Opposition resources spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon has quit the frontbench, accusing Labor of talking too much about issues like climate change and not enough about the needs of its traditional base.
Fitzgibbon told a news conference Labor should wait for Prime Minister Scott Morrison to set a medium-term emissions reduction target and then consider backing it.
Although he said he’d planned to step down from the frontbench 18 months after the election – and had told Labor leader Anthony Albanese some months ago he would do so before Christmas – Fitzgibbon’s timing couldn’t be worse for his leader.
It undermines Albanese’s push to use Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s victory in the US election to ramp up Labor’s attack on the government over climate policy.
Fitzgibbon’s exit from the shadow ministry follows his increasingly outspoken public campaign – which has infuriated many colleagues and caused serious friction with climate spokesman Mark Butler – to push Labor’s climate and energy policy towards the centre.
The tensions between Fitzgibbon and Butler forced the shadow cabinet recently to settle an agreed set of words on the party’s position on gas, to contain public differences on that issue.
At the weekend, Fitzgibbon, who is from the NSW right, sent a thinly veiled warning to his party, saying “this idea that a Biden victory is a vindication of all those who want to set Australia on a path to slower economic growth and large job losses is delusional”.
Fitzgibbon’s behaviour came under fire at a Monday night meeting of left caucus members.
He will be replaced on the frontbench and in the agriculture and resources post by the NSW right’s Ed Husic, who was squeezed out of a frontbench position after the election to accommodate Kristina Keneally.
Fitzgibbon affirmed his support for Albanese’s leadership, saying he would lead to the election. But with some in caucus restless at Albanese’s failure to cut through, there is always a risk of leadership destabilisation.
At Tuesday’s caucus, Albanese moved a motion recognising Fitzgibbon’s service.
Fitzgibbon said that since the election “I’ve been trying to put labour back into the Labor Party. Trying to take the Labor party back to its traditional roots, back to the Labor party I knew when I first became a member 36 years ago.”
“I think the Labor party has been spending too much time in recent years talking about issues like climate change – which is a very important issue – and not enough time talking about the needs of our traditional base.”
He said he had told the caucus meeting Labor should allow candidates and members “to express the aspirations of their local communities”. It couldn’t expect a candidate in an inner Melbourne seat to be saying the same thing as one in central Queensland.
Asked what Labor should do on climate policy, Fitzgibbon said its policy should be “meaningful”.
“I’m a serious believer that the climate is changing and humankind is making a contribution. And government should act.”
But “we need to stop so often being government-in-exile,” he said.
He said Morrison was committing a lot of money on the technology side of the climate change issue, rather than addressing it with a constraint on carbon.
“If Scott Morrison is serious about his actions, spending taxpayers’ money, then who knows where we’ll be on the carbon output equation or ledger in possibly two years’ time?” he said.
“I think we should let Scott Morrison make his investment, allow him to encourage others to invest. … Let him establish his next medium-term target.” Once he did so “the Labor Party should think about backing it.”
Fitzgibbon said he supported 2050 net zero emissions “as an ambition”.
“But the path to 2050 will not be linear. As technology kicks in, the effort will reduce. See, you don’t have to be halfway there at the halfway point.
“So, let Scott Morrison govern it. Let’s hold him to account. Let’s see what he sets. And let’s take some time to see whether he’s on track to meeting the commitment he makes.”
Fitzgibbon said Labor could not form government without winning at least two central and north Queensland electorates, and a couple around the rim of Perth, where there were a lot of fly-in-fly-out workers.
He said Labor had had at least six climate change/energy policies in the last 14 years.
“Only one of them was ever adopted by a Labor government. And, of course, that policy, having been legislated, was repealed by Tony Abbott.
“So, the conclusion you can draw from that is that after 14 years of trying, the Labor party has made not one contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in this country,” he said.
“So, if you want to act on climate change, the first step is to become the government.
“And to become the government, you need to have a climate change and energy policy that can be embraced by a majority of the Australian people. That is something we have failed to do for the last seven or eight years.”
The importance of higher education for the growth and development of society is generally accepted. But openness and access to education for all is essential to maximise its benefits. Leaders in higher education must be ready to examine what it will take to achieve this.
What do we mean by open access? Higher education should provide access for as many people as possible to reach their full potential as individuals. It is a priority in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals because inequality is emerging as a key threat to societal development.
Openness in education depends on the democratisation of societies and, with it, the democratisation of information and knowledge. Nobel Prize-winning Indian economist Amartya Sen described development as freedom. That is, development that enhances meaningful and quality living.
In this context, openness broadly refers to flexible, fair, welcoming and unprejudiced access to higher education. Openness of access requires adherence to basic purpose values – the promotion of self-regulated life-long learning, self-determination and personal agency. Enabling citizens to realise these aspirations contributes to strengthening our democracy.
So what will it take?
Changes in mindset will be non-negotiable for open access. Removing barriers, challenging assumptions and finding innovative means to ensure access and support are important starting points.
Torrens University and Think Education, like other institutions such as ANU and Swinburne, recently announced the Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank (ATAR) will no longer be the only thing that determines students’ entry into university. We now have alternative entry pathways. Systematic support and monitoring to ensure student success will be critical.
Higher education openness should also be understood in terms of the choice and flexibility it allows individuals. Service delivery needs to respond to personal circumstances and learning and support needs. It enables people to choose between different types or modes of access, geographical locations, synchronous (learning with others at same time) or asynchronous (learning individually in one’s own time) activity – in timeframes that suit their circumstances.
This is why online or hybrid learning is essential. At Torrens University, students can choose face-to-face or online study – or both – to undertake their studies.
Importantly, online offerings must never compromise on quality. Students studying remotely must not be worse off than students learning face-to-face.
Students who study online must not be disadvantaged compared to those learning face-to-face.insta_photos/Shutterstock
Offering choice through innovation
To help secondary students consider their options, higher education providers pulled together a series of virtual expos this year. Technology enabled these expos to reach almost 20,000 students across Australia and New Zealand. These expos showed how the higher education sectors in Australia and New Zealand can adapt, innovate and collaborate to ensure no one lacks choices.
It is important to understand that the ideas of openness and inclusive learning environments do not refer to having no norms or boundaries. Openness or open access to higher education depends on the values, ideology and practices of each institution. Equally important are regulatory and societal systems that provide the freedoms and incentives for institutions to develop complementary approaches and capacity.
In South Africa, for example, the higher education and school systems were transformed to open opportunities for all. Policies to increase participation among disadvantaged communities included financial and academic support throughout the education journey.
A set of enabling values and mechanisms will be critical. This means putting in place ideology that gives people the right and the means to participate. It involves creating an ethos that ensures every person is welcome in the education system.
A deliberate process of transformation opened up formerly exclusive institutions in South Africa.Sunshine Seeds/Shutterstock
A full spectrum of support services will be just as important. But why? And what will they be?
Well, while you may open up education for all, remote locations as well as lack of resources in secondary schools could be barriers. So you need arrangements in place to ensure access. Adjustments to entrance requirements and financial support might also be needed to deliver on the promise of education for all.
In higher education, the institutionalised roles of knowledge creators and education providers require them to lead and support societal development through the creation of knowledge that supports innovation. This equips citizens with the social and human capital they need to prosper.
This advancement of human well-being will necessitate breaking down existing barriers between higher education and society. It requires coming down from the ivory tower where a monopoly over knowledge, knowledge creation and distribution has been institutionalised. It means reviewing entrance requirements, policies and procedures that result in exclusion.
This is not to suggest it will be straightforward.
Higher education providers function in a complex and dynamic environment. Each institution will have to carefully choose the focus and scope of its activities. Institutions will have to follow up with strategies, systems and processes that open their boundaries to interaction with industry, society, decision-makers and government, while providing for individual choice and participation.
At Torrens University, Think Education and Media Design School, for example, we collaborate with industry from the outset as we build our curricula. This engagement continues throughout the student journey – through work-integrated learning, our “success coaches” and teaching staff who are industry leaders in their own right.
Openness is therefore not only a matter of access to higher education. It is an inclusive process of opening entrance opportunities, followed by a purpose-driven support environment that aims to prepare successful graduates to contribute to society.
When US President-Elect Joe Biden and Deputy Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris gave their victory speeches on Saturday evening, local time, the tally of Electoral College votes showed they had decisively passed the crucial 270-vote threshold, delivering them to the White House this January.
Tradition dictates the losing candidate also gives their own speech to concede defeat. But their vanquished opponent, Donald Trump, hasn’t done that.
We cannot psychoanalyse Trump from a distance, though I am sure many of us have tried. We can, however, apply psychological theories and models to understand the denial of defeat. My area of research — personality psychology — may prove particularly useful here.
Reluctance to admit defeat, even when the battle is hopelessly lost, is a surprisingly understudied phenomenon. But there is some research that can help give an insight into why some people, particularly those who display a trait called “grandiose narcissism”, might struggle to accept losing. Put simply, these people may be unable to accept, or even comprehend, that they have not won.
Other psychological theories, such as cognitive dissonance (resulting from the discrepancy between what we believe and what happens) can also help explain why we double down on our beliefs in the face of overwhelming contrasting evidence.
Joe Biden has been declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election. But current president Donald Trump is yet to concede defeat.JIM LO SCALZO/EPA/AAP
If you think you’re better than everyone, what would losing mean?
Personality traits may provide insight as to why someone could be unwilling to accept defeat.
Narcissism is one such trait. There is evidence to suggest there are two main forms of narcissism: grandiose narcissism and vulnerable narcissism.
In this article, we’ll focus on grandiose narcissism, as characteristics of this trait seem most relevant to subsequent denial of defeat. People who show hallmarks of grandiose narcissism are likely to exhibit grandiosity, aggression, and dominance over others. According to researchers from Pennsylvania State University, publishing in the Journal of Personality Disorders, this type of narcissism is associated with:
…overt self-enhancement, denial of weaknesses, intimidating demands of entitlement … and devaluation of people that threaten self-esteem.
The grandiose narcissist is competitive, dominant, and has an inflated positive self-image regarding their own skills, abilities, and attributes. What’s more, grandiose narcissists tend to have higher self-esteem and inflated self-worth.
For the grandiose narcissist, defeat may compromise this inflated self-worth. According to researchers from Israel, these people find setbacks in achievement particularly threatening, as these setbacks could indicate a “failure to keep up with the competition”.
Instead of accepting personal responsibility for failure and defeat, these individuals externalise blame, attributing personal setbacks and failures to the shortcomings of others. They do not, or even cannot, recognise and acknowledge the failure could be their own.
Based on the profile of the grandiose narcissist, the inability to accept defeat may best be characterised by an attempt to protect the grandiose positive self-image. Their dominance, denial of weaknesses, and tendency to devalue others results in a lack of comprehension it’s even possible for them to lose.
Why do some people double down despite evidence to the contrary?
In the 1950s, renowned psychologist Leon Festinger published When Prophecy Fails, documenting the actions of a cult called The Seekers who believed in an imminent apocalypse on a set date.
Following the date when the apocalypse did not occur, The Seekers did not question their beliefs. Rather, they provided alternative explanations — doubling down on their ideas. To explain this strengthened denial in the face of evidence, Festinger proposed cognitive dissonance.
Cognitive dissonance occurs when we encounter events that are inconsistent with our attitudes, beliefs, and behaviour. This dissonance is uncomfortable as it challenges what we believe to be true. To reduce this discomfort, we engage in strategies such as ignoring new evidence and justifying our behaviour.
Here’s an example of dissonance and reduction strategies.
Louise believes she is an excellent chess player. Louise invites a new friend, who has barely played chess, to play a game of chess with her. Rather than the easy win Louise thought it might be, her new friend plays a very challenging game and Louise ends up losing. This loss is evidence that contradicts Louise’s belief that she is an excellent chess player. However, to avoid challenging these beliefs, Louise tells herself that it was beginner’s luck, and that she was just having an off day.
Some researchers think experiencing dissonance has an adaptive purpose, as our strategies to overcome dissonance help us navigate an uncertain world and reduce distress.
However, the strategies we use to reduce dissonance can also make us unyielding in our beliefs. Ongoing rigid acceptance of our beliefs could make us unable to accept outcomes even in the face of damning evidence.
When something happens that goes against our beliefs, some of us are motivated to reduce this mental distress by any means possible.John Locher/AP/AAP
Let’s consider how grandiose narcissism might interact with cognitive dissonance in the face of defeat.
The grandiose narcissistic has an inflated positive self-image. When presented with contrary evidence, such as defeat or failure, the grandiose narcissist is likely to experience cognitive dissonance. In an attempt to reduce the discomfort of this dissonance, the grandiose narcissist redirects and externalises the blame. This strategy of reducing dissonance allows the grandiose narcissists’ self-image to stay intact.
Finally, the act of not apologising for one’s behaviour could also be a dissonance strategy. One study by researchers in Australia found refusing to apologise after doing something wrong allowed the perpetrator to keep their self-esteem intact.
It might be safe to say that, if Donald Trump’s denial of the election loss is a product of grandiose narcissism and dissonance, don’t hold your breath for an apology, let alone a graceful concession speech.
Guam has suffered its 90th covid-related death with the US Pacific territory now recording 5233 cases.
The Pacific Daily News today reported 249 new cases on infection yesterday.
Guam’s Joint Information Centre reported that 75 people were hospitalised with covid-19, including 18 in intensive care and 13 on ventilators.
The latest figures came as the US President-elect Joe Biden appealed to American citizens to wear masks as the best way to “turn this pandemic around”.
Biden said the US faced a “very dark winter” and the “worst wave yet”, and Americans had to put aside political differences to tackle covid-19.
He has named a new task force and vowed to “follow the science” as he puts together his transition team.
Covid cases in the US since the epidemic began are nearing 10 million, and there have been more than 237,000 deaths recorded so far, Johns Hopkins research shows.
The latest death in Guam was a 73-year-old man with underlying health conditions who was admitted to hospital on Sunday and died the following day.
Governor Lou Leon Guerrero offered her thoughts to the family and friends of the man saying the tragedy of covid-19 is in its isolation and how it kept families apart.
Guerrero appealed to the community to maintain health precautions to minimise risk of infection.
“If we come together and remain committed, we can end this pandemic.”
1742 cases are currently active in the community.
GMH administrator says Guam could get 2,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine for health care workers later this month. https://t.co/PUiS1b6dsg
CNMI reaches 100 cases Meanwhile, the Northern Marianas has now recorded 100 cases of covid-19 after two incoming passengers tested positive on Sunday.
The new cases were identified through travel screening and have been moved into quarantine .
The Commonwealth Healthcare Corporation has begun contact tracing for the most immediate contacts of the new cases.
Out of the 100 total confirmed coronavirus cases in CMNI, 74 are from incoming passengers.
The CNMI’s last case of community transmission was in early August.
As part of its recovery efforts the Northern Marianas Housing Corporation has reopened applications for the Emergency Solutions Grant-COVID programme, which will provide affected homeowners with financial assistance for 12 months.
The grant utilises federal funds to support communities in providing street outreach, emergency shelter, rental assistance, and related services.
It provides resources for adults and families with children experiencing or at-risk of homelessness.
This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.
Marie Curie is one of the most recognised scientists of the last 200 years. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize – let alone two – and the first to win in two different fields (physics in 1903, and chemistry in 1911).
Curie changed the prevailing understanding of the world and the practice of medicine along the way. She won acceptance and acclaim from the same colleagues who once thought she had no place in science.
Marie Curie’s 1903 Nobel Prize portrait.Wikimedia Commons
Radioactive, Jack Thorne’s screenplay adaptation of Lauren Redniss’ graphic novel, is directed by Marjane Satrapi (most famous for her own graphic novel, Persepolis). Purportedly biographical, it attempts to portray the drive and dedication Curie must have possessed to achieve her career success.
Curie’s story is incredible, without any need for dramatic emphasis or artistic licence. Radioactive, which employs both, does manage to convey her brilliance. It also highlights and reinforces issues affecting women – and other marginalised groups — in science, then and now.
Paris, 1894
The story begins with Maria Sklodowska (Rosamund Pike) literally bumping into her future collaborator and husband, Pierre Curie (Sam Riley), on the streets of Paris. Pierre is quickly established as a similarly poorly respected scientist. He and Marie share a respect for each other’s work.
The film focuses on the Curies’ discoveries – in particular the theorising of radioactivity and the discovery of polonium and radium.
The dichotomy between the initial use of the Curies’ findings of radium in makeup, matches and toothpaste is in stark contrast to the scenes showing some of the key applications of their work after their death.
The elements they discovered enabled radiotherapy medical treatments, but were also a key component of the nuclear devastation in Hiroshima and Chernobyl.
Advances in knowledge come with the potential for both harm and good, a theme reiterated throughout Radioactive.
Pierre and Marie Curie in 1903.Smithsonian Institution @ Flickr Commons
We are shown the realities of being a female scientist in that time. Curie’s isolation is palpable. She is frequently the only woman in a professional context, and further ostracised because of her immigrant status. This isolation of science professionals because of their gender, culture and/or socioeconomic status can still happen today.
Working in the physics laboratory of Professor Gabriel Lippmann (Simon Russell Beale), Curie expresses her frustration at the repeated movement of her equipment in the shared laboratory space. Lippmann revokes her access to the laboratory, citing her “constant demands”.
All Curie wants is the same courtesy and respect shown to the men who work in the laboratory, but she is portrayed as “difficult”.
Curie is presented as prickly, arrogant and often emotionally distant to both her colleagues and family.
Satrapi says she liked the flawed nature of Curie that emerged in the screenplay, her diaries and from discussions with Curie’s granddaughter. She has said it made Curie “a human being, she’s not perfect and she doesn’t do everything right.”
But in the process, Radioactive reinforces what some women in male dominated STEM fields might still encounter today: women can be perceived as competent or likeable, but not both.
Role model or cautionary tale?
Satrapi and Pike have spoken of how they want the scientist and the science in Radioactive to be an inspiration – especially to young girls. The film is certainly a tale about the value of intelligence and the importance of tenacity and perseverance.
It shows the human side of Curie, especially through her familial relationships. Pierre and Marie’s partnership – both scientific and romantic – is given the hallmarks of an epic love story.
In Radioactive, Pierre and Marie are shown as partners in life, and in science.Studiocanal
Pierre is a staunch ally and advocate, ensuring Marie is recognised for the quality of her work and thinking. The original nomination for the Nobel Prize made by the French Academy of Sciences excluded Marie – she was only added at Pierre’s insistence.
Still, Radioactive takes some liberties in the retelling of Marie’s life. It shows Pierre attending the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm alone to accept the Curies’ award, ostensibly because Marie had just given birth.
This reinforces the idea that motherhood creates impediments to career progression. In reality, Marie and Pierre attended the ceremony together in 1905.
Marie is portrayed as a sometimes distant mother to her two daughters. In a scene with her now adult eldest daughter, Irene (Anya Taylor-Joy), driving an ambulance on a World War I battlefield, Marie turns to her daughter and says: “I wasn’t a very good mother was I?”
Irene responds she is proud of her mother, but the not so subtle subtext is you can’t be a world-leading scientist and a good parent at the same time.
Radioactive promotes the idea women cannot be both great mothers and great scientists.Studiocanal
Certainly a recent study shows increasing difficulty for parents to reconcile caregiving with STEM careers, with nearly half of new mothers and a quarter of new fathers leaving full-time employment in STEM.
Some things haven’t changed
Radioactive shows how the media fed voraciously upon Marie’s scandalous affair with a married man in the years after Pierre’s sudden death in 1906.
The media, she tells her sister, are “merely having a hard time separating my scientific life from my personal life”. This is still seen in media coverage of women scientists today: their physical appearance is commonly mentioned in stories about their professional accomplishments.
Still, in Radioactive, it isn’t her gender that Curie identifies as the greatest impediment in her career. “I have suffered much more from a lack of resources and funds,” she says, “than I ever did from being a woman.”
COVID has led to children spending more timeon screens using social networks, communication apps, chat rooms and online gaming.
While this has undoubtedly allowed them to keep in touch with friends, or connect with new ones, during the pandemic, they are also being exposed to increased levels of online hate.
That’s not just the bullying and harassment we often hear about. They’re also being exposed to everyday negativity — Twitter pile-ons, people demonising celebrities, or knee-jerk reactions lashing out at others — several times a day.
This risks normalising this type of online behaviour, and may also risk children’s mental health and well-being.
What are children exposed to?
Hate speech can consist of comments, images or symbols that attack or use disapproving or discriminatory language about a person or group, on the basis of who they are.
It can even be coded language to spread hate, as seen on the world’s most popular social platform for children, TikTok. For example, the number 14 refers to a 14-word-long white supremacist slogan.
People can be exposed to hate speech directly, or witness it between others. And one study, which analysed millions of websites, popular teen chat sites and gaming sites, found children were exposed to much higher levels of online hate during the pandemic than before it.
The study, run by a company that uses artificial intelligence to detect and filter online content, found a 70% increase in hate between children and teens during online chats. It also found a 40% increase in toxicity among young gamers communicating using gaming chat.
Of particular note is the rise of hate on TikTok during the pandemic. TikTok has hundreds of millions of users, many of them children and teenagers. During the pandemic’s early stages, researchers saw a sharp spike in far-right extremist posts, including ideologies of fascism, racism, anti-Semitism, anti-immigration and xenophobia.
Children may also inadvertently get caught up in online hate during times of uncertainty, such as a pandemic. This may be when the entire family may be in distress and children have long periods of unsupervised screen time.
We know the more derogatory language about immigrants and minority groups people are exposed to (online and offline), the more intergroup relations deteriorate.
This leads to empathy for others being replaced by contempt. Terms like “hive mind” (being expected to conform to popular opinion online or risk being the target of hate) and “lynching” (a coordinated social media celebrity hate storm) are now used to describe this online contempt.
Being exposed to hate speech also leads young people to become less sensitive to hateful language. The more hate speech a child observes, the less upset they are about it. They develop a laissez-faire attitude, become indifferent, seeing hateful comments as jokes, minimising the impact, or linking hateful content to freedom of speech.
In real life, people are sent off the pitch for bad behaviour. But there is no such consequence in online gaming.Shutterstock
There is also little reputational or punitive risk involved with bad behaviour online. A child playing soccer might get sent off the field in a real-life sporting game for “flaming”, or “griefing” (deliberately irritating and harassing other players). But there is no such consequence in online gaming.
Social platforms, including Facebook and TikTok, have recently expanded their hate speech guidelines. These guidelines, however, cannot eradicate hate speech as their definitions are too narrow, allowing hate to seep through.
So kids are growing up learning “bad behaviour” online is tolerated, even expected. If what children see every day on their screen is people communicating with them badly, it becomes normalised and they are willing to accept it is part of life.
Witnessing hate affects children’s health and well-being
Prince Harry recently warned of a “global crisis of hate” on social media that affects people’s mental health.
It impacts the mental health of all involved: those giving out the hate, those receiving it, and those observing it.
If a young person has negative, insulting attitudes or opinions, this is often put down to having unresolved emotional issues. However, channelling pent-up emotions into hate speech does not resolve these emotional issues. As hate posts can go viral, it can encourage more hate posts.
And for people who are exposed to this behaviour, this takes its toll. The increased mental preparedness it takes to deal with or respond to microaggressions and hate translates into chronically elevated level of stress — so-called low-grade toxic stress.
In the short term, too much low-grade toxic stress lowers our mood and drains our energy, leaving us fatigued. Prolonged low-grade toxic stress can lead to adverse health outcomes, such as depression or anxiety, disruption of the development of brain architecture and other organ systems, and increases in the risk of stress-related disease and cognitive impairment, well into the adult years.
Unfortunately, we can’t eradicate hate online. But the more we understand why others post hate speech and the strategies they use to do this helps a child be more in control of their environment and therefore less impacted by it.
Hate speech is driven not only by negativity, but also by the simplicity in how groups are portrayed, for instance, boys are superior, girls are side-kicks. Teach children to notice over-simplicity and its use as a put-down strategy.
An aggressor (the one dishing out the hurt) can also easily hide behind a non-identifying pseudonym or username. This type of anonymity allows people to separate themselves from who they are in real life. It makes them feel free to use hostility and criticism as a viable way of dealing with their pain, or unresolved issues. Teach your child to be aware of this.
Yesterday, Zali Steggall, the independent member for Warringah, introduced her long-awaited climate change bill to the Australian parliament.
Much of the debate around the bill centres on what needs to be done for Australia to reach net zero emissions by 2050. That’s a crucial discussion — but it’s equally vital to recognise what’s already been committed.
We’ve found progress is, in general, going well. These sectors are increasingly making more climate-active commitments, which means the moment is right for precisely the kind of pivot Steggall’s bill seeks to facilitate.
What the climate change bill proposes
Steggall has garnered huge support outside of politics. In a joint letter this week, more than 100 Australian businesses, industry groups and community organisations endorsed the bill as a critical step in the recovery from the pandemic.
This included Oxfam, the Business Council of Australia, the ACTU, the Australian Medical Association and our organisation, ClimateWorks Australia
Along with the 2050 target, the bill proposes the establishment of an independent Climate Change Commission. It also adopts the government’s low emissions technology roadmap and would require the government to introduce risk assessment and adaptation plans.
To reach the 2050 target, the bill calls for a process to review the target every five years, and ensure independent advice on five-yearly emissions budgets.
An emissions budget sets the amount of greenhouse gases that can be emitted over five-year periods — in line with requirements for the Paris Agreement on climate. This is important because the amount of global warming depends on cumulative emissions, not emissions in any one year.
Tracking the sectors
Australia can no longer consider a commitment to a net zero target as a matter of ideology or a moral gesture. Increasingly, it’s simple economic common sense, especially for investors.
In 2019, Geoff Summerhayes from the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority pointed out that climate change now constitutes “a legally foreseeable risk facing many different companies in a range of different industries”. As such, the financial sector has an obligation to act.
In 2020, the level of ambition in the superannuation sector rose considerably, with REST super now joining Cbus, HESTA and UniSuper with net zero pledges.
Similarly, the recent ANZ announcement of “strong action to support the Paris Agreement” signals that all the major banks and insurers are moving away from thermal coal, as the International Energy Agency declares solar energy to be the cheapest source of electricity in history.
Most of Australia’s trading partners have committed to transform their economies.AAP Image/Mick Tsikas
Certainly, some sectors of the Australian economy are moving faster than others. Our analysis of 21 major property companies found 90% had set an emissions reduction target, while nearly a third were already committed to net zero.
The local government sector is equally proactive. Over a third of the largest local governments we assessed (representing a fifth of the Australian population) have committed to reaching zero community emissions by or before 2050.
And more than half are acting to reduce their operational (or direct) emissions by, for instance, installing solar panels and switching their vehicle fleet to electric vehicles.
By contrast, our analysis showed the retail and transport sectors have a long way to go before they’re aligned with net zero.
Asking ‘how’, not ‘why’
Even in a historically difficult sector like resources, progress is being made.
BHP, for instance, now says it can flourish under conditions compatible with the Paris Agreement. Rather than posing a problem for business, action to decarbonise the global economy will, it declares, present “opportunities to invest in commodities such as potash, nickel and copper”, which will “provide a strong foundation” for its business.
This shows when it comes to net zero many of Australia’s biggest companies no longer ask “why”, but instead focus on “how”.
In part, that’s because businesses that don’t change know they increasingly risk isolation.
For example, the International Energy Agency said in its annual report that demand for Australian thermal coal has peaked, and renewables will meet 80% of the world’s energy demands in the coming years.
Japan, South Korea and the European Union have committed to reaching net zero by 2050, and US President-elect Joe Biden says his administration will make the same pledge. China also recently committed to reaching net zero by 2060.
That means the vast majority of Australia’s exports are going to trading partners who have committed to transform their economies.
This will result in a shift in demand from high-carbon products and services, such as thermal coal, towards zero or near zero carbon alternatives, such as renewable hydrogen.
An opportunity, not a threat
Such a demand also presents extraordinary opportunities. The international transition to cleaner economies is a chance for Australia to become a renewable energy superpower.
After all, Australia possesses the world’s third-largest reserves of lithium and currently produces nine of the ten elements required for lithium-ion batteries.
Likewise, by 2030, Australia could be using renewable electricity and water to produce 500,000 tonnes of green hydrogen annually, one of the most important commodities of the transition into a clean economy.
Many other countries already have their own climate change acts.AAP Image/Lukas Coch
Providing certainty to businesses
In tracking the momentum to net zero, we’ve seen the importance of clear targets in raising ambition, encouraging innovation and fostering the deployment of known solutions quickly and at scale.
And a parliamentary commitment to decarbonisation at the federal level, backed by interim targets set every five years, would provide businesses and the public with the certainty they need to plan.
Across the country, all the state and territory governments have made net zero commitments – and our assessment of local governments found many of them to be taking strong stands, too. It’s time for the federal parliament to get on board.
The international student crisis is causing a population shock that is only going to get worse, a new report by the Mitchell Institute has found. The education policy think tank estimates over 300,000 fewer international students — half the pre-coronavirus numbers — will be in Australia by July 2021 if travel restrictions remain in place. The pandemic has already cut the number of international student who would normally be in Australia by over 210,000.
Since the pandemic began, the Australian government has released data showing the location of international students inside and outside Australia.
The table below compares the figures from March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, and November 2020.
The table shows total enrolments are down by 12% since March 2020. Border closures mean new students are not replacing current students as they finish their courses.
The number of Australian-enrolled international students now studying remotely from outside Australia has increased from 116,774 to 138,060.
Enrolments from China have been the most affected. This is because travel restrictions were first imposed on people travelling from China in February. Many Chinese students were unable to enter Australia before the start of semester one in 2020 and remain outside Australia.
These data suggest Australia is facing the dual problem of fewer enrolments and fewer international students inside the country.
How will Australian cities be affected?
The Mitchell Institute has used the latest data to update previous research to explore the impact of the international student crisis on our cities.
Our research shows the location and density of the reductions in international students vary by city.
For instance, an estimated 72,000 fewer international students are living in Sydney because of the pandemic.
Shown below is a three-dimensional visualisation of where in Sydney this reduction is likely to have occurred. The higher the column, the greater the reduction.
Three-dimensional map showing the estimated reduction in international students in Sydney. Source: Mitchell Institute analysis of ABS and DHA data
The map shows inner-city regions have been the most affected. Areas with large Chinese international student populations, such as Hurstville in Sydney’s south-west and Strathfield in Sydney’s west, also show significant reductions.
Melbourne has experienced a similar reduction to Sydney — an estimated 64,000 international students. The three-dimensional visualisation for Melbourne is shown below.
Three-dimensional map showing the estimated reduction in international students in Melbourne. Source: Mitchell Institute analysis of ABS and DHA data.
Compared to Sydney, the reduction in numbers is much more concentrated in the inner city. There is also a notable reduction in Melbourne’s south-east, near Monash University’s Clayton campus.
Every major Australian city will be experiencing a significant drop in international students, although in different ways.
The tables below list the ten areas in each state and territory estimated to have had the greatest reduction in international students to October 2020. (Click through the pages to find each state and territory.)
The interactive map of Australia below shows the Mitchell Institute estimates of reductions in population across each city because of the international student crisis. (Click on the magnifying glass icon to search for a city.)
As the crisis continues, the impact on Australia’s cities will evolve. The initial shock affected areas with large Chinese student populations. Further reductions are likely to involve students from other countries.
This will result in a more noticeable impact in areas with higher populations of non-Chinese international students.
What can be done?
The location of international students is important. These students spend in the wider economy. About 57%, or A$21.4 billion, of the A$37.5 billion associated with the international education sector comes from spending on goods and services.
If international students are outside Australia, this will affect the many local communities and businesses that rely on them.
Trials are planned to bring international students back into Australia. This will help those whose studies have been disrupted by the pandemic.
However, it is unclear whether such efforts will be enough to reverse the downward trend in the number of international students living in Australia.
Australia’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic might also create opportunities. Australia competes with other countries in the international education market, such as the United Kingdom and the United States.
Fewer cases of coronavirus might make Australia a more attractive study location than other countries.
Ultimately, Australia’s international education sector will look very different after coronavirus.
The emphasis that the Australian government has placed on the international education sector suggests it is not a matter of “if” international students return, but “when”.
It may also be wise to add “how” to the discussions. This is because there were concerns before the pandemic about Australia’s reliance on international student revenue.
Planning for the return of international students will ensure Australia rebuilds with a sustainable and equitable international education sector.
The scheme to go before the Senate this week will give employers who take on someone aged 16 to 29 years who has been on JobSeeker or a related benefit a bonus of A$200 per week, and a bonus of $100 per week if the person is aged 30 to 35 years.
New hires older than 35 won’t attract a bonus, and nor will new hires who have been out of work but not on JobSeeker.
The bonus will last for up to a year.
There are reasons to focus on young people. Youth unemployment is 14.5%, almost double the economy-wide average, and young people have lost more working hours than older people.
Also, young people will arguably be scarred for longer by the experience of unemployment (although many older people will be scarred for just as long or longer, never returning to work).
But Australians aged 35 and younger make up less than half of those on JobSeeker.
Most – about 800,000 of the 1.5 million – are older than 35.
With Victoria reopening, summer coming and the treasurer talking confidently about “fighting back”, it is easy to forget how serious our unemployment problem is.
Unemployment is at 6.9%, the highest it’s been this century. If the thousands working zero hours on JobKeeper were included, it would be higher still. Even without including those people, treasury the unemployment rate to reach 8% by Christmas.
Official forecasts say unemployment won’t fall to 5.5% for three-and-a-half years, until mid 2024, an extraordinarily slow recovery by the standard of previous downturns.
JobMaker as presently configured won’t do enough to speed it up.
The budget speech said the hiring credit would support around 450,000 jobs , but treasury has since told a Senate hearing that only about 10% of those jobs will be jobs that wouldn’t have been created anyway – about 45,000.
In our submission to the Senate inquiry into JobMaker we recommended four fundamental changes.
1. Open it to all ages
Opening the scheme to new employees of all ages, not just those age 35 or younger, could more than double the reach of the scheme.
It would also roughly double its cost, from $4 billion to roughly $8 billion, but that cost would remain modest in the context of the government’s stimulus spending to date.
Targeting younger workers would make sense if expenditure needed to be highly constrained, but with a need for more government spending rather than less there is no point in making the subsidy available to only some of the people who could benefit from it.
2. Extend it beyond the unemployed
Limiting the credit to jobs filled by new hires who have been on JobSeeker or a related payment is unnecessarily constraining.
If the most suitable candidate for a role is already employed, hiring that person provides an opportunity for someone else to fill their old position. If it is a new job, it is likely to ultimately put an unemployed person into work.
The goal ought to be to strengthen overall labour demand, not to encourage only the subset of job creation where the new job happens to be a good match for someone presently unemployed.
3. Allow more employers to use it
The scheme requires employers to demonstrate that new hires have boosted payroll beyond where it was in the three months to September 30 2020.
But the payroll baseline is defined as including jobs supported by JobKeeper.
As firms become ineligible for JobKeeper, and the payment rate is reduced in January and again in March, many businesses that relied on the payment will have to lay off staff. As a result, they will have an actual payroll bill well below where it was in the three months to September 30 2020.
This will effectively exclude them from the scheme, giving them no extra incentive to retain staff as they come off JobKeeper, or to increase working hours or hire more staff as conditions improve.
The government should ease the criteria to require employers to only demonstrate that they have boosted payroll net of JobKeeper receipts.
4. Ban ‘harvesting’
The test should be more demanding. As designed, employers can claim back up to 100 per cent of an increase in their payroll, which creates incentives for employers to “harvest” credits by converting full-time jobs to part-time.
As an example, an employer who reduces the hours of an existing employee from 40 per week to 20, while hiring two new employees at 20 hours each would be able to claim the hiring credit twice – despite total hours worked and wages paid increasing by only one 20 hour job.
This could be fixed by requiring each new hire to boost payroll by a multiple of credit paid.
A better, simpler model
A better model would be to simply pay employers a proportion of their payroll growth, as proposed by economist Peter Downes.
Our calculations suggest that as presently designed JobMaker will skew employment towards lower-wage, part-time jobs.
A rebate on additional payroll would instead encourage employment growth of all types – full-time as well as part-time, and extra hours worked by existing staff.
But even such a better-designed credit won’t help much if there’s weak demand for workers. To get it, we will need more stimulus, more government spending.
Either way, we’re going to have to boost the economy
Our estimate is that an extra $50 billion would drive unemployment down to 5% and kickstart wage growth nearly two years ahead of the government’s schedule.
There are plenty of good options for doing it, and a more ambitious JobMaker is one of them.
Since the 2012 hit film Magic Mike explored the hedonistic lifestyle of men who strip for women, popular culture has exploded with images of sexy, muscular, athletic and shirtless (or pantless!) “hot” men.
In our contemporary digital world, pornography and online dating apps offer male bodies to look at in various states of undress.
Some people celebrate the growth of such imagery as an increasing recognition of women’s sexual interests and desires. Others express concern about the potential consequences of objectification for young men, in a similar vein to that of women.
Matthew McConaughey and Channing Tatum in Magic Mike (2012).Iron Horse Entertainment (II), Extension 765, St. Petersburg Clearwater Film Commission
Researchers have argued sexualised images of men do not advance feminist values, as they glorify “superficial” ideals of beauty and youthful, able bodies. Others say this media representation of a muscular male body ideal reinforces “toxic” aspects of masculinity by emphasising strength and power.
We conducted focus groups with 24 women living in Melbourne. We wanted to understand how they thought about the increased sexual visibility of men’s bodies — and what this might mean for sexual equality.
Most participants were university educated and familiar with popular feminist ideas about sexual objectification.
We showed them a range of images of men’s sexualised bodies from advertising, films and TV and asked various questions. We also asked whether they felt the phenomenon of men being more interested in their appearance affected their sexual relationships with women.
Participants were asked about their responses to men’s sexualised bodies.shutterstock
The women took pleasure in talking about sexualised male bodies. As one participant noted of the star of Magic Mike, “Damn! Channing Tatum can move!”
Yet despite this, participants did not talk about men’s appearance alone. They did not want to be thought shallow, unethical, or “un-feminist”. Some struggled to “objectify” men at all, and when it came to their preference for a long-term relationship, sexy fantasy figures were out.
Interestingly, some women described the attractiveness of men’s bodies according to what men could do, rather than how they looked. They also discussed specific body parts as aspects of the whole person. This was partly about not wanting to be seen as treating a man as just a body part, as women often see men doing to other women.
Kaitlyn, (24, bisexual, single), noted:
I can become fixated on somebody’s hands because it shows how they’re interacting with the environment, or how they’re interacting with my body as well.
Some women thought themselves sexually deficient in not being able to objectify men. They thought men who posted sexualised images of their bodies on social media or dating sites might be shallow or superficial.
Scarlett, (30, heterosexual, single), said:
I’m looking for the personality in the picture of their body and I’m not getting that necessarily from someone that posts a picture of their washboard abs.
Personality in a partner was seen as more important than body shape.unsplash
Others thought muscular and attractive men represented broader interests in fitness and athletics that might not align with their own values.
Yu, (19, unsure/pansexual, in a relationship), noted:
… I guess if someone’s like super muscular, I don’t think they’re, like, a douche bro or anything but, like, I guess it gives me the impression that they really value fitness and stuff. So, that’s not really, particularly within my interests.
Intensifying women’s anxieties
Women described muscular and athletic men as sexual fantasy figures but discounted them as viable, long-term partners. They thought them too preoccupied with their own attractiveness. Indeed, these men’s work on their muscles intensified some women’s anxieties about their own bodies.
Jane, (34, heterosexual, in a relationship), said
Yeah, I want my superman to be really big […]. But I think if I was married to someone that would feel a bit uncomfortable, like, I wasn’t keeping up my end of the bargain.
Some women also thought that while conventionally attractive men were acceptable for sexual gratification, they were less certain about such men for serious, committed relationships.
Jane said:
I’ve had one boyfriend who was like, massive, perfect … I’d show him off to people … It wasn’t a serious relationship; it was very shallow.
Asked if she had thought about a long-term relationship with this man, she replied, “No, no way, he fulfilled a certain role and, yeah, fun.”
Added Abigail, (45, heterosexual, in a relationship): “The ‘shut up and f..k me’ role.”
‘A little bit of tummy’
Some participants described their preferences for “dad bods” over muscular physiques, gesturing to other qualities that could define a partner as attractive.
Harriet, (29, pansexual, in a relationship), said:
I really love that dad bods are in … that’s the perfect body, guys who are having fun and a little bit of a tummy.
A little bit of tummy was seen as OK.shutterstock
Our research found while women might consider a sexy hunk for a fling, they would not necessarily do so for a long-term relationship. “Dad bods” spoke to what were thought to be more easygoing, equitable and grounded personalities.
Elsa, (33, mostly straight, single), noted:
Most of my ex boyfriends have been, I guess — dad bods actually does describe it reasonably well, like, a little bit of weight, not super muscly … And it’s never really worried me as long as … they’ve got nice hands, like, I can look into their eyes and feel a connection. The rest of it isn’t super important.
In seeking to avoid treating men like “objects”, these women struggled with familiar ideas linking vanity with femininity, monogamy with ethical sex, and the need to value men according to a wider set of attributes than appearance alone (unless in casual sex).
This suggests that beneath the veneer of sexual empowerment presented by Magic Mike etc., women’s sexual lives are still often shaped by traditional values.
Attorney-General Christian Porter and fellow cabinet minister Alan Tudge have been accused of sexual indiscretions, in a sensational Four Corners expose the government first tried to head off and then to discredit before it went to air.
In the program, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull recounted how in December 2017 he had told Porter, then social services minister, that “I had heard reports of him being out in public having had too much to drink in the company of young women”.
“He knew that I was considering appointing him attorney-general, which of course is the first law officer of the Crown, and has a seat on the national security committee, so the risk of compromise is very very real,” Turnbull told the program.
Turnbull, however, was satisfied with the conversation and went on within a fornight to promote Porter to the post.
Rachelle Miller, a Liberal staffer in 2010-18, told the program she had a consensual affair with Tudge when on his staff.
Tudge had “put a lot of pressure” on her, asking her “to ‘war game’ the line that I was going to give the journalists to try and kill the story” when rumours spread of their liaison.
She said when she walked into a parliamentary mid-winter ball with Tudge, she felt like “I was being used as an ornament”.
Miller described an incident in Canberra “Public Bar” near parliament house, where there were journalists and politicians, when she and Tudge saw Porter with “someone in the corner”.
“They were cuddling, they were kissing. It was quite confronting given that we were in such a public place”.
She said Tudge had demanded a journalist delete photographs taken of Porter.
Before the program aired Four Corners executive producer Sally Neighbour tweeted “The political pressure applied to the ABC behind the scenes over this story has been extreme and unrelenting. All credit to the ABC’s leadership for withstanding it”.
The program, “Inside the Canberra Bubble” focused on what it described as the “heady, permissive culture” around federal politics that “can be toxic for women”. Its investigation questioned “the conduct of some of the most senior politicians in the nation”.
In Senate estimates the ABC’s managing director David Anderson faced hostile questioning from Liberal senators, with pre-emptive attacks on the program for not looking at the behaviour of members of other parties.
Anderson strongly defended the program’s integrity including saying the ABC chair Ita Buttrose had seen it and approved it going to air.
He said government staff had questioned whether the program was in the public interest, but had not made threats. The Prime Minister’s Office had not been involved.
The controversial investigation will intensify the criticisms of the ABC constantly made by some in the Coalition and media critics of the public broadcaster.
The program presented a damaging picture of Porter, delving back decades to expose his attitudes to and comments about women.
Barrister Kathleen Foley said she knew Porter from when she was 16. She was in the Western Australian state debating team and he was brought in to coach it; later she knew him when she was at the WA state solicitor office and he was at the office of the director of public prosecutions.
“I’ve known him to be someone who was in my opinion, and based on what I saw, deeply sexist and actually misogynist in his treatment of women, the in way that he spoke about women,” she said.
In a statement late Monday night Porter said many of the claims on Four Corners were defamatory and “I will be considering legal options.”
He “categorically rejected” the depiction of the Public Bar incident.
“The other party subjected to these baseless claims directly rebutted the allegation to 4 Corners, yet the programme failed to report that. This fact usually would be expected to be included in a fair or balanced report.”
Porter said that journalist Louise Milligan “never contacted me or my office, despite my awareness that for many months she has been directly contacting friends, former colleagues, former students – even old school friends from the mid 1980’s – asking for rumours and negative comment about me.
“The ABC’s Managing Director told a Senate Committee just today that all relevant information had been provided to Ministers who were the subject of tonight’s programme – that is not the case,” Porter said.
He said that in his time as attorney-general in Turnbull’s government, “I never had any complaint or any suggestion of any problem from Malcolm regarding the conduct of my duties as AG until the last week of his Prime Ministership when we had a significant disagreement over the Peter Dutton citizenship issue”.
Porter did apologise for sexist material he wrote in a law journal 24 years ago.
Tudge, who is now Minister for Population, Cities and Urban Infrastructure, said in a statement after the program: “Tonight, matters that occurred in my personal life in 2017 were aired on the ABC’s Four Corners program.
“I regret my actions immensely and the hurt it caused my family. I also regret the hurt that Ms Miller has experienced.”
The President of the Law Council, Pauline Wright, said: “Allegations of misconduct regarding public or elected officials require an appropriate framework for investigation, which is why the Law Council has long called for an integrity commission to be established at the federal level with appropriate powers and definitions of misconduct”.
Porter is in charge of the legislation recently released in draft form for an integrity commission.
In a post-election poll for the University of Melbourne’s US election webinar series we asked the several hundred people in the audience if President Donald Trump’s defeat would mean the death of “Trumpism”. A full 92% said “no”.
Now that Democratic challenger Joe Biden has won the election and will become the next president, the logical question for the Republican Party is: what’s next?
Will Trump — and Trumpism — remain dominant features of American life after the election, and if so, what does this mean for the Republicans?
If you are conservative, there are at least five reasons to feel concerned about Trump’s legacy — and another five to be optimistic about it.
Five reasons to be pessimistic
1) Biden has won the presidency with the largest popular vote tally in American history (more than 75 million and counting).
His mandate is considerable for this reason. He now gets to establish the country’s political agenda, both domestically and internationally. Republicans will seek to block him at every turn, but as they they have now lost the presidency, they have also lost the initiative.
2) Trump’s enduring popularity (no Republican has ever received more votes in a presidential election) means he will continue to set the agenda and tone of conservative politics for at least the next few years.
For them, he represents a brand of populism antithetical to conservative values like the importance of institutions in public life, reverence for good character and the rule of law.
Trump supporters protesting the presidential election results in Michigan.David Goldman/AP
3) Trump’s ability to galvanise grassroots conservatives around the country means polarisation is set to endure.
This will happen at two levels. Polarisation will likely deepen between the two parties, making bipartisan decision-making on COVID-19, China, climate change and the national debt impossible.
And the rift between the two wings of the GOP will likely widen, making a return to civility and compromise more nostalgic than real. The party looks set to be a noisy voice of discordant protest – “This election was stolen!” – rather than a key force of conservative renewal.
There is already evidence of division within the GOP over whether to support Trump’s claims of electoral fraud, with many choosing to remain silent rather than pick a side.
These twin demographics are in long-term decline, which makes replicating Trump’s electoral success on the national stage a losing game. As long as Trump’s brand of ethnic nationalism and white identity politics endures, Republicans will find it hard to build the governing coalitions necessary for national power.
The GOP needs to appeal more to non-whites in the cities and suburbs. Trumpism complicates that task.
5) If the party can’t reach more diverse voters, this creates a climate where conservatism is increasingly depicted by its opponents as illegitimate and politically incorrect.
Public discourse will mutate further into a shouting match of the extremes. The reasonableness and common sense so crucial to the conservative disposition will struggle to be heard.
Biden and Trump supporters frequently clashed during the race.Jeff Swinger/AP
Five reasons to be cheerful
1) Significant parts of the political and judicial systems look likely to remain in conservative hands.
As a result of all this, conservatism will remain a vital institutional component of American politics.
2) Despite Trump’s loss, there was still a strong Republican vote among those who feel they’ve been ignored or forgotten by the Democratic Party.
The poorest states in the union generally voted GOP, while the richest went Democratic. This trend has been evident for some time, but was affirmed in the election.
Trump galvanised Republican voters like few candidates before.Evan Vucci/AP
Expect Republicans to hone their working-class appeal as they build toward taking back the White House (with or without Trump) in 2024.
3) A white demographic decline need not spell disaster for the GOP. Despite his dog-whistle racism, Trump performed better than expected among Black voters. According to The New York Times and Post exit polls, which took into account early voting, nearly one in five Black men voted for Trump.
He also laid to rest the canard that Latino and Asian voters are the exclusive preserve of the Democratic Party. Trump fared better among both demographic groups than expected, particularly among Latino voters in Florida and Texas, where he increased his vote margin from 2016.
Overall, Trump won 26% of the non-white vote, according to the Times and Post exit polls. The trick now is to turn this into a lasting multiracial conservative voting bloc.
Cuban-American voters turned out in large numbers for Trump.Lynne Sladky/AP
4) Albeit crudely, Trump has tapped into a fervour for conservative politics among large sections of the voting public that his predecessors could not and that his successors can draw strength from.
He outperformed the pre-election polls in key battleground states when everything from an economic recession to a global pandemic suggested he would struggle.
5) The Biden win obscures how riven progressive politics have become.
Biden was a compromise candidate — the only one acceptable to both the progressive and moderate wings of his party. According to The New York Times exit poll, just 47% of Democrats voted for Biden, mainly because they supported him, while 67% said they were voting against Trump.
Biden will have to learn how to bargain not just with Republicans in Congress, but with his own side. This task would be exhausting for any leader, not least for the oldest man to ever hold the office.
Trump has increased the appeal of American conservatism, even as he has complicated its meaning. Republicans and Democrats must now find a way of appealing to a forgotten American middle class that Trump energised. That could be his most enduring and positive legacy.
That is good for democracy. And if Republicans can make this support routine, it could be good for conservatism and the diversity of ideas on which the American experiment itself depends.
Addressing plastic packaging is key to reversing these negative trends. It accounts for 42% of all non-fibre plastics produced.
But the plastics industry is pushing back. Industry representatives claim efforts to regulate plastic packaging will have negative environmental consequences because plastic is a lightweight material with a lower carbon footprint than alternatives like glass, paper and metal.
These claims are based on what’s known as life-cycle assessment (LCA). It’s a tool used to measure and compare the environmental impact of materials throughout their life, from extraction to disposal.
While independent LCA practitioners may adopt rigorous processes, the method is vulnerable to misuse. According to European waste management consultancy Eunomia, it is limited by the questions it seeks to answer:
Ask inappropriate, misleading, narrow or uninformed questions and the process will only provide answers in that vein.
Industry-commissioned life-cycle assessments often frame single-use plastic packaging positively. These claim plastic’s light weight offsets its harmful impacts on people, wildlife and ecosystems. Some studies are even used to justify the continued expansion of plastics production.
But plastic can come out looking good when certain important factors are overlooked. In theory, LCA considers a product’s whole-of-life environmental impact. In practice, the scope varies as practitioners select system boundaries at their discretion.
Zero Waste Europe has highlighted that life-cycle assessment for food packaging often omits important considerations. These include the potential toxicity of different materials, or the impact of leakage into the environment. Excluding factors like this gives plastics an unjustified advantage.
Life-cycle assessment of plastic packaging fails to account for marine pollution.Andrey Nekrasov/Barcroft Media via Getty Images
Researchers have acknowledged the method’s critical failure to account for marine pollution. This is now a priority for the research community, but not the plastics industry.
Even questionable LCA studies carry a veneer of authority in the public domain. The packaging industry capitalises on this to distract, delay and derail progressive plastics legislation. Rebutting industry studies that promote the environmental superiority of plastics is difficult because commissioning a robust LCA is costly and time-consuming.
LCA appeals to policymakers aspiring to develop evidence-based packaging policy. But if the limitations are not properly acknowledged or understood, policy can reinforce inaccurate industry narratives.
The Rethinking Plastics in Aotearoa New Zealand report, from the office of the prime minister’s chief science adviser, has been influential in plastics policy in New Zealand.
The report dedicates an entire chapter to LCA. It includes case studies that do not actually take a full life-cycle approach from extraction to disposal. It concedes only on the last page that LCA does not account for the environmental, economic or health impacts of plastics that leak into the environment.
The report also erroneously suggests LCA is “an alternative approach” to the zero-waste hierarchy. In fact, the two tools work best together.
The zero-waste hierarchy prioritises strategies to prevent, reduce and reuse packaging. That’s based on the presumption that these approaches have lower life-cycle impacts than recycling and landfilling.
New Zealand has a growing number of zero-waste grocers.Shutterstock/Ugis Riba
One of LCA’s limitations is that practitioners tend to compare materials already available on the predominantly single-use packaging market. However, an LCA guided by the waste hierarchy would include zero-packaging or reusable packaging systems in the mix. Such an assessment would contribute to sustainable packaging policy.
New Zealand is also a voluntary signatory to the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment, which includes commitments by businesses and government to increase reusable packaging by 2025.
A reduction of plastic production — through elimination, the expansion of consumer reuse options, or new delivery models — is the most attractive solution from environmental, economic and social perspectives.
Policymakers should take life-cycle assessment beyond its industry-imposed straitjacket and allow it to inform zero-packaging and reusable packaging system design. Doing so could help New Zealand reduce plastic pollution, negative health impacts and greenhouse gas emissions.
In a post-election poll for the University of Melbourne’s US election webinar series we asked the several hundred people in the audience if President Donald Trump’s defeat would mean the death of “Trumpism”. A full 92% said “no”.
Now that Democratic challenger Joe Biden has won the election and will become the next president, the logical question for the Republican Party is: what’s next?
Will Trump — and Trumpism — remain dominant features of American life after the election, and if so, what does this mean for the Republicans?
If you are conservative, there are at least five reasons to feel concerned about Trump’s legacy — and another five to be optimistic about it.
Five reasons to be pessimistic
1) Biden has won the presidency with the largest popular vote tally in American history (more than 75 million and counting).
His mandate is considerable for this reason. He now gets to establish the country’s political agenda, both domestically and internationally. Republicans will seek to block him at every turn, but as they they have now lost the presidency, they have also lost the initiative.
2) Trump’s enduring popularity (no Republican has ever received more votes in a presidential election) means he will continue to set the agenda and tone of conservative politics for at least the next few years.
For them, he represents a brand of populism antithetical to conservative values like the importance of institutions in public life, reverence for good character and the rule of law.
Trump supporters protesting the presidential election results in Michigan.David Goldman/AP
3) Trump’s ability to galvanise grassroots conservatives around the country means polarisation is set to endure.
This will happen at two levels. Polarisation will likely deepen between the two parties, making bipartisan decision-making on COVID-19, China, climate change and the national debt impossible.
And the rift between the two wings of the GOP will likely widen, making a return to civility and compromise more nostalgic than real. The party looks set to be a noisy voice of discordant protest – “This election was stolen!” – rather than a key force of conservative renewal.
There is already evidence of division within the GOP over whether to support Trump’s claims of electoral fraud, with many choosing to remain silent rather than pick a side.
These twin demographics are in long-term decline, which makes replicating Trump’s electoral success on the national stage a losing game. As long as Trump’s brand of ethnic nationalism and white identity politics endures, Republicans will find it hard to build the governing coalitions necessary for national power.
The GOP needs to appeal more to non-whites in the cities and suburbs. Trumpism complicates that task.
5) If the party can’t reach more diverse voters, this creates a climate where conservatism is increasingly depicted by its opponents as illegitimate and politically incorrect.
Public discourse will mutate further into a shouting match of the extremes. The reasonableness and common sense so crucial to the conservative disposition will struggle to be heard.
Biden and Trump supporters frequently clashed during the race.Jeff Swinger/AP
Five reasons to be cheerful
1) Significant parts of the political and judicial systems look likely to remain in conservative hands.
As a result of all this, conservatism will remain a vital institutional component of American politics.
2) Despite Trump’s loss, there was still a strong Republican vote among those who feel they’ve been ignored or forgotten by the Democratic Party.
The poorest states in the union generally voted GOP, while the richest went Democratic. This trend has been evident for some time, but was affirmed in the election.
Trump galvanised Republican voters like few candidates before.Evan Vucci/AP
Expect Republicans to hone their working-class appeal as they build toward taking back the White House (with or without Trump) in 2024.
3) A white demographic decline need not spell disaster for the GOP. Despite his dog-whistle racism, Trump performed better than expected among Black voters. According to The New York Times and Post exit polls, which took into account early voting, nearly one in five Black men voted for Trump.
He also laid to rest the canard that Latino and Asian voters are the exclusive preserve of the Democratic Party. Trump fared better among both demographic groups than expected, particularly among Latino voters in Florida and Texas, where he increased his vote margin from 2016.
Overall, Trump won 26% of the non-white vote, according to the Times and Post exit polls. The trick now is to turn this into a lasting multiracial conservative voting bloc.
Cuban-American voters turned out in large numbers for Trump.Lynne Sladky/AP
4) Albeit crudely, Trump has tapped into a fervour for conservative politics among large sections of the voting public that his predecessors could not and that his successors can draw strength from.
He outperformed the pre-election polls in key battleground states when everything from an economic recession to a global pandemic suggested he would struggle.
5) The Biden win obscures how riven progressive politics have become.
Biden was a compromise candidate — the only one acceptable to both the progressive and moderate wings of his party. According to The New York Times exit poll, just 47% of Democrats voted for Biden, mainly because they supported him, while 67% said they were voting against Trump.
Biden will have to learn how to bargain not just with Republicans in Congress, but with his own side. This task would be exhausting for any leader, not least for the oldest man to ever hold the office.
Trump has increased the appeal of American conservatism, even as he has complicated its meaning. Republicans and Democrats must now find a way of appealing to a forgotten American middle class that Trump energised. That could be his most enduring and positive legacy.
That is good for democracy. And if Republicans can make this support routine, it could be good for conservatism and the diversity of ideas on which the American experiment itself depends.
However, the same day Biden promised that his incoming administration would restore US commitment to the agreement.
The UN agency that oversees the agreement expressed regret over the Trump administration action, saying: “There is no greater responsibility than protecting our planet and people from the threat of climate change.”
Biden posted a tweet saying that the US would restore membership in “exactly 77 days”.
Biden’s victory will also help make the issue of human rights violations in West Papua more prominent.
This is because Biden and the Democratic Party have greater concerns about raising human rights issues, says international relations academic Dr Teuku Rezasyah of Padjajaran University.
Human rights pressure “As a democratic country, [the United States] often argues, it gets pressure from within the country to pay attention to human rights aspects in Papua,” said Dr Rezasyah.
Last week, a renewed call was made for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit West Papua by the UK government through the Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office), Nigel Adams.
“The UK supports a visit by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) to Papua,” the statement said.
“Officials from the British embassy have discussed the proposed visit with the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and continue to encourage the Indonesian Government to agree on dates as soon as possible.”
Today, the Trump Administration officially left the Paris Climate Agreement. And in exactly 77 days, a Biden Administration will rejoin it. https://t.co/L8UJimS6v2
The former Minister for Asia and the Pacific, Heather Wheeler, attended the Pacific Island Forum in August 2019.
“It is our longstanding position that we regard Papua and West Papua provinces as being part of Indonesia and consider dialogue on territorial issues in Indonesia as a matter for the Indonesian people,”Adams said.
Pacific leaders have congratulated Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris for their success.
Ardern welcomes Biden In Wellington, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said it was important for New Zealand to have tight connections with the US on big global issues – including trade, covid, and climate change – and she would pursue a strong relationship with Biden.
In Fiji, Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama is reported to have become the first world leader to publicly congratulate US President-elect Joe Biden on his victory – despite there being no clear winner on Saturday morning when he did so.
RNZ Pacific reports that Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown said he admired Biden’s patience as results had trickled in and his calming comments assuring people their votes would be counted.
Brown also praised Biden’s unifying speeches, describing them as “inspirational” to the American people and many internationally.
Northern Marianas Governor Ralph Torres, a Republican and staunch supporter of Trump, said his administration hoped it could work with the incoming Biden-Harris administration for the betterment of the people of the US and the islands.
Torres recognised the historic milestone of leadership for women in the US with the election of Harris.
“We look forward to working with them and their Democratic administration, just as we did with President Obama and his administration to great success,” Torres said.
Presidency for ‘all’ Americans NMI Democratic Party chair Nola Hix said they were confident that the Biden-Harris team would be a presidency for all Americans.
American Samoa’s Congresswoman, Aumua Amata Radewagen, a Republican, expressed the need for bipartisan work across the political spectrum.
Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape congratulated Biden yesterday and mentioned Harris, who would be the first woman and first Black and Asian-American person to serve as vice-president.
He thanked departing President Trump for his support, particularly for sending former Vice-President Mike Pence to APEC 2018 in Port Moresby, and for signing a $US2.3 billion deal with Australia, New Zealand and Japan to improve PNG access to electricity and the Internet.
“The US election was an event that captivated the world, including PNG, with our people glued to their TV screens and internet to get the latest updates,” Marape said.
“The Australia-US Alliance is deep and enduring and built on shared values. I look forward to working with you closely as we face the world’s many challenges together,” he said.
However, The Guardian reports that Biden’s election would increase diplomatic pressure on Australia to step up its commitments on climate change.
Laurens Ikinia is a Papuan Masters in Communication Studies student at the Auckland University of Technology who has been studying journalism. He is on an internship with AUT’s Pacific Media Centre.
Students enter university as young adults embarking on a new life. Hazing rituals are meant to be a lighthearted initiation into university life that breaks down barriers between seniors and freshers and prepares the newcomers for their future. But hazing can be a terrifying ordeal.
Many practices associated with being initiated by other students are cruel and inhumane. Hazing has, in some cases, led to homicide, rape, sodomy, infliction of physical injuries, mental torture and forced binge drinking of alcohol.
Innocent lives are lost and student careers ruined. Many carry the mental scars of hazing for life. However, if they refuse to participate in hazing, they are ostracised.
Internationally, courts are increasingly holding universities responsible for the impacts of hazing on their students. Unlike other countries, Australia lacks legislation that clearly makes universities and their colleges responsible for hazing. But the overseas experience shows legislation alone isn’t enough; cultural change is essential.
In 2017, 39 Australian universities had commissioned the Australian Human Rights Commission report Change the Course. The report was scathing about the prevalence of hazing, sexual assault and harassment at university campuses and residential colleges.
Hazing poses a threat to international education in Australia, a A$35 billion “export industry” employing more than 200,000 Australians. It is just behind iron ore, coal and natural gas.
In the US, 55% of students on university campuses face hazing. In India 60% of students at universities and professional institutions are victims of hazing. In 2018 reported incidents of hazing increased by 75% in India.
Police investigate the death of a Louisiana State University student in 2017, one of several who died in hazing rituals at US campuses that year.Hilary Scheinuk/The Advocate/AP/AAP
In Australia, as many as half (51%) of all Australian university students were sexually harassed in 2016, many as part of hazing rituals. Many are subjected to other indignities.
While the individual perpetrators of hazing are subject to criminal and civil sanctions, the reality is that it is up to institutions to deal with the problem. Australia does not have standalone hazing legislation that clearly makes this the responsibility of universities and/or their colleges.
Such legislation exists in the US (in 44 out of 50 states) and India (in 14 out of 29 states). These laws provide for wrongdoers to be imprisoned or fined. However, criminal liability has failed to stem the tide of hazing.
Other countries, but not Australia, have specific laws making institutions responsible for the humiliation and harm caused by hazing.AP/AAP
Civil courts have sought to help. They have recognised the university’s responsibility to its students and awarded damages to them under tort law. The US courts began this trend by imposing a duty of care on universities that left them liable for failure to control hazing.
In Mullins v Pine Manor College it was held that the university controlled residential premises. Thus, it was liable for the rape of a campus resident that happened due to its failure to arrange adequate security.
Furek v University of Delaware resulted from a fraternity hazing ritual during which oven cleaner was poured on the plaintiff’s face and neck, burning and permanently scarring him. The court held the university liable as through its clearly pronounced policies it had assumed responsibility for controlling hazing.
A 2018 US case, Regents of University of California v Superior Court, produced the most expansive view on the university’s liability. The behaviour of a student who suffered from schizophrenia had become erratic. The university knew about his behaviour. This student attacked another student with a kitchen knife, who then sued the university.
The court held the university liable as there was “a special relationship” between a university and students, creating a duty to protect the latter. The Regents decision reflects the modern reality of how much control an institution exerts over students and how much they depend on the university for their safety.
In Australia, there have been calls for a statutory duty of care to be imposed on universities. The ACT Supreme Court recently reached the same conclusion.
In SMA v John XXIII College (No 2), the plaintiff had non-consensual sex with a fellow student following the hazing ritual of binge drinking on the college premises and outside. She sued an affiliate college of ANU. The defendant was held liable for breaching its duty of care to the plaintiff on the grounds it failed to:
stop the hazing ritual of drinking
direct the students in an intoxicated state to leave the college
properly handle the student’s sexual harassment complaint.
The Human Rights Commission’s Change the Course report emphasises the need for cultural change.AHRC
Universities are an ecosystem in which students prepare for their life ahead. Judicial decisions both in the US and Australia emphasise universities have assumed responsibility for student safety, and it is they who must control hazing.
Hazing has become a “pandemic”. An isolated civil suit by a student helps but does not go to the heart of the problem.
What is required is cultural change. The institutions themselves must drive this change.
A failure to stop hazing damages an institution’s own students and tarnishes its image. Universities, members of civil society and political leaders need to get serious about tackling the evil of hazing.
This article was co-authored by D.K. Srivastava — formerly professor at the City University of Hong Kong and pro-vice-chancellor of OP Jindal Global University, India.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Toss Gascoigne, Visiting fellow, Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, Australian National University
It’s a challenging time to be a science communicator. The current pandemic, climate crisis, and concerns over new technologies from artificial intelligence to genetic modification by CRISPR demand public accountability, clear discussion and the ability to disagree in public.
However, science communication is not new to challenge. The 20th century can be read as a long argument for science communication in the interest of the public good.
Since the Second World War, there have been many efforts to negotiate a social contract between science and civil society. In the West, part of that negotiation has emphasised the distribution of scientific knowledge. But how is the relationship between science and society formulated around the globe?
We collected stories from 39 countries together into a book, Communicating Science: A Global Perspective, to understand how science communication has unfolded internationally. Globally it has played a key role in public health, environmental protection and agriculture.
Three key ideas emerge: community knowledge is a powerful context; successful science communication is integrated with other beliefs; and there is an expectation that researchers will contribute to the development of society.
The term “science communication” is not universal. For 50 years, what is called “science communication” in Australia has had different names in other countries: “science popularisation”, “public understanding”, “vulgarisation”, “public understanding of science”, and the cultivation of a “scientific temper”.
Colombia uses the term “the social appropriation of science and technology”. This definition underscores that scientific knowledge is transformed through social interaction.
Each definition delivers insights into how science and society are positioned. Is science imagined as part of society? Is science held in high esteem? Does association with social issues lessen or strengthen the perception of science?
Governments play a variety of roles in the stories we collected. The 1970s German government stood back, perhaps recalling the unsavoury relationship between Nazi propaganda and science. Private foundations filled the gap by funding ambitious programs to train science journalists. In the United States, the absence of a strong central agency encouraged diversity in a field described variously as “vibrant”, “jostling” or “cacophonous”.
The United Kingdom is the opposite, providing one of the best-documented stories in this field. This is exemplified by the Royal Society’s Bodmer Report in 1985, which argued that scientists should consider it their duty to communicate their work to their fellow citizens.
Russia saw a state-driven focus on science through the communist years, to modernise and industrialise. In 1990 the Knowledge Society’s weekly science newspaper Argumenty i Fakty had the highest weekly circulation of any newspaper in the world: 33.5 million copies. But the collapse of the Soviet Union showed how fragile these scientific views were, as people turned to mysticism.
At its peak in 1990, the government-published Russian newspaper Argumenty i Fakty had a circulation of 33.5 million copies per week.Shutterstock
Many national accounts refer to the relationship between indigenous knowledge and Western science. Aotearoa New Zealand is managing this well (there’s a clue in the name), with its focus on mātauranga (Māori knowledge). The integration has not always been smooth sailing, but Māori views are now incorporated into nationwide science funding, research practice and public engagement.
Ecologist John Perrott points out that Māori “belonging” (I belong, therefore I am) is at odds with Western scientific training (I think, therefore I am). In Māori whakapapa (genealogy and cosmology), relationships with the land, flora and fauna are fundamental and all life is valued, as are collaboration and nurturing.
Science communication in the Global South
Eighteen countries contributing to the book have a recent colonial history, and many are from the Global South. They saw the end of colonial rule as an opportunity to embrace science. As Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah said in 1963 to a meeting of the Organisation of African Unity:
We shall drain marshes and swamps, clear infested areas, feed the under-nourished, and rid our people of parasites and disease. It is within the possibility of science and technology to make even the Sahara bloom into a vast field with verdant vegetation for agricultural and industrial developments.
Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah believed science could aid his country’s development.L.A. van Es, CC BY-NC-SA
Plans were formulated and optimism was strong. A lot depended on science communication: how would science be introduced to national narratives, gain political impetus and influence an education system for science?
Science in these countries focused mainly on health, the environment and agriculture. Nigeria’s polio vaccine campaign was almost derailed in 2003 when two influential groups, the Supreme Council for Shari’ah in Nigeria and the Kaduna State Council of Imams and Ulamas, declared the vaccine contained anti-fertility substances and was part of a Western conspiracy to sterilise children. Only after five Muslim leaders witnessed a successful vaccine program in Egypt was it recognised as being compatible with the Qur’an.
Three key ideas
Three principles emerge from these stories. The first is that community knowledge is a powerful force. In rural Kenya, the number of babies delivered by unskilled people led to high mortality. Local science communication practices provided a solution. A baraza (community discussion) integrated the health problem with social solutions, and trained local motorcycle riders to transport mothers to hospitals. The baraza used role-plays to depict the arrival of a mother to a health facility, reactions from the health providers, eventual safe delivery of the baby, and mother and baby riding back home.
A second principle is how science communication can enhance the integration of science with other beliefs. Science and religion, for example, are not always at odds. The Malaysian chapter describes how Muslim concepts of halal (permitted) and haram (forbidden) determine the acceptability of biotechnology according to the principles of Islamic law. Does science pose any threat to the five purposes of maslahah (public interest): religion, life and health, progeny, intellect and property? It is not hard to see the resemblance to Western ethical considerations of controversial science.
The third is an approach to pursuing and debating science for the public good. Science communication has made science more accessible, and public opinions and responses more likely to be sought. The “third mission”, an established principle across Europe, is an expectation or obligation that researchers will contribute to the growth, welfare and development of society. Universities are expected to exchange knowledge and skills with others in society, disseminating scientific results and methods, and encouraging public debate.
These lessons about science communication will be needed in a post-COVID world. They are finding an audience: we have made the book freely available online, and it has so far been downloaded more than 14,000 times.
When the US formally left the Paris climate agreement, Joe Biden tweeted that “in exactly 77 days, a Biden Administration will rejoin it”.
The US announced its intention to withdraw from the agreement back in 2017. But the agreement’s complex rules meant formal notification could only be sent to the United Nations last year, followed by a 12-month notice period — hence the long wait.
While diplomacy via Twitter looks here to stay, global climate politics is about to be upended — and the impacts will be felt in Australia if President-elect Biden delivers on his plans.
Under the Biden administration, the US will have the most progressive position on climate change in the nation’s history. Biden has already laid out a US$2 trillion clean energy and infrastructure plan, a commitment to rejoin the Paris agreement and a goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.
If I have the honour of being elected president, we’re not just going to tinker around the edges. We’re going to make historic investments that will seize the opportunity, meet this moment in history.
And his plan is historic. It aims to achieve a power sector that’s free from carbon pollution by 2035 — in a country with the largest reserves of coal on the planet.
Biden also aims to revitalise the US auto industry and become a leader in electric vehicles, and to upgrade four million buildings and two million homes over four years to meet new energy efficiency standards.
Can he do it under a a divided Congress? With the US elections outcome, Democrats control the presidency and the House, but not the Senate.
This means President-elect Biden will be able to rejoin the Paris agreement, which does not require Senate ratification. But any attempt to legislate a carbon price will be blocked in the Senate, as it was when then-President Barack Obama introduced the Waxman-Markey bill in 2010.
In any case, there’s no reason to think a carbon price is a silver bullet, given the window to act on climate change is closing fast.
What’s needed are ambitious targets and mandates for the power sector, transport sector and manufacturing sector, backed up with billions in government investment.
Fortunately, this is precisely what Biden is promising to do. And he can do it without the Senate by using the executive powers of the US government to implement a raft of new regulatory measures.
Take the transport sector as an example. His plan aims to set “ambitious fuel economy standards” for cars, set a goal that all American-built buses be zero emissions by 2030, and use public money to build half a million electric vehicle charging stations. Most of these actions can be put in place through regulations that don’t require congressional approval.
And with Trump out of the White House, California will be free to achieve its target that all new cars be zero emissions by 2035, which the Trump administration had impeded.
If that sounds far-fetched, given Australia is the only OECD country that still doesn’t have fuel efficiency standards for cars, keep in mind China promised to do the same thing as California last week.
What does this mean for Australia? For the last four years, the Trump administration has been a boon for successive Australian governments as they have torn up climate policies and failed to implement new ones.
Rather than witnessing our principal ally rebuke us on home soil, as Obama did at the University of Queensland in 2014, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has instead benefited from a cosy relationship with a US president who regularly dismisses decades of climate science, as he does medical science. And people are dying as a result.
Obama on climate change at the University of Queensland.
For Australia, the ambitious climate policies of a Biden administration means in every international negotiation our diplomats turn up to, climate change will not only be top of the agenda, but we will likely face constant criticism.
Indeed, fireside chats in the White House will come with new expectations that Australia significantly increases its ambitions under the Paris agreement. Committing to a net zero emissions target will be just the first.
The real kicker, however, will be Biden’s trade agenda, which supports carbon tariffs on imports that produce considerable carbon pollution. The US is still Australia’s third-largest trading partner after China and Japan — who, by the way, have just announced net zero emissions targets themselves.
Should the US start hitting Australian goods with a carbon fee at the border, you can bet Australian business won’t be happy, and Morrison may begin to re-think his domestic climate calculus.
And what political science tells us is if international pressure doesn’t shift a country’s position on climate change, domestic pressure certainly will.
With Biden now in the White House, it’s not just global climate politics that will be turned on its head. Australia’s failure to implement a serious domestic climate and energy policy could have profound costs.
Costs, mind you, that are easily avoidable if Australia acts on climate change, and does so now.
An American columnist and high tech expert has apologised to the people of New Zealand over the “scary” experience of authoritarian presidential rule over the past four years and appealed for a “second chance”.
Dick Brass, a former vice-president of Microsoft and Oracle for almost two decades and an ex-New York Daily News editor, says it will take a while to restore trust in the American system after Donald Trump who has been defeated by Joe Biden in a closely fought election. Trump is due to leave office in January.
“I think the absolute low point for me came the night after the election. In a tweet that will live in infamy, our President [Trump] ‘claimed’ for himself states that had barely begun to count their votes,” Brass wrote in his New Zealand Herald column today.
“This was pretty shocking, because even populist demagogues like Putin and Erdogan pretend to wait for the results.”
“’We have claimed, for Electoral Vote purposes, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania … the State of Georgia, and the State of North Carolina. … Additionally, we hereby claim the State of Michigan.’ Hereby claim? I hereby claim this land for Spain!”
Brass summed up his response to Trump.
‘Just dumb bluff?’ – it was “Was he for real? Had militias been mobilised? Or was it just a dumb bluff from a beaten man? Well yes, turns out it was.
“As the numbers inexorably turned against Trump, even Rupert Murdoch began to distance himself. First Fox called Arizona for Biden, undermining Trump’s hope to seriously play his phoney rigged election ‘claim’.
We have claimed, for Electoral Vote purposes, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (which won’t allow legal observers) the State of Georgia, and the State of North Carolina, each one of which has a BIG Trump lead. Additionally, we hereby claim the State of Michigan if, in fact,…..
“Yesterday, all of Murdoch’s various organs agreed that with Pennsylvania, Biden had won.”
Brass said it must have been a hard four years for New Zealanders as well as Americans.
“We elected a cruel and rude man who called for a Muslim ban [in the US] and talked about “America First” as though we no longer cared about anyone else. To prove it, he renounced decades of commitments.
“We pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord just as climate disaster loomed. We pulled out of the World Health Organisation as covid raged.
“We started trade wars. We acted like we couldn’t be trusted.
Hiding ‘covid bungling’ In August, Brass wrote, Trump had tried to “hide his covid bungling … by pretending New Zealand was having a ‘big surge’ of new cases. You had nine that day. We had 42,000. On Saturday we had 132,000. You had two.”
Brass also referred to past differences such as New Zealand’s nuclear-free stance.
“Like in 1985, when we refused to honour your sovereign right to a nuclear-free country and insisted on our right to park a nuclear-armed destroyer in one of your ports.”
In a amusing footnote, he wrote that the destroyer was sunk as target practice in 2000.
“Authoritarianism is often much easier to see from abroad,” wrote Brass.
“At home, it looks like a mixture of patriotism and new-found national purpose. The ravings of a mad king seem entertaining, powerful or just different.”
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says it is important for New Zealand to have tight connections with the US on big global issues – including trade, covid and climate change – and she will be pursuing a strong relationship with President-elect Joe Biden.
The result was called yesterday after Biden overtook President Donald Trump in the state of Pennsylvania, winning the state gave Biden 290 Electoral College seats – 20 more than the margin he needed for victory.
President-elect Biden visited New Zealand in 2016 in his role as Vice-President.
Jacinda Ardern told RNZ Morning Report there was no question personal connections made a difference to a relationship.
“But I’ll be wanting to make sure that on behalf of New Zealand that we are maintaining good strong relationships, particularly in our [Pacific] region which has been quite contested over a number of years, and working together on issues that matter to the whole global community; trade, covid, climate change.”
The strength of the relationship is important regardless of whether bilateral discussion take place over the phone or in person, she said.
“I will be pursuing a strong relationship there because it matters to us, it’s important for us to have the ability on big issues to really have those tight connections when we need them…”
Ardern said the leadership of the World Trade Organisation was important to New Zealand but there had been dispute over certain appointments which had held things up for New Zealand exporters.
“We need to have those strong relationships and engagements there,” she said.
“Trade issues will certainly be high on our agenda.”
New Zealand will be encouraging the US to take leadership on the international commitment to climate change, she said.
This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.
A mountainside cave now used as a Tibetan Buddhist sanctuary was home to prehistoric humans known as Denisovans for tens of millennia.
Our painstaking efforts there are helping unravel the story of how early humans adapted to live in one of the world’s most remote and mountainous places.
Our research, published in Science, provides a better understanding of the little-known prehistoric humans who lived tens of thousands of years ago on the roof of the world.
In 1980, half of a fossilised jawbone was found by a monk in the Baishiya Karst Cave in China’s Gansu province, in the northeastern part of the Tibetan Plateau. The jawbone’s long-deceased owner was dubbed “Xiahe Man”.
This jawbone fragment represents the only known remains of the mysterious Xiahe Man.Author provided
Analysis showed the mandible was actually the 160,000-year-old remains of a Denisovan. This group of mysterious prehistoric humans was originally discovered in the Denisova Cave in Siberia, Russia.
So this fossil was not only the earliest evidence of human occupation on the Tibetan Plateau, but also the first Denisovan fossil to be found outside of Denisova Cave — and the largest to ever be found.
However, without other archaeological evidence to put the solitary jawbone in context, this single fossil gave us little convincing evidence to piece together the full story of the mysterious Denisovans living on the roof of the world.
For this, we needed to properly excavate the Baishiya Karst Cave and see what we could find. After dozens of visits to the cave and others nearby, in 2016 we finally found the first indisputable stone artefacts (probably made by Denisovans) on the cave floor.
With this, we became further convinced the cave was a treasure trove of archaeological deposits that could help tell the story of the Denisovans. But, as it’s also a Buddhist holy cave, we weren’t allowed to dig inside it — not even one scrape of a trowel.
Midnight digging in the depths of winter
After two years of wrangling with authorities and extended negotiations with the temple’s Buddhist caretakers, we finally got permission to excavate a limited area within the cave. This was on the condition we worked late at night during the cold of winter, when no monks or tourists were visiting.
So every night, for three weeks, we inched our way across a frozen river, trudged up the mountainside through prickly branches and thick snow to reach the cave 3,280 metres above sea level. We slept during the day and excavated at night.
Despite the bone-chilling wind and darkness punctuated only by weak lamplight, it was exciting work. And our efforts were rewarded.
The archaeological remains we uncovered were richer and even more beautiful than we’d expected, including stone artefacts and animal bones buried throughout the sediments.
In 2019, a fresh permit allowed us to work during the day, too, albeit still in December (the coldest month of the Tibetan winter). We found yet more archaeological riches, including stone artefacts, animal bones and the remains of fires — crucial evidence of people living in the cave.
Researchers sampling the Baishiya Karst Cave.Han Yuanyuan
Crucial questions
Our discoveries have raised several questions. Who lived in the cave and made these artefacts, and when? Were they Denisovans like the original Xiahe Man from 160,000 years ago, or modern humans? Or perhaps a genetic combination of both?
The “when” question was tackled using two techniques. By radiocarbon-dating the animal bones, we worked out when they were brought into the cave — either as food for human occupants, or simply animals sheltering alongside humans.
Our dating techniques, similar to those used previously at Denisova Cave, revealed the oldest stone artefacts in the Baishiya Karst Cave were buried more than 190,000 years ago. Since then, sediments and stone artefacts accumulated over time until at least 45,000 years ago, or perhaps more recently still.
DNA identification
But who were the people who lived there? To answer that question without any fresh human fossils besides the original jawbone, we needed to examine human DNA in the sediment samples.
We focused on identifying sequences of “mitochondrial DNA”, as cells contain many more copies of this than they do nuclear DNA. Thus, mitochondrial DNA is easier to obtain and analyse for research.
We found mitochondrial DNA matching Denisovans in cave sediments between 100,000–60,000 years old. What’s more, we found the newer samples were more closely related to those from Denisova Cave than older ones, indicating Denisovans were indeed more widespread than originally thought.
It’s possible they could have even contributed significantly to modern human DNA. For example, they may have helped today’s Tibetan Plateau dwellers on their evolutionary journey of adapting to high-altitude mountain life.
To confirm this, we’ll need to find out how long the Denisovans lived in the region around the Baishiya Karst Cave, and crucially, whether they survived long enough to intermingle with the modern humans who arrived on the Tibetan Plateau between 40,000–30,000 years ago.
Although, even if Denisovans and modern humans did come face to face, they would have actually had to interbreed for Denisovans to be able to share their high-altitude evolutionary adaptations.
It’s difficult to know whether this happened by only analysing mitochondrial DNA, since this only carries information about the maternal lineage.
This means it doesn’t always reflect the complete population history of a specimen. Future attempts to extract nuclear DNA from the Baishiya Karst Cave may finally provide the tools needed to explore these questions.
Race informs how Black parents raise their children in Australia. Our study, published in the journal Child and Family Social Work, found it complicates parenting in ways that non-Black parents might not have to consider.
We interviewed 27 highly skilled professional African migrants from eight different Sub-Saharan African countries about their experiences of employment, belonging and parenting in Australia. Parents of Black African children told us they had to consider how race affected the identity, perception, opportunities and well-being of their children.
One parent, who overheard her daughter telling her (white) friends about her experiences as a Black teenager, reflected:
This week I heard her tell one of her friends; there is no one day that passes without her thinking about this (race). Yeah, and her friends were really, really […] shocked. They said they do not have to think about it. Then, she said, ‘Every day when I get on to the bus, you know, I think about who I am and if somebody is going to say something, when I am on the streets, you know, I think about what will somebody think or say or do.’
Parents of Black African children report having to consider how race affected the identity, perception, opportunities and well-being of their children.Shutterstock
Many parents said they were unprepared for the extent to which race would become a defining marker of their parenting process in Australia.
One parent noted school was especially difficult for his children. He described instances in which his son had been called “a nigger” and threatened with violence, as well as fighting for his daughter’s rights to wear her afro-natural hair in school.
It put a lot of pressure on them and on me as a parent to explain without creating differences between them and the white kids […] We create a lot of explanations and conversations around who they are.
Parents of Black men and boys, in particular, reported feeling more concerned about the stereotype of black masculinity and how much more likely their sons were to be criminalised or profiled by police.
One parent said she constantly reminds her son that, because he is a young African male, he must
…always be conscious wherever he goes or wherever he is.
Some parents reported feeling overwhelmed and unprepared to support their children to deal with racial slurs, micro-aggressions (such as racial “jokes”, comments and “nicknames”) and racial exotification (such as hair-touching, invasive questions about their bodies or being described as “exotic”).
Parents of Black men and boys, in particular, reported feeling more concerned about the stereotype of black masculinity.Shutterstock
Teaching Black children about racial dignity
Participants reported a significant aspect of parenting involved teaching their children about their blackness and self-worth.
Because blackness is often inferiorised in white-dominant contexts, many told us they felt if their children weren’t taught about racial dignity and self-worth, they would grow up internalising feelings of inferiority.
One parent explained how, for her two children:
We have conversations about what they look like, how they are different to other people, and people may want to point out those differences. [We teach them] being different does not mean being inferior or anything like that […] we talk to them to be confident about who they are and to be proud about where they have come from and their African heritage.
Another parent reflected:
We have had instances […] where he has sort of alluded to the fact that somebody told him, ‘You are Black, you are not like us’. And we have taken that up very quickly with the school authorities (but) we have (also) tried to tell him in a soft way […] being African doesn’t make him inferior.
‘Having the talk’ and affirming children’s experiences
Most parents in this study considered that explicitly teaching their children about race was necessary while growing up in Australia.
This involved “having the talk” and explaining to children about why their skin colour was different — preparing them to live in a world where their blackness was sometimes going to be a hindrance and how deal with such instances, including interactions with police.
This process of teaching children about race and racism while also sharing positive cultural knowledge, concepts racial dignity and resilience is called racial socialisation.
Most parents in this study reported explicitly teaching their children about race and racism was necessary while growing up in Australia.Shutterstock
However, despite the efforts to instil a sense of pride about their African heritage in their children, many parents also encouraged their children to “curate or minimise” their blackness and/or Africanness in an effort to reduce their experiences of racism or racial profiling.
Others told us they pushed their children “to be exemplary”; that they had to be great representatives of the African/Black communities.
For the children, these expectations from family can lead to their blackness being worn as a “burden”. Parents, however, saw it as a necessary form of racial socialisation that prepares their children to face racial discrimination with greater resilience.
‘Colour-blind parenting’
A minority of parents interviewed believed their children “do not see colour” and tried their best “not to make race an issue”. One parent, for example, said:
We always taught our children race is not an issue, we are all the same, so it was easy for them to fit in.
Another parent said:
…when it comes to my children, they do not really have that idea of […] ‘I am a certain colour’ […] we’ve not had that conversation because there has been no reason to. We are people, we are not ‘coloured’ people.
This “colour-blind parenting” aligns with mainstream Australian ideas that people “are all the same”, and that racism is not a significant issue in contemporary multicultural Australia.
While well-intentioned, such an approach might make it harder for children to discuss potential experiences of “racial otherness” with their parents.
Where to from here?
Media representations of African migrant families often depict irreconcilable cultural clashes after relocation. But our interviewees were able to successfully adapt and change their parenting behaviour and attitudes after migrating, which improved family dynamics.
If you’re a parent, talk with your children about race and racism, and its effects. It is important Black children know that they are not imagining their racialised experiences.
Think about ways you can introduce these concepts to your children. Young children can understand complex concepts when discussed in age-appropriate terms — and through humour.
Children’s books such as Sharee Miller’s Don’t touch my hair!, for example, help introduce the importance of setting — and respecting — personal boundaries.
We also summarised some tips on how to raise racially conscious children in an SBS video here.
The Black Summer bushfires were devastating for wildlife, with an estimated three billion wild animals killed, injured or displaced. This staggering figure does not include the tens of thousands of farm animals who also perished.
It recommended governments improve wildlife rescue arrangements, develop better systems for understanding biodiversity and clarify evacuation options for domestic animals.
While these changes are welcome and necessary, they’re not sufficient. Minimising such catastrophic impacts on wildlife and livestock also means reducing their exposure to these hazards in the first place. And unless we develop more proactive strategies to protect threatened species from disasters, they’ll only become more imperilled.
What the royal commission recommended
The royal commission recognised the need for wildlife rescuers to have swift and safe access to fire grounds.
In the immediate aftermath of the bushfires, some emergency services personnel were confused about the roles and responsibilities of wildlife rescuers. This caused delays in rescue operations.
Australia does not have a comprehensive, central source of information about its native flora and fauna.AAP Image/Steven Saphore
To address this issue, the royal commission sensibly suggested all state and territory governments integrate wildlife rescue functions into their general disaster planning frameworks. This would improve coordination between different response agencies.
Another issue raised by the commission was that Australia does not have a comprehensive, central source of information about its native flora and fauna. This is, in part, because species listing processes are fragmented across different jurisdictions.
To better manage and protect wild animals, governments need more complete information on, for example, their range and population, and how climate change threatens them.
As a result, the royal commission recommended governments collect and share more accurate information so disaster response and recovery efforts for wildlife could be more targeted, timely and effective.
Adelaide wildlife rescuer Simon Adamczyk takes a koala to safety on Kangaroo Island.AAP Image/David Mariuz
Helping animals help themselves
While promising, the measures listed in the royal commission’s final report will only tweak a management system for wildlife already under stress. Current legal frameworks for protecting threatened species are reactive. By the time governments intervene, species have often already reached a turning point.
Governments must act to allow wild animals the best possible chances of escaping and recovering on their own.
This means prioritising the protection and restoration of habitat that allows animals to get to safety. As a World Wildlife Fund report explains, an animal’s ability to flee the fires and find safe, unburnt habitat — such as mesic (moist) refuges in gullies or near waterways — directly influenced their chances of survival.
Wildlife corridors also assist wild animals to survive and recover from disasters. These connect areas of habitat, providing fast moving species with safe routes along which they can flee from hazards.
An animal’s ability to flee fires determines whether it survives.Shutterstock
Hazard reduction activities, such as removing dry vegetation that fuels fires, were also a focus for the royal commission. These can coexist with habitat conservation when undertaken in ecologically-sensitive ways.
As the commission recognised, Indigenous land and fire management practices are informed by intimate knowledge of plants, animals and landscapes. These practices should be integrated into habitat protection policies in consultation with First Nations land managers.
The commission also suggested natural hazards, such as fire, be counted as a “key threatening process” under national environment law. But it should be further amended to protect vulnerable species under threat from future stressors, such as disasters.
Governments also need to provide more funding to monitor compliance with this law. Another World Wildlife Fund report, released today, warns that unless it is properly enforced, a further 37 million native animals could be displaced or killed as a result of habitat destruction this decade.
Pets and farm animals featured in the commission’s recommendations too.
During the bushfires, certain evacuation centres didn’t cater for these animals. This meant some evacuees chose not to use these facilities because they couldn’t take their animals with them.
To guide the community in future disasters, the commission said plans should clearly identify whether or not evacuation centres can accommodate people with animals.
Evacuation planning is crucial to effective disaster response. However, it is unfortunately not always feasible to move large groups of livestock off properties at short notice.
For this reason, governments should help landholders to mitigate the risks hazards pose to their herds and flocks. Researchers are already starting to do this by investigating the parts of properties that were burnt during the bushfires. This will help farmers identify the safest paddocks for their animals in future fire seasons.
Disasters are only expected to become more intense and extreme as the climate changes. And if we’re to give our pets, livestock and unique wildlife the best chance at surviving, it’s not enough only to have sound disaster response. Governments must preemptively address the underlying sources of animals’ vulnerability to hazards.
As an educational ethicist, I research teachers’ ethical obligations. These can include their personal ethics such as protecting students from harm, respect for justice and truth, and professional norms like social conformity, collegial loyalty and personal well-being.
Moral tensions in schools can come about when certain categories of norms conflict with each other. For example, sometimes students’ best interests are pitted against available resources. These present difficult decisions for the teacher, the school community and its leaders.
As part of a global study on educational ethics during the pandemic, I conducted focus groups with Australian childcare, preschool, primary and secondary school teachers to find out what ethical issues were most pressing for them.
Below are three ways in which the pandemic highlighted existing tensions between ethical priorities.
During COVID, this flipped and well-being took precedence. A primary school teacher told me:
It’s the first time in my teaching career where the learning became a low priority, and well-being took over … if we could keep them chugging along, that was good enough.
An Aboriginal-identifying teacher who shared their strong cultural background with students said:
… a lot of the Aboriginal students … didn’t have access to … resources. And so there was already this disconnect that became even wider by the time they had to learn from home … Some students were not able to complete the work that I was putting on the online forum because they were caring for little brothers and sisters when they were at home … or home life was extremely volatile …
A secondary school teacher said:
There were certain students that we were made aware of by the well-being coordinators that we weren’t to make contact with. If there were more extenuating circumstances in the life of the child then we weren’t to … exacerbate that by sending emails home about them not completing work …
Some teachers found it particularly difficult to identify students at heightened risk and to put in place their duty of care requirements.
A public primary school principal in a low socioeconomic area said:
We had a couple of instances where we would have had more contact with family, community services and since (then) we have heard stories of what happened when the children weren’t coming to school … we would have made an instant call to DOCS [Department of Community Services], but because we weren’t having that day to day contact we didn’t know. A lot of those things were hidden, very serious issues.
2. Government policy versus staff well-being
Leading teachers and principals found the tension between their personal safety and that of their colleagues were often in conflict with a lag in institutional directives.
Education departments often put out instructions long after principals felt the safety of their staff was compromised.Shutterstock
For instance, on March 25 The NSW Teachers’ Federation urged the education department to immediately prioritise the safety of staff and students.
But the department took time to mandate social distancing measures, school closures and learning from home. In the meantime principals were on alert for risk management, anticipating directives for extensive social distancing, such as cancelling school assemblies, before being instructed to do so.
One public school principal said:
The federation is telling us this. The department is telling us that … I would make a decision and then a couple of weeks later … the department would come up with the same strict instructions … it was the well-being of the staff first for me … even to the point where we sent the kids home for the first week with no learning … the second that one child comes to school and catches COVID, then I’m not going to be able to live with myself.
But it wasn’t the same in all schools. A primary school teacher in a bushfire affected area reflected on the decisions made by the principal.
I’m trying to be diplomatic … We were very slow to engage with kids who were starting to be kept home from school. And we were very slow for teachers to be able to work from home and we were very quick to come back to … school … We have a parent who worked at the local high school saying, ‘Oh, yeah, we’ve been working at home all week’. We haven’t even been told that’s a possibility …
3. Personal well-being versus professional integrity
A teacher’s professional integrity is how they evaluate the alignment between the expectations of their role and their values. When a schism arises, it throws into question some core professional values.
One public school principal’s integrity had an extremely high bar.
I’ll be really honest, despite all of the warnings and all of the advice, my own well-being was my last priority. And the ethical dilemma for me was, I can’t look after myself because I’ve got so many other people to look after first, despite all the warnings, despite all the advice.
Teachers reported the personal cost of changing work arrangements into remote settings, concerned about how they were to fulfil their professional integrity to provide the kind of meaningful interactions students needed.
A secondary Catholic school teacher said:
Remote learning really threw me off balance and I struggled to find myself and how I fit into that situation … I had to learn to let go and … work out what is really important.
For the next generation of teachers, the dilemma was more about how to set boundaries in an emerging professional identity.
One early career public secondary teacher said:
I did go out of my way to with my Year 11s, them being my most senior year … Which did bring up the ethical thing … there were times I would get a message at one o’clock and I’d be up but I’d say, I’m not answering that, I’m not looking at it. I’m looking at it in the morning. That’s too much in each other’s heads. And, yeah, the barriers were tough.
An experienced secondary teacher in an International Baccalaureate school said:
I was working sending emails at midnight, and getting up three hours before my lessons to try and make sure that the platform is working … and obviously all my lessons that I plan had to be then turned into online lessons. So that takes a whole other weekend for everything … I got WhatsApp messages at all hours …
She said students sent her emails to thank her for the commitment. She realised it was a toxic message to send, and that implied this should be the norm for teachers. While teaching is a generous profession, COVID highlighted the expectations on their generosity.
A Grattan Institute report released today finds Australian governments spent A$34 billion, or 21%, more on transport projects completed since 2001 than they first told taxpayers they would. And as we enter the era of megaprojects in Australia, costs continue to blow out.
Transport projects worth A$5 billion or more in today’s money were almost unheard of ten years ago. Today, as the chart below shows, megaprojects make up the bulk of the work under way across the country.
We are also hearing calls to add to this bulging pipeline. In June, the transport and infrastructure ministers of all states and territories said they were “clearing the way for an infrastructure-led recovery” from the COVID-19 recession.
The Grattan report, The rise of megaprojects: counting the costs, sounds a warning about the risks of this approach. The report uses the Deloitte Access Economics Investment Monitor to look at the final cost of all public road and rail projects worth A$20 million or more and completed since 2001. As the chart below shows, we found bigger projects overran their initial cost estimates more often and by more.
Author provided
Almost half of the projects with an initial price tag of more than A$1 billion in today’s money had a cost overrun. These projects overran their initial costs by 30% on average. The extra amount spent on some megaprojects was the size of a megaproject itself.
Cost announcements before governments were prepared to commit formally to a project were particularly risky. Only one-third of projects had costs announced prematurely, but these accounted for more than three-quarters of the A$34 billion overrun.
When early costings of infrastructure turn out to be too low, it distorts investment planning in three ways:
underestimating the costs of transport infrastructure can lead to over-investing in it relative to other spending priorities
if governments misunderstand the uncertainty in a project’s cost at the time they commit to it, their decision to invest in that project was made on an incorrect basis
because unrealistic cost estimates are more prevalent for larger projects, governments are more likely to over-invest in larger projects.
There’s also a fourth and no less important problem: when unrealistically low cost estimates are announced, the public is misled.
Despite the experience of the past 20 years, the costs of big projects continue to be underestimated. The chart below shows A$24 billion more than first expected will be spent on just six mega megaprojects (that is, projects with an initial cost estimate of A$5 billion or more) now under construction. Overruns on other megaprojects have been reported too.
With megaproject costs continuing to blow out, governments should take immediate steps to manage better the portfolio of work under way — particularly if they are looking to add to it in the name of economic stimulus.
Each state’s auditor-general should conduct a stocktake of current projects. This would give the public and the government a clear picture of the situation.
Ministers should report to parliament any changes in project costs, dates and benefits as they become known.James Ross/AAP
Ministers should begin reporting to parliament on a continuous disclosure basis. Any material changes in expected costs, benefits or completion dates of very large projects should be disclosed.
Steps should be taken to put decisions on the incoming batch of projects on a sounder basis, too. When announcing a cost, ministers and government agencies should disclose how advanced the estimate is. If the proposal is at an early stage, they should quote a range of estimates.
Governments should also require their infrastructure advisory bodies to at least assess — if not approve — large proposals before funding is committed.
Looking further ahead, action is needed to stop the pattern of spending billions more than expected on megaprojects. State departments of transport and infrastructure should devote more resources to identifying modest-sized transport infrastructure proposals.
And governments need to start learning from the past. Detailed project data, particularly on expected and actual costs, should be centrally collated in each state.
Post-completion reviews should be mandatory on all large projects. These reviews should be published.
If there is no change in the way infrastructure is conceived and delivered in Australia, then the era of the megaproject will indeed mean megaproblems.
House prices are spiking again, with “affordable homes” showing most growth. That’s no surprise really, with multiple factors in play.
Market instability due to COVID-19 is driving asset acquisition — property is the classic port in a storm for investors. Interest rates are at all-time lows and likely to stay that way. The pandemic has curtailed people’s spending, costly holidays are cancelled, socialising is limited and home working has reduced travel costs.
Overall, homeowners have more disposable income. This has led to an uptick in home improvements, renovations and real estate activity. Media coverage adds fuel to the fire by breathlessly reporting rapid price rises. First-time buyers panic that they will miss their chance.
Bottom line: the conditions are in place for a house price boom.
Into this febrile atmosphere stepped the Property Investors’ Federation CEO, claiming first-time buyers were causing recent price rises. The reasoning was that people moving out of a flat to buy a home — one that was previously a rental property — effectively reduce the available housing stock.
This is unfair at best. It shifts blame onto a younger, poorer demographic for reduced cost efficiency and return on investment. Those buyers may be looking to settle down and start a family. They are already largely locked out of the housing market by the depredations of property speculators and investors.
The rise of renting
For many years, property investment has been the main way in which New Zealanders have grown their wealth and provided for retirement. Developing a property portfolio is a tax-efficient, cost-efficient option for individuals with surplus wealth.
Capital growth in previous acquisitions leverages funding for further acquisitions, making the process self-sustaining. Better yet, investors can congratulate themselves for offering rental accommodation options that the state does not provide.
Government attempts to limit investment through capital gains taxes or some other mechanism have encountered substantial pushback. New Zealanders want the freedom to invest in property.
The result has been an ever-increasing proportion of the population in rental accommodation and an accompanying decline in the total number of owner occupiers. Over the past 40 years, owner occupancy has declined from 74% nationally to its current 62% (close to 50% in Auckland).
House prices — irrespective of media narratives — are not driven by production costs. They are driven by the residual values of existing houses. Like any commodity, scarcity drives values up. Abundance forces values down. Investors and first-time buyers pursuing the same properties create artificial scarcity.
The issue, then, is how to rapidly generate enough housing to meet the demand, given house building is not a rapid process. Irrespective of how many new houses of a particular type are wanted, capacity is constrained.
At best, additional “emergency” housing stock will take several years to be built. New houses are generally commissioned and bought by individual customers, and each house is unique and distinct. To date, most of this type of development has involved large, standalone — not affordable — homes.
This is not a market set up to provide mass housing at short notice. It is certainly not a market to create the housing surplus that would force down values.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern visits a construction site to announce Labour’s housing policy during the 2020 election campaign.AAP
Governments should think like builders
The options are clear — moderation of supply and demand, with houses constructed ahead of the market.
But successive governments have failed to recognise builders will not do this of their own accord. So-called “special housing areas” failed because the market drove the development of standalone sections, not high-density plots.
KiwiBuild, the previous government’s ambitious house-building policy, failed utterly. Once again, it was because the government assumed builders would scale up their production and productivity without pre-existing commitment of funding and contracts.
Starting large development contracts without guaranteed customers is risky. Builders have limited resources and will not take on speculative builds.
On the other hand, housing scarcity leads to regular business and reasonable margins. In a volatile economy this is a good place to be. In a free society we can’t simply compel builders to build more. We can only encourage and incentivise them with large contracts.
This is where the government would need to provide the development capital to get ahead of the market — in other words, be the customer of first resort.
This does create the secondary problem of the state stepping into a commercial space. Using public funds to favour certain projects and providers will certainly trigger outraged howls of “unfair competition” from those not favoured.
But the demand side could be dampened with various measures to limit property investors and meet the urgent need to wean New Zealanders off property investment by:
limiting the number of properties that individuals or household trusts can hold
limiting the number of trusts that individuals can hold
incentivising divestment of property holdings (in favour of selling to first-home buyers, for example).
The elephant in the room is a capital gains tax on secondary and rental properties — something the current government backed away from during its first term.
Ultimately, though, given a choice between helping first-home buyers into housing or limiting cost-effective property investment, a left-leaning government will likely side with social need over optimising capital formation. To do otherwise would be unacceptable to its voter base.
In the final analysis, the Property Investors’ Federation is likely to be sorely disappointed with future policy.
Literary culture carries profound social value. In general terms it is essential to employment, cultural literacy and understanding of community, as well as to Australia’s post-pandemic recovery and growth. It is also radically underfunded and in urgent need of new support.
I am particularly concerned with the low level of investment in literature through state and federal funding agencies compared with other art forms.
The economic benefits
Literature is a mainstay of the creative and cultural industries, which contributed $63.5 billion to the Australian economy in 2016-17. Creative arts employ 645,000 Australians and those numbers were increasing before the pandemic. Literature operates in the economy in many and complicated ways, since writers are “primary producers” of creative content.
Books form an often invisible bedrock of robust resources for the wider economy. They provide creative content in areas such as film, television, theatre and opera; moreover they contribute fundamentally to the educational sector, to libraries, events and what might be called our forms of cultural conversation.
Julia Ormond and Angourie Rice in Ladies in Black, a 2018 film based on the novel by Australian author Madeleine St John.Lumila Films, Ladies in Black SPV, Screen Australia
The most conspicuous areas of economic benefit and employment are libraries, universities, schools, festivals, bookshops and publishing.
Indirect benefits, such as to tourism and cross-cultural understanding, are often overlooked in reference to the economic benefits of literature. Our books carry implicit, prestigious reference to a national culture and place; they attract interest, visitors and students and arguably establish a presence of ideas above and beyond more direct mechanisms of cultural exchange.
Cross-cultural exchange and understanding are crucial to the literary industries and of inestimable benefit in “recommending” Australia and its stories.
However, writers’ incomes are disastrously low, $12,900 on average; and COVID-19 has eliminated other forms of supplementary income. It has always been difficult to live as a writer in Australia (which is why most of us have “day jobs”) and it is clear writers are disproportionately disadvantaged. Although essential to the economic benefits of a healthy arts sector overall, writers are less supported by our institutions and infrastructure.
We need additional government-directed support such as the funding delivered to visual arts through the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy ($6.6 million in 2018-19), regional touring delivered through Playing Australia ($7.4 million 2018-19) and the Major Festivals Initiative ($1.5 million 2018-19).
Melbourne’s State Library.Valeriu Campan/AAP
Shaping national identity
The literary culture in Australia is chronically underfunded, but its benefits are persistent, precious and immense. “Social well-being” requires social literacy, a sense of connection to one’s history, community and self: these are generated and nourished through narrative, conversation and reflection.
The literary arts create a sense of pride, community and solidarity. A single library in a country town can offer astonishing opportunities of learning and self-knowledge: how do we calculate value like this?
As someone who grew up in remote and regional areas, I’m aware of how crucial libraries and book culture are to a sense of connection with the nation. Moreover, reading is an indicator of mental health, especially among young people.
Brothers Douglas and Dare Strout read a school book together while home schooling in Brisbane in April.Darren England/AAP
“National identity” also requires reflexive literacy: social understanding and agency derive from reading and writing; a nation that neglects its literary culture risks losing the skills that contribute to creative thinking in other areas — including in industry and innovative manufacturing. Local reading and writing initiatives have had remarkable success in areas like Aboriginal literacy and aged care mental support.
More Australians are reading, writing and attending festival events than ever before. Reading is the second most popular way Australians engage with arts and culture.
Writers’ festivals are flourishing and attendances growing. Libraries remain crucial to our urban and regional communities. It is no overstatement to claim that literature has shaped and reflected our complex national identity.
Australian literature at universities
The formulation of a Creative Economy Taskforce by Arts Minister Paul Fletcher is a positive step in establishing better understanding of this crucial economy. I would draw attention, however, to the lack of literary expertise on the taskforce. The appointment of a publisher or a high-profile Indigenous writer, for example, would give more diversity to the collective voice of our literary community.
The additional appointment of an academic concerned with Australian literature, such as the current director of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, would further enhance the claims of literature.
The education sector will have a role in implementing creative arts initiatives. There has been a deplorable lack of support for Australian literature within the academy.
Under the current wish to renovate the jobs sector through the creative arts there is an opportunity to direct dedicated funds within the education budget to establishing a Chair of Australian Literature in each university (or at least in the Group of Eight).
There is currently one Chair at the University of Western Australia and a privately endowed one at the University of Melbourne. Postgraduate scholarships could also be offered specifically in the area of Australian literary studies.
Alexis Wright, pictured here in 2007 after winning the Miles Franklin award, is the Boisbouvier Chair of Australian Literature at Melbourne University.Dean Lewins/AAP
For a comparatively small outlay in budget terms, such a move would signal direct support for Australian reading, writing and research and would be widely celebrated in the education and library sectors.
‘Embarrassing’
It is embarrassing to discover that some European universities (in my experience Belgium, Germany and Italy, in particular) study more Australian literature than is offered in our own nation.
The case for increased Australia Council funding in the neglected area of literature has already been made. Writers’ incomes are, as attested, direly low and I worry in particular about diminishing funding for new and emerging writers.
An injection of funds into the literature sector of the Australia Council is another efficient and speedy way in which to signal understanding of the fundamental role of literature to our cultural enterprises and economic growth.
Cuts to publishing, festivals, journals, individual writers’ grants and programs generally, have had a disastrous effect on the incomes and opportunities for writers in this nation. Notwithstanding a few highly publicised commercial successes, most writers truly struggle to make ends meet. The “trickle down effects” — from a sustaining grant, say, to a literary journal — have direct economic benefits to writers and therefore to the wider economy.
Most writers’ work is not recognised as a “job”; if it were, if there were a definition of “writer” as a category of honourable labour (such as it is, for example, in Germany and France), writers would be eligible for Jobmaker and Jobseeker benefits.
This may be blue-sky thinking, but I look forward to a future in which forms of precarious labour, like writing, are recognised and honoured as legitimate jobs.
Another area that may work well with literature is foreign aid. The government of Canada, for example, donates entire libraries of Canadian literature as part of its aid program. (I’ve seen one installed on the campus of the University of New Delhi.)
What about gifting libraries of Australian books as part of our aid program?Hamilton Churton/PR Handout
This works as a stimulus to the host economy (benefiting publishers and writers) and also the receiving community, for whom access to books and education may be difficult. It also encourages study of the host culture’s writings and has benevolent “soft power” effects of inestimable worth.
‘Literature houses’
The government has indicated physical infrastructure (buildings and so on) will be necessary to the renovation of the domestic economy post-COVID. This is a wonderful opportunity to consider funding “literature houses”, purpose-built sites for readings, writer accommodation for local and overseas residencies, places for book-launches, discussion and the general support of literature.
The Literaturhaus system in Germany, in which all major cities have funded buildings for writer events, and in which, crucially, writers are paid for readings and appearances, is a wonderful success and helps writers’ incomes enormously.
The Frankfurt Literaturhaus.shutterstock
The inclusion of Indigenous, regional, rural and community organisations in proposals for “literature houses” would stimulate local building economies and generate community recognition of Australian literature.
The Regional Australia Institute considers creative arts as a potentially productive area of regional economies. However its 2016 map of Australia has a tiny space allocated to creative industries (situated around Alice Springs and linked to the Indigenous art industry). This strikes me as a radical imbalance and a missed opportunity.
A priority for this inquiry could be support for initiatives in literature, perhaps through existing library or schools infrastructure, to address creatively matters of both rural innovation and disadvantage.
Encouraging workshops in writing, including visiting writers, addressing reading and writing as a creative enterprise for the community as a whole: these could form the basis for an enlivening cultural participation and skills. Dedicated funds in literature for regional, remote and rural communities are urgently required.
Literature, in all its forms, is crucial to our nation — to the imaginations of our children, to the mental health and development of our adolescents, to the adult multicultural community more generally — in affirming identity, purpose and meaning.
Scott Morrison has lost no time pivoting to the incoming US administration, declaring on Sunday he hopes Joe Biden and his wife Jill will visit Australia for next year’s 70th anniversary of ANZUS.
“This is a profound time, not just for the United States, but for our partnership and the world more broadly,” Morrison told a news conference.
“And I look forward to forging a great partnership in the spirit of the relationships that has always existed between prime ministers of Australia and presidents of the United States.”
Those around Morrison say the government is already familiar with many figures in the Biden firmament, who were players in the Obama years.
Morrison also thanked Donald Trump and his cabinet “with whom we have had a very, very good working relationship over the years of the Trump administration and, of course, that will continue through the transition period.”
Meanwhile, Anthony Albanese retrospectively sought to put a less controversial gloss on his Friday comment, when he said Morrison should contact Trump and convey “Australia’s strong view that democratic processes must be respected”.
On Sunday Albanese said: “What I suggested was that Scott Morrison needed to stand up for democracy. He’s done that in acknowledging the election of President-elect Biden”.
Within Australia political attention is quickly turning to what a Biden administration will mean for the Morrison government’s climate change policies, and how Biden will handle China.
With an activist climate policy a central feature of Biden’s agenda, including a commitment to net zero emissions by 2050 (which Australia has refused to embrace), Australia faces an increased risk of becoming isolated internationally on the issue.
That could have trade and investment implications, something of concern to the business community.
Morrison sought to highlight a common Australian-US commitment to technology.
He said he particularly welcomed campaign comments Biden made “when he showed a lot of similarity to Australia’s views on how technology can be used to address the lower emissions challenge.
“We want to see global emissions fall and it’s not enough for us to meet our commitments,” Morrison said.
“We need to have the transformational technologies that are scalable and affordable for the developing world as well, because that is where all the emissions increases are coming from … in the next 20 years,” he said.
“I believe we will have a very positive discussion about partnerships we can have with the United States about furthering those technological developments that will see a lower emissions future for the world but a stronger economy as well where we don’t say goodbye to jobs,” Morrison said.
Labor will use the Biden win as a springboard to ramp up its attack on the government over climate policy, including in parliament this week.
Albanese said Biden would reject “accounting tricks” like the government’s argument to be allowed to use carryover credits to reach emission reduction targets.
Former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull told the ABC the US result gave Morrison the opportunity to pivot on climate policy. Now was the time for him to say, “I don’t have to go on with all of the BS about a gas-led recovery, which is political piffle,” Turnbull said.
Chief of the Australian Industry Group Innes Willox said the Biden administration would place much more emphasis on climate change and energy policy.
“The commitment to net zero emissions by 2050 will encourage other economies to move down this path. We are already seeing significant steps in recent times from other major trading partners such as Japan, South Korea, the UK and the European Union.
“Australia, led by industry and investor action, is already headed this way without making a formal target commitment,” Willox said.
Willox said independent Zali Steggall’s climate change bill – with a pathway to a 2050 target – provided an immediate opportunity to move the debate forward. The bill will be introduced on Monday.
“The Bill is non-partisan. 2050 is many changes of government away, but for some industries it’s just a couple of investment cycles,” Willox said. The Steggall bill is receiving considerable business support.
Willox said the other major shift from a Biden administration would be “the opportunity for the US to re-engage with China on trade and broader economic issues.
“Efforts to take the heat out of differences on global trade through a change in tone will be welcomed but there should be no illusion that a Biden administration would seek to markedly soften the US’s stance on key issues,” Willox said.
“The risk for Australia until now has been that we have been caught up as collateral damage in the US-China trade dispute.
“The future risk is that China may seek to substitute Australian exports in key sectors with goods from the US in an effort to reset their economic relationship,” Willox said.
Asked about the prospect of the US rejoining the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Morrison said, “I think it would be very early days to speculate on those matters. I would simply say to the United States, the door has always remained open on the TPP. It is open now. It will be open in the future and you are welcome any time.”
Last week, the fifth most senior minister in the Morrison Government, Agriculture Minister and Deputy National Party Leader David Littleproud, threatened the ANZ bank with “every lever at the federal government’s disposal – including the availability of deposit guarantees”.
His concern was an ANZ statement about climate change.
The bank had said that it supported the transition to a net zero emissions economy by 2050, and that as a consequence it would no longer provide banking services for new business customers with “material thermal coal exposures”.
For me, it evoked 18-year old memories of when I was the ANZ bank’s chief economist in the early 2000s.
I had delivered a speech to a conference of accountants in which I’d been critical of the Howard government for its pretence that the goods and services tax wasn’t a federal tax and therefore didn’t need to be included in budget estimates of total tax collections.
After seeing media reports of that speech, the then treasurer Peter Costello phoned the then chief executive of the ANZ John McFarlane threatening (as McFarlane subsequently relayed his words to me) regulatory action which ANZ would not like if I said that sort of thing again.
‘Regulatory action ANZ would not like’
Costello also had his then press secretary fax (it was 2002) a press report of my remarks to the then Chairman of ANZ, Charles Goode, with the offending passage circled.
I was, frankly, astonished, that the third most important minister in the government at that time, someone who by his own account was single-handedly returning the budget to surplus, promoting wide-ranging tax reform and reversing a long-term decline in Australia’s birth rate, would have the time to ring the head of one of Australia’s big four banks to complain about something its chief economist had said on an arcane topic to an obscure conference.
And I was appalled that any Australian treasurer would be willing to use the regulatory powers granted to him to help ensure the stability of the financial system to (at the very least) silence someone who’d had the temerity to question the accounting treatment of a tax measure.
To their very great credit, neither the chief executive John McFarlane nor the chairman Charles Goode sought to take any disciplinary actions against me.
A delicate relationship
Saul Eslake, ANZ Chief Economist 1995-2009.
Goode sought an assurance that there was nothing personal in what I’d said (there wasn’t) and reminded me that I should not create the impression that ANZ was aligned with any side of politics.
McFarlane indicated that it was important that the ANZ “got on well” with the man who was (in his words) “likely to be the next prime minister”, and asked me to ring Costello up and “smooth things over”, and to avoid commenting on that particular topic again.
In accordance with these instructions I rang the treasurer’s office, but he refused to take the call (so I was told).
I scrupulously avoided such comments from then on.
When I declined an invitation from a journalist to comment on a subsequent government decision to fiddle with the timing of the Reserve Bank dividend to improve the 2004-05 budget position at the expense of the 2003-04 one, I received a note from McFarlane thanking me “for taking the greater good of ANZ and an easier life for me into account”.
A more ominous threat
Agriculture Minister David Littleproud.
Minister Littleproud’s threat to the ANZ’s current chief executive Shayne Elliott is more sinister.
Costello was trying to silence what could never have been more than a mere irritant.
Littleproud is seeking to prevent one of Australia’s leading banks from making a conscious, ethically-based decision to bring its lending practices into line with the goal of reducing Australia’s carbon emissions.
He is threatening to withdraw from its deposit customers the protection provided by Australia’s deposit insurance scheme – presumably in the hope that those customers would take their deposits to another financial institution.
Instead Littleproud seems to believe (as perhaps does the government of which he is a part, since no-one more senior has sought to “clarify” his remarks), that the government should decide who gets loan funds, and the circumstances under which they get them.
Free enterprise is only as free as the government allows it to be.
Pennsylvania and Nevada were today called for Joe Biden, taking him to 279 Electoral Votes, nine more than the 270 required to win. Biden is now the US president-elect, defeating an incumbent president for the first time since 1992.
Donald Trump has won 214 electoral votes. He is very likely to win North Carolina and Alaska. In Georgia, Biden leads by over 9,000 votes or 0.2%, with virtually all votes counted. In Arizona, Biden leads by under 19,000 votes or 0.6%.
If Biden holds his current leads in Georgia and Arizona, he will win the Electoral College by a 306 to 232 margin. That’s the exact margin by which Trump won the 2016 election, ignoring “faithless” electors.
On election night, Trump was well ahead in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. This occurred because election day votes were strongly Republican, and much of the mail-in votes in those states had not been counted. With the inclusion of mail-ins, Biden won Wisconsin by 0.6% and Michigan by 2.6%.
Pennsylvania took longer to process its mail, but Biden’s lead there will expand from its current 37,000 or 0.6%. Virtually all votes needed to be counted in Georgia for Biden to move ahead.
The late counting trend has been different in Arizona, in which Biden’s large lead on election night induced Fox News and the AP to prematurely call for him. In Arizona, the early mail, which was counted on election night, was good for Biden, but the later mail has been good for Trump. This pattern has normally been reversed in Arizona.
Cook Political Report analyst Dave Wasserman has a graphic tracking the national popular vote. Biden currently leads Trump by 50.7% to 47.6%, and that margin will expand further owing to there being far more vote remaining to be counted in Democratic strongholds like California and New York. The total number of votes cast is already up over 9% from 2016.
While the polls were biased against Trump both nationally and in key states, there was a large gap between the popular vote and the Electoral College “tipping-point” state, as they predicted. Wisconsin, which Biden won by just 0.6%, is likely to be the tipping-point state, with Biden’s lead likely to grow in Pennsylvania but drop in Arizona.
If Biden wins the national popular vote by four to five points, Wisconsin would be 3.5 to 4.5 points better for Trump than the overall popular vote.
While Trump outperformed his polls, the cause was unlikely to be shy Trump voters, as Trump under-performed Republican candidates for the House and Senate. CNN analyst Harry Enten says Republican House candidates are leading overall in Pennsylvania by two points. The small portion of the electorate that voted for Biden but Republicans in Congress made the difference.
The final FiveThirtyEight forecast gave Trump a 10% chance to win. Analyst Nate Silver wrote that in 2016, Trump was just a “normal polling error” from winning, but he needed a bigger error in 2020. In the end, Biden’s polling lead was large enough to survive the errors that occurred.
In the Senate, Republicans are tied 48-48 with Democrats in called races, but Republicans are very likely to win the final two uncalled races in Alaska and North Carolina. Democrats would need to win both Georgia Senate runoffs on January 5 to tie it 50-50, and allow Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to break the tie.
In the House, Democrats lead Republicans by 215 to 196 with 24 races uncalled. Republicans have so far made a five-seat net gain from the 2018 results.
Fiji’s Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama is reported to have become the first world leader to publicly congratulate US President-elect Joe Biden on his victory – despite there being no clear winner yesterday morning when he did so.
Bainimarama took to Twitter on Saturday to express his well wishes to Biden and called on him to work toward tackling climate change, which is a major problem for Fiji and Pacific nations, reports Newsweek.
“Congratulations, @JoeBiden,” Bainimarama wrote. “Together, we have a planet to save from a #ClimateEmergency and a global economy to build back better from #COVID19. Now, more than ever, we need the USA at the helm of these multilateral efforts (and back in the #ParisAgreement — ASAP!)”
Biden has said he would rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement if he became president, saying the US would reverse President Donald Trump’s decision to leave the accord immediately after his inauguration.
Biden was declared victorious early today after successfully overturning his hometown state of Pennsylvania, giving him enough electoral college votes to surpass the required 270. Nevada was also declared for Biden a short time later.
Bainimarama has been Fiji’s prime minister since 2007, serving as acting prime minister from 2007 to 2014 following his 2006 military coup.
Fiji was the first country to ratify the Paris Climate Agreement.
Bainimarama was not the first world leader to offer congratulations on the outcome of the 2020 election. Slovenia Prime Minister Janez Janša congratulated President Donald Trump for his false declaration of “victory” on November 5, according to Newsweek.
Janša’s tweet prompted criticism from some members of the European Parliament, while his claim that Trump would win the election was premature and mistaken.
It is common for world leaders to congratulate newly-elected presidents but most heads of government and heads of state wait until the election is concluded.
Ardern said she looked forward to strengthening the ties between both nations in the coming years, reports TVNZ.
“There are many challenges in front of the international community right now, the message of unity from Joe Biden positions us well to take those challenges on,” she said.
Noting Biden’s previous visits to New Zealand in 2016, Prime Minister Ardern said the win would allow for the two countries to work closely on prominent issues like covid-19 and climate change.
“New Zealand will continue to work side-by-side with the United States on the issues that matter to both of us, including the prosperity, security, and sustainability in the Indo-Pacific and Pacific Island regions.”
Joe Biden wins the US presidency today – “time for America to unite”. Image: Al Jazeera screenshot
A timeless tradition in political journalism is trying to find a narrative that explains an electoral outcome.
A widely accepted narrative to explain Barack Obama’s win over John McCain in 2008 was that Americans wanted to embrace the “change” candidate who appeared the most dissimilar to then-President George W Bush. The narrative four years later in 2012 was that Republican Mitt Romney was too “elite” to resonate with American voters, and Obama was returned. Then in 2016, it was that Hillary Clinton was so confident of becoming president, she overlooked “Middle America”.
The accuracy of these widely accepted narratives in explaining electoral victories is fiercely debated. So, too, will be many of the narratives for Joe Biden’s election win to become the 46th president of the United States.
One narrative for this election may be that Biden ran a campaign that was unspectacular, when unspectacular was exactly what Americans wanted after four years of endless spectacles. Perhaps Americans wanted more conventionality after an exceedingly unconventional president.
Another potential narrative may be the death toll of nearly a quarter of a million Americans from the coronavirus pandemic was simply too overwhelming for President Donald Trump to overcome. When a majority of Americans blame the US government for the coronavirus situation in the country now seeing record numbers of infections each day, it’s not hard to see why they would want to change course.
Yet perhaps the most lasting narrative of this election is how fearful, uncertain, and polarised Americans are. Although this is not novel in modern American history, the ever-increasing reach and volume of this sentiment certainly is.
In receiving more than 70 million votes, more Americans voted for Trump in this election than any other candidate in history – except for Biden, who earned more than 74 million votes. (Both of these totals will likely increase as further ballots are counted.) There’s no denying increased voter participation is an encouraging sign for American democracy, yet some of the passions fuelling that turnout are worrying.
Recent polling found a majority of Americans unwilling to agree the other side’s electoral victory in the presidential election should be accepted.
Biden supporters celebrate in front of the White House in Washington, D.C.AAP/AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais
Americans recognise this in the other side too: only 16% of Trump voters said Democrats would accept a Trump re-election; 26% of Biden supporters said Republicans would accept a Biden win.
Alarmingly, other polling found around a third of Americans believed violence could be justified in support of their political parties’ goals, while 21% of those with a strong political affiliation were “quite willing to endorse violence if the other party wins the presidency”.
With more than three quarters of Americans saying they expected violence in the aftermath of the election, a record number of Americans in 2020 decided to arm themselves.
For more than a decade, the United States has had more guns than people. But 2020 has already broken records for the number of gun sales. This was often a partisan trend in previous years – Americans who leaned Republican were more than twice as likely to own a gun as those who leaned Democratic – yet there are some indications that in 2020, increased gun ownership became bipartisan.
Just last month, the Trump administration’s own Department of Homeland Security – an organisation set up in the aftermath of the September 11 2001 terror attacks – said it was Americans, specifically violent white supremacists, who posed the “most persistent and lethal threat in the homeland”.
Amid reports of a foiled plot to attack a vote-counting centre in Philadelphia and continued inflammatory rhetoric, there is little question as to whether violence in the aftermath of this election is likely.
So what happens now?
Trump will remain president for another 73 days, as a “lame duck” president. Biden will be inaugurated on January 20 2021.
So far, Trump has refused to concede defeat – in fact, he in insisting he won without offering any evidence of it – and has launched a series of legal challenges to the outcome. Many of those challenges have already been dismissed.
Simultaneous to his ceaseless battles over the integrity of his electoral loss, Trump will likely face extensive lobbying for presidential pardons – a unique privilege given to the president by the constitution “to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States”.
Conventional presidents have traditionally been concerned about how history will perceive their pardons. Trump is certainly not conventional, having used and considered using pardons for much of his presidency.
Trump will eventually leave the White House. But it is hard to see his loyal base leaving him anytime soon. Like so many other norms, Trump will be unlikely to adhere to the norm that former US presidents retire from political life after leaving the White House.
Trump will leave the White House in January, but he still has many supporters, leaving the possibility of him running again in 2024 an open question.AAP/AP/Julio Cortez
The fact Trump is still eligible to run for another term of office may allow him to follow in the footsteps of President Grover Cleveland, who was ousted from the White House by Benjamin Harrison in 1888, but four years later, defeated Harrison and took back the presidency.
While some Republican leaders are distancing themselves from the president, the fact Trump still enjoys a 95% approval rating among Republicans means he is undeniably an early favourite for the 2024 Republican nominee for president.
Lastly, Biden will assume the presidency facing multiple crises, ranging from a pandemic and economic downturn to overwhelming levels of fear, uncertainty, and polarisation. Should the US Senate remain Republican-controlled, he will need to navigate these crises in the face of a divided government. In this scenario, his former Republican colleagues in the senate would have final approval of his cabinet and legislative agenda.
From expanding NATO to the 2009 economic stimulus bill, Biden comes to the White House with arguably more bipartisan achievements than any president of the last half century. The question is whether he will overcome the widely-accepted narrative of a dangerously divided America.
Throughout the four years of Donald Trump’s presidency, Joe Biden spent significant time reassuring American allies around the world that Trump’s America is not “who we are” and pledging “we’ll be back”.
Now that he’s the president-elect, those who were most worried about another four years of “America First” foreign policy are no doubt breathing a sigh of relief.
Much has been written about a Biden presidency being focused on restoration, or as David Graham of The Atlantic put it,
returning the United States to its rightful place before (as he sees it) the current president came onto the scene and trashed the joint.
Then-Vice President Biden meeting Chinese leader Xi Jinping in 2013.LINTAO ZHANG / POOL /EPA
The old world order doesn’t exist anymore
This idea has revolved around restoring the post-1945 liberal international order – a term subject to a lot of academic contention. The US played a central role in creating and leading the order around key institutions such as the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organisation, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the like.
However, there is now no shortage of evidence that many of these institutions have come under extreme strain in recent years and have been unable respond to the challenges of the 21st century geopolitics.
Trump questioned the US commitment to NATO and expressed affinity for Russian leader Vladimir Putin.Hau Dinh/AP
Moreover, nations themselves are no longer the only important actors in the international system. Terror groups like the Islamic State now have the ability to threaten global security, while corporations like Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Facebook have such economic power, their combined revenue would qualify them for the G20.
Equally, the so-called liberal international order was built on the idea that a growing number of democracies would be willing to work within institutions like the UN, IMF and WTO and act in ways that would make everyone in the system better off.
Clearly, that has not been the case for the past 15 years as democracies around the world slowly eroded, from European Union states like Hungary and Poland to Brazil to the US.
From his first days in office, Trump was on a mission to roll back US commitments to myriad organisations, deals and relationships around the world. Most significantly, this included questioning commitments to its closest allies in Europe, Asia and elsewhere that had been unwavering for generations.
Trump damaged some of America’s strongest alliances in Europe.Francisco Seco/AP
Biden takes over at a precarious time. The world is more unstable than it has been in decades and the US image has been severely damaged by the actions and rhetoric of his predecessor.
There is no naivety on Biden’s part that he will be able to fix everything that was broken along the way. After all, many of these challenges predated Trump and are merely a reflection of a changing world.
Furthermore, Biden will have many pressing domestic issues that will demand his immediate attention — first and foremost addressing the greatest public health and economic crisis in a century.
Given this, Biden’s presidency should be approached with managed expectations. Unlike President Barack Obama, he did not campaign on lofty promises of change. He ran on being the opposite of Trump and, as such, being better able to understand the intricacies of foreign policy.
This will mean a swift return to multilateralism and rejoining the deals and organisations Trump abandoned, from the Paris climate agreement and Iran nuclear deal to the the World Trade Organisation and World Health Organisation.
Given these moves by Trump required no congressional input, Biden will be able to return to Obama-era policies in a relatively straightforward fashion through executive action.
Biden’s campaign put a great emphasis on strengthening America’s existing alliances and forging new ones to maintain what he frequently refers to as “a free world”.
This shift will benefit America’s traditional allies in western Europe the most. However, these countries are more determined than ever to stop depending on the whims of the Electoral College to decide their security. Instead, they are strengthening their own defence capabilities.
‘America First’ finished second
Lastly, on the greatest geopolitical question of our time, there is no doubt the US will continue its competition with China in the coming years, no matter who is president.
Yet, there are still plenty of questions around how Biden will handle this relationship. His campaign adopted a much more hawkish stance toward China compared to the Obama administration, which reflects a growing bipartisan consensus the US must get tougher with Beijing.
At the same time, there is significant debate about how far his administration should push Beijing on issues ranging from technological competition to human rights, particularly given Biden has said the US needs to find a way to cooperate with China on other pressing issues, such as climate change, global health and arms control.
America might be coming back under Biden, but this is not the same world or the same country it once was. So, while the restoration of the US will be challenging, one thing is certain: “America First” finished second.
Joe Biden is almost certain to be the next president of the United States, ushering in a welcome return to engagement with the climate crisis after four years of denial. Great news for the Pacific.
In contrast with Donald Trump’s premature declaration of victory and desperate calls to “stop the count”, Biden is modelling patience, with around 10 percent of ballots still to be tallied.
But he let his confidence in the eventual outcome show with a tweet promising his White House will rejoin the Paris Agreement, 77 days after the official exit of the United States, reports Climate Change News.
That is the easy part. Much harder will be delivering emissions cuts, after disappointing Senate results for the Democrats.
They could yet scrape a majority — subject to a January run-off in Georgia — but do not have the 60 seats needed to pass a framework climate law.
A Biden administration will have to get creative to submit a credible 2030 climate target to the UN next year, as required under Paris.
Biden made climate change a cornerstone of his vision to recover the American economy from the impacts of covid-19, with a US$2 trillion plan to drive green investments and create jobs, reports Chloé Farand of Climate Change News.
Blue wave never materialised
But the blue wave Democrats hoped for in the Senate has failed to materialise, dampening Biden’s prospects of passing climate legislation.
While Democrats are confident they will retain control of the House of Representatives, the Senate election is down to the wire, with both sides having 48 seats as of Friday.
The contest is so tight, the Senate majority could be determined on January 5 in a hotly contested special election for at least one, and maybe two seats in Georgia.
Even with a slim majority in the Senate, Biden would need some Republican support to pass climate legislation. Under US Senate rules, policy changes beyond spending and taxation require at least 60 of the 100 senators to agree to move the issue to a vote.
Bipartisan backing will be required to introduce a clean electricity standard, for example, which would mandate a transition to zero carbon electricity generation by 2035 and help deliver on a campaign promise. So would a carbon pricing mechanism.
“Control of the Senate will have a huge impact on climate policy in the US,” said Jamie Henn, cofounder of US environmental group 350.org.
“There’s little hope for passing sweeping climate legislation if [Republican majority leader] Mitch McConnell keeps his claws on the gavel. There’s a lot the president can do through executive authority, but to really rise to the scale of this crisis, we need the votes in the Senate.”
Without congressional backing, “a sweeping economic regeneration policy… will not happen in the next two years,” said Nathan Hultman, director of the Center for Global Sustainability at the University of Maryland.
“Then we have to look at it as a stage process.”
Republished with permission from Climate Change News.
As Aotearoa New Zealand waited for the election special votes results there was no talk of violence in the streets or threatened endless litigation.
Our citizens are more tolerant of opposition and more liberal than the citizens of the divided nation that used to be called the “United States” of America.
A womanising, egotistical, vain, ignorant and self-serving person would never become Prime Minister here.
So — feeling rather proud of ourselves— let us turn to the New Zealand special votes announced this afternoon.
Opposition National’s agonies continue with its loss of two more seats, and Labour won three electorates that it lost on election night.
In Maungakiekie, Labour’s Priyanca Radhakrishnan won by a 635 majority over National’s Denise Lee.
In Northland, Willow-Jean Prime defeated Matt King by a 163 vote majority, while in Whangārei, Emily Henderson won over Shane Reti with a 431 vote majority. Reti will, however, retain a seat in Parliament.
Greens hold Auckland Central The Green Party’s Chloe Swarbrick held on to Auckland Central, doubling her election night lead of 1068, and Rawiri Waititi held his hat on to hold Waiariki and add a second Māori Party seat.
Radio NZ reports the Māori Party extra seat goes to co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer who comes in on the list.
“Today’s success is first and foremost about Waiariki, and that absolute belief in mana motuhake, belief in their candidate,” she said.
Labour’s Tamati Coffey has conceded to Waiariki electorate winner, Māori Party’s Rawiri Waititi.
Waititi won the seat by doubling his election night majority to 836.
In the United States, democratic norms are breaking down.
The president, Donald Trump, baselessly claimed at a White House press conference on Friday morning, Australian time, that the presidential election has been stolen from him by fraudulent and corrupt electoral processes.
This confronted the television networks, whose job is to report the news, with an acute dilemma.
In an already volatile political atmosphere, do they go on reporting these lies, laced with an undertone of veiled incitement to violence? Or do they cut away on the grounds that by continuing to broadcast this stuff, they are helping to propagate lies and perhaps to oxygenate a threat to the civil peace?
It was not rooted in reality and at this point, where our country is, it’s dangerous.
CNBC presenter, Shepard Smith, said the network was not going to allow it to keep going because what Trump was saying was not true.
CNN and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News broadcast Trump’s entire press conference but immediately afterwards challenged what he said. CNN’s fact-checker Daniel Dale said it had been the most “dishonest” speech Trump had ever given, with anchor Jake Tapper saying Trump’s statements were “pathetic” and “a feast of falsehoods”.
Fox’s host Martha MacCallum said the supposed evidence and proof of election misconduct would need to be produced.
Even Murdoch’s New York Post, which had endorsed Trump’s re-election, accused him of making “baseless” election fraud claims, quoting a Republican Congressman as saying they were “insane”.
The Washington Post carried two news stories on its front page, clearly calling out Trump’s lies: “Falsehood upon falsehood”; “A speech of historic dishonesty”.
A serious decision to silence the President
But what of the networks’ decision to cut away?
Silencing a public official in the course of his official duties is a very serious abrogation of the media’s duty in a democracy.
But so is allowing the airwaves to be used in such a way as to arouse fears for public confidence in the democratic process and — as MSNBC’s Williams argued — even public safety.
Caption text.Shawn Thew/ EPA
On the run, many of the big networks prioritised public confidence in the democratic process, and public safety, over the reporting of the president’s words.
It is a rare circumstance in any democratic society that the media are placed in the position of having to shoulder such a heavy burden of responsibility.
It is most unlikely that once the present crisis is over, assuming Democrat candidate Joe Biden wins, the American media will find themselves in this position again.
Even so, a Rubicon has been crossed. A president of the United States, a publicly elected official, has been silenced by significant elements of the professional mass media in the course of his public duties.
This was done principally on the grounds he was lying to the people in circumstances where there was a foreseeable risk of serious harm to the body politic, and there was no practicable way to reduce the risk.
Is that a standard the media is prepared to set for the future? If so, it would be giving itself a power that goes well beyond anything the media has claimed for itself up till now.
Journalists need to keep their nerve
In considering this, two questions arise.
What if all media outlets had adopted this course? No one except those at the White House press conference would have known the whole of what Trump said, seen the context and observed the demeanour with which he said it.
Would it have been enough to do as CNN and Fox did — report the speech and then repudiate it?
An answer to that would be: the lies were coming so thick and fast, and were so damaging to the public interest, that it would have been impossible to set the record straight in anything like real time.
Real-time fact-checking is a relatively new development, and a welcome one. But its feasibility should not be a criterion for deciding whether to publish breaking news, unless there is doubt about whether the breaking news is actually happening.
The networks that cut away doubtless acted in good faith to do right by the country. Trump’s speech was shocking and irresponsible.
Trump supporters have taken to the streets since the polls closed on November 3.Nicole Hester/AP
However, American democracy is in crisis. At this time, above all, the public needs the institution of the fourth estate to keep its nerve and a clear head.
A primary norm of journalism is to inform the public. That certainly means being fair and accurate. But if the news contains lies, the norm is to publish and then call out the lying and set the record straight as soon as possible.
The networks need to explain to their audiences their reasoning behind the decision to cut away, and the media as a whole need to realise that if the norms of journalism break down, that just adds to the tragic chaos into which their country has descended.
The division of the findings of the Victorian COVID-19 Hotel Quarantine Inquiry into two – the interim report published today, with a final report due December 21 – is aimed at making a timely contribution to the redesign of the quarantine systems that will remain key to Australia’s management of the COVID-19 pandemic for some time to come.
With a view to the expected influx of returnees at Christmas, the national cabinet is due to discuss necessary changes later this month. Justice Jennifer Coate’s clear recommendations for how to devise and operate a quarantine system will surely be pivotal to its deliberations.
Key recommendations
Coate’s primary message is that quarantine – in whatever form it might take – is a public health operation. So any future quarantine system needs to be designed in a manner that ensures the centrality of this public health imperative.
We must wait until the final report to find out what Coate has to say on the larger governance and accountability questions surrounding “the decision” to contract out the front line of Victoria’s hotel quarantine operation to private security provision. However, her interim report already tells us a lot – if indirectly.
The report states it “is clear from the evidence to date” that the majority of those involved in the hotel quarantine program who contracted the virus were:
private security personnel engaged by way of contracting arrangements that carried with them a range of complexities.
It is therefore unsurprising that the issue of the appropriateness of contracting-out is the elephant in the room across a number of its key recommendations.
In particular, the recommendations record that the expertise of those involved in future quarantine operations will be crucial. Moreover, every effort should be made to ensure people working at quarantine facilities are “salaried employees” who are “not working in other forms of employment”.
Rydges on Swanston was one of the quarantine hotels where coronavirus outbreaks occurred.James Ross/AAP
It takes little effort to surmise that contracted-out service delivery is unlikely to meet any of these demands.
As I have explained elsewhere, to contract out a statutory function in whole or in part requires that it be translated into a “service” that private sector providers are capable of delivering.
In the Victorian case, this meant the front line of the hotel quarantine operation was performed pursuant to an “observe and report” security services contract. It was carried out by an entirely casualised workforce with little infection-control training and no lawful powers of enforcement. Many or most of them worked in other jobs at the same time.
Coate also recommended that, alongside the “embedded” presence of expert infection-control personnel, a 24/7 police presence be established at every facility-based quarantine operation. This clearly points to the failure of contracting-out from an enforcement perspective as well.
So, by implication or otherwise, the interim report confirms that too little thought was given to whether the contracted service could meet the dual public health and detention demands of the function at issue.
Coate’s conclusions on how a facility-based quarantine program should work make the multiple dimensions of this mismatch plain.
Where to from here?
The final report of the inquiry may well prove to be the most sustained critique of contracting-out, from the perspective of public expectations of government action, that Australia has yet seen. This would be a welcome shift from what has prevailed so far, with much more effort dedicated to refining and expanding the practice than to challenging it.
As for where the interim report fits with the “whodunnit” exercise that has dominated so much of the interest in the inquiry’s work so far, Coate makes clear we must wait until the final report to find out more. Whether Victoria ended up with private security at the front line of its hotel quarantine program as a result of a “decision” by one or more individuals, or (as counsel assisting Rachel Ellyard described it) a “creeping assumption that became a reality”, is something that ultimately might never be clear.
Either way, the question of accountability will remain. Providing a clear answer to it stands to be every bit as complicated as it has been so far.
The inquiry, which found the bungled scheme cost the state $195 million, has shown the relationship between contracting-out and political accountability is incoherent. Substantial reform in both directions is needed to make it otherwise. Coate’s final report will hopefully guide that much-needed conversation.
But, again, we can already take a lot from the interim report about where – minimally – we need to be. Any future Victorian quarantine program must be operated “by one cabinet-approved department”, in accordance with a “clear line of command vesting ultimate responsibility in the approved department and Minister”.
That department must in turn be “the sole agency responsible for any necessary contracts”. Among other things, its responsible minister must also ensure senior members of its governance structure “maintain records […] of all decisions reached”.
Such is the vision for the future. But it also highlights why it is so important not to lose sight of the “why” questions when the issue of accountability for what actually happened in Victoria’s disastrous hotel quarantine program is again upon us.
If the front line of the hotel quarantine system was simply too important a responsibility to be outsourced, it is time to get to the bottom of why this was the case, and why it might also be the case for other high-stakes government functions that carry serious consequences for public health or safety.
Providing sensible answers to those questions needs to be the goal. But what matters above all else is that we actually start asking them.
Mining magnate Clive Palmer has lost his challenge to the closure of the Western Australian border in response to COVID-19. Palmer has also been ordered to pay costs.
While it is clear from the High Court’s order in Palmer v Western Australia that Palmer lost, it remains unclear whether the border closure was and remains valid.
The reason for the lack of clarity is because the High Court has not yet handed down its reasons, which may take weeks or months. In the meantime, all we have is its orders – and they are phrased in a rather peculiar and limited way.
Section 92 of the Constitution says the movement of people among the states shall be “absolutely free”. But the High Court has previously accepted it can be limited if it is reasonably necessary to achieve another legitimate end, such as the protection of public health.
In the Palmer case, the High Court gave a very limited answer to the questions it was asked. In relation to the Emergency Management Act it said that “on their proper construction”, sections 56 and 67,
in their application to an emergency constituted by the occurrence of a hazard in the nature of a plague or epidemic comply with the constitutional limitation of section 92 of the Constitution.
Both these sections are quite general in nature. Section 56 says the minister can declare a state of emergency in the whole of the state or a part of it. There is nothing on obvious that would appear to offend section 92 of the Constitution in each of its limbs.
Section 67 says during a state of emergency, certain officers may issue directions that prohibit the movement of persons within, into or out of an emergency area. On the face of it, it is not directed at the movement of people across state borders. However, if a state of emergency were issued for the entire state under section 56, then section 67 would potentially allow a direction to be made that would prevent people from entering or leaving WA.
Clive Palmer launched his challenge after WA closed its border in April.Lukas Coch/AAP
The High Court’s qualification in the phrase “on their proper construction” is therefore important. This raises the question of how the High Court has interpreted section 67 and whether it has restricted its interpretation in a manner that accommodates section 92 of the Constitution. We will have to wait for the High Court’s reasons to learn this.
The court’s order in relation to the Quarantine Directions is more unusual. It says the exercise of this power under clauses 4 and 5 of the directions “does not raise a constitutional question”. This refers to an issue raised during the hearing. The argument, initially raised by Victoria, was that the validity of a direction made under a power conferred by an act will depend on whether the direction falls within the scope of that power in the act.
If the section in the act that confers the power (in this case, section 67 of the Emergency Management Act) is constitutionally valid, then any direction that falls within that power will be valid too.
The real question, then, is whether the direction falls within the scope of the legislative power. This is not a constitutional question, but a question of administrative law. The High Court then said in its order that it had not been asked this question, so it did not need to answer it.
On the basis of this technicality, the High Court (or at least a majority of the Justices) concluded it was not necessary to address whether the actual directions that stop people going in or out of Western Australia were valid.
Does this mean more litigation?
As this case does not seem to have resolved whether or not the directions are valid, will there be more litigation? It is possible someone could challenge the directions, arguing this time that they do not fall within the scope of the authorising section in the legislation.
But such litigation would have to start from square one and so would take some time to determine. As it would not be a constitutional matter, it might have to be decided by a lower court first.
WA Premier Mark McGowan celebrated the High Court result on Friday.Richard Wainwright/AAP
Further, before initiating any such litigation, it would be important to read the High Court’s reasons, which may not be produced for some time. Those reasons will tell us about the scope of the legislative provision, which will be essential to know before any challenge to the directions made under it could proceed.
Hopefully, by the time we get to that point, there will be no need for such litigation because no such directions will exist, if the pandemic continues to ease in Australia.
But it does mean we may be left with inadequate guidance about such matters for the future, which would be unfortunate given the cost and time taken with this litigation. Perhaps the court’s reasoning about the interpretation of section 67 of the Emergency Management Act will give us sufficient understanding about the operation of section 92 of the Constitution and the tests applicable to border closures in a pandemic. But that remains to be seen.
Victorian lockdown challenge also rejected
In a busy day for the High Court on Friday, it also threw out hotelier Julian Gerner’s challenge to Melbourne’s lockdown laws.
Gerner’s challenge, to be successful, would have required the High Court to find an implied freedom of movement in the Constitution.
This would have opened up all sorts of other laws to challenge and been condemned by conservatives as judicial activism. The court was so unimpressed by the argument that it unanimously rejected it on the spot, without even needing to hear Victoria’s response.
The end of the case was swift and brutal. It is unlikely this point will be raised again before the court.
