It would be a waste if the Friday’s mammoth Retirement Incomes Review was remembered only for its finding that increases in employers compulsory superannuation contributions come at the expense of wages.
These are much bigger increases than the earlier two of 0.25% in 2012 and 2013.
And the wage rises they will be taken from will be much lower. The latest figures released on Wednesday point to shockingly low annual wage growth of 1.4%.
Should each of the scheduled increases in employers compulsory super knock 0.4 points off wage growth (which is what the review expects) annual wage growth would sink from 1.4% to 1%.
Private sector wage would sink from 1.2% to 0.8%, in the absence of something to push it back up.
Because inflation will almost certainly be higher than 1%, it means the buying power of wages would go backwards, all for the sake of a better life in retirement.
The review presents the finding starkly. Lifting compulsory super contributions from 9.5% of salary to 12% will cut working-life incomes by about 2%.
And for what? It’s a question the review spends a lot of time examining.
Most retirees have enough
The review dispenses with the argument that the goal of a retirement income system should be “aspirational”, or to provide people with higher income in retirement than they had in their working lives.
It finds that for retirees presently aged 65-74 the replacement rates for middle- to higher-income earners are generally adequate.
Many lower-income earners get more per year in retirement than they got while working.
If the increases in compulsory super proceed as planned, this will extend to the bottom 60% of the income distribution.
They’ll enjoy a higher standard of living in retirement than while working (and will enjoy a lower standard of living while working than they would have).
Most retirees die with most of what they had when they retired, leaving it as a bequest. They are reluctant to “eat into” their super and other savings because of concerns about possible future health and aged care costs, and concerns about outliving savings.
The review quite reasonably sees this as a betrayal of the purpose of government-supported super, saying
superannuation savings are supported by tax concessions for the purpose of retirement income and not purely for wealth accumulation
It’s the pension that matters
The pension does what super cannot. It provides a buffer for retirees whose income and savings fall due to market volatility, and for those who outlive their savings. 71% of people of age pension age get it or a similar payment. More than 60% of them get the full pension.
If there’s one key message of the review, it is this: it is the pension rather than super that matters for maintaining living standards in retirement, which is what the review was asked to consider.
It is also cost-effective compared to the growing budgetary cost of the super tax concessions.
The age pension costs 2.5% of GDP and is set to fall to 2.3% of GDP over the next 40 years as the super system matures and tighter means tests bite.
Treasury modelling prepared for the review shows that if more money is directed into super and away from wages as scheduled, the annual budgetary cost of the super tax concessions (mostly directed will exceed the cost of the pension by 2050.
There’s a real retirement income problem
A substantial proportion of Australians, about 30%, are financially worse off in retirement than while working, and they are people neither super nor the pension can help.
Mostly they are older Australians who have lost their jobs and cannot get new ones before they before eligible for the age pension or become old enough to get access to their super. Often they’ve left the workforce due to ill health or to care for others and are forced to rely on JobSeeker, which is well below the poverty line.
It’s much worse if they rent privately. About one quarter of retirees who rent privately are in financial stress, so much so that the review finds even a 40% increase in the maximum Commonwealth Rent Assistance payment wouldn’t be enough to get them a decent standard of living in retirement.
No recommendations, but findings aplenty
The review was not asked to produce recommendations. Instead, while noting that much of the system works well, it has pointed to things that need urgent attention.
It finds that pouring a greater proportion of each pay packet into the hands of super funds is not one of them, and in the present unusual circumstances could cost jobs as employers who can’t take the extra cost out of wages take it out of headcount.
The government will make a decision about whether to proceed with the legislated increase in compulsory super in its May budget, just before the first of the five increases due in July.
We’re often hearing alerts for different areas after traces of coronavirus are found in the wastewater, or sewage.
Most recently, fragments were detected at Benalla, in Victoria’s north, and at Portland, not far from the South Australian border. The Victorian government subsequently closed the border to South Australia, and urged anyone in these areas to get tested if they developed symptoms.
The idea of testing sewage to track the presence of a virus is not new. Scientists in Israel used it to monitor a polio outbreak in 2013.
While it is a useful tool for COVID-19 disease surveillance, it’s not entirely foolproof.
From drug use to COVID-19
We commonly use wastewater monitoring to estimate levels of illicit drug use in Australia. This is the sort of work our teams do, although this year we shifted our focus to look at methods of testing wastewater for COVID-19.
A virus monitoring program uses the same principle as wastewater monitoring for drugs. Microbes such as SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, are passed mainly through a person’s gut, then come out in their stool, and enter the sewerage system after a toilet flush.
This process, called viral shedding, depends on the severity of the infection (generally, people who have a more severe infection shed more of the virus, though this isn’t always the case) and can occur for several weeks after symptoms have disappeared.
Although the virus doesn’t stay viable in the sewage for very long — you’re not likely to catch it if you come into contact with sewage containing virus — remnants of its genetic material may remain intact. When a daily sample is collected at a treatment plant, we can recover the RNA fragments.
Some research groups have suggested this approach may be able to detect a single infected person in a catchment of 100,000.
Wastewater testing is being used in many places around the world during the pandemic, not only Australia.Shutterstock
The technique is important
A variety of techniques can be used to recover the genetic material before we measure how much virus is present. The more virus there is in a sample, the easier it is to detect.
Currently, there are no agreed standard approaches — different teams testing wastewater for COVID in different places do it differently.
This is partly because we’re still working out the best method — each has its own strengths. Our research, currently under review, shows a method may be very sensitive in some cases but not in others.
Wastewater from a suburban area may contain mainly household effluent, whereas a sample from a more industrial area could contain various chemicals that may interfere with detecting the viral RNA. Wastewater is not homogeneous and its contents can even vary depending on the time of day.
We’re working on developing more robust methods that are less prone to being influenced by the wastewater source. In the meantime, we need to be a bit cautious when interpreting results from wastewater testing.
Once traces of SARS-CoV-2 show up in wastewater, it’s a likely indication that infected people live in, or have visited, the sewer catchment. However, it’s important that more than one indicator confirming virus RNA is included in the tests to minimise the risk of false positives.
Even then, a result may simply be a case of people who are recovering from illness, shedding virus after they’ve completed their quarantine, when they will no longer be infectious.
It’s important to carry out ongoing surveillance to determine if the signal peters out, or if the level of virus detected at the location increases. The latter would suggest an underlying spread of infections, and the need to step up targeted testing. This is arguably the strength of wastewater surveillance.
The detection of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater often means people in the area are encouraged to be tested.Dan Himbrechts/AAP
Conversely, when the results are negative, it may imply there are no infected people in the catchment. However, this could also mean the testing method is insufficiently sensitive to pick up infections. It’s possible infected people are located far from the sampling point, and no identifiable virus remnants remain in the sample by the time it’s collected.
There’s also the issue that many people in regional areas have their own septic tanks.
So like testing people for COVID, wastewater testing carries a risk of both false positives and false negatives.
Sewage surveillance can’t give us specific information, such as the location of the infected people or the number of infections. But as long as we understand its strengths and weaknesses, it’s a valuable complementary approach to guide targeted testing.
It can provide authorities with evidence that may inform whether they can relax restrictions in some communities, instead of applying blanket lockdowns. If we had COVID wastewater monitoring across South Australia (currently it’s only operating in Adelaide), it might have been able to indicate there were no cases in regional areas, and perhaps they could have avoided this week’s harsh lockdown.
With so much uncertainty about when and where the next outbreak might occur, monitoring wastewater could provide an early warning signal.
People in Benalla in Portland should be aware and get tested if they have any symptoms, according to public health advice. But at this stage, there’s no need for alarm.
It’s been a big week for South Australia. First, the announcement of a six-day lockdown to limit the spread of COVID-19. Then today we heard this lockdown may have not been needed, after a man lied to contact tracers, prompting an early lifting of restrictions.
In between, South Australians have been waiting in queues for up to ten hours for COVID-19 tests. And the state’s chief public health officer Nicola Spurrier warned the “worried well” not to clog up important public health services.
Labelling people anxious about COVID-19 the “worried well” isn’t helping, especially in a climate of uncertainty, as South Australia has experienced this week. It might also discourage people with mild symptoms to come forward.
So who are the “worried well”? And what should we really be doing to encourage the right people to get tested?
The “worried well” is a term invented to describe apparently healthy people who think they might have a disease or medical problem, so see a doctor or have testing.
The term carries the whiff of a sneer, along with the implication such people are wastinghealth resources.
It shouldn’t be confused with hypochondria, which is chronic anxiety about your health to the level it may be considered a psychiatric illness.
The “worried well”, in contrast, are often responding to a situation that asks people to be paying special attention to an aspect of their health.
They might attend more regularly than required for cancer screening, for example. They are also more likely to believe it is important to take responsibility for their own health — a concept public health messaging actually reinforces.
Dismissing people who seek medical attention for vague ailments or unsubstantiated risks as the “worried well” ignores the very real problem of the anxiety created by attention to particular illnesses.
Anxiety can cloud health perceptions and judgements, and prompt people to seek reassurance.
In the face of a global pandemic, where an invisible pathogen is transmitted often through pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic people, many of us are a bit anxious.
Vigilance can be useful for achieving compliance with the COVID-safe rules that have restructured our daily habits, such as physical distancing, avoiding touch and regularly washing our hands.
Anxiety is less useful if it results in people who have no known exposure and no COVID symptoms presenting for testing, particularly if there is a concern testing services may be stretched by demand.
However, applying a stigmatising label to such people is counterproductive.
Yes, it can be frustrating
In the context of an outbreak where there is urgent need to test people who have been exposed, and where testing capacity is being overwhelmed, reference to the “worried well” may be a symptom of public health officials’ understandable frustration.
It is, after all, a delicate balancing act to get everyone deemed at risk to test in a timely manner, without their ranks being swelled by those seeking reassurance who believe they were at risk but who have no clear or likely route of exposure.
But that doesn’t make the “worried well” a fair or useful label, and may work against achieving the widespread testing needed to control infection.
We’d be better off promoting testing as doing the ‘right thing’
New South Wales and Victoria have promoted COVID testing as doing the “right thing”. Both emphasise people with COVID-like symptoms should be tested regardless of whether they have had a known exposure.
Similarly, the South Australian government is asking everyone with COVID-like symptoms to be tested, regardless of whether the symptoms are mild.
One of the risks of a phrase like the “worried well” is different people can interpret it in different ways. So if someone with mild COVID-like symptoms is worried they might be called one of the “worried well”, they might second-guess themselves and not get tested.
We have seen the dire consequences of people underestimating a sniffle, or mild respiratory illness, in the terrible tragedy of the Newmarch House aged-care cluster in New South Wales earlier this year.
Clear, consistent, targeted public health messaging works
Currently, in South Australia this means people with symptoms, people who have been identified through contact tracing, and people who have visited sites listed on the contact tracing website where exposure may have occurred.
Clear and consistent repetition of these groups is needed throughout relevant media, including the broadcast media, internet and social media.
Have the ‘worried well’ really clogged up testing?
It is not possible to assess how many of the more than 617,000 COVID tests conducted in the state so far met the criteria of credible risk according to the published criteria.
But if there is serious concern there is unnecessary testing, this needs to be swiftly addressed by explaining who needs testing and why. This needs to be repeated in multiple places, including being visible where people queue to test.
Clear and accessible pathways also need to be provided for people with COVID anxiety who don’t meet testing criteria, which the state government is beginning to address.
This is so people can be reassured in ways that do not involve unnecessary testing, and if necessary learn how they can address their concerns using the appropriate designated mental health services.
University of Canberra Professorial Fellow Michelle Grattan and University of Canberra Assistant Professor Caroline Fisher discuss the week in politics.
This week the pair discuss the six-day lockdown in South Australia, despite dwindling cases, and how this lockdown will affect the prime minister’s hopes for an ‘open christmas’. Also discussed is the Brereton report in misconduct by SAS operatives during the Afghanistan conflict, and how allegations of war crime will affect Australia’s national identity domestically and internationally.
For decades, researchers have tried to find out what the zone is and how to enter it. And the assumption has been that there is one zone that we can experience.
Our research with athletes, however, suggests there may be two types of zone.
One is a “flow state”, where athletes describe effortlessly “letting it happen”. The other is a “clutch state”, where athletes report “making it happen” by purposefully and powerfully stepping up in a key moment.
Here’s how to decide which zone you need to be in — and how to get there.
Research with athletes suggests there may be two zones.Shutterstock
Flow vs clutch states
Much research or media reporting about the zone is often based on interviews with athletes which take place some months or years after their performances have happened.
This means our understanding has been based on old, and likely faded, memories. As a result, people remember their experiences as one zone.
For our research, we interviewed athletes within days or hours of exceptional performances, allowing them to describe their experiences in much more detail.
We heard frequently of different ways of being “in the zone”, sometimes employed during different parts of a challenge. As a polar explorer told us, “They’re definitely two different states.”
A marathon runner told us:
It was like two different races.
In the flow state, your performance effortlessly clicks into place as if you are on autopilot.Shutterstock
The flow state is where you become completely absorbed in what you are doing, you perform the task effortlessly — as if you are on autopilot — and it feels like everything harmoniously clicks into place.
The clutch state was described as “making it happen”, where athletes purposefully step up their effort and concentration during important moments in a performance.
This state describes clutch performance — a common term among fans and media in sport — such as Michael Jordan’s famous buzzer-beater in the 1989 playoffs (from from about the 2:00 mark in the video below).
We would all love to be in the zone more often. Now that the research is telling us there are actually two types of zone, a first step is to recognise which zone you’re aiming for.
Clutch performances occur in certain situations under pressure, when there is an important outcome on the line. Think meeting deadlines, running to catch the last bus home, or being at the end of a race with a personal best on the line.
Flow occurs in situations where there’s novelty, exploration, and experimentation. This might be playing a golf course for the first time, running a new route, or sitting down with a blank page and brainstorming ideas. There’s no pressure or expectation — you’re free to explore.
Both zones can happen in the same event too. For example, runners can be in flow during the start or middle of a race, and then realise they have a chance of breaking their personal best or a chance to win, and flip into a clutch performance at the end — like when Shura Kitata won in a sprint finish in the men’s 2020 London Marathon (from about the 2:05 timestamp in the video below).
How can you get in each zone?
Research suggests the type of goals we set plays an important role in getting into each zone.
Clutch performances occur when we realise there is an important outcome at stake, we understand what is required, and we step up our effort. You’ve probably done this before — like pulling an all-nighter to get your assignment finished, staying late at work to meet an important deadline, or pushing hard to record a personal best.
The key to these clutch performances is having a specific goal in mind, and understanding clearly what you need to do to meet the challenge (for example, “if I can run this last kilometre in under five minutes I can break my personal best”).
Once this challenge is set, it’s quite natural for us to increase our effort and intensity in order to achieve the goal.
Megan Rapinoe of the USA football team in action during the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup Final match between USA and Netherlands.Shutterstock
To get into flow, however, we need to think a bit differently. We need to create situations where we can explore — where we’re free from expectation and pressure.
An important part of this is setting open goals such as to “see how well I can do,” “see how many under par I can get”, or “see how fast I can run the next five kilometres”.
These open-ended, non-specific goals help avoid pressure and expectation, letting you gradually build your confidence, and increasing your chances of getting into flow.
Image by CDC/ Alissa Eckert, MS; Dan Higgins, MAM - https://phil.cdc.gov/Details.aspx?pid=23312.
Analysis by Manqing Cheng – Doctoral Researcher in Politics and International Relations at University of Auckland. This is Manging’s first analysis for EveningReport.nz.
Precis: This article takes the WHO as an example to examine the difficulties for some international organizations in playing their due roles and tackling with the security threats of international concern such as a public health crisis of COVID-19. It is believed that an in-depth institutional reform is necessary for international organizations including WHO to adapt to the reset of globalization, the ensuing global challenges, and the transformation of global governance in the post-pandemic order.
Image by CDC/ Alissa Eckert, MS; Dan Higgins, MAM – https://phil.cdc.gov/Details.aspx?pid=23312.
Confronting the public health crisis as COVID-19, the existing global governance system has fallen into a state of partial failure, which is embodied in slow response and action of international organizations, increasing difficulty in coordination and cooperation between big powers, and the lack of leadership. WHO is clearly unable to coordinate national actions or to regulate behaviour and change prevention and control measures of various countries amid this pandemic. In recent years, the impediments to globalization, the rise of populism, the revival of nationalism and unilateralism allude to the inherent conflicts between international organizations and sovereign states. Disease is a non-zero-sum non-traditional security issue as its threat to all is undifferentiated. Since everyone is facing a common threat, international organizations that are instrumental for communication and preventive solutions should take the lead. But why some international organizations failed to function and why can it be hard for countries to utilize such platforms and work together? This article analyses that there are several major dilemmas restraining the role of international organizations, which are unlikely to be resolved in the short run. The following takes WHO in the pandemic as an example to explore its plight.
Difficulties and Dilemmas Confronting International Organizations
Above all, the WHO faces constraints from the sovereign states.
The first hinderance is financing. The most common way for all parties to play games in WHO is to influence the WHO agenda through financial leverage. WHO’s funding comes from two main sources: assessed contributions and voluntary contributions largely from member states and other sources such as philanthropic foundations and private sector. Assessed contributions have been a declining share of WHO’s overall budget in recent years, so the organization is increasingly relying on voluntary contributions. The trick is that most voluntary contributions come with explicit requirements and restrictions on their use. The only fund that WHO really has control and can flexibly allocate is about US$500 million a year in assessed contributions. WHO has been struggling to both invest in global public health and to cover its own operating costs. Take the 2018-2019 biennial budget as an instance, the total planned amount was US$4.422 billion (the actual implementation was US$5.3 billion), of which the assessed contributions were only US$957 million. As the biggest contributor to WHO, after President Trump announced a suspension for US funding on April 14, 2020, Director-General Tedros indicated that the US move would leave the organization with a financial gap that could interrupt the efforts to stop the coronavirus pandemic. When the greatest power takes an example, it is hard for others not to follow suit, particularly under the situation where all economies are suffering heavy losses.
The second is the recognition. As an intergovernmental organization, WHO has the legitimacy and capacity to act only based on state empowerment and authorization. In a broad sense, this “authorization” is also a recognition. A recognition of the existence and effectiveness of international organizations. Given the limits of human knowledge of various communicable diseases, WHO remains torn between taking initiative and being cautious in the event of an outbreak. After the outbreak of influenza A (H1N1) in 2009, WHO coordinated countries to take proactive measures and declared a “pandemic”, but was accused of “overreacting”. This was because H1N1 had been spreading all over the world, but the fatality rate was low. A joint report by the British Medical Journal and the Parliament of the European Commission criticized WHO for exaggerating the pandemic, causing panic among the public and triggering a global rush to buy vaccines for pharmaceutical companies to profit. After the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014, WHO was accused of poor early warning, ineffective prevention, and slow response. Critics claimed that the first Ebola patient was infected in Guinea in December 2013, but WHO did not officially declare an outbreak until three months later, when the virus had spread to neighboring countries. In this recent crisis, WHO’s status and value have been further weakened. During the present anti-pandemic process, the Trump administration continuously accused WHO of acting too slowly to sound the alarm about the coronavirus. A great power refuses to admit the role of WHO is parallel to not recognize and distrust the organization, which will inevitably impact the international organization’s authority and capability to act in its field. Facing public health threats, particularly from unknown viruses and emerging infectious diseases, WHO seems to be caught in a paradox: taking aggressive action to stop outbreaks before the situation becomes serious will be criticized as overreacting; and taking cautious attitude would be blamed for failing to contain the pandemic. The anarchy of international system makes international organizations have no coercive power in implementing measures. One of the authoritative sources of them is the level of expertise rest on knowledge. They hold the “power” to master data, publish information and set standards by virtue of their knowledge. Therefore, if a country questions its expertise, it can affect a range of the organization’s actions. If countries no longer use that knowledge as a standard, the authority of the organization will be undermined.
Secondly, the WHO is influenced at the systemic level.
First of all, international organizations are the product of globalization and multilateralism. In theory, the deepening of globalization should become a hotbed for the development of international organizations. In reality, nevertheless, globalization has deepened the antagonism between countries. We are witnessing more clearly the gap between countries and the changing political landscape within them. Some countries have risen in the process of globalization, while others have been divided in the process. Rising nations are more insistent on globalization, while declining nations only want to retreat. International organizations seem to become a burden no longer needed, living in the tension between the cracks. As a sub-agency of the UN system, WHO seeks to place health goals above power politics. But as an intergovernmental organization, WHO cannot avoid the shades of power game and geopolitics. As early as its establishment, the Constitution of the World Health Organization was delayed by the ratification of member states due to the confrontation between two camps of the U.S. and the Soviet Union. It was not until the outbreak of cholera in Egypt’s Suez Canal area that countries realized the importance of establishing a global public health organization and passed the Constitution in 1948. With the launch of the Marshall Plan, the eastern and western camps entered a period of fierce confrontation. In 1949, the Soviet Union led the Eastern European countries withdraw from WHO. In order to maintain the integrity of global public health system, then Director-General George Brock Chisholm retained the membership of the Soviet Union and other countries on the ground that there was no opt-out clause in the Constitution, so that the Soviet Union was able to rejoin in 1958.
Second, the new world pattern is evolving, and some countries are inclined to politicize global issues. The alleged politicization of health issues refers to use health issues as a tactic to pursue political goals. The introduction of political issues into WHO by some countries led to the dysfunction and overloading of the mechanism beyond WHO’s jurisdiction and weakened its original purpose of promoting public health. When Trump halted funding for WHO, he also expressed his dissatisfaction and anger at WHO’s repeated praise for China’s anti-epidemic efforts. He believes that the U.S. is investing a lot of money, but WHO is ultimately standing up for China. International organizations do not necessarily choose sides, but their support for one country in a certain area may be regarded as a preference to be resisted by the other party. WHO, in this case, is unwittingly entering the political gap between China and the U.S. Mutual recriminate and stigmatization, transfer domestic contradictions as well as shirk responsibility for the poor response to the pandemic aggravate the conflicts and frictions that already existed among member states, thereby result in the inefficient operation of international organizations. In this climate of mistrust and disunity, it is hard for all parties to act in concert.
Third, non-neutral rules of global governance are impacted. The current global governance system mainly relies on the rules formulated by western countries. However, these rules are non-neutral in the light of non-western cultures. That is, the meaning of the same system varies to different groups, and those who benefit from the established system or may benefit from some future institutional arrangement will strive for or maintain institutional arrangements that are favorable to them. Global governance rules exist upon intersubjectivity and only play a normative role if they are accepted by the majority. Non-neutral rules are difficult to promote consensus between western and non-western cultures. One consequence of this non-neutrality is that in the practice of global governance, the actual benefits or losses brought by different mechanisms to sovereign states are inequivalent. In an era when the developed economies dominate in the global governance system, such non-neutrality, while has always existed, is not as prominent as it is today with more and more non-western economies rise and enter the global governance system. This is illustrated in the case of COVID-19 striking big powers, as non-western actors are bringing their own practical experiences into the existing governance system, thereby shaking the governance structure dominated by the Western instrumental rationality. The concepts, principles and approaches of global governance begin to fall short in attuning to the reality of rapid development of globalization and the emergence of global challenges.
Lastly, the WHO has self-deficiencies in terms of operating rules and mechanisms.
First, WHO is already the largest and most authoritative international agency for epidemic prevention in the world, but it is still unable to play a leading role in this crisis. This is because international organizations and states are distinct in nature. States have sovereignty, while international organizations do not. Management personnel in international organizations are dispatched by member states, and there are no individuals independent of the state and belong exclusively to an organization. This makes it impossible for international organizations to operate in complete isolation from states. Additionally, an international organization is a platform where member states gather for discussion, vote to reach a resolution, and implement it. Basically, the consensus of major powers becomes the resolution of the international organization. That is, a balance exists between the views expressed by the representatives of member states within WHO. Leaders of international organizations has only the power to implement the policy. Taking the position of chief balancer, Director-General Tedros may be viewed as a consensus-maker instead of an authoritarian decision-maker. International organizations, whether intergovernmental or non-governmental, are coordinating bodies. Their decision-making power is limited. Whether member states, especially the big powers, have shared interests, common needs and collective policy orientation determines how much role the international organization can play.
Second, WHO has an “institutional inertia”. Its reform of governing structure lags behind the development of global health governance with its influence on the decline. Since 1999, the principle of zero growth has been introduced into the budgeting process of WHO. Consequentially, WHO is increasingly dependent on voluntary contributions and has shown a bilateralism in promoting projects, since most contributions are earmarked for specific purposes by donors. As some scholars note, voluntary contributions militate against multilateral governance and decentralize the authority of international organizations to donor countries.
All in all, from the perspective of internal factors, academics generally believe that WHO’s organizational culture is strongly functionalist, conservative, and increasingly corrupt in recent years. The failure of strategic planning and the over-decentralization of WHO’s structure render its internal system increasingly rigid. Moreover, there are issues of impartiality within WHO. As more and more information about WHO’s internal decision-making is exposed by the media, the fairness and transparency of WHO’s work are increasingly questioned. Many scholars agree that the financial interests of the medical experts who advise WHO on decision-making are intertwined with multinational pharmaceutical companies, making WHO difficult to be objective and neutral.
To date, no substantive breakthrough and sustainable progress have been made in any area of governance, terrorism, financial crisis, transboundary disasters, and climate change, etc. COVID-19 represents yet another failure of global governance. The root cause is the lack of international cooperation. In recent years, with the strong backtracking of populism, unilateralism, and power politics, international relations are shifting toward geopolitics, the sense of international responsibility and the trust of international community are declining. It seems that everyone knows the theory of win-win cooperation, however in reality, the spirit of cooperation is easily concealed, forgotten, and even deliberately abandoned.
Some Recommendations on Institutional Reform in the Post-Pandemic order
In the post-pandemic world, international organizations and multilateral mechanisms will face greater tests. Only through constant institutional reform can they adapt to a changing world order.
The first is toboost the leadership and appeal to perform the leading and coordinating role to full potential in global governance. The authority and expertise of international organizations are mainly reflected in the fairness and effectiveness of promoting international cooperation and solving global issues. This depends on the sufficient cooperation and support of member states on the one hand and on the strategic vision, leadership, and professionalism of international organizations from officials to staff, on the other. In response to global challenges like COVID-19, the UN needs to make corresponding reforms and adjustments. This would include convening relevant meetings at the earliest possible time to convey confidence to the world, unifying the goals of all parties, and drawing up global action roadmap. Specialized agencies under the UN need to carry out separate actions around their respective themes, update their own rules and norms in real time. WHO could be more empowered to upgrade the global public health governance system. The international community has had conducted some effective bilateral and local cooperation and gained positive experiences in the fights against SARS, H1N1 influenza and Ebola, but there is still a long way ahead to achieve global, sustainable and closer cooperation. It is necessary to improve the overall status of public health governance and reinforce WHO, so that it has more rights and higher international status similar to that of the IMF and the World Bank to organize experts and focus on scientific research, vaccine development and data sharing as well as help developing countries with weak health infrastructure to improve their response capacity. The international community has generally been underinvesting in public health. As of February 29, the U.S. was still more than half behind with its 2019 dues and US$120 million is defaulted for 2020. After the outbreak, the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund has been created by the UN Foundation, the Swiss Philanthropy Foundation and WHO, but similar efforts should be more institutionalized in future. Meanwhile, WHO must strengthen the institutional construction, such as build a global infectious disease monitoring, early-warning and emergency-boot mechanisms, further elucidate the rules and norms of public governance, formulate guiding principles that all countries must abide by, unify standards, and improve the control and binding force on relevant behaviors of various countries, but not limited to report information, temporary research and judge the situation. For now, though the role and status of WHO in global public health governance has been weakened to a certain extent, as the largest international health organization and one of the larger specialized agencies within the UN, WHO still has broad responsibilities to combat infectious diseases based on the Constitution of WHO and designated by its accession to the UN, as well as has the only authorization of leading and promoting effective development of international health law. Therefore, it is crucial to carry out effective reform of WHO. The direction is not “reprimand and denounce” by some member states targeted others and counteract each other’s efforts. Instead, it should be further enhancing the power of existing multilateral mechanisms, increasing financial support, and expanding bilateral or small multilateral public health cooperation to larger regional domain. For this purpose, the established China-Japan-ROK joint prevention and control mechanism and the public health cooperation within the ASEAN framework should be consolidated and then upgraded to the Asia-Pacific region. The European Union and the African Union should also act together and promote the integration of public health, and then on this basis, form the regional cooperation between Asia and Europe, among Asia, Europe and Africa as well as in a wider range.
The second is to strengthen the authority and expertise of international organizations. Globalization has never been entirely positive as a single-dimensional process. International organizations is the central force and the primary driver for global governance. The multilateral cooperation mechanism should include at least two functions: political leadership and advisory implementation. In the current international system, it is unrealistic to require specialized agencies to perform core political leadership because they do not have corresponding political authority and power resources. However, for multilateral organizations with rich expertise in a specialized field, it is the fundamental obligation to provide intellectual support and technical implementation for political decision-making. For example, the political leadership of G20 and the advisory implementation of WHO could converge and form a global action model to counter security threats more actively in global public health. WHO can gather information, propose professional suggestions, and provide a concrete scientific basis for the G20 to put forward global action plans. In this regard, G20 could be continuously elevated from short-term crisis response mechanism to long-term governance mechanism.
Conclusion
International organizations have accrued deep malpractices in managing global affairs. In the current COVID-19 and previous international public health emergencies, there are various difficulties in the operation of international organizations, confining them to take conductive actions, which in turn reducing the effectiveness of problem solving. The world seems to lack a consistent and coherent response in the face of a common enemy. A path of transformation should be explored. Only through constant change can international organizations be reinforced in the new order, otherwise it will be eliminated or replaced. However, we must also be aware that some curtailments are beyond the scope of international organizations and concern the whole international community. The reality of the COVID-19 has put the international community at a crossroads once again. Is it to turn the crisis into an opportunity and make the pandemic a driving force for community building through strengthening all-round cooperation and multilateralism? Or to reject international cooperation, shrink into a corner, and deepen the division of the world? Or to expand the conflict and make the outbreak a pusher of the law of jungle? The rational choice is certainly cooperation. COVID-19 is an acute crisis that not only takes a heavy toll on global public health safety, but also creates global threats to varying degrees in other fields through its spillover effects. Institutional reform needs the solid support of political will and cooperative consensus. Multilateralism is by far the most reasonable approach to global governance, and multilateral cooperation is the most democratic way to combat global threats. Whether global consensus can be reached and cooperation mechanism can be built out of the crisis will not only directly affect the success of anti-pandemic battle, but also have a far-reaching impact on the international relations and world order after the pandemic.
As we reflect on the value and place of children, this gives us a chance to look at how birth registration and birth certificates operate in Australia today.
As the UN notes, “a name and nationality is every child’s right”. Australian academics have previously argued, the convention “implicitly includes the right to a birth certificate”.
Yet not every Australian child is registered or has a birth certificate.
When we think of children’s development and care, we don’t tend to think of the barriers to gaining such an important document. Or the appropriateness of an administrative process of birth notification and registration that hasn’t changed much in more than 160 years.
To reduce burdens on families and increase social engagement among the marginalised, we need seriously to consider alternatives to the traditional birth certificate.
With growing digital connectivity, are paper-based birth certificates still relevant?
Why do we need birth certificates?
All births in Australia are required to be registered by a parent or carer with the relevant state or territory registry office for births, deaths and marriages. This service is free.
All Australian babies need to be registered after they are born.www.shutterstock.com
Birth registration is also a fundamental human right — it provides a record of the name, birth details, and very existence of someone. It also provides a government administrative function, helping to determine population estimates.
Birth certificates, on the other hand, aren’t automatically issued in Australia – there’s a fee involved with gaining this crucial piece of identification, potentially violating human rights.
These paper-based certificates are vital documents, needed for a huge range of crucial life events, from enrolling in school to opening a bank account, getting a passport, applying for government benefits, learning to drive, holding a tax file number to work in paid employment — even getting into a sporting team.
There’s a cost
The cost of a birth certificate varies across states and territories, but they are not insignificant. The Australian Capital Territory has the highest fee at $65.00, Victoria has the lowest at $33.80 (plus an additional $10 for postage).
All registry offices in Australia with the exception of Queenslandcan waive the fee. But information about fee exemptions is near impossible to find. Birth, Deaths and Marriages in Victoria is the only jurisdiction to make such information available on its website, but the process appears complicated and eligibility very narrow.
Not everyone has a birth certificate — and this is a problem
Despite the importance of birth certificates, not everyone has one.
Experiencing financial difficulties, moving house, being wary of government, and having lower English proficiency are among the reasons people may not have a birth certificate.
Births still go unregistered in Australia, mostly among people from disadvantaged and minority groups, including First Nations Australians and children of parents born overseas and from non-English speaking backgrounds.
Estimates suggest about 3% of births are not registered by a child’s fifth birthday, but this declines as young people approach the age of 15. Milestone events, like starting school and applying for a tax file number or driver’s licence, are triggers for either the realisation a birth isn’t registered or a prompt for registration.
There are no data on how many people in Australia do not hold birth certificates. The Victorian registry office reports the “majority” of people apply for a birth certificate when a baby is registered, but even they don’t know the actual numbers.
Milestones, like starting school, can prompt a realisation a child does not have a birth certificate.www.shutterstock.com
Investments have been made to increase the completeness of birth registration, particularly among First Nations Australians and in Victoria, but this has not extended to increasing the accessibility of birth certificates.
If births are registered for free, it follows that birth certificates should (and could be easily) be part of the free registration process.
Not having a birth certificate can render people invisible, particularly for the already vulnerable. Without a birth certificate, full recognition and participation in society including through education and employment is hindered.
There are other ways
The birth registration and certification process has not kept up with contemporary expectations.
Australian birth certificates themselves, for example, have altered very little since the 1930s — they remain paper-based and include similar information.
There are other systems available to make identification processes easier, but these also rely on individuals having paper copies of their birth certificates. The Australian government’s documentation verification service (DVS) is a central database enabling interrogation and confirmation of identity documentation.
Banks can use the DVS system, for example, to confirm the identity of an individual without seeing a birth certificate, relying on the birth certificate number.
There are, of course, safety issues when it comes to maintaining the security of identity data. But with so much other sensitive information now digitised, these risks can be managed. It’s also doubtful they outweigh the practical and equity concerns about continuing to rely on paper-based birth certificates.
What about Sweden?
Other countries are doing this better. Babies born in Sweden are immediately registered and added to a population address register by the hospital or midwife responsible for delivering the child. The child’s name is then updated by their parents or carers, and important information relating to each Swede is maintained throughout their life.
All Swedes are immediately registered by the hospital or midwife when they are born.www.shutterstock.com
Australia has a similar hospital and midwife notification system in the National Perinatal Data Collection(NPDC). The NPDC isn’t used to help register births – it’s health-focussed — but it (or a registry-based) notification system has the potential to assist in redressing the invisibility too many Australians experience.
A better process for babies
The costs associated with buying a birth certificate for a baby appear more of a revenue raising endeavour than a public good.
Australia holds a number of different data system capabilities that could replace the outdated paper-based scheme of birth registration and certification.
Yes, there are security and logistical concerns, but we can manage them. It is most important to create a system where every baby is granted their fundamental human rights of recognition.
From a demographic perspective, we will have a more accurate and timely picture of all Australians — no matter the socioeconomic circumstances they might be born into.
The Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA) reached in principle this week by Japan and Australia provides a legal framework for the Australian Defence Force and the Japanese Self-Defence Force to operate in each other’s territories.
It has taken six years to get to this point. There are various reasons for this, but a significant stumbling block has been Japan’s death penalty and the Australian government’s opposition to it.
This 2018 strategy sets Australia apart from other countries that have abolished the death penalty because of its outward-looking policy of pursuing abolition in other countries. It is not limited to advocating the restricted use of the death penalty in instances where Australian nationals are sentenced to death — as was the case with Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan. It takes a principled stance against the death penalty “in all circumstances for all people”.
No guarantees on death penalty – yet
The bilateral defence co-operation with Japan is a case in point. The negotiations stalled because the Australian government wanted an assurance Australian Defence Force members would not be sentenced to death, even if convicted of crimes punishable by death under Japanese law.
However, in June 2020, it was reported a breakthrough was made in the negotiations where the Japanese authorities were considering replacing the death penalty with the maximum sentence that would be applied under Australian law.
With the in-principle agreement, it has been reported that if an ADF member were to be convicted of serious crimes in Japan, the punishment would be considered on a “case by case” basis.
It is unclear, however, how this case-by-case mechanism will operate. There is no public guarantee to date that Australian soldiers would not be subject to the death penalty.
Interestingly, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Japanese-language media were silent on this sticking point.
A “case by case” approach may appear like a step back from the breakthrough reported in June, if it means members of the Australian Defence Force could be executed in some cases.
That said, we remain confident the Australian government will not concede in finalising the RAA with Japan. The Australian government’s 2018 strategy is unequivocal in its principled stance against the death penalty. Entering into an agreement with the full knowledge that the death penalty may be applied to its citizens would be a clear breach of its own pledge.
There is yet no clear indication if Australian soldiers would be spared the death penalty should they be convicted of a crime that carries this sentence in Japan.Cpl Raymond Vance/ADF handout/AAP
How governments can work towards abolition
The death penalty tends to be viewed in binary terms: either countries have it or they don’t. It is often cast as a domestic criminal justice policy, with international organisations such as the United Nations having some influence.
We pay less attention to the subtle ways in which abolitionist governments can restrict the application of the death penalty in retentionist countries. For example, this may involve:
refusing to extradite those who may face the death penalty
refusing to co-operate in mutual legal assistance
in the case of Australia and Japan, receiving prior assurance before an offence has been committed that the death penalty will not be applied.
This is what William Schabas referred to as the “indirect abolition” of the death penalty. It offers much potential as a template for how Australia might achieve its 2018 strategy in the region.
Casting our eyes from Japan to Vietnam, we find another strategic partnership with Australia that may eventually prove ripe for indirect abolition.
Australia recognised that Vietnam’s amended Penal Code has abrogated the death penalty for seven crimes, and encouraged Vietnam to move towards abolition of the death penalty.
So it seems an ideal time to push for creative ways to realise the 2018 strategy. This is especially so given that the Australian and Vietnamese prime ministers agreed in August 2019 to develop an Enhanced Economic Engagement Strategy with the aim of becoming top ten trading partners and doubling bilateral investment.
While Australia has taken a principled stance against the death penalty with Japan and in its interactions with Vietnam, we do not know how this commitment would translate to other situations, with other nations.
Australia might lack the necessary soft power to nudge other countries to align themselves with its mission. Alternatively, Australia may have enough economic power to push its agenda even though retentionist governments may view its death penalty diplomacy as unwelcome interference in their domestic criminal policy.
Asia lags behind the global trend away from the death penalty. The Philippines, Sri Lanka and the Maldives have taken steps to reinstate the death penalty or resume executions. Bangladesh has expanded the reach of the death penalty.
Australia is at a pivotal moment in terms of testing its own commitment to its strategy, especially in our region. This is a critical time for determining its role in advocating for abolition of the death penalty in Asia.
Afghanis who say they have witnessed torture and murder at the hands of Australian soldiers want the chance to testify in court as well as compensation, a journalist says.
He was commenting on a four-year inquiry that found “credible information” supporting allegations of war crimes by the country’s special forces.
Major-General Paul Brereton’s report also said junior soldiers were often required by their patrol commanders to shoot prisoners to get their first kill in a practice known as “blooding”.
The inquiry also found evidence soldiers gloated about their actions, kept kill counts and planted phones and weapons on corpses to justify their actions.
Afghan journalist Bilal Sarwary has interviewed some of the victims’ families. Speaking from Kabul, he told RNZ Morning Report: “They told me about torture, about helicopters, about women and children getting scared and murder.”
One victim had told him four of his family had been killed – two brothers and two cousins.
In another village he spoke to a number of victims about their bad experiences and they described “murders after murders”.
“One man did say to me that he wanted to look up in the eyes of these killers and ask them why did they kill so many innocent Afghans.”
Another man he interviewed could not stop crying as he likened the sound of bullets from a gun with a silencer to “drops of water”.
“These families… have been telling me that they want to get justice, that they want to make sure this is a transparent process and that those responsible are brought to justice.”
They have asked him if those directly affected will get the chance to fly to Australia to give evidence in courtrooms there, Sarwary said.
Many of the people involved were very poor and they had also asked him about their chances of receiving compensation from Australia.
Sarwary said that the Afghanistan Human Rights Commission has demanded that Australia adopts a transparent process as it lays charges against the perpetrators and there should be compensation for victims.
Former SAS paramedic Dusty Miller, who was deployed to Afghanistan in 2012, told the ABC he had witnessed a number of unlawful killings and had since struggled with “psychological wounds”. Image: Al Jazeera screenshot
‘We crossed a very bad line’ – ex-soldier The Brereton inquiry heard from more than 400 witnesses, including former SAS paramedic Dusty Miller, who was deployed to Afghanistan in 2012.
He told the ABC he witnessed a number of unlawful killings and has since struggled with “psychological wounds”.
He said he felt vindicated after reading the report and was in no doubt that some of the soldiers needed to go to jail for their crimes. It might be hard for the Australian public to accept such behaviour had occurred, he said.
“We’ve got this proud ANZAC tradition that we’re trying to uphold but unfortunately it’s like finding out that Santa Claus isn’t real.
“We crossed a very bad line and we crossed it for a number of years and we need to pay that price now.”
The report also warned that more killings would be revealed in the future and Miller said he was sure that is true.
Some soldiers’ lives had been ruined by what they had witnessed in Afghanistan. It also meant the end of his own military career, Miller said.
‘Everybody knew what was going on’ “Everybody knew what was going on. It was a day-to-day occurrence. We normalised it… you certainly had to go along with what was happening because the alternative would have been professional suicide. You’d have been ostracised.
“There was no way you would have flagged this with the commanders or speak up – that would have been unthinkable.”
Miller said the commanders must have known what was happening especially as they had debriefs after every mission.
However, it was “a minority group” who acted badly and the majority of men he served with were “honourable” although they operated in a “dog eat dog” aggressive environment.
Jon Stephenson: “They deliberately planned and carried out unlawful actions, alleged war crimes.” Image: RNZ
Clear differences between NZ and Australian troops, says author Investigative journalist Jon Stephenson, the co-author of Hit and Run, the book which led to the Operation Burnham Inquiry, said there was a difference between the way Australian forces behaved and the conduct of New Zealand forces.
“It’s clear that for Operation Burnham the allegations concerned civilian casualties but they weren’t deliberate. The New Zealand forces were involved in an action in Afghanistan that led to civilian casualties but they didn’t intend for those people to die,” Stephenson told Morning Report.
“Whereas in the Australian case, there’s a clear difference, in that they deliberately planned and carried out unlawful actions, alleged war crimes – shooting people who were in their custody and posed no threat or civilians.”
Australian and New Zealand troops worked together in some places, such as headquarters, but they did not go out in large numbers on missions together.
After New Zealand troops had bad experiences working with the US in Afghanistan a decision was made that New Zealand troops would operate as independently as possible so they would not be “contaminated” by some of the behaviour they saw.
In some cases they did support missions, but generally they acted on their own or with the Afghans, Stephenson said.
Australian federal police will investigate the specifics and decisions will be made about which troopers should be prosecuted over the 39 alleged murders. This process may take years, he said.
“It would be my expectation, based on what I’ve heard, and the people I’ve spoken to, that there will definitely be a large number of prosecutions.
“It’s inconceivable to me given that, for example, people have been shown on camera shooting unarmed young men in a field who posed no threat, that there will not be successful prosecutions, convictions and some people will serve serious jail time.”
Defence Force chief General Angus Campbell identified a significant problem with what he called “toxic warrior culture” in Australian forces and this was not seen in the New Zealand forces.
However, Stephenson said it is important for New Zealanders to consider if their troops had served as many rotations in the same same high intensity conflict areas and had lost as many troops in conflicts as the Australians did whether such a culture might evolve.
He believes that NZ troops would not have resorted to this type of behaviour.
“I think there are significant cultural problems in the Australian military. They have got a very different attitude towards indigenous people than our troopers have.
“That’s not to say that our forces have acted impeccably at all times, but I do think there are significant cultural differences, training differences between New Zealand and Australia.”
With New Zealand’s smaller numbers it was also easier to identify bad behaviour.
This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rona Carroll, Senior Lecturer, Department of Primary Health Care and General Practice, University of Otago
Demand for healthcare for transgender people is on the rise in New Zealand but training for health professionals to develop basic competencies is lagging behind.
Medical education needs to change urgently to prepare doctors to adequately care for their transgender and non-binary patients.
Transgender and non-binary health
We use the term transgender (or trans) to refer to people who identify with a gender different to that assigned to them at birth. The term non-binary describes people who don’t identify with the male/female gender binary.
There are other gender identities such as takatāpui, a traditional Māori term which has been reclaimed to embrace all Māori who identify with diverse genders and sexualities. Not everyone will identify with these umbrella descriptors.
Transgender identities are not an illness or a mental health problem. They are a variation of human experience.
In the Youth’12 survey of 8,500 high school students carried out in 2012, almost half of the transgender students reported experiencing depressive symptoms. One in five had attempted suicide in the year prior to the survey.
The Counting Ourselves survey in 2018 also showed high rates of mental health problems and a higher risk of suicide and substance abuse.
It highlighted the difficulty many transgender and non-binary people face in accessing gender-affirming healthcare. Many already had negative experiences and said they avoided seeing a doctor because they were worried about being disrespected.
Not all trans people will require access to hormone therapy or surgery, but many do. Removing barriers to healthcare is essential. Trans and non-binary people have specific health needs to affirm their gender identity and to reduce gender dysphoria — the distress that can occur when someone’s gender identity differs from the sex assigned to them at birth.
Case studies used to teach medical students rarely show diversity of sexuality or gender identity. When you don’t see yourself or the population reflected in your learning, it can send a message that this isn’t important or relevant to future practice.
Just as we want our future doctors to reflect the population they will treat, the medical curriculum should evolve to do so, too.
Transgender healthcare teaching needs to be part of all medical speciality, nursing and allied health training, so that trans and non-binary patients can expect some basic cultural competence in all areas of our health service. Care and sensitivity are required in certain specialities — including endocrinology, obstetrics, gynaecology, sexual health, mental health, urology and breast surgery. But it is most important in general practice where we receive most of our healthcare.
Best healthcare practice for transgender people is based on an informed consent model, which views the patient as the expert in their identity.Hannah Peters/Getty Images
From dysphoria to celebration
While some care requires hospital specialists, general practitioners (GPs) can provide much gender-affirming care.
GPs are experts in supporting people with normal life issues, as well as addressing physical and psychological needs in a holistic manner.
GPs who wish to provide gender-affirming care based on an informed consent model, should be supported and encouraged to do so. This aligns with best practice models that view the patient as the expert in their identity and recognise them as a competent adult who can make choices about their own healthcare.
A multidisciplinary approach with the GP at the centre, supported by other specialists where necessary, is an ideal model. Financial and educational support for primary care to take the lead in this area would increase patients’ access to care and reduce the need for referrals to secondary care, freeing up appointments for people who need them.
There are simple steps health providers can take to make transgender and non-binary patients feel more welcome and respected, including:
Outward signs of acceptance in the practice environment, such as a rainbow flag, relevant posters and pamphlets
gender-neutral toilets
enrolment forms with appropriate questions around gender identity, names and pronouns.
These things in themselves can make a difference, but need to be backed up by staff who use people’s correct names and pronouns and do not make assumptions around gender or sexuality.
Healthcare providers who treat their transgender and non-binary patients with respect and support them to affirm their individual gender identity contribute to making them comfortable attending appointments. The result is improved health and well-being.
Better medical training and practice also require changes in societal attitudes, and that’s where we all have a role to play.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Breunig, Professor of Economics and Director, Tax and Transfer Policy Institute, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
The government’s much-anticipated Retirement Incomes Review has found that increases in employer’s compulsory superannuation contributions are financed by reductions in workers’ wage growth.
This isn’t obvious, and it certainly isn’t what the superannuation industry has been saying.
Legally, those contributions (at present 9.5% of each wage) come from employers, on top of the wage.
Employers are required to pay them under a legal instrument known as the “superannuation guarantee”.
But employers have to get the money from somewhere.
Compulsory super was introduced in 1992 with the intention the money would come out of funds that would otherwise have been used for wage increases. The document said workers would be
forgoing a faster increase in real take-home pay in return for a higher standard of living in retirement
Government ministers encouraged employers to shave wage increases to pay for increases in compulsory super. In 2012 then minister Bill Shorten explained:
a portion of what would have been employees’ increases will go into compulsory savings
Then in February groundbreaking research by the Grattan Institute on 80,000 enterprise bargaining agreements over three decades of compulsory super found that was indeed what has been happening.
Grattan found that on average, 80% of each increase in compulsory super has been taken from what would otherwise have been a wage increase.
And now, in work commissioned by the Retirement Incomes Review using completely different data (from the Tax Office instead of enterprise agreements) and an entirely different analytical approach, so have we.
Here’s what we did
Imagine three companies (A, B, and C) offering an identical job in the same city with three different annual total compensation packages: $117,000 (A), $112,000 (B), and $109,500 (C).
The three companies offer the same wage ($100,000), they only differ in the amount of super they pay their workers: 17% (A), 12% (B) and the legally-required 9.5% (C). In this example, total compensation equals wages plus superannuation.
In a competitive labour market (which we largely have in Australia), job seekers would flock to company A, which offers the best compensation package.
How might B and C respond to get workers back?
By offering higher wage growth in subsequent years than A. Higher wage growth would ultimately lead to a catch-up in total compensation levels across the three firms, over time.
Examining the administrative tax records since compulsory super has been set at a single standard rate, that is indeed what we found – when a firm paid super at more than the standard rate, those firms that paid less or merely the standard rate lifted wages by more.
Put another way, the firms that paid their workers more than the legislated rate of super lifted their wages by less.
What happens when compulsory super is increased?
Legislated increases to the standard rate of compulsory super increase firms’ labour costs, but only for firms that pay the standard rate (in our example that’s firm C which we will call a super guarantee “SG” firm).
By comparing the difference in wage growth of employees in “SG firms” to “above SG” firms (companies A and B) during periods when the minimum super guarantee was increased, we can determine how companies pay for the increase in labour costs.
The ATO has insights into super and wages.
We already know that wage growth for “SG firms” is higher than “above SG” firms.
The question is: how does that change when the SG increases?
If “SG firms” find the money to fund the higher SG from somewhere other than wages, it won’t change at all.
If they pass on some or all of the cost to their workers in lower wage increases, then their wage growth should slow relative to that of “above SG” firms.
Our examination of Tax Office data finds this is what has happened.
Our results show that when the legislated compulsory super contributions increased from 8% to 9% in 2002 and again from 9% to 9.25% in 2013, companies passed on 71% to 100% of the cost to workers in the form of reduced wage growth.
What about other findings?
Two other studies, one funded by Industry Super, do not find a trade-off between super increases and wage increases (and in some instances present a case for superannuation increases leading to wage increases).
As we are seeing in the current debates about pausing increases in compulsory super, it tends to be politically easy to raise compulsory super when wage growth is robust and convenient to pause increases when wage growth is slow.
The correlations observed in these studies (that wage growth has been high when compulsory super has been increased) may well be picking up on the timing of increases in compulsory super – that they have been introduced at times when wage growth has been strong rather than they have caused strong wage growth.
Increases in compulsory super come at a cost to the wages of workers.
They might result in higher retirement incomes later in life (although this is uncertain because the settings of the age pension mean an increased superannuation balance is not directly correlated with an increase in retirement living standards).
But they leave less disposable income available to workers and their families to consume today or to save through alternative means.
They also cost the government money.
An increase in compulsory super contributions might one day reduce age pension expenditure, a question examined by the review.
But in the years before then, the government would forego substantial tax revenue because the extra super would be taxed at a lower rate than wages.
These are important things for the government to consider as it decides whether to proceed with the legislated increase in compulsory super from 9.5% of salary to 12% in five steps of 0.5% between July 2021 and July 2025.
Indonesian police have arrested 54 participants of a public hearing organised by the Papuan People’s Council (MPR) this week at the Valentine Hotel in Merauke regency in Papua.
They were arrested for alleged makar (treason, subversion, rebellion) yet the public hearing was actually discussing evaluating the implementation of Law Number 21/2001 on Special Autonomy (Otsus) in Papua, reports Kompas.
Merauke district police chief Assistant Superintendant Untung Suriatna explained the chronology leading up to the arrest of the participants which included those attending the public hearing as well as members of the MPR.
Yellow book Initially, police wanted to break up the public hearing on Tuesday because they claimed the organisers did not apply health protocols. But during the investigation, the police found out that there was a participant who tried to throw a document out of the hotel.
“First the event violated health protocols, but suddenly in the (process) of checking and rechecking there was a document which was thrown out, it was a yellow book,” said Suriatna when contacted by phone.
The police searched for the book. When it was found it turned out to contain the basic guidelines for the “West Papua Federal Republic”.
The book, which contained the name of the president of the West Papua Federal Republic, was used as material evidence by police of alleged makar.
“There was the name of the president, there is material evidence in the form of a book, there’s [also] a laptop which we are still holding”, he said.
54 people arrested Based on these findings, the police secured 54 people including participants of the meeting and MRP members who were then detained for questioning. While in detention, said Suriatna, they behaved well and have now been sent home.
“Yesterday we detained them all in the context of taking data, we examined their health, we served them food and drink, we gave them a place to sleep, they were detained in the auditorium and give good quality military beds,” he said.
Earlier on Sunday, November 15, an entourage of MRP members also wanted to hold a public hearing to discussion an evaluation of the Papua Special Autonomy law in Jayawijaya regency, reports Dhias Suwandi ofKompas.
Their arrival at the Wamena airport however was rejected by a group of people who prevented them from leaving the arrival hall. The entourages of MRP members were held at the airport for six hours until they were finally forced to returned to Jayapura on Sunday afternoon.
Indonesian police in Merauke, Papua, question detainees. Image: Kompas
‘They dragged me down, arrested me’ Pacific Media Watch reports that people arrested tell a different story of harsh treatment. Wensislaus Fatubun said in a statement:
November 17: “While I was sitting in front of the hotel, the Merauke police chief and his men came to the hotel. Several police officers carried rifles. They dragged me down [from] the hotel, [ransacked] my room, arrested me and handcuffed me along with other hotel residents.
“Before arresting me, the police chief asked me about my origin, my job, what were my interests in Merauke. I had a debate with the police chief and argued, because they asked for my ID card.
“After conducting the search, I was handcuffed by the police officers to the Dalmas [armoured] car. Cell phones, wallets, laptop bags, laptops and several other items except clothes and shoes were also transported to the police for examination as evidence.
“In the Dalmas car, besides me there were several MRP members, staff and RDP participants who stayed with us.
“I saw that the coordinator of the MRP RDP Team, two MRP staff and a participant were handcuffed just like me.
“At around 1055 Papuan time, we arrived at the Merauke Police. I and 4 other people were still handcuffed. The handcuffs were removed when we sat down to inspect our belongings.
“All the people who were arrested were gathered at the Merauke police hall. Our belongings that were secured by the police officers were checked and we were asked to hand over the report of the evidence.
“After that we just sat down. We purchased our own lunch. We also bought drinking water ourselves.
“At around 1600 Papua time, we began to undergo investigations.
“I was examined separately in a separate room by the officer. I was asked about my personal identity, family, RDP MRP, my job and the source of the RDP MRP costs. I gave a statement but refused to sign it.
“One night we stayed at the Merauke police hall. Everyone [who was] arrested. In the hall, police officers did not pay attention to health protocols.
November 18 “At around 09.05 Papuan time, I was called again by the officers to ask for information about the RDP MRP manual, and more specifically point 3 the objectives of the MRP RDP.
“Point 3 is written about the MRP RDP for OAP to determine their own fate. I explained that self-determination needs to be well understood and not just a referendum but also needs to be linked to human rights, particularly the principles of FPIC.
“At around 1400 Papua time, two MRP members, me and MRP staff signed a statement letter made by the Merauke police.
“At around 1645, we were declared free. However, some items were detained, namely my belongings, belongings of the team coordinator, members of the MRP, and some money.”
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Egliston, Postdoctoral research fellow, Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology
In the latest salvo of an almost two-decade console war between Microsoft and Sony, both Sony’s Playstation 5 and Microsoft’s Xbox Series S/X were launched last week.
With increased spending on videogames due to ongoing quarantine and travel restrictions, the launches have been described as historically significant. Head of Xbox Phil Spencer tweeted:
As is typical for a “next-generation” launch, both consoles sport significant boosts to computing power, support 4K graphics and offer faster performance and loading times. But unlike previous launches, they present starkly different visions for the future of video gaming.
Sony continues to focus on providing exclusive content. Meanwhile, Microsoft yesterday launched its Project xCloud game streaming service in Australia — the most recent step in a wider trend towards embracing a subscription-based business model.
Sony’s focus on exclusivity
For a long time, new consoles had been primarily marketed around “platform exclusive” titles available only for that console.
Sony and Microsoft have in the past paid millions to developers for exclusivity deals. In 2010, Microsoft paid Rockstar Games US$75,000,000 to stop Grand Theft Auto IV from becoming a Playstation 3 exclusive.
Sony’s recent PS5 launch carries on this tradition. The console is marketed in terms of first-party exclusives, such as those developed by Naughty Dog (Uncharted, The Last of Us) and Sony Computer Entertainment’s Santa Monica Studio (God of War).
Sony has also had great success selling hardware peripherals that make its consoles more attractive, evident in recent quarterly revenues. The PlayStation virtual reality headset sold more than five million units worldwide during the last generation.
In contrast, Microsoft quickly abandoned the Kinect. This motion-sensing device bundled with the Xbox One never won over its audience.
The rise of subscription gaming
That said, although Sony vastly outsold Microsoft with the PS4 last generation, it seems in 2020 Microsoft has shifted the goalposts of success.
As Phil Spencer notes, Microsoft’s aim is no longer to sell the most consoles, but to accumulate the most players, irrespective of where they’re playing. The console itself is now almost secondary.
For instance, Microsoft’s Game Pass subscription service, launched in 2017, provides access to Xbox titles across both Xbox consoles and PC. Game Pass follows a similar model to Netflix, wherein users pay a monthly fee to access a library of content.
And although having a Game Pass membership isn’t mandatory, Microsoft reports 70% of X/S console users do.
In Australia, Game Pass memberships for either PC or console gaming are the same price. The ‘ultimate’ membership, which includes both PC and console games, costs extra.Shutterstock
On the surface, subscription gaming seems to offer better value for money in terms of access to content, as gamers don’t have to buy the games outright.
But as has been the case with competing television and film streaming services, should subscription gaming become more common, paying for a range of subscriptions may become costly — especially if certain games are exclusive to certain services.
The Game Pass service uses “cloud gaming” technology. Whereas consoles provide the local computing hardware needed to play games, cloud gaming involves streaming games over the internet, from a host’s remote servers to the user’s device.
Cloud gaming enables seamless cross-platform gaming, which has come leaps and bounds in the past few years.Shutterstock
In the past, this hasn’t worked well due to “high latency”. This refers to the delay between making an input (such as shooting a character) and seeing the result (the character being shot).
However, with improved computing power, internet speeds and clever design tricks, cloud gaming is becoming a crowded market, with big tech companies including Google and Amazon joining in, too.
Sony began experimenting with cloud gaming in 2014 with PS Now. This service allows the streaming of older titles, such as PS3 games. And while Sony continues to offer PS Now for the PS5, and at a cheaper price point than Microsoft’s Game Pass, the PS Now is still focused on old games.
On the other hand, Microsoft is aggressively pushing its new Project xCloud. This service, which comes bundled with the GamePass, allows users to stream certain newer Xbox games directly to their smartphone or tablet, without even needing to own an Xbox console.
Clearly, Micosoft’s focus is on players, not consoles. Considering the massive impact smartphones are having on who plays games (and how often), Microsoft may be setting itself up to engage a much larger audience than ever before.
An evolving market
The 2020 console war looks quite different to those of the past, when a single winner often took it all (or at least the majority of it). Think Nintendo in 1990s North America, or Sony’s domination last generation with the PS4.
In light of Microsoft’s shifting approach, we’re now in a situation where two winners will likely take large chunks of different markets, by doing different things.
On one hand, this might help diversify the market and provide greater variety for consumers. On the other, Sony and Microsoft’s divergence might have gamers spending more than ever.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Pickering, Assistant Professor, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra
Now Joe Biden is on track to be the next US president, there has been plenty of speculation about what this means for Australia’s policies on climate change.
Biden promises to achieve a 100% clean energy economy and reach net-zero emissions in the US no later than 2050. This puts Australia — which is ranked among the worst of the G20 members on climate policies — under pressure to revisit its paltry greenhouse gas emissions targets for 2030 and to commit to reaching net-zero by 2050 as well.
But emissions targets are only part of the story. Another important area where the US election could make a difference involves climate finance: when rich countries like Australia channel money to help low-income countries deal with climate change and cut their emissions.
Biden’s win could be the perfect opportunity for Australia to save face and rejoin the UN Green Climate Fund, the main multilateral vehicle for deploying climate finance.
Australia’s initial commitment to the Green Climate Fund
Under the Paris Agreement, developed countries, including Australia, have committed to mobilise US$100 billion a year in climate finance by 2020.
Of this, US$20 billion has been formally pledged to the UN Green Climate Fund. The rest of what countries have committed so far is spread across a range of bilateral partnerships (typically through aid programs), other multilateral channels such as the World Bank, and private investment.
In 2014 Obama committed US$3 billion to the Green Climate Fund, but only transferred the first US$1 billion before President Trump cancelled the remainder in 2017. Biden has pledged to fulfil Obama’s original commitment.
Australia, under the Abbott government, eventually decided to support the fund, initially contributing A$200 million in 2014 and co-chairing its board for much of its early stages.
When the fund called for new commitments in 2018, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced over talkback radio that Australia would not “tip money into that big climate fund”. Australia lost its board seat at the end of 2019.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Marise Payne elaborated at the time:
it is our assessment that there are significant challenges with [the fund’s] governance and operational model which are impacting its effectiveness.
Australia steps back
Australia stood by — and even exceeded — its overall pledge to provide A$1 billion in climate finance over five years to 2020, but it opted to provide this assistance through other channels, mainly bilateral partnerships with governments in neighbouring countries, including A$300 million for the Pacific.
Even so, Australia’s stepback from the fund was condemned by Pacific island countries, whose populations are among the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, and who are strong supporters of the fund.
I think we are coming to the stage where some countries don’t care what their reputation in the international arena is. It seems [Australia] is heading in that direction.
The cast has changed – will the script say the same?
Our 2017 research on Australia’s climate finance commitments found pressure from the US — not least during Obama’s visit to Australia in 2014 — and other countries ultimately served as a catalyst for Prime Minister Tony Abbott to overcome his reluctance to contribute.
Obama on climate change at the University of Queensland.
Subsequently, the Trump administration’s recalcitrance on climate change appears to have given the Morrison government cover to resist international pressure and pull out of it.
Now that the cast has changed again, can we expect Australia to rejoin the fund?
There are signs Morrison’s rhetoric on climate change has shifted compared to Abbott’s. But this hasn’t translated into a major policy shift, and he still faces intense pressure from the coalition’s right wing to do as little as possible.
However, as one of the more moderate members of the Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs Marise Payne can be expected to appreciate the diplomatic value of recommitting to the Green Climate Fund.
After the government’s recent audit of multilateral organisations, Payne observed that mulilateralism through strong and transparent institutions “serves Australia’s interests”. Recommitting to the Green Climate Fund would be consistent with this message.
Global momentum on climate action
Two other key variables are how the fund and the broader global context have evolved.
In 2014, the fund hadn’t yet delivered any money to developing countries. Since then, work on the ground has got underway, but the fund has faced criticism around its governance and slow disbursement.
Progress has been hampered by recurring disagreements between board members from developed and developing countries over the direction of the fund.
While on the fund’s board, Australia was a persistent advocate for robust decision-making processes. But it won’t be in a position to shape the fund’s governance for the better unless it recommits.
This is a vote of confidence in the fund’s capacity to deliver results and leverage private resources more efficiently than dozens of bilateral funding channels.
And it shows how pressure on Australia from Biden will be backed up by the global momentum for climate action, which has built up since the Obama administration.
Pacific island countries have condemned Australia’s stepback from the fund.AAP Image/Mick Tsikas
The COVID-19 wild card
While Australia has pledged a further A$500 million for the Pacific from 2020 onwards, its overall A$1 billion commitment, which extends across the Indo-Pacific and beyond, expires this year. Many countries are also due to update their emissions targets under the Paris Agreement ahead of a major summit in 2021.
But COVID-19 is a wild card. It has placed new demands on development assistance programs and national budgets in Australia and elsewhere.
Still, Australia has fared much better in the pandemic than many other countries so far, while also running an aid budget lower than many of its peers. This means Australia can hardly justify going slow on funding when climate change poses a growing threat.
Ramping up its overall commitment to climate finance — and renewing its support for the leading multilateral fund in this area — will be an important sign that Australia is ready to play its part.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Barbara Broadway, Senior Research Fellow, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, University of Melbourne
Female workforce participation has risen for the past two decades in Australia, and in turn, more young kids have been attending formal childcare.
The HILDA Survey has been running since 2001, and the same 17,000 or so Australians are interviewed every year on issues such as health, family and work. The newest report, published today, is based on 2018 figures, the most recent available data.
According to the HILDA Survey, 52% of single-parent households with kids aged under four used formal childcare back in 2016. But in 2018, that share has dropped to 35%. The same trend isn’t observed among coupled parents.
While it is unclear what is driving this trend, it is potentially a sign many single parents simply can’t afford formal childcare. If so, it risks kicking off a vicious cycle in which lack of money, lack of childcare, and lack of employment opportunities trap single parents in entrenched disadvantage.
About 52% of single parent households with kids aged under four used formal childcare back in 2016. But in 2018, however, that share has dropped to just 35%.HILDA 2020
There doesn’t appear to be an obvious explanation for this phenomenon. The change in usage patterns comes at a time when childcare subsidies had just been substantially increased for the majority of low- and middle-income households, reducing their out-of-pocket expenses.
There also appears to be no reduced need for care; employment levels among single parents remained stable even while childcare usage dropped.
It may be many single parents are instead relying on informal childcare arrangements, such as relatives or friends. The HILDA data reveal a growing number of single parents with kids below school age, who have a job but no formal care arrangement.
In 2018, only 52% of all employed single parents with young kids had a formal care arrangement, compared with an average of 70% over the previous ten years.
In 2018, only 52% of all employed single parents with young kids had a formal care arrangement, compared to an average of 70% over the previous ten years.Shutterstock
This is a worrying new trend. It sets up single parents for a host of logistical problems juggling multiple care arrangements and unreliable access to care, which can jeopardise their employment in the longer term.
And because it’s unregulated, there’s no way to enforce quality standards of informal care arrangements. That could potentially limit children’s social, behavioural and cognitive development if they miss out on formal care.
As in other countries, Australian single-parent families who don’t access formal childcare are the most disadvantaged; they are more likely to live in remote or regional Australia, and in socially and economically disadvantaged locations, and the parents in these families have lower educational qualifications.
There is a strong link between families that don’t or cannot access formal childcare, and families affected by poverty and lack of employment.
A cycle of poverty and entrenched disadvantage
HILDA tracks households over time, so we can also see each family’s circumstances and childcare usage in the year prior. When we analysed single-parent households over time, we found two important facts.
First, the falling rates of formal childcare usage among single parents isn’t just about a shift over time, in which fewer and fewer single new families begin to use the formal care sector when their child is old enough.
It is, to a large extent, about families that already had a formal care arrangement in place, but cancelled their enrolments before their kids reached school age.
And second, just before these families stopped using childcare, they tended to be somewhat poorer than their counterparts who continued to use it — but not as poor as the families are who don’t use childcare in the long run.
In other words, there could be a vicious cycle whereby lack of income (whether because the single parent is unemployed, or employed on a low wage) prompts families to drop childcare, further worsening their economic position down the track because work opportunities are more constrained. It’s hard to maximise work opportunities if you don’t have reliable childcare.
It appears that even after the recent increase in subsidies, our childcare system is badly set up.Shutterstock
The HILDA Survey had already shown a substantial increase in relative poverty rates among single-parent households — from 15% in 2016 to 25% in 2018, well above the 10.7% overall rate of relative poverty.
Given the devastating effects of COVID-19, we can expect the number of single-parent families that enter a cycle of poverty and entrenched disadvantage will only grow further.
It appears that even after the recent increase in subsidies, our childcare system is badly set up to help them find a way out.
Measuring the material factors of our lives — like finances, work, health — can tell us a lot about the state of Australian society, but what matters most to us?
To help answer this question, we need to know not just what people have and don’t have, but how they feel — what researchers call subjective well-being.
The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey asks these questions of around 17,000 Australians every year. The latest report, released today, shows that over almost two decades (2001-2018), Australians’ life satisfaction has been fairly constant at relatively high levels, driven by basic factors such as health, safety and social contact.
But there are gaps. Unemployed people, immigrants from non-English speaking countries and Indigenous Australians generally all fare worse than other Australians.
Combined with the reduced satisfaction that comes from unemployment, the data is a warning the economic and social cost of controlling the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to have significantly hurt many Australians’ sense of well-being.
Combined with the reduced satisfaction that comes from unemployment, the data is warning that the well-being of many Australians is likely to have been significantly hurt this year.Shutterstock
The youngest and oldest have the highest life satisfaction
Life satisfaction, as one measure of subjective well-being, is measured in HILDA by asking Australians
All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life overall?
Responses range from 0 to 10 — the higher this score, the more satisfied a person is with their life as a whole.
Respondents were also asked to rate their satisfaction with different areas or domains of life, namely job, finances, housing, safety, leisure, and health.
Australians are generally quite satisfied with their lives. In 2018, for example, the average life satisfaction score was about 7.92 on the 0-10 scale.
In 2018, the average life satisfaction score was about 7.92 on the 0-10 scale.HILDA 2020
Women report consistently higher levels of life satisfaction compared to men (though this difference is very small), and this has remained consistent over the 18 years of HILDA. But women are less satisfied with leisure time than men, which may reflect the greater child caring burden on women.
There are also some age differences. As is common across the world, the youngest (15-24) and oldest (65 and over) have the highest life satisfaction, whereas Australians in the 35-44 and 45-54 age groups are consistently the least satisfied with their lives.
The HILDA results confirm a so-called “U-shape” relationship between age and life satisfaction, implying that life satisfaction is relatively high at younger ages, declines during middle age, and starts increasing again at a later stage.
Life satisfaction is relatively high at younger ages, declines during middle age, and starts increasing again at a later stage.HILDA 2020
Health and safety: good for most but not all
Health, unsurprisingly, seems to play an important role. People in poor general or mental health, and those with a disability, have substantially lower average life satisfaction than those without such health problems.
As might be expected, employed people have much lower satisfaction with their leisure time than those who are unemployed or not in the labour force. But regardless of gender, unemployed people are much less satisfied with life.
Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians overall reported similar levels of life satisfaction in 2018, but there are relatively large differences in some important domains that suggests Indigenous Australians do worse.
Compared to non-Indigenous people, Indigenous Australians report lower satisfaction with finances, housing, and health.
Australians are generally quite satisfied with their lives.Shutterstock
Apart from health satisfaction, immigrants from non-English speaking countries report lower average well-being in all domains (including with life overall).
When we consider satisfaction in different life domains, Australian men and women are least satisfied with their finances, although financial satisfaction has been increasing somewhat over time.
Of the ‘life domains’ we asked about, Australians are most satisfied about their personal safety. But women are less satisfied with leisure time than men.HILDA 2020
Australians are most satisfied with their personal safety, and here as well safety satisfaction has exhibited an upward trend over time. Of note is that Australians’ satisfaction with health, although relatively high, has been on a slight downward trend over the past two decades.
Life satisfaction
Married people are more satisfied than those in other marital statuses. One interesting exception, however, is among women in de facto relationships, who are slightly more satisfied with life than married women.
Somewhat counter-intuitively, higher levels of education are related to lower reported life satisfaction. One possible explanation is the hypothesis that more educated persons have higher aspirations which, if not met, may have a detrimental effect on well-being.
Having children is associated with greater life satisfaction for men, but for women there is no relationship between children and life satisfaction. Again, this may in part reflect greater childcare responsibility and is also consistent with women’s lower leisure satisfaction.
People with a disability are especially more likely to report lower life satisfaction.
Having regular social contact and social relationships leads to higher life satisfaction for both men and women, underscoring the importance of maintaining social ties.
The social restrictions imposed to control COVID-19 this year therefore likely had a detrimental effect on the well-being of many Australians, especially in Melbourne.
For both women and men, having higher household income is related to greater life satisfaction, but the effect is pretty small. So, life satisfaction is not just about money.
For women there is no relationship between region of residence and life satisfaction, but men living in major urban areas are much less satisfied with life compared to men living in non-urban areas.
For all Australians, regardless of age or gender, changes in health satisfaction lead to the largest changes in life satisfaction.
Australians are most satisfied about their personal safety, and here as well safety satisfaction has exhibited an upward trend over time.Shutterstock
After health satisfaction, people’s satisfaction with personal safety is also associated with large increases in overall life satisfaction.
These findings imply basic needs such as being healthy and feeling safe are some of the most important contributors to overall well-being.
What policies and services do we need?
For the most part, the average Australian is doing very well. Overall life satisfaction is generally high, and satisfaction with safety and housing rank among the highest scored domain satisfactions, suggesting most Australians are very satisfied with the provision of their basic needs.
But it is clear the unemployed have very low levels of well-being in most life domains. Subjective well-being is also quite low among immigrants from non-English speaking countries, as well as among Indigenous Australians.
These observations stress the importance of a strong emphasis on factors like job creation and skills development for unemployed people, additional support for immigrants and continued emphasis on Indigenous well-being.
Because health satisfaction is the strongest predictor of overall life satisfaction in Australia, improvements in individual health circumstances are likely to filter through into greater overall life satisfaction.
Finally, the data on Australians suffering from poor health — physical, mental, and those with a disability — signal that the efficient and effective provision of health services to those most in need is paramount.
This piece was co-published with the University of Melbourne’s Pursuit.
The incoming tide of new books makes me reflect and wonder whether writing still more books about climate change is a waste of precious time. When the UN is calling for governments to act to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, are books just preaching to the converted? My answer is no, but that doesn’t mean publishing, buying or reading more books is the answer to our climate emergency right now.
In April, on the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, the New York Times told readers this might be the year they finally read about climate change. But many already have.
The science was still developing then. We knew human activity was increasing the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane. Measurable changes to the climate were also clear: more very hot days, fewer very cold nights, changes to rainfall patterns.
The 1985 Villach conference had culminated in an agreed statement warning there could be a link, but cautious scientists were saying more research was needed before we could be confident the changes had a human cause. There were credible alternative theories: the energy from the Sun could be changing, there could be changes in the Earth’s orbit, there might be natural factors we had not recognised.
By the mid-1990s, the debate was essentially over in the scientific community. Today there is barely a handful of credible climate scientists who don’t accept the evidence that human activity has caused the changes we are seeing. The agreed statements by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, led to the Kyoto Protocol being adopted in 1997.
And so — as the urgency being felt by the scientists increased — more books were published.
Former US vice president and 2007 Nobel Prize winner Al Gore’s book Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis was first published in 2008 and has since been issued in 20 editions. There have been more than enough books to furnish a list of the top 100 bestselling titles on the topic, recommended by the likes of Elon Musk and esteemed climate scientists and commentators. The ones I have acquired fill an entire bookcase shelf — dozens of titles describing the problem, making dire predictions, calling for action.
Does the new batch of books risk spreading more despair? If the previous books didn’t change our climate trajectory then what is the point in making readers feel the cause is hopeless and a bleak future is inevitable?
No. Writing more books isn’t a waste of time, but they also shouldn’t be a high priority at the moment. The point of writing a book is to summarise what we know about the problem and identify credible ways forward.
Those were my goals when I wrote Living in the Greenhouse in 1989 and Living in the Hothouse in 2005. The main purpose of the first book was to draw attention to a problem that was largely unrecognised, trying to inform and persuade readers that we needed to take action. By the release of the second book, the aim was to counter the tsunami of misinformation unleashed by the fossil fuel industry, conservative institutions and the Murdoch press. Rupert Murdoch spoke at News Corp’s AGM this week, maintaining: “We do not deny climate change, we are not deniers”.
But there are two reasons why I’m not working on a third book right now.
The first is time. If I started writing today, it would be late next year before the book would be in the shops. We can’t afford another year of inaction. More importantly, the inaction of our national government is not a result of a lack of knowledge.
On November 9, United Nations chief António Guterres said the world was still falling well short of the leadership required to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050:
Our goal is to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Today, we are still headed towards three degrees at least.
Some believe the inaction is explained by the corruption of our politics by fossil fuel industry donations. Others see is a fundamental conflict between the concerted action needed and the dominant ideologies of governing parties. Making decision-makers better informed about the science won’t solve either of these problems.
They might be solved, however, by the evidence that a growing majority of voters want to see action to slow climate change.
And the COVID-19 pandemic has focused, rather than distracted, the community on the risks of climate change. A recent survey by the Boston Consulting Group of 3,000 people across eight countries found about 70% of respondents are now more aware of the risks of climate change than they were before the pandemic. Three-quarters say slowing climate change is as important as protecting the community from COVID-19.
The growing awareness and sense of urgency are backed by another recent study looking at internet search behaviour across 20 European countries. Researchers found signs of growing support for a post-COVID recovery program that emphasises sustainability.
Books have also educated young readers on the climate emergency.Shutterstock
Still, preaching to the converted is not necessarily a bad thing. They might need to be reminded why they were persuaded that action is needed, or need help countering the half-truths and barefaced lies being peddled in the public debate. Books can fulfil that mission. So can speaking to community groups, which I do regularly.
I tell audiences the urgent priority now is to turn into action the knowledge we have about the accelerating impacts of climate change and economically viable responses. Our states and territories now have the goal of zero-carbon by 2050, so I am giving presentations spelling out how this can be achieved. We urgently need the Commonwealth government to catch up to the community.
Change is happening rapidly. More than 2 million Australian households now have solar panels. Solar and wind provided more than half of the electricity used by South Australia last year and that state achieved a world-first on the morning of October 11: for a brief period, its entire electricity demand was met by solar panels.
The urgent task is not to publish more books on the crisis, but to change the political discourse and force our national government to play a positive role.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine appears to work equally well in older people.Shutterstock
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.
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.
We’ve heard a lot of good vaccine news lately — but it’s not a competition.Bebeto Matthews/AP
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
An individualistic culture has stifled collective action on COVID in the US.John G. Mabanglo/EPA/AAP
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.
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.
Papua New Guinea’s prime minister has urged the public to not get caught up in the country’s political crisis which has ended up in the courts.
James Marape’s government appears to have staved off a vote of no confidence by quickly passing the budget on Tuesday and adjourning parliament to April.
But the move is being challenged in court by the opposition which gained a majority last week following a mass defection of government MPs.
The opposition leader, Belden Namah, with a majority of MPs behind him, moved a motion to adjourn Parliament to December 1 when a grace period on motions of no-confidence lapses.
But Parliament Speaker Job Pomat subsequently ruled that the motion had been “wrongly entertained” by his deputy and recalled the House.
Former prime minister Peter O’Neill, one of the opposition MPs leading the charge to remove Marape, said the Speaker’s ruling was flawed.
“Flawed in the sense that in every occasion over the past 45 years only the members of Parliament can adjourn Parliament by a resolution and a motion on the floor, when in fact Belden Namah on Friday moved the motion to suspend standing orders.
57 members ‘gave authority’ “When you suspend standing orders that means the standing orders do not apply. Fifty-seven members gave him the authority. That is why he moved the motion,” he said.
In Tuesday’s sitting, Parliament achieved a quorum with less than half of all MPs present, when the government passed its budget, without the usual required debate.
O’Neill’s legal team has now filed a court application challenging the legality of the sitting, which the opposition was largely unable to attend.
“So Marape and the Speaker are making a mockery of the parliamentary system, the mandate of our people, the democracy that we have enjoyed for the last 45 years.”
While this was happening, the embattled prime minister summoned public service departmental heads, including Police Commissioner and Defence Commander, for a special briefing.
The message he gave them was repeated to the public at large, blaming the current crisis on MPs who he said were prepared to indulge in “cut-throat politics” at a time when PNG is faced by steep challenges caused by covid-19.
“So let me at this time encourage our citizens, don’t you worry about politics that is taking place. Remain focussed at your job, leave politics to politicians, get on your life. Public servants and members of our disciplinary services are asaked to remain above politics, focus on your job.”
Marape dismisses O’Neill’s claims Marape dismissed O’Neill’s claim that Tuesday’s adjournment was illegal. He said just because the opposition decided to leave the capital and form a camp in remote Vanimo, it did not mean government services must come to a standstill.
“Mr O’Neill and his friends in the opposite side of the house are reminded that we will play by the rule, play fair and square. And if they’re not satisfied, well the court is the place where we can meet. In the meantime, government business runs, we run a government.”
Marape had the option of adjourning Parliament to June, within the last 12 months of parliament’s five-year term, when it’s not possible to lodge a no-confidence motion. But by instead opting for April, the prime minister has given the opposition a late chance at tabling such a motion.
“I would have played nasty and asked the leader of government business to push Parliament into a safer time when there was no vote-of-no-confidence opportunity, for instance after July 30th, 2021,” Marape explained.
“But we are not stupid running government. We are mindful that Parliament is a place of forum. The reason why we pushed Parliament to April was to ensure the programmes of early 2021 take place – 2021 is an important preparation year for the 2022 national elections.”
With last week’s political gambit frustrated, O’Neill has kept up the attack on his former close ally’s government.
“We are hearing today that they are printing cheques in the Treasury, printing cheques in the Finance Department to use to politically bribe members of Parliament. This has never happened before in the history of our country.”
Similar accusations flying Similar accusations are flying in the other direction. The Finance Minister Rainbo Paita revealed that on the eve of his exit from government, Bulolo MP Sam Basil – who was deputy prime minister and National Planning Minister until he led the defection last week – oversaw a large payout from the Supplementary Budget prepared to meet the towering challenges of an economy rocked by the pandemic.
According to Paita, the funds allegedly went to MPs in Basil’s United Labour Party.
Meanwhile, one of the defectors, William Duma, the incumbent Minister of Commerce and Industry, is now back showing support for Marape again.
Last Friday, after leaving government, the MP cited concerns about government handling of the economy, yet the bulk of his United Resources Party remained with the government. Now he is back claiming last week was a mistake made while confused over the opposition’s move.
Duma has form, having switched sides more than once during the lobbying that preceded the ousting of Peter O’Neill as prime minister last year.
The Mt Hagen MP’s inveterate flip-flopping means there’s no guarantee he would not change sides again, another sign that the political situation in Port Moresby remains fluid.
This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.
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.
ABC TV’s ‘7.3’0 report on Crown Resorts whistleblower Jenny Jiang.
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.
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.
The Barangaroo casino complex in Sydney.Shutterstock
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A map showing sea and land routes planned under the Belt and Road initiative.Shutterstock
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.
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.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews is committed to the Belt and Road initiative.Twitter
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.
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.
Dredging can cause sediment to smother seagrass.iStock
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.
Noise pollution from ships can affect threatened species such as manatees.Shutterstock
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Letts, Director, Centre for Military and Security Law; Associate Professor, Australian National University
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”.
ADF chief Angus Campbell condemned the behaviour of Australian soldiers in Afghanistan.Mick Tsikas/AAP
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.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison warned Australians the report would make tough reading.Lukas Coch/AAP
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And now a toast to, um, the end of 2020!Unsplash, CC BY
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.
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 …
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.
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.
When spoken, ‘um’ and ‘uh’ can signal topic changes or speech repair jobs.Unsplash, CC BY
Speakers can improve the effectiveness of their communication; for example, through awareness of their ums and uhs, or by slowing down.
Utterances like um and uh can act like bullet points during a presentation.Unsplash, CC BY
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.
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.
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.
The crystal structures of cubic diamond and hexagonal Lonsdaleite have atoms arranged differently.
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.
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.
In ‘shear’ forces, the object is pushed in one direction at one end, and the opposite direction at the other.Wiki Commons
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.
This electron microscope image shows a ‘river’ of diamond in 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.
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.
The Papua New Guinea Parliament has passed the 2021 national budget with more than half of MPs – including the opposition – absent from the chamber, assuming it had been adjourned to December 1.
The opposition says it is challenging the sitting in the Supreme Court.
Opposition lawyers could not obtain a stay order from the court in time to stop the Parliament sitting on Tuesday morning, reportsThe National.
Speaker Job Pomat, after reviewing the laws governing the calling of meetings of the House on Monday, ruled that a motion passed last Friday to adjourn to next month, was “wrongly entertained”.
He therefore recalled Parliament on Tuesday, catching the Opposition MPs who left last weekend for a camp in Vanimo, West Sepik, by surprise. They were still in Vanimo.
Prime Minister James Marape, backed by 50 MPs including himself, welcomed the passing of the 2021 national budget saying the work of governing the nation must continue.
“It is time to finish the year and pass the budget for a new year. I am still PM leading this government and have been leading for 18 months. It hasn’t been easy,” he said.
Debts ‘we are trying to clean’ “There are debts we are trying to clean and get loans that have less interest like the Australians have given.
“The IMF, ADB, World Bank, Japan are assisting this country. We are trying to clean the debts we have incurred over the last couple of years.”
“Crisis in the House” … The National newspaper’s coverage of the budget vote. Image: PMC screenshot
Lawyer Phillip Tabuchi of Young and Williams lawyers representing the opposition said an application for a stay order had to be withdrawn around midday as Parliament was already sitting by then.
Justice Derek Hartshorn in the Supreme Court agreed to withdraw the application and had the substantive matter adjourned to the registry.
Tabuchi said: “The application for injunction to restrain this morning’s (yesterday) sitting had to be withdrawn because the events had overtaken the application. We will reconsider legal avenues and take it from there.”
Former PM Peter O’Neill described the Parliament sitting as “illegal”.
“Last Friday, 57 members voted to adjourn Parliament to Dec 1. If the government has the numbers they can pass the budget on December 1,” he said.
“Unfortunately, they knew that more than half of MPs are out of Port Moresby and not able to attend Parliament.”
‘Why the rush?’ He accused Marape and Pomat of “making a mockery of our parliamentary system, the mandates of our people, the democracy that they have enjoyed for the last 45 years.”
He said any MP could move a motion for parliament to be adjourned.
“In fact (last Friday), Belden Namah moved a motion to suspend Standing Orders. When you do that, it means Standing Orders do not apply,” he said.
“The 57 members gave him (Namah) that authority to suspend standing orders.”
O’Neill said they were redrafting the application to the court to declare the sitting illegal.
“Today they (government) were trying to pass a budget which is not printed. It is illegal. Why the rush?”
The Pacific Media Centre republishes The National articles with permission.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 disproportionatelyaffected by the pandemic, experiencing more psychological distress and a greater chance of job disruption.
Indigenous prisoners account for just over a quarter of the total Australian prisoner population.Peter Rae/AAP
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.
Marine heat waves resulted in severe bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef in 2016 and 2017.Stringer/AP
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.
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.
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 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.)
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.
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.
As chief scientist, Alan Finkel has benefited from a strong relationship with Prime Minister Scott Morrison.Mick Tsikas / AAP
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.
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.
Cathy Foley brings a wealth of expertise and experience to the role of chief scientist.Mick Tsikas / AAP
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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Blair Williams, Associate Lecturer, School of Political Science and International Relations, Australian National University
Former prime minister Kevin Rudd’s record-breaking petition calling for a royal commission into Australian media ownership has once again put this issue in the spotlight. It has gained more than 500,000 signatures and led to a Senate inquiry into media diversity.
Rudd has described News Corp as a “cancer on democracy”, while fellow former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has labelled it “pure propaganda,” and slammed its “campaign on climate denial”. Labor’s Julia Gillard, has also made similar claims.
However, these discussions fail to consider how the Murdoch press is particularly hostile towards women politicians.
How does the Murdoch press represent women?
While studying media representations of women in politics, I’ve noticed a stark difference in Murdoch press coverage of men and women leaders.
There is a difference in the way male and female leaders are represented in News Corp papers.Lukas Coch/AAP
My research, recently published in Feminist Media Studies, compared Australian media portrayals of Gillard’s prime ministerial rise with that of Helen Clark’s in New Zealand. Both leaders experienced a sexist focus on their gender, appearance and personal lives. But it was far more frequent and intense for Gillard.
My research suggests two key explanations for this contrast: the different political contexts they operated in, and the dominating influence of the Murdoch press in Australia versus its absence in New Zealand.
Yet this has notably gendered ramifications. Murdoch’s conservative morality, traditionalist values, and opposition to left-wing movements appear constantly in his newspapers, making them uniquely hostile to women.
Gillard did not simply threaten the political status quo as Australia’s first woman prime minister. As an unmarried, child-free, atheist woman from the left of the ALP, she also threatened Murdoch’s conservative ideology. His newspaper therefore portrayed Gillard in a highly gendered — even misogynistic — manner intended to undermine her. This was evident in the criticisms of her fashion choices, such as a headline condemning her “technicolour screamcoat” in The Daily Telegraph.
Things have not changed since Gillard’s days
Though it’s been ten years since Gillard became prime minister, not much has changed. News Corp papers continue to attack women in politics, especially if they are from the left.
Queensland Labor Premier Annastacia is another seasoned veteran of News Corps’ sexist coverage. This includes the Sunshine Coast Daily’s 2019 front page image, which featured Palaszczuk in crosshairs with the headline, “Anna, you’re next”.
More recently, The Courier Mail labelled her dealings with Liberal NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian over border closures, “schoolgirl behaviour”.
Even Liberal women aren’t immune from sexist coverage. Julie Bishop, the Coalition’s former foreign affairs minister, was likened to the power-hungry “Lady Macbeth” by The Australian for her 2018 leadership tilt. She was also ridiculed by the same paper for calling out the Liberal party’s sexist bullying culture.
Berejiklian has also endured sexist reportage, particularly during the recent scandal over her relationship with disgraced former NSW MP Daryl Maguire. One Daily Telegraph article waxed lyrical about her supposed “wedding fantasy”, a “feminine albeit old-fashioned thing to do” which, they argued, might have kept a workaholic like Berejiiklian “sane”.
However, the News Corp’s partisan bias towards the Coalition is also evident in these stories. Rather than holding Berejiklian to account, the Murdoch press largely ran sympathetic stories about the premier’s behaviour. This starkly contrasts with the onslaught of sexist coverage Gillard received during the AWU affair, which haunted her for the rest of her term in office.
International leaders also under attack
Australian women aren’t the only targets. The globally popular New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has frequently borne the brunt of biased News Corp coverage.
In the lead up to the 2020 New Zealand election, columnist Greg Sheridan argued Ardern doesn’t live up to the hype, claiming in The Australian,
part of the international Jacindamania comes from the fact she is a young left-wing woman who gave birth in office and took maternity leave.
Sheridan also labelled her government’s COVID-19 response and progressive style of politics as “inherently authoritarian” that also “enjoys bossing people around”.
When Ardern won the election in a historic landslide, The Australian responded with a piece describing her as “grossly incompetent” and “the worst person to lead New Zealand through this economic turbulence”.
Notably, the clear bias here drew criticism from the New Zealand press.
In August, Johannes Leak’s cartoon in The Australian, also received international condemnation for its misogynistic and racist depiction of vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
Don’t forget gender
It is clear the Murdoch press has a “woman problem”.
This poses a real obstacle for women in politics, especially those who oppose Murdoch’s conservative ideology. But it also broadcasts a message about women’s roles and place in society more generally — that no matter how privileged or powerful a woman might be, it’s nearly impossible to escape sexist commentary and the objectifying male gaze.
This is why it is so essential to hold the Murdoch press to account in a specifically gendered light.
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.
The Duchess of Cornwall visits Brixton Prison’s Clink restaurant and kitchen in 2016.GettyImages
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
An independent committee analyses interim results to give the trial a green light to proceed.Shutterstock
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%).
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.
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.
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.
Energy efficiency saves consumers money on power bills.Julian Smith/AAP
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.
Window seals help make homes more energy efficient.Shutterstock
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.
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.
Renters would be told upfront about the energy rating of the property under the new plans.Shutterstock
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.
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.
Classrooms where desks are in rows, facing the front, are a hangover from the industrial revolution.Shutterstock
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.
Flexible learning environments include different furniture options, including soft chairs, and no ‘front’ to the classroom.Author provided
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.
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.
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.
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”.
Episodes of Bluey were re-edited to remove the phrase ‘ooga booga’.ABC
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.
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.
A 1922 ad for Eskimo Pie — the brand also only changed its name in 2020.Wikimedia Commons
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.
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.
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.
