Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mehmet Ozalp, Associate Professor in Islamic Studies, Director of The Centre for Islamic Studies and Civilisation and Executive Member of Public and Contextual Theology, Charles Sturt University

Muslims are a small minority in the United States, but they may have a significant influence on the US elections. Muslim Americans, however, are often torn between the anti-Muslim rhetoric and xenophobia of President Donald Trump and the perception that Democrats undermine public morality on social issues.

According to a 2017 estimate by Pew Research Center, 3.45 million Muslims reside in the US, which is 1.1% of the total population. While this may seem small, Pew estimates Muslims will surpass the Jewish population by 2040 to become the second-largest religious bloc after Christians.

Muslim Americans mainly live in large cities. About 58% were born overseas. Another 18% were born in America to one or more parents who are first-generation migrants. About a quarter (24%) of Muslim Americans are considered native to the US.

Muslim Americans are one of the most ethnically and racially diverse groups in the United States. A large segment (41%) of Muslims identify as white, almost one-third (28%) are Asian (including South Asian), one-fifth (20%) are Black and about 8% are Hispanic.

Muslim voters face a conundrum on policies

The demographic diversity of Muslim Americans translates to a unique profile when it comes to policies. On moral and social issues, Muslims are closer to the conservative Republican Party, but on matters of cultural and religious diversity they are more in tune with the more liberal Democratic Party.

According to a congressional electoral survey, 18% of Muslim Americans identified themselves as conservative, 51% as moderate and the remaining 31% as liberal.

The same survey found 88% of Muslims support tighter controls on guns compared to 96% for Democrat voters as a whole.

A March 2020 poll by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) showed 65% of Muslims support the Black Lives Matter movement, the highest support of all religious groups in US.

The same poll found almost half of Muslim voters supported alliances with religious liberty advocates. Muslim Americans also expect to be treated with respect and be accepted as part and parcel of American nation. The Democratic Party is more likely to meet this expectation.

On the other hand, Muslim Americans do not support LGBTQ activism (55%) and are more likely than Jews and Catholics to support alliances with opponents of abortion. Muslims also see Trump as a better prospect for the economy.

So, Muslims view Republicans as hostile to Muslims on racial grounds, but see Democrats as hostile to Islamic morality and family values.

Such a position causes electoral dissonance in Muslim voters. This conundrum is partly responsible for the lower electoral registration and turnout among Muslim Americans.

As of March 2020, 78% of Muslims eligible for voting were registered to vote. Of those who are registered, 81% said they would show up on the election day. This is significantly lower than for other religious groups, such as evangelicals (92%) and Catholics (91%).

Read more: Trump has changed America by making everything about politics, and politics all about himself

Shifting patterns in Muslim voting

Over the past 20 years, Muslim Americans’ party preferences have shifted markedly. Prior to the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001, an estimated 80% of non-African-American Muslims were Republican voters, while the majority of African-American Muslims voted for the Democratic candidate Al Gore.

This voting pattern changed in the post-September 11 era, when George W. Bush’s administration and the Republican Party spearheaded the “war on terror”.

The rhetoric of the war on terror, intrusive surveillance of Muslims under the Patriot Act and military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq have created a noticeable anti-Muslim atmosphere in the US. Muslims perceived the war on terror to be a war on Islam and Muslims. As a consequence, the Muslim American vote for Bush plummeted to a mere 7% in the 2004 elections.

A significant shift by Muslim voters to the Democrats culminated in the support for Barack Obama in the 2008 elections. The same trend continued with Muslims overwhelmingly voting for Democrats in the 2016 elections, with 82% of votes going to Hillary Clinton. By 2018, Muslim support for the Republican Party was only 10%.

The March 2020 ISPU poll, however, found Muslim American voter support for Trump had increased to 30%, as Muslim voters believed Trump to be a good manager of the economy and unwilling to take part in Middle East wars.

Interestingly, the same ISPU poll showed 31% of white Muslims supported Trump as opposed to 8% of Black and Arab Muslims and 6% of Asian Muslims.

It is unclear if Trump’s poor handling of the pandemic has caused a decline in Muslim support for Trump. But two other actions of his still concern Muslim voters.

The first is the 2017 Executive Order 13769 that banned Muslims from seven countries – Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Iran, Yemen, Libya and Somalia – from entering the United States on grounds that these states were supporting terrorism. The order also indefinitely suspended entry to the US for all Syrian refugees.

The executive order came to be known as the “Muslim ban” and was criticised for targeting Muslims “because of their faith”. The ban had a huge impact on the freedom of travel for many Muslim Americans who were not citizens.

The second was the 2018 move of the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, in effect recognising Jerusalem as a Jewish capital. This infuriated Palestinians and Muslims around the world.

Yet Joe Biden is not a default choice for Muslim voters either. Muslim Americans expect Biden to make promises to review the “the watchlist” if elected. This is the US government’s terrorist screening database, which contains the names of individuals barred from boarding commercial flights. Many Muslims feel the policy unfairly targets innocent Muslims. While George Bush introduced the policy, it was extensively applied under the Obama-Biden administration.

Avoidance by both candidates of Middle East issues in the current campaign and in the presidential debates is another concerning factor for Muslim voters. They have been left unclear where the candidates stand on important foreign policy matters.

These concerns are likely to lead to a significant “Biden or no vote” or choice of a third-party candidate among Muslims voters.

This is important as the Muslim turnout could determine the outcomes in the marginal swing states of Florida, Ohio, Virginia and particularly Michigan. The estimated Muslim population in Michigan is 3%. This margin is enough to determine the result for the state where Trump edged Hillary Clinton by 0.23% of the vote in 2016.

A large Muslim turnout and support for Joe Biden may be enough to switch the colour of swing states such as Michigan to blue and hand the White House to the Democrats in the 2020 presidential election.

Read more: What might a Trump presidency mean for Muslims and the Muslim world?

– ref. Who will Muslim Americans vote for in the US elections? – https://theconversation.com/who-will-muslim-americans-vote-for-in-the-us-elections-146854

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lara Herrero, Research Leader in Virology and Infectious Disease, Griffith University

Last week we heard Queensland-based biotech company Microbio had developed a test that could, according to media reports, tell whether someone is a COVID-19 superspreader.

While this may sound like an exciting prospect, there are a few questions to answer before we know what role this test might have in managing the spread of COVID-19.

First, what is a superspreader?

It’s important to understand there’s no scientific definition of a “superspreader”.

In the context of COVID-19, the term “superspreader” has been used to describe someone who can spread the virus and cause infection in many people with minimal contact.

There are many factors thought to contribute to what makes someone a superspreader. The most talked about is infectious viral load. Put simply, this is the amount of live infectious virus a person carries.

Current thinking is that people with a higher infectious viral load are more likely to infect others, but it may not be that simple.

When a person has a COVID-19 test, the health-care worker uses a swab to collect samples from the back of the person’s nose and throat. These are the areas where the virus likes to live. The swab is then sent to a pathology lab which tests for the presence of viral genomic material.

The test returns as a positive (that is, the virus has been detected) or negative (virus not detected). There’s no indication of how much virus is present, or whether it’s replicating.

Read more: Coronavirus: superspreading events could help make COVID-19 endemic

So, back to the new test

Microbio says the newly developed InfectID-COVID-19-R test can detect “replication-competent virus”. This essentially means the test would detect the amount of active live virus a person is carrying. Researchers believe the patient is most likely to be infectious when the virus is replicating.

Like current COVID-19 tests, the test requires a sample of viral genetic material from a patient swab. The genetic material is “extracted” from the swab (termed RNA extraction). The resulting sample is put through a machine to detect an important part of the virus genome which indicates whether the virus is alive and replicating.

InfectID-COVID-19-R claims to accurately detect a virus concentration as low as 1,500 TCID50 per millilitre with 99% specificity. (TCID50 stands for tissue culture infectious dose 50% — it’s currently the accepted standard to quantify the amount of infectious SARS-CoV-2.)

This equation may be tricky to grasp, but the important part to understand is that below this threshold, the person has a lower amount of replicating virus than the test can guarantee to detect. They can’t say for certain the person has no replicating virus.

If a person records a result above the threshold, that tells scientists the virus is alive and replicating.

The suggestion is the test will be able to quantify the amount of replicating virus present in the swab. But exactly what that means — and how the test will achieve this — is uncertain.

Read more: A few superspreaders transmit the majority of coronavirus cases

Microbio’s media release is tight-lipped on a few key aspects of this test. We still don’t have answers to some questions, including:

• what part of the virus genome it is detecting, and how is this different to our current diagnostic tests?

• how does detecting this part of the virus ensure detection of replicating or “live” virus?

• how will the test results be presented? For example, will the test provide a reference range and guide on how to interpret the result?

• how can they prove that if a test comes back below the limit of detection for replicating virus that the person is not infectious?

In response to queries from The Conversation, Microbio’s chief scientific officer Flavia Huygens said the new test “targets the part of the virus’ genome that is present while it is replicating inside the human cell”, and that this target is different to existing COVID-19 tests. She added: “Our test detects the portion of the virus genome that is only present whilst the virus is replicating and hence is indicative that the virus is “live.”

Huygens also said the test has built-in references and guides for clinical laboratories to interpret the results.

It’s early days yet

Without more detail, it’s too early to tell just how useful this test will be.

Certainly, we need to know whether a low replicating viral load means a person is not infectious before using this test to make any decisions around quarantine. Research is still ongoing in this area.

The test hasn’t yet been approved for use. It has been independently validated by 360 biolabs, a clinical trial laboratory accredited by the Australian National Association of Testing Authorities. Huygens told The Conversation that Microbio is planning further validation of its test using patient samples.

More than a question of viral load

Currently we have no way to know who may be a superspreader. While this test might give us a measure of a person’s replicating viral load, this is only one piece of the puzzle.

As is the case for any virus, spreading SARS-CoV-2 requires more than just high viral load. It requires the right environmental conditions (for example, indoors and lower humidity), proximity to an infected person, and time (more time exposed means more chance of infection).

Therefore it’s more accurate to refer to “superspreading events” rather than to particular people as “superspreaders” more generally. Superspreading events are situations in which one person, aided by the ideal conditions, infects a large number of others.

With this in mind, limiting the time you spend in confined spaces (and wearing a mask if you can’t avoid a closed space), washing your hands and keeping your distance will be your best protection against COVID-19.

Read more: Why do some COVID-19 tests come back with a ‘weak positive’, and why does it matter?

– ref. Could a test really detect if someone is a COVID-19 ‘superspreader’? – https://theconversation.com/could-a-test-really-detect-if-someone-is-a-covid-19-superspreader-148627

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brett Carter, Senior lecturer, RMIT University

Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.

If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nz

I recently read an article stating the atomic bomb testing in the Pacific destroyed so much of the upper atmosphere that the US could no longer bounce communications off the atmosphere and had to deploy artificial satellites for communication. Is this true? And just how much damage did they do?

The article the question refers to doesn’t mention satellites, so let’s focus on the atmospheric damage part of the question. Indeed, surface and atmospheric (high-altitude) detonations of nuclear weapons can have short-term and long-term effects.

One short-term effect was a temporary blackout of long-distance high-frequency (HF) radio communication over the surrounding area. But this radio communication blackout was not a result of the nuclear explosions destroying the ionosphere.

Read more: Climate explained: Sunspots do affect our weather, a bit, but not as much as other things

On the contrary, the nuclear detonations temporarily increased the natural level of ionisation in the upper atmosphere.

The ionosphere and radio communication

The Earth’s ionosphere is a natural layer of charged particles at approximately 80-1,000km altitude. This ionised portion of the Earth’s upper atmosphere largely owes its existence to solar radiation, which strips electrons from neutral atoms and molecules.

The ionosphere consists of three major layers, known as D, E and F layers. The lower D and E layers typically exist only during daylight hours, while the highest F layer always exists.

These layers have distinct characteristics. The E and F layers are very reflective to HF radio waves. The D layer, on the other hand, is more like a sponge and absorbs HF waves.

In long-distance HF radio communications, the radio waves are bounced back and forth between the ionosphere and the Earth’s surface. This means you don’t need to establish a line of sight for HF radio communication.

Many applications, such as emergency services and aircraft/maritime surveillance, rely on this mode of HF radio propagation.

But this radio communication scheme only works well when there is a reflective E or F layer, and when the absorbing D layer is not dominant.

During regular daytime hours, the D layer often becomes a nuisance because it weakens radio wave intensity in the lower HF spectrum. However, by changing to higher frequencies you can regain broken communication links.

The D layer may become even more dominant when intense X-ray emissions from solar flares or energetic particles are impacting the atmosphere. The absorbing D layer then breaks any HF communication links that traverse it.

Bomb blasts and the ionosphere

Nuclear detonations also produce X-ray radiation, which leads to additional ionisation in all layers of the ionosphere. This makes the F layer more reflective to HF radio waves, but, alas, the D layer also becomes more absorptive.

This makes it difficult to bounce radio waves off the ionosphere for long-distance communication soon after a nuclear explosion, even though the ionosphere stays intact.

Beyond additional ionisation, shock waves from nuclear detonations produce waves and ripples in the upper atmosphere called “atmospheric gravity waves” (AGWs).

These waves travel in all directions, even reaching the ionosphere where they cause what are known as “travelling ionospheric disturbances” (TIDs), which can be observed for thousands of kilometres.

Other atmospheric disturbances

Bomb blasts are not the only things that cause disturbances in the atmosphere.

In September 1979, there were reports of bright flashes of light off the South African coast, igniting theories South Africa had nuclear weapon capabilities.

Analysis of ionospheric data from the Arecibo Observatory, in Puerto Rico, confirmed the presence of waves in the ionosphere that corroborated the theory of an atmospheric detonation. But whether the detonation was artificial or natural could not be determined.

The reason for the ambiguity is that meteor explosions and nuclear detonations in the atmosphere both generate AGWs with similar characteristics.

The 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor explosion in Russia generated waves in the ionosphere that were detected all across Europe, and as far away as the United Kingdom.

Volcanic eruptions, such at the 1980 Mount St Helens eruption in the US, and large earthquakes, such as the 2011 Tohoku earthquake in Japan, are other examples of energetic processes at the ground impacting the upper atmosphere.

Another well-known source of ionospheric disturbances is the geomagnetic storm, typically caused by coronal mass ejections from the Sun or solar wind disturbances impacting Earth’s magnetosphere.

Satellites as backup

In summary, nuclear detonations can impact the upper atmosphere in many ways, as do many other non-nuclear terrestrial and solar events that carry enormous energy. But the damage (so to speak) isn’t permanent.

Read more: Climate explained: how volcanoes influence climate and how their emissions compare to what we produce

Did the impact of these nuclear tests on the ionosphere specifically lead to the immediate launch of communications satellites? Not directly, because the impacts were temporary.

But in the Cold War setting, the potential for adversaries to even briefly interrupt over-the-horizon communications would certainly have been a motivating factor in developing communications satellites as backup.

– ref. Climate explained: did atomic bomb tests damage our upper atmosphere? – https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-did-atomic-bomb-tests-damage-our-upper-atmosphere-146760

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Mathews, Professor, School of Law, Queensland University of Technology

Book review: Witness, by Louise Milligan (Hachette).

Louise Milligan’s new book, Witness, is an excoriating critique of the failures of the criminal justice system in sexual assault trials.

Informed by Milligan’s two decades of experience as an investigative journalist, including her specialist work as a court reporter and her sustained coverage of the trials of George Pell, her analysis is enriched by in-depth interviews with prosecutors, defence counsel, solicitors, judges and academics.

Witness is both a gripping revelation of rarely-heard experts’ opinions about the realities and flaws of criminal procedure, and a devastating critique of the system.

The book is further inspired by detailed consideration of the experience of complainants in two high-profile cases, which Milligan had previously covered in Sydney and Melbourne.

These include Saxon Mullins, a young woman who was the complainant in a rape case that involved two trials, two appeals, and judicial errors. Her experience influenced a Law Reform Commission inquiry into the law of consent. She is now working with criminologists and advocates to develop minimum standards in rape laws to better define consent.

Read more: Australian law doesn’t go far enough to legislate affirmative consent. NSW now has a chance to get it right

Also examined in detail is the case of former St Kevin’s student Paris Street, who allowed Milligan to reproduce a letter he wrote about his experience of being cross-examined at the age of 15.

Witness is informed, too, by Milligan’s own experience of being cross-examined as a witness in the 2018 committal hearing of Cardinal George Pell. Here Milligan displays courage in divulging the personal toll taken.

“You don’t sleep the night before that first day in court …” she writes. “You vomit … Your mind spins … You cry …”

Her visceral description of the attempted destruction of her own character and credibility in cross-examination testifies to the brutality of many witnesses’ encounters with the criminal trial process.

Read more: Media Files: Investigative reporter Louise Milligan on Cardinal Pell and redactions in the Royal Commission’s report

Victims’ trauma

Witness recognises that for many complainants, their experience of the criminal justice system is traumatic. Through multiple case studies of cross-examination, centring mostly on cases in Victoria and NSW, Milligan demonstrates the best known dimension of this brutality, laying bare the chasm between complainants’ expectations of the system, and the reality of its operation.

Complainants, she shows, are stunned to realise the trial process is not about establishing truth. Often, they feel they are on trial.

Milligan recognises this experience is only partly due to the adversarial criminal justice system being centred neither on the complainant, nor on truth. Our system enables prosecution by the state: the complainant is simply a witness, subject to rules of evidence and procedure.

Core doctrines protecting the accused exist to prevent state abuse of power. This systemic environment is overlaid by features of sexual assault trials, which often turn on the complainant’s credibility and word against that of the accused.

Read more: Pell decision: why sexual offence trials often result in acquittal, even with credible witnesses

Milligan’s book is balanced. Neither she, nor her interviewees object to principles of presumed innocence until proven guilty, or the standard of proof. She accepts counsel’s obligation to strongly defend their client, but focuses on the professional ethic of choice in how this is achieved.

Crucially, Witness emphasises that many defence counsel do treat complainants with dignity and respect, and still defend their client admirably.

But at the book’s core is a justified sense of outrage at those who choose to treat complainants and witnesses with a hostility causing its own trauma; a special kind of systemic abuse.

Tactical shifts and empathy deficits

The interviews in Witness trace fascinating shifts in professional culture. Milligan identifies a change in defence cross-examination tactics from the outright aggression of the past. One interviewee admits “there was a time when you’d just try and eviscerate [the complainant]. And I don’t think juries are impressed by that now.”

Still, Milligan finds much room for improvement. Several defence counsel reveal they changed their approach — not because they have greater understanding about the nature of sexual assault and trauma, or empathy for the complainant, but because it was no longer effective for their client.

Others, still reliant on aggression, rationalise their approach as simply doing their job, to “ask the hard questions”. However, Milligan suggests this is simply a disingenuous cloak for cruelty, starkly contrasting it with defence counsel who do a brilliant job without brutalising victims.

Elsewhere in Witness, she charts the historic male dominance of the legal profession and the limits this places on the capacity for change.

A particularly striking dimension of Witness is its revelation that the adversarial system is brutal for legal practitioners, too.

Milligan’s interviews elicit numerous admissions of excessive drinking to cope with the stress, including the trauma of having to try to break down complainants.

One lawyer describes this activity as requiring “a complete separation of self”.

Milligan’s experience

Milligan’s account of her own cross-examination in the Pell committal by Robert Richter QC is exhaustive and compelling. Reflecting on the experience, she repeatedly references the Evidence Act s 41, which imposes a duty on the court to disallow improper questions and improper questioning, including questions that are intimidating or humiliating, or are asked in an insulting way.

Yet, it is clear she felt insufficiently protected by this section of the Act, and by other laws giving the court control over how witnesses should be questioned.

Virtually every question was asked, she writes, in a belittling or insulting way. By the end of the day, she “had never felt more alone”, despite all her experience, preparation, and team of lawyers. What hope do complainants have, she asks, who lack these resources, and were already traumatised?

An argument for change

Witness eloquently affirms how the criminal justice system is maladapted to meet the needs of complainants.

The system is broken. For sex crimes, rates of complaints, prosecutions, and convictions are persistently low.

Read more: Queensland rape law ‘loophole’ could remain after review ignores concerns about rape myths and consent

Knowing the brutal experience awaiting them, victims often do not complain, or withdraw from proceeding, undermining the rule of law. Because these are qualitatively different kinds of cases, leaders in the field have long argued that sexual assault trials require more fundamental changes.

Yet, even without more radical change, Witness insists a minimum acceptable standard of professional practice – treating witnesses with dignity and respect – is required and achievable, without compromising fair trial rights.

Protections against humiliating treatment of witnesses need to be properly enforced by judges and prosecutors. As one QC admits to Milligan, reforms about judicial directions and improper questioning “don’t mean anything if the prosecutor doesn’t intervene and the judge or magistrate isn’t in control of the courtroom”.

Milligan also suggests complainants would benefit from an expert advisor to assist them in navigating the system, and to protect against unduly intimidatory tactics.

This suggestion is supported by many of her interviewees, including both prosecutors and defence counsel.

Having interviewed so many witnesses, having borne witness to these trials, and having been a witness herself, Milligan is uniquely placed to reflect on the process.

She challenges legal practitioners to be part of the problem, or part of the solution. With Witness, a triumph of intellect and empathy, Milligan has chosen to be part of the solution.

– ref. Review: Louise Milligan’s Witness is a devastating critique of the criminal trial process – https://theconversation.com/review-louise-milligans-witness-is-a-devastating-critique-of-the-criminal-trial-process-148334

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Mathews, Professor Emeritus, Macquarie Business School, Macquarie University

Australia doesn’t yet export renewable energy. But the writing is on the wall: demand for Australia’s fossil fuel exports is likely to dwindle soon, and we must replace it at massive scale.

The proposed Asian Australian Renewable Energy Hub (AREH) will be a huge step forward. It would eventually comprise 26,000 megawatts (MW) of wind and solar energy, generated in Western Australia’s Pilbara region. Once complete, it would be Australia’s biggest renewable energy development, and potentially the largest of its type in the world.

Late last week, the federal government granted AREH “major project” status, meaning it will be fast-tracked through the approvals process. And in another significant step, the WA government this month gave environmental approval for the project’s first stage.

The mega-venture still faces sizeable challenges. But it promises to be a game-changer for Australia’s lucrative energy export business and will reshape the local renewables sector.

Writing on the wall

Australia’s coal and gas exports have been growing for decades, and in 2019-20 reached almost A$110 billion. Much of this energy has fuelled Asia’s rapid growth. However, in recent weeks, two of Australia’s largest Asian energy markets announced big moves away from fossil fuels.

China adopted a target of net-zero greenhouse emissions by 2060. Japan will retire its fleet of old coal-fired generation by 2030, and will introduce legally binding targets to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

There are signs other Asian nations are also moving. Singapore has weak climate targets, but on Monday inked a deal with Australia to cooperate on low-emissions technologies.

Export evolution

The Asian Renewable Energy Hub (AREH) would be built across 6,500 square kilometres in the East Pilbara. The first stage involves a 10,000MW wind farm plus 5,000MW of solar generation – which the federal government says would make it the world’s largest wind and solar electricity plant.

The first stage would be capable of generating 100 terawatt-hours of renewable electricity each year. That equates to about 40% of Australia’s total electricity generation in 2019. AREH recently expanded its longer term plans to 26,000MW.

The project is backed by a consortium of global renewables developers. Most energy from AREH will be used to produce green hydrogen and ammonia to be used both domestically, and for shipping to export markets. Some energy from AREH will also be exported as electricity, carried by an undersea electrical cable.

Another Australian project is also seeking to export renewable power to Asia. The 10-gigawatt Sun Cable project, backed by tech entrepreneur Mike Cannon-Brookes, involves a solar farm across 15,000 hectares near Tennant Creek, in the Northern Territory. Power generated will supply Darwin and be exported to Singapore via a 3,800km electrical cable along the sea floor.

Read more: It might sound ‘batshit insane’ but Australia could soon export sunshine to Asia via a 3,800km cable

The export markets for both AREH and Sun Cable are there. For example, both South Korea and Japan have indicated strong interest in Australia’s green hydrogen to decarbonise their economies and secure energy supplies.

But we should not underestimate the obstacles standing in the way of the projects. Both will require massive investment. Sun Cable, for example, will cost an estimated A$20 billion to build. The Asian Renewable Energy Hub will reportedly require as much as A$50 billion.

The projects are also at the cutting edge of technology, in terms of the assembly of the solar array, the wind turbines and batteries. Transport of hydrogen by ship is still at the pilot stage, and commercially unproven. And the projects must navigate complex approvals and regulatory processes, in both Australia and Asia.

But the projects have good strategic leadership, and a clear mission to put Australian green energy exports on the map.

Shifting winds

Together, the AREH and Sun Cable projects do not yet make a trend. But they clearly indicate a shift in mindset on the part of investors.

The projects promise enormous clean development opportunities for Australia’s north, and will create thousands of jobs in Australia – especially in high-tech manufacturing. As we look to rebuild the economy after the COVID-19 pandemic, such stimulus will be key. All up, AREH is expected to support more than 20,000 jobs during a decade of construction, and 3,000 jobs when fully operating.

To make smart policies and investments, the federal government must have a clear view of the future global economy. Patterns of energy consumption in Asia are shifting away from fossil fuels, and Australia’s exports must move with them.

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

– ref. Super-charged: Australia’s biggest renewables project will change the energy game – https://theconversation.com/super-charged-australias-biggest-renewables-project-will-change-the-energy-game-148348

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Brady, Research Fellow – Community Resilience, University of Melbourne

The joy Melburnians feel about coming out of lockdown is palpable, but another thread is also emerging: if you don’t live in Melbourne and haven’t experienced what we’ve experienced, you can’t actually understand what we’ve been through.

COVID has affected all Australians, but these last few months have been different for us.

Research on collective trauma and community recovery after disaster and upheaval tells us this is common in groups that have faced terrible or challenging experiences together.

If you’re in Melbourne, there are many ways to help yourself and those near you as we emerge from this gruelling period. If you’re outside Melbourne, you can and should support your Melbourne mates — but there are a few things to avoid.

Was Melbourne lockdown really a case of collective trauma?

Collective trauma events are not just disasters; they also have community-wide effects, and challenge people’s understanding of the way the world works.

Collective trauma events are typically thought of as tragedies such as the Lindt Cafe siege in 2014, the Christchurch Mosque shootings in 2019 or the events at Dream World in 2016. But I’d argue the strain of the last months in Melbourne have been experienced as a type of collective trauma event.

This view is informed by my research into disaster recovery, my work as a senior practitioner at Australian Red Cross, workplace seminars I have conducted during the pandemic, and my own experience living in Melbourne through this.

Collective trauma can have direct and indirect impacts. In the pandemic, direct impacts might be bereavement, the effect on your health, employment, education and access to services. Indirect impacts can be much harder to get your head around. They include changes to your worldview, your relationships, and how you see yourself.

For example in pre-pandemic times you may have been in a very equal relationship where domestic duties were evenly shared — but in lockdown, maybe one partner shouldered a bigger burden of childcare and housework, or was under more pressure at work. These stressors can throw the relationship out of whack and have a long term impact.

People who lived alone during lockdown may have watched their relationships change and might wonder if things can go back to how they were.

Read more: Collective trauma is real, and could hamper Australian communities’ bushfire recovery

In the first wave, there was a sense of “if we just batten down the hatches and get on with it, we will get through this.”

In the second wave, people in Victoria were confronted with a realisation that much in life is outside our control and recovery may not be linear. Instead of thinking “we just need to get through this part and then we’ll get back to how things were”, there was an unsettling day-to-day challenge of thinking, “What if this keeps happening? What if we can’t stop it? What if this changes the way I thought the world worked?”

So you had this disconnect where people outside Victoria kept saying “You’ll get through this! Once you’re on the other side things will be normal!” but, for many of us, those well-meaning cheers of encouragement didn’t line up with our actual experience.

Of course, people in other parts of the country who have been shaken in similar ways, and the restrictions Melburnians have experienced recently are faced by some people all the time. But in Melbourne, the relentlessness has been difficult to escape.

Getting support from others who lived it

We know from research that if a community has been through a challenging experience together — whether that’s bushfire, flood or some local horrific event — getting support from others who experienced it is crucial.

In my work with the Red Cross, we try to encourage people to connect with others after disasters. Just coming together to talk about what happened gives people the opportunity to feel a sense of hope, to normalise their experience and to be able to talk in a “shorthand” with others who will understand, because they went through it too. It’s a relief.

But all the things we’d normally suggest in the early stages of disaster are systemically dismantled by COVID. People have tried to stay connected online but it’s not the same. It’s tiring. It’s been harder to draw on normal points of support, which is crucial to recovery.

If you’re in Melbourne, recognise that we’ve all been through something huge and exhausting. Everyone is going to be in a different place. Try and be as patient and kind as you can with yourself and the people around you.

Dos and don’ts for people outside Melbourne

The research on collective trauma tells us if you haven’t been through the event, you’ll never quite understand. That doesn’t mean people outside Melbourne haven’t had their own experience, or can’t help.

Think about any upsetting personal experience you’ve had, such as miscarriage, divorce or the death of a parent. When someone who hasn’t experienced that specific trauma says “I know how you feel”, you might have felt misunderstood and even resentful or rageful.

You might think, “Not only do I need to explain myself and my feelings to this person — which in itself is exhausting and upsetting — I also have to find the energy to explain why what they said was wrong, even though I know they meant well”.

So over the next few weeks and months, don’t say “I know exactly how you feel” to your Melbourne friends and family. Unless you actually have been through the same thing in another setting, you don’t know how they feel. This experience was very specific.

Instead, ask “What has this been like for you?” and listen to what the person is saying. Say, “That sounds difficult. Tell me why, because I haven’t been in that situation”.

Staying open and empathetic

Research in this field talks a lot about the five mass trauma intervention principles, which are about promoting:

1) a sense of safety

2) a sense of calm

3) a sense of self-efficacy and community efficacy (belief in one’s community or one’s own ability to do something well)

4) connectedness

5) hope.

The lovely thing about these principles is they can be applied in many situations, whether that’s holding a press conference, consoling a friend or socialising with colleagues.

Good leaders promote these five things in times of crisis.

When we talk to each other as friends, try to keep those five principles in mind. Be open and empathetic in your listening.

Don’t be scared to talk to each other about how you’re feeling, and don’t be scared to ask your Melbourne friends about what happened.

But recognise that if you haven’t been through it, a good place to start could be “I can’t imagine what that was like. How can I help?”

– ref. Dear Australia, your sympathy helps, but you can’t quite understand Melbourne’s lockdown experience – https://theconversation.com/dear-australia-your-sympathy-helps-but-you-cant-quite-understand-melbournes-lockdown-experience-148900

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Walker, Adjunct Professor, School of Communications, La Trobe University

American presidential elections do not, as a rule, change the calculus much for Australian foreign policy. Elections come and go, American presidents complete their terms and business continues more or less as normal.

Even Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974 due to Watergate caused not much more than a ripple in what had been a difficult relationship between Washington and Canberra during the Whitlam era.

Gough Whitlam and his ministers had criticised US bombing campaigns in Hanoi and the North Vietnamese port city of Haiphong.

Importantly from Australia’s perspective, Gerald Ford continued Nixon’s engagement with China. This led to the normalisation of relations under Jimmy Carter in 1978.

While it would be foolish to predict the outcome of presidential elections whose results have confounded pollsters in the recent past, odds favour a change of an administration.

President Donald Trump’s blunders in the management of a pandemic are weighing heavily on both his electoral prospects and those of the Republican Party.

So, with all the caveats attached, it is reasonable to speculate about implications for Australia of a change of administration.

Read more: Trump can’t delay the election, but he can try to delegitimise it

An end to Trump’s “America First” era and its replacement by a traditionalist American foreign policy under Joe Biden, which emphasises friendships and alliances, will create new opportunities.

Importantly, a less abrasive international environment, in which America seeks to rebuild confidence in its global leadership, should be to Australia’s advantage.

Not least of the benefits would be an opportunity for Canberra to reset its relations with Beijing. This is a long-overdue project whose fulfilment has been complicated by Australia’s identification with Washington’s erratic policies coupled with Sinophobic attitudes in Canberra.

None of this is to suggest Australia should drop its legitimate criticisms of China: its human rights abuses; its cyber intrusions; its intellectual property theft; its attempts to interfere in Australian domestic politics; its flagrant disregard for criticisms of its activities in the South China Sea; its unprincipled reneging on its “one country two systems” agreements on Hong Kong, and a host of other issues.

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

Indeed, you could argue Canberra needs to be more forthright in its dealings with China in pursuit of a more distinctive foreign policy.

Early in his tenure, Prime Minister Scott Morrison showed glimmers of promise in this regard. But this proved short-lived.

In an Asialink speech in the lead-up to the 2019 Osaka G20 summit, Morrison sketched out a role for Australia in seeking to defuse tensions in the region and provide some space for itself in its foreign policy. He said:

We should not just sit back and passively await our fate in the wake of a major power contest.

The speech was regarded at the time as promising a nuanced Morrison foreign policy. But since then the Australia has not ventured far from America’s coattails.

Indeed, it might be said to have cleaved even more closely to the US alliance as China’s rise has unsettled the region.

This returns us to implications of a potential Biden administration for Australia.

It would be naive to assume tensions between Washington and Beijing will dissipate under a Biden presidency. Such is the range of issues bedevilling Sino-US relations that some rancour will persist.

Much has changed in the four years since Biden served as vice president under Barack Obama. China is richer, bigger, stronger, more assertive and seemingly more ideological. It is certainly more nationalistic.

In Xi Jinping, it has a leader who is more conspicuously and ruthlessly committed to restoring China’s greatness than his predecessors.

Gone are the days when discussion about China revolved around hopes it would become a responsible international stakeholder willing to accommodate itself to an America-dominated global order. Now the issue is whether China’s assertiveness can be hedged to avoid open conflict.

Read more: Beware the ‘cauldron of paranoia’ as China and the US slide towards a new kind of cold war

If elected, Biden will need to settle on a new formula for dealing with China that provides certainty for an anxious global community. Whether this proves possible remains to be seen.

It should also be noted that Biden’s foreign policy advisory team includes hawkish elements that will resist yielding ground to China. Biden himself has referred to China’s leader Xi as a “thug”, along with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.

On the other hand, Biden’s foreign policy realists are not burdened by an “America First” mindset. His team can be expected to take an expansive view of American foreign policy on issues like climate change, arms control and rebuilding a global trading system battered by years of neglect.

A Democrat administration would re-enter the Paris Agreement on climate change. It could also be expected to review Trump’s decision to disengage from the Trans Pacific Partnership trading bloc and it might seek to renegotiate a nuclear deal with Iran.

These would be positive developments from an Australian standpoint.

Unquestionably, re-ordering China policy will be at the top of Biden’s foreign policy priorities, and separate from the absolute domestic imperative of bringing a COVID-19 pandemic under control.

Australia should take advantage of the opportunity to explore possibilities of a less counterproductive relationship with its principal trading partner.

– ref. What would a Biden presidency mean for Australia? – https://theconversation.com/what-would-a-biden-presidency-mean-for-australia-148516

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jennifer Windt, Senior Research Fellow, Monash University

Many feel the coronavirus pandemic has changed not just our everyday lives, but also our inner mental lives. There has been talk of a mental health pandemic, but also of lockdown brain fog when we are awake, as well as reports of more frequent, vivid, and bizarre dreams when we are asleep.

We tend to think of our waking and dream lives as separate. But it is striking how deeply they are linked.

Spontaneous thought, or mind wandering, occupies up to 50% of wakefulness. Our thoughts and attention frequently drift away from what we are doing and what is happening in our immediate surroundings, with one thought following another along an associative trajectory.

Spontaneous thoughts and experiences are also pervasive in sleep. The clearest example is dreaming, which has been described as an intensified form of the mind wandering that happens when we are awake.

Considering dreaming and mind wandering together suggests the fluctuations in spontaneous experience, the natural ebb and flow of attention and somewhat erratic trajectory of thoughts continue throughout waking and sleep.

In normal circumstances, we mostly remain oblivious to the fact our minds have wandered. Most people also only rarely remember their dreams, but when awakened in the sleep laboratory can report multiple dreams per night. Like mind wandering, dreaming is also largely (with the exception of certain lucid dreams) beyond our control.

However, attention to our inner lives may be amplified at a time when control over our everyday lives is elusive.

Paying attention to your dreams when you first wake up in the morning drastically increases dream recall. And attempting to harness our thoughts and attention throughout the day can actually make us more aware of our failures, including lapses in attention. If you have been paying more attention to your spontaneous thoughts during the pandemic, you might have become more aware of what was were there all along.

Read more: Unravelling the mysteries of sleep: how the brain ‘sees’ dreams

Changes in spontaneous thought — for better or worse

If you have been sleeping more during lockdown, you are probably experiencing more early morning REM sleep. Because REM sleep is typically associated with the most vivid and complex dreams, this might lead to an increase in actual dreaming.

If you have also ditched your alarm clock, you are probably awakening directly from REM sleep, which further increases dream recall.

The pandemic has also changed what we daydream and dream about. Waking concerns about the pandemic seem paralleled by more frequent nightmares and dreams about topics such as social distancing, contagion, or personal protective equipment.

Read more: What dreams may come: why you’re having more vivid dreams during the pandemic

Some changes to our spontaneous mental lives can indicate something is amiss. Anxiety and stress are linked to increased repetitive thoughts and rumination; trouble focusing, disturbed sleep, nightmares, and unpleasant dreams, all of which seem to have increased during the pandemic.

These repetitive, sticky and non-progressive thoughts contrast with the free, meandering movement that characterises most dreams and mind wandering.

Spontaneous thought might be beneficial

The restlessness of our minds might also have a silver lining. Mind wandering certainly does compromise how well we perform tasks demanding attention. But because of their associative nature, dreams and mind wandering can also help make new connections and see familiar topics in a new light. When our minds wander, our thoughts are often drawn to the future and personal concerns.

Similarly, dreams have the tendency to weave disparate waking experiences and concerns into new and sometimes bizarre narratives. You might encounter a dream character who is a mixture of different people you have been close to at different times in your life.

Or your initially pleasant dream of visiting friends in a faraway city might morph into a nightmare about getting infected, putting your family at risk, and being pursued by the police because you are breaching lockdown.

Spontaneous thoughts in waking and sleep might help process memories and guide future planning and decision making, for example by enabling us to imagine alternative courses of action; they can also be a source of insight and creativity.

Such thoughts may also contribute to coping and emotional processing. Future-oriented mind wandering is often positive, whereas past-oriented mind wandering tends to be associated with negative moods and emotions.

A great escape

Being in the here and now is often lauded as a virtue we should aim to cultivate through mindfulness. But sometimes, distraction can be useful: Mind wandering can provide a welcome break from boring tasks, allowing us to return with refreshed attention.

Other times, distraction might just be pleasant. In our dreams, we experience alternative realities; we can travel freely and, because dreams are rich in social interactions, we can interact with people we are separated from in waking life.

Given the monotony, restrictions, and social isolation many of us are experiencing, the unruliness and unboundedness of our minds might sometimes be a great escape.

If you are interested in joining a study on mind wandering and dreaming, please email spontaneous.experiences.sr@gmail.com.

– ref. Our minds may be wandering more during the pandemic — and this can be a good thing – https://theconversation.com/our-minds-may-be-wandering-more-during-the-pandemic-and-this-can-be-a-good-thing-145764

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Dempster, Director, Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research; Professor, School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, UNSW

Water is more abundant on the Moon than we might have suspected, according to two papers published today in Nature Astronomy that confirm the presence of ice on and near the lunar surface.

It’s a boost for the prospect of extracting water from the Moon, which can help support humans, or be converted to rocket fuel, although the situation is far from simple.

The first paper, led by Casey Honiball of the University of Hawai’i, offers confirmation of the suspected discovery of water on the Moon. In previous studies, researchers had examined frequencies of absorbed radiation and identified the presence of chemicals called hydroxyl ions on the Moon.

Hydroxyl ions (OH-) are part of the water molecule H₂0, meaning water ice was a likely, but not definite, source of the hydroxyls detected. But as hydroxyl ions are found in many other compounds too, it was impossible to be sure.

The new research used a new technique and has shown that a significant proportion of those hydroxyls are indeed found within water ice molecules, possibly bound or suspended in the Moon’s surface rocks. More research is needed to deduce the precise details, but the presence of molecular water is big news.

The second paper, led by Paul Hayne of the University of Colorado, notes there are likely to be more “cold traps” containing water ice than previously estimated.

A “cold trap” is a place in permanent shadow, where ice can survive because it never receives direct sunlight, and where the temperature stays sufficiently low. Elsewhere, sunlight warms the ice, causing it to “sublime”: the Moon’s low atmospheric pressure means solid ice directly transforms into water vapour, which may refreeze somewhere else.

The study showed that at high latitudes, there were potentially very high numbers of these cold traps (possibly billions), some as small as 1cm across.

Read more: Blowin’ in the (solar) wind: how the moon got its water

How much water is on the Moon? Current estimates, based on the previous detection of hydroxyls, range from 100 million tonnes to the more recent 2.9 billion tonnes. According to the new estimate, up to 30% of some areas of the lunar surface could be ice in cold traps.

Even using the conservative price for water offered by launch company ELA of $US3,000 per kg for delivery to low Earth orbit, the water on the Moon could be worth billions of dollars a year, because water can be split into hydrogen and oxygen and used as rocket fuel. Some of our research shows how a business case can be made at low Earth orbit.

The importance of the new findings is there is now far more certainty that the water is there, and there are more widespread opportunities to find it.

Good news for ice miners?

It’s a timely discovery, because there has been a lot of activity recently, including in Australia, developing projects to extract water on the Moon. In the past two weeks alone, NASA has let a contract for an ice-mining drill, and announced the launch aboard NASA’s Space launch System (SLS), designed for deep space missions, of three small satellites looking for water. Meanwhile, the European and Chinese space agencies have announced missions to explore the lunar south pole for water.

Australia is in this game because of the Australian Space Agency’s A$150 million commitment to the Moon to Mars program. Australia also this month signed the Artemis Accords, a series of bilateral agreements between the United States and other partners to develop a legal framework for space resources.

Read more: Artemis Accords: why many countries are refusing to sign Moon exploration agreement

That may sound like great news but Australia is also a signatory of the Moon Agreement, the UN’s approach to peaceful uses of the Moon and other bodies. Some say this is inconsistent with the Artemis Accords. We have called for the Australian Space Agency to provide clarity on this issue, and hosted events to discuss it (including a solid 1.5-hour debate).

Yet Australia is now a signatory to both agreements, with no explanation as to how that is possible under international law. We need the Australian Space Agency to provide clarity about its interpretation of both instruments, as soon as possible. The urgency for this action is pressing — we are now much more certain there is water to extract on the Moon, and that the barriers to entry have been lowered. Australian companies are building capability in space resources and they need certainty to allow those businesses to grow.

– ref. Cool discovery: new studies confirm Moon has icy poles – https://theconversation.com/cool-discovery-new-studies-confirm-moon-has-icy-poles-148639

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Howard Wiseman, Director, Centre for Quantum Dynamics, Griffith University

Lasers were created 60 years ago this year, when three different laser devices were unveiled by independent laboratories in the United States. A few years later, one of these inventors called the unusual light sources “a solution seeking a problem”. Today, the laser has been applied to countless problems in science, medicine and everyday technologies, with a market of more than US$11 billion per year.

A crucial difference between lasers and traditional sources of light is the “temporal coherence” of the light beam, or just coherence. The coherence of a beam can be measured by a number C, which takes into account the fact light is both a wave and a particle.

Read more: Explainer: what is wave-particle duality

From even before lasers were created, physicists thought they knew exactly how coherent a laser could be. Now, two new studies (one by myself and colleagues in Australia, the other by a team of American physicists) have shown C can be much greater than was previously thought possible.

How coherent can a laser get?

The coherence C is roughly the number of photons (particles of light) emitted consecutively into the beam with the same phase (all waving together). For typical lasers, C is very large. Billions of photons are emitted into the beam, all waving together.

This high degree of coherence is what makes lasers suitable for high-precision applications. For example, in many quantum computers, we will need a highly coherent beam of light at a specific frequency to control a large number of qubits over a long period of time. Future quantum computers may need light sources with even greater coherence.

Read more: Explainer: quantum computation and communication technology

Physicists have long thought the maximum possible coherence of a laser was governed by an iron rule known as the Schawlow-Townes limit. It is named after the two American physicists who derived it theoretically in 1958 and went on to win Nobel prizes for their laser research. They stated that the coherence C of the beam cannot be greater than the square of N, the number of energy-excitations inside the laser itself. (These excitations could be photons, or they could be atoms in an excited state, for example.)

Raising the limit

Now, however, two theory papers have appeared that overturn the Schawlow-Townes limit by reimagining the laser. Basically, Schawlow and Townes made assumptions about how energy is added to the laser (gain) and how it is released to form the beam (loss).

The assumptions made sense at the time, and still apply to lasers built today, but they are not required by quantum mechanics. With the amazing advances that have occurred in quantum technology in the past decade or so, our imagination need not be limited by standard assumptions.

The first paper, published this week in Nature Physics, is by my group at Griffith University and a collaborator at Macquarie University. We introduced a new model, which differs from a standard laser in both gain and loss processes, for which the coherence C is as big as N to the fourth power.

In a laser containing as many photons as a regular laser, this would allow C to be much bigger than before. Moreover, we show a laser of this kind could in principle be built using the technology of superconducting qubits and circuits which is used in the currently most successful quantum computers.

Read more: Why are scientists so excited about a recently claimed quantum computing milestone?

The second paper, by a team at the University of Pittsburgh, has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal but recently appeared on the physics preprint archive. These authors use a somewhat different approach, and end up with a model in which C increases like N to the third power. This group also propose building their laser using superconducting devices.

It is important to note that, in both cases, the laser would not produce a beam of visible light, but rather microwaves. But, as the authors of this second paper note explicitly, this is exactly the type of source required for superconducting quantum computing.

Can we get even higher?

The standard limit is that C is proportional to N ², the Pittsburgh group achieved C proportional to N ³, and our model has C proportional to N ⁴. Could some other model achieve an even higher coherence?

No, at least not if the laser beam has the ideal coherence properties we expect from a laser beam. This is another of the results proven in our Nature Physics paper. Coherence proportional to the fourth power of the number of photons is the best that quantum mechanics allows, and we believe it is physically achievable.

An ultimate achievable limit that surpasses what is achievable with standard methods, is known as a Heisenberg limit. This is because it is related to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.

Read more: Explainer: Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle

A Heisenberg-limited laser, as we call it, would not be just a revolution in the design and performance of lasers. It also requires a fundamental rethinking of what a laser is: not restricted to the current kinds of devices, but any device which turns inputs with little coherence into an output of very high coherence.

It is the nature of revolutions that it is impossible to tell whether they will succeed when they begin. But if this one does, and standard lasers are supplanted by Heisenberg-limited lasers, at least in some applications, then these two papers will be remembered as the first shots.

– ref. Reimagining the laser: new ideas from quantum theory could herald a revolution – https://theconversation.com/reimagining-the-laser-new-ideas-from-quantum-theory-could-herald-a-revolution-147436

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Damien Cahill, Associate Professor, Department of Political Economy, University of Sydney

The COVID crisis has exposed the destructive consequences of an over-reliance on casual labour across the economy. Australian universities provide one of the clearest examples of this. For the past two decades, universities have leaned into international student fees on the revenue side and casual workers on the expense side.

This approach effectively shifted the risks of the international student fee market onto insecurely employed staff with few entitlements or employment rights. Since the pandemic caused international student fee revenue to dry up, thousands of casual university staff have lost their jobs.

Read more: More than 70% of academics at some universities are casuals. They’re losing work and are cut out of JobKeeper

This is a devastating consequence of the business model of universities intersecting with the federal government’s ideological aversion to universities accessing JobKeeper.

On top of this, the associated problem of wage theft is widespread. In a newly released National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) survey of 2,174 professional and academic staff at every university except Charles Darwin, almost four in five academic respondents claimed one or other form of underpayment.

University managers have been keen to deny the extent of casualisation. They point to figures showing casuals comprise only a small proportion of their workforce on a full-time equivalent (FTE) basis. Universities are only required to report their staffing figures to the Education Department on an FTE basis. This underestimates the actual headcount of casual staff.

The NTEU estimates the proportion of casual employees in Australian public universities is about 45%.

This estimate closely matches the data universities provide to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency. It’s the only government agency that requires all Australian universities to report their total staff numbers by employment category. The agency’s data show the proportion of casual staff is as high as 58% at some universities.

Read more: Casual academics aren’t going anywhere, so what can universities do to ensure learning isn’t affected?

Casual work and wage theft go together

University managers typically downplay the problem of wage theft. In a recent submission to the Senate Inquiry into Unlawful Underpayment of Employees’ Remuneration, the Australian Higher Education Industrial Association (AHEIA), an employer group representing universities, claimed wage theft is not a systemic issue in Australian universities.

Yet we now know that in NSW alone seven of the 11 public universities have indicated they are being, or have recently been, audited for underpayment of staff – Sydney, UNSW, Western Sydney, Newcastle, Wollongong, Charles Sturt and New England. Other Australian universities accused of underpayment include Melbourne, Monash and RMIT in Victoria, the University of Queensland, and UWA and Murdoch in Western Australia.

This is an indication of the scale of the problem. And well-paid vice chancellors value casuals for more than just being able to end their employment at a moment’s notice. Casuals can be paid less than they are owed. Wage theft, normally associated with the hospitality industry, has become rife within universities.

Read more: Shocking yet not surprising: wage theft has become a culturally accepted part of business

How are casuals underpaid?

There are several common forms of underpayment for casual workers.

The first is a semantic sleight of hand where managers classify teaching work in a way that attracts a lower rate of pay. For example, tutorials are regularly classified as “demonstrations”, meaning the casual is paid less for the same type of work.

Last year at Macquarie University the NTEU negotiated about A$50,000 in back payments for casual staff whose tutorials had been reclassified as “small group teaching activities” with a lower rate of pay. Similarly, at the University of Western Australia, tutorials have been classified as “information sessions” that attract a lower rate of pay.

Another frequent source of underpayment is a failure to pay casuals their full entitlements. For example, casual workers are entitled to be paid for a minimum number of hours per engagement, but university payroll systems, which only look at time sheets, might ignore this. This is why auditors have been called into Sydney University where casual workers might have been underpaid as much as A$30 million over six years.

But perhaps the most common and insidious form of wage theft is requiring casuals to work for no pay. Typically, key tasks simply aren’t part of a casual worker’s contract, yet are expected to be completed. This could be consultation with students, class preparation, familiarisation with labyrinthine policies, or being required to complete marking within unrealistic timeframes.

At the University of Melbourne, the Fair Work Ombudsman is investigating underpayments in relation to casual marking based on the improper use of piece rates, rather than payment for the hours worked. About A$1 million has already been paid out. The NTEU is also in dispute with RMIT management over a similar issue.

Why has the problem become so entrenched?

Because of their insecure employment and fear of losing work, casuals are often reluctant to raise underpayments with their supervisors.

Read more: Dependent and vulnerable: the experiences of academics on casual and insecure contracts

A recent survey at UNSW found 42% of casuals reported doing unpaid work. A survey at Sydney Uni reported 82% of casuals working unpaid hours.

Much of the work casual staff do is not actually casual in nature. It is regular, ongoing and stable over time. Student enrolments, for example, which drive teaching work, are quite steady year on year.

The solution is simple: end the over-reliance of universities on casuals. Just a few months ago, such a proposal would have sounded outlandish. But unprecedented times demand new solutions.

Moving casual university work into salaried positions with greater security and employment rights would be good for staff, good for students and good for the broader community.

– ref. Wage theft and casual work are built into university business models – https://theconversation.com/wage-theft-and-casual-work-are-built-into-university-business-models-147555

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

If the past few months have been like a long-haul flight, Victorians are now standing in the aisles waiting for the cabin door to open, a little groggy and disoriented but relieved.

They have every right to be. No other place in the world has tamed a second wave this large. Few have even come close.

Read more: Of all the places that have seen off a second coronavirus wave, only Vietnam and Hong Kong have done as well as Victorians

It’s not a competition

Comparing different countries’ fights against COVID-19 is not a straightforward exercise, given differences in demography, geography, health system capability, and government strategy.

Perhaps most importantly, not every country has tried to get down to zero, or near zero, community transmission. This may not have been a realistic goal for countries with less border control than Australia.

Also, as Victorians understand acutely, the virus is unpredictable. Today, as the crisis accelerates in Europe and elsewhere, Victoria’s “zero new cases” are the envy of the world. But there can be no certainty about where things will be in a few months’ time.

All of this is to say that a favourable international comparison should not encourage complacency. But it is nevertheless true that Victoria’s efforts are notable on the world stage. The state’s success has warded off a significant human toll and further economic damage. As a result, Australia has a much better chance of returning to an approximation of “normal life” in the new year.

Victorians should be proud of these efforts, and the starkly different outcomes in countries that were in a similar position should reassure them that the efforts were worthwhile.

Surfing the second wave: Victoria, Singapore, then daylight

On August 5, Victoria’s seven-day average of daily new cases reached 533, the worst numbers seen anywhere in Australia.

Several other countries had similar numbers around that time, including Canada, Japan, Singapore, and most of Europe. They had taken different paths to get there; for Europe, these numbers represented a low ebb, not a peak. But the trajectories after this period diverged even more dramatically.

As the chart below shows, case numbers in several European countries began to accelerate steeply and are now much worse than ever. In contrast, Japan, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Singapore, and Australia have so far kept case numbers at a moderate level.

But as this next chart shows, there is significant divergence even among these relatively stable countries. Sweden appears on track to replicate the sharp acceleration seen elsewhere in Europe. In Denmark and Japan, case numbers remain at a moderate level but are not trending towards zero. Only Victoria and Singapore, which peaked at around 300, have returned to single digits.

By suppressing their second waves, Victoria and Singapore are well placed to join a small club of countries that have sustained zero or near-zero cases, including New Zealand, Thailand, Vietnam, China, and the rest of Australia. The dividend for these countries has been economic, not just health-related, as the chart below shows.

Victoria’s lockdown has been long and difficult, but it now occupies a rare and envious position. As Victorians await new freedoms on the next step towards COVID-normal, they should feel a sense of accomplishment.

Read more: Set ground rules and keep it intimate: 10 tips for hosting a COVID-safe wedding

– ref. Finally at zero new cases, Victoria is on top of the world after unprecedented lockdown effort – https://theconversation.com/finally-at-zero-new-cases-victoria-is-on-top-of-the-world-after-unprecedented-lockdown-effort-148808

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yee-Fui Ng, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law, Monash University

Independent MP Helen Haines has just introduced a bill into parliament that seeks to establish a robust new federal integrity commission.

This is a consensus bill that involved consultation with legal academics, panels of retired judges, civil society stakeholders, ethicists and MPs.

Without the government’s support, it is unlikely to pass. But it is a move designed to force the government’s hand.

Although the government has agreed to establish a Commonwealth Integrity Commission, it has been dragging its heels on the issue. An exposure draft of the government’s CIC bill was sent to the attorney-general in December, but it has yet to be publicly released.

The government has said the bill’s release was delayed due to the immediate priority of responding to the pandemic.

However, the need for a federal integrity commission is just as important as ever, with the government now plagued by multiple scandals involving the misuse of federal funds, such as the Western Sydney airport deal, the ASIC chair’s tax advice bill, the Angus Taylor water buyback scheme and the “sports rorts” affair.

A strong — and independent — integrity commission would be able to investigate such issues thoroughly. It shouldn’t be left to the government to monitor itself any longer.

Read more: Government’s Commonwealth Integrity Commission will not stamp out public sector corruption — here’s why

What makes this proposal worth considering

Overall, the bill proposes a robust commission with strong powers, coupled with checks and balances to ensure it does not abuse its powers.

Perhaps most significantly, the proposed integrity commission would have the power to conduct public hearings if it believes it’s in the public interest, balancing the seriousness of allegations with any unfair prejudice to a person’s reputation or unfair exposure of a person’s private life.

This is a proportionate model that enhances public trust through public hearings, but also takes into account legitimate concerns about damage to an individual’s reputation.

By contrast, the government’s proposed CIC would not have the power to conduct public hearings.

Haines’s proposed commission would also have the power to make findings of fact and recommendations in a public report. It could refer matters involving criminality to law enforcement authorities.

The commissioner would be a statutory office holder who is independent of government. He or she would be supported by several assistant commissioners to allow for internal checks and balances.

And the body would include a whistleblower protection commissioner, which is particularly necessary given how weak Australia’s whistleblower laws are considered to be.

Read more: From Richard Boyle and Witness K to media raids: it’s time whistleblowers had better protection

Importantly, the bill would provide for external accountability mechanisms to “watch the watchdog” via parliament and the courts.

Specifically, there would be oversight by a parliamentary joint committee to ensure the body’s compliance with the law, due process and other standards. Its decisions would also be subject to judicial review.

The commission’s funding would need approval by the joint parliamentary committee, as well, which provides some financial protection. This is important as the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) has had its budget severely cut following its explosive revelations of corruption in government.

Haines’ bill also proposes a corruption prevention program for the Commonwealth public sector. This is a positive, pro-integrity function that monitors major corruption risks across all sectors.

Why the government’s model has been criticised

The government’s CIC model is a watered-down version of Haines’s proposed body. It has been criticised for a few reasons.

The first is that it would fail to achieve its main aim of exposing corruption in the public sector.

The bar for investigation is too high, requiring a reasonable suspicion of corruption amounting to a criminal offence before an inquiry can even begin. This is a difficult hurdle to clear.

Lessons from the state anti-corruption commissions show evidence of corruption is typically unveiled through investigations themselves (based on credible allegations), rather than before an investigation begins.

Another major criticism is the proposed CIC will not have the power to hold public hearings.

Public hearings ensure proceedings are not cloaked in secrecy. They also increase public trust. Widespread corruption has been uncovered through such hearings in the past, such as the Fitzgerald inquiry in the 1980s into corruption in the Queensland police force. This led to the resignations and imprisonments of various former ministers and officials.

Read more: Grattan on Friday: Morrison’s promised integrity commission can’t hide behind COVID much longer – can it?

The time to act is now

All states now have an anti-corruption commission and the federal government is lagging behind.

A bill is now before parliament that puts forward a strong, yet proportionate, vision for an integrity commission with robust powers and both internal and external accountability mechanisms.

It has been developed through a strong consultative process with legal experts, academics and civil society.

In short, it is a better model than what the government has proposed. It is now time for the government to move forward to promote political integrity — without any further delay.

– ref. As the government drags its heels, a better model for a federal integrity commission has emerged – https://theconversation.com/as-the-government-drags-its-heels-a-better-model-for-a-federal-integrity-commission-has-emerged-148796

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ari Chand, Lecturer in Visual Communication Design and Creative Industries, University of Newcastle

Review: Real Worlds: Dobell Australian Drawing Biennial 2020, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney

Why do drawers draw?

Drawing is historically connected to creative practice, but also truth and accuracy. It helps materialise story and culture, perhaps because it’s often the fastest way to get an idea down on paper. But drawing can also be slow, meditative and reflective. When the artist is in the flow state, a drawing can take hours and hours to resolve itself.

The 2020 Dobell Australian Drawing Biennial is an insightful window into the active compulsion of drawers. With the theme of Real Worlds, this wonderful array of work turns our minds back to representational forms of drawing and the way in which the medium envelops our connection to self, place, and country.

The works provide pause to consider the visual narrative and what the future of drawing might look like given new technologies — but less government support — at the tertiary level.

Real versus abstract

Sir William Dobell won the Archibald Prize for portraiture three times but his day job as a draughtsman is often referred to. Perhaps this is an attempt to legitimise his skills. Since the controversy of his 1943 Archibald prize — an image of fellow artist Joshua Smith derided by some vocal critics as caricature — his work has always made us question what is drawing today?

The Dobell Biennial, which ran from 1993—2012 alongside the Archibald as a prize worth A$30,000 before being reinvented as a curated exhibition, continues the conversation. The Dobell Drawing Prize, now hosted by the National Art School, was won last year by Justine Varga for a work entitled Photogenic Drawing (2018).

Real Worlds exhibits a tight selection showcasing the ideologies and technical skills of eight artists.

Curator Anne Ryan points provides a litmus test of drawing now. The eight artists featured are Martin Bell, Matt Coyle, Nathan Hawkes, Danie Mellor, Peter Mungkuri, Becc Ország, Jack Stahel and Helen Wright.

Read more: Great time to try: learning to draw

Traditional boundaries

On the whole, they use tried and true methods.

The work of Ország requires us to evaluate the role of observation and composition. Her work expresses our longing for a Utopian pre-technological society.

Stahel’s drawings and made things to draw show how boundaries can be crossed between scientific thought and visual beauty.

Mellor’s work connect us to ecology, history and Dreaming narratives while Bell’s impressively sized, interwoven type, line drawing and nostalgic drawn-on-paper tapestry recalls the 80s.

Mungkuri’s large layerings of Country in ink captivate and pull the viewer into a mesmerising cartography. Coyle wants you to dream alongside him, while Hawkes provides a splash of colour. Finally, Wright’s drawings tap into human fears of excess consumption.

The sheer scale of the works is striking and the time involved is impressive. Each artist shows us the deeply cognitive nature of their practice.

Learning to draw and think

The skill and technique of drawing has been diminished in schools and university curricula.

People aren’t sitting around drawing all day like they once did, (slowly thinking), and new funding models for the arts suggest they won’t anytime soon.

Read more: The government’s funding changes are meddling with the purpose of universities

The newly formed Drawing Education Network seeks to understand the potential of drawing across all forms of education and to counter this shortsightedness.

As noted at a recent event, the dynamic of drawing within universities has dramatically shifted over the last 20–50 years. We might be losing a generation of learning for “job ready” visualisation skills — despite operating in a visual era.

Yet drawing continues to be widely utilised across journalism and reportage, education and knowledge transference, persuasive advertising and marketing, strategic planning, and narrative fictions and entertainments.

The future of drawing lies in its ability to persist throughout time, notes University of Newcastle creative industries head Paul Egglestone:

Drawing continues seemingly unfazed — even energised — responding to and feeding off copious new ways to make images — electronically and mechanically — on film, video and computers. Images are being made today we can legitimately call drawing that would not have been possible or even imaginable at one time.

Read more: Why is teaching kids to draw not a more important part of the curriculum?

Following the Art Gallery of NSW exhibition, Real Worlds: Dobell Australian Drawing Biennial 2020 will tour regionally to Lismore Regional Gallery (27 February–25 April 2021) and Museum of Art and Culture Lake Macquarie, yapang (8 May–18 July 2021).

– ref. Dobell Biennial showcases drawing today as we consider its future in the real world – https://theconversation.com/dobell-biennial-showcases-drawing-today-as-we-consider-its-future-in-the-real-world-146837

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gwyn McClelland, Lecturer, Japanese Studies, University of New England

The UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons will finally come into force after the 50th country (Honduras) ratified it over the weekend. The treaty will make the development, testing, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons illegal for those countries that have signed it.

This is an extraordinary achievement for those who have suffered the most from these weapons — including the hibakusha (survivors) of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the islanders who lived through nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific.

Since 1956, the hibakusha in Japan, South Korea, Brazil and elsewhere have been some of the most strident campaigners against the use of these weapons. Among them is a group of Japanese Catholics from Nagasaki whom I interviewed as part of my research collecting the oral histories of atomic bomb survivors.

A 92-year-old hibakusha of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in 1945 and a brother in a Catholic order, Ozaki Tōmei, explained the significance of the treaty to survivors like him. He was orphaned from the bombing at 17 and never found his mother’s body.

The Germans made tools for war including poisonous gas, which was [eventually] banned […] However, when the USA made an atomic weapon, then they … wanted to try it out. It was a war […] they were human.

And so this is why we say we have to eliminate nuclear weapons […] They said they did it to end the war, but for the people who were struck, it was horrific […] there was no need to use it.

Treaty does not have support of nuclear powers

The treaty was adopted at the United Nations in 2017 by a vote of 122 nations in favour, one against and one abstention.

Sixty-nine nations, however, have not signed it, including all of the nuclear powers such as the US, UK, Russia, China, France, India, Pakistan and North Korea, as well as NATO member states (apart from the Netherlands who voted against), Japan and Australia.

Since the treaty was adopted, it needed ratification by 50 countries to come into force. This will now happen in 90 days.

The campaign for the treaty has relied heavily on civil society and organisations such as the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).

And from the beginning, it has exposed political fault lines. The United States has been particularly outspoken in its opposition to the treaty, warning last week the treaty “turns back the clock on verification and disarmament and is dangerous” to the 50-year-old Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).

Read more: World politics explainer: The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

The NPT sought to prevent the spread of nuclear arms beyond the five original weapons powers (the US, Russia, China, UK and France). It has been signed by 190 countries, including those five nations.

The head of ICAN, Beatrice Fihn, says the new treaty banning nuclear weapons merely builds on the nonproliferation treaty.

There’s no way you can undermine the nonproliferation treaty by banning nuclear weapons. It’s the end goal of the nonproliferation treaty.

States like Japan and Australia have opposed the treaty on the grounds their security is boosted by the US stockpile of nuclear weapons. Japan’s former prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has said the treaty

was created without taking into account the realities of security.

The efforts of hibakusha in advocating for a treaty

Making the bomb illegal turns an old US justification for the weapon on its head. Harry Stimson, the former US war secretary, argued in 1947 the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary to compel the Japanese to surrender at the end of the second world war.

The atomic bomb was more than a weapon of terrible destruction; it was a psychological weapon.

The damage from the bombings was colossal. It is unknown how many people were killed, but estimates range from 110,000 (the US army’s toll) to 210,000 (the figure accepted by ICAN and others).

Read more: Ban the bomb: 70 years on, the nuclear threat looms as large as ever

At the forefront of the campaign to support the nuclear weapons ban treaty have been the voices of hibakusha who experienced the carnage firsthand.

Another Catholic hibakusha, Nakamura Kazutoshi, told me the stockpiling of nuclear weapons enables states to carry out genocide.

In war, we are at a level below animals. Among monkeys, or chimpanzees, there are no animals who would carry out a genocide.

A third hibakusha, 90-year-old Jōji Fukahori, told me about how he lost his mother and three younger siblings in the Nagasaki bombing.

His younger brother, Kōji, died an excruciating death around a week after the bombing, walking in the hot ash with no shoes and complaining to his brother, “I’m so hot!”

At the site where Fukahori’s brother was exposed, the temperature was about 1,000 degrees Celsius. Fukahori said,

You would have thought everyone would have turned into charcoal.

For Fukahori, the lasting effects of radiation exposure is a major reason why nuclear weapons must be banned. He continued:

the terror of radiation has to be fully communicated … The atomic bomb is unacceptable. I still cannot get over it.

Since 2009, Fukahori has been speaking out at the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum and on the Peace Boat, a non-governmental organisation that organises cruises where passengers learn about the consequences of using nuclear weapons from hibakusha.

Pressure building on Japan

The Japanese government is now under mounting pressure to ratify the treaty. Major Japanese financial institutions and companies have said they will no longer fund the production of nuclear weapons and nearly a third of all local assemblies have adopted proposals calling on the government to act.

The government, however, has been unmoved. In August, Abe gave a speech at a memorial service in Nagasaki, in which he suggested the effects of the bombings had been overcome.

Seventy-five years ago today, Nagasaki was reduced to ashes, with not a single tree or blade of grass remaining. Yet through the efforts of its citizens, it achieved reconstruction beautifully as we see today. Mindful of this, we again feel strongly that there is no trial that cannot be overcome and feel acutely how precious peace is.

A Japanese atomic researcher, who knows how Fukahori and other hibakusha have not been able to move on, told me Abe’s words don’t go far enough:

Rather than placing a ‘full-stop’ at the end of damages such as this, we have a necessity to make our claim that the damages are not finished.

The nuclear weapons ban treaty offers a moment of hope for all the hibakusha of Hiroshima and Nagasaki still with us after 75 years. It is certainly their hope the ratification of the treaty now moves us one step closer to a world free of nuclear war.

Read more: Instead of congratulating ICAN on its Nobel Peace Prize, Australia is resisting efforts to ban the bomb

– ref. ‘I still cannot get over it’: 75 years after Japan atomic bombs, a nuclear weapons ban treaty is finally realised – https://theconversation.com/i-still-cannot-get-over-it-75-years-after-japan-atomic-bombs-a-nuclear-weapons-ban-treaty-is-finally-realised-147851

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Anderson. Palawa, Deputy Vice-Chancellor Student and University Experience, Australian National University

The new National Agreement on Closing the Gap has a higher education target for the first time.

It’s also the first time an agreement between governments on Indigenous issues was negotiated and signed by Indigenous Australians. The Coalition of Aboriginal Peak Organisations represented Indigenous Australians.

Read more: We have 16 new Closing the Gap targets. Will governments now do what’s needed to meet them?

Endorsed by the National Cabinet on July 30 this year, the ten-year agreement replaces the 2008 National Indigenous Reform Agreement.

To reach the higher education target, universities and vocational education providers must overcome the educational and social barriers Indigenous students face. Higher education providers can also have an impact on all the agreement’s target areas as well as the reform agenda set out in the agreement.

What is the target?

The higher education target is for 70% of Indigenous Australians between 25 and 34 years of age to have a tertiary qualification by 2031.

In 2016, 42.3% of Indigenous Australians in this age group had tertiary qualifications at the target’s required level. The proportion had more than doubled from 18.9% in 2001. By contrast, however, 72% of non-Indigenous Australians had such qualifications in 2016.

The target includes all university qualifications and those in vocational education above Certificate III level. Tertiary qualifications at these levels prepare Indigenous Australians for jobs.

Helping students take the next step

Year 12 completions are one factor with an impact on tertiary outcomes. It is encouraging to see growing numbers of Indigenous students completing high school. In 2020 this target was on track.

However, schools need to ensure Indigenous students who complete Year 12 are academically equipped for further university education and/or vocational training. More focus is needed on educational attainment in schools. Options for Indigenous students can also be broadened, including stronger pathways in secondary school mathematics and science.

Many Indigenous students are the first in their family to enter higher education. To support their journey, universities and vocational education providers need to develop long-term relationships with schools and Indigenous communities.

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

What higher education providers can do

Indigenous university enrolments continue to grow. In fact, Indigenous enrolments increased by about 100% over the decade from 1996.

However, Indigenous attrition rates continue to be high. This is a key issue that demands attention.

A number of things can be done to improve university completions and lower attrition rates. Targeted education support is sometimes needed for Indigenous students who have gaps in their earlier education. Universities should also continue to provide appropriate social and cultural support.

The university sector has already taken some important steps to address these issues. It’s important to maintain the momentum for reform, particularly while we respond to the challenges posed by COVID-19.

Indigenous students are enrolled in vocational education at a higher rate than their non-Indigenous peers. However, enrolments tend to drop off significantly above Certificate III level. There is, however, some evidence this pattern is changing.

Educational strategies to improve literacy and numeracy will improve progression to higher levels of vocational education. Strong regional links between employers and vocational education will help ensure training lines up with jobs.

Leading change in other ways

Higher education providers also can contribute across all priorities in the Closing the Gap agenda. The new agreement has 16 targets. The targets cover: health, early childhood and child protection, education, housing, employment, community safety, language and land.

Higher education providers can better equip all their students to engage with these priorities over their professional lives. Embedding Indigenous knowledge in curricula is a key to this. So too is research undertaken to investigate Indigenous disadvantage and identify strategies to improve the quality and impact of Indigenous services.

Read more: How a university can embed Indigenous knowledge into the curriculum and why it matters

The agreement has a particular focus on Indigenous-led initiatives.

An important reform is shared decision-making between governments and Indigenous Australians. The agreement also outlines reforms to strengthen the Indigenous community-controlled services sector. Finally, there is a focus on Indigenous-led evaluation and data management.

To that end, it is important that universities and vocational education providers think about how they can lead change. They should consider how they invest in Indigenous leaders within the sector. They should also consider the quality of the Indigenous partnerships they develop.

The National Agreement on Closing the Gap presents some new challenges for higher education providers. The first is to focus on improving educational outcomes for Indigenous Australians. However, these providers have a broader contribution to make; their role in producing the knowledge and workforce for change is equally important.

– ref. For the first time, Closing the Gap has a higher education target – here’s how to achieve it – https://theconversation.com/for-the-first-time-closing-the-gap-has-a-higher-education-target-heres-how-to-achieve-it-147984

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Harris Rimmer, Professor and Director of the Policy Innovation Hub, Griffith Business School, Griffith University

The Queensland election is a history-making poll. For the first time in a state or federal election, two women are going head-to-head.

Does this mean gender equality issues are finally writ large across an election campaign?

Sadly, neither Labor’s Annastacia Palaszczuk, nor the Liberal National Party’s Deb Frecklington appear to be interested in highlighting the needs and perspectives of women ahead of election day on October 31.

Women making political history in Queensland

Labor goes into this election with a remarkably strong — and rare — record of female ministers in recent years.

In 2009, Anna Bligh became the first woman in Australia to win an election as premier. Six years later, Palaszczuk was the first woman to lead an opposition into government.

She also had the first female dominated-cabinet in Australian history – with eight out of the 14 ministers being women in 2015. After the most recent reshuffle this year, eight of Palaszczuk’s 18-member cabinet were women.

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

For the Queensland LNP, Frecklington is making history as their first female leader. But she is one of just five women in the LNP’s 23-member shadow ministry.

Despite these achievements, the proportion of women running in the 2020 election isn’t substantially different to the past. Across all 597 candidates, only 219, or 37%, are women. This is up from 32% in the 2017 election.

So, overall, progress is is being made, but slowly.

Hard hats and hi-vis

And just because both leaders are women, this does not mean “women’s issues” or even a focus on female perspectives is featuring prominently in the campaign. On the contrary.

COVID-19 has hurt women’s work more than men’s, leading to a so-called “pink recession”. Women are more likely to be in part-time, casual or insecure work, and to work in industries most affected by lockdowns or economic downturn, such as retail and hospitality, tourism, human services, creative arts and universities.

Despite this, the leaders are making male-dominated industries the focus of their campaigns.

Both Palaszczuk and Frecklington have made frequent appearances in hi-vis vests and hard hats, talking up policies around infrastructure, roads and other developments to boost the state’s economy.

While hi-vis may be convenient shorthand for “jobs”, it’s lazy politics. And it doesn’t make sense in this particular election, given the extent to which women have been affected by COVID-19.

What gender issues are featuring in the campaign?

There are some exceptions to the hard hat focus, however, and these are notable ones – even if they are not generating significant attention on the campaign trail.

The ALP has pledged free sanitary pads and tampons for 120 schools “most in need”. This would make Queensland only the second state, after Victoria, to offer a program like this.

On Thursday, the LNP said it would spend A$70 million to improve before and after school care and a further A$10 million to subsidise childcare training courses.

Both major parties are also taking significant domestic violence policies to the polls.

Following the murder of Brisbane woman Hannah Clarke and her three children in February, the LNP announced a package including laws against coercive control and emergency accommodation grants.

Read more: Australia is not ready to criminalise coercive control — here’s why

Earlier this month, the Palaszczuk government also pledged to do more to tackle coercive control, including training programs for first responders and a community awareness campaign, although has stopped short of specifically promising new laws.

Abortion law concerns

In disturbing news for women’s advocates, Frecklington has also committed to a review of the state’s abortion laws in her first term of government, with a focus on the gestational limit for terminations.

The anti-abortion lobby are backing the LNP and Moggill LNP candidate Christian Rowan has reportedly given assurances to Christian groups about repealing hard-won abortion laws.

While it seems Frecklington is attempting to distance herself from the debate — saying it is not a “priority” — it is a worrying proposal for women specifically and the state more generally.

Are the leaders feminists?

Gender issues also got some attention in the second week of the campaign, after the leaders were questioned about their views on feminism. It wasn’t exactly a Helen Reddy “hear me roar” moment.

Asked whether she would describe herself as a feminist, Palaszczuk said, “if a feminist is about believing in equality, absolutely”.

Frecklington was even more noncommittal.

I identify as a female who wants to get Queensland working again.

Undermined from within

In Australian politics, we are used to women politicians being undermined by the media, opposition and even their own parties.

During this campaign, we have seen little media undermining on gender, perhaps because both leaders are women and their gender is not seen as a point of difference.

But we have seen further demonstration of female leaders being attacked from within.

Read more: Fundraising questions have interrupted the Queensland LNP’s election campaign. What does the law say?

In the early stages of the campaign, the ABC reported Frecklington had been referred to the Electoral Commission of Queensland by her own party over fundraising concerns. The LNP denies this, and Frecklington denies any wrongdoing.

The episode has not dominated the campaign since it was reported in mid-October. But it will only serve to make her leadership more precarious, should the LNP lose on October 31.

Not that it was particularly secure to begin with. This follows intense speculation about a leadership spill ahead of the election campaign.

So far, women appear to back the ALP

In the meantime, the major parties need women’s votes to win. The latest Roy Morgan Poll for Queensland shows the key to the ALP’s slim lead in week three of the campaign comes via its support from women.

Women favour the ALP 53.5% over LNP 46.5% on a two-party preferred basis, while men more narrowly favour the LNP 51.5% to 48.5% (overall, the ALP has its nose in front, 51% to 49%).

Women’s perspectives may not be dominating the campaign but they may be being crucial when it comes to the result.

Regardless of the election outcome, we can be sure that without either leader stepping up more strongly for women — and being supported by their parties to do so — this election will also be a historic lost opportunity.

– ref. Queensland is making election history with two women leaders, so why is the campaign focused on men? – https://theconversation.com/queensland-is-making-election-history-with-two-women-leaders-so-why-is-the-campaign-focused-on-men-148261

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Toole, Professor of International Health, Burnet Institute

Of the 215 nations and territories that have reported COVID-19 cases, 120 have experienced clear second waves or late first waves that began in July or later. That’s according to the Worldometer global database, which sources data from national ministries of health and the World Health Organisation.

Of these 120, only six have definitively emerged from their second wave: Australia, South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Vietnam and Singapore. I am not including New Zealand, as the series of clusters that arose in Auckland in mid-August never evolved into a clear second wave.

Ultimately, Victoria has performed extremely well by international standards. Only Vietnam and Hong Kong have enjoyed comparable success in quashing the second wave. Victorians’ sacrifice during lockdown has left Australia well placed to sustain very low numbers of cases through the coming summer.

A grim global context

Any comparison between Australia and other countries takes place amid a grim global context. The worldwide tally of cumulative cases is adding one million new cases every three or four days. On Wednesday, of the 100 countries with the highest total reported cases, just seven reported fewer than 50 new cases: Australia, China, Nigeria, Singapore, Ivory Coast, Zambia and Senegal. The same day, France and the United Kingdom each reported more than 26,000 new cases, and 20 European countries posted all-time daily record numbers.

Some European countries, such as the Czech Republic, Poland and Georgia, are now reporting daily case numbers 25-30 times higher than during their first waves.

Read more: Lockdown, relax, repeat: how cities across the globe are going back to coronavirus restrictions

Europe and North America face enormous challenges to control their outbreaks as winter looms and pandemic fatigue sets in. But already there are signs of decisive measures including a national lockdown in Ireland — very similar to Melbourne’s — and night curfews in Paris, seven other French cities, Brussels, Athens and Rome. Their current struggles stand in stark contrast to Australia’s situation.

Israel’s second wave came early

Which countries offer the most instructive comparison with Australia? Let’s start with Israel, one of the first countries to experience a second wave far more severe than the first.

Israel was also a founding member of the long-forgotten First Movers Group, comprising Austria, Denmark, Norway, Greece, the Czech Republic, Israel, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. Each member nation implemented restrictions early in the pandemic, and held a virtual summit in May to share tips about controlling the virus. Since then, every member except New Zealand has experienced a major second wave.

Israel’s second wave was largely caused by transmission among high school and middle school students, and an uncoordinated exit from the first lockdown. By the end of May, citizens were allowed to go to shopping centres and community gatherings, despite a growing resurgence of cases. During the Israeli summer there was minimal enforcement of face mask use, and moderate restrictions were reimposed on July 17.

Cases continued to surge, prompting a second lockdown introduced on September 18. This included restricting people’s movement to within 1km from their homes. The mishandling of the first wave had eroded public trust in the government, and morale was seemingly bleak during what was the first national lockdown in the world in response to a second wave. While cases have declined in the past few weeks the country has not yet emerged, with daily new case numbers still between 800 and 1,100.

National lockdowns not essential for success

Four of the five Asian countries that have emerged from their second wave demonstrate that lockdowns aren’t an all-or-nothing choice. There are intermediate options, but they only work if certain conditions are met. These include effective testing, contact tracing and isolation capacities; a culture of wearing masks and following public health directives; electronic contact tracing; and selective local restrictions such as closing bars, restaurants and places of worship.

Vietnam was one of the first countries to contain its first wave and did not record a single death until July. Measures included early border closures, aggressive testing and tracing, and enforced quarantine of all cases and their contacts. This may not be an option in less authoritarian countries. Vietnam did have a national lockdown for a two-week period in April.

Clear communication with the public was a crucial element of Vietnam’s response. The government used a range of creative ways to spread messages about symptoms, prevention and testing sites, including via state media outlets, social media, text messages and, famously, a viral song about the importance of handwashing.

After 99 days of zero daily cases, Vietnam’s first community transmission case was reported in Da Nang on July 25. It started with a man who tested positive without any travel history, and it’s still unclear how he contracted the virus.

By September 4, Vietnam’s health ministry had confirmed 632 new cases and 35 deaths. As during the first wave, blanket testing was conducted in Da Nang, transport in and out of the city was cancelled, and bars and restaurants closed. The same local measures were implemented in certain neighbourhoods in Hanoi when new cases were identified. The country has not reported any community transmission since early September.

Read more: Europe’s second wave is worse than the first. What went so wrong, and what can it learn from countries like Vietnam?

Besides enforced quarantine, Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea have mostly followed the same strategy as Vietnam and haven’t imposed blanket lockdowns. After two months of near zero daily cases, South Korea experienced a series of spikes linked to bars, nightclubs and karaoke venues, with a major surge in August linked to a large church. The response has been characterised by robust decentralised testing, contact tracing and isolation, and a registration system at entertainment venues based on QR codes. However, the country is not yet out of the woods, reporting 50-90 cases a day.

Likewise, Japan continues to report 400-700 cases a day. But Hong Kong is approaching the same level as Victoria, reporting between five and 18 cases a day.

Singapore is a very different case. It has by far the highest per capita number of cases in Asia. With a population of just 5.8 million, the country has reported 57,921 cases — more than twice the number of Australia (which has more than four times the population).

Between mid-April and mid-June, Singapore experienced a massive spike in cases mostly among overseas migrant workers. On June 19, the country eased restrictions opening restaurants and gyms. In the seven subsequent weeks leading up to August 8, Singapore reported 13,096 new cases or 267 per day. Cases have subsequently declined to single digits, comparable to Victoria.

– ref. Of all the places that have seen off a second coronavirus wave, only Vietnam and Hong Kong have done as well as Victorians – https://theconversation.com/of-all-the-places-that-have-seen-off-a-second-coronavirus-wave-only-vietnam-and-hong-kong-have-done-as-well-as-victorians-148520

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amy Lykins, Associate Professor, University of New England

This week, the bushfire royal commission is due to hand down its findings. Already, the commission’s officials have warned the status quo is “no longer enough to defend us from the impact of global warming”.

Australia’s young people appear to know this all too well. Preliminary findings from our recent research show many young people are worried about the future. And those directly exposed to the Black Summer bushfires suffered mental health problems long after the flames went out.

Young people with direct exposure to the bushfires reported significantly higher levels of depression and anxiety, and more drug and alcohol use, than those not directly exposed.

It’s clear that along with the other catastrophic potential harm caused by climate change, the mental health of young people is at risk. We must find effective ways to help young people cope with climate change anxiety.

Concern about the future

Our yet-to-be published study was conducted between early March and early June this year. It involved 740 young people in New South Wales between the ages of 16 and 25 completing a series of standardised questionnaires about their current emotional state, and their concerns about climate change.

Our early findings were presented at the International Association of People-Environment Studies (IAPS) conference online earlier this year.

Some 57% of respondents lived in metropolitan areas and 43% in rural or regional areas. About 78.3% were female, about 20.4% male and around 1% preferred not to say.

Overall, just over 18% of the respondents had been directly exposed to the bushfires over the past year. About the same percentage had been directly exposed to drought in that period, and more than 83% were directly exposed to bushfire smoke.

Our preliminary results showed respondents with direct exposure to the Black Summer bushfires reported significantly higher levels of depression, anxiety, stress, adjustment disorder symptoms, and drug and alcohol use than those not directly exposed to these bushfires.

Many young people were clearly concerned about the future. One 16 year old female respondent from a rural/regional area told us:

From day to day, if it crosses my mind I do get a bit distressed […] knowing that not enough is being done to stop or slow down the effects of climate change is what makes me very distressed as our future and future generations are going to have to deal with this problem.

Another 24 year old female respondent from a rural/regional area said:

It makes me feel incredibly sad. Sad when I think about the animals it will effect [sic]. Sad when I think about the world my son is growing up in. Sad to think that so many people out there do not believe it is real and don’t care how their actions effect [sic] the planet, and all of us. Sad that the people in the position to do something about it, won’t.

Young people directly exposed to drought also showed higher levels of anxiety and stress than non-exposed youth.

‘I feel like climate change is here now’

Those with direct exposure to bushfires were more likely than non-exposed young people to believe climate change was:

• going to affect them or people they knew
• likely to affect areas near where they lived
• likely to affect them in the nearer future.

Both groups were equally likely — and highly likely — to believe that the environment is fragile and easily damaged by human activity, and that serious damage from human activity is already occurring and could soon have catastrophic consequences for both nature and humans.

One 23 year old female respondent from a metropolitan area told us:

I feel like climate change is here now and is just getting worse and worse as time goes on.

One 19 year old male respondent from a metropolitan area said:

I feel scared because of what will happen to my future kids, that they may not have a good future because I feel that this planet won’t last any longer because of our wasteful activities.

When asked how climate change makes them feel, answers varied. Some were not at all concerned (with a minority questioning whether it was even happening). Others reported feeling scared, worried, anxious, sad, angry, nervous, concerned for themselves and/or future generations, depressed, terrified, confused, and helpless.

One 16 year old female respondent in a metropolitan area told us:

I feel quite angry because the people who should be doing something about it aren’t because it won’t affect them in the future but it will affect me.

Though they were slightly more upbeat about their own futures and the future of humanity, a significant proportion expressed qualified or no hope, with consistent criticisms about humanity’s selfishness and lack of willpower to make needed behavioural changes.

One 21 year old female respondent from a metropolitan area said she felt:

a bit dissappointed [sic], people have the chance to help and take action, but they just don’t care. I feel sad as the planet will eventually react to the damage we have done, and by then, it will be too late.

Extra stressors

Many participants listed COVID-19 as an extra stressor in their life. One 18 year old female said:

Slightly unrelated but after seeing all of the impacts on a lot of people during the COVID-19 pandemic, all of my hope for humanity is gone.

A 25 year old woman told us:

Due to the fact of this COVID stuff, we are not going to be able to do a lot of activitys (sic) that we did before this virus shit happen (sic).

A 16 year old male said:

At present with how people have reacted over the COVID-19 virus there is no hope for humanity. Everyone has become selfish and entitled.

Irrespective of bushfire exposure, respondents reported experiencing moderate levels of depression, moderate to severe anxiety and mild stress. They also reported drug and alcohol use at levels that, according to the UNCOPE substance use screening tool, suggested cause for concern.

What does this mean?

We are still analysing the data we collected, but our preliminary results strongly suggest climate change is linked to how hopeful young people feel about the future.

We are already locked into a significant degree of warming — the only questions are just how bad will it get and how quickly.

Young people need better access to mental health services and support. It’s clear we must find effective ways to help young people build psychological resilience to bushfires, and other challenges climate change will bring.

University of New England researchers Suzanne Cosh, Melissa Parsons, Belinda Craig and Clara Murray contributed to this research. Don Hine from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand was also a contributor.

– ref. Distress, depression and drug use: young people fear for their future after the bushfires – https://theconversation.com/distress-depression-and-drug-use-young-people-fear-for-their-future-after-the-bushfires-146320

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Neil Selwyn, Distinguished Research Professor, Monash University

It is estimated around half the world’s students’ schools remain shut down. All told, this has been a potentially damaging disruption to the education of a generation.

But one of the few positive outcomes from this experience is an opportunity to rethink how digital technologies can be used to support teaching and learning in schools.

Our collective experiences of remote schooling offer a fleeting opportunity for schools to think more imaginatively about what “digital education” might look like in the future.

This is not to echo the hype (currently being pushed by many education reformers and IT industry actors) that COVID will prove a tipping-point after which schools will be pushed fully into digital education.

On the contrary, the past six months of hastily implemented emergency remote schooling tell us little about how school systems might go fully virtual, or operate on a “blended” (part online, part face-to-face) basis. Any expectations of profiting from the complete digital reform of education is well wide of the mark.

Instead, the most compelling technology-related lessons to take from the pandemic involve the informal, improvised, scrappy digital practices that have helped teachers, students and parents get through school at home.

Technology during the pandemic

All over the world, school shutdowns have seen teachers, students and families get together to achieve great things with relatively simple technologies. This includes the surprising rise of TikTok as a source of informal learning content. Previously the domain of young content creators, remote schooling saw teachers of all ages turn to the video platform to share bite-size (up to one minute) chunks of teaching, give inspirational feedback, set learning challenges or simply show students and parents how they were coping.

TikTok also been used as a place for educational organisations, public figures and celebrity scientists to produce bespoke learning content, as well as allowing teachers to put together materials for a wider audience.

Even principals have used it to keep in contact with their school — making 60-second video addresses, motivational speeches and other alternatives to the traditional school assembly speech.

Classes in some countries have been run through WhatsApp, primarily because this was one platform most students and families had access to, and were used to using in their everyday lives.

Elsewhere, teachers have set up virtual BitMoji classrooms featuring colourful backdrops and cartoon avatars of themselves. These spaces act as a friendly online version of their familiar classroom space for students to check in and find out what they should be learning, access resources and temporarily feel they were back at school.

Read more: TikTok can be good for your kids if you follow a few tips to stay safe

Some teachers have worked out creative ways of Zoom-based teaching. These stretch beyond the streamed lecture format and include live demonstrations, experiments, and live music and pottery workshops.

Social media, apps and games have proven convenient places for teachers to share insights into their classroom practice, while students can quickly show teachers and classmates what they have been working on.

These informal uses of digital media have played an important role in boosting students, teachers and parents with a bit of human contact, and additional motivation to connect and learn.

So, what now?

All this will come as little surprise to long-term advocates of popular forms of digital media in education. There is a sound evidence base for the educational benefits of such technology.

For example, a decade’s worth of studies has developed a robust framework (and many examples) of how students and educators can make the most of personal digital media inside and outside the classroom. These include allowing students to participate in online fan-fiction writing communities, digital journalism, music production and podcasting.

The past ten years has also seen a rise in e-sports — where teams of young people compete in video games.

This stresses the interplay between digital media, learning driven by students’ interests and passions, and online communities of peers. Informal digital media can be a boon for otherwise marginalised and disadvantaged youth and allowing students to find supportive communities of like-minded peers regardless of their local circumstances.

Australia continues to be one of the few countries in the world where classroom use of smartphones is banned by some governments. Some of the most popular social media platforms, content creation apps, and open sites such as YouTube remain filtered and blocked in many schools too.

Read more: Banning mobile phones in schools: beneficial or risky? Here’s what the evidence says

At the same time, official forms of school technology are increasingly criticised for being boring, overly-standardised, and largely serving institutional imperatives, rather than pitched toward the interests of students and teachers.

Concerns are growing over the limited educational benefits of personalised learning systems, as well as the data and privacy implications of school platforms and systems such as Google Classroom.

The past six months have seen many schools forced to make the best of whatever technologies were immediately to hand. Previously reticent teachers now have first-hand experience of making use of unfamiliar technologies. Many parents are now on board with the educational potential of social media and games. Most importantly, students have been given a taste of what they can achieve with “their” own technology.

With US schools now exploring the benefits of establishing official TikTok creation clubs to enhance their video-making skills, it might be time for Australian educators to follow suit. Let’s take the opportunity to re-establish schools as places where teachers, students and families can work together to creatively learn with the devices and apps most familiar to their everyday lives.

– ref. How creative use of technology may have helped save schooling during the pandemic – https://theconversation.com/how-creative-use-of-technology-may-have-helped-save-schooling-during-the-pandemic-146488

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Bentley, Professor of Social Epidemiology, Principal Research Fellow in Social Epidemiology and Director of the Centre for Research Excellence in Healthy Housing in Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne

The World Health Organisation has always been interested in housing as one of the big “causes of the causes”, of the social determinants, of health. The WHO launched evidence-based guidelines for healthy housing policies in 2019.

Australia is behind the eight ball on healthy housing. Other governments, including in the United States, United Kingdom and New Zealand, acknowledge housing as an important contributor to the burden of disease. These countries have major policy initiatives focused on this agenda.

In Australia, however, we do housing and we do health, but they sit in different portfolios of government and aren’t together in the (policy) room often enough. Housing should be embedded in our National Preventive Health Strategy.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to rethink how we approach health and protect our populations. It has amplified social and economic vulnerability. The pandemic has almost certainly brought housing and health together in our minds.

Housing – its ability to provide shelter, its quality, location, warmth – has proven to be a key factor in the pandemic’s “syndemic” nature. That is, as well as shaping exposure to the virus itself, housing contributes to the social patterning of chronic diseases that increase COVID-19 risks.

Read more: Overcrowding and affordability stress: Melbourne’s COVID-19 hotspots are also housing crisis hotspots

Housing and health are intertwined

Housing affects health in many ways. At the broad scale, housing disadvantage, unaffordable housing and housing of poor quality have been the focus of much recent Australian research. More specific housing drivers of health, such as household mould, injury, overcrowding, noise, cold and damp, have received renewed global attention.

However, capturing the combined health effect of housing is difficult. It’s hard to measure and has many components, and everyone has slightly different housing (and health).

But epidemiologists can provide us with a useful way of estimating the “burden” of various risk factors for population health. Housing risk factors have rarely been examined in Australia, but our estimates flag that the increasing health burden of housing demands attention.

For example, we estimate the health cost (measured in disability-adjusted life years) due to respiratory and cardiovascular disease that can be attributed to mouldy or damp housing is about three times the cost attributable to sugary drinks in Australia. Damp, cold and mouldy housing generates a substantial health burden and could be an easy target for public health prevention strategies. These housing conditions stand alongside many of the classic risk factors such as diet, smoking and obesity.

This estimate of health burden does not even factor in the important role housing plays in mental health. Housing affordability, security, suitability, location and condition are all associated with good mental health.

With rates of eviction likely to increase once moratoriums are lifted across the country, the housing-related mental health burden will almost certainly increase too.

We have previously estimated more than 2.5 million Australians are living in unhealthy housing — and that this number is rising.

Read more: COVID spurred action on rough sleepers but greater homelessness challenges lie ahead

What housing actions will improve health?

Simple housing-focused interventions could reduce the sizeable health burden from housing-related problems. As the WHO advocates, this requires policy and research that have an eye on both health and housing.

In practical terms, a preventive health strategy would include:

• minimum rental housing standards to protect occupants’ health, which would target structural factors related to damp and mould, ventilation, heating and cooling, injury hazards, maintenance and repair

• good-quality public housing that is easy to access as a foundation for healthy lives

• help with fixing problems, such as mould removal and servicing of heaters, for people in poor-quality housing

• insulation to maintain indoor temperature and increase energy efficiency.

Read more: Chilly house? Mouldy rooms? Here’s how to improve low-income renters’ access to decent housing

COVID adds urgency to rethinking our approach

COVID has caused us to rapidly rethink public housing, nursing homes, share houses and small inner-city apartments. When choosing our current housing, few of us would have factored in the potential for isolation and loneliness, the need for separate working and study spaces, access to private green space, or the infection risk of shared lifts.

The experience of many Australians during the pandemic has almost certainly changed our view of the housing that we need, and what we consider to be healthy. It is time to harness this knowledge and learn from our COVID-19 experience.

Read more: How might COVID-19 change what Australians want from their homes?

Many have lamented the missed opportunity to create economic stimulus in our nation’s COVID recovery plan by building more social housing. But social housing is only a small part of the story. Australia needs to embrace a future where good population health goes hand in hand with good-quality, affordable and secure housing – where health is at the forefront of housing policy and public preventive health strategies harness housing.

7 key questions for a healthy housing agenda

The time is right for Australia to put housing and health in the same room and develop a national healthy housing agenda. Our National Health and Medical Research Council-funded Centre for Research Excellence in Healthy Housing aims to lead and shape this agenda. In doing so, we pose the following questions to our governments, research community and stakeholders:

1. How can we respond in a nationally co-ordinated way to the emerging challenges that COVID-19 presents to healthy housing?

2. Who should be included in the conversation and in developing the agenda – and what is the role of the Commonwealth Department of Health?

3. Where does responsibility for providing healthy housing lie?

4. What is the “minimum standard” of housing that we want to provide to all Australians?

5. What are the healthy housing priorities? Warmth? Mould? Tenure security? Affordability?

6. What groups in our society demand immediate attention? Children? Renters? People with disabilities?

7. How will an Australian healthy housing agenda fit within a national housing agenda (when one exists)?

Read more: Coronavirus lays bare 5 big housing system flaws to be fixed

– ref. Mould and damp health costs are about 3 times those of sugary drinks. We need a healthy housing agenda – https://theconversation.com/mould-and-damp-health-costs-are-about-3-times-those-of-sugary-drinks-we-need-a-healthy-housing-agenda-147743

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stuart Richards, Lecturer in Screen Studies, University of South Australia

In a new series, our writers explore their best worst film. They’ll tell you what the critics got wrong – and why it’s time to give these movies another chance.

While some may know John Waters through his family friendly Hairspray (1988) – adapted into a stage musical in 2002 and back to the screen in 2007 – many know him as the Prince of Puke, the King of Bad Taste or the Pope of Trash.

Perhaps his most notorious film is the exploitation comedy Pink Flamingos (1972), the first in his “Trash Trilogy”, which also includes Female Trouble (1974) and Desperate Living (1977).

Pink Flamingos is emblematic of Waters’ camp aesthetic, juxtaposing grotesque subject matter against pastel colours, kitsch props and bubblegum pop music.

Waters’ muse Divine is Babs Johnson, the “filthiest person alive.” She lives with her mother Edie (Edith Massey), who dresses as a baby, sits in a crib and screams for eggs; her ghoulish lover Cotton (Mary Vivian Pearce); and her son Crackers (Danny Mills), who, in a particularly gruesome moment, has sex with a woman while a live chicken is crushed to death between their two bodies.

But Babs’ title of “filthiest person alive” is at stake, and she must rival Raymond (David Lochary) and Connie Marble (Mink Stole), who kidnap women, imprison and forcefully impregnate them, and sell their babies to lesbian couples.

Variety’s first review is now famous, calling it “one of the most vile, stupid and repulsive films ever made.”

Banned for indecency

It wasn’t just the critics who were unimpressed. When distributors tried to bring the film to Australia in 1976, it was banned for “indecency”. A cut version was given an R rating and released that year theatrically.

The film’s full version was eventually granted an X18+ rating, for pornographic, non-simulated sexual activity, restricting sale and hire of the film to the ACT and some regions of the NT.

In 1997, for a 25th anniversary cinematic re-release, the uncut film was again refused. The classification board said films could receive an R rating when sexual activity was “realistically simulated” – but not when it was “the real thing”.

Films with unsimulated sexual activity, such as Catherine Breillat’s Romance (1999) and John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus (2006) have since been awarded R18+ classification, allowing the category to include films with unsimulated sexual activity.

But the full version of Pink Flamingos maintains an X18+ rating. Even the National Film and Sound Archive’s 2017 screenings of banned films showed a cut version rated R18+.

Stupid? No: it was groundbreaking

Despite this reception, Pink Flamingos is now heralded as ground-breaking. It shaped the boundaries of bad taste and gross out humour.

There are several shocking scenes in the film. One sees Divine and Crackers break into the Marbles’ home where, after licking all the furniture, Divine fellates her son. Another sees a shot of a man flexing his prolapsed anus so it looks like it’s miming the words to “Surfin’ Bird”.

Read more: Boundary-pushing films are more than their clickbait headlines

But perhaps the most notorious is where, in the final scene, Divine eats dog faeces to “How Much is the Doggy in the Window?”.

Just how much can you stomach when watching something disgusting?

The characters in Pink Flamingos challenge normative ideas around sexuality, gender and family. Confronting perceptions of “good taste”, Pink Flamingos attacked an elitist culture that excluded many communities, such as queer folk and punks.

Unlinke the respectable queer characters palatable to a broad audience in Love, Simon (2018) or Will & Grace (1998–2005, 2017–), Pink Flamingos allows us pleasure in others’ disgust at these mad characters.

Pink Flamingos draws on a queer rage that channelled the discontent many viewers felt with assimilationist politics. Babs Johnson and her family were disgusting and broke the law – and the audience loved her for it.

The film contributed to a camp aesthetic that is imbued in many popular queer films, such as But I’m a Cheerleader (1999) and Raspberry Reich (2004), and Waters’ rage became a key part of queer cinema, seen elsewhere in the New Queer Cinema movement of the early 90s and beyond.

In an era when films depicted queer folk as painfully banal, such as The Boys in the Band (1970), or offensive, such as Cruising (1980), Waters’ films were a funny and crude counterpoint.

They were a promise of a brighter and queerer future.

Read more: The Boys in the Band: once banned in Australia, this pre-gay liberation story is now a fond, funny Netflix remake

As I have argued elsewhere, Waters’ films do not make explicit political statements. His ideology is conveyed through humour.

Through co-opting the plastic, pink flamingo lawn ornament, Waters makes fun of a middle class sense of respectability. Before carrying out the punishment of the Marbles (for “asshole-ism”, no less), Babs Johnson proclaims:

Kill everyone now! Condone first degree murder! Advocate cannibalism! Eat shit! Filth is my politics! Filth is my life!

The humour lies in the absurdity of the situation.

When Variety dubbed the film “one of the most vile, stupid and repulsive films ever made”, Waters used this on the posters promoting the film. Waters wanted to offend people with Pink Flamingos – and if you can stomach to look past the offence, you will find a biting and hilarious film, as shocking and politically relevant as ever.

But in revisiting Pink Flamingos, there is one scene that still doesn’t sit right with me. The on-screen deaths of the chicken (purely for the sake of comedy) is a cruelty and grotesquery that goes beyond my own sense of good taste. Everyone has their limits.

– ref. My best worst film: Pink Flamingos – ‘one of the most vile, stupid and repulsive films ever made’? – https://theconversation.com/my-best-worst-film-pink-flamingos-one-of-the-most-vile-stupid-and-repulsive-films-ever-made-147358

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

The Australian government has registered “serious concerns” with Qatar about an incident in which female passengers, including Australians, were taken off a flight bound for Australia and subjected to an invasive search.

The incident happened at Hamad international airport in Doha earlier this month after a fetus was discovered in an airport bathroom.

The story was broken by the Seven Network, which reported that “women at the airport, including thirteen Australians, were removed from flights, detained and forced to undergo an inspection in an ambulance on the tarmac.”

According to the report, Qatari authorities forced the women to remove their underwear.

A foreign affairs spokesperson said on Sunday: “The Australian government is aware of concerning reports regarding the treatment of female passengers, including Australian citizens, at Doha (Hamad) airport in Qatar.

“We have formally registered our serious concerns regarding the incident with Qatari authorities and have been assured that detailed and transparent information on the event will be provided soon.”

The matter is being handled by Foreign Minister Marise Payne.

– ref. Australia expresses ‘serious concerns’ about invasive searches of women at Doha airport – https://theconversation.com/australia-expresses-serious-concerns-about-invasive-searches-of-women-at-doha-airport-148784

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

The Morrison government and business have reacted angrily to Daniel Andrews’ “cautious pause” on announcing the easing of COVID restrictions in Melbourne, suggesting it showed the state government lacked faith in its contact tracing.

The delay of the announcement – which Andrews said would only be for a day or two – follows an outbreak in the northern suburbs of Melbourne. Andrews insisted the pause would not stop things opening on or before November 1, as scheduled.

After talking up expectations of a major announcement, the premier hosed them down on Saturday before declaring on Sunday a hold until at least 1,000 test results from the northern metropolitan outbreak were processed.

The federal government said the pause was “a profound disappointment.”

“At some point, you have to move forward and put your public health systems to work in a bid to reclaim the jobs that have been lost, and rescue the livelihoods and peace of mind of so many Victorians who have been affected by the inability to contain the outbreak that lead to the second Victorian wave,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, and Health Minister Greg Hunt said in a statement.

“Victoria’s public health systems are either up to the task of dealing with future outbreaks or they are not. The decision to keep businesses closed suggests that there is still not sufficient confidence within the government that their systems can support reopening.”

Andrews’ delay brought a sharp reaction from his former Health Minister Jenny Mikakos, who tweeted:

“The set reopening is gradual & safe so any delay is unnecessary. It’s paralysis in decision-making.”

The Australian Industry Group said the state government’s failure to set out guidelines for Melbourne’s reopening was “yet another hammer blow to business confidence”.

“The decision reflects a clear lack of confidence by the government in its own testing and tracing systems,” Ai Group chief executive, Innes Willox, said.

The Business Council of Australia also pointed the finger at Victoria’s health system. “There can only be one explanation for the delays – Victorian authorities do not have confidence in their procedures to manage local outbreaks and we urge them to collaborate with NSW and adopt the NSW system,” BCA chief executive, Jennifer Westacott, said.

The Victorian pause is especially frustrating for the federal government because on Friday all jurisdictions except Western Australia agreed in principle to a new “Framework for National Reopening Australia by Christmas”.

Morrison and his ministers said in their statement that while the federal government “welcomes Victoria’s commitment to the national framework agreed at national cabinet to have Australia open by Christmas, for many Victorian businesses and their workers today’s announcement will mean they will simply not be able to make it”.

The Victorian government delay comes as there were seven new cases reported in the state, six of them linked to cases associated with the northern metropolitan outbreak.

Andrews insisted at his daily press conference the delay in making an announcement was “not a setback”.

“This is not anything other than a cautious pause, to wait to get that important information, to get the results of those tests.”

Andrews said that even if an announcement on easing Melbourne restrictions had been made on Sunday businesses would not have opened before Tuesday night or Wednesday.

The premier did announce some further easing of restrictions for regional Victoria.

– ref. Daniel Andrews’ delay prompts new questions about Victoria’s contact tracing – https://theconversation.com/daniel-andrews-delay-prompts-new-questions-about-victorias-contact-tracing-148783

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

Australia’s leading economists have struggled to grade this month’s budget.

Challenged by the Economic Society of Australia and The Conversation to rate it on a scale of A to F when judged by its stated aims of rebuilding the economy and creating jobs, none of the 43 economists who responded gave it the lowest grades of E or F.

But most who gave it a pass were unhappy.

Financial markets expert Kevin Davis praised “the willingness of a conservative government to adopt needed large deficit spending at variance with its ideology”.

Economic modeller and former Reserve Bank board member Warwick McKibbin said he would give it an A for scale.

But Davis said tax cuts “to the better-off employed” weren’t the best way of achieving desired outcomes, and McKibbin said the composition could have been much better designed.

Read more: It’s not the size of the budget deficit that counts; it’s how you use it

“There was an opportunity to invest in green infrastructure as part of a fiscal response and a climate/energy policy response that would have longer-term economic and environmental payoffs,” McKibbin said.

“For spending support, transfers to low income households rather than income tax cuts would have given a bigger bang for the buck. Greater support of childcare would support incomes and labour supply.”

Bob Breunig said the design of the childcare benefit created a well-documented income cliff for second earners making it difficult for them to work more hours. It was a known problem and would have been easy to fix.

Hard hats instead of soft skills

The Grattan Institute’s Danielle Wood said it was “absolutely the right call to change course on fiscal strategy and recognise the need for sizeable stimulus, so marks for that”.

But the budget “very much bet the house on a private sector-led recovery”.

Where it had spent money directly it mostly went to “hard-hat” professions such as infrastructure, construction, manufacturing, defence, utilities and energy.

Read more: High-viz, narrow vision: the budget overlooks the hardest hit in favour of the hardest hats

“Some of these sectors haven’t even seen job losses during COVID,” Wood said, and there is already a healthy pipeline of work for transport infrastructure projects, so why spend your stimulus dollars here?“

Renee Fry McKibbin noted that the burden of COVID-19 falls on front-line workers in health, caring industries, hospitality, tourism, arts and education, yet she said the budget focused on sectors “traditionally dominated by men”.

Climate change overlooked

Wood said the price of those blindspots would be a weaker recovery than otherwise, unemployment higher for longer than it could have been, and women’s economic disadvantage entrenched.

Labour market specialist Sue Richardson said relying on incentives such as instant asset write-offs and hiring subsidies was risky because the private sector might not respond in the way that had been hoped.

What direct spending there was seemed “intended largely to recreate the economy of the past, rather than invest in the economy of the future”.

Read more: Budget 2020: promising tax breaks, but relying on hope

“The economy of the future will, among other things, need to have much lower greenhouse gas emissions and much greater ability to cope with the unavoidable damage arising from climate change.”

How we handle the recovery will either set us on a path towards net-zero emissions or lock us into a fossil fuel system from which it will be hard to escape.

Saul Eslake gave the government “great credit for being willing, explicitly, to recalibrate its budget strategy” and run up what (for Australia) were large amounts of debt.

On average, a bare pass

But he said the measures chosen would be less effective in delivering jobs and recovery than others available including vouchers for spending in sectors hard-hit sectors and spending on social housing and childcare.

All but one of the 43 economists who responded to the survey also responded to the pre-budget survey which nominated spending on social housing, education and training and permanently boosting JobSeeker as the top budget priorities.

Assessing the budget, 16 of the 43 (37%) awarded it either an A or a B. Almost half (49%) awarded it a C, or “bare pass”. Six (14%) gave it a D.

Some of the economists who awarded a B said it was really a “B-minus”

One of them, Lata Gangadharan, said when it came to opportunities for women (those worst affected by the downturn) the budget “failed miserably” and would attract a D.

James Morley said he might have been “too easy of a marker” by awarding a B, but that it was “possible to lose the forest for the trees when only evaluating the budget on its specifics”.

‘B’ reflects the big picture, not the details

The big picture was that deficit-financed stimulus was needed and that the budget provided much more than might have been expected given the previous positions of the treasury and the Morrison government.

He said the forward guidance that put off “budget repair” until after the unemployment rate fell below 6% was welcome, even if one could ask why the threshold of 6% number had been chosen.

The more one looks at the details, the more one wants to significantly mark down the grade for budget. But I will still give it a “B” because the big picture is on the right track and I will just hope the Treasurer somehow becomes an “A” student in the future.

Rana Roy said he would have to grade the budget a C rather than an A or B, “more in sorrow than in anger”.

While he approved of the deficits and the tax cuts and the focus on infrastructure, he strongly suspected the measures would not be enough.

“For example, in an immediate sense it is likely that the negative impact of tapering and terminating JobKeeper will overpower the positive impact of the new wage subsidies for new hires.”

Read more: Top economists back boosts to JobSeeker and social housing over tax cuts in pre-budget poll

Two of those surveyed awarded the budget a B primarily because it had shown restraint. Tony Makin said two much spending would have pushed up the dollar and drawn resources away from the private sector. Geoffrey Kingston said it was important to avoid “maxing out the national credit card”.

Chris Edmond awarded it a C primarily because its assumptions relied on hope.

By simply assuming a widespread effective vaccine will be available next year and not otherwise thinking hard about how to beat the pandemic, the government is being very optimistic.

Others said it had ignored the one thing recommended by most economists, which was to invest in social housing to make housing affordable and create jobs.

A permanent increase JobSeeker would have given a million Australian confidence in the leadup to Christmas. Higher education, a major export earner with a direct impact on productivity, was being left to shrink.

John Quiggin said the budget pursued “cultural/ideological vendettas against perceived enemies like renewable energy and the university sector”.

But he said it was still worth a C. The government was right to budget for a large deficit, and deserved continuing credit for JobSeeker and JobKeeper.

Individual responses

– ref. ‘Could do better’: Top Australian economists award the budget a cautious pass – https://theconversation.com/could-do-better-top-australian-economists-award-the-budget-a-cautious-pass-148624

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

James Shipton, chairman of the Australian Securities and Investments Corporation, has stood aside after an adverse Audit Office report about $118,557 paid by ASIC on his behalf when he relocated from the US.

The Audit Office also found payments of $69,621 for deputy chairman Daniel Crennan, to relocate from Melbourne to Sydney, had not been within the guidelines. He has not stood aside.

ASIC is the national corporate regulator.

Both men said they would repay the money. The funds for Shipton related to taxation advice and support when he relocated to take up his position, while Crennan received payments for housing expenses.

The Audit Office indicated the amounts might exceed the limits set by the Remuneration Tribunal, and pointed to Commonwealth procurement rules not being followed.

The revelations about ASIC come a day after the government forced Australia Post CEO Christine Holgate to stand aside when she revealed four employees had been given Cartier watches worth $3000 each as a reward for their work on a major commercial deal.

Scott Morrison, who on Thursday denounced the Post rewards, said on Friday the government was taking legal advice about whether Holgate should be paid while an inquiry – by public servants with outside assistance – is conducted into the matter. Australia Post is a government-owned business.

Asked on Friday whether a broad inquiry was needed into remuneration and other arrangements for all government appointees, Morrison said: “I think there wouldn’t be a board member of a government agency or a CEO of a government agency that did not get my message yesterday. I think they got it with a rocket. And so, my advice to them is to get it.”

The tax services for Shipton were provided by KPMG and the fees escalated. The Auditor-General said: “The fee increases were described by KPMG as being due to the complexity of the tax affairs being managed”.

After its finding about the ASIC payments the Audit Office recommended

… ASIC review the processes supporting the approval of remuneration and benefits paid to executive office holders, including the trigger points for seeking advice should amounts outside the Renumeration Determination be considered, and

… a review be undertaken of the procurement processes around payments for tax advice paid on behalf of the chair to determine the internal controls that need to be either reinforced or redesigned.

Frydenberg has ordered an independent review of the matter.

In his statement Shipton said: “ASIC acknowledges the processes supporting the approval of these relocation expenses were inadequate and, given the high standard ASIC holds itself to, it is disappointed that such situation has occurred.

“ASIC anticipates the independent review will assist it to make appropriate changes to key policies and processes.

“In the interim ASIC has implemented changes to procedures associated with approval of expenses relating to geographic relocation for statutory appointees to ensure that there is Commission oversight of those expenses and that the arrangements for new statutory appointees are clearly documented prior to them being made.”

The accommodation payments for Crennan were ceased following his request, Shipton said. “He offered and agreed to repay the accommodation payments made to him as a debt due to the Commonwealth.”

Shipton said he had advised Frydenberg that it was appropriate to stand aside while the review was done. “I hold myself to the highest possible standard.”

A deputy chair of ASIC, Karen Chester, will act as chair in the interim.

– ref. ASIC chair James Shipton steps aside after adverse finding by Auditor-General – https://theconversation.com/asic-chair-james-shipton-steps-aside-after-adverse-finding-by-auditor-general-148728

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ketaki Sharma, PhD student, University of Sydney

An ideal COVID-19 vaccine would not only protect people from becoming ill, it would also stop the virus spreading through the population. The best way to do this is to vaccinate as many people as possible.

If the best available vaccine is only moderately protective — for example, if it only prevents 50% of infections — we might need to vaccinate children as well as adults to interrupt the spread.

There is no COVID-19 vaccine being developed specifically for children. So if children are to be vaccinated, they will likely receive the same vaccine as adults. They might require a different dosing schedule, but that is not yet clear.

So what are the issues with developing a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine for children? And where are we up to with clinical trials including them?

Why children?

Children don’t appear to be “super-spreaders” of COVID-19, although they can still be infected. And if infected, they have a lower risk of severe illness or death than adults.

However, some children may have a higher risk of severe illness, such as those with existing medical problems. We are also learning more about a rare but serious inflammatory condition reported in some children after COVID-19 infection.

There is also a broader issue at stake. Delaying children’s access to vaccines could delay our recovery from COVID-19. This would prolong the pandemic’s considerable impact on children’s education, health and emotional well-being.

Read more: Rare multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children linked to coronavirus

Would children react differently to a vaccine?

The way a child’s immune system reacts to pathogens or vaccines can be different to adults. Age can determine the number of required doses. For example, infants sometimes require more doses of a vaccine than older children.

Age can also influence the side-effect profile of a vaccine. For example, mild fever following vaccination can be common in babies and young children.

So vaccine developers need to include children in their clinical trials so they can gather age-specific information on the immune response, the effectiveness of the vaccine in preventing disease, and any side-effects.

Are COVID-19 vaccines already being tested in children?

Vaccine trials are usually done in stages. They typically start with healthy, young and middle-aged adults.

Once a vaccine is confirmed to be safe in these earlier trials, developers then test the vaccine in older and younger age groups.

Several COVID-19 vaccine developers already have plans to include children in their clinical trials.

University of Oxford researchers will recruit children aged 5-12 into a phase 2/3 trial of its vaccine. This is one of the vaccines for which the Australian government has a supply agreement, should clinical trials prove successful.

Read more: Putting our money on two COVID vaccines is better than one: why Australia’s latest vaccine deal makes sense

Pfizer will enrol children aged 12 and older in a phase 2/3 trial of its vaccine. Multiple developers in China and in India are also including children in COVID-19 vaccine trials, some as young as six.

All of these trials are ongoing and have not released results.

Read more: From adenoviruses to RNA: the pros and cons of different COVID vaccine technologies

How could we get more children included in trials?

We need more children included in clinical trials, an issue recognised globally. For instance, the US Food and Drug Administration announced it will work as quickly as possible with vaccine developers to set up trials for COVID-19 vaccines in children.

The US National Institutes of Health is developing a protocol for researchers to include children in vaccine trials in a safe but timely way.

Having a universal protocol, which we don’t yet have for COVID-19 vaccine trials, would make it easier for researchers to include children in future trials, and to compare different vaccines.

There are no protocols yet including children in COVID-19 vaccine trials run in Australia. Any Australian studies would only likely examine the immune response and safety in children (phase 1 and 2 trials). They would probably not examine effectiveness (phase 3 trials) because of the low rates of COVID-19 here.

Read more: How researchers assess whether medications work

Before any child is enrolled in a trial their parent or guardian will be asked to read an information sheet that explains the risks and benefits of taking part. Safety data from earlier trials in adults would need to be included in child-specific information sheets, so parents are aware of the known risks before they decide to enrol their child.

In Australia, it may be a challenge to enrol children in COVID-19 vaccine trials, as the disease burden is low compared with other countries, so parents may not want their child to take part.

However, it is important we learn as much as we can about how COVID-19 vaccines perform in children, and participating in such research helps us gather this valuable information.

How is vaccine safety assessed?

Vaccine trials are closely supervised by an independent data and safety monitoring board, who follow strict protocols and have the authority to pause a trial if there are safety issues.

Australia also has strict guidelines for the registration of vaccines. A vaccine will only be licensed if its safety has been demonstrated in large studies, usually including many thousands of people. Usually, vaccines are registered according to the age groups in which trials have been done.

Even after a vaccine is licensed in Australia, its safety continues to be monitored. A doctor, patient or parent can report side-effects to the authorities.

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

Alternatively, researchers can more actively engage with the public to monitor side-effects, such as with the AusVaxSafety system.

In this system, when a GP gives someone a vaccine, that person receives a text message three days later to ask about side-effects and to complete a survey on their smart phone or computer. This is “real time”, important safety data.

We already use this system to monitor the safety of each year’s flu vaccines and will potentially use it when COVID-19 vaccines are rolled out into the community.

In a nutshell

Although there has been extraordinary progress in COVID-19 vaccine trials, only some vaccine developers have taken steps to recruit children so far. That needs to change if we are to protect children and the wider community. So we need protocols that make it easier for researchers to recruit children into COVID-19 vaccine trials.

As early data in adults accumulates, providing information to parents — and where age-appropriate, their children — to consent to their child participating in trials has a lot of benefits. It will also ultimately help us in the race to end this pandemic.

– ref. Children may need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 too. Here’s what we need to consider – https://theconversation.com/children-may-need-to-be-vaccinated-against-covid-19-too-heres-what-we-need-to-consider-146404

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steve Georgakis, Senior Lecturer of Pedagogy and Sports Studies, University of Sydney

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant disruptions to all major sports in Australia, but perhaps the most fascinating — and unlikely — change is the playing of the AFL grand final in Brisbane.

When most Australians think of sports preferences by state, AFL naturally comes out on top in Victoria, while rugby union is thought of as a Queensland and NSW game.

But Australian rules football was actually played first in Queensland — and it was only a quirk of history, as well as an enduring love of the British empire, that caused Queenslanders to eventually switch allegiances.

Sports in the early colonial days

Unlike many countries, Australia supports four major football codes (Australian rules, rugby union, rugby league and soccer). The story of how these four sports developed here goes back to the pre-Federation days.

After the British began colonising Australia, sports were one of the most important ways for early settlers to replicate British culture. It was a demonstration of British nationalism and loyalty to the home country.

The first sports in Australia included horse racing and cricket, but were soon followed by others, such as coursing (hunting with dogs) and bowling.

The other popular British sport at the time was football. But unlike other sports, there were various forms of football played in the home country. This was particularly evident in the British private boys’ schools, where football was played according to the respective schools’ rules.

Read more: Indigenous players didn’t invent Australian rules but did make it their own

Two distinct forms of football ultimately emerged in England — what we now call soccer and rugby union. This history has been very contentious and still provides some very passionate debate.

As Britain began colonising various parts of the world, rugby union emerged as the dominant football sport, not soccer. That is, the elite sanctioned rugby union as the imperial football code.

This legacy can be felt today as New Zealand, South Africa and Australia are the dominant rugby union countries, while in the former colonies of countries like Spain, Portugal and France, soccer is the sport of choice.

A simpler, safer and more attractive game

In the late 1850s, momentum grew in Melbourne to establish football clubs and play matches. The only problem was rugby union and soccer had not yet been codified — that is, there was no accepted set of rules.

So, the early settlers in Melbourne attempted to establish their own rules for “football”, creating what they believed would be an easily understood, safe and attractive game. It took some time to get right.

In the first trial of the new rules in 1859, for example, no goals were kicked due to the wind and the closeness of the goal posts. According to a report from the time,

Some little unpleasantness was occasioned owing to the vague wording of the rule which makes ‘tripping’ an institution, and after the match a meeting of the committee was held, at which most of the existing rules underwent revision, and some new ones were added.

From the very beginning, Australian rules football developed as its own thing. The members of the Melbourne Cricket Club who established the rules were free to experiment as they liked to produce a game they believed would grow in popularity.

The rest is history. Australian rules football soon became the dominant code in Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia.

A battle between football codes in Queensland

Queensland became an independent colony late in comparison to the others. And in 1866, the first Brisbane Football Club was formed, adopting the Melbourne rules of the game.

For the next decade, Australian rules was the official football code in Queensland, though the Brisbane Football Club also dabbled in some rugby union games.

When it became clear rugby union was becoming the dominant football code across the British empire, however, there was a concerted push in Queensland to change to rugby union. And in 1876, the various Brisbane football clubs switched allegiances, though this wasn’t without controversy.

Read more: The AFL has moved the grand final from Melbourne for the first time – but it has a far more pressing issue

For several years, supporters and clubs were torn between the two games. It’s clear from media reports that Australian rules had some advantages: the game was more enjoyable to play and watch, easier to understand, and safer.

Rugby union promoters, meanwhile, had difficulty translating their rules into practice, leading to confusion. As one rugby union detractor said in the Brisbane Courier in 1876,

there is too much holding of the ball and disputing about ‘on’ and ‘off’ side. This is not football at all, and for this reason these rules were discarded by Melbournians, and new ones, far better, substituted. The rugby union code contain fifty-seven rules, which the Melbourne rules are only fifteen.

But rugby union was the game preferred by the elites; it was the British game. So, rugby union ultimately prevailed in Queensland (as well as NSW) from around 1880.

AFL push into rugby union country

This divided football landscape changed very little throughout the 20th centuries. But as the codes have become more commercialised in recent years, the AFL in particular has made efforts to expand its reach beyond Victoria and reach new players and spectators in NSW and Queensland.

This process began with the expansion of the VFL/AFL, beginning in the 1980s. But more significantly, there has also been growth at the grassroots level among both adults and children, men and women.

This year, the pandemic provided the AFL with a great opportunity to make even further inroads into the rugby-playing states. Not only did Brisbane host matches when Victoria went into lockdown, but spectators started watching in greater numbers, too.

The opening match of the finals series earlier this month between Port Adelaide and Geelong saw huge increases in Sydney (up 259% over the 2019 week one final) and Brisbane (up 112% over 2019).

Read more: With the debut of GWS, Aussie Rules comes home to Sydney

And the qualifying final between Brisbane and Richmond attracted nearly 150,000 viewers in Brisbane — more than the NRL qualifying final the same night.

AFL chief executive Gil McLachlan even went as far as to say,

I’m not saying we’re the number one sport here in Queensland, but it’s certainly nice to be in the conversation. Right now, it feels like it’s close to being Queensland’s game.

If these spectator numbers are any indication, Australian rules football is coming back to Queensland. And it might not be leaving like it did in the early 1880s.

– ref. The Gabba Grand Final: how Queensland fell in love with Australian Rules football again – https://theconversation.com/the-gabba-grand-final-how-queensland-fell-in-love-with-australian-rules-football-again-148344

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Finch, Adjunct Research Fellow, University of Southern Queensland

Imagine visiting the Europe of 2048. The cities are strangely silent. Desperate communities in Paris, London and Berlin struggle in the shadow of hollowed-out buildings. The once-popular coastal resorts have also been abandoned, as rises in sea level have taken their toll.

Heading out to rural areas, you find where the fortunate few have gone: shining citadels, high-tech gated communities designed to protect residents from the ravages of climate change and ongoing pandemics.

That doesn’t mean life in 2048 is always grim. The world is gearing up for the 39th Summer Olympics, to be held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The greatest athletes will be attending, but also thinkers, artists and heroes nominated from around the globe for their work fighting the climate crisis.

Europeans, Americans and Australians are hoping for a great medal haul, but this year, as in most others, the country expected to dominate is China, the world’s leader in the fight to survive climate change.

Is this the future we face? Even if it isn’t, what can imagined scenarios like this teach us about the challenges we face in the present?

Read more: There are many good ideas to tackle inequality – it’s time we acted on them

Identifying inequality blindspots

Researchers from 13 countries are currently thinking about such questions as part of the IMAJINE project, funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme. IMAJINE’s aim is to explore inequality and injustice across the European Union’s member states.

Inequality isn’t just the gaps between the haves and have-nots in the present. As the world changes and societies evolve, different forms of unfairness can arise.

Read more: Inequality in the OECD is at a record high – and society is suffering as a result

COVID-19 has fuelled uncertainty and, as both the pandemic and our response to it have reshaped societies, made these issues more urgent. We need to anticipate new and emerging forms of inequality and injustice — and understand how we can counter them.

To do this, IMAJINE uses scenario planning, a tool for envisioning different future worlds.

Scenarios aren’t predictions; they are valuable even if they never come to pass. The aim of the four visions we’ve created isn’t to forecast what will certainly happen, but to find our blindspots when it comes to planning for the future of inequality.

A future of digital citizenship or five-person marriages

In our first scenario, outlined above, we picture a world in which cities are abandoned and today’s rural backwaters become the most desirable places to live.

The fight against climate change is a global priority and next-generation clean manufacturing technology is expanding rapidly. Inequality here is based on who has the means to protect themselves from the changing climate.

Read more: We live in a world of upheaval. So why aren’t today’s protests leading to revolutions?

Another scenario explores a world in which citizenship is entirely digital. It becomes so removed from your place of residence that you might be a European citizen online, even though you physically live in Australia.

The haves and have-nots in this future aren’t defined by where they call home, but where they’re allowed to work, play and gather in virtual space. Advanced technology lets the privileged explore, enjoy and profit from these digital environments, while the less fortunate are locked out.

Yet another scenario explores a breakdown of trust driven by “fake news”, which leads to a fragmentation of cultures and values.

In that future, some parts of Europe celebrate five-person marriages, while others double down on traditional values. Where you live might hold you back from exploring your identity — or create new opportunities to define and celebrate who you are.

Learning from imagined futures

Each of these scenarios shows how inequality isn’t just a question of how wide the gap is between the haves and have-nots. It’s also about the changing ways we understand injustice.

The IMAJINE team are inviting stakeholders to explore these worlds and consider how they relate to social challenges in the present. We want to inspire fresh solutions, not impose our own.

Policy decisions are still often based solely on the numbers: what policies cost, who and how many people benefit. Yet changing social and cultural values also steer people’s perceptions of what is fair and acceptable, beyond the numbers.

The scenarios we’ve created test our sense of what matters when the world changes. They provide a stage on which to play out new ways of thinking when it comes to policy ideas. They help us devise policies that are broadly accepted and can be adapted to local needs.

These imagined futures may never happen, but they might keep us from sleepwalking into new kinds of inequality and prepare us for whatever shocks our world will inevitably encounter.

– ref. Climate-protected citadels, virtual worlds only for the privileged: is this the future of inequality? – https://theconversation.com/climate-protected-citadels-virtual-worlds-only-for-the-privileged-is-this-the-future-of-inequality-146680

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW

This week the United States Department of Justice (DoJ) filed a lawsuit accusing Google of using “anticompetitive tactics to maintain and extend its monopolies in the markets” for search and advertising.

It is the most significant antitrust case since the US government took on Microsoft in 1998 for using its dominant position as the provider of the Windows operating system to force PC makers to bundle its Internet Explorer web browser.

That case was fought out in US courts for years before Microsoft agreed to settle in 2001. This case will no doubt be heavily litigated, and likewise take years to conclude. But it’s not too soon to consider the basic economics.

The bottom line is more complicated than one might think. Yes, Google has a huge share of the search-engine market – 92% globally according to statcounter.com, compared with 2.8% for Microsoft’s Bing, 1.6% for Yahoo! and 0.5% for DuckDuckGo.

But does that give Google a lot of “market power” – the ability to charge high price or produce low-quality products? Probably not.

To judge if a company like Google is really a monopolist, it is crucial to understand the difference between ordinary markets (like those for clothes, cars, or breakfast cereal) and technology markets (like those for internet search, social media, or ride sharing).

Read more: The US is taking on Google in a huge antitrust case. It could change the face of online search

Markets with ‘network externalities’

Any introductory economics textbook will tell you a large market share is smoking-gun evidence of market power; and that with market power comes the ability to shut out competitors, charge high prices and even get away with producing low-quality products.

Economists of all stripes agree that regulating monopolies and making markets more competitive benefits consumers, through lower prices and better products.

Indeed, this was the motivation behind the so-called “trust-busting” movement in the US in the early 20th century. The most famous scalp was John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, which the US Supreme Court ordered in 1911 be broken up into 34 separate companies. (The break-up made Rockefeller the world’s richest man).

But internet search isn’t like oil. Neither is social media, ride sharing or platforms like Amazon. These are what economists call “markets with network externalities”. That is, when more consumers use the product, it becomes more valuable for other consumers.

Read more: Lawmakers keen to break up ‘big tech’ like Amazon and Google need to realize the world has changed a lot since Microsoft and Standard Oil

Facebook is useful because it connects one with lots of other users. A thousand little, disconnected social media platforms would be much less useful. Amazon connects lots of sellers with million of consumers. This is hugely valuable for both. Google connects lots of consumers with advertisers and information. Again, this is valuable to both sides of the market.

Because network externalities mean — all else being equal — the bigger the market share the more valuable the company’s product is to consumers, we tend to see one dominant company and a few smaller ones in such markets.

Just because tech companies have a big share of the market now, however, doesn’t mean they are destined to keep it.

Remember Netscape? In the mid-1990s it had a 80% share in the browser market, before losing it to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

But Internet Explorer’s dominance, peaking at 95% share in the early 2000s, didn’t last either. It now claims barely 1% of the browser market.

This is why companies in markets with network externalities are never asleep. Uber and Facebook are constantly running experiments to innovate their products, as are other companies like Amazon and, you guessed it, Google.

Influencers and defaults

An important part of the Department of Justice’s suit against Google is that it allegedly pays Apple as much as US$11 billion a year to be the default search engine on the Safari browser on every iPhone.

This is a bit like paying for a social media influencer to plug your product — with a twist. Making something the default doesn’t mean the user has to use it, but the small effort to choose an alternative means most don’t bother.

But if it really wasn’t a good product and didn’t deliver good search results, wouldn’t consumers (a) remove it and (b) be less likely to buy iPhones?

There’s a big difference between something being a default and there being no choice. Articulating this difference may end up being an important part of how the Google litigation plays out.

Indeed, Microsoft making Internet Explorer the default browser in Windows has been an ongoing source of back and forth with US and European competition authorities.

Read more: Twitter is banning political ads – but the real battle for democracy is with Facebook and Google

Ultimately misguided

As with the suits against Standard Oil and Microsoft, the case against Google will be decided by the courts, perhaps ending with the US Supreme Court. The outcome will be instructive as to whether other tech companies like Amazon, Facebook or Uber will also wind up in the firing line.

Ironically, at a time of extreme polarisation in US politics, breaking up big tech companies is popular on the left and the right.

But we should remember that consumers are huge beneficiaries from these tech companies. Think about how much it used to cost to take and print photographs. A 2018 International Monetary Fund report cites research suggesting US consumers would need more than US$25,000 a year to compensate for the loss of free services from tech companies.

That’s a lot.

What is crucial for competition regulators around the world to note is that the markets in which big technology companies operate are not like other markets. Because of network externalities they tend to have big “in” firms (with a large market share) and smaller “out” firms (with small market shares but providing competitive discipline).

That doesn’t mean these markets aren’t competitive. It means the “in” companies have a lot to lose by being leapfrogged by a small competitor. Which is why they work so hard to innovate and keep prices low.

– ref. Vital Signs: Google’s huge market share doesn’t automatically make it a monopoly – https://theconversation.com/vital-signs-googles-huge-market-share-doesnt-automatically-make-it-a-monopoly-148525