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

When he speaks at functions, Scott Morrison routinely pays tribute to present and past members of the Australian Defence Force.

It seems a very American thing to do.

But he is also putting the military on an extremely high pedestal. When some of those on that pedestal are found to have done appalling things, the shock is doubly great.

For many Australians, looking back on a history of war heroism, it will be hard to take in what the investigation by Justice Paul Brereton has found: 25 current or former soldiers, from the special forces, allegedly perpetrated, as principals or accessories, war crimes in Afghanistan.

A total of 39 people – Afghan non-combatants or prisoners of war – were killed, and another two cruelly treated. Some 19 Australians will be referred on for criminal investigation and likely or possible prosecution.

For the government and the military brass, the Brereton findings are not, or should not be, as surprising as is being suggested.

For a long time, there have been suggestions of bad behaviour by some Australians in Afghanistan.

Read more: Changing the culture of our SAS forces is no easy fix. Instead, we need to face the true costs of war

Indeed, even when I was there way back in 2002, and Australia had 150 special forces in place, there was chatter among the international media that the Australians were fast and loose.

Before then, there were allegations of brutality by Australian special forces in East Timor in the late 1990s.

The military itself in recent years commissioned inquiries into the culture and operations of the special forces.

In a 2016 report on culture, Samantha Crompvoets wrote, on the basis of the interviews she conducted, of “unverifiable accounts of extremely serious breaches of accountability and trust”.

Most concerning were “allusions to behaviour and practices involving abuse of drugs and alcohol, domestic violence, unsanctioned and illegal application of violence on operations, disregard for human life and dignity, and the perception of a complete lack of accountability at times”.

David McBride, who served in Afghanistan as a military lawyer, blew the whistle on misconduct, and has been prosecuted for his public service.

In some excellent journalism, The Age/Sydney Morning Herald and the ABC extensively documented alleged criminal behaviour.

Even so, Angus Campbell, Chief of the Australian Defence Force, said of the Brereton report: “I was anticipating it wouldn’t be good – but I didn’t realise how bad it would be”.

Brereton documents how a culture of compliance, intimidation and silence in the field hushed up crimes, and he highlighted the “warrior culture” of Special Air Service Regiment commanders in Australia.

Patrol commanders on the ground were culpable. “The criminal behaviour in this Report was conceived, committed, continued and concealed at patrol commander level, and it is overwhelmingly at that level that responsibility resides,” Brereton writes. To a junior SASR trooper, “fresh from selection and reinforcement cycle, the patrol commander is a demigod, and one who can make or break a trooper’s career”.

But those up the chain did not know what was going on, Brereton found, although they bore a “moral command responsibility”.

Read more: Evidence of war crimes found against 25 Australian soldiers in Afghanistan

The key question is, how could this be so? We are talking about multiple crimes of murder and brutality, practices such as “blooding” (patrol commanders requiring a junior soldier to shoot a prisoner to make his first kill), and planting false evidence on victims.

If senior officers did not pick up gossip and whispers, surely they should have been enough aware of the broad special forces culture to know that extensive checks should be in place to guard against the ever-present threat of misconduct.

In 2011, Campbell was appointed Commander Joint Task Force 633, responsible for Australian forces in the Middle East including Afghanistan.

Asked on Thursday for his response to those who might say the report had let people like him “off the hook”, Campbell admitted “I wonder was there something I walked past, was there some indicator I didn’t see?”

Having not done enough many years ago to ensure Australia’s special forces were best prepared to meet proper standards of legal and ethical conduct, the ADF more recently began reform and is now in overdrive to make amends for the atrocities that have been committed.

The government is trying to keep as much at arms length as it can (and remember this inquiry stretches back through Coalition and Labor years, with the worst behaviour concentrated in 2012-13). But it has quickly and properly set up a special investigator’s office that will undertake further work to gather and prepare material for criminal actions.

Campbell has accepted all Brereton’s recommendations. He has made a public apology to the Afghan people. He’s been in contact with the head of the Afghan military. Australia will pay compensation to victims’ families.

In Canada, after a major scandal, the unit concerned was disbanded. That is not happening here, but a SASR sub-unit has got the chop.

Read more: Politics with Michelle Grattan: Defence expert Allan Behm on the background to the Brereton report

While Thursday’s release of the report was a huge moment, it actually marks the middle of a process.

The military is some way down the track in dealing with its consequences, and the preparations for the prosecution process are advancing. The government is particularly anxious to be seen to be pursuing wrongdoers vigorously: it wants them to be brought to justice under Australian law, not to go to international justice.

The Meritorious Unit Citation that was awarded to the Special Operations Task Group will be revoked – which is appropriate though it will be hard on soldiers who performed commendably and bravely and without fault – and meritorious awards won by individuals will be reviewed.

The redacted report does not name those it says should be referred for criminal investigation; hopefully they’ll be successfully bought to justice but it will be a difficult, long road, given the report is not a brief of evidence and much work will have to be redone.

With so much redaction, there is still a good deal we don’t know about these events. When the official history of the time is written some years on, it will include the unredacted material.

The affair has torn at the heart of Australia’s military reputation. It has not destroyed that reputation, but the repair effort must be comprehensive and, above all, transparent.

And it should always be remembered that the military can be as fallible as any other group in society, and a small minority of individuals as reprehensible as other criminals, and to assume otherwise is to be blind in the name of false patriotism.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Australia’s war crimes in Afghanistan – how could those up the chain not know? – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-australias-war-crimes-in-afghanistan-how-could-those-up-the-chain-not-know-150462

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kylie Quinn, Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow, School of Health and Biomedical Sciences, RMIT University

On Wednesday, Pfizer and BioNTech announced their mRNA vaccine has demonstrated a remarkable 95% efficacy in the “final efficacy analysis” of its phase 3 trial.

The news comes hot on the heels of Pfizer/BioNTech’s interim analysis last week, which pointed to greater than 90% efficacy, and Moderna’s announcement on Monday, also based on an interim analysis, that its vaccine is 94.5% efficacious.

The word “efficacy” describes how well the vaccine offers protection against the target disease during the trial, whereas the word “effectiveness” refers to how well the vaccine protects against the disease in the real world.

This “final efficacy analysis” represents the Pfizer/BioNTech study’s “primary endpoint” — which means there are enough volunteers in the study who have developed COVID-19 to perform a solid evaluation of whether the vaccine is working.

Before the study began, statisticians designing the study identified that 164 people with confirmed COVID-19 would be enough cases to evaluate efficacy (more than 43,000 participants are enrolled in the trial in total).

There were 94 people who had COVID-19 in the interim analysis last week, and they reached 170 people this week — 162 of whom got the placebo and only eight of whom received the vaccine. This is very convincing evidence that this vaccine protects against developing COVID-19 disease.

The fact the primary endpoint was reached so quickly indicates cases are surging in the United States across a lot of the sites where the trial is taking place. Yes, these surging cases are providing more data than anticipated for phase 3 clinical studies; but they also highlight the urgency of the situation in the US.

Read more: 90% efficacy for Pfizer’s COVID-19 mRNA vaccine is striking. But we need to wait for the full data

Deeper insights

Pfizer/BioNTech have provided three additional important pieces of information.

First, the vaccine appears to be safe. Volunteers in the study were asked to report different symptoms after receiving the vaccine, and the most common symptoms of note were fatigue and headaches (3.8% of participants experienced more severe fatigue, and 2% headaches).

Second, the vaccine appears to protect against severe disease. The trial saw ten people become severely unwell with COVID-19, only one of whom had received the vaccine. This is a huge relief, because severe COVID-19 puts immense pressure on health-care systems.

Third, they’ve reported the vaccine has 94% efficacy in older people. This is crucial as older adults are bearing the brunt of COVID-19. In Australia, people over 65 make up only 20% of cases but almost 50% of all ICU admissions and more than 95% of deaths from COVID-19.

This efficacy in older people exceeds what many researchers had anticipated, as vaccines often don’t work as well in this group.

It’s not a competition

The Moderna vaccine has also shown promising results on those first two measures — safety and protecting against severe disease. We await data on its efficacy in older people.

This rapid-fire succession of press releases may feel like Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna are competing for the “biggest” efficacy, but competition is not the driving factor.

The primary endpoints are pre-defined by both companies and, when the study reaches them, an interim or final analysis can be performed. Data and safety monitoring boards, independent from the companies, perform these analyses.

Read more: Moderna’s COVID vaccine reports 95% efficacy. It means we might have multiple successful vaccines

From a scientific perspective, it’s plausible these two vaccines would have similar efficacy, because they use very similar mRNA vaccine designs. In fact, it’s reassuring they are similar because, in science, we must be able to repeat our results. This gives us confidence the data are correct and that we’ll see similar results outside the lab.

In any scenario, competition is redundant when you consider the size of the problem. Nearly eight billion people around the world urgently need a vaccine. Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna have each indicated they can make enough vaccines for around 500 million people next year. That still leaves seven billion people needing a vaccine — more than enough of a market for both companies, and more.

Any way you look at it, the real competition is against the virus.

What’s next?

In the coming days, Pfizer/BioNTech will apply to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for an emergency use approval for their vaccine. Moderna and other vaccine developers likely won’t be far behind once they reach their primary endpoints.

Applications to other regulatory bodies around the world will follow, including the Therapeutic Goods Administration in Australia. A successful emergency use approval with the FDA can accelerate approvals with other bodies.

Read more: How to read results from COVID vaccine trials like a pro

This study will continue for two years to collect “secondary endpoints” — more in-depth details on how the vaccine works and its safety longer term. It will aim to answer three important questions:

• longevity: how long the vaccine protects people for

• infection: these latest results show that the vaccine prevents people from getting sick and showing symptoms of COVID-19. But we also need to see whether the vaccine protects people from getting infected in the first place

• transmission: whether the vaccine reduces the likelihood of an infected but vaccinated person passing the virus on to another person.

It’s fairly straightforward to measure whether a vaccine prevents people from developing disease — you wait for people to report symptoms that could be COVID-19 and then perform a COVID test. Longer timelines and more complicated, laborious lab work are needed to learn about longevity, infection and transmission.

So, there are more insights into the virus and vaccines to come. But these studies are an exciting landmark in vaccine development.

Read more: Why we should prioritise older people when we get a COVID vaccine

– ref. ‘Very convincing evidence’: Pfizer now has the data it needs to apply for COVID vaccine approval – https://theconversation.com/very-convincing-evidence-pfizer-now-has-the-data-it-needs-to-apply-for-covid-vaccine-approval-150443

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

The United States does not have a health system — it has multiple systems, with no coherence.

If you are an armed services veteran, you have access to a comprehensive, centrally coordinated, government-run health service.

If you are over 65, you are covered by Medicare, a federally funded, quite generous insurance-based system.

If you are poor, the partly federally funded but state-run Medicaid system is your option. The extent of your eligibility will vary depending on the state you live in, but the system is generally pretty mean in terms of income thresholds for eligibility.

If you are employed, your employment package may include health insurance coverage and you generally get to choose — from a panel selected by your employer — which insurer will cover you in the forthcoming year.

The types of insurers on offer normally include those operating a fee-for-service model like Australian private health insurance, and those offering a whole-of-care experience where the insurer is also the provider, or is closely linked to the provider, and covers all care for a fixed sum each year.

The “Obamacare” reforms added an option, for those without other coverage, of insuring through federal and state “marketplaces”. These marketplaces enabled people to avoid the very high premiums that was the norm for individually-negotiated private insurance, by sharing risks across the insured in a bulk-buy arrangement.

Read more: Biden has announced a COVID taskforce to guide him through the crisis. But there are many challenges ahead

More expensive but less effective

Despite these reforms, almost 15% of adults aged 18-64 have no insurance coverage at all. That number is projected to rise in the short term because outgoing President Donald Trump wound back some of the Obamacare provisions.

Unlike Australia, the US has no network of public hospitals to be coordinated and mobilised during the COVID pandemic. More than half of US hospitals are not-for-profit, and they negotiate contracts with multiple insurers for their income.

Health insurers control their costs by charging customers out-of-pocket fees, and by limiting the number of service providers covered by the plan. If you go to an uncovered provider, you pay the whole bill yourself.

Some hospitals and health services in the US provide the best care in the world, albeit at very high cost.

Overall, the US health system is very expensive and costs roughly twice as much as the Australian health system per person.

Despite this, Americans have lower life expectancy than Australians.

Individualism, less regulation, more gaps

It is impossible to understand the US health system without considering America’s ideological and political context.

Politics is highly partisan. Obamacare is still being fought in the courts, a decade after it was signed into law, to limit its coverage and impact. Public opinion polling shows that Obamacare’s popularity continues to increase, but an overwhelming majority (76%) of Republicans polled supported the Supreme Court overturning it.

Read more: Pandemic letter from America: how the US handling of COVID-19 provides the starkest warning for us all

The dominant political ideology in the US is much more individualistic and against social service provision than in Australia. This translates into less regulation and more gaps in the social safety net.

Politics matters too. Trump denied the reality of COVID, ignored scientific advice about its importance, and failed to develop meaningful strategies to contain the threat. He gutted the internationally well-regarded specialist infection control organisation — the Centers for Disease Control — in favour of untested treatments.

The perfect storm

A health system that’s uneven at best, and a national individualistic orientation, overseen by an idiosyncratic COVID-denying president, created the disastrous conditions fuelling the COVID surge in the US.

There is therefore no national strategy. The president does not attend meetings of the Coronavirus Task Force he established. States and cities do their own thing.

Unlike the situation in Australia, where all the states stepped up to lead the public health response, state responses in the US have often been weak, following the COVID-denying example of Trump — taking no or very limited actions while the virus spreads in their states.

The individualistic orientation translates into less concern about social norms and social solidarity — so less mask wearing, and less support for restrictions on liberties such as lockdowns.

The weak insurance arrangements meant that uninsured people faced huge out-of-pocket costs for coronavirus testing, so they didn’t get tested and potentially spread the infection.

Antipathy to masks and restrictions allowed infections to spread too. The record number of infections — 11 million Americans infected and 250,000 deaths — has overwhelmed the health system, leaving people unable to get access to care in an emergency, whether COVID-related or not.

COVID is not the flu. It can have long-term effects on people’s health and well-being. So the disastrous Trump legacy of COVID mismanagement will have an impact on the dysfunctional United States health system for months and years to come, with poor, rural areas — ironically also mostly Trump-voting — and people of colour among the hardest hit.

Read more: What is post-viral fatigue syndrome, the condition affecting some COVID-19 survivors?

– ref. How the US health-care system works — and how its failures are worsening the pandemic – https://theconversation.com/how-the-us-health-care-system-works-and-how-its-failures-are-worsening-the-pandemic-150271

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charles Livingstone, Associate Professor, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University

Australia’s biggest gambling company, Crown Resorts, has been told by the NSW Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority to delay its planned December 14 opening of its A$2 billion Barangaroo casino complex in Sydney.

The authority wants to wait for the completion of the inquiry into Crown Resorts’ fitness and propriety to operate the new casino, before Commissioner Patricia Bergin. Her final report is expected in February 2021.

This is not a surprise. The inquiry has revealed a litany of dodgy behaviour by Crown Resorts. This includes poor governance, management failures, inconsistent and ineffective controls over money laundering, “machine tampering”, misleading public statements and inappropriate special treatment of principal shareholder James Packer.

Emblematic of its behaviour are the newspaper advertisements it took out last year attacking whistlebower Jenny Jiang as a “gold digger”, after the former Crown employee went public about money laundering and other illegal activities to lure Chinese high rollers.

Jiang, along with 18 other Crown staff in China, was detained by Chinese authorities in 2016. She was convicted for breaching China’s tough anti-gambling laws.

She told her story again to the ABC’s 7:30 program this week. It epitomises the disarray and avoidance of responsibility that has also characterised Crown’s performance before the inquiry.

Yet more money-laundering revelations

The Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority’s decision came after yet more revelations to the inquiry on Tuesday. The company admitted it was “likely” accounts it set up for VIP players had been used for money laundering.

This was done via a mechanism known as “cuckoo smurfing”, whereby money is laundered in small amounts not subject to notification (in Australia, less than A$10,000), using the accounts of unwitting legitimate third parties.

Read more: The global war on money laundering is a failed experiment

Commissioner Bergin was reportedly furious about these new admissions, given Crown Resorts officials had already been grilled about the details of bank accounts over the months the inquiry has taken so far. The company claimed its law firm, MinterEllison, had advised it to make no such admissions. The commissioner, unsurprisingly, now wants to see that advice.

Senior counsel assisting the inquiry submitted in early November that Crown Resorts was not a fit and proper person to operate the casino.

This was on the basis of a range of issues, not the least of which were “disgraceful threats” by Packer, when still a director of the company board, that a Melbourne financier said left him fearing for his safety.

Crown Resorts says it will cooperate and open only non-gambling facilities at Barangaroo.

It’s difficult to see how it could do otherwise.

There are now few options for the business. Its well-connected board has been widely castigated. Its management has been revealed to be ineffective and, at the very least, lacking curiosity.

Packer has admitted it he might need to substantially reduce his 36% shareholding for the company to survive.

The tenure for chief executive Ken Barton must also be seen as tenuous, given he was Crown Resort’s chief financial officer from 2010 until his promotion this year.

Read more: Gaming the board: Crown Resorts shows you just can’t bet on ‘independent’ directors

If Crown is found to not be fit and proper

Given all that has been revealed, it is very hard to see how the NSW inquiry can find Crown Resorts is fit and proper hold to hold a casino licence. The secretive — and indeed evasive manner — in which the company seems to have conducted its business is key.

If that finding is made, a range of consequences might follow.

The company’s board may be forced to restructure, and its management replaced or overhauled. Packer may be required to sell down his shareholding. The whole Barangaroo operation might even need to be sold to a new licensee.

Whatever happens will not be a rapid process.

And the high-rollers and tourists who were supposed to patronise the casino will not be flocking to Sydney. In the absence of slot machines, the casino is not going to make a profit any time soon.

Victoria and Western Australia can’t look away

There are other very big questions raised from all this.

Not the least of them is the future of Crown’s casinos in Melbourne and Perth, and indeed London. Relevant regulators are watching the inquiry. Relevant governments might want to reflect on these circumstances as well.

Read more: If Crown is unfit to hold a Sydney casino licence, what about Melbourne, and Perth?

The Victorian Commission for Gambling and Liquor Regulation has taken a softly-softly approach to Crown (and other gambling operators). The regulator is under-resourced and does not appear to have the state government’s backing to take a harder line.

The evidence from the NSW inquiry, and its findings, will need decisive responses not just in Sydney but in Melbourne and Perth. It is these casinos, after all, that have profited from the shenanigans revealed by the NSW inquiry.

The Victorian and Western Australian government need to reflect carefully on the appearance of political coverage for the way Crown Resorts has been able to conduct its operations.

To allow business as usual given all we now know would be a major abrogation of responsibility. No government can allow that if it is to retain any semblance of regulatory authority.

– ref. It’s hard to see how Crown Resorts can be found ‘fit and proper’ to run Sydney’s Barangaroo casino – https://theconversation.com/its-hard-to-see-how-crown-resorts-can-be-found-fit-and-proper-to-run-sydneys-barangaroo-casino-150379

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mischa Turschwell, Research Fellow, Griffith University

China’s signature foreign policy, the Belt and Road initiative, has garnered much attention and controversy. Many have voiced fears about how the huge infrastructure project might expand China’s military and political influence across the world. But the environmental damage potentially wrought by the project has received scant attention.

The policy aims to connect China with Europe, East Africa and the rest of Asia, via a massive network of land and maritime routes. It includes building a series of deepwater ports, dubbed a “string of pearls”, to create secure and efficient sea transport.

All up, the cost of investments associated with the project have been estimated at as much as US$8 trillion. But what about the environmental cost?

Coastal development typically damages habitats and species on land and in the sea. So the Belt and Road plan may irreversibly damage the world’s oceans – but it also offers a chance to better protect them.

Controversial deals

China’s President Xi Jinping announced the Belt and Road initiative in 2013. Since then, China has already helped build and operate at least 42 ports in 34 countries, including in Greece, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. As of October this year, 138 countries had signed onto the plan.

The Victorian government joined in 2018, in a move that stirred political controversy. Those tensions have heightened in recent weeks, as the federal government’s relationship with China deteriorates.

Read more: Why is there so much furore over China’s Belt and Road Initiative?

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews recently reiterated his commitment to the deal, saying: “I think a strong relationship and a strong partnership with China is very, very important.”

However, political leaders signing up to the Belt and Road plan must also consider the potential environmental consequences of the project.

Bigger ports and more ships

As well as ports, the Belt and Road plan involves roads, rail lines, dams, airfields, pipelines, cargo centres and telecommunications systems. Our research has focused specifically on the planned port development and expansion, and increased shipping traffic. We examined how it would affect coastal habitats (such as seagrass, mangroves, and saltmarsh), coral reefs and threatened marine species.

Port construction can impact species and habitats in several ways. For example, developing a site often requires clearing mangroves and other coastal habitats. This can harm animals and release carbon stored by these productive ecosystems, accelerating climate change. Clearing coastal vegetation can also increase run-off of pollution from land into coastal waters.

Read more: Ships moved more than 11 billion tonnes of our stuff around the globe last year, and it’s killing the climate. This week is a chance to change

Ongoing dredging to maintain shipping channels stirs up sediment from the seafloor. This sediment smothers sensitive habitats such as seagrass and coral and damages wildlife, including fishery species on which many coastal communities depend.

A rise in shipping traffic associated with trade expansion increases the risk to animals being directly struck by vessels. More ships also means a greater risk of shipping accidents, such as the oil spill in Mauritius in July this year.

Ocean habitat destroyed

Our spatial analysis found construction of new ports, and expansion of existing ports, could lead to a loss of coastal marine habitat equivalent in size to 69,500 football fields.

These impacts were proportionally highest in small countries with relatively small coastal areas – places such as Singapore, Togo, Djibouti and Malta – where a considerable share of coastal marine habitat could be degraded or destroyed.

Habitat loss is particularly concerning for small nations where local livelihoods depend on coastal habitats. For example, mangroves, coral reefs, and seagrass protect coasts from storm surges and sea-level rise, and provide nursery habitat for fish and other marine species.

Our analysis also found more than 400 threatened species, including mammals, could be affected by port infrastructure. More than 200 of these are at risk from an increase in shipping traffic and noise pollution from ships. This sound can travel many kilometres and affect the mating, nursing and feeding of species such as dolphins, manatees and whales.

But there are opportunities, too

Despite these environmental concerns, the Belt and Road initiative also offers an opportunity to improve biodiversity conservation, and progress towards environmental targets such as the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

For example, China could implement a broad, consistent environmental framework that ensures individual infrastructure projects are held to the same high standards.

In Australia, legislation helps prevent damage to wildlife from port activities. For example, go-slow zones minimise the likelihood of vessels striking iconic wildlife such as turtles and dugongs. Similarly, protocols for the transport, handling, and export of mineral concentrates and other potentially hazardous materials minimise the risk of pollutants entering waterways.

Read more: China just stunned the world with its step-up on climate action – and the implications for Australia may be huge

The Belt and Road initiative should require similar environmental protections across all its partner countries, and provide funding to ensure they are enacted.

China has recently sought to boost its environment credentials on the world stage – such as by adopting a target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2060. The global nature of the Belt and Road initiative means China is in a unique position: it can cause widespread damage, or become an international leader on environmental protection.

– ref. China’s Belt and Road mega-plan may devastate the world’s oceans, or help save them – https://theconversation.com/chinas-belt-and-road-mega-plan-may-devastate-the-worlds-oceans-or-help-save-them-150176

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Damian Powell, Historian and Principal, Janet Clarke Hall, University of Melbourne

Australians will be disheartened by the inspector-general of the Australian Defence Force’s report on war crimes committed by our special forces soldiers in Afghanistan. But they should not be surprised.

The demands placed upon the Special Air Service Regiment (SASR) and Commando Regiment have stretched our soldiers to the point where some have failed themselves, each other and the Anzac tradition. They may not deserve our sympathy, but we do need to understand what brought them to this point.

Read more: Evidence of war crimes found against 25 Australian soldiers in Afghanistan

Specifically, we need to consider if these crimes are an aberration or part of a systemic cultural problem in how the Australian Army trains, debriefs, deploys and then redeploys special forces soldiers in war zones.  

Importantly, the SASR badly needs to examine how it relates to the Australian Army, of which it is a part.

Selected for relentless ‘kill and capture’ missions

In Afghanistan, special forces soldiers were fighting a war within a war. Selected through recruitment courses to stand out and stand alone, the SASR distinguished itself – even from the commandos who shared the burden of Australia’s war-fighting missions.

Drawing on a few hundred soldiers and two units from an army of tens of thousands, only a small body of troops was selected for relentless “kill and capture” missions of Taliban militants.

They fought with the constant reality of potential death or maiming through close-quarter combat, IEDs and “green on blue” attacks by Afghan allies. Special forces saw the very worst of their enemy, and eventually of each other.

Read more: The reputation of Australia’s special forces is beyond repair — it’s time for them to be disbanded

Other Australian service personnel were constrained by strict rules of engagement in projects ranging from school construction to counter-intelligence operations to building trust with local warlords. Meanwhile, SASR and 2 Commando returned again and again to combat. This likely desensitised, then dehumanised, some of the soldiers.

The army command offered too little by way of integration of SASR and 2 Commando with other units. SASR even demarcated its own compound within the confines of the larger Tarin Kowt base.

There was also inadequate rotation away from the battlefield, and no significant or complementary support from other units (such as regular infantry battalions). There was no mandatory rest and renewal for soldiers who might thrive on operational adrenalin, but at a long-term cost to their physical and mental health.

‘Throwdowns’ and ‘blooding’ in a ‘warrior culture’

The redacted findings in Justice Paul Brereton’s report are painful in their detail and damning in their conclusions. It finds special forces personnel unlawfully killed 39 non-combatants – prisoners, farmers, civilians – between 2009 and 2013. The report also recommends 36 matters to the AFP for criminal investigation.

The report found “credible information” about two practices that make for particularly distressing reading. The first is a “throwdown”, which involved soldiers planting equipment on bodies. The report says:

This practice probably originated for the less egregious though still dishonest purpose of avoiding scrutiny where a person who was legitimately engaged turned out not to be armed. But it evolved to be used for the purpose of concealing deliberate unlawful killings.

Second, is the practice of “blooding”, where unit commanders encouraged junior soldiers to execute unarmed prisoners as their first “kill”.

Typically, the patrol commander would take a person under control and the junior member would then be directed to kill the person under control. “Throwdowns” would be placed with the body, and a “cover story” was created for the purposes of operational reporting and to deflect scrutiny. This was reinforced with a code of silence.

Chief of Defence Force General Angus Campbell accepted all 143 recommendations from the inspector-general’s report. He acknowledged the findings were a “bitter blow” to the morale and prestige of the ADF.

What to make of it all?

Beyond reputational damage, defence needs to undergo a rehabilitation of culture. This includes organisational deficiencies, which Campbell acknowledged extended beyond special forces and into the wider organisation.

Among a toxic competitiveness between SASR and 2 Commando, which he termed a “disgrace”, Campbell acknowledged a “reckless indifference” to the rules of war among junior commanders at unit level, sanitised and misleading reporting, and inadequate oversight from operational command, among a systemic failure of unit and higher command.

In defending the need for special forces capability, he stressed ongoing reform within SASR. This included disbanding an SASR squadron which, he argued, bore “collective responsibility” for unlawful unit culture.

He noted measures to strengthen ethical standards and enhanced levels of oversight and governance across the army.

The winding down of operations in Afghanistan and changes in serving personnel might offer special forces a chance for cultural change.

But long history suggests issues of character and culture are a tough nut to crack.

Perhaps unlike any other institution in contemporary Australian society beyond the priesthood, the military is distinctive in recruiting young, with virtually no external points of entry or cultural comparison until retirement.

Defence assumes, as it must given the reality of constant unit rotation, an equivalence of character and capacity based largely on military rank and duties.

In Afghanistan, the influence of some warrant and non-commissioned officers over more junior ranks, as well as the (often younger and less experienced) officers who were ostensibly their superiors, promoted a dysfunctional and finally criminal culture that unit or higher command never confronted or challenged. Beyond mere negligence, such an obvious ethical failing in an organisation that relies on an explicit chain of “command and control” is unforgivable.

Improving SAS culture is no quick fix

In the closed culture embraced by the special forces and enabled by army leadership, a lack of objectivity was always at risk: the soldier to your left was at once your therapist, emotional crutch, brother-in-arms and (oftentimes damaged) arbiter of right and wrong.

But this type of role demands a clear, fully formed moral compass and a constant measure of external regulation.

Read more: It’s time for Australia’s SAS to stop its culture of cover-up and take accountability for possible war crimes

As a series of Department of Defence inquiries over decades make clear, cultural change requires unending toil. The Australian Army is in constant flux; it changes with every intake of young soldiers who will eventually sign on for special forces training.

Good culture requires many things, among them:

• an unrelenting clarity and consistency of expectation in matters large and small

• constant internal and external review of practice

• a willingness to accept that so-called “troublemakers” are often in fact “truth-tellers” who need to be protected, and indeed honoured, as agents of change

• better training of soldiers in the ethical demands and responsibilities of “lawful violence”

• counselling and psychological support both during and after operations.

All of this requires more than just recommendations in a report; it requires unbending political and institutional will and close scrutiny of organisational leadership.

Scrutiny of those at the top matters, too

Some army leaders are to be commended for their willingness to drill down into SAS culture with an eye to change. However, it was the courage of Australian journalists and SAS and commando whistle-blowers — not the actions of politicians or army leaders — that pushed these alleged crimes into the national conscience.

If military honours are to be stripped from soldiers, a thorough examination of unit command and delegated authority is vital, extending to the very top. This includes the actions of those highly decorated senior officers who provided command during the Afghanistan campaign.

Read more: Did the US commit crimes in Afghanistan? International prosecutors want to find out

Over the past few decades, a strong orthodoxy has evolved, wrapped in the mystique of “Anzac” nationalism, that any criticism of the ADF is taboo. This has served as a convenient cloak to obviate harsh public examination of everything from politically driven procurement deals to massive spending overruns.

But, in choosing to investigate and possibly prosecute alleged war crimes, Australia is stepping out onto ground resisted by our “Five Eyes” allies, who have avoided similar interrogation of their own special forces.

T.S. Elliot long ago observed that humanity could not “bear very much reality”. By definition, fighting wars is a murderous business. Beyond apportioning blame, or any new recommendations on how to change the culture of our special forces, we have the chance to reflect on the painful truths of war.

Now is also the time to reflect carefully on what we ask of, and how we best support, those soldiers who serve in our name.

– ref. Changing the culture of our SAS forces is no easy fix. Instead, we need to face the true costs of war – https://theconversation.com/changing-the-culture-of-our-sas-forces-is-no-easy-fix-instead-we-need-to-face-the-true-costs-of-war-150058

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Letts, Director, Centre for Military and Security Law; Associate Professor, Australian National University

The long-awaited report into allegations of war crimes by Australia’s special forces in Afghanistan has finally been made public, after months of speculation about the contents.

Read more: Evidence of war crimes found against 25 Australian soldiers in Afghanistan

As expected, the report by Justice Paul Brereton is highly confronting and deeply concerning. However, despite widespread condemnation of the behaviour identified in the report — from the highest levels of the military and government — the next steps are far from straightforward.

Unlawful killings

The report, from the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force (IGADF), found evidence of 23 incidents of alleged unlawful killing of 39 Afghan civilians by Australian special forces personnel. There are a further two incidents of “cruel treatment”.

This involved a total of 25 current or former Australian Defence Force members who were perpetrators, either as principals or accessories.

Some of these incidents took place in 2009 and 2010, with the majority occurring in 2012 and 2013.

ADF Chief General Angus Campbell said he was shocked by the revelations, which he described as “damaging to our moral authority as a military force”.

I would never have conceived an Australian would be doing this in the modern era.

Blooding, throwdowns and executions

The inquiry has found “credible information” that junior soldiers were required by their patrol commanders to shoot a prisoner, in order to achieve the soldier’s first kill, in a practice known as “blooding”. “Throwdowns” — other weapons or radios — would be planted with the body, and a “cover story” was created.

This was reinforced with a code of silence.

The report is damning about a “warrior culture” within the Special Air Service Regiment, as well as a “culture of secrecy”.

The inquiry has recommended the chief of the defence force refer 36 matters to the Australian Federal Police for criminal investigation. Those matters relate to the 23 incidents and involve a total of 19 individuals.

Numerous obstacles to prosecutions

However, last week, in preparation for the report’s release, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced a “special investigator” would be appointed to further examine any allegations of war crimes.

Campbell confirmed those who are alleged to be involved in unlawful criminal conduct will be referred to the special investigator.

After gathering evidence on specific allegations, the Office of the Special Investigator will refer briefs to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions. Morrison explained such a task would “significantly overwhelm” the AFP, hence his decision to appoint a special investigator.

Despite these mechanisms being put in place, there are still serious questions about how potential criminal prosecutions would work. 

Investigating and prosecuting alleged crimes of this nature is incredibly difficult due to the passage of time, fading memories and inconsistency of witnesses. There are also practical challenges obtaining evidence in a country with a fragile security situation.

Read more: It’s time for Australia’s SAS to stop its culture of cover-up and take accountability for possible war crimes

It is also important to note any statement or disclosure made by a witness to the IGADF inquiry cannot be used as evidence against that person in any subsequent civil or criminal trial or court martial.

This means some of the evidence contained in the IGADF inquiry — however compelling it might be — may not be available for a criminal prosecution, as the right to remain silent would be available to a person being interviewed by the Special Investigator.

Also, the standard of proof required to convict an individual “beyond a reasonable doubt” in a criminal trial is quite high, meaning any successful prosecution might require stronger evidence than what has been included in the IGADF inquiry.

Therefore, for any prosecution to proceed, any evidence obtained by the special investigator will need to be evaluated against this higher criminal standard to determine if it is sufficient for a person to stand trial.

It is important to note the same higher standard of proof (beyond reasonable doubt) will need to be met for a successful prosecution, regardless of whether any trial takes place by court martial or in a civilian court.

Public perceptions of war crimes allegations

The reaction of the Australian public to the report will be interesting to observe. As journalists have revealed the shocking details of many of the allegations against SAS soldiers in recent years, some have defended their actions as having taken place in the “fog of war”.

In his comments on Thursday, Campbell spoke plainly about the report’s findings.

None of the alleged unlawful killings were described as being in the heat of battle […] The unlawful killing of citizens and prisoners is never acceptable.

Of course, it is important to recognise Australian soldiers faced significant difficulties in Afghanistan. Most notably, they were dealing with an enemy that was not easily identifiable and did not abide by the laws of war.

For instance, some Afghan civilians directly participated in conflict against Coalition soldiers. The so-called “farmer by day, fighter by night” has been a constant feature of operations in Afghanistan ever since Australians were first deployed there.

If civilians directly participated in hostilities against foreign forces, regardless of whether they were armed or not, they would lose their protected status under the laws of war. The death of any civilian taking direct part in hostilities, therefore, would not necessarily be unlawful under the laws of war and Australian domestic law.

Read more: Australia is lagging on climate action and inequality, but the pandemic offers a chance to do better

Understanding and applying this aspect of the laws of war is a potential complicating factor for the special investigator.

That said, as Campbell pointed out, the challenging circumstances faced by coalition forces in Afghanistan do not allow soldiers to commit war crimes. The laws of armed conflict are very clear in this regard.

A transparent and open investigation process

There was a clear need for these allegations to be properly investigated in an impartial manner. This has happened with the Brereton inquiry.

In appointing a special investigator, the government has shown it is taking these findings seriously and wants those soldiers who are proven guilty of crimes to be held accountable.

Read more: Explainer: how Australia’s military justice system works

The ADF must also be open and transparent about the actions it is taking following the completion of the IGADF inquiry.

By doing this, Australia’s military can show that it has learned from this sorry tale and made whatever changes are necessary to ensure compliance with the laws of armed conflict is understood and practised by every member of the ADF — regardless of the difficulty of the operating environment.

– ref. Allegations of murder and ‘blooding’ in Brereton report now face many obstacles to prosecution – https://theconversation.com/allegations-of-murder-and-blooding-in-brereton-report-now-face-many-obstacles-to-prosecution-145703

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anna Filipi, Senior lecturer, Monash University

There’s been a lot of talk lately. In briefings, speeches and video meetings. In the coming weeks, there will be celebrations and toasts given. These are opportunities to attend to talk.

In talk, it’s not just words that create meaning.

Nonverbal cues, including stress on key words alongside the use of gaze and gesture, assist us when speaking or understanding others. Verbal cues such as “discourse markers” (for example, “okay”, “so”, “um”, “uh”) also accomplish important work in interaction.

Listeners conventionally associate ums and uhs with broken speech (called “dysfluency” in studies of communication) when speakers self-repair by interrupting themselves to self-correct. They might do this to more clearly express themselves or to conduct a word search. We all do this from time to time.

Yet research suggests ums and uhs also serve a range of other functions in conversation. We know that where they occur in talk, and how they are articulated contribute to meaning.

Like talking bullet points

As well as being associated with repair in everyday speech stumbles or word gaps, ums and uhs mark openings of talk, new topics or a return to topic.

In extended speech, like a public presentation or speech, such markings are important for the listening audience so they can follow the meaning of what is being said. The uhs work like bullet points.

In conversation they also have an important role to play in politeness. The um at the beginning of a speaker’s turn indexes awareness that what is about to be said is “dispreferred”; that is, delicate or not what a listener expects or wants to hear, or something that the listener might be inclined to reject.

Read more: Anxious about speaking in online classes and meetings? Here are 7 tips to make it easier

Talk in action

The best way to study verbal cues is to transcribe talk in micro detail. This exercise can show why presentations with more ums and uhs are likely more frustrating to listen to.

Discourse transcription is time-consuming, so is done in short segments. A transcribed sample of the first two minutes and 40 seconds of a medical briefing by Victoria’s Deputy Chief Health Officer Allen Cheng, generated a total of 34 occurrences of “um” and 21 of “uh”.

Eleven ums marked topic changes. As per previous research, when marking a beginning or new topic, these were produced loudly, and were followed by pauses as per below which marked the opening of the talk:

um [pause] I might just take the opportunity to explain how …

This is a classic use of um to mark the beginning of talk. It has also been found in academic lectures or seminars and in telephone openings to mark the reason for the call.

Talk-back radio provides examples of um occurring after the greeting, as illustrated in this example from ABC Melbourne radio with host Virginia Trioli.

Caller: How’re you going?

Virginia: Good thanks.

Caller: Ummm, I was picked up for speeding …

Meanwhile, many of the ums and uhs (71%) in Professor Cheng’s briefing occurred in repair environments including a word search, as in the following where the um is stretched:

… it’s not an exact um [pause] quantification but it is um uh — it is an indication …

Here the first um is followed by a pause, while the second co-occurs with uh before the repetition of it is. These features create dysfluent speech. However, in both cases there is a successful outcome and return to topic after a momentary interruption.

Three samples from politicians — Victorian treasurer, Tim Pallas, NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian, and Victorian premier Dan Andrews — show seasoned public communicators.

There was a greater number of uhs and ums in Tim Pallas’s speech (45) than in the premiers’ (25 and 10 respectively). Pallas was reporting on a range of financial support measures, and like Professor Cheng’s, whose talk was highly technical, this content was dense in terms of vocabulary. So, there was a greater number of word searches as both speakers worked to make their talk accessible.

Read more: In defence of jargon – it might be infuriating but it also has its uses

Um and uh have been found to facilitate comprehension. They guide the listener through the overall format of the talk. However, research also suggests that too many ums and uhs can affect listener perceptions about speaker credibility or how prepared they are.

On this basis, Daniel Andrews is the most effective communicator, although accessible content in his briefing was a factor.

Read more: 3 ways to get your point across while wearing a mask – tips from an award-winning speech coach

Speaking is complex and tough under pressure

Speakers can improve the effectiveness of their communication; for example, through awareness of their ums and uhs, or by slowing down.

But we must remember that spontaneous extended talk to an audience — such as in a speech — is highly complex.

Speakers need to plan what they are going to say, watch the audience, and keep their talk going under time pressure. In a challenging public and televised space, they also need to be accurate, and choose words carefully.

Um, not talking under that kind of pressure? Uh I’ll … I’ll toast to that.

– ref. Watch your ums and uhs, spoken communication is about more than words – https://theconversation.com/watch-your-ums-and-uhs-spoken-communication-is-about-more-than-words-147362

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dougal McCulloch, Professor, RMIT University

In nature, diamonds form deep in the Earth over billions of years. This process requires environments with exceptionally high pressure and temperatures exceeding 1,000℃.

Our international team has created two different types of diamond at room temperature — and in a matter of minutes. It’s the first time diamonds have successfully been produced in a lab without added heat.

Our findings are published in the journal Small.

There’s more than one form of diamond

Carbon atoms can bond together in a number of ways to form different materials including soft black graphite and hard transparent diamond.

There are many well-known forms of carbon with graphite-like bonding, including graphene, the thinnest material ever measured. But did you know there’s also more than one type of carbon-based material with diamond-like bonding?

In a normal diamond, atoms are arranged in a cubic crystalline structure. However, it’s also possible to arrange these carbon atoms so they have a hexagonal crystal structure.

This different form of diamond is called Lonsdaleite, named after Irish crystallographer and Fellow of the Royal Society Kathleen Lonsdale, who studied the structure of carbon using X-rays.

There is much interest in Lonsdaleite, since it’s predicted to be 58% harder than regular diamond — which is already considered the hardest naturally-occurring material on Earth.

It was first discovered in nature, at the site of the Canyon Diablo meteorite crater in Arizona. Tiny amounts of the substance have since been synthesised in labs by heating and compressing graphite, using either a high-pressure press or explosives.

Our research shows both Lonsdaleite and regular diamond can be formed at room temperature in a lab setting, by just applying high pressures.

Read more: Graphite: to capitalise Australia needs to invest in conversion

The many ways to make a diamond

Diamonds have been synthesised in laboratories since as far back as 1954. Then, Tracy Hall at General Electric created them using a process that mimicked the natural conditions within the Earth’s crust, adding metallic catalysts to speed up the growth process.

The result was high-pressure, high-temperature diamonds similar to those found in nature, but often smaller and less perfect. These are still manufactured today, mainly for industrial applications.

The other major method of diamond manufacture is via a chemical-gas process which uses a small diamond as a “seed” to grow larger diamonds. Temperatures of about 800℃ are required. While growth is quite slow, these diamonds can be grown large and relatively defect-free.

Nature has provided hints of other ways to form diamond, including during the violent impact of meteorites on Earth, as well as in processes such as high-speed asteroid collisions in our solar system – creating what we call “extraterrestrial diamonds”.

Scientists have been trying to understand exactly how impact or extraterrestrial diamonds form. There is some evidence that, in addition to high temperatures and pressures, sliding forces (also known as “shear” forces) could play an important role in triggering their formation.

An object being impacted by shear forces is pushed in one direction at the top and the opposite direction at the bottom.

An example would be pushing a deck of cards to the left at the top and to the right at the bottom. This would force the deck to slide and the cards to spread out. Hence, shear forces are also called “sliding” forces.

Making diamonds at room temperature

For our work, we designed an experiment in which a small chip of graphite-like carbon was subjected to both extreme shear forces and high pressures, to encourage the formation of diamond.

Unlike most previous work on this front, no additional heating was applied to the carbon sample during compression. Using advanced electron microscopy — a technique used to capture very high-resolution images — the resulting sample was found to contain both regular diamond and Lonsdaleite.

In this never before seen arrangement, a thin “river” of diamond (about 200 times smaller than a human hair) was surrounded by a “sea” of Lonsdaleite.

The structure’s arrangement is reminiscent of “shear banding” observed in other materials, wherein a narrow area experiences intense, localised strain. This suggest shear forces were key to the formation of these diamonds at room temperature.

Tough nuts to crack

The ability to make diamonds at room temperature, in a matter of minutes, opens up numerous manufacturing possibilities.

Specifically, making the “harder than diamond” Lonsdaleite this way is exciting news for industries where extremely hard materials are needed. For example, diamond is used to coat drill bits and blades to extend these tools’ service life.

The next challenge for us is to lower the pressure required to form the diamonds.

In our research, the lowest pressure at room temperature where diamonds were observed to have formed was 80 gigapascals. This is the equivalent of 640 African elephants on the tip of one ballet shoe!

If both diamond and Lonsdaleite could be made at lower pressures, we could make more of it, quicker and cheaper.

Read more: Our ability to manufacture minerals could transform the gem market, medical industries and even help suck carbon from the air

– ref. We created diamonds in mere minutes, without heat — by mimicking the force of an asteroid collision – https://theconversation.com/we-created-diamonds-in-mere-minutes-without-heat-by-mimicking-the-force-of-an-asteroid-collision-150369

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

The inquiry into Australian Special Forces’ misconduct in Afghanistan has found evidence of war crimes involving 25 current or former Australian Defence Force personnel.

The inquiry found “credible information” of 23 incidents in which one or more non-combatants or prisoners of war “were unlawfully killed by or at the direction of members of the Special Operations Task Group, in circumstances which, if accepted by a jury, would be the war crime of murder”.

In a further two incidents, a non-combatant or prisoner was mistreated in a way that would be “the war crime of cruel treatment”.

Some incidents involved one victim, and in some there were multiple victims.

The inquiry found a total of 39 individuals were killed, and a further two cruelly treated.

The 25 current or former ADF personnel were perpetrators “either as principals or accessories” some of them on a single occasion and a few on multiple occasions.

None of the alleged crimes involved decisions made “under pressure, in the heat of battle”.

The inquiry has recommended the Chief of the Defence Force refer 36 matters to the Australian Federal Police for criminal investigation, relating to 23 incidents, and involving 19 individuals.

The inquiry, which examined conduct by the Special Forces between and 2005 and 2016 was conducted by Justice Paul Brereton. Prime Minister Scott Morrison last week announced the establishment of a special investigator’s office to prepare material for the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions.

While the report is damning specifically for the special forces operation in the prolonged Afghanistan war, it will cast a pall over the Australian military more generally.

It recommends Australia immediately compensate families of Afghan nationals unlawfully killed, without waiting for criminal liability to be established.

“This will be an important step in rehabilitating Australia’s national reputation, in particular with Afghanistan, and it is simply the right thing to do,” the report says.

It says although many members of the Australian Operation Task Group showed great courage and commitment, and the group had considerable achievements, “what is now known must disentitle the unit as a whole to eligibility for recognition for sustained outstanding service.”

“It has to be said that what this Report discloses is disgraceful and a profound betrayal of the Australian Defence Forces’ professional standards and expectations.”

The inquiry has recommended revoking the award of the Meritorious Unit Citation, “as an effective demonstration of the collective responsibility and accountability” of the group as a whole.

The investigation found that while commanders on the ground were involved, those higher up the chain did not know of the war crimes being perpetrated.

Among the evidence, the inquiry found credible information that “junior soldiers were required by their patrol commanders to shoot a prisoner, in order to achieve the sliders first kill, in a practice that was known as ‘blooding’”.

It also found that “throwdowns” (weapons and radios) would be placed with the body as a “cover story” for operational reporting and to deflect scrutiny.

“This was reinforced with a cone of silence.”

The report laid blame on culture, condemning the “warrior culture” of some SAS commanders in Australia.

The Chief of the ADF, Angus Campbell said at a news conference he “sincerely and unreservedly apologised” for any wrongdoing by Australian soldiers.

Campbell said he had accepted all 143 Brereton recommendations, dealing with culture, governance, and accountability.

– ref. Evidence of war crimes found against 25 Australian soldiers in Afghanistan – https://theconversation.com/evidence-of-war-crimes-found-against-25-australian-soldiers-in-afghanistan-150377

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Thwaites, Chair, Monash Sustainable Development Institute & ClimateWorks Australia, Monash University

As Australia plans its recovery from COVID-19, our strategies should be based on a broader set of priorities than we have used in the past.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), agreed to by all countries at the United Nations, provide a set of objectives and targets that can serve as a blueprint to “build back better” after the pandemic.

This week, a report card is being released on Australia’s progress toward achieving these goals. It also highlights the potential impact of COVID-19 on our ability to meet our SDG targets by 2030.

The report shows Australia is performing well in health and education but failing in climate, environment and areas linked to social inequality.

The good news is that trust in government has risen significantly since the pandemic began, no doubt reflecting in part Australia’s relatively good response to the crisis.

Australians are proud of what we have been able to achieve, and this trust and optimism will be needed as we try to tackle some of the stubborn challenges highlighted in the report.

Read more: We can build a more inclusive government and economy out of the pandemic — this blueprint shows us how

Why targets are critical

In adopting the SDGs, all countries (including Australia) recognised the need to take a long-term and integrated approach to national planning informed by data and evidence.

Central to this approach is the setting of economic, social and environmental targets for 2030, which help to provide clear signposts for where we want to go.

Targets are critical. They set the priorities and level of ambition, encourage a shift from short- to long-term thinking, provide investment certainty and mobilise people to collaborate to solve problems.

They also enable a clear picture of where we are on track or off track, and the scale and pace of change needed.

Read more: Australia falls further in rankings on progress towards UN Sustainable Development Goals

With only 10 years left to achieve the SDGs, Australia still lacks national targets for many of the specific goals and this is undermining our ability to plan effectively for our future.

The report card makes three important contributions:

1) it proposes an initial set of 2030 targets for Australia across economic, social and environmental indicators

2) it assesses Australia’s progress towards these targets over the past two decades, highlighting where we are falling behind and where accelerated action is needed

3) it evaluates the affects of COVID-19 on Australia’s capacity to achieve the SDGs.

Where Australia is falling behind

Our key findings in this week’s report show where Australia needs to focus its energies to meet our SDGs.

Social challenges

• Australians are living longer but are more obese and, since the pandemic, drinking more alcohol.

• Domestic violence has increased during COVID-19.

• Homicide rates have halved since 2000, yet the prison population has increased by 32% since 2006, with Indigenous Australians vastly over-represented.

• Women have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, experiencing more psychological distress and a greater chance of job disruption.

Environmental challenges

• Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions have declined only marginally since 2000 and little progress has been made since 2013. Australia is not on track to meet a 2030 emissions target consistent with the Paris Agreement objective to keep global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius.

• Australia’s per capita material footprint is one of the highest in the world — more than 70% above the OECD average — and rising.

• Hard coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef has declined and the number of species now threatened has increased since 2000.

Economic challenges

• Women, young people and those without high school qualifications are more likely to have had their employment disrupted by COVID-19.

• Australia’s relatively low levels of government debt will help in the COVID-19 recovery, yet household debt is well above the OECD average.

• Wealth inequality is getting worse with the share of household net worth of the bottom 40% of the population declining by 30% since 2004.

• Since 2012, middle-class wages and incomes have stalled.

• COVID-19 has stymied trade, foreign investment and skilled migration, prompting the need for new drivers of growth.

An opportunity for major policy changes

This report comes at a pivotal moment. All countries are facing a series of complex and related crises — a global health emergency, climate change, growing inequality, unemployment and biodiversity decline.

COVID-19 has reduced pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, but emissions are now returning to pre-COVID-19 levels.

And increased public deficits and debt may constrain governments’ abilities to address social and environmental challenges in the coming decade.

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

On the other hand, COVID-19 has given governments the chance to undertake much more significant interventions than previously thought possible.

Australia has a huge opportunity to design a recovery strategy that strengthens our resilience to future shocks, addresses many of the challenges of sustainable development that we have not properly dealt with, and ensures the country’s long-term, sustainable prosperity.

– ref. Australia is lagging on climate action and inequality, but the pandemic offers a chance to do better – https://theconversation.com/australia-is-lagging-on-climate-action-and-inequality-but-the-pandemic-offers-a-chance-to-do-better-149983

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Misha Schubert, Visiting Fellow at the National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science at the Australian National University, Australian National University

Australia’s chief scientist, Alan Finkel, will bring his five-year stint in the role to a close at the end of 2020. His successor will be Cathy Foley, a physicist and current chief scientist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), the national government research agency.

What legacy will Finkel leave behind? If there’s a defining theme to his time as chief scientist, it must surely be how he has drawn science and evidence more deeply into government policy-making. Among his many achievements in this vein, two key examples leap out.

Bringing scientists to public service

The first is the Australian Science Policy Fellowship pilot program. Based on a hugely successful US scheme run by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, this program recruits brilliant professionals from scientific, technical, engineering and mathematical (STEM) fields and places them in the federal public service. Now in its third successful year, the scheme has been embraced by 10 Commonwealth government departments.

The embedded scientists, technology experts, engineers and mathematicians not only bring their specific expertise into public service careers. They also bring the broad analytical skill set that is a hallmark of a high-quality STEM education. In STEM, you’re taught to question timeworn assumptions, pull things apart to understand how they really work, look at problems from fresh angles, and strive to innovate and improve things.

The program is a defining legacy for Finkel, who is himself an engineer by training, an entrepreneur by instinct, and a cross-disciplinary STEM leader by evolution.

Connecting government with research and expertise

The second example hails from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. As chief scientist, Finkel found himself fielding requests from government ministers for the latest expert scientific evidence about the coronavirus and the effects of the outbreak.

With a huge volume of research being undertaken at record speed, this was no small task. Finkel looked to leverage the collective brains trust of our nation’s learned academies and peak bodies, such as Science & Technology Australia (STA), to reach deep into our nation’s STEM workforce. (Disclosure: we are the president and CEO of STA, respectively.)

Read more: Bees, pesticides and … what are chief scientists for?

He created the Rapid Research Information Forum. It handled questions from ministers, swiftly crowd-sourcing leading experts to produce clear and concise guides to the emerging evidence. It is a model for future policy-making, and should be resourced as an ongoing vehicle for expert advice to complement the in-house work of the public service.

A complex balancing act

Finkel’s legacy also includes a vast amount of work on energy and education policy, and myriad reports, reviews and roadmaps to help the government navigate complex challenges by leveraging Australia’s STEM strengths.

He also created the STARportal, a digital treasure trove of STEM resources for parents and teachers to engage kids in STEM – especially girls. And his office has run campaigns such as Summertime Science, Science Superheroes, the Storytime Pledge, and STEMEverywhere to get the public more involved in STEM.

The chief scientist’s role is a complex balancing act. It demands great intellect, mastery of policy and political engagement, strong management of relationships with the STEM sector, expert media skills and the ability to communicate clearly to the Australian public.

Behind the scenes, the chief scientist is an advocate for science-informed policy, and an independent source of wise counsel to the prime minister and other ministers on science, technology and innovation. But they are also drawn into media and public debates about the role of science in any number of issues, requiring dexterous skill and a strong command of detail, nuance and politics.

Supported by his top-notch staff, Finkel racked up a catalogue of luminous speeches in the finest tradition of using formal speechcraft to stake out an agenda. He proposed many big and bold ideas, elegantly articulated with warmth, wit and historical anecdotes aplenty.

Read more: Chief Scientist’s address to the National Press Club: The voyage of science and innovation

A strong relationship with the prime minister has been one of Finkel’s greatest assets. Scott Morrison’s speech at the award ceremony for the Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science this year carried a special note of personal connection.

As well as thanking the thousands of scientists who kept us safe this year working on everything from vaccines to epidemiological modelling to ventilators and virus transmission, Morrison paid tribute to Finkel, noting his public service was far from over.

Stronger collaboration, more inspiration

Finkel’s successor will be physicist Cathy Foley. She is currently chief scientist for Australia’s national science agency, the CSIRO, where she has spent 36 years of her impressive career.

We can expect Foley to combine Finkel’s instincts for strong public engagement with the mastery of public service machinery that Finkel’s predecessor Ian Chubb displayed deftly in the role.

Foley is also impeccably connected across the STEM sector. She’s a former president and policy committee chair of STA, a fellow of two learned academies – the Academy of Technology and Engineering and the Australian Academy of Science – and a generous mentor to many young scientists and women in STEM through STA’s Superstars of STEM program.

What will her priorities be? Morrison has noted he would like her to drive stronger collaboration between industry and the science and research community to create jobs for the COVID-19 recovery and beyond.

Federal Science Minister Karen Andrews proposed Foley for the job and is herself a longstanding champion of women in STEM. Andrews said the new chief scientist would help Australia’s manufacturing sector leverage science and technology to strengthen our sovereign capabilities.

For her part, Foley has stated a strong desire to help the government draw on expert scientific advice, serve the nation, and inspire more young people – especially girls – into STEM.

She’s already off to an astute start – turning up at the media call to announce her appointment with gifts for Morrison’s two daughters to inspire in them an even deeper love of science.

Read more: We can’t let STEM skills become a casualty of COVID-19

– ref. As Australia’s chief scientist, Alan Finkel brought more science into government. His successor Cathy Foley will continue the job – https://theconversation.com/as-australias-chief-scientist-alan-finkel-brought-more-science-into-government-his-successor-cathy-foley-will-continue-the-job-150156

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alison McIntosh, Professor of Tourism, Auckland University of Technology

Prison food and fine dining aren’t usually mentioned together. But various initiatives around the world are changing that, with restaurants located within jails offering both culinary satisfaction and opportunities for positive social change.

Prison catering and dining programs aim to tackle re-offending and recidivism by offering inmates training and practical experience before they finish their sentences and re-enter society.

The success of various restaurants based in minimum- or medium-security prisons, including The Clink restaurants in the UK, the InGalera restaurant in Italy and INTERNO in Colombia, suggests a definite trend toward this form of responsible, socially conscious hospitality.

Britain’s Clink Charity operates four restaurants in working prisons in Brixton, Cardiff, High Down and Styal. All are registered catering colleges. Despite the security measures and no alcohol on the menu, we found these restaurants offer a dining experience comparable to any modern, stylish, fine dining establishment.

Brixton prison’s Clink restaurant consistently ranks in Tripadvisor’s top ten restaurants in London. The charity itself has received more than 60 awards since its first restaurant opened in 2009.

A hit with diners

The differences between conventional fine dining establishments and prison restaurants are obvious. But changing public perceptions of prisoners through prison dining programs is key to their wider rehabilitation.

The restaurants are usually staffed by prisoners with six to 18 months left on their sentences. They have completed restorative courses and are lower risk or chosen for their good behaviour.

Analysis of 3,951 Tripadvisor customer reviews of the four Clink restaurants shows diners reported great meals and professional and memorable experiences. They also appreciated the charity’s inspiring ethos. Comments include:

It is not every day that you get to dine in a category C prison, but I can strongly recommend it. A great concept where training and rehabilitation are the key drivers here — they deliver excellent quality food in a relatively relaxed environment. Well worth supporting.

Rehabilitation — new chances — go for it. Feelgood experience while enjoying superbly cooked and presented food. Great value. And it’s not just about supporting a good cause, you will appreciate the quality as well.

Although these restaurants lie within the walls of a prison, customers noted the warm welcome and the relaxed and friendly atmosphere during their visits, despite the initial security checks (including having to leave their phones and laptops outside).

Importantly, the prisoners staffing the restaurants came to be viewed less as inmates and more as trainee hospitality employees capable of delivering outstanding service.

Reducing reoffending

Gaining formal qualifications and training in prison restaurants, as well as having mentoring and support on their release, provides offenders with valuable skills, confidence, dignity and a work ethic that helps them on the outside.

Prison restaurant initiatives also help reduce recidivism. The Clink training programs — based on five stages from recruitment, training, in-prison support to employment and post-prison mentoring — have reduced the chance of a Clink graduate reoffending by 65.6%.

As Clink CEO Christopher Moore has explained:

The key to the success of The Clink Charity is that we are one of the only organisations to deliver a five-step integrated model, both sides of the wall.

A solution for New Zealand

Adopting the successful hospitality training model demonstrated by The Clink Charity should be considered for New Zealand. Our imprisonment rate is high by developed world standards, with a re-offending rate over 50%.

The low numeracy and literacy skills among New Zealand’s prisoner population, as well as general substance abuse and mental health issues, suggest an urgent need for innovative solutions to reoffending and reincarceration rates. It is widely accepted that education reduces recidivism rates.

Adding prison dining programs would build on existing opportunities for inmates. In 2018, 2,017 New Zealand prisoners gained 3,003 qualifications. Hospitality qualifications are offered in 13 New Zealand prisons, but there are few genuine equivalents to the Clink model beyond Rimutaka Prison’s participation in the Wellington on a Plate festival, and the Auckland Region Women’s Correction Facility cafe.

Creating change will be difficult, but prison dining programs have demonstrated success in increasing prisoners’ skills, social support and meaningful employment in the hospitality industry after release.

Furthermore, such programs provide restaurant goers with an opportunity to contribute to meaningful change and help break down stereotypes that hold former prisoners back from making a successful transition from cell to society.

– ref. Serving time: how fine dining in jail is helping prisoners and satisfying customers – https://theconversation.com/serving-time-how-fine-dining-in-jail-is-helping-prisoners-and-satisfying-customers-149161

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Esterman, Professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, University of South Australia

It’s been a busy week or so for news about COVID vaccines. First we heard preliminary clinical trial results from the Pfizer vaccine, then the Russian Sputnik V vaccine. This week, we heard about the Moderna vaccine. All these results were shared with the media, ahead of being peer reviewed and published in a journal.

As we expect preliminary results from more vaccine trials to be released in the coming weeks and months, it’s important to understand what’s behind these announcements, what news reports don’t tell us, and what researchers don’t yet know.

This can help us identify good news when we see it, be more critical of news reports, or delay our judgement until we have more information.

Read more: We may have to accept a ‘good enough’ COVID-19 vaccine, at least in 2021

1. Does the news report tell me what type of trial it is?

At this stage of the pandemic, trial results making the headlines are generally the interim results of late-stage clinical trials, known as phase 3. This is when a vaccine is given to thousands of people and tested for how well it works and whether it’s safe (more on these issues later).

In these trials, volunteers are randomised into two study arms, the vaccine arm (people who get the actual vaccine), and the placebo arm (people who get the placebo, usually an inert substance, such as a saline injection). However, some vaccine trials use vaccines against other diseases as the placebo.

So, ideally, media reports should mention how the vaccine results compare with the placebo or the comparator vaccine.

Read more: Explainer: how do drugs get from the point of discovery to the pharmacy shelf?

Before the vaccine gets to this stage it will have successfully completed smaller trials (phase 1 and 2). Often, clinical trial phases are combined. So you could have results from a trial that combines phases 1 and 2, or phases 2 and 3.

2. Does the media report mention safety?

As vaccines are mainly tested on healthy volunteers, it is extremely important to demonstrate the vaccine is safe.

Side effects (also called adverse events) are reported to an independent committee — usually with two or more experts in immunology and medicine as well as a biostatistician. It’s one of the jobs of this data monitoring committee to receive and examine reports of adverse events, and to look at interim results to determine whether the trial should continue.

Sometimes, if safety concerns are raised, a trial is temporarily halted while the committee investigates. This is what happened with the University of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine trial, which has since recommenced.

So any media report should mention how many people are affected by side effects, the type of side effects (common/rare, serious/minor), whether they were in people in the vaccine or placebo arm of the trial, and whether the data monitoring committee is investigating. Not all these details are available to the public.

Read more: Halting the Oxford vaccine trial doesn’t mean it’s not safe – it shows they’re following the right process

3. Does the media report mention how well the vaccine works?

Trial outcomes are measured at one or more interim time points, and at the end of the trial. This is another factor the data monitoring committee oversees.

For instance, the committee has rules about vaccine efficacy it applies part-way through the trial to work out whether the trial proceeds. So a rule might be something like “For the trial to continue, vaccine efficacy must be at least 60% after 25% of subjects have completed the trial”.

The types of results making the headlines currently come from this type of interim analysis. In other words, the committee will have assessed the results so far and will have given the trial a green light to proceed.

No phase 3 clinical trial has yet reported the full analysis from tens of thousands of study participants, but this will happen over the next few weeks.

Vaccine efficacy

Vaccine efficacy describes how well the vaccine offers protection against the target disease. The formulae and calculations can get quite complicated, so I will only give a simple example here.

One measure is based on the “attack rate”, which is the proportion of the people in the trial diagnosed with COVID-19. We measure the attack rate in the vaccine arm and the placebo arm separately, then divide one by the other to give the “attack rate ratio”. We then subtract the attack rate ratio from 1 to get one measure of vaccine efficacy.

For example, if 5% of the vaccine arm are diagnosed with COVID-19, while 40% of the placebo are diagnosed, then the attack rate ratio is (5%/40%) or 0.125 or 12.5%. That gives a vaccine efficacy of 87.5% (100% – 12.5%).

Read more: Pfizer vaccine: what an ‘efficacy rate above 90%’ really means

Immune response

Some vaccine trials report how well the immune system responds (immunogenicity). For example, the University of Oxford/AstraZeneca trial has reported the antibody response as well as several other measures of immunogenicity.

Some trials only report on immunogenicity. This allows the trial to be smaller, shorter, and less expensive than vaccine efficacy trials, as they use immunogenicity as a surrogate for vaccine efficacy.

Although efficacy is the preferred endpoint for vaccine trials, some regulating authorities accept evidence of immunogenicity to authorise a vaccine.

Vaccine effectiveness

Vaccine effectiveness describes how well the vaccine offers protection against the target disease in the real world, rather than in a controlled clinical trial. Vaccine trials usually include healthy volunteers, but often don’t tell us how well the vaccine works in children, elderly people, or those with compromised immune systems.

Reported vaccine efficacies of 90-95%, as we’ve heard recently, may sound impressive. However, under real-world conditions, the vaccines are likely to offer much less protection in some population groups.

Read more: 5 ways our immune responses to COVID vaccines are unique

4. What else do I need to know?

Current trials are reporting whether or not a vaccine prevents COVID-19 (in other words, symptoms), not whether it prevents the infection itself.

However, a recent media report about the Pfizer vaccine says it is likely to prevent 50% of infections, as well as 90% of symptomatic COVID-19.

If the vaccine has 90% efficacy, then 10% of vaccinated people could still get the symptomatic disease. We would hope these people would have a much milder illness, but we don’t know if this is the case.

We also don’t know how long immunity lasts or if there are any long-term side effects.

All we can do now is wait with patience for the full phase 3 trial results to come in over the next few weeks.

– ref. How to read results from COVID vaccine trials like a pro – https://theconversation.com/how-to-read-results-from-covid-vaccine-trials-like-a-pro-149916

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan Pears, Senior Industry Fellow, RMIT University

Renters will no longer have to contend with poorly insulated homes and Victoria will move closer towards 7-star home efficiency standards under a A$797 million plan announced this week. It’s purportedly the biggest energy efficiency scheme in any Australian state’s history.

Energy efficiency essentially means using less energy to perform the same job. It’s often the quickest and cheapest way to reduce emissions from energy use, yet state and federal governments in Australia have traditionally done little to seize the opportunity.

Australia’s national energy productivity plan, agreed by the nation’s energy ministers in 2015, has stalled. It aims for a 40% improvement in energy productivity by 2030, but has so far achieved only a fraction of that.

It’s clearly time to kickstart the energy efficiency revolution in Australia – to reduce energy bills, make homes more comfortable and meet our climate goals. So let’s examine Victoria’s plan, and how other states might follow.

Better homes, lower bills

The Victorian package is strongly focused on helping renters and low-income households in existing homes, and forms part of the state’s 2020-21 budget.

The measures include:

• A$335 million to replace old wood, electric or gas-fired heaters with more efficient systems. The program will be open to low-income earners

• A$112 million to seal windows and doors, and upgrade heating, cooling and hot water in 35,000 social housing properties

• minimum efficiency standards for rental properties, expected to benefit renters living in around 320,000 homes with poor heating and insulation

• funding to help Victoria move to 7-star efficiency standards for new homes

• a A$250 payment for those struggle to pay their bills

• A$14 million to expand the Victorian Energy Upgrades program, including rebates for “smart” appliances.

The package follows a A$5.3 billion announcement earlier this month to build 12,000 new social and community housing units over four years. These new homes will meet a 7-star energy rating, rather than the mandatory 6 stars.

A new approach

To date, energy efficiency policies and programs in Australia have mostly focused on new and owner-occupied homes. These homes are easy targets, because they’re on separate titles and don’t involve negotiations with owners’ corporations or landlords.

So Victoria’s program helps to fill a big gap. Currently, the average Victorian home has a 3-star energy rating, so there is plenty of room for improvement in existing homes. The approach will ensure renters, and those in homes already built, see the benefits of energy efficiency. And it means emissions reductions are realised across the residential sector.

In the past, policy in this area has largely been debated on narrow economic assessments of “cost effectiveness”. And in my experience, powerful industry groups and political agendas seek to slow progress behind closed doors, while consumers often lack a voice in decision-making.

Both the Victorian government announcement, and progress at the COAG level, follow advocacy from social justice groups and Energy Consumers Australia (ECA) building on academic research (eg https://www.ahuri.edu.au/research/final-reports/338 ). These groups have helped highlight how poor housing affects vulnerable people, causing high energy bills and health problems.

Read more: Australia has failed miserably on energy efficiency – and government figures hide the truth

In February 2019, COAG agreed to a national plan towards zero-net-energy new buildings for Australia. In November that year it resolved to extend the plan to existing homes. Proposed measures include national frameworks for use by states and territories, covering energy disclosure at the time of a home’s sale or lease, and minimum energy efficiency requirements for rental properties.

Victoria’s commitment this week to introduce minimum energy standards for rental properties puts it at the forefront of this process.

The Victorian government had earlier developed a Residential Efficiency Scorecard suitable for rating homes under an energy disclosure scheme assessment tool. So far it’s been rolled out as a voluntary scheme and been trialled in other states.

In Melbourne, a 7 star building would require around 25% less heating and cooling energy than a 6 star home.

Of course, the devil is in the detail. When will energy disclosure and rental energy standards be introduced? How stringent will the standards be? Will there be sufficient focus on improving summer performance to cope with climate change? Will old gas appliances be replaced by alternatives that use renewable electricity? How much of the package will be implemented before Victoria’s next election in late 2022? Time will tell.

Time to get on board

Other Australian states and territories, including NSW, the ACT and South Australia, have introduced impressive energy efficiency measures. The ACT, in particular, has had a mandatory energy disclosure scheme at time of sale for many years. And NSW is introducing a scheme to encourage a reduction in peak electricity demand.

Action by individual states and territories may encourage other jurisdictions to follow. However different energy efficiency approaches across states may dilute benefits while increasing confusion among households and complicating life for industry. This must be guarded against.

In June, the International Energy Agency released a global “green recovery” plan to help economies recover from the pandemic. Many of the millions of new jobs created through the plan would be in retrofitting buildings to improve energy efficiency. Increasing energy efficiency would also improve electricity security, lowering the risk of outages.

But globally, improvements in energy efficiency have slowed in recent years, making it harder to curb climate changes. The federal government, so far fixated on a “gas-led” path out of recession, must also get on board the energy efficiency wagon.

Read more: House hunters are rarely told the home energy rating – little wonder the average is as low as 1.8 stars

– ref. Renters in Victoria soon won’t have to deal with dodgy heaters and insulation. Now other states must get energy-efficient – https://theconversation.com/renters-in-victoria-soon-wont-have-to-deal-with-dodgy-heaters-and-insulation-now-other-states-must-get-energy-efficient-150358

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julia E. Morris, Senior Lecturer, Visual Arts Education, Edith Cowan University

The COVID pandemic has meant many students learnt from home for a lot of the year. But with schools returning to normal across Australia, how will students readjust from learning at the kitchen table (or couch, or bedroom) to being at desks and chairs in classrooms?

We conducted a study to find out how primary school students feel about different types of classroom furniture.

The students we spoke to clearly explained the reasons why they prefer certain types of furniture. They know furniture can suit their physical and learning needs, and they talked about how they actively set up their own environments to get them ready for learning in the way they know works best for them.

Teachers and students have the opportunity to think about how the learning environment can be re-imagined to best support students’ (and teachers’) needs.

What do classrooms look like?

Research shows three quarters of primary and secondary students in Australian and New Zealand schools learn in traditional classrooms. The majority of these classrooms have uniform desks and chairs facing the teacher at the front of the room. This type of classroom is a hangover from the industrial revolution.

While some teachers can teach well in such traditional settings, evidence suggests more flexible learning environments are associated with deeper learning. Deep learning is when students go beyond learning facts. They instead apply knowledge to their context, using critical and creative thinking skills to engage in learning they are curious about.

Read more: Knowledge is a process of discovery: how constructivism changed education

Flexible learning environments have a range of furniture options including ottomans, stools, multi-height chairs and different height tables. A mix of private retreat spaces and public group spaces means the teacher is everywhere — there is no front to the classroom.

What students say about classroom furniture

We are conducting a three-year industry-funded study investigating how flexible furniture affects student learning in primary school classrooms.

We surveyed 300 students in Years 3 to 6. About 93% said flexible furniture helped them learn better.

The most popular types of furniture were high tables with height adjustable stools, round or triangular-shaped tables that promoted collaboration, and soft seating like ottomans.

Students said having options meant they could choose furniture to meet their physical and other learning needs.

More than half (54%) of students said comfort was the main reason for their furniture selection. They preferred furniture where they could adjust their position if working in one place for long periods of time.

They also liked it when the furniture could suit their body types or manage injuries. One student said he preferred a higher table with a stool because it “helps my back because its strait [sic] and you can’t wobble on it”.

Another said about a multi-height table:

… [it] allows me to either stand or sit while being comfortable.

Students also chose furniture they said helped them learn better. They preferred furniture they could move to support concentration, and facilitate independent and collaborative work.

Students said they made decisions about the arrangement of furniture to manage their behaviour in class. One student told us:

It helps me to stay focused because I have to turn my head to socialise with my friends and if I do that too much my neck will start to hurt.

Portable furniture was also important for students who felt they had extra energy to burn. Small bounces on a gym ball while working helped some relax and stay focused.

Read more: Kids spend nearly three-quarters of their school day sitting. Here’s how to get them moving — during lessons

Flexible furniture helps teachers too

Teachers spend more time talking at the students, and delivering content, when they are facing the students sitting at rows of desks.

But flexible furniture allows teachers to use more student-centred ways of teaching. This means they give students more autonomy to be active learners, participating in collaboration with peers or leading their own work.

In our study, we noticed teachers spent more time giving instructions to the whole class when using the traditional furniture arrangement. But when flexible furniture was available they gave instructions to smaller groups, making it easier to tailor specific tasks to students and help those who may need it.

Read more: Explainer: what is inquiry-based learning and how does it help prepare children for the real world?

The type of teaching in classrooms with flexible furniture aligns with educational outcomes such as those in the Alice Spring (Mparntwe) Education Declaration, which call for students to become autonomous, confident learners.

We also found teachers felt they built better relationships and trust with students when they were working in flexible furniture arrangements.

While we don’t yet have enough evidence to say using flexible furniture results in higher student achievement, it is clearly a factor that affects students’ learning experience.

– ref. Group tables, ottomans and gym balls: kids told us why flexible furniture helps them learn – https://theconversation.com/group-tables-ottomans-and-gym-balls-kids-told-us-why-flexible-furniture-helps-them-learn-150069

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Roslyn Petelin, Course coordinator, The University of Queensland

This week, it was announced two types of Allen’s lollies, Red Skins and Chicos, will be known from January 2021 as Red Ripper and Cheekies.

The Swiss-headquartered Nestle Corporation decided the original names did not express their brand values, presumably because of the racist connotations of redskins (Native Americans) and chicos (Latin Americans).

But don’t be surprised if the Nestle marketing department requests a further name change. As the Daily Mail reported, “Red Ripper” was the moniker of a notorious Soviet criminal, Andrei Chicatilo, responsible between 1978 and 1990 for the violent deaths of 52 women, some of whom he ripped apart.

Haven’t you heard of Google?

Nestle is not the only corporation neglecting to Google before using language that causes offence.

Two episodes of the Emmy-award-winning children’s show Bluey were removed from the ABC streaming platform iview and subsequently edited after a complaint from a viewer about the racial connotations of the term “ooga booga”.

The viewer pointed out the Macquarie Dictionary defines “ooga booga” as a “stereotypical rendering of what the speaker regards to be the language of those deemed by them to be African savages”.

In an apology, the ABC and Ludo Studios said they were unaware of the term’s potentially derogatory meaning and was only intended as “irreverent rhyming slang often made up by children”.

The term “ooga booga” connotes primitivism and superstition. In B-grade movies, when uttered by a witch-doctor, it could mean anything at all and saved any more complex scriptwriting.

Read more: Explainer: what is systemic racism and institutional racism?

The racism or otherwise of the term today is, however, entirely dependent on context. Today, it can be considered a satirical term for the inauthentic representation of indigenous people as savages.

When the leading Indigenous art collective proppaNow exhibited works under that title, they used it critically to play on the absurdity of various traits attributed to Aboriginal people by white Australians.

But if used to deride a culture itself, it is profoundly offensive.

Our changing norms

Noddy’s golliwogs have been exiled, as has the “n” word in Huckleberry Finn and elsewhere. Enid Blyton’s Faraway Tree children Fanny and Dick were renamed Frannie and Rick — raising the ire of many devotees and sending them scrambling to second-hand bookshops for early editions.

Discriminatory language — in the form of ageist, classist, racist, and sexist expressions — has long been unacceptable in Australia and other parts of the world. The Black Lives Matter movement has dominated the headlines this year, raising awareness of racism in word and deed.

But why has it taken so long for American food companies such Quaker Oats and Dreyer Icecream to feel the pressure to rename Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix and Eskimo Pie? Aunt Jemima, based on a black “mammy”, is disappearing altogether and Eskimo pie is now called Edy’s.

One part of the world that has not seen the necessity to rename products with racist connotations is mainland China. One of south east Asia’s best-selling toothpaste brands is “Darlie”. From 1933 to 1989 there was a “k” where the “l” now is, constituting a longstanding racial slur against African Americans.

Colgate Palmolive must have been aware of how disgustingly racist the name was when they bought into the company in 1985. It took them four years to change the English name — but the Chinese language name still translates to “black people toothpaste”.

Language shapes our world

Of course, the Allen’s lollies’ name change has been called unnecessary by some critics, who have derided “political correctness” and “cancel culture”.

In recent years these movements have been allied to “wokeness”, which has also been subjected to derision, though its concern is being attentive to important issues —especially issues of racial and social justice.

George Orwell’s 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language, focused on the political dangers of not caring for language. Language is everyone’s business.

Surely our stance should encompass empathy, respect and civility? In the quest for this empathy, these name changes are a small but important step forward.

– ref. Renaming of Red Skins and Chicos is a shaky step towards leaving discriminatory ideas in the past – https://theconversation.com/renaming-of-red-skins-and-chicos-is-a-shaky-step-towards-leaving-discriminatory-ideas-in-the-past-150178

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

The findings of the inquiry by Justice Paul Brereton into the misconduct – including allegations of murder of non-combatants and mistreatment of prisoners – by Australian special forces in Afghanistan are released on Thursday.

Scott Morrison last week warned these findings will be “difficult and hard news” for Australians.

The leadership of the Australian Defence Force will drive a program of reform in the wake of behaviour that puts a deep blemish on what the ADF and most Australians see as the nation’s proud military tradition.

Allan Behm, from The Australia Institute, an expert on defence and security issues and a former senior public servant and ministerial adviser, joined the podcast on the eve of the release to discuss the background to the report.

“I think it is going to be quite shocking for many of us. And I think … we will feel a sense of shame.”

“It will get many people to think about issues of moral hazard. It will certainly get people to think about what kind of administrative and organisational arrangements within the Australian Defence Force permitted this to happen.”

“I think it will cause a lot of Australians to think quite deeply about the moral peril that we expose young soldiers to in warfare.”

If reports are true “that prisoners were shot dead, that noncombatants were simply ‘wasted’, to use the language of warfare, as collateral damage in pursuit of military objectives, many, many ADF people will be very perturbed by that.”

Asked about the culture of these soldiers, Behm described the special forces as “elites”. “Elites can be highly problematic,” he says.

In the wake of the report, there will be the question of whether special forces are needed, he said.

If they are to be retained, “the second thing will then be to decide whether we need to have the special forces quarantined, separate from the rest of our forces … or whether the special forces should be more clearly part of our standing army.”

Having the special forces work across a wider base within the military could “militate against the formation of uncontrollable elites or rogue elements”.

“And there’s history to be dealt with.

“I mean, we have a regiment which is highly decorated and highly recognised. At the same time, it is this regiment and this function, which … has brought this shame upon us.

“And that will require a lot of evaluation.”

Additional audio

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

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Defence expert Allan Behm on the background to the Brereton report – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-defence-expert-allan-behm-on-the-background-to-the-brereton-report-150384

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

South Australian Premier Steven Marshall today announced a six-day “circuit breaker” lockdown to try and snuff out the state’s COVID outbreak.

From midnight Wednesday, residents will be asked to stay in their homes. Hospitality venues will shut, as will schools and universities. Construction will grind to a halt and exercise won’t be allowed outside the home.

The only permitted reasons to leave home are to shop for food or medicine, or for essential health care. Elective surgery will be paused, except for urgent operations.

There are now 22 cases linked to the cluster that emerged from hotel quarantine, and a further seven suspected cases.

Why lockdown?

While this may seem like an overly cautious approach to a cluster that isn’t yet as big as we’ve seen in other places, I think it’s a wise move.

This is how lockdowns should be used. Indeed, the World Health Organisation advocates lockdowns as a way to buy precious time while other essential public health measures are mobilised, such as contact tracing and widespread testing. The focus here is on preventing a rise in cases, unlike the lockdown in Melbourne where the cases had already taken off widely in the community and it was about turning the wave around.

We’ve seen the virus in this particular cluster spread very rapidly. In just two weeks it has spread through five generations — that is, to five “rings” beyond the initial case.

We’ve also seen cases passed on through quite casual contact, via a pizza shop in the suburb of Woodville.

The state’s chief health officer, Nicola Spurrier, said:

This particular strain has […] a very, very short incubation period. That means when somebody gets exposed, it is taking 24 hours or even less for that person to become infectious to others, and the other characteristic of the cases we have seen so far is they have had minimal symptoms and sometimes no symptoms but have been able to pass it on to others.

This short incubation period and rapid spread is why the government has opted for a six-day lockdown, giving the space to put out the spot fire while protecting the wider community, and especially high-risk settings and vulnerable populations where cases numbers can escalate rapidly with serious consequences.

Also, as Spurrier said, the cases so far have had no, or very mild, symptoms. So this six-day window allows the testing of close and casual contacts to be completed so the cases that are out there become visible to the health department.

The decision to restrict exercise altogether is strict, but warranted in my view. The rationale is similar to putting a wide range of people into isolation, as they don’t yet know where the edge is of the current cases, or the full extent of exposure. The rationale for the extension of restrictions beyond Adelaide and surrounds to the whole state is less clear at this stage.

If it protects the population from an escalation of cases, then six days without outdoor exercise will ultimately be better for physical and mental health than longer strict rules, even with some exercise allowed.

Significant restrictions will remain after the six days, but not full lockdown, according to the state’s Police Commissioner Grant Stevens.

Read more: South Australia’s COVID outbreak: what we know so far, and what needs to happen next

The good news

The good news is there have been no mystery cases so far. All positive cases have been linked back to hotel quarantine at the Peppers Waymouth Hotel (known as a “medi-hotel” locally).

Testing rates have been very high. Some 5,300 tests were done on Monday, and more than 6,000 on Tuesday. This number of tests is comparable to three or four times that number in a larger city like Melbourne. Local residents have been very patient in queuing up to get tested, sometimes for several hours.

South Australia’s contact tracing team hasn’t really been severely tested during the pandemic. But the team has received extensive training and is reportedly robust, having been given the tick of approval from Chief Scientist Alan Finkel’s recent review into Australia’s contact tracing, published last Friday.

Read more: Exponential growth in COVID cases would overwhelm any state’s contact tracing. Australia needs an automated system

More than 4,000 people have been quarantined already, including not just contacts, but contacts of contacts, and even beyond that to ensure “casual contacts” are also followed up and tested. This is a sign of a rapid and strong public health response.

What needs to change?

Before this cluster, testing was not mandatory for hotel quarantine staff — although this has now changed to compulsory weekly testing.

This is a positive step, but in my view we should ideally start testing hotel quarantine staff daily.

Getting a nasal swab every day is quite intrusive, so I think we could use saliva tests instead. Yes, they don’t have quite the same level of sensitivity as the “gold standard” PCR tests based on nose and throat swabs, but they’re more tolerable for frequent testing.

Saliva samples can also be efficiently managed if pooled together, and if there’s evidence of a positive test in the broad sample, individual samples can then be checked. Testing early and often is the best approach.

We also need to get serious about resourcing our hotel workers. Spurrier confirmed some workers had worked at multiple sites. This obviously increases the risk of the virus spreading through the community — we saw this with some aged-care staff working across multiple venues in Victoria.

We need to prevent workers from needing to work across multiple sites, by paying them more. Even if they’re not working full-time, they need to be paid as such to ensure they don’t need to take on extra work and increase the risk of spreading the virus to other workplaces. This goes for all staff — security staff as well as cleaners. Cleaners have a very important job and are particularly vulnerable.

I’d like to see national guidelines crafted for hotel quarantine. Today there is national agreement on weekly testing, but I think this should be a minimum. Infection control protocols and monitoring, and pay rates with accompanying sole employment rules also need to be considered. It’s an issue that isn’t going to go away, and it’s an important gap that needs to be filled.

Read more: How’s your life under lockdown? Tweets tell the tale of how neighbourhoods compare

– ref. South Australia’s 6-day lockdown shows we need to take hotel quarantine more seriously – https://theconversation.com/south-australias-6-day-lockdown-shows-we-need-to-take-hotel-quarantine-more-seriously-150368

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Haskell-Dowland, Associate Dean (Computing and Security), Edith Cowan University

Last week, the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) issued warnings to Australian health-care providers that it had observed an increase in cyber incidents targeting the sector.

These attacks seem to be aimed at infiltrating networks and burrowing deep into their infrastructure before deploying further attacks.

The ACSC is tasked with improving Australia’s cyber security posture, and provides advice and support to help ensure Australia is a secure place to live and work. As part of its warning, the ACSC flagged the possibility of “ransomware” being deployed, which could disable critical systems unless a ransom is paid. In a hospital or other health-care facility, this could be a life-threatening situation.

Attacks against the health-care sector are dangerous at any time. But when services are under pressure from COVID-19, and information-sharing (including tools such as contact tracing) is increasingly important, an all-out cyber attack against the health sector could be very damaging.

The current threat

The ACSC guidance identifies two significant threats.

The first is the SDBBot Remote Access Tool (often referred to as a RAT), whereas the second is a ransomware tool named Cl0p. While neither is desirable, the combination of the two is particular concerning in a health-care setting.

SDBBot Remote Access Tool (RAT)

A RAT is a piece of malicious software designed to allow criminals to remotely access and control one or more systems in an organisation. Once run, the SDBBot RAT installs itself, downloads additional components and deploys the remote-access capability.

Once fully installed, criminals will often use a compromised computer to explore other systems – a technique often referred to as “pivoting”. As the criminals move through the network, they often take the opportunity to make copies of sensitive data. This can be a valuable asset to use for coercion, blackmail or even sell through the underground economy.

Cl0p ransomware

Having the SDBBot RAT successfully deployed enables other attacks – one of the most concerning is that of ransomware. While not an inherent feature of SDBBot, a frequent consequence of infection is the subsequent deployment of the Cl0p ransomware.

Ransomware generally encrypts an organisation’s files or data so they are no longer accessible. Recovering the files typically involves paying a ransom, often in Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency.

In October, German company Software AG faced a US$20 million ransom demand after a Cl0p ransomware attack. In this incident, the criminals claimed to have more than a terabyte of stolen data, including emails, financial records and even scanned copies of passports. This data trove was published online when the company failed to pay the ransom.

This is an example of an increasingly common tactic referred to as “double extortion”, in which not only is data stolen and held to ransom, but there is the added threat the data will be posted in public or auctioned to interested parties. The threat of public exposure of the breach, coupled with the potential release of confidential data, can often encourage organisations to pay the ransom.

Potential consequences

A recent ACSC report on ransomware in Australia identified the health-care sector as the most targeted, by a significant margin. This is perhaps not surprising, given the sector’s lack of training, lax security practices and chronic underinvestment in technology and digital infrastructure.

Health-care providers face two significant consequences of cyber compromise. First, personal or sensitive data are valuable to criminals. Having such data leaked online is embarrassing and has significant legal implications for the organisation and the government.

A second, more serious, consequence can be seen when a ransomware attack impacts critical systems. The most notable example in recent years was the Wannacry attack in 2017 that targeted the UK National Health Service, among others.

The NHS suffered a major outage over several days following the Wannacry ransomware attack, resulting in thousands of operations and appointments being cancelled. Wannacry was estimated to have cost billions of dollars globally, with the UK NHS spending close to US$100 million to recover and strengthen its cyber defences.

A ransomware incident earlier this year in Germany had deadly results. When ransomware crippled a hospital in Dusseldorf, an emergency patient was sent to another facility instead. She died, and her death has been attributed to the delay in treatment.

Australia has had similar incidents in the past. Last year saw seven hospitals affected by a ransomware attack.

Read more: Defending hospitals against life-threatening cyberattacks

Should we be worried?

Cyber attacks are a constant threat, and most organisations are well aware of the risks to their business operations, intellectual property, sensitive data and reputation.

But in the health-care sector the stakes are higher. Losing data can cost lives, and patient records being stolen is a breach of privacy that can have long-lasting effects for the patient.

With systems intertwined and dependent on each other, just one compromised target can have major implications.

Interestingly, the Cl0p Leaks website (only available on the dark web through the TOR web browser) features the following reassuring statement in relation to hospitals – perhaps showing an ethical streak to the criminal group.

Cyber criminals are usually motivated by profit. Ransomware attacks work because individuals within organisations make mistakes. When combined, there is a strong motivation for criminals to continue these actions and for organisations (and us) to continue to pay to clean up the mess that’s left behind.

– ref. Australian hospitals are under constant cyber attack. The consequences could be deadly – https://theconversation.com/australian-hospitals-are-under-constant-cyber-attack-the-consequences-could-be-deadly-150164

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katrina Raynor, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Hallmark Research Initiative for Affordable Housing, University of Melbourne

The Victorian government has announced the big social housing investment for which housing advocates, industry groups, academics and social service providers have been clamouring for decades.

The A$5.4 billion “Big Housing Build” aims to create over 12,000 homes in four years. Of these, 9,300 will be social housing. The rest will be affordable or market-rate housing. The program will replace 1,100 old public housing units.

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

The headline programs include:

• $532 million to build on public land, including six “fast start” sites, resulting in 500 social housing homes and 540 affordable and market homes

• $948 million to spot-purchase homes, projects in progress or ready-to-build dwellings from the private sector, adding 1,600 social housing and 200 affordable homes

• $1.38 billion for community housing projects to build up to 4,200 homes

• $2.14 billion for “new opportunities” with private sector and community housing providers, producing up to 5,200 homes.

Up to $1.25 billion will go into regional Victoria, which is welcome.

In addition, $498 million was announced in May to refurbish and build public housing.

Just how big is the Big Housing Build?

A target of 9,300 new social housing units over four years is definitely “big” by recent Victorian standards. The state’s social housing stock grew by just 12,500 dwellings over the past 15 years – about 830 dwellings a year.

The only comparable investment in Australia in the past two decades was the Commonwealth’s $5.6 billion Social Housing Initiative in 2009. This post-GFC stimulus program built around 19,700 social housing dwellings and repaired 12,000.

Is it enough?

No. It will take a long time and continued commitments of a similar scale to overcome the massive shortages in Victoria and Australia.

Victoria has a history of spending less on social housing per person than the rest of Australia.

University of Melbourne research estimated a 164,000 shortfall in social and affordable housing in Victoria in 2018. The Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute estimated an extra 166,000 social units would be needed by 2036.

Read more: Australia needs to triple its social housing by 2036. This is the best way to do it

The Big Housing Build aims to increase social housing dwellings in Victoria from 80,500 to about 89,000 – about 3.5% of all housing. That’s still less than the Australian average of 4.2% and the OECD average of 6%.

What the scheme gets right

This program leans heavily on the use of state and local land to reduce the cost of the new housing. My colleagues and I have previously pointed out the large swathes of “lazy” government land across Victoria that could be used for this.

Read more: Put unused and ‘lazy’ land to work to ease the affordable housing crisis

Offering $1.38 billion in competitive capital grants for community housing providers is also substantially more cost-effective for government than models that rely on private finance and provide an operating subsidy to providers. It appears the entire amount will be spent on supporting construction, rather than on creating a seed fund that drip-feeds investment returns into the not-for-profit sector like the Social Housing Growth Fund does.

Victoria is also joining Canada and the state of California in spot-purchasing homes from the private sector in response to COVID-19. This will deliver social housing quickly. It will also support developers in a depressed market while capitalising on lower prices.

The focus on victim-survivors of domestic violence, Indigenous Australians and people living with mental health conditions is welcome too.

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

Remaining concerns

Privatisation of social housing

This announcement continues trends across Australia to shift social housing provision from a state responsibility (public housing) to a more partnership-based model led by community housing providers (community housing).

This approach can leverage substantial contributions from other sectors in the form of land, capital, skills and ideas, producing exemplary outcomes. An example is the Education First Youth Foyer partnership, which is changing how “at risk” young people access housing, education and other services.

However, complex arrangements between multiple partners, especially when using private finance, can be inefficient and costly. Such partnerships are often opportunistic rather than strategic, with priority given to commercial over social outcomes. Community housing residents have less tenancy rights than those in public housing and sometimes pay more of their income on rent.

An emphasis on mixed-tenure developments can lead to cherry-picking of “acceptable” tenants and destroy tightly knit communities. Previous public housing renewal programs based on private sector involvement left a legacy of poorly integrated communities and loss of public land for negligible gains in social housing. We cannot afford to make those mistakes again.

Read more: Social mix in housing? One size doesn’t fit all, as new projects show

Lack of a strategic plan

The program comes with a new government agency, Homes Victoria, and the promise of a ten-year policy and funding framework. This level of strategic leadership has been lacking in Victoria and will require bipartisan support. Strong partnerships with local councils will also be needed.

Good policy depends on many elements, including:

• research
• housing targets with geographical and population-group breakdowns
• transparent decision-making
• clearly identified funding streams and responsible agencies
• shared definitions
• monitoring and evaluation mechanisms
• clear time frames
• integration with other policy areas and levels of government.

These elements appear to still be a work in progress for the Big Housing Build. The risk is that this announcement will follow Australia’s pattern of “lumpy” funding and inconsistent policy on social and affordable housing.

Without long-term funding streams, providers find it hard to to scale up, make strategic decisions, invest in internal capacity and plan development pipelines. Without overarching strategy and monitoring, Victoria’s lacklustre history of social housing provision may continue.

Read more: Ten lessons from cities that have risen to the affordable housing challenge

Reduced community engagement

Planning approvals for larger social housing developments will be streamlined. In many cases, the state will take over final decision-making from local government. This will reduce opportunities for community consultation and the state government will need to work hard to ensure high-quality design is integrated into developments.

Where to from here?

As COVID-19 has made clear, everyone needs a home and society benefits from caring for those in need. The speed with which governments moved to house rough sleepers, a seemingly intractable problem before COVID, shows homelessness and severe housing stress can be overcome.

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

The Big Housing Build is not perfect and will not solve Victoria’s huge housing challenges on its own. It must be the start of regular cycles of funding to sustain social housing in Victoria. It should also be tied to longitudinal evaluation of outputs and an aligned research agenda to shape best-practice outcomes.

And powers-that-be in Canberra, the list of partners in this program has a large federal-government-shaped gap. When are you going to come to the party?

– ref. Victoria’s $5.4bn Big Housing Build: it is big, but the social housing challenge is even bigger – https://theconversation.com/victorias-5-4bn-big-housing-build-it-is-big-but-the-social-housing-challenge-is-even-bigger-150161

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

The Productivity Commission’s report on mental health, released earlier this week, prompted headlines emphasising the huge economic cost of mental ill-health and suicide in Australia.

The commission estimated the direct economic costs at between A$43 billion and A$70 billion, with an additional A$151 billion due to the cost of disability and premature death.

While there have been many reports on mental health reform in the past, this one is different. The Productivity Commission looks at issues through an economic rather than a health lens. Its remit in producing the report was to examine “the effect of mental health on people’s ability to participate in and prosper in the community and workplace, and the effects it has more generally on our economy and productivity”.

This meant the report covered the impact of mental ill-health on the whole of Australian society and the role of all levels and sectors of government in helping to alleviate it.

The recommendations

While this economic lens inevitably involved an analysis of costs, the report’s real significance is in the more than 100 “actions” the commission recommended the federal, state and territory governments take.

Besides the health sector, these recommended actions involve families, schools, tertiary education, workplaces, income and employment support, insurance, criminal justice, police, housing and Indigenous communities. This breadth of coverage reflects the huge impact of mental ill-health right across Australian society, and acknowledges a whole-of-government, and indeed whole-of-society, response is needed.

Read more: Coronavirus has boosted telehealth care in mental health, so let’s keep it up

This extraordinary breadth makes it hard to summarise the recommendations briefly, but there are some key themes that stand out:

• the commission has recognised mental ill-health often has its origins early in life, and action for prevention and early intervention is needed in families, preschools and schools

• telehealth and online services are likely to become increasingly important. This is an area where Australia is already a world leader, but the report recommends a major integration and expansion of these approaches

• tertiary educational institutions are recommended to see mental health as central to their mission. This includes the need for better services for international students.

• mentally healthy workplaces are vital, with recommendations covering psychological health and safety, employers’ duty of care, workers’ compensation claims, and standards for employee assistance providers

• the report recognises the higher risk of mental ill-health and suicide among Indigenous Australians, with recommendations on empowering Indigenous communities and including a role for traditional healers

• there is recognition of the poor physical health and substantially reduced life expectancy of people with severe mental illnesses, with recommendations for improved physical health care

• the importance of social factors in mental illness is reflected in recommendations on reforms in housing, justice and income support.

Read more: If Australia really wants to tackle mental health after coronavirus, we must take action on homelessness

An overarching theme behind all the recommendations is the need for better data and evaluation. In the past, large sums of public money have been spent on programs that have never been properly evaluated or, when they were evaluated, found not to deliver the expected benefits. The commission urges all innovations be rigorously evaluated before being rolled out.

Where to from here?

If the commission’s recommendations were fully implemented, Australia would be the undisputed world leader in mental health reform. The cost of implementation is inevitably a barrier, but the commission has done the hard-nosed economic analysis and concluded the benefits outweigh the costs.

The report estimates the recommended reforms would deliver up to A$18 billion in benefits per year, mainly from improvements to people’s quality of life, plus a further A$1.3 billion a year from increased economic participation and productivity. These benefits would require up to A$4.2 billion of expenditure per year.

Many of the recommended actions, such as giving Australians the right to choose their preferred mental health specialist and the recognition of mental health advance directives by state and territory governments, cost little or nothing, as they merely represent better ways of doing things we already do.

Read more: 3 in 4 people with a mental illness develop symptoms before age 25. We need a stronger focus on prevention

The danger is governments will see the recommended actions as a menu from which they choose a few items at budget time. Over the past 20 years, Australia has been through a piecemeal process of lobbyist-led reform, in which ministers fund particular programs that make good “announceables” when an election or budget rolls around.

This approach has failed to improve Australians’ mental health. What we need is unified support from the mental health sector, and the community more generally, for the commission’s recommendations as a total reform package.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

– ref. The Productivity Commission says mental ill-health costs Australia billions — it’s time for a proper investment in making things better – https://theconversation.com/the-productivity-commission-says-mental-ill-health-costs-australia-billions-its-time-for-a-proper-investment-in-making-things-better-150184

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Manu Saunders, Lecturer, University of New England

From ethereal kelp forests off the south east Australian coast to grassy woodlands and their stunning wildflowers, many ecological communities are under threat in Australia.

But national environment legislation — the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act — has so far been ineffective at protecting them.

In our recent paper, we identify a major flaw in the current approach to listing threatened ecological communities for protection under the EPBC Act: the requirement to meet unrealistic condition thresholds.

In other words, where areas of a community do not meet these specific minimum thresholds, they’re considered too degraded to warrant conservation and aren’t protected under the EPBC Act.

What’s an ecological community anyway?

An ecological community is a group of species that co-exist in a specific type of habitat and interact with each other. For example, a mangrove community is clearly different in structure and the types of plants and animals is supports, compared to what you would see in a salt marsh community nearby.

Just like individual species, ecological communities can occur over thousands of kilometres, even though examples of this type of community may only be found in small and patchy areas across that range.

There are currently 85 threatened ecological communities listed in the EPBC Act, and the majority of them are listed as critically endangered or endangered.

Major threats to these communities include land clearing and development, which can increase their risk of extinction.

Read more: How drought-breaking rains transformed these critically endangered woodlands into a flower-filled vista

For example, less than 5% of the box gum grassy woodlands remain in good condition. This critically endangered community is home to a number of threatened plant and animal species, such as the spotted-tailed quoll, but many areas have been degraded and cleared for farming, threatening their survival.

The flaw in the law

Most listings of threatened ecological communities contain very specific “condition thresholds”. These thresholds were introduced to the legislation in 2005 in an effort to prioritise habitats considered higher quality.

Condition thresholds are usually defined in consultation with experts and often involve very specific descriptive characteristics, such as minimum patch sizes or numbers of species.

If areas of a community do not meet these specific minimum thresholds, it means a landholder doesn’t require approval to clear or develop parts of a community, if those parts are perceived to be “poor quality” habitat.

For example, the condition thresholds for Coolibah-black box woodlands suggest protection only applies to woodland patches larger than five hectares. This ignores the ecological importance of smaller patches that increase the connectivity of habitat in the landscape.

What’s more, condition thresholds make it hard to justify conservation funding to restore areas that don’t meet those criteria.

Unrealistic thresholds threaten wildlife

This is bad for biodiversity conservation in Australia for two reasons.

First, excluding examples of a threatened ecological community from protection because they don’t meet restrictive condition thresholds assumes these areas have no ecological value.

This is clearly a flawed assumption, as small, disturbed or degraded remnants can still be important to conservation. They could, for instance, be a target for restoration, a source of regeneration for nearby areas of the community as part of a larger natural corridor, or a habitat for threatened species.

Let’s take the critically endangered ecological community of the Cumberland plain woodland in the Sydney Basin as an example. Only 9% of the woodlands’ original extent remains today.

Despite providing habitat for threatened squirrel gliders, bats, and land snails, urban development in areas containing the woodland were continually approved during the 2000s — a death by a thousand cuts for the species and communities in patchy conditions.

Second, restrictive condition thresholds aren’t appropriate for conservation and management of communities that naturally change over seasons and years. This is particularly a problem for dynamic ecosystems like wetlands that cycle through natural dry and wet phases.

Wetlands can support completely different groups of plant and animal species in different phases, from waterbird breeding events when they are wet, to kangaroos and butterflies when they are dry.

Read more: Why a wetland might not be wet

These dynamic systems rarely exist in a state that would warrant protection under the restrictive thresholds.

For example, the listing for upland wetlands of the New England tablelands and the Monaro plateau excludes farm dams and domestic water storages.

This is a problem, because most remaining examples of these wetlands are on private property and almost all have been modified by humans in some way, including damming. Few of these modified wetlands would technically qualify for protection.

Yet some of these modified wetlands still support diverse plants and animals and are important sites for migratory waterbirds, such as Latham’s snipe.

Because this threatened community has such a small distribution and very few examples remain (only 58 lagoons are left in the Northern Tablelands), excluding even a few because of unrealistic condition thresholds greatly increases their risk of extinction.

New attitudes in a changing world

It’s clear governance frameworks have struggled to keep up with the changes in ecosystems that human activity causes.

Read more: Climate-driven species on the move are changing (almost) everything

These frameworks are often based on a flawed assumption: that natural systems remain essentially the same over time. To prevent further biodiversity loss, we need better understanding of how, when and why ecological communities shift between different states.

Importantly, we need to change our approach to environmental governance frameworks, including seriously rethinking condition thresholds in the EPBC Act, to ensure we can continue to protect biodiversity as it rapidly changes before us.

– ref. We found a huge flaw in Australia’s environment laws. Wetlands and woodlands will pay the price – https://theconversation.com/we-found-a-huge-flaw-in-australias-environment-laws-wetlands-and-woodlands-will-pay-the-price-150083

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian R. Camilleri, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, University of Technology Sydney

Christmas is a time of celebration, relaxation and gift giving.

But choosing gifts can also make it a time of stress and anxiety. The wrong gift can actually do more harm than good.

Here is some advice, based on decades of research, on how to side-step such pitfalls.

Why do we give gifts?

Research into the psychology of gift-giving suggests there are two goals to consider when giving someone a gift.

The first is to make the recipient happy. That mostly depends on whether the gift is something they want.

The second is to strengthen the relationship between giver and recipient. This is achieved by giving a thoughtful and memorable gift – one that shows the giver really knows the recipient. Usually this means figuring out what someone wants without directly asking.

You can see the conundrum.

To get someone the gift they most desire, the obvious thing to do is ask. This approach can achieve high marks on desirability. But it is set up to fail on communicating thoughtfulness.

The following graphic illustrates the problem (with myself as the example recipient).

The best kind of gift is one both desired by the recipient and is thoughtful. For me this might be a custom t-shirt printed with an in-joke.

The worst kind of gift, on the other hand, is neither desired nor thoughtful. For me, this might be a pair of socks.

Then there are desirable but unthoughtful gifts, such as cash, and undesired but very thoughtful gifts, which for me would be officially naming a star in my honour. I love astronomy but this just isn’t for me.

Read more: We’re not as Grinchy as we think: how gift-giving is inspired by beliefs-based altruism

Navigating social risk

This is why buying a gift can be so anxiety-inducing. There is a “social risk” involved.

A well-received gift can improve the quality of relationship between giver and recipient by increasing feelings of connection, bonding, and commitment. A poorly received gift can do the opposite.

This has been shown by research. A 1999 study asked 129 people to describe in detail a situation in which they had received a gift. Ten people reported gifts that weakened the relationship. Two people actually ended the relationship after the gift.

How much does the thought count?

Research also shows people tend to overestimate their ability to discern what a recipient will like, and therefore what gifts will lead to a strengthening of the relationship.

A 2011 study asked respondents to think back to either their own wedding or a wedding to which they were a guest. Gift recipients were asked to rate how appreciative they were of gifts either listed on the gift registry or not. Guests were asked to estimate how well they thought gifts were received.

Gift recipients strongly preferred gifts on their list. However, gift givers tended to wrongly assume unsolicited gifts (those not on the registry) would be considered more thoughtful and considerate by their intended recipients than was the case.

Gift givers also tend to overestimate that more expensive gifts will be received as being more thoughtful. But it turns out gift recipients appreciate expensive and inexpensive gifts similarly. In reality, they actually feel closer to those who give convenient gifts, such as a gift certificate to a nearby ordinary restaurant rather than a distant upscale restaurant.

The psychology of cash

What about simply giving cash?

After all, the recipient can buy exactly what they most desire. But cash is considered unthoughtful because it requires no effort and seems to put a dollar value on the relationship.

In Chinese cultures, cash is given in a red envelope to decommodify the money by literally enveloping it in a symbol of good luck. If you’re going to give cash, think about doing it creatively, such as through clever origami or in some other way that personalises it. This will show a degree more thoughtfulness.

The closest alternative to cash is the gift card. The main benefit is that it requires some effort and allows some thoughtfulness in the selection of which gift card to purchase. Nevertheless, the research suggests the gift card is often reached for as a last resort.

Read more: No presents, please: how gift cards initiate children into the world of ‘credit’

The best gift of all

If you want to have a wrapped gift under the Christmas tree and haven’t been tipped off on exactly what the recipient wants, go for something practical with a personalised touch. If you really are struggling, then a thoughtful card together with a flexible gift card is a safe option.

But the main takeaway from the psychology of gift-giving research is that, if your goal is to strengthen your relationship with the recipient, give them an experience.

A 2016 study asked people to give a friend either a “material” or “experiential” gift (valued at $15). Material gifts included things such as clothing. Experiential gifts included things such as movie tickets. Recipients of the experiential gifts showed a stronger improvement in relationship strength than recipients of the material gifts.

The most precious gift you can give a loved one, though, is actually quite simple: quality time. In a 2002 study involving 117 people, more happiness was reported from family and religious experiences than from events where spending money and receiving gifts was the focus.

So this Christmas, grab a drink, sit down and have a conversation. Get to know each other. If done well, come next Christmas, you’ll both know exactly what gift to get each other.

– ref. How to choose the right Christmas gift: tips from psychological research – https://theconversation.com/how-to-choose-the-right-christmas-gift-tips-from-psychological-research-149739

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

In his first overseas trip since the COVID-19 pandemic, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has finally concluded a Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA) with Japan. Australia is only the second country in 60 years to reach such an arrangement with Japan’s Self-Defence Forces (SDF).

By undertaking his 24-hour visit to Tokyo, Morrison became the first foreign leader to personally meet Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga in Japan. That Morrison made such an effort, which will require two weeks of quarantine upon his return, shows how important the strategic partnership between the two countries has become.

Morrison was scheduled to visit Papua New Guinea on the return trip. He was forced to cancel due to PNG’s latest political crisis, which has destabilised the government of Australia’s largest Pacific neighbour.

Morrison was also the first foreign leader to call and congratulate Suga when he succeeded Shinzo Abe in September.

The prime ministers then held online meetings prior to this visit. This included the ASEAN-related series of virtual summits, which concluded last weekend with the online signing of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) trade agreement.

Read more: We’ve just signed the world’s biggest trade deal, but what exactly is the RCEP?

Strengthening defence ties

Morrison’s visit was presaged by ministerial visits to Tokyo last month. Foreign Minister Marise Payne came for the second foreign ministers’ summit of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue between Japan, the United States, Australia and India. This meeting also approved Australia’s participation in the Malabar naval exercises held by India after a 13-year hiatus.

Defence Minister Linda Reynolds then met Suga’s new defence minister, Shinzo Abe’s younger brother Nobuo Kishi. This was important preparation for the Reciprocal Access Agreement, as Japan agreed the Australian Defence Forces (ADF) could come under the protection of Japan’s SDF. This is part of the collective self-defence legislation passed by the Abe government in 2015. Australia is the only country after the United States to be so covered.

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

Morrison’s latest trip to Japan, the second after the G20 Osaka summit last year, continues the now well-established practice of annual reciprocal visits between Australian and Japanese prime ministers. These leadership summits have incrementally upgraded the level of co-operation between the ADF and SDF, formally approving security pacts such as the 2007 Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation and the 2010 Access and Cross-Servicing Agreement, which was revised in 2017.

Morrison has invited Suga for his first official prime ministerial visit to Australia next year, to formally sign the RAA.

… and regional security

The ADF and SDF have co-operated in peacekeeping since the 1990s. The SDF also regularly participates in military exercises in Australia, such as Kakadu and Talisman Sabre, and in joint naval patrols in the South China Sea.

Since 2018, the airforce has been conducting surveillance flights from Japanese bases to enforce sanctions against North Korea. It also undertook air combat training exercises at Hokkaido in 2019. By authorising an even higher level of integrated operational capability, the RAA will now allow ADF units to be stationed in Japan, and the SDF in Australia.

Japan has had a Status of Forces Agreement with the US since 1960. It has long caused friction among local Japanese communities over the burdens of the US military presence, particularly in Okinawa, where most US forces in Japan are based.

Negotiations for the RAA have dragged out for six years. The sticking point was potential application of the death penalty to ADF personnel if they commit capital crimes while off duty in Japan. It is still unclear whether the jurisdiction of Japanese law will apply, with only a commitment from both sides to address such issues on a case-by-case basis.

From the Japanese perspective, there may also be concerns over co-operating with the ADF in potential combat situations, after the investigation into alleged war crimes committed by ADF Special Forces in Afghanistan.

Despite any such misgivings, ratification of the RAA by Japan should proceed fairly smoothly, given the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s majority in both houses of the Diet. However, the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party and the Japanese Communist Party are still likely to raise concerns over whether the RAA undermines the pacifist ideals of Article 9 of the Japanese constitution.

Trade promising, but ‘travel bubble’ less so

On other matters raised by Morrison’s visit, establishing a pre-vaccine “travel bubble” with Australia now seems unlikely. This is due to a recent spike in coronavirus cases in Japan.

Australians stranded in Japan because of Australia’s strict pandemic travel restrictions also hope more efforts will be made to help them return home.

Japan has long been Australia’s second-largest trading partner, so there were hopes it might pick up some of the slack for the loss of Chinese export markets.

In meetings with Japanese business leaders in Tokyo, Morrison insisted carbon capture and storage will still allow Australian LNG and “clean” coal exports to “evolve” and supply Japan’s energy market.

To take advantage of Suga’s recent declaration in his maiden policy speech of Japan’s net-zero emissions target by 2050, Morrison also promoted Australian hydrogen exports.

Ammonia-based fuel exports could have even more long-term potential. However, it will be a challenge to crack the emerging Japanese renewables market, which is likely to be primarily domestically supplied through wind and solar power.

The intensification of the Australia-Japan alliance is a further development of the “minilateral” approach by Indo-Pacific middle powers to improve their security ties. This in turn helps resist rising Chinese hegemony.

It is also a reflection that their US alliance partner has become less reliable, wrought with its internal divisions and political turmoil.

Read more: Hopes of an improvement in Australia-China relations dashed as Beijing ups the ante

In his first call with President-elect Joe Biden, Suga reconfirmed the defence of Japan under the US-Japan Security Treaty covers the Senkaku Islands (claimed as the Diaoyu Islands by China).

Morrison has not yet made a similar commitment, but could be pressed to do so, given this latest deepening of the defence relationship.

In this time of geopolitical flux, Japan and Australia have taken another step closer towards a formal military alliance.

– ref. Morrison’s Japan trip yields defence pact, but travel bubble less certain – https://theconversation.com/morrisons-japan-trip-yields-defence-pact-but-travel-bubble-less-certain-149985

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kliti Grice, John Curtin Distinguished Professor of Organic and Isotope Geochemistry, Curtin University

Chemical clues left behind by humble microbes have rewritten the timeline of one of the biggest mass extinction events in Earth’s history.

The so-called “end-Triassic mass extinction”, thought to have occurred just over 200 million years ago, wiped out swathes of prehistoric creatures both on land and in the oceans. It was prompted by the breakup of the supercontinent Pangea, which triggered massive volcanic activity that flooded the atmosphere with carbon dioxide and acidified the oceans.

But our new research, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests these cataclysmic events actually happened later than previously thought.

We made this discovery by examining molecular fossils — trace chemicals derived from microbial “mats” that bathed in prehistoric waters.

A likely story

Traditionally, scientists have placed the mass extinction event, and the volcanic upheaval that presaged it, at about 201 million years ago.

They came to this conclusion after studying rocks of that age from the Bristol Channel, UK, which show a distinctive chemical signature. The ratios of different isotopes of carbon within these rocks suggest this was the moment when the global atmosphere changed, as huge amounts of methane were pumped into the skies due to massive volcanic activity covering the central Atlantic, in turn altering the chemical composition of rocks that formed during this time.

But we made a discovery that challenged this assumption. We found evidence of ancient microbial mats in the same region, at the same time. It was these flourishing communities of microbes that actually created the change in the chemical signature of the rocks, rather than a global volcanic event.

These microbial mats formed as the region’s waters changed from salty seawater to brackish or fresh water, and water levels dropped to puddle-like centimetre depths. This is another reason why scientists mistook this event for a mass extinction — marine creatures disappeared from the local fossil record at this time not because they had all died out, but because it was no longer marine.

Of course, the world’s marine creatures had only earned a relatively brief reprieve. We know the volcanic cataclysm did occur, but just not as long ago as previously assumed.

Read more: Elementary new theory on mass extinctions that wiped out life

Still going strong

Remarkably, the microbial mats recorded in UK samples are similar to living microbial mats in Australia, such as in Western Australia’s Shark Bay. It’s amazing to think similar microbial communities are still living on Australia’s shorelines to this day.

Microbes have also been useful resources in research to learn about several other mass extinction events too, such as the “Great Dying” that marked the end of the Permian period roughly 252 million years ago, and the dramatic demise of the dinosaurs in a mass extinction some 66 million years ago.

For example, pigments and lipid remains from microbial mats found in the Chicxulub crater in the Gulf of Mexico — formed by the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs — show that photosynthetic processes had bounced back within 200,000 years of the impact.

Microbial mats also have helped to preserve an amazing range of fossil evidence from prehistoric animals, including soft tissues, red blood cells and chemical clues to ancient animals’ diets.

A warning from prehistory

While we don’t know exactly how much later the global end-Triassic mass extinction event actually occurred, what we can say is that our research sounds a stark warning for potential future mass extinctions on Earth.

The end of the Triassic Period featured huge environmental shifts, including declines in biodiversity, ocean acidification, reduced oxygen levels, habitat destruction, nutrient shifts and changing sea levels.

Knowing more about these changes will provide crucial information that could help understanding the threats our own ecosystems face today, and potentially help safeguard them for the future.

Read more: Triassic mass extinction may give clues on how oceans will be affected by climate change

– ref. How chemical clues from prehistoric microbes rewrote the story of one of Earth’s biggest mass extinctions – https://theconversation.com/how-chemical-clues-from-prehistoric-microbes-rewrote-the-story-of-one-of-earths-biggest-mass-extinctions-150170

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Darren Pennay, Campus Visitor, ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods, Australian National University

Election polling has had a torrid time in recent years.

Prominent examples of the polls performing below expectations include the United Kingdom’s 2015 general election, the 2016 Brexit referendum and the United States’ 2016 presidential election.

Read more: How did we get the result of the US election so wrong?

The dust is yet to settle on how well the polls performed in the recent US election, but the highly respected Pew Research Center is reporting that by the end of counting, the polls will likely have overestimated the Democratic advantage by about four percentage points.

Closer to home, we saw the below par performance of national election polls during the 2019 federal election. All of these showed Labor had the support of the majority of Australian voters.

Yet, the Coalition went on to win with 51.5% of the vote compared to Labor with 48.5%, almost the mirror opposite of what the final polls found.

After the election, the polls attracted widespread criticism.

In response, the Association of Market and Social Research Organisations and the Statistical Society of Australia launched a joint inquiry into the performance of the polls, which I chaired.

This involved trying to obtain primary data from the pollsters, assembling the sparse information in the public domain and finding additional data sources to inform our report.

What went wrong in 2019?

The inquiry found Australian election polling had a good track record, by and large.

Across the ten federal elections since 1993, Australian pollsters had a 73% success rate in “calling the right result” with their final polls. The comparable success rate of US pollsters over a similar period was 79%, according to fivethirtyeight.

Australian pollsters had an even better track record in more recent times with 25 out of 26 final polls from 2007 to 2016 calling the right result, a phenomenal 96% success rate.

So what went wrong in 2019? With limited cooperation from the pollsters themselves, the inquiry identified a number of factors.

Conditions for polling, as reflected in response rates for surveys, got a lot harder. The report documents a decline in response rates for typical telephone surveys from around 20% in 2016 to 11% in 2019, with the polls likely to be achieving much lower response rates than this.

Read more: Outrage, polls and bias: 2019 federal election showed Australian media need better regulation

This recent fall in response rates was part of a longer term decline, coinciding with the increasing take-up of lower cost polling methodologies (predominately online and robopolling) and pressure on polling budgets.

It also seemed to be the case — perhaps lulled into complacency by a long period of relative success and a mistaken belief that compulsory voting made Australia different — that our pollsters did not heed the lessons emerging from the polling reviews into 2015 UK and 2016 US elections. These identified unrepresentative samples (in the UK) and the failure of many polls to adjust for the over-representation of college graduates (in the US) as primary reasons for poll inaccuracies.

Systemic polling failure in Australia

The inquiry found no compelling evidence for the “shy conservative” theory — that people were afraid to admit their true intentions to pollsters — as a possible explanation for the performance of the polls in 2019. It also found no compelling evidence of pollsters being deliberately misled by respondents, or a comprehensive late swing to the Coalition that may have been missed by the polls.

But we did find the polls most likely over-represented people who are more engaged in politics and almost certainly over-represented persons with bachelor level degrees or higher.

Both of these factors are associated with stronger levels of support for the Labor Party and were not reduced by sample balancing or weighting strategies.

So, the performance of the polls in 2019 had the hallmarks of a systematic polling failure rather than a one-off polling miss. The pollsters were stung into action with several announcing their own internal reviews. They also launched an Australian Polling Council,

with the aim of advancing the quality and understanding of public opinion polling in Australia.

What needs to change

With the next federal election possible as soon as August 2021, the need for reform of polling standards in Australia is urgent.

The main recommendations from our inquiry are as follows:

• a code of conduct: the development of the code could be led by the pollsters, but also informed by other experts, including statisticians, political scientists, the Australian Press Council and/or interested media outlets. Disclosure requirements for pollsters would be fundamental here — as well as how these are monitored, and how compliance is ensured. The code should be made public so it can hold pollsters, and those reporting on the polls, to account. It would make polling methods, and their limitations, more transparent. This will help foster more realistic expectations of polling.

• methodology: pollsters need to investigate and better understand the biases in their samples and develop more effective sample balancing and/or weighting strategies to improve representativeness. Weighting or balancing by educational attainment seems promising, and the report suggests several other variables for further experimentation such as health status, life satisfaction and past voting behaviour.

• conveying uncertainty: currently, polls are usually published with a “margin of error”. This isn’t good enough — it is often inadequately calculated and inadequately reported. Pollsters need to use more robust methods for conveying the variability associated with their results. In addition, pollsters should routinely report the proportion of respondents who are “undecided” about their vote choice and identify those who are only “leaning” towards a particular party.

• get media outlets onside: Australian media organisations should comply with and actively support any new code of conduct.

• provide educational resources: educational resources about polling methods and standards should be developed and made available to journalists, academics and others who use the results.

Election polling plays such an important role in informing decisions and shaping expectations ahead of elections. Time is running out to learn the lessons of 2019. Rapid implementation of our recommendations is vital.

– ref. How can Australia reduce the risk of another ‘systemic polling failure’? – https://theconversation.com/how-can-australia-reduce-the-risk-of-another-systemic-polling-failure-149984

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Barbara Mintzes, Associate professor, School of Pharmacy and Charles Perkins Centre, University of Sydney

As the world continues to battle COVID-19, the prospect of a vaccine gives us hope of returning to some kind of “normal” in the not too distant future.

The Australian government has signed supply agreements with manufacturers of four COVID vaccines currently in clinical trials. Assuming one or more meets the requirements for safety and effectiveness, everyone will be able to be vaccinated for free.

However, as vaccine supply will be limited at least initially, the government has specified certain groups that will take priority to receive vaccines first. These include people at higher risk of exposure to COVID-19 (such as health-care workers), and those who are more vulnerable to severe disease (such as older people).

At the same time, the head of the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), John Skerritt, has noted manufacturers will also be able to sell vaccines privately:

We live in a free market economy […] There’s nothing stopping companies as long as they have the TGA approval to put that vaccine on the market in Australia.

Read more: 90% efficacy for Pfizer’s COVID-19 mRNA vaccine is striking. But we need to wait for the full data

This arrangement reinforces the status quo of Australia’s health system: a public health system with a private market on the side. But COVID is not the status quo. It’s a global public health emergency that has already claimed more than 1.3 million lives.

Allowing people to jump the queue via the private market is a bad idea, for several reasons.

1. A private market puts wealth ahead of need

Those most likely to buy the vaccine privately are those who have not been deemed at high enough risk to receive the vaccine for free until later on, but have the means to do so (we don’t know yet how much it might cost).

Prices are often higher in the private sector because public drug schemes benefit from their size and bargaining power to keep prices low, which could lead vaccine manufacturers to prioritise private sales. If companies set aside a portion of their limited supply for private sales, people who need the vaccine the most, such as health workers and older people, may have to wait longer.

If there are exceptions where people who don’t fall into the priority categories need a vaccine, such as for essential travel to a country that mandates vaccination as a condition of entry, the answer is to build in flexibility through special access requests, not private sales.

2. People buying privately may not get the vaccine they need

Several vaccines may come onto the market, and we don’t yet know if all will be equally effective for everyone. For example, it’s possible a particular vaccine won’t work as well in older people.

The allure of private sales may lead companies to promote their vaccines, in turn affecting which one a patient gets. Drug companies have a long history of intensive marketing to doctors, often casting a wide net in terms of who they suggest might benefit. In the case of the opioid epidemic, these practices have been associated with serious harm to patients.

Companies cannot advertise prescription-only products, including vaccines, to the public in Australia. But they can run unbranded disease awareness campaigns that indirectly promote products to consumers, often through emotional images and appeals.

3. Follow-up may be poorer

COVID vaccine development is moving very quickly, with shorter pre-market testing than a vaccine would normally have. This makes it all the more important to keep careful track of who receives the vaccine, any health problems they experience, and longer-term effectiveness. Uncoordinated private provision creates extra logistical challenges for follow-up.

Read more: Why we should prioritise older people when we get a COVID vaccine

4. Private supply may be impractical

As an example, Pfizer’s mRNA-based vaccine must be stored at -80℃. Special cold chain management is not easy for any provider, but is likely better handled by larger-scale providers set up to deliver COVID vaccines.

Further, all COVID-19 vaccines are likely to require at least two doses. Especially if supply is limited, it may become challenging to make sure private patients get their second dose. And delays or missing the second dose will likely lead to lower effectiveness.

An issue of equity

Some 40 countries have joined the World Health Organisation’s Solidarity Call to Action to support equitable global access to COVID-19 health technologies. Similarly, the COVAX initiative, which Australia supports, provides direct funding for vaccine access in less advantaged countries.

Echoing the principles of these initiatives, Prime Minister Scott Morrison told the United Nations in September:

[…] it’s a moral responsibility for a vaccine to be shared far and wide. Some might see short-term advantage or even profit, but I assure you, to anyone who may think along those lines, humanity will have a very long memory, and be a very, very severe judge.

Given this moral responsibility, why allow wealthier Australians to jump the queue? The planned public rollout of free COVID-19 vaccines for all is laudable. The main rationale for a parallel private system is “short-term advantage or even profit”, to borrow the prime minister’s words. Let’s not go there.

Read more: Creating a COVID-19 vaccine is only the first step. It’ll take years to manufacture and distribute

– ref. You may be able to buy a COVID vaccine ahead of the government rollout. But jumping the queue comes at a price – https://theconversation.com/you-may-be-able-to-buy-a-covid-vaccine-ahead-of-the-government-rollout-but-jumping-the-queue-comes-at-a-price-149972

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Komesaroff, Professor of Medicine, Monash University

Australian health minister Greg Hunt said recently the government is on track to deliver COVID-19 vaccines from March 2021.

US biotech firm Moderna has just announced its COVID-19 vaccine has 95% efficacy, following on the heels of Pfizer’s claimed 90% efficacy and the Russian Sputnik V vaccine’s 92% efficacy, albeit based on limited data and yet to be peer-reviewed.

We’ll likely see more preliminary results from other vaccine trials reported in the media in coming weeks and months.

While an effective vaccine will provide the best chance of controlling the disease, it is sadly not so simple. No vaccine will be perfect or end the pandemic instantly. The first vaccines are also likely to have significant limitations.

The issue is how good a vaccine is good enough? We also need to think about what imperfections we — as individuals, regulators or governments — will be prepared to accept.

How safe is safe enough?

Safety is obviously the major concern. Vaccines are designed to be given to very large numbers of healthy people. This means even an extremely rare, serious adverse event, when applied to a population of millions, can produce major harm.

Short-term trials on small population samples relative to the numbers expected to receive the vaccine may also not be able to pick up relatively rare but important risks. This is a problem we may not be able to avoid because the only way to find out is to give the vaccine to large numbers of people and then allow long periods of time to elapse, for any long-term adverse events to become evident.

Obviously, all therapeutic agents carry the possibility of adverse effects and in individual cases decisions have to be made about whether the potential benefits justify taking the risks. It is arguable that the extreme dangers associated with COVID-19 justify accepting a higher level of risk for the vaccine. However, while the US and Australian regulatory authorities have broad guidelines relating to vaccine safety, neither has issued guidelines regarding the levels of risk that are considered justified for a coronavirus vaccine, and there has been only limited public debate on this subject.

Read more: Who pays compensation if a COVID-19 vaccine has rare side-effects? Here’s the little we know about Australia’s new deal

How effective is good enough?

Efficacy — the vaccine’s ability to produce clinical and public health benefits — is also uncertain.

Ideally, a vaccine should prevent any person who receives it from catching the disease. However, at least with the first vaccines, it is likely the benefits will be more limited. For example, they may slightly reduce the severity of the illness, or they may only benefit a small subset of the population. No current trials are looking at purely whether the vaccine will reduce the chance of dying from COVID-19 of individuals in specific risk groups.

In fact, different clinical trials have different “efficacy end points”, including (among others) effects on susceptibility to infection, severity of disease, time to recovery and mortality, in different age and population groups.

There is no guarantee vaccines under development will provide significant protection for those in most need, such as people in older age groups or those with existing medical conditions. Not all trials are specifically recruiting such participants and there is a real possibility benefits will not extend to them. In other words, a clinical trial might show “efficacy” in a formal sense but might not solve the key problems we are facing in the real world.

Read more: Pfizer vaccine: what an ‘efficacy rate above 90%’ really means

Earlier this year, the US Food and Drug Administration said it would only consider approving vaccines that “prevent disease or decrease its severity in at least 50% of people who are vaccinated”. Australia’s equivalent, the Therapeutic Goods Administration, has not issued any similarly precise guidance.

How equitable is good enough?

Access and distribution of any vaccine pose major problems. Some of these are built into the nature of the product itself.

For example, vaccines like the mRNA vaccine developed by Pfizer that need to be transported and stored at around -70℃, will have limited utility in low and middle income countries with limited health infrastructure and in rural and remote communities all over the world – meaning other vaccines may need to be found for these populations.

Read more: Keeping coronavirus vaccines at subzero temperatures during distribution will be hard, but likely key to ending pandemic

The role of minorities in relation to clinical studies of therapeutic products in the US is very uneven, in terms of participation, exposure to risk and access to benefits. There is a serious chance that in the search for a COVID-19 vaccine those least likely ultimately to receive the final product will be the ones who carry the greatest risk. This creates a possibility the social divisions already exposed by the COVID crisis will be further exacerbated.

Further, while there has been widespread acknowledgement of the need for access and supply of COVID vaccines to poorer nations there is no legal structure to ensure this and no guarantee it will actually happen.

Read more: Australia’s just signed up for a shot at 9 COVID-19 vaccines. Here’s what to expect

Where to next?

A number of COVID-19 vaccines will likely become available during 2021 that offer either limited protection from infection or lower the risk somewhat of severe disease. However, these benefits may not necessarily be for those most at risk.

Robust regulatory systems, and independent scrutiny of clinical trial results, mean COVID-19 vaccines will likely be safe in the short-term. However, no-one will know about long-term risks and distribution may be limited, for logistic, economic and cultural reasons.

Even if we develop a “good enough” vaccine, there are no guarantees. Although many will be prepared to chance the first vaccines, many others will refuse them, despite government attempts at persuasion.

So herd immunity via vaccination, which for the coronavirus requires effective immunisation of at least two-thirds of the population, will remain a long way away.

This means strategies to reduce the spread, such as physical distancing, use of face masks and hand hygiene and, where necessary, rigorous quarantine measures, will be with us for some time.

– ref. We may have to accept a ‘good enough’ COVID-19 vaccine, at least in 2021 – https://theconversation.com/we-may-have-to-accept-a-good-enough-covid-19-vaccine-at-least-in-2021-148168