams travel (very fast) directly to us.

Although you can’t tell by looking at them, beams of light from the Sun come in different sizes. Scientists measure these sizes using something called “wavelength”.

Each different wavelength of light has its own unique colour.

Earth is wrapped in its atmosphere

So we know why the sky is bright during the day and dark at night. And we know sunbeams come in different sizes, or “wavelengths”.

But how does it become the gorgeous colours we see during sunset and sunrise?

This happens because of an important blanket of air wrapped around Earth, called the atmosphere.

Earth’s atmosphere is made up of many very tiny objects called molecules. In fact, all things are made of molecules, including you and me.

But each molecule is much, much smaller than a grain of sand. They’re so small you can’t see them without a microscope — you can only see the bigger things they make.

How the atmosphere plays with light

When the Sun’s beams reach Earth, they meet the molecules in Earth’s atmosphere. The molecules then begin to play with the light — bouncing it back and forth between themselves. This is called “scattering”.

The longer a wavelength of light is, the longer it can keep scattering between the molecules in our Earth’s atmosphere before “tiring out” and going back into space.

Blue light has a shorter wavelength than red or pink light. This means it can only bounce between the molecules for a shorter distance.

When Australia is directly facing the Sun (daytime), there’s less atmosphere for the light to pass through. Blue light can easily come out the other side — giving us a blue sky.

The colours of sunrise and sunset

We already know Earth spins in its place. Remember that during sunset in Australia, we are circling away from the Sun and no longer facing it directly.

This means sunlight has to travel through a thicker slice of the atmosphere to reach us. This happens during sunrise too, when Australia is moving towards the Sun.

With this larger distance of atmosphere to cover, the blue light gets tired. It can’t keep up anymore, so it mostly bounces back out into space.

But the red, orange and yellow light have longer wavelengths. This means they can scatter for longer and travel through the atmosphere to reach us.

And this is why we have beautiful bright sunsets and sunrises.

– ref. Curious Kids: how does the Sun make such pretty colours at sunsets and sunrises? – https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-how-does-the-sun-make-such-pretty-colours-at-sunsets-and-sunrises-151278

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Crabb, Director and CEO, Burnet Institute, Burnet Institute

In the midst of the anxiety over the latest outbreaks in NSW and Victoria, it is easy to forget the wider context of Australia’s privileged COVID position.

Relative to most Western countries, some of which are losing someone to COVID every 60 seconds, we live in a largely COVID-free oasis. This puts us in an incredibly good position to carefully exit from the COVID crisis and manage a steady return to nationwide normality, without the suffering seen in other nations. But we have 12 months or so to go.

Despite how it often appears in the media, the nine jurisdictions — one federal and eight states and territories — are actually in agreement on the highest-level issues. All jurisdictions have long agreed that COVID is so serious that each wants either extremely low (the aggressive suppression strategy) or indeed zero community transmission.

In fact, we have reached an Australia-wide “zero tolerance” for COVID, increasingly recognising that COVID-zero is in the best interests of our health, social and economic well-being. This Australia-wide “crush it” attitude has been the single biggest driver of our success. It’s what we have in common with many of our equally successful neighbours, such as New Zealand and Thailand, and what sets us apart from the horror of the COVID carnage in the United Kingdom, mainland Europe, the United States and elsewhere.

Read more: Why does Boris Johnson delay coronavirus lockdown decisions? A psychologist gives her view

We also agree this COVID-free status should be achieved with as little disruption as possible to society, non-COVID health (especially mental health) and the economy. None of this is in dispute. Moreover, we all agree on the two parallel strategies needed to achieve it:

• identifying and isolating cases and exposed individuals through testing and contact tracing
• and preventing transmission through interventions such as physical distancing, mask-wearing, hand-washing, movement restrictions (such as different degrees of “lockdown”, border control and quarantine) and improved ventilation.

Different styles, shared values

Where different jurisdictions do differ is around the timing and extent of these interventions, rather than the value of those interventions. For example, contrary to popular belief, NSW does not rely solely on its testing and contact-tracing strategy (excellent though it is); it also uses all the other measures mentioned above.

That’s not to say differences in how interventions are used are not sometimes important, but these differences should be seen in the wider context of the high-level agreement across Australian states and territories.

There is no textbook to guide the use of the various interventions; it is all being worked out as new knowledge becomes available. An example of difference in nuance is the recent NSW outbreak response, compared with that in South Australia in November.

SA chose to go hard and fast, implementing a short but widespread movement restriction policy. NSW also used movement restriction, but less severe and more geographically targeted.

SA chose what it hoped would be short-term pain for long-term gain (which is as it turned out); NSW opted for softer but longer-lasting restrictions.

Importantly, however, both states used every one of the interventions mentioned above, and both aimed to reach COVID-zero with least disruption. Which was the better approach from a health and economic standpoint will require deeper analysis in due course.

Speaking personally, we favoured stricter and more widespread movement restrictions early on in the Sydney outbreak, because there were substantial unknowns (the source of the Avalon cluster), questions about more than one quarantine leak (there were), whether there was spread to Greater Sydney and beyond (which happened) and with Christmas and New Year approaching.

As it stands, the NSW approach is looking promising, but it is a myth to think this comes without major economic and social disruption. Despite the rhetoric, there is no easy way to COVID-zero, just a different mix of the same tools.

Read more: Coronavirus: few vaccines prevent infection – here’s why that’s not a problem

We’re halfway there

Why is all this important? Because although our exit strategy will be built around vaccines, the cold reality is that all the COVID controls we use now will be in place for the next nine to 12 months, and some will likely endure beyond that.

Australians will not be fully vaccinated until late in 2021, according the federal government’s timetable, although the government announced yesterday that vaccination will begin two weeks earlier. During that time, the threat of COVID coming into Australia from high-transmission countries will remain.

In fact, with the pandemic still growing, and what appear to be more highly transmissible strains becoming more prevalent, the threat of introduction is likely to increase. Once here, the threat of transmission is greater.

Given the nation is already exhausted, it is crucial we find ways to safeguard public health even more rigorously in 2021 than we did in 2020. We must find a way to reduce interstate rankles, but also to rapidly adopt new findings or tools as they come to light. We can’t be stuck in our ways.

Interstate cooperation, flexibility and open-minded public health responses are the key. Such flexibility, for example, might include a willingness to adopt a “go hard, go early” approach in one circumstance, but not in another.

Crucially, our decisions should be decided by circumstance, not ideology. Leaders need to be more receptive to discussion around vexed issues, especially aerosol transmission and what needs to be done about it. The change in stance on mandatory masks in NSW was a great example of what can be achieved with a can-do attitude.

Read more: Australia’s mishmash of COVID border closures is confusing, inconsistent and counterproductive

We need pragmatic, constructive cooperation between jurisdictions. A common strategy for tight international border security and hotel quarantine is a must. Wouldn’t it have been great if NSW and Victoria had thrashed something out to each other’s satisfaction, preventing the New Year border chaos? It doesn’t reflect well on either that didn’t happen.

Australians have come to appreciate just how precious a COVID-free existence is. They will not, and should not, give it up lightly. If we are to maintain it, we have to be kinder and more cooperative. There is still a long road ahead.

– ref. Hang in there, Australia — we’re in great shape but we’re only halfway through the COVID marathon – https://theconversation.com/hang-in-there-australia-were-in-great-shape-but-were-only-halfway-through-the-covid-marathon-152753