Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samantha Vilkins, PhD candidate, Australian National University

In April, as the coronavirus pandemic was gathering force around the world, reporters asked Brendan Murphy, then Australia’s Chief Medical Officer, about international case numbers. In his answer, he made an interesting comment:

The only numbers I have total faith in are the Australian numbers.

“Faith” might seem an odd word to use about about official statistics. But in our research, which involves talking to statisticians, public servants and journalists who produce and communicate the statistics that govern our lives, people say overwhelmingly that faith and trust are essential parts of what makes statistics useful.

Despite the objective and impartial appearance of statistics, it is a web of people and human processes that makes them trustworthy.

When trust falters

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us the importance of numbers we can rely on. In many cases, early problems in data management have been indicators of bigger problems to come.

In the United Kingdom, a lack of local case data was hindering public efforts as early as June. By October, it emerged that some 16,000 cases had been lost from national reporting due to sloppy data management.

In Australia, the quality of COVID-19 responses in different states has broadly reflected existing perceptions of the quality of each state’s published data.

New South Wales was celebrated early on by data scientists for its responsiveness and transparency in data management, long before Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s September comment that the state’s contact tracing was the “gold standard”.

Meanwhile, inconsistencies in Victoria’s data management — such as irregular definitions of “local” and “community” transmission, and confusion over the definition of “routine testing” — were rankling data scientists back in June, before the state’s mystery cases blew up into a second wave.

Governing by numbers

Public statistics play a huge role in our lives. Political staffers we have interviewed in our research explained how the “mere presence of any kind of numbers” seems to make people more trusting of any claim.

Enthusiasm for decisions made “on data” often relies on the image of statistics having what philosophers call “mechanical objectivity”. By this logic, statistical results are essentially produced by machines or mechanical processes, so decisions based on data can be routine, apolitical, unbiased and incontestable.

But talking to the people behind our national numbers reveals how official statistics are in fact the product of expertise, immense resources, personal judgement calls, and trust.

Analysts we spoke to described official statistics as “icebergs” concealing vast tangles of sources and stories. Statisticians often used words like “instinct” and “vibe” in explaining how they check data sources and rely on long-term relationships to gather figures. One public servant summed up the situation neatly:

A lot of personal relationships are stringing together government statistical work.

The process of transforming real life into tables of data takes expert human intervention at every stage. These interventions can result in vastly different answers to the same initial questions. As the answers often form the bedrock of public decision-making, it becomes crucial we can trust the people who make the decisions behind the scenes.

“Total faith” in Australian numbers

When the Statistical Society of London was founded in 1834, discussion of interpretation or “opinion” was banned at its meetings. Modern statisticians have a much greater understanding of the importance of how people feel about data: the theme of this year’s World Statistics Day was “Connecting the world with data we can trust”.

But trusting “data” buries the work of the people who create statistics. In practice, they are the ones we are trusting.

Read more: Statistics is more than a numbers game – it underpins all sciences

In Australia, at least, we trust them a lot. Murphy’s “total faith” in “Australian numbers” is reflected in a 2020 survey conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which found 85% of the general community trust ABS statistics. The figure is even higher among “informed users”: a near-unanimous 99%.

Our communal faith in the numbers produced by the ABS reflects a web of trust and relationships built over decades.

Why trust matters

For many policy issues, such as unemployment, ABS statistics are taken as our absolute measure of reality. In these cases, the fact that 99% of informed users trust the numbers is what lets government and society keep functioning.

ABS data forms a shared basis for discussion. One analyst told us it’s not just trust in the bureau’s expertise that creates trust in the data — it’s also “because everybody else is using it as well”.

Read more: Why you should never use Microsoft Excel to count coronavirus cases

Those who work with public statistics agree these networks of trust — both between institutions like the ABS and the Australian public, and between individual academics, public servants, statisticians and journalists — rely on day-to-day honesty and responsiveness.

Transparency and consistency are essential. Statisticians and journalists alike emphasised that even data formatting plays a role in building trust. One journalist we interviewed talked about a health agency releasing coronavirus statistics as PDF files emailed to a private list early in the pandemic, describing it as “a ridiculous situation” that created extra work for the journalist to make the numbers clear and accountable in public. (State governments have since improved on this, generally making daily case numbers publicly available online.)

Long-term trust

Our response to future crises, whether the next pandemic or the impacts of climate change, will rely on the strong communal web of trust in our statistics.

Statistical failures, like the UK losing 16,000 cases or the United States massively undercounting coronavirus deaths, damage public trust in government. When institutions can prove their statistics are trustworthy, the public are more willing to follow directives based on those statistics. How do we know we can trust statistics? We talked to the humans behind the numbers to find out

Read more: The promise and problems of including ‘big data’ in official government statistics

– ref. How do we know statistics can be trusted? We talked to the humans behind the numbers to find out – https://theconversation.com/how-do-we-know-statistics-can-be-trusted-we-talked-to-the-humans-behind-the-numbers-to-find-out-148339

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Colin D. Butler, Honorary Professor, Australian National University

In all the talk of tackling environmental problems such as climate change, the problem of population growth often escapes attention. Politicians don’t like talking about it. By and large, neither do environmentalists – but former Greens leader Bob Brown has bucked that trend.

Brown recently declared the world’s population must start to decline before 2100, telling The Australian newspaper:

We are already using more than what the planet can supply and we use more than the living fabric of the planet in supply. That’s why we wake up every day to fewer fisheries, less forests, more extinctions and so on. The human herd at eight billion is the greatest herd of mammals ever on this planet and it is unsustainable to have that growing.

Research suggests our species has far exceeded its fair share of the planetary bounty, and Brown is right to call for the global population to peak. It is high time others joined the chorus – not only other environmentalists, but those concerned with international development and human rights.

Population growth, by the numbers

COVID-19 has killed more than one million people. While undeniably tragic, the figure is minor compared to world’s annual growth in population, estimated by the United Nations at about 83 million.

In 1900, the world’s population was about 1.6 billion people. By 2023 it’s expected to hit 8 billion. According to the UN, it will reach 9.7 billion by 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100.

(The US-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation recently forecast a lower peak of about 9.7 billion by 2064, falling to about 8.8 billion by 2100.)

Read more: Is global fertility really plummeting? How population forecasts are made

Why is the population growing so fast? Much of it is due to advanced fertilisers and intensive farming practices, leading to higher crop yields that can sustain more people. Health care has improved, and people are living much longer. And many parts of the world have historically had high fertility rates.

There is no expert consensus on how many people the planet can support. The answer will largely depend on how much humans produce and consume, now and in the future. Some experts believe we’ve already hit the limit.

The “planetary boundaries framework” is one way to measure Earth’s carrying capacity. Introduced about a decade ago, it involves nine planetary boundaries such as biodiversity loss, climate change and ozone depletion. If the boundaries are crossed, Earth’s capacity to support civilisation is at risk. Research suggests in some parts of the world, multiple boundaries have already been breached.

It’s time to talk

In recent decades, many conservationists, politicians and scientists have been reluctant to talk about population growth.

When The Australian approached Greenpeace, the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Wilderness Society regarding Brown’s remarks, the groups said they did not comment on population growth. Brown told the newspaper environmentalists avoided the issue because they were “frightened” of being targeted by News Corp.

In an address to the National Press Club this month, Greens leader Adam Bandt reportedly wouldn’t say whether he is concerned about population growth, saying “my priority is getting energy at running on 100% renewable. That makes much more of a difference than […] population size.”

Read more: How breastfeeding sparked population growth in ancient cities

Bandt wouldn’t be the first environmental advocate to avoid the topic. But why? I believe there are three main reasons.

Most obvious is the fear of being accused of racism. Some past advocates of population “control” supported eugenics and coercion, including forced sterilisation and abortion. In fact, eugenics and forced sterilisation has been reported in both rich and poor countries.

Second, the Catholic Church has played a big role in suppressing the topic. In the 1960s a papal commission suggested the church’s decades-long ban on birth control be dropped. But in 1968, Pope Paul VI rejected the advice, and declared artificial birth control to be morally wrong.

Third is the ascendancy of free-market economics. High population growth in low-income countries is convenient for capitalism, because these populations depress wages worldwide.

In 1984, the Reagan administration became the first in a long line to deny the importance of population problems. Its views were influenced by economic theorist Julian Simon, who believed adding to the world’s population was good for human well-being.

Starting the conversation

As Brown said, we should be “having a mature debate” about population growth. But where to start?

An obvious beginning is the unmet demand for contraception. For example, a UN report in 2015 reported fewer than half of African women who are married or in a union, and who need contraception, have their family planning needs satisfied.

Slowing global population growth will be helped by promoting the UN Sustainable Development Goals. One goal seeks to ensure “universal access to reproductive health and family planning” by 2030. Improving female literacy – especially when combined with internet access – is also an important way to empower women.

Apart from reproductive health care, general improvements to health, including well-funded health systems, would give couples greater confidence their children will thrive. This would reduce their perceived need for additional children in case one or more dies.

These measures all require increased investment and public attention. The environmental movement, in particular, must awaken to the link between population growth and environmental degradation. “Business as usual” will hinder human development, further oppress women and magnify many forms of environmental damage.

Read more: Climate explained: why we need to focus on increased consumption as much as population growth

– ref. Bob Brown is right – it’s time environmentalists talked about the population problem – https://theconversation.com/bob-brown-is-right-its-time-environmentalists-talked-about-the-population-problem-148347

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Helen Ngo, Honorary Fellow, Deakin University

Footscray Primary School in Victoria decided earlier this year to abolish its long-running Vietnamese bilingual program — where classes are taught in both English and Vietnamese. It will replace it with an Italian bilingual program. Vietnamese will be downgraded to two hours per week.

Footscray has been, and continues to be, an important Vietnamese community in Melbourne’s west. Unsurprisingly, there has been substantial community backlash about this decision. At the time of writing, an online petition initiated by one of the parents at the school has garnered around 17,000 signatures.

According to the latest census (2016) Vietnamese remains the most commonly spoken language in Footscray other than English — 11.4% of the population speak it (compared to 1.2% nationally). Vietnam is also listed the most common country of birth for residents who were born outside Australia (9.6%, compared to 0.9% nationally), or whose parents were (12.9% mothers, 12.4% fathers; compared to 1.4% nationally).

Italian does not figure in the top five responses in any of these categories.

The school says:

The bilingual program at Footscray Primary School is not a mother tongue maintenance program. It is a program that should deliver academic and content-based outcomes as well as language and culture to all students, regardless of which language they speak at home.

But placing Vietnamese on equal footing with any other bilingual program ignores its special significance to the local Vietnamese community, and beyond.

It also ignores the relentless battles people from minority immigrant and First Nations communities have had to fight to keep our cultures and languages alive in ways that are meaningful to us.

We live in, and through, language

German philosopher Martin Heidegger once described language as “the house of being”. What he meant is that language is more than a means of communication or transaction. Rather, we dwell in language. And since he conceives “being” as a kind of dwelling, it is in language that we are (or be).

That’s language — but what of languages?

French philosopher and philologist (who studies the history of languages) Barbara Cassin writes the maternal language is:

the one in which we are steeped … we are master of this language and yet it is the one that has a hold on us. It’s an extraordinary relationship. We are master because we can say what we want in it, but it has a hold on us because it determines our manner of thinking, our manner of living, our manner of being.

Cassin’s words might ring true for some, but not all in diasporic communities, as language retention among second and subsequent generations can be difficult to sustain.

Yet if one lives in a society where one’s maternal language is not the dominant one, the linguistic intimacy Cassin describes still only presents a partial picture. This is because our “manner of being” is also shaped by how we are received, supported and validated (or not) in our broader communities.

Read more: How to make Australia more bilingual

In a context where non-white migrant communities are perennially held in suspicion and at the margins — that is, until our cultures and cuisines become trendy enough to consume — to “be” or “dwell” in our language becomes a lot more fraught.

Latinx feminist and queer theorist Gloria Anzaldúa calls this relentless switching, negotiating, and self-contorting between language-worlds, living in “the borderlands”, a state of psychic unrest. There is much to affirm and celebrate about living this enriching state of in-betweeness. But it does not erase the labour non-white communities are endlessly performing, to translate our languages, cultures and selves to a decidedly committed monolingual society.

Nor does it erase the pain often felt. Celebrated Chinese Australian artist Lindy Lee has said of her experience growing up under the White Australia Policy:

It was telling me that my difference was not acceptable. And that is an excruciating place to live in.

The ‘superiority’ of some languages

Bilingual language programs are not the only way to maintain local community languages, and in fact few bilingual programs across the country explicitly serve this purpose. But they present a powerful, and rare, opportunity to support such languages, while still offering benefits to the rest of the school community.

As language and literacy experts have recognised, bi- or multilingual children in Australia are chronically underestimated and undervalued in our education system; the system “kills off” languages already existing in their community during early school years, only to encourage new languages in the final years of schooling, when it is least effective.

The decision by Footscray Primary does not do exactly this, since the proposal is to replace one bilingual program with another — Vietnamese with Italian. But it does point to how we value languages differently. Researchers have long recognised the perceived “prestige” of European languages in Australian society, compared with Asian languages, which are often only seen as instrumentally useful — for example, as “trade languages”.

Read more: Want to get ahead this century? Learn an Asian language

But for migrant communities, language is more than instrumentally useful, and programs such as these are more than an educational “value add”.

A revived Twitter thread recently asked: “What’s considered trashy if you’re poor, but classy if you’re rich?” To which many replied: “speaking two languages”. Substitute “rich and poor” for “white and non-white” and the quip starts to ring a little truer.

– ref. Housing a sense of self: for migrant communities, bilingual school programs are about more than learning – https://theconversation.com/housing-a-sense-of-self-for-migrant-communities-bilingual-school-programs-are-about-more-than-learning-148099

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides, Associate Professor in Ancient History, Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Macquarie University

The year has been a strange one for sports lovers.

We’ve seen athlete protests here and around the world. Where big gatherings have been permitted in the US, discordant NFL crowds have highlighted America’s divisions.

Australian stadium rules have varied from state to state and the AFL Grand Final will be played before a smaller than normal crowd at the Gabba rather than the MCG. Sunday’s NRL Grand Final, meanwhile, will bring 40,000 fans together.

Sport can unite people with a common sense of purpose and identity. The sporting crowd can also vent community concerns and express social dissatisfaction.

This power of cheering — or jeering — goes back to ancient times.

Read more: Thucydides and the plague of Athens – what it can teach us now

Blues versus Greens

By the late Roman Republic, prominent statesmen were expected to provide public entertainments, which also served to keep the masses content and under control.

Like his predecessors, emperor Augustus organised gladiatorial games but also a number of athletic events, taking his inspiration from the Greek Olympic Games.

To commemorate his victory against Antony and Cleopatra in 31 BC at the naval battle of Actium, Augustus established the Actian Games, which took place every four years in emulation of the Olympic Games.

Read more: Hidden women of history: Kyniska, the first female Olympian

Notably, in his Res Gestae, the public summation of his reign, Augustus rejoiced in his games alongside his conquests. In each of the events he attended, the leader and his public barracked in chorus and their harmony represented the harmony of the state.

The same could not be said of the chariot races between rival teams — the Blues and the Greens — in Constantinople in 532 AD. Emperor Justinian, an unpopular ruler, was watching at the hippodrome with up to 100,000 spectators at one of the 70-odd races held there annually. Then the crowd turned on him.

The amphitheatre had already been the scene of chaos in 501 AD, when the Greens ambushed the Blues and massacred 3,000 people.

Yet in 532 AD, the fans, upset by Justinian’s high taxes and poor response to their political demands, along with widespread corruption among his officials, put sporting rivalries aside to chant “Nika!” in unison, meaning “Conquer!” A slogan typically used to cheer on charioteers, was now directed against the emperor. Massive civic unrest erupted for a week; the city was torched, its major church (Agia Sophia burnt, and thousands murdered.

Justinian’s reign went on to be marred by disaster: from 541 to 549 AD, Constantinople suffered the first old world pandemic. In 542 AD alone, 5,000—10,000 deaths occurred daily, until one third of the population was wiped out. Justinian was infected and although he survived the plague, he remained unpopular.

Read more: Dying old, dying young – death and ageism in the times of Greek myth and coronavirus

Chanting to power

At sporting events and other large crowd spectacles in the ancient world, people could pitch requests and voice socioeconomic grievances.

It was customary for high officials — the emperor, his ministers, or local authorities — to be present, and they were expected to respond to such petitions.

In 362 AD, the people of Antioch, in Roman Syria, greeted the emperor Julian in the hippodrome with the chant, “Everything is plentiful, everything is dear,” protesting the high prices of grain in the city.

In first century Alexandria, meanwhile, which was home to a large Jewish population, racial tension, combined with racially-based tax exemptions and civic rights, found expression at sports grounds and public events. Violence consumed the city in 38 and again in 66. It began at the gymnasium and the theatre.

The importance of sport for cementing authority was also reflected in 540 AD when the Sasanian king Khosrau I tried to oversee chariot racing in a captured Roman city in Asia Minor. According to the historian Procopius , Khosrau demanded that the Blues lose the race because he knew they were Justinian’s favourite team!

Read more: Leaders as healers: Ancient Greek ideas on the health of the body politic

Sport and civics today

Although we now interpret political legitimacy differently to the ancients, aspects of our sporting events are the same.

There is the conspicuous presence of politicians, singing of anthems, the over-the-top displays of military might and performances.

And, as in ancient times, symbolic or vocal protests in venues and at events laden with national significance are hard to ignore. When these actions are witnessed by thousands and speak to raw existential conflict, such as famine (in the past) or racism (today), they become even more powerful.

This year’s grand final has already been mired in political point-scoring. How the crowd behaves remains to be seen.

– ref. The power of the grand final crowd recalls ancient times – https://theconversation.com/the-power-of-the-grand-final-crowd-recalls-ancient-times-145619

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rick Sarre, Emeritus Professor of Law and Criminal Justice, University of South Australia

One can always sense an election is looming when law and order becomes headline news.

As Queenslanders head towards election day on October 31, the state’s opposition leader Deb Frecklington has announced that, if elected, the Liberal National Party will trial a curfew for children.

Read more: As the Queensland campaign passes the halfway mark, the election is still Labor’s to lose

In Townsville and Cairns, the LNP would introduce an 8pm curfew for unaccompanied children aged 14 and under, and a 10pm curfew for those aged 15 to 17.

Frecklington said under the planned six-month trial, teenagers would have to prove to police they had a reasonable excuse to be out at night, or be put in a “refuge”. Parents would be fined $250.

This is similar to a policy the party took to the 2017 state election.

‘Dog pound for kids’

The Labor Party and One Nation have both announced populist “tough on crime” policies in the run up to the election, but neither has endorsed a curfew. Labor’s Police Minister Mark Ryan labelled the LNP’s plan a “simplistic answer to a complex problem”.

Katter’s Australian Party has warned a curfew will result in a “dog pound for kids.”

With a significant proportion of young people in the far north of the state identifying as Indigenous, the Greens slammed the policy announcement as a “racist dog whistle.”

There is little doubt the LNP announcement is pitched primarily at voters in and around Townsville, where three marginal seats are up for grabs — and which some commentators suggest could decide the election.

Youth crime in Townsville is perceived to be a problem, although some experts say this is overblown. Whatever the reality, tackling the perceptions is clever politics.

Are curfews legal?

This year, COVID-19 has reminded us governments do have the power to enact legislation that places a brake on where and when people can be out in public.

This is so long as there are overriding reasons in the interests of public safety, and a lockdown is not a disproportionate limitation on freedom of movement.

Read more: FactCheck: did the Northbridge WA curfew see a ‘dramatic drop’ in crime?

So, the imposition of curfews in cities and towns around Australia has never been illegal, and indeed they have been implemented in the past. In relation to Aboriginal Australians, they were in place well into the 20th century.

While Amnesty International says the proposed Queensland curfew may breach Australia’s commitment to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, this is unlikely to dislodge the zeal of politicians keen to display their “tough on crime” credentials.

Do curfews work?

Various studies have looked at specific curfews in the past, both here in Australia and in the United States.

Evidence of their effectiveness is weak.

To my mind, the best evidence comes from meta-analyses, studies that amalgamate the findings of only the most trustworthy scholarship into one place. One of the most reputable meta-analysis research conglomerates in the world is the Campbell Collaboration.

Their researchers undertook a systematic review, up to 2014, of all the quantitative studies that had assessed the effect of a curfew on criminal behaviour and victimisation. Twelve studies met their rigorous standards.

According to their summary, the evidence suggests juvenile curfews do not reduce crime or victimisation.

[…]all the studies in the review suffer from some limitations that make it difficult to draw firm conclusions. Nonetheless, the lack of any credible evidence in their favor suggests that any effect is likely to be small at best and that curfews are unlikely to be a meaningful solution to juvenile crime and disorder.

Are there counterproductive consequences?

There is another problem for advocates of a curfew. Imposing a curfew may make matters worse.

For one thing, proponents are likely to exaggerate the problem, while pretending crime issues will be solved simply by taking unaccompanied children off the streets at night.

But the most puzzling incongruity is there is also plenty of evidence to suggest what should be done to alleviate the disorder and dysfunction curfews are designed to address.

The evidence is clear: whatever we do must stem the flow of young offenders into the justice system in the first place. By targeting and detaining the inevitable number who will flout the new law, curfews will bring about exactly the opposite.

Read more: Ten-year-olds do not belong in detention. Why Australia must raise the age of criminal responsibility

Currently Indigenous over representation in the justice system is a national disgrace. Schemes designed to mentor and guide all young people, and Aboriginal young people especially, to enhance their life-skills and their prospects of education and employment must be prioritised.

There is no lack of potential guidance in this respect.

The recently launched Justice Reform Initiative — of which I am a patron — boasts dozens of experts, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, who are available to guide and direct political parties to develop policies that build safe and supportive communities.

This is done by strengthening community connections, not isolating and stigmatising their most disengaged members.

– ref. Queensland’s LNP wants a curfew for kids, but evidence suggests this won’t reduce crime – https://theconversation.com/queenslands-lnp-wants-a-curfew-for-kids-but-evidence-suggests-this-wont-reduce-crime-148529

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jane McAdam, Scientia Professor and Director of the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW

The effects of a warming planet are no longer far away in time or distance. We are witnessing transformed landscapes, mass extinctions and people on the move, whether by force or choice.

Across the globe, the adverse effects of disasters and climate change are already prompting millions of people to move. More people are now displaced within their countries each year by disasters than by conflict.

The Asia-Pacific region has been the hardest hit by these disasters.

In the Pacific islands, king tides, cyclones, droughts and flooding displace people on a regular basis. Countries like Kiribati and Tuvalu are now facing existential questions about their capacity to sustain their populations into the future.

‘Burying our heads in the sand’

There are potential consequences for Australia, too, which may disrupt many of our foreign and domestic policy agendas – including energy, environment, foreign aid, national security, labour and migration.

This is why Pacific governments, including Australia, are currently engaged in talks about how migration could alleviate pressure on threatened Pacific island nations and become a climate change adaptation strategy.

Most Pacific Islanders want to remain in their homes. Policies designed to reduce their exposure to disaster risks, improve their adaptation to climate change and bolster their development can all help.

But at the same time, Pacific communities acknowledge

that the movement of people needs to be discussed … [and] failing to do so will be like burying our heads in the sand.

Most displacement in the Pacific is temporary and internal, but it is occurring with increasing regularity.

Some Pacific governments have already developed guidelines on internal displacement and planned relocations in the context of climate change and disasters. Fiji has established a trust fund to support relocations. (New Zealand has contributed A$3 million to the fund).

Read more: COVID-19 provides a rare chance for Australia to set itself apart from other regional powers. It can create a Pacific ‘bubble’

How Australia can expand visas for Pacific islanders

Australia could play a much bigger role in this effort, too.

A new Kaldor Centre policy brief argues that smarter Australian migration policies could give Pacific peoples more choice to take control of their own lives.

By creating more temporary and long-term visa opportunities, Australia could provide a release valve for Pacific islanders at risk of displacement.

Read more: China wants to be a friend to the Pacific, but so far, it has failed to match Australia’s COVID-19 response

If only 1% of the Pacific’s population was permitted to work permanently in Australia, this would bring more benefits to the region than Australia’s annual aid contribution. Migration can enhance the resilience of those who move, as well as those who stay behind.

Australia already has targeted Pacific work schemes: the short-term Seasonal Worker Programme and the longer-term Pacific Labour Scheme.

These could be expanded and complemented by additional initiatives, such as

• special educational or training visas

• preferential access to existing labour, education or family visas

• humanitarian visas to assist those displaced by disasters, or those already in Australia when a disaster strikes and who cannot safely return home.

Australia should also create a visa category similar to New Zealand’s longstanding “Pacific Access Category”.

This enables 650 Pacific Islanders from specific countries (plus their families) to become permanent residents of New Zealand annually. The Samoan quota resident visa allows 1,100 Samoans to come, as well.

The New Zealand schemes are based on a ballot that prevents “cherry picking” based on people’s skills, going some way to alleviate concerns about a brain drain resulting in Pacific nations.

Migration can be a win-win

The lockdown of borders in response to COVID-19 has wrought unprecedented damage to the already vulnerable economies of the Pacific.

Dame Meg Taylor, secretary general of the Pacific Islands Forum, powerfully observes that the pandemic’s

humanitarian and economic fallout offers us a glimpse of what the global climate change emergency can become – if it is left unchecked and if we do not act now.

As Australia reshapes its Pacific policies in response to COVID-19, dignified migration should be front and centre.

The pandemic itself has revealed just how reliant Australian horticulture is on Pacific seasonal workers; likewise, seasonal employment is a lifeline for many Pacific families.

Increased migration could thus be a win–win strategy in the face of climate change, as well.

Read more: Pacific nations aren’t cash-hungry, minister, they just want action on climate change

– ref. We can no longer ignore the threats facing the Pacific — we need to support more migration to Australia – https://theconversation.com/we-can-no-longer-ignore-the-threats-facing-the-pacific-we-need-to-support-more-migration-to-australia-148530

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ananish Chaudhuri, Professor of Behavioural and Experimental Economics, University of Auckland

With the government borrowing heavily to fund its pandemic response and recovery, it has been suggested it could simply cancel its debt by printing more money. That sounds like an attractive idea, but it is one that would have seriously adverse consequences.

Derived from “modern monetary theory” (MMT), the suggestion is that expansionary monetary policy (i.e. money creation by the central bank) be used to finance government spending.

According to proponents of MMT, a country that issues its own currency can never run out and can never become insolvent in its own currency. It can make all payments as they come due. Therefore, there is no risk of defaulting on its debt.

This is a flawed idea based on economic misconceptions. It has been opposed by economists, liberal and conservative, including Nobel laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and Harvard University’s Greg Mankiw.

So, what does happen when the government wants to spend more than it raises in tax revenue? It needs to borrow money (known as deficit financing), and so instructs the Treasury to issue debt.

There are three major types of debt: treasury bills, treasury notes and treasury bonds.. Treasury bills have the shortest maturity (less than a year) while treasury bonds have maturities of ten years or more. They all must be paid back in the future.

The debt is typically held by banks, institutional investors and managed funds (such as Kiwisaver accounts). Because the government is not expected to default on the loans, the debt is considered to be secure. So, these bonds can typically be issued at lower interest rates than bonds from other financial entities.

Where government debt goes

When the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) engages in “quantitative easing” it essentially buys up these government issued bonds. To do this, it prints currency to pay for the bonds and this currency goes into circulation, increasing the money supply.

Quantitative easing floods the system with liquidity — the amount of money readily available for investment and spending. In turn, this should put downward pressure on interest rates because money is cheaper to borrow when there is more of it.

The RBNZ can also lower the official cash rate (OCR) to push retail interest rates (on mortgages and savings deposits) down. The aim in both cases is to make borrowing cheaper in the hope that businesses will borrow money to invest, in turn creating more jobs.

If the RBNZ is buying government bonds from the banks and investors who had bought them earlier, it follows that the creditors have been paid off. So why can’t the government simply write off this debt?

Read more: With a mandate to govern New Zealand alone, Labour must now decide what it really stands for

Firstly, this takes away the RBNZ’s ability to act as an independent entity, which in itself is problematic. But even so, the debt does not disappear, it just takes the form of that additional amount of money floating around the economy.

At some point this extra money will end up being deposited in commercial banks and be held as reserves which earn interest from the RBNZ.

The currency in circulation is also legal tender backed by the authority of the government. If no one else wants to accept it, holders of this money should be able to sell it back to the RBNZ for something of value in return (US dollars, say).

One way or another, sooner or later the debt will have to be honoured.

The risk of inflation

In the meantime, if lower interest rates do not lead to business expansion and higher production (and there are good reasons to suppose they may not) then the net result is a larger amount of money circulating in the economy with no new production happening.

This will eventually set off inflationary pressures, which make savers worse off and provide a disincentive for saving. But saving by households is fundamental to making funds available for businesses to borrow.

In the absence of increased production this extra money may also make its way to non-productive financial assets such as equity and houses, setting off speculative bubbles in those markets.

Read more: COVID-19 is predicted to make child poverty worse. Should NZ’s next government make temporary safety nets permanent?

Why might businesses not expand, even with lower interest rates? In deep recessions it is not the lack of credit that holds them back, it is that they cannot sell their goods at prevailing prices. This reduces demand for labour, further reducing demand for goods because more customers are unemployed.

It becomes a vicious cycle of insufficient demand, where the key issue is not credit or liquidity but rather a crisis of confidence. Monetary policy loses its teeth at this point, leaving fiscal policy (via deficit financing or tax cuts) as the only option.

It’s all about trust

However, government borrowing is a long-term game. The entire system, whether deficit financing or printing money, is based on trust — that the government will honour its debt.

Simply put, no government could satisfy all its creditors if they wanted their money back at the same time. But as long as the government keeps making the interest payments on the loans, or at least has the capacity to pay back some of those creditors (sometimes by borrowing even more), the economy remains stable. The juggler’s balls stay in the air.

Read more: NZ election 2020: survey shows voters are divided on climate policy and urgency of action

If for some reason trust in a government goes, watch the balls come crashing down. Any hint of default or not honouring debt obligations will lead to long-term damage to a government’s reputation and its future ability to borrow. No one will want to hold the government’s debt in the form of government bonds.

When that happens, we see capital flight — money flows out of the country as people seek a return elsewhere. The value of the currency goes through the floor, with catastrophic effects on the economy, such as occurred during the Asian financial crisis in 1997.

The economic crisis New Zealand is facing is real and deep. Attempting to cancel debt would only reduce trust in the government and risk making the crisis worse.

– ref. Explainer: why the government can’t simply cancel its pandemic debt by printing more money – https://theconversation.com/explainer-why-the-government-cant-simply-cancel-its-pandemic-debt-by-printing-more-money-148514

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah John, College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University

In the US election next month, record-breaking numbers of voters will cast their ballots by mail for the first time. Millions of these ballots will be processed by local election administrations inexperienced with large numbers of mail-in votes.

In this environment, many ballots are likely to be rejected for technical reasons, such as non-matching signatures (the signature on the ballot doesn’t match the signature on voter registration forms), raising the risk of protracted court battles in key battleground states.

Already, lawsuits are being filed in many of these states to try to prevent or reduce ballot rejections, which, perversely, may only make the problem worse if voters can’t keep track of constantly changing rules.

Large numbers of ballot rejections could prove pivotal if the race is close in key states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, which Donald Trump won by less than 80,000 votes in total in 2016 to claim victory over Hillary Clinton.

But there is also a longer-term risk to voters’ belief in the fundamentals of democracy itself if they cast a ballot that literally does not count.

How many ballots could be rejected?

According to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), a federal agency created to help states modernise their voting systems after the “hanging chads” problem in the 2000 presidential election, less than 5% of voters in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin voted by mail in 2016.

But 2020 will be different. In Pennsylvania, 2.5 million voters requested mail-in ballots — about eight times as many as 2016. And more than ten times as many North Carolinians requested mail-in ballots in 2020 than 2016.

A dramatic increase like this could very easily overwhelm county election administrators who are unfamiliar with the system and under-resourced to process masses of mail-in ballots.

In every election with mail-in voting, some ballots are not counted for reasons unrelated to the eligibility of the voter. Most commonly, these “rejected” ballots arrived too late, lacked the requisite signature or “secrecy” envelope or had some other technical problem.

Read more: Mail-in voting’s potential problems only begin at the post office – an underfunded, underprepared decentralized system could be trouble

In the 2016 presidential election, the EAC found about 1% of the 33.4 million total absentee ballots were rejected — or about 319,000 overall.

However, in some counties, rates were much higher. Nassau County, an affluent county just outside New York City, reported rejecting 82% of its mail-in ballots (mostly because they missed the deadline). Greene County, Arkansas, reported rejecting 48% of its mail-in ballots (mostly because the voter did not write their address on the envelope, which is a requirement in Arkansas).

It is likely more ballots could be rejected in this year’s election — USA Today estimates more than 1 million, if half the nation votes by mail.

We got our first taste of the problem during the Republican and Democratic presidential primaries earlier this year. More than 550,000 ballots were rejected in these contests — nearly twice as many as the 2016 general election.

Mishmash of laws and court rulings

Even in normal times, voting by mail is complex. Technical requirements and formats vary greatly from state to state.

Some states, like Pennsylvania, require the ballot to be ensconced in a second “secrecy” envelope. Without this, the ballot will be rejected.

And six states, including the key battleground states of North Carolina and Wisconsin, require a witness to verify the voter’s signature. Without this, the ballot will be rejected.

Unsurprisingly, research reveals inexperienced voters, including younger voters, are more likely to have their mail-in ballots rejected.

And while there is no evidence mail-in voting leads to widespread voter fraud — as Trump has repeatedly claimed — rejected ballots do have the potential to determine election outcomes.

For this reason, rules about accepting and rejecting mail-in ballots are currently the subject of hundreds of court actions.

In the absence of a concerted national effort to reduce ballot rejection rates, citizen and activist groups and Democratic state party organisations have filed lawsuits seeking to remove technical requirements for mail-in ballots in numerous states.

Republican state party organisations, meanwhile, are appealing those decisions and challenging policy changes that loosen technical requirements.

Read more: No mail-in votes, proof of citizenship: the long history of preventing minorities from voting in the US

Using the courts in this way creates uncertainty, and may even serve to increase the number of ballots that are rejected.

In some states, court rulings that have loosened requirements have been overturned only weeks later by higher courts. In early October, for example, the US Supreme Court reinstated the witness requirement for South Carolinian mail-in voters after a lower court had ordered it removed.

Consequently, South Carolina voters have received mail-in ballots with outdated instructions, increasing the risk their votes will be rejected.

Every day, there are new court rulings. For example, last week, a Michigan appeals court overturned a lower court ruling that prevented ballots from being rejected if they arrived late, so long as they were postmarked November 2 or earlier.

This week, the US Supreme Court ruled mail-in ballots could be counted for up to three days after election day in Pennsylvania, so long as they were postmarked by November 3.

This decision could prove critical in a tight race. Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 by just 44,000 votes out of some 6 million cast.

And in Texas, which has the most restrictive voting rules of anywhere in the country, an appeals court overturned a lower court decision this week to allow election officials to reject ballots without matching signatures without giving voters a chance to challenge.

Will ballot rejections erode trust in democracy?

There are long-term risks to these battles over mail-in voting, as well.

Voters would understandably be disheartened to learn their ballots were rejected in the election — and their votes didn’t count — after they went to the effort of voting by mail. This risks a genuine disengagement with the electoral system.

Researchers in Scotland have found high rates of ballot rejections in the 2007 Scottish parliament elections caused many to question the fairness of the electoral system, possibly resulting in lower voter turnout rates in future elections.

Read more: Mail-in voting is safe and reliable – 5 essential reads

Not much research has emerged in the US on the effects of ballot rejection on future political participation. But this will likely change after this election, particularly if ballot rejections are widespread.

We should expect to hear many angry partisan allegations about “naked” ballots (those missing special secrecy envelopes), postmarks and signatures in the weeks after the election.

But we should also spare a thought for the citizens who find out the ballots they diligently returned were rejected on a technicality. They may not be so inclined to vote again in the future.

– ref. Over 1 million mail-in ballots could be rejected in the US election — and the rules are changing by the day – https://theconversation.com/over-1-million-mail-in-ballots-could-be-rejected-in-the-us-election-and-the-rules-are-changing-by-the-day-148188

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yuting Zhang, Professor of Health Economics, University of Melbourne

Almost all private health insurers increased their premiums in October, and have scheduled another price rise for April 2021. As many people struggle financially amid the pandemic, you may be wondering whether you should drop your private health insurance altogether.

Before you do, bear in mind some government policies affect the cost of your insurance, and sometimes dropping it may even cost you more.

Here’s the bottom line

For singles with an income above A$105,000, and for families with an income above $180,000, it’s worth buying private hospital cover even if you don’t think you’ll use it. I’ll explain why in a moment.

People with incomes below these levels need to compare value and costs. The decision varies a lot depending on your age.

Three key polices affect your premium costs: the Medicare levy surcharge, government rebates, and discounts for younger people.

Throughout this article, we’re talking about hospital cover, not “extras” like dental, optical or physio, which aren’t affected by these policies. You can buy extras cover separately without hospital cover. Extras cover is much cheaper than hospital cover, and an easier decision overall — you can readily compare how much you stand to gain from extras cover (based on how often you’re expecting to visit a physiotherapist, for instance) and then weigh that against how much it will cost you.

Here are the main things you should factor in when deciding on hospital cover.

There’s the Medicare levy, and then there’s the surcharge

Almost all Australians pay 2% of their taxable income as the Medicare levy. This money goes towards funding parts of the public health-care system. It pays for Australians to get free (or much cheaper) GP visits and care in public hospitals.

If you earn above a certain income and don’t have private hospital cover (extras cover does not apply), you have to pay an extra 1-1.5% of your taxable income, called the Medicare levy surcharge.

For example, if John Citizen has a total taxable income of $150,000, he must pay $2,250 in additional tax (the Medicare levy surcharge), on top of the $3,000 he already pays as the Medicare levy. If he buys an appropriate level of private hospital cover, he can waive this extra tax and just pay the $3,000.

Keep an eye on government rebates

Singles with an income below $140,000, and families with an income below $280,000, can get government rebates on their private health insurance — that is, a partial refund. The level of this rebate varies by income and age.

Discounts for the young

Since April 2019, people aged 18–29 have been able to get discounts of up to 10% of their private hospital premiums. The allowable discounts are 2% for people aged 29, 4% for 28, 6% for 27, 8% for 26, and 10% for 18-25. People will retain that discount until they turn 41, then the discount gradually decreases by 2% per year.

Factoring the above policies in, for singles with an income above $105,000 and families with an income above $180,000, it makes sense to buy private hospital insurance even if you won’t use it. That’s because you can find hospital cover cheaper than the Medicare levy surcharge.

For those with an income below these levels, you need to compare whether the value is more than the cost. Value consists of two components: protection from unexpected catastrophic risk, and your expected use of private hospital care.

First, value from risk protection is highly subjective, depending on your level of tolerance for potentially catastrophic uncertainties. Some people might naturally be more anxious about risks, but others less so. For example, people buy home and contents insurance to cover unexpected natural or accidental catastrophes, or burglary. But arguably, this component of value is small in the health insurance market because all Australians are insured by Medicare to cover their health needs in public hospitals, and are therefore protected from the financial risk of catastrophic health problems.

Second, there is value in buying private health insurance if you anticipate using private care, which can reduce your waiting time for certain elective surgeries, or give you a choice of doctors. This goes to the second part of value: expected use.

Take a look at the table below for the national averages for your age regarding your expected use of private hospital care. Basically, the older you are, the more you’re likely to use it, and the greater the expected benefit.

Here’s an example. If you are single, 24 years old, are comfortable taking risks, have an income below $90,000, and your expected use of private hospital care is in line with the national average, your value from buying private hospital insurance is about $550 a year. As per the above graph, for people 20-24 years old, $550 was the national average of benefits actually paid by private insurance companies between July 2019 and June 2020.

Meanwhile, your median premium cost is $1,457 after rebates and discounts, and you are exempt from the Medicare levy surcharge. So it may not be worth buying private hospital insurance in this set of circumstances.

When comparing value and costs, you are most likely better off buying private hospital insurance given the current government policies for the following scenarios:

• family cover: family income above $180,000; family income below $180,000 if older than 44 or with special needs for private hospital care (such as childbirth in private hospitals).

• single cover: income above $105,001; income below $90,000 and older than 54; income between $90,000 and $105,001 and older than 24.

And don’t forget

There are a few final things you should keep in mind. When you use your insurance for a stay in hospital, there will be out-of-pocket, or “gap”, costs. So you’ll still have to pay extra even with private hospital insurance.

Then there is the Lifetime Health Cover loading, which adds 2% to your insurance premiums for every year you are over 30 if you don’t have hospital cover by 1 July following your 31st birthday.

For example, if you wait until you’re 40 to buy private hospital insurance for the first time, you could pay an extra 20% on hospital premiums. The loading is removed once you’ve held appropriate private hospital cover for ten consecutive years.

More generous coverage requires higher premiums. What’s more, even for the same coverage, premiums may vary substantially across insurers. So, shop around and use free resources to compare health insurance policies.

Finally, it’s a good idea to re-evaluate your options every year or every other year as your situation or government policy changes.

– ref. Thinking of ditching private health insurance in the pandemic? Here’s how to calculate if it’s worth it for you – https://theconversation.com/thinking-of-ditching-private-health-insurance-in-the-pandemic-heres-how-to-calculate-if-its-worth-it-for-you-148191

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Morgan Disspain, Adjunct Researcher, Southern Cross University

A recent program for school kids in Kakadu and West Arnhem Land, incorporating traditional knowledge and Western science, is a model for teaching Indigenous children on Country.

The Djenj Project (djenj means “fish” in the local language) involved teaching Bininj (Aboriginal) children and rangers about fish, and scientific water research techniques, to improve employment opportunities.

As archaeologists, we wanted to find out how fish populations near the 65,000-year-old Madjedbebe archaeological site have changed over thousands of years. Evidence collected from the rock shelter suggests it’s one of the oldest sites on the continent.

We wanted to know which fish Bininj inhabitants at the site ate in the past, where and how they caught them, what the environment was like then, and what impact humans and environmental change have had on fish populations.

We needed to gather information about traditional fishing methods and knowledge. We also needed to gather samples of the current fish in the region, to compare them with fish remains excavated from Madjedbebe.

Read more: When did Aboriginal people first arrive in Australia?

To do that meaningfully, we wanted to bring the community on the journey with us, rather than working in our labs in isolation. Dozens of school children between the ages of seven and 17 were involved in the project. They helped us answer our questions and learnt a lot in the process.

Beyond thinking about our scientific aims and questions, we put community-based benefits at the forefront of the research process. At the heart of the project were the core ideas of respect and two-way knowledge sharing, especially giving senior Bininj people the opportunity to share their knowledge and skills.

What it looked like

The project included about 80 community members from the small townships of Jabiru and Gunbalanya, and surrounding outstations in the Top End of the Northern Territory.

Bininj Elders shared traditional ecological knowledge with Bininj children, rangers (the Djurrubu Rangers of Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation and Njanjma Rangers), and Western (Balanda) researchers. Everyone worked together to prepare teaching resources so the project has long-lasting benefits.

Fishing is a favourite activity for Bininj, so participation in the project was high. While word-of-mouth was the main way to reach the community about catching fish for the project, we also shared short videos on social media. These explained what we were doing and how people could get involved.

One positive side-effect of the project was providing large amounts of fish for the community to eat, promoting healthy eating.

In between the fishing and the eating was the science and the learning. A key aim was to integrate cultural knowledge into school lessons to improve literacy and numeracy skills.

Local teachers interwove The Djenj Project throughout the class curriculum for the entire year. Researchers ran monthly workshops to teach children and rangers how to collect and interpret scientific information from fish, such as species, length, girth and weight, as well as the capture location and the fishing method used.

Fish were then processed to collect otoliths (ear bones), and sometimes their entire skeletons. Otoliths provide valuable information about the fish’s life, such as its size, age, season of death, and the water conditions it lived in.

Elders shared traditional knowledge about fish and fishing methods with the children. They worked together to construct bone points to use as fish hooks. They also constructed traditional fish traps, which involved making string from plant fibre.

Groups made trips to the rock art (bim) sites, where Elders shared knowledge about djenj, and the children found, recorded and counted djenj images.

While the Elders shared their knowledge about the local waterways, water monitoring specialists provided training in testing water quality for rangers and children. Children also learnt about the importance of water quality to the health of all living things.

Woven throughout all activities was attention to Indigenous languages, with staff from the Bininj Kunwok Language Resource Centre creating a dedicated language booklet and app focused on djenj. This resource is helping with language maintenance and revitalisation in the Bininj community, as well as providing Balanda with the necessary terms to have productive discussions with Bininj about fish and water.

What we learnt

Students and rangers gained a new appreciation for how much we can learn from our environment. The project also reinforced the rights of Bininj to engage in water and fish management processes.

The project also laid a foundation for future skills and environmental awareness with children (many of whom will go on to join local ranger teams). They have learnt cultural and scientific knowledge about fish, water, archaeology and rock art.

As researchers, we have established modern fish reference collections we can use and have learnt about local traditional fishing methods and ecological knowledge.

The Djenj Project is a great example of how grass-roots projects can provide practical benefits for Aboriginal communities, while contributing to scientific research. The model of collaborative teaching and learning from each other can be customised to benefit other communities.

We are planning to do more projects like this in West Arnhem Land over the following years, investigating other species of plants and animals.

Read more: Secondary school textbooks teach our kids the myth that Aboriginal Australians were nomadic hunter-gatherers

– ref. School of fish: how we involved Indigenous students in our investigation of a 65,000-year-old site – https://theconversation.com/school-of-fish-how-we-involved-indigenous-students-in-our-investigation-of-a-65-000-year-old-site-144577

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rafal Chomik, Senior Research Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research (CEPAR), UNSW

This article is part of our series on the future of aged care.

The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety will hold its final hearing on Friday, where Counsel Assisting will spell out his case for reforms.

With over 10,000 submissions and many hours of hearings, the Commission has identified systemic failures in the design, objectives, and regulation of aged care in Australia.

At their heart is a two-way lack of trust on funding and the cost of providing aged care.

The main funder is the Commonwealth, with expenditure of about A$20 billion in 2019, distributed across residential, home care, and home support services.

This is topped up by user contributions of just over $5 billion.

At first glance, public funding and the continued prospect of demographically-driven demand suggest lucrative opportunities for providers.

The customer base of people aged 85 years and over is projected to more than double by 2040.

More for-profit providers, fewer profits

Though the system relies heavily on not-for-profits, the four years to 2019 saw the for-profit shares of residential and home care places climb from 35% to 41% and from 10% to 21%.

In practice, profits have dived or barely kept pace.

Between 2017 and 2019 earnings per care recipient slid by 26% in residential care and nearly 60% in home care.

Read more: If we have the guts to give older people a fair go, this is how we fix aged care in Australia

Many operators are no longer financially viable.

Smaller, regional operators are suffering the most, but even large providers listed on the stock exchange have seen their prices drop by as much as 80% over the past five years.

More than one third of aged care homes recorded operating cash losses during the nine months to March 2020. And that was before the full impacts of the hits to occupancy and infections from COVID-19.

Part of it is a squeeze on costs. Community expectations are increasing at the same time as staffing costs are climbing and care needs are becoming more complex.

Residential care is increasingly seen as a last resort, making the profile of residents older and more frail.

Over the past decade the share of residents with a “high care needs” has climbed from 33% to 60%.

Even worse, uncertain profits

Declining profits is one thing. Uncertainty over profits is another. A recurrent theme in the evidence presented to the Commission is that funding is not only insufficient, but also uncertain, which itself is harming care.

As an example, in residential care, food, cleaning, and administrative overheads tend to be higher than the capped basic daily fee that is expected to pay for them.

The government believes that the process used to set care funding is open to over-claiming, allowing providers to make their own assessments of care need.

So on a number of occasions it has frozen the indexation of payments – a blunt tool that might drive productivity improvements but punishes the whole sector.

Read more: Despite more than 30 major inquiries, governments still haven’t fixed aged care. Why are they getting away with it?

The mistrust is compounded by a lack of transparency in the corporate structures employed in the sector as well as financial reporting practices which are blind to the terms, returns, support, or recoverability of loans to related entities.

This makes it difficult to tell what earnings truly look like.

It’s also hard to get a handle on key performance indicator data, such as direct care staffing costs.

What’s needed is an honest broker…

To address the challenges of trust and transparency, the royal commission is expected to recommend the establishment of an independent Aged Care Pricing Authority, tasked with identifying the lowest price for services achievable by those providing excellent care.

It would also estimate the uplift in price for regional and specialist services.

The idea has merit and has been welcomed by both providers and bureaucrats. It has a precedent in the hospital system.

It is likely to expose the need for much more funding.

For example, appropriate staffing of home care and the cutting of home care waiting lists is estimated to cost the equivalent of a 1% increase in taxes.

…and more spending

Australians appear open to the idea. A recent survey found taxpayers were willing to pay an additional 1.4% per year on average to ensure that all Australians in need had access to a satisfactory level of quality aged care, and an additional 3.1% per year if it gave all Australians in need access to a high level of quality aged care.

The royal commission was told that a European-style social insurance scheme could work. It would explicitly link contributions with the right to benefits and would quarantine them from general revenue.

In practice such schemes don’t guarantee sustainable funding and they are out of kilter with the usual Australian approach which is to provide needs-based rather than contributions-based support.

It could come from a Medicare-style levy

A better option would be a dedicated tax similar to the Medicare levy. Its clear social benefit might be acceptable to the electorate and earmarking it for aged care could build the confidence providers will need to invest in its future.

It could differ by age to address intergenerational equity.

The reality is that in a world with fewer younger workers and more retirees with considerable wealth we will need a combination of measures, with extra funding coming from care recipients as well as taxpayers.

Current means testing caps and thresholds require too little from those with greater means and require too much from those with modest means.

Read more: The budget must address aged care — here are 3 key priorities

The regime favours homeowners, couples, and those receiving care at home. Better and simpler means testing could raise more, reduce distortions, and improve fairness.

Former Prime Minister Paul Keating has suggested collecting contributions from deceased estates.

We already have the mechanism in the form of the Pension Loan Scheme which could be used alongside fairer means testing.

The Commission will formally report by February 26, kicking off what could be the rebuilding of trust in the system.

– ref. At the heart of the broken model for funding aged care is broken trust. Here’s how to fix it – https://theconversation.com/at-the-heart-of-the-broken-model-for-funding-aged-care-is-broken-trust-heres-how-to-fix-it-147101

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Sharpe, Associate Professor in Philosophy, Deakin University

Over the past seven months, many of us have got closer to experiencing the kind of solitude long sought by monks, nuns, philosophers and misanthropes.

For some, this has brought loneliness. Nevertheless, like religions such as Buddhism, the West has a rich literature — both religious and secular — exploring the possible benefits of being alone.

“Take time and see the Lord is good,” Psalm 34 enjoins, in a biblical passage long read as a call to periodically withdraw from worldly occupations. The best form of life will be contemplative, the philosopher Aristotle concurs.

Solitude, according to the Renaissance poet-philosopher Petrarch,

rehabilitates the soul, corrects morals, renews affections, erases blemishes, purges faults, (and) reconciles God and man.

Here are four key benefits of solitude these very different, contemplative authors point to.

1. Freedom to do what you want — any old time

The first boon identified by those who praise solitude is the leisure and liberty it provides.

There is freedom in space. You can (proverbially) get around in your PJs, and who’s to know? There is the release from the needs and demands of others (a liberty many parents may have found themselves longing for recently). And there may be a freedom in time, also. In solitude, we may do, think, imagine and pay easy attention to whatever pleases us.

“When I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep,” the 16th century French philosopher Montaigne, a connoisseur of the quiet life, mused.

Yes, and when I walk alone in a beautiful orchard, if my thoughts drift to far-off matters for some part of the time, for some other part I lead them back again to the walk, the orchard, to the sweetness of this solitude, to myself.

Read more: Guide to the classics: Michel de Montaigne’s Essays

2. Reconnecting with yourself

Solitude (unless of course we are working from home) withdraws the external objects, demands and tasks crowding our days. All the energies we have distributed so widely, in different relationships, projects and pursuits can regather themselves, “like a wave rolling from sand and shore back to its ocean source,” as psychologist Oliver Morgan has written.

Advocates of solitude hence stress how, with fewer preoccupations, we can reconnect to aspects of ourselves we usually don’t have time for. This may not always be pleasant. But periodically reassessing who we are, even when it throws up confronting desires, harrowing fears or humbling insights, may be renewing.

This value of solitude as a test explains why, in many cultures, rites of passage involve periods of enforced withdrawal from the wider group. If a person can’t be content in their own company, the odds are they will not be happy around others either, as the Stoic Epictetus observed.

Read more: What would Seneca say? Six Stoic tips for surviving lockdown

3. Finding your ‘inner citadel’

Solitude can enable us to recharge. As Montaigne joked, it allows you to take a step back from ordinary life, the better to leap into it next time. It also enables us to cultivate a valuable inner distance from the pressures, shocks and follies that usually beset us.

“We should have wives, children, property and, above all, good health,” Montaigne observed. But also, metaphorically, “We should set aside a room, just for ourselves, at the back of the shop, keeping it entirely free and establishing there our true liberty, our principal solitude and asylum …”

The Roman emperor and thinker Marcus Aurelius called such a virtual back room an “inner citadel” to which the wise person could retreat, retiring into his own soul.

Read more: Guide to the Classics: how Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations can help us in a time of pandemic

4. Seeing the bigger picture

In ordinary life, the horizons of our concern are practical and short-range. We are too busy to take stock — fearing and desiring what is coming up today, next week, next month or next year.

Ferried along in this way, years can pass without our noticing.

Solitude gives us the means to recall the bigger picture: our lives are quietly passing by; there are good people who we too often take for granted; we have neglected many things we deeply wanted to do and Nature or God (if we are religious) is far more awe inspiring than we usually credit.

Indeed, many sources suggest it is only through being alone that the highest truths become accessible to the seeker.

As the mystic St John of the Cross reported: “The very pure spirit does not bother about the regard of others or human respect, but communes inwardly with God, alone and in solitude as to all forms, and with delightful tranquillity, for the knowledge of God is received in divine silence”.

It is for these reasons that holy men and women from diverse global traditions have withdrawn into the desert, as Christ did, or onto isolated heights, as did Mohammad in the Quran or Moses in Exodus.

Of course, most of us will not emerge from the pandemic convinced solitaries. It is natural to long for the many goods of human connection.

But one unlikely benefit of 2020 for some harried moderns may be gaining insight into why older cultures valued time alone so highly.

– ref. Why philosophers say solitude can be helpful (even if you didn’t choose it) – https://theconversation.com/why-philosophers-say-solitude-can-be-helpful-even-if-you-didnt-choose-it-147440

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katharine Kemp, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law, UNSW, and Academic Lead, UNSW Grand Challenge on Trust, UNSW

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google for unlawful monopolisation. The department says Google’s conduct harms competition and consumers, and reduces the ability of new innovative companies to develop and compete.

It’s the most important monopolisation case in the US since 1998, when the DoJ brought proceedings against Microsoft.

It’s possible the current proceedings, given their timing, are politically motivated. US President Donald Trump and other Republicans have repeatedly voiced the view that Google is prejudiced against conservative beliefs.

But even if Democratic candidate Joe Biden is elected president, this action against Google is unlikely to go away.

The ramifications for Google, if the court rules against it, could ultimately be dramatic. The DoJ’s associate deputy attorney general, Ryan Shores, has refused to rule out seeking orders to break up the tech giant, saying “nothing is off the table”.

Google’s monopoly power

Google’s economic power is no secret. Regulators around the world, including in the European Union, are investigating the company’s conduct and bringing actions under competition, consumer and privacy laws.

US Attorney General William Barr said the new DoJ action:

[…] strikes at the heart of Google’s grip over the internet for millions of American consumers, advertisers, small businesses and entrepreneurs beholden to an unlawful monopolist.

Specifically, the DoJ claims Google is illegally monopolising the markets for online search and search advertising (the advertising that appears alongside search results).

According to the DoJ, Google’s US market share is roughly:

• 88% in the market for general search services

• 70% in the search advertising market.

However, holding a dominant position isn’t against the law. A company is allowed to enjoy a dominant position or even a complete monopoly, as long as it doesn’t do so by unlawful means.

Read more: The ACCC is suing Google for misleading millions. But calling it out is easier than fixing it

So what has Google allegedly done wrong?

The DoJ’s main complaint is Google has entered into several “exclusionary agreements” that preserve its monopoly power by hindering competition from rivals (and potential rivals). Exclusionary agreements are deals that restrict the ability of at least one party to deal with other players.

The DoJ says Google spends billions of dollars each year on:

• long-term agreements with Apple that require Google to be the default search engine on Apple’s Safari browser

• exclusivity agreements that forbid pre-installation of competing search services by certain mobile device manufacturers and distributors

• arrangements that force certain mobile device manufacturers and distributors to pre-install Google search applications in prime locations on mobile devices and make them undeletable, regardless of consumer preference

• using monopoly profits to buy preferential treatment for its search engine on devices, web browsers and other search access points.

The DoJ claims these agreements have created a “continuous and self-reinforcing cycle of monopolisation” in the market for online search and search advertising (which relies on Google’s dominance in online search).

Google has responded by describing the court action as “deeply flawed”. In a blog post it said:

[…] people don’t use Google because they have to, they use it because they choose to.

It also said users are free to switch to other search engines.

But even if that’s technically true, Google’s agreements for pre-installation, default settings and preferential treatment give it a substantial advantage over its rivals.

Does any of this matter when Google is ‘free’?

Google provides services that are hugely valued the world over — and with no direct financial cost to the user. That said, “free” services can still cause harm.

According to the DoJ, by restricting competition Google has harmed search users, in part “by reducing the quality of search (including on dimensions such as privacy, data protection, and use of consumer data)”. This is an important recognition that price is not all that matters.

The logic behind this claim is that other search engines with better track records on privacy, such as DuckDuckGo, might otherwise be more successful than they are.

Or, to frame that another way, Google might actually have to compete vigorously on privacy, instead of allegedly imposing privacy-degrading terms on its users.

What might happen if the action succeeds?

If Google is found to have contravened the prohibition against monopolisation under the US Sherman Act, it could face substantial fines and damages claims.

But perhaps more concerning for Google would be the prospect of the DoJ seeking to break up Google’s various businesses.

Google owns a range of highly successful services, including Google search, Google Chrome, the Android operating system, and numerous ad tech (“advertising technology”) services. Google’s position and access to data in one business arguably give it advantages in its other businesses.

Eleven Republican attorneys general from various US states have joined the proceedings and could individually seek remedies.

The action won’t be having a major impact any time soon, though. Google’s lawyers estimate the case would only come before the US District Court for the District of Columbia in a year.

Could our competition watchdog be taking notes?

Google could contravene Australia’s misuse of market power law under the Competition and Consumer Act 2010, if it has engaged in conduct of the kind alleged by the DoJ that has an effect on Australian markets.

As part of its 2019 Digital Platforms Inquiry, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said Google has substantial market power in the general search and search advertising markets in Australia. It has a market share of about 95% in both cases.

If this is true, it would be unlawful for Google to engage in any conduct that substantially lessens competition in a market (or has the purpose or likely effect of doing so). This could include entering exclusionary agreements that affect Australian markets.

So far, the ACCC has twice brought proceedings against Google, alleging it misled users about how it collects and uses their data. It is also investigating the conduct of Google and Facebook, in particular, in digital advertising markets as part of its ad tech inquiry.

While Australia’s consumer watchdog might wait and see how proceedings against Google fare in the US and the EU, the recent DoJ action could encourage the ACCC in any action it might be contemplating under Australian law on misuse of market power.

Read more: Every step you take: why Google’s plan to buy Fitbit has the ACCC’s pulse racing

– ref. The US is taking on Google in a huge antitrust case. It could change the face of online search – https://theconversation.com/the-us-is-taking-on-google-in-a-huge-antitrust-case-it-could-change-the-face-of-online-search-148519

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anna Sullivan, Associate Professor of Education, University of South Australia

The disability royal commission heard from experts last week on the disproportionate number of students with a disability who have been suspended or expelled from school for “problem behaviour”.

The commission’s public hearings come at the same time the NSW education department is receiving submissions on a new behaviour management strategy. This plan, among other things, would see the maximum number of days students can be suspended for cut from 20 to ten.

The strategy was designed after inquiries showed too many suspensions being given to students who have a disability, are Indigenous, experience socioeconomic disadvantage, are in out-of-home care, and live in remote and regional areas.

In 2019, more than 113,000 students across Australia were removed from government schools, either for a set period or permanently — representing 4.3% of all government school enrolments. This figure is based on the limited data released by state and territory education departments. The true number is likely higher.

So, what are the rules around suspensions and expulsions in NSW, and the rest of Australia? And what needs to be done to reduce discrimination?

Different rules for different states

Schools use suspensions and expulsions to help change unproductive student behaviours, and allow time for other strategies to be implemented, to help avoid repeat situations.

Each state and territory has its own legislation (except NSW, which has a policy) that defines and guides the use of expulsions and suspensions.

The length of time students can be suspended for varies between states. For instance, a student in Queensland (and NSW under current legislation) can be suspended for up to 20 days. But in WA, the maximum is ten, and the school needs approval from the education department if it wants to extend it.

Suspensions in Victoria can generally be given for up to five days, but this can be extended to 15 with education department approval.

Each state also provides different grounds on which schools can suspend or expel students. In Queensland and Tasmania, a student can be suspended for disobedience or misbehaviour. Whereas in Victoria, a student has to “consistently behave in an unproductive manner that interferes with the well-being, safety or educational opportunities of any other student”.

Read more: Why suspending or expelling students often does more harm than good

In South Australia, a student can be expelled for similar behaviour to Victoria — for “persistently interfering with the ability of a teacher to instruct students or of a student to benefit from that instruction”. But an SA student can also be suspended for “persistent and wilful inattention or indifference to school work”.

Under the proposed changes in NSW, a school can only expel a student in kindergarten (the first year of school) to Year 2 for serious violence or possession of a weapon. And the maximums days a student in these year levels can be suspended would be reduced from 20 to five.

For students in Years 3 to 12, the maximum days for suspensions would be reduced from 20 to ten.

Problems with suspending or expelling kids

Children with disability aren’t the only group excluded from school more than others. Data from South Australia and Victoria show male students accounted for three-quarters of all suspensions and expulsions in 2019.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students also receive disproportionately more suspensions and expulsions than non-Indigenous students. In Queensland, Indigenous students accounted for 10% of all state school enrolments in 2019, but they made up 25% of all suspensions. And 25% of all students expelled in the state were Indigenous, too.

Research consistently shows removing children from school is not the best way to manage behaviour. It fails to address the underlying cause, and can often exacerbate the problem. An analysis of several studies conducted mainly in the US found suspensions are associated with poor academic achievement and dropout.

Removing students from school for indifference or inattention is unlikely to promote greater engagement. Research indicates suspensions exacerbate disengagement.

Within 12 months of being suspended from schools, students are 50% more likely to engage in anti-social behaviour and 70% more likely to engage in violent behaviour. In the US, many students who have been suspended or excluded from school end up in the juvenile justice system.

What needs to be done

Suspending or expelling a student should be considered a last resort. In determining whether to remove a student, principals should first investigate whether other issues could be impacting their behaviour.

They should also prepare a plan to support students and minimise repeat behaviours. This could include supporting the teacher, teaching the student social skills, providing them with literacy support and offering counselling.

The NSW proposal does encourage principals to first consider alternative strategies such as preparing a prevention and intervention plan, professional learning for staff and conflict resolution. But the proposal has gaps in other areas.

Children and their parents/guardians have a right to procedural fairness which means giving them opportunity to be heard before a decision is made and ensuring the decision-maker is impartial. The NSW proposal doesn’t include this.

Victoria’s legislation has the most comprehensive expectations for procedural fairness which include the opportunity to be heard and considering other forms of action that could address the behaviour for which the student is being suspended.

Read more: Excluded and refused enrolment: report shows illegal practices against students with disabilities in Australian schools

Most states also include an appeal process (through the school or education department) for expulsions. Queensland and the ACT have an appeal process for suspensions. But the NSW proposal does not include an appeal process for suspensions or expulsions.

Schools should develop a plan that outlines educational support during the students’ absence, so they can continue their education. In the case of expulsion, a principal must take reasonable steps to arrange for access to an educational program that allows the student to continue their education.

The NSW plan includes this expectation. Queensland, Western Australia, Victoria, ACT and Tasmania have similar requirements.

And finally, a school should outline how it will support a successful transition back for a suspended student. This could include reintegration meetings with parents, children and other service agencies, and a phased re-introduction into the school.

The NSW proposal commits to improved guidance on reintegration, but few details are given on how it would go about doing this. It is important schools develop such a plan in consultation with the student and their parents.

– ref. NSW wants to change rules on suspending and expelling students. How does it compare to other states? – https://theconversation.com/nsw-wants-to-change-rules-on-suspending-and-expelling-students-how-does-it-compare-to-other-states-144676

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Graham Meadows, Professor of Adult Psychiatry, Monash University

COVID-19 outbreaks and the resulting lockdowns, particularly in Victoria, have adversely affected many people’s mental health.

Social isolation, financial stress, and anxiety about contracting COVID-19 can all contribute to psychological distress. For some people, these experiences may trigger mental disorders, such as depression.

People in lower socioeconomic groups are likely to be in particular need of mental health support in the face of the pandemic.

While federal and state governments have rightly boosted mental health services, we need to ensure these services reach those who need them most.

‘Better Access’ doesn’t guarantee access for all

The “Better Access” scheme entitles people to Medicare-subsidised sessions with a psychologist, occupational therapist or social worker, including via telehealth.

Recognising the mental health consequences of the pandemic, the federal government has increased the number of psychological therapy sessions subsidised under Better Access from ten to 20 sessions per year.

Well before COVID-19, we knew socioeconomic disadvantage was associated with poorer mental health. Our earlier research has shown very high psychological distress is much more common in the most disadvantaged fifth of Australian areas than in the most affluent fifth.

But for reasons including out-of-pocket costs and service locations, we’ve found people in poorer areas receive fewer Better Access treatments.

In Victoria, as in other parts of the world, COVID-19 has taken a higher toll on people in disadvantaged areas.

Not only have poorer areas suffered disproportionate numbers of COVID-19 infections, but they also seem to be enduring greater associated social and economic hardships such as job losses.

And if people in these areas need extra mental health support, they may find they’re under-served by the existing system.

Read more: When it’s easier to get meds than therapy: how poverty makes it hard to escape mental illness

Three concerns

The expansion of Better Access may in fact deepen the inequity around access to these services.

1. Access to providers

The supply of therapists has not suddenly increased, so neither has the availability of treatment sessions. The increased number of allowable sessions will largely benefit people who already have access to treatment — and who are less likely to come from disadvantaged areas.

With scarce provider time, this potentially means fewer available sessions for those in disadvantaged areas.

2. Gap fees

Telehealth items continue to allow uncapped co-payments (gap fees). Whatever principled commitments practitioners may have to bulk billing, it makes financial sense to want to attract clients who can afford to pay.

So there may be better access for people with greater financial resources.

Read more: Budget funding for Beyond Blue and Headspace is welcome. But it may not help those who need it most

3. A digital divide

Telehealth items, including video mental health consultations, may be less accessible in disadvantaged areas because of poorer access to technology, including reliable internet connections.

Those in disadvantaged areas may also be living in overcrowded conditions, and therefore have less privacy to use telehealth.

Where is the need greatest?

The Index of Relative Socioeconomic Disadvantage (IRSD) summarises a range of information about the economic and social conditions of people and households in Australia.

It can help planners direct resources to more disadvantaged areas — which, as we’ve shown, is particularly important for mental health services.

Our new paper offers a model for policy-makers to apply what we know about the IRSD and poorer mental health to planning and monitoring mental health services.

We created a spreadsheet using area IRSD scores to estimate mental health resource needs for different areas.

In Melbourne, for example, we estimated more disadvantaged parts of the western suburbs have a need around 2.5 times greater than parts of the eastern suburbs.

We used Victoria as an example, but this model could easily be adapted for use elsewhere.

How can we make services in Australia more equitable?

We hope our research will complement other Australian tools so the influence of disadvantage on mental health-care needs can be more consistently and transparently taken into account when designing mental health services.

State-based mental health services are often funded by areas, such as those for adults with serious mental illnesses in Victoria. So getting the funds to where they’re most needed is possible for state and territory governments.

But with services such as Better Access, which are funded by Medicare item rather than by geographic area, we will need new ways to ensure they’re distributed equitably.

A thought experiment

The government could encourage a practitioner using telehealth to ensure 40% of these services get to people living in areas in the lowest 40% according to the IRSD.

The government could also implement an overall bulk-billing target of, say, 50%. Disincentives could follow if the provider falls short of these targets.

For example, a provider would receive commonwealth funding for all services provided if they achieved the 50% target. If not, they would receive funding for all bulk-billed consultations, plus the same number of co-payment services.

So, if a provider only bulk bills 40% of their clients, 80% of their services would receive funding. Similar mechanisms may operate for IRSD targets.

Such a move would likely face opposition, including from practitioners who might find it difficult to change their referral and charging practices. For some, at least initially, their income would suffer. So it could be challenging to introduce.

Read more: Social housing, aged care and Black Americans: how coronavirus affects already disadvantaged groups

This is just a draft proposal and the details, including specific targets, could be refined in discussion with professional bodies. The model in our paper could be used to assess if changes succeed in improving equity.

But something like this could see people with the greatest mental health needs, particularly those in the most socioeconomically disadvantaged areas, better able to access services.

– ref. Greater needs, but poorer access to services: why COVID mental health measures must target disadvantaged areas – https://theconversation.com/greater-needs-but-poorer-access-to-services-why-covid-mental-health-measures-must-target-disadvantaged-areas-146306

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Liam Elphick, Adjunct Research Fellow, Law School, University of Western Australia

It has long been a glaring problem that the New South Wales Anti-Discrimination Act (ADA) does not prohibit religious discrimination.

One Nation’s Mark Latham recently proposed a new Religious Discrimination Bill. One key part of the bill is to fill that gap: to prohibit religious discrimination.

This is a welcome and long-overdue development in NSW.

No-one should be refused employment or access to goods and services because of their religious beliefs. The ADA should provide protection for religion as it does for race, sex and disability.

Public parliamentary committee hearings on the bill, which start this week, will undoubtedly reaffirm the importance of prohibiting religious discrimination.

However, the bill goes far beyond this.

It privileges and prioritises religion over all other views, practices and attributes.

It provides wide exceptions to religious bodies to permit them to discriminate and to refuse to comply with some existing NSW laws.

And it renders it near impossible for employers to enforce codes of conduct and promote safety and equality in their workforces.

These issues undermine the bill’s ability to effectively prohibit religious discrimination, and unduly infringe on other laws and rights.

How is religious discrimination defined?

The bill adds two new protected attributes to the ADA, making it unlawful to discriminate because of one’s “religious belief” or “religious activity”.

Unlike the simpler definitions provided in other state laws, religious belief has been given an unnecessarily complex definition.

“Religious belief” is defined as either:

a) having a religious conviction, belief, opinion or affiliation, or

b) not having any religious conviction, belief, opinion or affiliation.

This definition is entirely subjective: each person can effectively decide what their religious beliefs are. The explanatory notes to the bill say this is intended “as a means to avoid courts determining matters of religious doctrine”.

But as two High Court justices remarked in the famous 1983 case of Church of the New Faith:

The mantle of immunity would soon be in tatters if it were wrapped around beliefs, practices and observances of every kind whenever a group of adherents chose to call them a religion.

This definition also likely excludes agnostics from protection: by definition, they do not have a specific religious conviction and also cannot be said to have no religious conviction.

“Religious activity” is defined as an “activity motivated by religious belief”. This wide definition would capture a vast array of actions, even where the link to religious doctrine is only tenuous.

The only limitation is that it excludes “offences punishable by imprisonment”. This means some unlawful acts can still be protected.

Employers, goods and service providers and accommodation providers would not be able to treat someone differently based on them breaking the law. Schools would be unable to sanction students for engaging in religiously motivated bullying or harassment.

The biggest challenge will be for employers to determine if an activity is indeed motivated by religious belief.

If an employee (Person A) makes a complaint of harassment against another employee (Person B) and that harassment is based on a religious view of, say, gender or sexuality, employers would be placed in an impossible position.

They would either need to investigate and sanction Person B and risk them bringing a religious discrimination claim against them, or they would need to reject the complaint and risk Person A bringing a harassment claim against them.

Employers will be forced to act unlawfully, no matter what they do.

Other states, such as Victoria, have avoided this conflict by protecting only “lawful” religious activities.

The NSW bill also does not prohibit religious vilification, despite this being a widespread problem for Muslim and other faith groups.

How does the bill apply to religious conduct?

The bill applies to religious conduct in three key ways, each of which goes far beyond equivalent discrimination laws in Australia.

First, employers are barred from restricting or limiting their employees from engaging in “protected activity”.

A “protected activity” means a religious activity performed by the employee when they are not working and not at their workplace. This includes religious views expressed on social media, in a clear nod to the Israel Folau saga.

Read more: Explainer: does Rugby Australia have legal grounds to sack Israel Folau for anti-gay social media posts?

Let’s assume an employee expresses religious views or comments on social media – hypothetically, that “hell awaits homosexuals” – that breach an employment code of conduct. Under this bill, the employee cannot be punished for this.

They can actually sue their employer for any such punishment, unless the comment directly criticises the employer, attacks the employer and causes financial detriment to the employer. The bill, though, provides that withdrawal of sponsorship or of financial support does not count as “financial detriment” – so it seems an impossibly high threshold for any employer to meet.

As a result, these provisions would significantly curtail the ability of employers to protect their brand and reputation, enforce codes of conduct and promote the safety and equality of their workforce. Employers would need to uncover the motivation behind an employee’s comments or actions before they could even attempt to enforce codes of conduct.

Because this protection is only afforded to views and activities that have a religious basis, employers would be forced to treat employees of faith differently from other employees. An atheist employee could make the same comment – that “hell awaits homosexuals” – and their employer would be free to sanction them.

These “protected activity” provisions also extend to qualifying bodies, universities and schools.

This means a school would be unable to sanction a student for bullying another student after school, so long as their bullying is religiously motivated.

Second, the bill makes it unlawful to require any religious body, when performing functions under NSW laws, to engage in conduct in a manner contrary to their religious doctrines. There appears to be no equivalent provision in any other Australian discrimination laws.

The breadth of this provision may mean that, for instance, religious bodies could challenge and avoid criminal laws imposing duties to report child abuse and neglect to authorities. This could be on the basis that a particular religious body’s doctrines oppose unsealing the confessional.

Local governments might also be unable to impose noise restrictions on religious ceremonies. The NSW government might even be unable to impose COVID-19 public health restrictions on religious ceremonies.

Third, religious bodies are granted wide exceptions from the operation of the entire bill. These allow religious bodies to discriminate against people of other religious beliefs.

Religious bodies are defined widely to include all schools and charities conducted in accordance with religious beliefs.

Read more: Grattan on Friday: Scott Morrison will go into 2020 with a challenging cluster of policy loose ends

In some instances, this is entirely appropriate. For example, an Anglican school is likely to want its religious education teachers to be of the same faith – and this seems fair.

But this bill goes much further. The exception covers any conduct that “furthers or aids” the religious body in acting in accordance with their religious beliefs. This is an easier test to satisfy than in any other Australian discrimination laws.

Imagine, for example, a student joins an Islamic school in Year 7 and at the time shares the same religious beliefs. Halfway through Year 12, that student may decide they do not identify strongly with those beliefs anymore.

This bill would allow the school to expel that student on the basis that they do not share the same religious beliefs as the school.

Similarly, a Catholic soup kitchen could refuse to serve food to Jewish people, or require them to participate in Catholic practices to receive food.

Allowing organisations primarily engaged in charity, health or education to be granted a carte blanche to discriminate is a step too far. Indeed, this frustrates and undermines the fundamental purpose of the bill: to prohibit religious discrimination.

What’s the best path forward?

The ADA is an outdated piece of legislation. It often provides ineffectual protection from discrimination.

While NSW has stood still, other states and territories have reformed their discrimination laws. These provide much stronger protection for all individuals.

As we argued in our joint submission on this bill, a wider, expert review of the ADA is the best way to effectively prohibit religious discrimination. This bill will only be a stop-gap measure.

As its own committee inquiry recently recommended, the NSW parliament should “undertake a thorough review of the Anti-Discrimination Act 1977 with the aim of updating and modernising the Act”. This would provide better protection for all people in NSW, not just those of faith.

It is tempting to approach reform to discrimination law as a “patch-up” job. But such an approach only enshrines and exacerbates the flawed NSW regime.

– ref. NSW needs to prohibit religious discrimination, but not like this – https://theconversation.com/nsw-needs-to-prohibit-religious-discrimination-but-not-like-this-148007

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alana Piper, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Technology Sydney

The Black Lives Matters movement in the United States and Australia has drawn welcome attention to Black deaths in the criminal justice system. Such fatalities are extreme manifestations of a long history of excessive punishment of Black bodies: from the use of neck chains on Indigenous Australian prisoners into the 1940s to their over-incarceration for minor offences today.

One historical case that demonstrates this in Australia is that of William King, an African-American sailor who arrived in Melbourne in 1887. Little is known about King’s life before this but the following year he was convicted for burglary and sentenced to 18 months’ hard labour. Thus began a cycle in and out of prison.

Read more: Captain Cook wanted to introduce British justice to Indigenous people. Instead, he became increasingly cruel and violent

King’s second conviction in 1889 — on four charges of receiving stolen goods — earned him nine years’ imprisonment. This sentence was unusually steep. Data on prosecutions for this crime in Victoria during the 1880s show the vast bulk of offenders were sentenced to less than two years in prison, even when facing multiple charges.

Even more remarkable is the wide range of additional punishments King was subjected to in prison.

‘Insolence’

Prison records show during his time in Pentridge, King was punished for 53 infractions of prison discipline, far more than any other prisoner at the time. These infractions, mostly consisting of “insolence” or “disobedience of orders”, were punished by stints of solitary confinement, months spent wearing heavy, iron chains and an extension of his original sentence.

King was a problematic individual. But the colour of his skin probably engendered hostility from the guards or increased their perception he was a dangerous offender in need of rigid control. King later said he believed his race had made him a target.

Public attention was drawn to King’s treatment in 1898 when an anonymous informant — most likely a former inmate — alerted socialist newspaper The Tocsin to his plight.

In a lengthy exposé, the paper alleged prison guards not only deliberately targeted King by imposing groundless punishments on him, but even ganged up to give him beatings at night. King had spent more than 100 days in solitary confinement in the previous year alone.

Continued media attention may have prompted the decision to release King by “special authority” in 1900.

Just six weeks later he was convicted on two counts of burglary. At his trial, King said he would “rather be hanged” than return to prison. He alleged continual police persecution following his release, and said he was merely a convenient suspect for the crimes.

While King’s assertions of innocence must be read with a grain of salt, officials at the time were undoubtedly influenced by pervading racist rhetoric that associated Black men with increased criminality and violence.

Read more: Why the Black Lives Matter protests must continue: an urgent appeal by Marcia Langton

‘Big, burly, repulsive’

One of the detectives who worked the 1900 case, David George O’Donnell, tellingly recalled King in his later reminiscences as “a big, burly, repulsive looking American nigger … absolutely dangerous to life and limb”.

King’s return to prison was marked by further infractions and solitary confinement. In 1908, he was released for only a month before again being convicted of burglary. Declared a habitual criminal under the 1907 Indeterminate Sentences Act, King was remanded to prison indefinitely.

In 1909, King was convicted of stabbing prison guard William Sharp in the cheek with a knife. King claimed Sharp had brought the knife into his cell, and had been stabbed as King tried to get it away from him. As a result, King spent even more time in solitary confinement.

Later that year, Pentridge’s medical officer expressed concerns about the toll lengthy solitary stays were having on King’s mental and physical health after he lost ten pounds (4.5 kilograms) in just one week.

Read more: From molten lava to cobbled laneways: how bluestone shaped Melbourne’s identity

The use of solitary confinement against King was halted for several months — until he stabbed another warder. King’s defence was that he had been held down and beaten by five warders until he had managed to draw out a knife to defend himself.

King’s final trial occurred in 1911, this time for attempted murder of a guard. While admitting the offence, King again claimed to have been defending himself after repeated, racially-motivated violence from both guards and fellow prisoners.

‘Treated like a wild beast’

He claimed to have been treated “not like an ordinary prisoner, but more like a wild beast”. The jury appears to have been sympathetic, returning a verdict of not guilty.

King remained incarcerated until 1916, when the government ordered his release on the condition he be immediately deported to the US. Police escorted King on board the ship Puacko, bound for San Francisco.

According to Detective O’Donnell’s memoir, the vessel’s Captain told King if they had any trouble from him during the voyage, a quick burial at sea would mean there would be no coroner’s inquest.

King was indeed buried at sea during the voyage. His cause of death was recorded as a stomach complaint.

– ref. The tale of ‘habitual criminal’ William King: a Black life in Victoria’s white justice system – https://theconversation.com/the-tale-of-habitual-criminal-william-king-a-black-life-in-victorias-white-justice-system-147274

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fiona R Martin, Associate Professor in Convergent and Online Media, University of Sydney

If Facebook prevented Australian news from being shared on its platform, could the ABC start its own social media service to compensate? While this proposal from the Australia Institute is a worthy one, it’s an impossible ask in the current political climate.

The suggestion is one pillar of the think tank’s new Tech-xit report.

The report canvasses what the Australian government should do if Facebook and Google withdraw their news-related services from Australia, in reaction to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s draft news media bargaining code.

Tech-xit rightly notes the ABC is capable of building social media that doesn’t harvest Australians’ personal data. However, it overlooks the costs and challenges of running a social media service — factors raised in debate over the new code.

Platforms react (badly) to the code

The ACCC’s code is a result of years of research into the effects of platform power on Australian media.

It requires Facebook and Google to negotiate with Australian news businesses about licensing payments for hosting news excerpts, providing access to news user data and information on pending news feed algorithm changes.

Predictably, the tech companies are not happy. They argue they make far less from news than the ACCC estimates, have greater costs and return more benefit to the media.

If the code becomes law, Facebook has threatened to stop Australian users from sharing local or international news. Google notified Australians its free services would become “at risk”, although it later said it would negotiate if the draft law was changed in its favour.

Facebook’s withdrawal, which the Tech-xit report sees as being likely if the law passes, would reduce Australians’ capacity to share vital news about their communities, activities and businesses.

Read more: If Facebook really pulls news from its Australian sites, we’ll have a much less compelling product

ABC to the rescue?

Cue the ABC then, says Jordan Guiao, the report’s author. Guiao is the former head of social media for both the ABC and SBS, and now works at the institute’s Centre for Responsible Technology.

He argues that, if given the funding, ABC Online could reinvent itself to become a “national social platform connecting everyday Australians”. He says all the service would have to do is add

distinct user profiles, user publishing and content features, group connection features, chat, commenting and interactive discussion capabilities.

As a trusted information source, he proposes the ABC could enable “genuine exchange and influence on decision making” and “provide real value to local communities starved of civic engagement”.

Financial reality check

It’s a bold move to suggest the ABC could start yet another major network when it has just had to cut A$84 million from its budget and lose more than 200 staff.

The institute’s idea is very likely an effort to persuade the Morrison government it should redirect some of that funding back to Aunty, which has a history of digital innovation with ABC Online, iView, Q&A and the like.

However, the government has repeatedly denied it has cut funding to the national broadcaster. It hasn’t provided catch-up emergency broadcasting funds since the ABC covered our worst ever fire season. This doesn’t bode well for a change of mind on future allocations.

The government also excluded the ABC and SBS as beneficiaries of the news media bargaining code negotiations.

The ABC doesn’t even have access to start-up venture capital the way most social media companies do. According to Crunchbase, Twitter and Reddit — the two most popular news-sharing platforms after Facebook — have raised roughly US$1.5 billion and US$550 million respectively in investment rounds, allowing them to constantly innovate in service delivery.

Operational challenges

In contrast, over the past decade, ABC Online has had to reduce many of the “social” services it once offered. This is largely due to the cost of moderating online communities and managing user participation.

First news comments sections were canned, and online communities such as the Four Corners forums and The Drum website were closed.

Last year, the ABC’s flagship site for regional and rural user-created stories, ABC Open, was also shut down.

Even if the government were to inject millions into an “ABC Social”, it’s unlikely the ABC could deal with the problems of finding and removing illegal content at scale.

It’s an issue that still defeats social media platforms and the ABC does not have machine learning expertise or funds for an army of outsourced moderators.

The move would also expose the ABC to accusations it was crowding out private innovation in the platform space.

A future without Facebook

It’s unclear whether Facebook will go ahead with its threat of preventing Australian users from sharing news on its platform, given the difficulties with working out exactly who an Australian user is.

For instance, the Australian public includes dual citizens, temporary residents, international students and business people, and expatriates.

If it does, why burden the ABC with the duty to recreate social media? Facebook’s withdrawal could be a boon for Twitter, Reddit and whatever may come next.

In the meantime, if we restored the ABC’s funding, it could develop more inventive ways to share local news online that can’t be threatened by Facebook and Google.

Read more: Latest $84 million cuts rip the heart out of the ABC, and our democracy

– ref. Calls for an ABC-run social network to replace Facebook and Google are misguided. With what money? – https://theconversation.com/calls-for-an-abc-run-social-network-to-replace-facebook-and-google-are-misguided-with-what-money-148338

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Smith, Senior Lecturer in American Politics and Foreign Policy, US Studies Centre, University of Sydney

On October 14, Donald Trump held a rally attended by several thousand in Iowa, despite White House guidelines that gatherings in the state should be limited to 25. Trump visited Iowa numerous times in 2016, a political outsider promising he would “give working people a voice for the first time in a very, very long time”. He won the state by nine points.

In 2020, polls show Trump and Joe Biden virtually tied in Iowa. And, after four years as president, Trump’s rhetoric has changed significantly. Last week, one of Trump’s first applause lines was: “Did you hear Bruce Ohr is finally out of the Department of Justice?”

Ohr was a Justice Department official who promoted a salacious opposition research dossier that the FBI misused to obtain a surveillance warrant on a former Trump campaign operative, Carter Page. Most people wouldn’t know who he is unless they have been closely following Trump’s crusade to “investigate” the origins of the Mueller investigation into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Trump’s language in rallies, interviews and even debates is increasingly hard to follow for those who aren’t already initiated into his world of conspiracies, grievances and half-digested news items. He recently suggested he watches up to eight hours of Fox News a day. Much of what he says and tweets involves vague but dense allusions to his favourite shows.

Four years ago, Trump appealed to people who aren’t usually interested in politics. Now, he appeals to people obsessed with politics.

Trump’s politicisation of everyday life

This reflects the changes Trump has wrought in his country. Politics, and particularly politics defined in terms of being for or against Trump, has become central to nearly every issue in American life. That politics has a strong esoteric streak, especially on Trump’s side. While Trump promised to “take back the heart of our country”, many Americans believe their politics is significantly influenced by hidden conspiracies.

Trump’s most sophisticated supporters welcome the “politicisation” of life that he represents. Sociologist Salvatore Babones, author of The New Authoritarianism, said in 2018 that Trump represents “the return of politics” against the undemocratic rule of liberal expertise:

Experts often demand that we should not ‘politicize’ public policy debates, but democracy is all about taking those debates into the sphere of politics – taking them to the people.

There is no better example of this politicisation than the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. From the outset, Trump downplayed expert warnings about the seriousness of the virus and the need for a concerted public health response.

Read more: Donald Trump blames everyone but himself for the coronavirus crisis. Will voters agree?

Instead, he encouraged his supporters to view the pandemic as a plot to sabotage his re-election. Trump has continued to downplay the virus and promote an illusory normality, even after getting it himself.

A Brookings study published in September found partisan affiliation was the strongest single predictor of behaviour and attitudes towards COVID-19. Another study found Republicans and Democrats disagreed over basic facts about mortality and testing rates in the United States, surpassing previous partisan gaps on factual questions.

Trump’s supporters and opponents alike see many issues through the lens of Trump. More than a third of Republicans expressed support for Black Lives Matter during the protests following George Floyd’s death, but this support dropped by more than half following Trump’s repeated attacks on the movement. Support among Democrats remained extremely high, at 88%.

The widespread (if exaggerated) popular association between Trump and Russia is reflected by Republicans and Democrats effectively switching sides in their views about the threat Russia poses to the country.

Some liberals see Russian influence everywhere, missing the fact that Russian disinformation campaigns in the US are trivial in scale compared to the disinformation Americans make for themselves.

The world according to Trump

Politics has never been far from the surface of any issue in America. Trump didn’t invent partisan division or ill-feeling in the United States, which were expanding for a quarter of a century before he took office. Nor are conspiracy theories anything new. They have often been central to American politics, beginning with the American Revolution.

What has changed is that Trump has put himself at the centre of everything. Trump has become very important to Republican Party identity. The majority of Americans planning to vote for Trump will do so because they personally support him, while the majority of Biden voters are motivated by getting rid of Trump. Biden’s victory in the primaries was largely because of the perception he was the best candidate to beat Trump.

And while presidents often feature in conspiracy theories, Trump is the first since JFK to be cast in a heroic role in a conspiracy theory pushed by his own supporters. The QAnon conspiracy complex, which has become more of an industry than a theory, has been recognised by the FBI as a terrorist threat and has prompted social media platforms to take dramatic action against it.

Political leaders always influence the views of their partisans, and presidents are always central to American politics. But Trump’s ubiquity in all forms of media makes him quantitatively different.

How Trump rules the media

Politics, while always an important topic in American news, has dominated it over the past four years, and Trump has dominated politics news.

According to Ethan Zuckerman, former director of MIT’s Center for Civic Media, Trump has appeared in roughly a quarter of all news stories in major US media sources during his presidency. Normally, a president appears in about 10% of news stories.

During his 2016 campaign, Trump benefited enormously from his ability to saturate the media. By one estimate, Trump got US$2 billion worth of free advertising from media coverage during the Republican primary. It gave him a huge advantage over his rivals.

Trump’s relationship with the media may appear hostile, but it is mutually beneficial. Newspapers across the political spectrum were able to add subscribers on the back of their coverage of Trump. A study of the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency found he appeared in an incredible 41% of all news stories. Most of that coverage was more negative than positive, but it put Trump permanently at the centre of the news, a position he has never relinquished.

The fact Trump calls journalists “enemies of the people” and revels in violence against journalists doesn’t diminish his symbiotic relationship with them.

In September, the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward, arguably the most celebrated journalist in America, revealed he had interviewed Trump 18 times in the last year. While telling Americans in March that COVID-19 wasn’t as bad as seasonal flu, Trump was calling Woodward to tell him it would be much worse.

Read more: Trump reportedly played down the risk of COVID-19 to avoid ‘panic’. How much should leaders say, and when?

Trump’s career-long habit of gossiping to journalists led to what should have been a highly damaging story about his negligent leadership during the pandemic. But it was quickly overwhelmed by numerous other Trump stories, including him finally catching COVID-19 himself.

… but he can’t control them

Some have speculated Trump’s ability to dominate news coverage, even with negative stories, is a political superpower. Events that would have sunk earlier presidents barely seem to touch Trump, quickly forgotten as the media move on to the next outrage.

His constant, rampant disinformation and erratic policy announcements waste the time of those who must respond to them. Fact checks and abrupt reversals exhaust Trump’s opponents while making little difference to his supporters. Trump’s average approval rating is the most stable in the history of polling, even if it is low. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s strategy to “flood the zone with shit” seems to have worked.

But the flood has dragged down Trump with everyone else. A recent poll found just 12% of Americans believed White House reports on the state of Trump’s health. Trump’s continual undermining of public trust in everything from the Centers for Disease Control to the legitimacy of election results may have undermined his own ability to make any message widely believable.

Trump’s domination of the news doesn’t translate into control over its narratives. One computational study examining the flow of stories on Twitter found the peak of Trump’s “narrative control” was in 2017, when he was still routinely attacking Hillary Clinton. It has since dwindled to almost nothing. Trump has had virtually no narrative control over the COVID-19 pandemic, as we can see from the failure of his attempts to rechristen it the “China virus”.

This pattern of domination without control defines not just Trump’s relationship with the media, but his whole presidency. He can command displays of loyalty from Republicans in Congress but he can’t advance a legislative agenda or count on them to help him politically. He can inflict suffering on rival countries, but he can’t change their behaviour to America’s advantage.

For many of Trump’s supporters, domination is the measure of his greatness. But he may be about to lose an election because during a pandemic voters expect a president to be in control of things, including himself.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

It is easy to exaggerate Trump’s impact on the United States, especially when comparing it to a mythical pre-Trump dark age or golden age. Trump asserts he has done more for America than any other president in history.

In reality, the US economy in Trump’s first three years looked a lot like it did in Obama’s last three years, and Trump expanded the overseas military commitments he promised to retrench. Meanwhile, Biden called Trump the “first racist elected president”, a bewildering statement to anyone with even a passing familiarity with American history.

Read more: Racism has long shaped US presidential elections. Here’s how it might play out in 2020

Trump is a product of many different strands of that history, from urban racism and authoritarianism to the travelling medicine show tradition that blended entertainment and con artistry to sell “miracle cures”.

So while Trump has put himself at the centre of American life and made his country look more like him, it is still recognisably itself.

– ref. Trump has changed America by making everything about politics, and politics all about himself – https://theconversation.com/trump-has-changed-america-by-making-everything-about-politics-and-politics-all-about-himself-146839

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eileen Webb, Professor of Law and Ageing, UniSA: Justice and Society, University of South Australia

This article is part of our series on aged care. You can read the other articles in the series here.

Australia’s aged care sector has been the subject of more than 30 major inquiries and reviews since 1997.

It is fair to say the findings have been highly critical of the way aged care is run in this country. Many of these concerns have been brought to light again — along with new issues raised — in the ongoing Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety.

Yet, as the royal commission has noted, successive Australian governments have shown a “lack of willingness to commit to change”.

Responses often come years after the review and recount what has been done in an almost tangential way.

Even the establishment of the royal commission was not based on previous inquiries or recommendations, but in response to media exposés of the appalling conditions in some aged care facilities.

Read more: Aged care failures show how little we value older people – and those who care for them

From these dysfunctional circumstances, three questions arise.

First, what are the ongoing issues with aged care in Australia?

Second, why have successive governments been comfortable making do with piecemeal solutions rather than truly “fixing” aged care, once and for all?

Finally, and most perplexingly, why have Australian voters let them get away with it?

What’s the problem?

It is important to emphasise that aged care is predominantly a federal government responsibility. The 1997 Aged Care Act is the main law covering government-funded aged care. This includes rules for funding, regulation, approval of providers, quality of care and the rights of those in care.

Since 2019, the federal Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission Act regulates complaints, sanctions and enforcement, but has been criticised for lacking teeth.

The 1997 act diluted many preexisting regulatory protections, such as strict financial accreditation and staffing requirements, and opened the sector up to privatisation. At the time, concerns were raised the new regime could compromise standards of care in aged care facilities and disadvantage older people on lower incomes.

The concerns were raised again and amplified in subsequent years. For example, in 2011, a Productivity Commission report noted Australia’s aged care system needed a “fundamental redesign”.

Here is a brief summary of the recurring issues raised in multiple reports:

• the huge difficulty people have navigating the aged care system, including finding accurate information about facilities

• failure to meet the needs of vulnerable older people

• poor quality care, especially for those with dementia and other disabilities

• the use of chemical or physical restraints

• inappropriate staff ratios and poor training

• the rising cost of care, especially in light of an ageing population

• adherence to accreditation standards

• ineffective complaints mechanisms.

Why haven’t these problems been fixed?

One of the major hurdles to real reform is the relationship between the aged care industry and the federal government.

The government funds the sector and provides a relatively “light-touch” oversight, while the providers attend to the day-to-day running of the facilities.

Read more: Federal government did not prepare aged care sector adequately for COVID: royal commission

However, there is concern this alignment has meant successive governments are not as involved as they should be and proposals for change are diluted by the influence of industry lobbyists.

Another reason for governments’ reluctance to intervene is many of the providers are “too big to fail”. A facility’s licence and government funding can be withdrawn if standards are not met. Yet this rarely happens.

Why? Because if a licence is revoked, residents need somewhere to go. The issues here can be seen in the closure of the Earle Haven nursing home in July 2019. Here, 68 elderly people were left homeless and had to be moved to hospitals and other aged care facilities.

As a further example, Bupa, one of Australia’s largest providers, continues to operate, despite sanctions or failing fundamental assessments.

Why isn’t aged care a vote winner?

After so many inquiries and so many horror headlines, the problems in aged care are well and truly common knowledge. But do Australians care enough about aged care for it to influence their vote — and so, influence the way governments respond?

If we cast our minds back to the 2019 federal election campaign, the hot button issue concerning older people was the potential demise of franking credits and negative gearing.

In-home and residential aged care barely rated a mention in the campaigns of the major parties.

Even now, despite the publicity surrounding the royal commission, if an election was held today, would this issue actually influence voting intentions? Sadly, it seems unlikely.

During the July 2020 Eden-Monaro byelection, a survey of nearly 700 voters showed while 84% believed the aged care system was “in crisis”, this influenced the vote of less than 4% of respondents. It also ranked last in a list of seven issues of importance.

When heartfelt concern does not translate to winning votes, there is little incentive for the federal government to provide meaningful solutions to well-documented problems.

Read more: The budget must address aged care — here are 3 key priorities

We only need to look to the record spending in the 2020 Budget, which provided only 23,000 extra home care packages and deferred consideration of funding for residential aged care until the royal commission’s final report next year.

It comes back to voters

Why does concern for the plight of people in aged care fail to generate public action?

We suggest it is because many Australians consciously or unconsciously have ageist attitudes — that older people are inherently not important. On this front, look no further than arguments made by prominent commentators about the fate of older people during COVID-19.

Yes, most fair-thinking Australians care about our older citizens, yet until either we or our family members are directly impacted, we do not prioritise it.

If we don’t care enough or care about other things more, nothing will change. And, while this remains the case, the government will have no reason to do more than just tinker with an unsatisfactory status quo.

Read more: If we have the guts to give older people a fair go, this is how we fix aged care in Australia

– ref. Despite more than 30 major inquiries, governments still haven’t fixed aged care. Why are they getting away with it? – https://theconversation.com/despite-more-than-30-major-inquiries-governments-still-havent-fixed-aged-care-why-are-they-getting-away-with-it-147736

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Blundell-Wignall, Adjunct Professor, School of Economics, University of Sydney

My old OECD boss Secretary General (SG) Angel Gurria’s third term is coming to an end and the race is on to replace him.

Australia’s departing finance minister Mathias Cormann will face off against likely candidates from France, Japan, Mexico, Poland and South Korea and others yet to declare their hands.

Nominations are made by member countries and close on November 1.

The successful candidate will be announced by March 1. The next SG will begin the five-year term on June 1, 2021.

The person chosen will be remembered either as the SG who saw the OECD lose relevance in the face of pressure from large countries to cut its budget and marginalise it or, alternatively, as the person who kept alive the importance of the collective interest in holding governments to account, in a lobby-free zone.

The OECD has come a long way

The OECD began as the Organisation of European Economic Cooperation in the ruins of the second world war. Its brief was cooperation in the post-war reconstruction of Europe. It was about getting old foes to bury the hatchet and focus on common needs as US loans and technology were passed to Europe.

Its flagship activities were economic forecasting and country surveys.

As the formation of the European Economic Community in the late 1950s rendered some of its original role redundant, the United States and Canada joined, and in 1960 it was rechristened the OECD.

Read more: Simon Birmingham to become finance minister and Senate leader as Australia nominates Cormann for OECD

Japan joined later in 1964 and Australia much later in 1970. Today it has 37 member countries, all of them upper or middle income democracies, including Mexico, Korea, Chile and Israel.

Brazil, India, China, Indonesia and South Africa are official partners (although not members), meaning the OECD is able to address challenges facing countries that account for 80% of world trade.

From tax to bribery, its work is important

At first it too focused on forecasting and country surveys, but then the International Monetary Fund moved into that role after its original raison d’être of exchange rate stability was taken away as the world moved to floating exchange rates in the wake of massive spending by the US to sustain the Vietnam War and the mid-1970s oil crisis.

Under the its second SG, Emiel van Lennep, the OECD developed new rules, facilitating cooperation on, among other things, financial regulation, tax policy, competition policy, corporate governance, multi-national enterprises, science and technology, environment, bribery and corruption, pensions, social policy, employment and (often forgotten) data consistency and the manuals used by statistical agencies and researchers all over the world.

Read more: The PISA world education test results are about to drop. Is Australia getting worse?

It’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is the gold standard for assessing the performance of students worldwide.

The way it works was well suited to these roles and could not be duplicated by other international organisations. Its agenda is driven by committees made up of representatives of member governments rather than its permanent staff.

In these committees, more than 300 including expert and working groups, representatives come together to discuss problems and how cooperation can help sort them out.

Read more: The OECD’s scorecard for the Digital Economy. Australia OK, but could do better

The expansion has been demand-driven, with member countries, companies and other institutions often providing voluntary financing to make them work (OECD budgets are always under pressure). Today roughly one third of the OECD is funded this way.

It requires a special type of leader.

What’s needed to run the Paris-based organisation is someone who is credible, experienced in international affairs, has presence and gravitas, is a linguist (English and French), a fund raiser, energetic, ready to spend months travelling, thick skinned and has vision and courage.

It needs a leader who’s unafraid

Above all, it has to be someone who believes in the idea of the OECD and wants it to make a difference.

The present SG, Mexico’s Angel Gurria has been perfect, pulling it out of a lull and raising its profile.

Unfortunately, after 15 years with Gurria at the helm, some governments are looking for a more of a consensus-seeker.

“Consensus” means moving to the lowest common denominator, and not rocking the boat by using the full power the SG has to publish under his or her authority whenever consensus cannot be reached, as is often the case.

How will the new SG be chosen? The OECD Council doesn’t have the seniority and independence to decide. The appointment will be approved back in the capitals after lobbying by politicians and trading of favours, just as these things are decided for all heads of international organisations.

The best hope for an inspiring choice will be the smaller countries.

We can be grateful there’s one vote per country and no veto held by major powers as is so often the case in other international organisations.

Adrian Blundell-Wignall is a former director of the OECD

– ref. Mathias Cormann wants to lead the OECD. The choice it makes will be pivotal – https://theconversation.com/mathias-cormann-wants-to-lead-the-oecd-the-choice-it-makes-will-be-pivotal-148171

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ivan Maksymov, Australian Research Council Future Fellow (Senior Lecturer), Swinburne University of Technology

This year, my colleague Andrey Pototsky and I were awarded the Ig Nobel Prize in Physics for our experimental work involving vibrating living earthworms.

The Ig Nobel Prizes are awarded each year to recognise scientific research that’s not only thought-provoking, but also comical or unusual in nature.

Our work made people laugh, and then think. At face value, it was simply two researchers observing a bunch of worms jiggling on a loudspeaker.

From these observations, however, we’ve discovered the potential for a new, safer approach to linking the human brain with computers.

What did we do?

First, we sedated earthworms in alcohol to relax their muscles. We then vibrated them on a loudspeaker and used laser light to observe ripples on the surface of each worm.

Such ripples are known as Faraday waves. In nature, frogs create these waves on water’s surface to attract mates. Faraday waves can also be seen on a vibrating liquid drop, when the vibrations become intense enough to make the liquid’s surface unstable.

Earthworms consist mostly of water. So we expected a sedated worm to vibrate similarly to a water drop.

When we switched the loudspeaker on, the whole worm moved up and down. But when we increased the volume to above the “Faraday instability” level, Faraday waves appeared on the worms’ surface — just as we were expecting.

It’s important to note: even though these non-linear ripples are “unstable”, this doesn’t mean they behave in a completely chaotic way. In fact, Faraday waves can (after much trial and error) be “programmed” to behave in a certain way.

But why would we do this?

In past research, it has been hypothesised nerve impulses (which let nerve cells communicate with one another) move through the nerve fibre (or “axon”) as not only an electric signal, but also a sound wave which humans can’t hear. We also believe this is the case.

Nerve impulses let nerve cells communicate with one another, by moving through the nerve fibre (or “axon”). Past research has hypothesised nerve impulses move not only as electric signals, but also as sound waves which humans can’t hear. We also believe this is the case.

Sound and vibrations can both move through human skin, bones and tissue without causing damage. This is how medical ultrasound imaging is done. “Ultrasound” simply refers to sound waves with frequencies higher than humans’ upper audible limit.

Read more: Five amazing ultrasound inventions set to change the world (and not a pregnancy scan in sight)

Sound waves can also form “solitons”. These are waves that move for long distances and pass by each other without any deformation occurring. They keep their shape. Water waves in canals can move as solitons, as this video shows.

However, it’s hard to detect solitons in human nerves. That’s why researchers instead investigate them in the nerves of earthworms, which are an effective model.

Could ultrasound vibrations transmit thoughts?

If future research is able to confirm nerve impulses do, in fact, move through nerve fibres as solitons, our finding of Faraday waves in vibrating worms becomes significantly more important.

This may indicate potential to produce and modify nerve impulses in the brain. By externally generating ultrasound waves at different frequencies, such as on a mobile device, for instance, we may be able to trigger Faraday waves in the brain’s tissues.

We think these should then interact with the brain’s nerve impulses and activate certain signals corresponding to “thoughts”.

If the nerve impulses travel through the brain as solitons, they would keep their form throughout the process. And this would ensure the transmitted “thought” remains consistent until it’s processed by the brain.

The above process would equate to “programming” human thoughts.

The potential for brain-computer interfaces

There have been numerous attempts to link the human brain with computers. A growing number of high-tech companies, including Elon Musk’s Neuralink, plan to implant needle electrodes into human brains to achieve this.

This would allow the transmission of knowledge — for example, how to fly a helicopter or speak a foreign language — from a computer directly to a person’s brain in mere minutes. Of course, we’re still a long way off from knowing how to actually do something this complex.

However, this approach is very invasive and poses significant health risks, such as inflammation of the brain tissue or brain damage.

We believe our results, pending further detailed research, may help create a safer, sound-based link between the human brain and computers — one that works without unsafe needle electrodes.

Recently, solitons in optical fibres were used to achieve world record-high data transmission. Therefore, nerve signals moving as solitons should be able to help transmit high data rates to the human brain.

What happens now?

At present, we can’t claim we have solid scientific evidence Faraday waves can interact with natural nerve impulses in earthworms.

That said, our models suggest there should be a strong interaction between the two waves when the frequency of the Faraday wave oscillations coincides with the frequency of the nerve impulses.

No current models can predict exactly which frequencies are needed to allow this interaction. We’d have to conduct many, many trial and error tests to potentially find this out.

So far, we have pitched our ideas to several neurobiology research communities and have received positive feedback overall. Eventually, we hope our work could be useful to high-tech companies, as well as our colleagues investigating similar questions.

But for now, it continues.

Read more: Remote control for brain cells: scientists use ultrasound waves to activate neurons

– ref. We vibrated earthworms to learn about safely connecting human brains to computers – https://theconversation.com/we-vibrated-earthworms-to-learn-about-safely-connecting-human-brains-to-computers-148313

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Evita March, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Federation University Australia

Humans are curious and social creatures by nature. The news helps us make sense of the world around us and connects us with our local, national and international community. So it’s no wonder we’re drawn to it.

Objective, legitimate news also keeps us informed, empowering us with knowledge to make balanced decisions.

But the way we consume news has been profoundly altered by media developments. As news outlets have adapted to media trends, the way people watch, read and listen to news has changed. And these changes aren’t without consequences.

The way we consume news matters

The increase of online news, particularly when presented via social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, has affected how we access and consume our news.

When news was delivered via traditional one-way outlets such as television and radio, we were passive receivers. But on social media platforms, we’re active consumers. We sculpt and cultivate our news through immediate feedback, such as reacts or shares.

There’s evidence this might not be especially good for us.

Read more: Australians are less interested in news and consume less of it compared to other countries, survey finds

Amid an unfolding crisis such as a pandemic, news presented via one-way outlets might be less damaging than news consumed online. In early months of COVID-19, researchers found news consumed online and via social media was associated with increased depression, anxiety and stress. The effects weren’t as bad when news was consumed via traditional media such as television and newspapers.

This isn’t limited to the pandemic. After the September 11 attacks, young people who consumed news via online sources experienced more PTSD symptoms than those using traditional media. This effect was attributed to more graphic images online, and the possibility for extra exposure as people could watch the footage repeatedly.

Where do we source news?

In an average week, more Australian news consumers source their news online (53%) than via print (25%). But perhaps surprisingly, television is still the most popular mode of news consumption. This year, 63% of Australians said they watched television news in an average week. Nevertheless, we’re far more actively engaged with our news than we once were.

Access to news is also radically different. The ability to consume news 24/7, via an almost endless variety of sources, has prompted experts to encourage us to moderate our news consumption.

Our bad news bias — not good news for our well-being

During times of crisis, we’re more drawn to news. In fact, Australians’ consumption of news significantly increased in 2020. During the 2019–20 bushfires, the percentage of heavy news consumers (people who consume news more than once a day) increased from 52% to 56%, and increased to 70% during the COVID-19 pandemic peak.

Read more: Twitter’s plan to help young people not get too overwhelmed by bad news doesn’t go far enough

Unfortunately, the impact of news on our well-being is also particularly salient during a time of crisis. Multiple studies have found the more we consume news during or after a tragedy, crisis or natural disaster, the more likely we are to develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Why are we so interested in bad news, anyway? University of Queensland psychologist Roy F. Baumeister and his colleagues have noted bad is stronger than good. Humans have a “negativity bias”, whereby we pay more attention to negative information than positive.

“If it bleeds, it leads”

Journalists are said to capitalise on our negative bias to capture our attention. Some news sources have learned this lesson the hard way. When a city reporter from an online Russian news website decided only to report good news for a day, they lost two-thirds of their readers.

The problem is, this negativity bias in the news can make the world appear worse than it truly is.

The repeated presentation of information can create cognitive distortions, meaning we’re likely to interpret newsworthy problems, like violent crime, as more prevalent than they really are.

This negativity bias might also explain the tendency to focus on ‘doom and gloom’ stories on social media, referred to as doomscrolling.

Research published this year showed when we perceive the daily news as negative, we can feel less positive overall. So it’s no wonder increased news consumption can impact our well-being.

Read more: Google News favours mainstream media. Even if it pays for Australian content, will local outlets fall further behind?

Those who use social media largely for news, instead of social networking, show increased anxiety and depression. These results highlight the importance of being strategic about how you use social media, particularly during times of crisis.

How can we take control of our news consumption?

First, it’s important to be aware your news consumption via different sources can look very different. Traditional media tends to focus on the facts, whereas stories, rumours, and human interest pieces are prioritised on social media.

Empower yourself with the knowledge that, as humans, we are subject to bias. The media and those producing the news know this. These biases, which make us wonderfully human, also make us wonderfully biased to the information we receive.

Our biases mean we’re more likely to be impacted by negative news and more likely to believe what we see is more prevalent than it truly is.

Read more: How fake news gets into our minds, and what you can do to resist it

That’s certainly not to say no news is good news. News is powerful, and helps us stay connected and informed. But in a world where we’re surrounded by news 24/7, it is important we are aware of our cognitive biases and the distortions they create. Let’s take control of our news consumption rather than allowing it to control us.

– ref. When too much news is bad news: is the way we consume news detrimental to our health? – https://theconversation.com/when-too-much-news-is-bad-news-is-the-way-we-consume-news-detrimental-to-our-health-146568

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Zena Cumpston, Research Fellow, University of Melbourne

Over countless millennia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have harnessed the tremendous potential of plants, ingeniously using them for medicines, nutrition, to express our culture and to develop innovative technologies.

But as I learn more about First Peoples’ plant knowledge, I’m also better understanding the broader Australian community’s failure to recognise the depth and breadth of our expertise.

Aboriginal people, our culture and deep knowledges are often seen as “in the past”, fixed and stagnant.

Damaging perceptions which cast us as lesser and posit us as a homogenous peoples, who were limping towards inevitable extinction before the arrival of a “superior” race, still abound. Such tropes deny our dynamic place in the present day, and our ability to continuously adapt and innovate.

Below I’ve listed five of my favourite indigenous plants and the multiple ways Aboriginal people used them, and continue to do so.

Read more: To address the ecological crisis, Aboriginal peoples must be restored as custodians of Country

These plants are examples from my recent publication exploring Aboriginal plant use, and highlight our deep knowledge and holistic approaches to ecological management.

1. Spiny-headed mat-rush (Lomandra longifolia)

Spiny-headed mat-rush is a large tussocky plant found throughout southeastern Australia.

The Wurundjeri people particularly favour this plant for weaving cultural items such as necklaces, headbands, girdles, baskets, mats and bags for carrying foods, as well as for making technologies such as eel traps and hunting nets.

Its seeds are high in protein. They can be collected and pounded into a bread mix, with the core of the plant and the base of the leaves eaten as a vegetable.

Many diverse Aboriginal peoples use the roots to treat bites and stings. The caterpillars of several butterflies, such as the Symmomus Skipper, also rely on this plant for food and habitat.

2. Wallaby grass

There are around 30 types of wallaby grass in Australia. Native grasslands were once the most extensive habitat of Victoria’s western plains, but are now the most endangered plant community.

Grasslands provide food and habitat for a huge diversity of fauna, particularly birds, such as the peregrine falcon, whistling kite and Australian kestrels. Many animals, such as the legless lizard, little whip snake and fat-tailed dunnart, were once commonplace, but are now scarce in this endangered ecosystem.

Wallaby grass seeds make an excellent bread by pounding them into flour. The leaves and stem are also used to make cultural items, such as nets for fishing and hunting.

It’s also incredibly hardy – highly tolerant to frost, heat and drought, and requiring no fertilisers and little water. And it makes an excellent lawn, controlling erosion and weeds.

3. Bulbine lily (Bulbine bulbosa)

In summer, bulbine lily dies back to a dormant bulb, before re-shooting in late autumn. In spring, it displays vibrant yellow flowers.

Bulbine lilies can be found in all states except Western Australia, growing wild in tandem with milkmaids and chocolate lilies in the few areas of Victoria’s undisturbed remnant vegetation.

It’s considered the sweetest tasting of all edible root plants and is available year-round. You can find a plump, round, cream-coloured storage organ (a type of underground stem) under its stalk, which can be eaten after being roasted. Bulbine lily is also nutritious, a good source of calcium and iron.

4. Black kurrajong (Brachychiton populneus)

Aboriginal peoples from many diverse groups favour the fibrous kurrajong bark for making string for fishing lines, nets and bags, as well as body adornments such as headbands.

Flowers turn to fruit in the form of leathery pods. These pods contain highly nutritious yellow seeds, which contain around 18% protein and 25% fat, and high levels of magnesium and zinc.

To eat the seeds, you first must remove toxic yellow hairs surrounding them. They can be eaten raw and roasted, and have a pleasantly nutty flavour. The young roots of this tree also make an excellent food source and can provide water.

5. Black sheoak (Allocasuarina littoralis)

Favouring dry conditions, black sheoak is native to Queensland, Tasmania, NSW and Victoria, and can grow up to eight metres high. It flowers in spring, with either rusty-brown spikes or red flowers that develop into cones.

Its seeds are an important food source for many native birds, including parrots and cockatoos.

Diverse groups of Aboriginal peoples use sheoaks for various purposes. The shoots and cones can be eaten, and sheoak wood can be used to fashion boomerangs, shields, clubs and other cultural implements because the wood is both strong and resists splitting and chipping.

In fact, the earliest evidence of boomerangs, found in the Wyrie Swamp in South Australia, were made from various sheoak species, and were dated at 10,000 years old.

Read more: The art of healing: five medicinal plants used by Aboriginal Australians

– ref. Food, tools and medicine: 5 native plants that illuminate deep Aboriginal knowledge – https://theconversation.com/food-tools-and-medicine-5-native-plants-that-illuminate-deep-aboriginal-knowledge-145240

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Gildersleeve, Associate Professor of English Literature, University of Southern Queensland

A small group of novels are famous for their first lines: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851) and Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1877). Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (1938), belongs to this elite collection. Its opening line perfectly encapsulates the narrative’s core theme.

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again,” the book begins — though it is not Rebecca who speaks.

This is the strange paradox of Du Maurier’s novel: its characters are doomed to refer (and defer) endlessly to Rebecca, who “always” did things, perfectly and elegantly, a certain way, while Rebecca herself never appears.

Read more: Newly discovered Du Maurier poems shed light on a talented writer honing her craft

Two ghosts

It is the novel’s unnamed narrator who speaks that first line — the second Mrs de Winter, a woman perpetually in her predecessor’s shadow. She is quite simply, not Rebecca — her husband’s late first wife.

She is exceedingly young — shy, inexperienced, and under the thumb of a wealthy lady who has employed her as a travel companion.

In Monte Carlo, our narrator meets Maxim de Winter, a tall, dark and handsome aristocrat, recently widowed. He swiftly rescues her from drudgery, proposes marriage, and takes her back to England to live in his beautiful and ancient estate, Manderley.

The dual spectres of Rebecca and Manderley haunt de Winter and his bride but the circularity of the narrative makes escape impossible.

The novel begins at the narrative’s end, retelling the events leading to the couple’s nomadic life. Retrospection taints the novel with a pervasive sense of inevitable doom and a desperate sympathy for the naïve young narrator. Now, night after night, she must dream of Manderley again — of its beauty, to be sure, but also, too, of its oppressiveness.

The name “Rebecca” means to tie or to bind, a further allusion to the first Mrs de Winter’s stranglehold on her home and its inhabitants even after her death. She is imprinted on the house and on its (housekeeper, the silent and sinister Mrs Danvers, whose passionate obsession with her former employer is echoed in Carol Ann Duffy’s poem, Warming Her Pearls (1987).

Mrs Danvers’ snide comments constitute Rebecca’s continuing manipulations, even beyond the grave.

When Manderley hosts an annual costume ball, for instance, the second Mrs de Winter is anxious to impress her new husband and his guests. Mrs Danvers encourages her to dress as Caroline de Winter, one of her husband’s ancestors, whose imposing portrait graces the mansion’s hall.

But when she makes her grand entrance, her husband angrily orders her to change. Rebecca had worn an identical costume the year before. Mrs Danvers’ goal of humiliation is achieved.

A limited perspective

The novel’s use of first-person narration in some ways limits us to the inexperienced worldview of the young narrator.

She stands in for the hordes of young women of the interwar period, their families lost to the war while these young women were left to navigate the world unchaperoned and alone, without interested parties available to approve or consider their choice of husband.

But the reader does come to understand the narrator’s naivety, and to see what she does not see, with increasing anxiety for her safety.

While she cannot see beyond Maxim’s charm, or conceptualise Mrs Danvers’ obsession with Rebecca, the reader looks on helplessly as she experiences what we now recognise as “gaslighting”.

Read more: Explainer: what does ‘gaslighting’ mean?

Rebecca can be recognised as part of the genre of the “female gothic”, critic Ellen Moers’ term for works that derive their terror from women’s domestic entrapment and manipulation, as in the Bluebeard folktale.

Female gothic narratives seek to expose the psychological manipulations and abuse of power disguised as romance. This alone explains the narrator’s continued sympathy for her “wronged” husband, even at the novel’s end.

This use of the female gothic also constitutes a critique of the novel’s source text: Du Maurier’s Rebecca is a reimagining of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1847), in which Jane is disturbed by the looming presence of Mr Rochester’s first wife, the infamous “madwoman in the attic”.

Whereas Jane’s ultimate devotion to her husband is celebrated in that novel, Du Maurier encourages her reader to recognise her narrator’s powerlessness

Read more: Emily Brontë’s fierce, flawed women: not your usual Gothic female characters

Birds, horror and adaptation

Du Maurier’s writing has always lent itself to cinematic adaptation, particularly as horror. Perhaps most famously, Alfred Hitchcock adapted her short story to make The Birds, his 1963 film, while Nicholas Roeg’s adaptation of her story Don’t Look Now (1971) was screened in 1973.

Rebecca’s psychological suspense drew Hitchcock’s attention, and he swiftly adapted it as a film, released in 1940 starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine.

Hitchcock’s Rebecca won the Academy Award for Best Picture that same year. It also spawned a range of commercial products such as the “Rebecca Luxury Wardrobe” and the “Rebecca Makeup Kit”, one of the first films to do so.

Read more: Psycho turns 60 – Hitchcock’s famous fright film broke all the rules

Strangely, however, these beauty and fashion products were all associated with Rebecca, a woman who never appears on screen.

Hitchcock’s adaptation diverges from Du Maurier’s novel at its conclusion and in the way in which each narrative explains Rebecca’s death. Whereas Du Maurier lays a foundation for Maxim’s capacity for violence, Hitchcock positions him, like the narrator, as a victim of Rebecca’s cruel manipulations.

A new Netflix adaptation of Rebecca stars Lily James, Armie Hammer and Kristen Scott Thomas. This follows recent adaptations of Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House (2018) and its second season, The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020), a reworking of Henry James’ The Turn of The Screw (1898).

Together, these constitute a series of gothic hauntings that draw attention not only to the psychological trauma inherent in those earlier works, but the way in which that trauma and its terrors are profoundly gendered.

Rebecca’s capacity to haunt the second Mrs de Winter, Mrs Danvers’ maintenance of her place in Manderley, Maxim’s power over his new bride, and the narrator’s cowing acceptance of all of this, point to the gendered power structures of both the gothic and the marriage plot.

Rebecca screens on Netflix from October 21.

– ref. Guide to the classics: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier — gender, gothic haunting and gaslighting – https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-rebecca-by-daphne-du-maurier-gender-gothic-haunting-and-gaslighting-146573

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jack Vowles, Professor of Political Science, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

As the dust begins to settle after the 2020 election, a new electoral landscape becomes visible. It is remarkably different from the one before.

One way to put this in perspective is by measuring what we call “vote volatility” — the net vote shift between parties from one election to the next. By this calculation the 2020 election has ended a period of relative stability.

More significantly, unless reduced after the final count, the net vote shift will be the biggest in over a century.

The challenge will be for Labour to capitalise on this landmark in New Zealand electoral history — before the wheel inevitably turns again.

The first Labour landslide

Vote volatility is calculated by adding the absolute changes in parties’ vote shares between elections, then dividing the sum by two. A score of 0 would mean parties all received the same vote shares as before. A score of 100 would mean a complete replacement of one set of parties by another.

Over the past century, New Zealand has had four elections in which net vote shifts have been well above the norm: 1919, 1935, 2005 and now 2020.

In 1919, the Labour Party broke through into the city electorates and destroyed an embryonic two-party system that had pitched the Reform Party against the Liberal Party at the 1911 and 1914 elections. This turned elections into three-way races, with Labour winning mostly major urban seats, the Liberals doing better in the provincial towns and cities, and Reform in the countryside.

Read more: Labour’s single-party majority is not a failure of MMP, it is a sign NZ’s electoral system is working

In 1935, in a massive electoral landslide, Michael Joseph Savage’s Labour advanced further, forming its first government. Three conservative parties merged to form the National Party, ushering in New Zealand’s second two-party system.

That lasted much longer, but began to decay as early as the 1950s. At the 1984 election, net vote shifts were higher than at any election since 1938. However, the first-past-the-post system had prevented the emergence of a multi-party system from the 1970s onwards.

An end to vote stability

An upward vote volatility trend, beginning as long ago as the 1960s, continued after the introduction of MMP. Through the 1996, 1999 and 2002 elections, it reached a peak in 2005. After that, votes moved back in the direction of Labour and National.

As the pattern seemed to persist it led some observers to wonder whether the multi-party politics promised by MMP was a “mirage”.

ACT became a one-seat party, its Epsom electorate strategically gifted from National. New Zealand First dropped out of parliament in 2008, but returned in 2011. Only the Green Party prospered from one election to the next, eating into Labour’s vote share as the party languished in opposition during the John Key years.

Despite the change of government in 2008, vote shifts were modest, a pattern repeated in 2011. Indeed, in 2014 net vote shifts were the second lowest of any election over the previous century, only slightly higher than those of the “no change” election of 1963.

Read more: With a mandate to govern New Zealand alone, Labour must now decide what it really stands for

In 2017, Jacinda Ardern’s Labour took office, reflecting a real shift to the left, but relying on New Zealand First’s coalition choice more than the movement of votes (which was not enough for a left majority). It seemed party politics under MMP had stabilised after a brief period of experimentation that ended after the 2005 election.

The 2020 election breaks the mould. If the pattern holds after the counting of special votes, it will surpass even 1935, New Zealand’s hitherto most dramatic realigning election.

Moreover, turnout was up, another indicator of a big change. This was despite a widely predicted Labour win and a big margin between Labour and National in pre-election polls — expectation of a decisive result usually pulls turnout down.

The challenge to create a legacy

One might dismiss this as a one-off. COVID-19 and the government response created a perfect storm. When the crisis is over, things will return to normal.

But one could have said the same thing in 1935. The depression of the 1930s gave Labour the chance to win. Even if the economic recovery that followed was only partly an effect of Labour policy, the party reaped the rewards in 1938.

Like Michael Joseph Savage before her, Jacinda Ardern has demonstrated the leadership demanded by the times. But there is a difference. Labour in 1935 came to power with a big promise of a welfare state. Labour in 2020 has made no big promises, although many smaller ones. It faces huge challenges, arguably much more demanding than those of the 1930s.

Read more: Jacinda Ardern and Labour returned in a landslide — 5 experts on a historic New Zealand election

COVID-19 and a sustainable economic recovery will be the first priorities. Climate change, increased international tension, trade wars, internal cultural diversity and working through ongoing responsibilities under the Treaty of Waitangi — all of these will test the mettle of the Ardern government.

The 2020 election tells us the New Zealand party system is more prone to big shifts than expected after 2005. Periods of apparent two-party dominance may be temporary. Both Labour and National are prone to rise and fall, creating space for smaller parties to step into the gaps as they open, and fall back as they close.

The catalysts of change may be big external shocks or internal challenges. All else being equal, the 2020 election is likely to herald a period of Labour dominance, but eventually the tide will turn. Labour’s biggest challenge will be to establish a lasting policy legacy before that happens.

– ref. The 2020 NZ election saw record vote volatility — what does that mean for the next Labour government? – https://theconversation.com/the-2020-nz-election-saw-record-vote-volatility-what-does-that-mean-for-the-next-labour-government-148330