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

There is an urgent need to understand why people troll.

Recent Australian estimates show about one in three internet users have experienced online harassment.

Across several research studies, I have attempted to construct the psychological profile of those who trolls to harm others.

In my most recent study, I wanted to see if trolling could be linked to self-esteem. Do people troll because they have low self-worth?

What is trolling?

In scientific literature, internet trolling is defined as a malicious online behaviour, characterised by aggressive and deliberate provocation of others. “Trolls” seek to provoke, upset and harm others via inflammatory messages and posts.

Read more: Online trolling used to be funny, but now the term refers to something far more sinister

Trolling can refer to a variety of online behaviour. In some circumstances, the intent of the trolling behaviour may even be to amuse and entertain. However, in my research, I have explored trolling as a malevolent behaviour, where the troll wants to hurt their online victim.

Why is trolling a problem?

Trolling can cause significant harm and distress. It is associated with serious physical and psychological effects, including disrupted sleep, lowered self-esteem, depression, self-harm, suicidal ideation, and in some cases, even suicide.

In 2019, The Australia Institute estimated trolling and online abuse had cost the Australian economy up to $3.7 billion in health costs and lost income.

Alarmingly, it is extremely common to experience trolling. Combined with the psychological and economic costs of trolling, this demonstrates the urgency of understanding why people troll.

If we can understand why people troll, this can inform management and prevention.

Researching trolls

In my latest study, I explored gender, psychopathy, sadism and self-esteem as predictors of engaging in malevolent trolling.

Psychopathy is characterised by callousness, deceitfulness and a lack of personal responsibility. Sadism is characterised by enjoyment of physically and/or psychologically harming other people.

The study recruited 400 participants via social media advertisements. Almost 68% of participants were women, 43% were Australian, while the average age was 25. They completed an anonymous, confidential online questionnaire, which assessed personality and self-esteem.

Read more: Women troll on dating apps just as often as men

The study also measured the extent to which participants displayed troll-like behaviours. For example:

I enjoy upsetting people I do not personally know on the internet

although some people think my posts are offensive, I think they are funny.

What the study found

Results showed that gender, psychopathy, and sadism were all significant independent predictors of malevolent trolling. That is, if you are male, have high psychopathy, or high sadism, you are more likely to troll.

The most powerful predictor of trolling was sadism. The more someone enjoys hurting others, the more likely it is they will troll.

Self-esteem was not an independent predictor of trolling.

However, we found self-esteem interacts with sadism. So, if a person had high levels of sadism and high self-esteem, they were more likely to troll. This result was unexpected because low self-esteem has predicted other antisocial online behaviour, such as cyberbullying.

What does this mean?

These results have important implications for how we manage and respond to trolling.

First, based on the results of psychopathy and sadism, we understand the internet troll as someone who is callous, lacks a sense of personal responsibility and enjoys causing others harm.

The significance of psychopathy in the results also indicates trolls have an empathy deficit, particularly when it comes to their ability to experience and internalise other people’s emotions.

On top of this, the interaction between high sadism and high self-esteem suggests trolls are not trolling because they have low self-worth. In fact, this is quite the opposite. The more someone enjoys hurting others and the better they feel about themselves, the more likely they are to troll.

So, how can we use this information?

Unfortunately, the psychological profile of an internet troll means you will not get far appealing to their sense of humanity. And don’t just brush off the troll as someone who has low self-worth. Their character is far more complex, which makes managing the behaviour all the more challenging.

Previous research has found showing the troll they have upset you may only reinforce their behaviour.

It appears the popular refrain is correct: don’t feed the trolls and give them the hurt or angry response they are looking for.

This does not mean we should just ignore this behaviour. People who commit this type of cyber abuse should still be held accountable for their actions.

I propose we change the narrative. Trolls are not to be feared — their power lies in the reactions they cause.

Read more: ‘Don’t feed the trolls’ really is good advice – here’s the evidence

One way we can start is to become active bystanders. Bystanders are those who witness the trolling. Active bystanders intervene and say “this is not okay”.

Don’t fight fire with fire. Respond with outward indifference and strict no tolerance. Let’s work together to dismantle the power of the troll and take back the internet from their influence.

It is not only up to the person experiencing the trolling to respond and manage the behaviour. We all need to take responsibility for our online environment.

– ref. New research shows trolls don’t just enjoy hurting others, they also feel good about themselves – https://theconversation.com/new-research-shows-trolls-dont-just-enjoy-hurting-others-they-also-feel-good-about-themselves-145931

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Georgia Atkin-Smith, Research scientist, La Trobe University

I know veins are made out of cells but what are cells made out of? It’s very tricky to answer that — Bea, 4 years old

That is a great question, Bea!

The human body is just like a big puzzle, but with billions of tiny pieces called cells. Our cells come in many different shapes and sizes. Together, they make up all of the parts of our body, from our veins to our brain.

Our cells are really, really small. For example, look at how thin a single strand of your hair is. Although it’s so thin, nearly 20 cells could fit across it. That’s how small they are.

Scientists have discovered cells are made from different building blocks we call molecules, such as water, plus other types like proteins, fats and DNA.

Just like our body, which has different parts that all work together, our cells also have different parts too. Let’s take a closer look.

Cells have skin

The outside skin of a cell is called the plasma membrane. It is made mainly of molecules called fats. This skin forms a bubble around the outside of the whole cell and holds it together.

Plants also have cells. But plant cells have an extra layer of skin called the cell wall which is strong and tough, not soft like a bubble, which explains why plants like trees can grow so tall.

Cells have skeletons

Like the bones inside our body, cells also have a kind of skeleton called the cytoskeleton (which means “cell skeleton”). It is made from molecules called proteins. The cell’s skeleton makes it strong, and also helps our cells move around the body.

Cells have brains (sort of)

One of the most important molecules in a cell is its DNA, made from a type of building block called nucleotides. DNA is like an instruction book for everything our cells have to do (including making more cells, moving, and fighting germs). As the nucleus stores most of our DNA, it’s just like the brain of the cell.

You might have heard of genes (not the ones you wear, but the ones inside you). They are just like a recipe your cells use to make you! They decide how tall you will grow, what colour your eyes or hair are, and more.

Our genes are made of DNA and we get this DNA from our mum and dad. For example, if a dad has brown eyes, he can pass on the recipe in his DNA to his child which tells their cells how to make brown eyes. This explains why we can look similar to our parents.

Cells have stomachs

When you’re hungry, you eat! Your stomach then breaks down your food, in a process called digestion. Just like this, your cells also have their own mini stomachs which are important to digest the food and waste from the cell and keep them happy.

Cells make energy

If you turn on a light switch, the room quickly lights up. This is because of electricity which is a type of energy, made in big powerhouses. We use electricity for so many things like lights but also TVs, phones, heating and cooling.

Nearly everything that happens inside a cell needs energy too. Therefore, cells have special sections in them called mitochondria, which are the powerhouses of the cell and make all the energy the cell needs to work.

Cells can talk to each other!

If our cells are so tiny and our body is so big, how can all of our cells work together? The answer is they can talk … well, kind of.

Instead of picking up the phone to talk to each other, our cells have to send messages. These messages are made of molecules that help cells communicate.

Here is a cool example. If you get stung by a bee (ouch!) your skin will start to go red and puffy. This may look scary but actually, it is your body helping you. The cells in this area are quickly sending out messages for help. Cells in other areas get these messages and then go in for the rescue.

As scientists, we know a lot about cells. But we still don’t know everything. That’s why we need young kids to stay curious and ask questions, like Bea!

Hello, curious kids! Have you got a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au

– ref. Curious Kids: what are cells made out of? – https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-what-are-cells-made-out-of-142728

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Rich, Senior lecturer in International Relations and Security Studies, Curtin University

US President Donald Trump heralded nothing short of “the dawn of a new Middle East” as the leaders of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed agreements normalising ties with Israel during a ceremony at the White House this week.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu echoed that sentiment, saying “this day is a pivot of history”.

The diplomatic detente is significant — the UAE and Bahrain will join Egypt and Jordan as the only Arab countries to officially recognise the Jewish state. This will strengthen economic and security ties that have existed tacitly for years and establish diplomatic missions in the respective capitals.

But despite Trump’s grandiose statements, these agreements are little more than a footnote in the wider chaos of contemporary Middle Eastern affairs.

Less important than you’d think

The broader Arab-Israeli conflict has been dormant for decades, as the main players have been preoccupied by the threats of internal dissent and civil strife, rather than one another.

Beyond this, the UAE and Bahrain were never central to Arab hostilities with Israel. Historically, they acted as cheerleaders and financiers for the front-line states during the Cold War, such as Syria and Egypt.

The two Persian Gulf monarchies are not great powers, either. The UAE certainly swings above its weight, but its small size means it will never be a major factor in regional events.

Read more: Why increasing Arab-Israeli closeness matters

In geopolitical terms, Bahrain is far less notable — it’s effectively a vassal of Saudi Arabia.

Regardless of the immediate changes brought by these diplomatic moves, the bigger question is how Saudi Arabia will respond in the coming months.

It is rare in foreign relations to see “beta testing” of bold ideas, but the UAE and Bahrain have provided just such a test case for Riyadh in its own fraught push to normalise relations with the Jewish state.

The enemy of my enemy

Since the ascendance of the aggressively reformist Prince Mohammad Bin Salman in 2015, Saudi Arabia has made moves behind the scenes to strengthen ties with Jerusalem.

From the outset, the prince showed little interest in hostile relations with Israel, instead perceiving a natural partner in containing Iran, a rival to both states.

This led to an informal arrangement between the Saudis and Israelis, along with the United States and a number of smaller Gulf states, aimed at confronting the Iranian challenge together.

An outright solidification of an alliance between the Saudis and Israelis would allow for greater cooperation and coordination in regional security, diplomacy and trade — and build a more unified and effective front against the threat posed by Iran’s growing influence in the region.

Jumping the gun on diplomacy

But previous attempts by Israel and Saudi Arabia to warm relations have proved challenging, to say the least.

In 2018, bin Salman made the unprecedented move of declaring Israel’s right to exist, extending a clear olive branch meant to open the door to further opportunities to strengthen ties between the two countries.

Read more: Saudi Arabia’s ‘liberal’ Crown Prince is a year into his tenure – how is he doing?

However, the prince may have jumped the gun with the statement, which was met with ambivalence by the Saudi public and other Arab states.

Many felt the move too sudden and incongruous with the kindgom’s longstanding position on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. The Saudis have long demanded the creation of a state for the Palestinians before any sort of formal sovereign recognition could be offered to Israel.

Ultimately, this led to an embarrassing intervention by the prince’s father, King Salman, who publicly walked back his son’s statements, in part due to fears of eroding the monarchy’s domestic legitimacy.

Following his chastisement, the prince went silent on the issue for over a year. He also took a less prominent position in the public eye, a significant departure from his normal flamboyant style.

New year, new opportunities

This year, things have changed. With King Salman ailing, the prince consolidating his position within the country further and the ever-present threat of Iran across the gulf, there are new opportunities for Saudi Arabia to potentially re-engage with Israel.

New challenges have also presented themselves. The ravages of COVID-19 and a vulnerable oil market have left the kingdom in a far more precarious position than just two years ago. In such an environment, the risk of losing legitimacy from such a deal could prove far more catastrophic to the authoritarian regime.

Read more: Saudi and Iran: how our two countries could make peace and bring stability to the Middle East

Bin Salman may be up to the task, though. The prince has demonstrated a growing aptitude to navigate complex political situations.

Over the past year, for instance, he has curtailed his characteristic brashness, avoiding the blunders seen early on in his reign that damaged Saudi prestige on the international stage and drew ire from his father.

Since his 2018 Israeli misfire, the prince has displayed a more reserved and circumspect demeanour in his public activities and foreign engagements — sending a message he intends to serve out a long and productive term.

Canaries in the diplomatic coal mine

Having learned from past mistakes, a more prudent bin Salman is likely to approach a rapprochement with Israel with greater caution than before.

If people in the UAE and Bahrain prove amenable or indifferent to the warming relations between their countries and Israel — and all signs thus far suggest they do — it may encourage the prince to try his plan again.

While many on the Saudi street still oppose Israel in theory, the issue lacks the salience it once did. There is an exhausting array of crises in the region — from Yemen to Syria, Libya to COVID-19 — that have become far more immediate priorities.

Thanks in part to to a concerted propaganda effort by bin Salman, the Saudi public is also increasingly in tune with the ruling elite when it comes to the desire to counter Iran as a national security concern.

As a small country on the Mediterranean sharing no borders with the Saudis, Israel simply doesn’t pose the same kind of threat in the popular imagination as the looming expansionist giant just across the gulf.

With these political dominoes in line, the coming months may prove a far more fortuitous time for bin Salman to pursue a Saudi detente with Israel.

Such a development would not only be historically significant, but would pave the way for an Arab-Israeli alliance — the likes of which has never been seen before.

– ref. Is it too soon to herald the ‘dawn of a new Middle East’? It all depends what the Saudis do next – https://theconversation.com/is-it-too-soon-to-herald-the-dawn-of-a-new-middle-east-it-all-depends-what-the-saudis-do-next-146153

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Jefferson, Research Fellow, The University of Queensland

Many products we use each day contain compounds taken from nature. Aspirin, for example, is derived from willow trees. And nanofibres from spinifex grass in Queensland is added to bitumen to make stronger roads.

But throughout history, native plants, animals and other biological materials have been removed without the consent of Indigenous people. In many cases, Indigenous knowledge was also taken without permission – and Indigenous people rarely benefited from the commercial products developed as a result.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities have strong connections to country, and totemic relationships with certain plants and animals. If these are removed without permission, Indigenous people suffer significant spiritual harm. And using Indigenous knowledge without permission perpetuates the social and economic injustices of colonisation.

With those important considerations in mind, the Queensland government last month reformed a law governing “biodiscovery” – the taking, analysing and using of native biological material. It should serve as a model for other states to follow.

A leader in biodiscovery law

In 2004, Queensland was the first Australian jurisdiction to regulate biodiscovery. Since then, the Commonwealth and Northern Territory governments have also passed biodiscovery laws.

Queensland’s original Biodiscovery Act was beset with limitations, such as:

• it did not cover traditional knowledge. This meant Indigenous people were left out of benefit-sharing negotiations

• it didn’t meet all requirements of the 2014 Nagoya Protocol, which sets conditions for access to genetic resources and traditional knowledge

• the approvals process for biodiversity researchers was burdensome

• only biological materials from state land or waters were regulated – not those from private or Indigenous land.

The Queensland government wanted to rectify these issues. During the reform process, it consulted widely – including with Indigenous people, scientists, and experts on intellectual property and Indigenous rights.

So what’s changed?

Under the revised law, anyone engaging in biodiscovery must take all reasonable measures to form agreement with the custodians of Indigenous knowledge being used. This includes a benefit-sharing agreement.

The act now aligns with the Nagoya Protocol. This is important for those in the Queensland biodiscovery industry who want to export to countries that have ratified the protocol, such as in Europe. The approvals process has also been streamlined.

Read more: ‘All things will outlast us’: how the Indigenous concept of deep time helps us understand environmental destruction

Finally, the Queensland government is designing a “Traditional Knowledge Code of Practice” in consultation with Indigenous communities and other experts. The code will aim to help the biodiscovery industry work more inclusively with traditional knowledge custodians. It will be important to monitor whether the code meets these aims.

Collaboration is key

The Queensland government hopes the reforms will lead to more biodiscovery activities. These will often rely on the knowledge and practices of Indigenous people.

As well as custodians of Indigenous knowledge, others involved in the biodiscovery process include:

• scientists researching the properties of native biological materials

• businesses that commercialise new products

• consumers who buy the products

• government officials who grant regulatory approvals.

Collaboration between all these groups is key. One good example of this involves the Chuulangun Aboriginal Corporation and researchers at the University of South Australia. In 2013, the partners began work on a biodiscovery project in the Kuuku I’yu Northern Kaanju homelands in Cape York. It investigated traditional medicinal plants used to treat ailments such as psoriasis, a skin condition.

Read more: Strength from perpetual grief: how Aboriginal people experience the bushfire crisis

David Claudie – a coauthor of this article and Kuuku I’yu Northern Kaanju Traditional Owner – knows how to use local plants as medicine. Working together, traditional knowledge custodians and scientists collected medicinal plants and analysed them in a lab. This approach drew on both Indigenous and Western perspectives, and led to plant-based medicinal products being developed.

The project also protected Indigenous intellectual property and negotiated an agreement to share commercial benefits. Claudie is named as an inventor on the patents and an author of scientific articles published from the collaboration.

An important example

Australia is one of 17 countries considered “megadiverse”. It is home to up to 700,000 species, many found nowhere else in the world. This means the biodiscovery industry has big potential in Australia – but Indigenous knowledge must be protected.

Queensland’s reforms to biodiscovery laws set an important example. Other Australian states should follow Queensland’s lead and develop better legal protections for Indigenous knowledge. These should take into account both Indigenous and Western perspectives, for the benefit of all.

– ref. Australia’s plants and animals have long been used without Indigenous consent. Now Queensland has taken a stand – https://theconversation.com/australias-plants-and-animals-have-long-been-used-without-indigenous-consent-now-queensland-has-taken-a-stand-144813

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Jin Kang, Lecturer, Computing and Security, Edith Cowan University

The philanthropic foundation of mining billionaire Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest has unveiled a plan to transform how Australia responds to bushfires.

The Fire Shield project aims to use emerging technologies to rapidly find and extinguish bushfires. The goal is to be able to put out any dangerous blaze within an hour by 2025.

Some of the proposed technology includes drones and aerial surveillance robots, autonomous fire-fighting vehicles and on-the-ground remote sensors. If successful, the plan could alleviate the devastating impact of bushfires Australians face each year.

But while bushfire behaviour is an extensively studied science, it’s not an exact one. Fires are subject to a wide range of variables including local weather conditions, atmospheric pressure and composition, and the geographical layout of an area.

There are also human factors, such as how quickly and effectively front-line workers can respond, as well as the issue of arson.

Read more: Humans light 85% of bushfires, and we do virtually nothing to stop it

A plan for rapid bushfire detection

The appeal of the Fire Shield plan is in its proposal to use emerging fields of computer science to fight bushfires, especially AI and the Internet of Things (IoT) network.

While we don’t currently have details on how the Fire Shield plan will be carried out, the use of an IoT bushfire monitoring network seems like the most viable option.

The IoT network is made of many wireless connected devices. Deploying IoT devices with sensors in remote areas could allow the monitoring of changes in soil temperature, air temperature, weather conditions, moisture and humidity, wind speed, wind direction and forest density.

The sensors could also help pinpoint a fire’s location, predict where it will spread and also where it most likely started. This insight would greatly help with the early evacuation of vulnerable communities.

Data collected could be quickly processed and analysed using machine learning. This branch of AI provides intelligent analysis much quicker than traditional computing, or human reckoning.

A more reliable network

A wireless low power wide area network (LPWAN) would be the best option for implementing the required infrastructure for the proposal. LPWAN uses sensor devices with batteries lasting up to 15 years.

And although a LPWAN only allows limited coverage (10-40km) in rural areas, batteries sustaining a network with more coverage would need to be replaced more often — making the entire system less reliable.

In the event of sensors being destroyed by fire, neighbouring sensors can send this information back to the server to build a sensor “availability and location map”. With this map, tracking destroyed sensors would also help track a bushfire’s movement.

Dealing with logistics

While it’s possible, the practicalities of deploying sensors for a remote bushfire monitoring network are hugely challenging. The areas to cover would be vast, with varying terrain and environmental conditions.

Sensor devices could potentially be deployed by aircrafts across a region. On-ground distribution by people would be another option, but a more expensive one.

However, the latter option would have to be used to distribute larger gateway devices. These act as the bridge between the other sensors on ground and the server in the cloud hosting the data.

Gateway devices have more hardware and need to be set up by a person when first installed. They play a key role in LPWAN networks and must be placed carefully. After being placed, IoT devices require regular monitoring and calibration to ensure the information being relayed to the server is accurate.

Weather and environmental factors (such as storms or floods) have the potential to destroy the sensors. There’s also the risk of human interference, as well as legal considerations around deploying sensors on privately owned land.

Read more: There’s only one way to make bushfires less powerful: take out the stuff that burns

Unpredictable interruptions

While statisticians can provide insight into the likelihood of a bushfire starting at a particular location, bushfires remain inherently hard to predict.

Any sensor network will be counter-acted by unpredictable environmental conditions and technological issues such as interrupted network signals. And such disruptions could lead to delays in important information reaching authorities.

Potential solutions for this include using satellite services in conjunction with an LPWAN network, or balloon networks (such as Google’s project Loon) which can provide better internet connectivity in remote areas.

But even once the sensors can be used to identify and track bushfires, putting a blaze out is another challenge entirely. The Fire Shield plan’s vision “to detect, monitor and extinguish dangerous blazes within an hour anywhere in Australia” will face challenges on several fronts.

It may be relatively simple to predict hurdles in getting the technology set up. But once it is and a bushfire is detected, it’s less clear as to what course of action could possible extinguish it within the hour. In some very remote areas, aerial firefighting (such as with water bombers) may be the only option.

That begs the next question: how can we have enough aircrafts and controllers ready to be dispatched to a remote place, at a moment’s notice? Considering the logistics, it won’t be easy.

– ref. Andrew Forrest’s high-tech plan to extinguish bushfires within an hour is as challenging as it sounds – https://theconversation.com/andrew-forrests-high-tech-plan-to-extinguish-bushfires-within-an-hour-is-as-challenging-as-it-sounds-146194

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachael Ka’ai-Mahuta, Senior Lecturer in Māori Language Revitalisation, Auckland University of Technology

Editor’s note: This article marks Māori Language Week/Te Wiki o te Reo Māori. You can read the full article in English here.

Nō te tīmatanga o tēnei tau, i tūtaki au ki tētahi tangata nō Tāmaki-makau-rau, nā tōna ngākaunui ki te ao K-pop i a ia e taitamariki ana i tipu ai te aroha ki te reo me te ahurea Kōrea, nāwai nāwai ka tahuri ia ki te ako i te reo Kōrea hei reo tuarua.

Nā konā taku whakaaro he aha ētahi akoranga hei tautoko i te whakarauoratanga o te reo Māori. Inarā, i runga anō i te hiranga o ngā taitamariki i aua mahi whakarauora, he aha ngā akoranga o te āhuatanga e kīia nei ko te “Ngaru Kōrea” me tana whakararu i te reo Pākehā hei reo matua i te ahurea o te marea?

Kua tīmatahia kētia ngā mahi o tēnei kaupapa. Ko te iho o tā Tākuta Hinurewa Poutu rangahau Kairangi o te tau 2015, ko te āta waihanga i ētahi kaupapa kia kite ai te rangatahi i te “pārekareka” o te reo Māori.

Hei tāna i taua wā:

Mātua whakamahi ai te reo Pākehā i ngā wā o te whakahoahoa, i te mea kāore he nui ngā wā e rongo ai i te reo Māori i ngā wā whakahoahoa, te ako rānei i ngā kīanga Māori o te pahupahu ki ō hoa, o te whakaipoipo, me te tākaro. Mō te nuinga o ngā tamariki, ka kōrerotia te reo Māori i ngā wā ōkawa anake.

Kia pārekareka te reo Māori

Ka hipa te rima tau, e kawe ana a Te Ipukarea o AUT i tētahi kaupapa rangahau me te pātai me pēhea e kaha ake ai te taunaki o te reo Māori i te oranga o te rangatahi. He kaupapa tēnei i tautokona e te pūtea o Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga, ko tōna ariā, ko te reo o te taiohi te tūāpapa o te reo ōpaki o te pakeke.

Arā, ko te reo ōpaki o te whakahoahoa, o te whakakatakata, o te whakaipoipo, o ngā kare ā-roto, me te hauora hinengaro, te kaiwhakamahere i te reo pakeke o ia rā.

E whakaatu ana ā mātou kitenga tuatahi i te hiranga rautaki o te reanga rangatahi i ngā kaupapa whakarauora i te reo Māori. Ko te taitamariki he reanga whakatau he aha te haere – nā reira, he pānga nui a rātou (me te whakaaweawetia nuitia o rātou) ki te wāriu matawhānui o te reo Māori, arā, ki tōna mana.

Heoi anō, e whakaatu ana ngā hua o tētahi atu rangahau o Te Ipukarea, inā te ngōuruuru o ngā rauemi reo Māori me ngā kaupapa reo Māori (ngā pakimaero, ngā hōtaka pouaka whakaata, ngā waiata, ngā kēmu) e hāngai ana ki tēnei reanga.

Read more: K-pop fans are creative, dedicated and social – we should take them seriously

Ka tino kitea tēnei i te wā ka whakataurite ki ngā rauemi o te reanga tamariki, arā, o ngā ākonga kōhungahunga.

I a tātou e whakaaro ana, he aha i kīia ai tētahi mea he mea “pārekareka”, nā, mārama ana te kite i te whakaaweawe o te ao ngahau, o ngā pae pāho pāpori, me te ahurea o te marea, i ngā rangatahi. Nō taku tūtakitanga ki te pia reo Kōrea, aroha nui ki te K-pop, i tīmata ai au ki te whakaaro ka pēhea te kaupapa whakarauora reo Māori whakaoho ai i taua reanga rā: arā, te rangatahi whakatau he aha te haere, whakatipu apataki whakamaimoa.

Te wero i te whakatuanuitanga o te reo Pākehā

E wero atu ana te Ngaru Kōrea i te whakatuanui o te reo Pākehā hei reo matua i te ao ahurea o te marea. Ko te rongonui o te K-pop, o ngā K-drama (he maha ngā hōtaka kua hokona e Netlix, he kaha hoki tā rātou tuku i te pūtea tautoko), me ngā kiriata pēnei i a Parasite (te kiriata whakaihuwaka ki ngā Oscars 2020, te kiriata “reo tauiwi” tuatahi ki te whakawhiwhia ki tēnei taonga), i waenga i ngā iwi atu i a Kōrea e whakaatu ana ehara te reo i te tauārai nui pēnei i ngā wā o mua.

Kua hanumi noa ēnei momo whakangahau me te ahurea whānui o te marea. Hei tauira, tērā te rōpū Kōrea o BTS (e kīia ana i ētahi wā ko Bangtan Boys) – i tēnei wā tonu, ko rātou tētahi o ngā tino rōpū pao nui o te ao, he rite tonu tā rātou eke ki ngā taumata pao, me te poipoi i tētahi apataki whakahara ao whānui.

Read more: Māori loanwords in NZ English are less about meaning, more about identity

Ka taea e BTS te waiata ki te reo Pākehā, engari i te nuinga o te wā ko ā rātou waiata me ā rātou momo kaupapa pāpāho katoa (he hōtaka ngahau, he hōtaka tipi haere, he kiriata, he hōtaka o ngā mahi atu i ngā mahi o te atamira) ka waihanga ki te reo Kōrea. I tēnei tau i whakaputa i a rātou te rauemi Learn Korean with BTS, he tohu e whakaatu ana i te hāngai o te Ngaru Kōrea me te nui haere o te hunga e hiahia ana ki te ako i te reo Kōrea.

Te aro atu ki tētahi ngaru Māori hou

E ariari mai ana ngā rerekētanga o te reo Kōrea ki te reo Māori. Kei te whakamāui tonu te reo Māori, he reo ririki, engari te reo Kōrea, neke atu i te 50 miriona ngā kaikōrero ki Kōrea ki te Tonga anake.

Heoi anō, mehemea e whakakipakipatia ana te rangatahi o Aotearoa e te ahurea o te marea o Kōrea ki te ako i te reo Kōrea, mā te aha i te māramatanga ka ahu mai i ngā akoranga ka taea e te kaupapa whakarauora reo Māori te ako mai i te Ngaru Kōrea.

Read more: Kia ora: how Māori borrowings shape New Zealand English

Ko te Ngaru Kōrea anō te whakatinanatanga o te angitu o te rautaki matua i kōkiritia e te kāwanatanga o Kōrea ki te whakahorapa i tō rātou ahurea ki te ao me te whakakaha i tōna “mana whakaaweawe”. Inarā, ko te whāinga o Kōrea, kia tū ko rātou te ahurea pārekareka katoa huri noa i te ao.

Ki te whai haere i tērā whakaaro, me mātāmua te tautoko mārika o te waihanga rauemi reo Māori mō te ahurea o te marea, i roto i ngā mahere katoa kua whakaritea mō te whakapoapoa i te reanga taiohi.

Ko taku tumanako, tērā tētahi rā, ka rite tonu te eke o ngā waiata reo Māori ki ngā taumata pao, ka kī pohapoha taku rārangi Netflix ki ngā hōtaka reo Māori, ā, ka whakatairangatia, ka whakanuitia hoki tētahi kiriata reo Māori rite tonu ki te kiriata Kōrea, ki a Parasite.

– ref. Kia pārekareka te reo Māori: ko ngā akoranga o te Ngaru Kōrea mō te whakarauoratanga o te reo – https://theconversation.com/kia-parekareka-te-reo-maori-ko-nga-akoranga-o-te-ngaru-korea-mo-te-whakarauoratanga-o-te-reo-146198

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Joseph, Professor of Human Rights Law, Griffith University

COVID-19 has caused a global public health emergency, a global economic emergency, and a global human rights emergency. The crisis is detrimentally affecting all recognised human rights in every country.

Unrestrained spread of COVID-19 is prejudicial to the human rights to life and health. All governments have human rights obligations to take appropriate measures to combat the spread of the virus.

Human rights v COVID-19

COVID-19 restrictions have imposed extraordinary restrictions on countervailing human rights. COVID measures interfere with economic, social and cultural rights, such as rights to work, adequate standards of living, education, and mental health. They also interfere with civil and political rights, such as freedoms of movement, association, assembly, the right to a fair trial, as well as the rights of families and children.

In response to recent questions about the human rights compatibility of the curfew in Victoria, Premier Daniel Andrews bluntly responded that the curfew was “not about human rights”, but rather “human life”. That is a stark dichotomy, which leaves little space for human rights arguments. However, human rights are not optional extras, even in this pandemic.

Limits to human rights

Most internationally recognised human rights can be limited in certain circumstances. Even the right to life, globally recognised in Article 6(1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, is subject to limitations. A person must not be “arbitrarily” deprived of life, so “non-arbitrary” deprivations are permissible.

Indeed, every government routinely balances the interest in preserving life against other societal benefits in their calibration of numerous everyday policies, such as those regarding speed limits.

Of course, the nature of the right to life dictates that few limitations are tolerable. Furthermore, a COVID outbreak has the potential to be catastrophic, costing many lives, causing debilitating long-term illness to many more, and overwhelming health systems.

But there must be some limit, even in the context of COVID-19. Human rights law does not mandate harsh lockdowns until elimination of COVID-19 or the development of a cure or vaccine. The question becomes one of just how much increased sickness and death, or risk thereof, is permissible under international human rights law?

The flipside of that question is to ask what human rights restrictions are permissible to suppress COVID-19 and decrease the risk of sickness and death?

Proportionality, risk and catastrophe

A key concept in working out the appropriate limitations to rights is that of proportionality: are the limiting measures reasonably necessary for the achievement of a legitimate purpose?

A key consideration in the test of proportionality is how important the limitation might be. The purpose of stopping the spread of COVID-19 is vitally important. But a more precise way of phrasing the purpose of most restrictions is to “stop the risk of the spread of COVID-19”.

For example, the quarantining of a person known to have COVID-19 contains spread, whereas the quarantining of someone who might have it contains risk. As it is impossible to know who might have COVID-19, it may be assumed that containment of spread is the same as containment of risk. But is this so? Not all risks are the same.

Consider the following example. Most Australian states and territories have imposed border restrictions (of varying degrees of strictness and geographic impact) to stop infections from being introduced from interstate. These measures restrict freedom of movement and forcibly separate families and friends.

Sarah Caisip is a Canberra woman who was unable to attend her father’s funeral and comfort her family in Queensland. She was refused an exemption from hotel quarantine due to the potential risk that she might introduce infection to Queensland. Was this a breach of her right to family life?

The ACT has not recorded a positive COVID diagnosis for months. The risk posed by Caisip is tiny: there is virtually no chance she has COVID-19. So the chance she would transmit the virus and cause a serious or catastrophic outbreak was infinitesimal. The problem is every single catastrophic outbreak, anywhere, has logically been sparked by a single case.

Read more: Grattan on Friday: When grief meets politics, it is sad and ugly

So in the Caisip example there is, on the one hand, a miniscule risk, but on the other, the potential for devastating outcomes if the risk materialises. Furthermore, the stakes seem amplified when COVID-19 is under ostensible control, as in Queensland and the less populous states: few decision-makers want to risk the replacement of a situation of control with one of a lack of control.

If decisions can be justified by the possibility of catastrophic outcomes from tiny risks, they can logically be justified if risks are larger, even if still very small. However, there is the danger any measure can be justified based on its marginal impact, or even potentially marginal impact, on reducing the risk of catastrophic outbreak.

For example, Victoria’s curfew has been criticised on human rights grounds. The virus is not more infectious at night. The curfew was not requested by either Victoria’s health authorities nor its police.

However, perhaps the curfew prevented an illicit party which might have led to further extensive spread and longer lockdown in Victoria. Alternatively, that illicit party may have simply moved to the daytime. Regardless, does the possibility of a benefit make the curfew “worth it”?

What of the lockdown of public housing towers in inner Melbourne without notice in early July? It seems doubtful this unique imposition of mass home detention without notice was justified by the chance a COVID-positive resident would abscond and spread the virus.

If we accept anything that might reduce the risk of COVID-19 infections is permissible, we may effectively permit extreme measures with only marginal, and perhaps no actual, benefit. Proportionality is reduced to a rubble, and human rights considerations are effectively jettisoned. If so, the most vulnerable and marginalised are those most likely to have their rights abused.

Read more: Melbourne tower lockdowns unfairly target already vulnerable public housing residents

Government officials deserve some sympathy in having to engage in a wicked “balancing” exercise involving a novel deadly pathogen. But it is very likely some laws and decisions have overreached, and important human rights have been displaced by restrictions with dubious benefit.

It is vital governments face scrutiny and remain accountable over the human rights compatibility of COVID measures.

Systems matter

Under international human rights law (and some domestic laws), Australian governments must take all reasonable measures to prevent and manage COVID infections. Requisite measures extend beyond coercive restrictions to the establishment of appropriate systems to control spread of the virus.

This is particularly important as system failure has contributed greatly to the spread of the virus in Australia and beyond. There are major weaknesses in the regulation of aged care homes, where there has been a devastating death toll in Melbourne. Hotel quarantine failure sparked the Victorian second wave, while sub-optimal contact tracing failed to detect extensive spread before it was too late.

Communications strategies must ensure public health messaging reaches all parts of society. Indeed, the pandemic has exposed the inadequacy of public services globally in coping with an emergency after years of austerity policies.

While some institutional reforms necessarily take time, some can happen quickly. For example, Victoria has probably significantly improved its contact tracing capacities already.

System improvements will help to ensure against further major outbreaks in Australia. Lockdowns and other general human rights restrictions are not the only tool in the kitbox. System improvements should give Australian governments greater confidence in managing the risks associated with any easing of coercive restrictions.

Balancing the right to life with the right to live

Sensibly, Australians are prioritising safety for themselves and their communities over freedom during the COVID-19 pandemic. But how much risk avoidance is sustainable socially, economically, politically, and even legally, if COVID cures and vaccines remain unavailable?

The continued adoption of an extreme precautionary approach could mean Australia remains balkanised, loved ones (including the vulnerable) separated, livelihoods destroyed, and coercive measures tolerated where they offer little benefit. And the countervailing human rights issues will only loom larger and larger. The human right to life is vitally important, but there is also a human right to live.

– ref. COVID-19, risk and rights: the ‘wicked’ balancing act for governments – https://theconversation.com/covid-19-risk-and-rights-the-wicked-balancing-act-for-governments-146014

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Shulmeister, Professor, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Canterbury

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

What is the impact of temperature increases in the tropics? How likely is it that regions along the Equator will be uninhabitable due to high wet bulb temperatures such as 35℃ and more in places like Singapore? Do we have models that suggest how likely this is and at what time frames?

More than 3.3 billion people live in the tropics, representing about 40% of the world’s population. Despite some areas of affluence, such as Singapore, the tropics are also home to about 85% of the world’s poorest people and are therefore particularly susceptible to the impacts of climate change.

The tropics are expected to experience rising temperatures and changes to rainfall, and the question is whether this could make this region uninhabitable. How would this happen?

Heat stress

Humans regulate their body temperature in warm conditions through sweating. The sweat evaporates and cools the skin. But if conditions are humid, sweating and evaporation are much less effective.

Humans can survive and function in quite high temperatures if humidity is low, but as humidity increases our ability to function decreases rapidly. This effect is measured by a heat stress index which shows the apparent temperature you feel under different relative humidity conditions.

From a human health point of view, the wet bulb temperature is critical. This is the temperature a thermometer covered in a wet cloth would measure, and it reflects the maximum amount of cooling that can be achieved by evaporation.

High wet bulb temperatures are more problematic to human health than high absolute temperatures. Wet bulb temperatures above 35℃ are life-threatening because they cause hyperthermia, which means the body cannot cool down and the internal body temperature exceeds 40℃.

Climate modelling predictions used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for the period from 2080-2100 suggest warming in the tropics of about 1.6℃ under mid-range emissions scenarios and up to 3.3℃ under high emissions scenarios, with error margins of about 0.5℃ on both predictions.

Read more: Siberia heatwave: why the Arctic is warming so much faster than the rest of the world

Different parts of the world respond in different ways to warming from greenhouse gas emissions. The projected warming in the tropics represents about 40% of the expected temperature rise in the Arctic.

High-latitude regions – far north or south of the Equator – warm more rapidly than the global average because excess heat in the tropics creates a temperature and pressure gradient. This drives heat up to higher elevations and higher latitudes through an atmospheric circulation called the Hadley cell.

The stronger the gradient, the more heat is exported.

Hot in the city

There is one additional factor: urbanisation. Singapore is a good place to look at actual climate change in the tropics.

Records from Singapore indicate temperatures have increased by 1.1℃ over 42 years to 2014. This is nearly twice the average global rate of warming over recent decades and is opposite to expectations.

The difference appears to be due to a heat island effect caused by the city itself. This is important because changes in land use amplify background global climate change and put tropical cities at greater risk of extreme heat. As populations are concentrated in cities, this increases the risk to human health.

The mean average temperature for Singapore is about 27℃, whereas Jakarta in Indonesia is slightly warmer. At the scale of predicted mean annual temperature change, neither of these cities would become uninhabitable. But even a small temperature increase would make life more challenging.

This is made worse in at least some parts of the tropics, because total rainfall is increasing, suggesting a long-term rise in humidity. For example, average rainfall in Singapore increased by more than 500mm from 2,192mm in 1980 to 2,727mm in 2014.

Read more: Urban growth, heat islands, humidity, climate change: the costs multiply in tropical cities

Deadly heat

People working outdoors are at higher risk, as are vulnerable populations, including the elderly. Under the IPCC’s high-emission trajectory, heat-related deaths in Jakarta in August are expected to rise from about 1,800 in 2010 to nearly 27,000 in 2050.

Even allowing for a significant increase in elderly people as the Indonesian population ages, this means about 15,000 excess deaths in this month. Estimates under high-emission predictions for the tropics and mid-latitudes suggest about a 40% decline in the ability to undertake manual work during the warmest month by 2050.

These impacts will be stronger in the seasonally wet tropics (such as the Northern Territory of Australia), where more extreme warming is expected than in the equatorial zone.

Predictions for Darwin, in northern Australia, suggest an increase in days with temperatures above 35℃ from 11 days a year in 2015 to an average of 43 days under the mid-range emission scenario (IPCC’s RCP4.5 scenario) by 2030 and an average of 111 (range 54-211) days by 2090. Under the higher emission scenario (IPCC’s RCP8.5), an average of 265 days above 35℃ could be reached by 2090.

In summary, while absolute temperatures are expected to rise more slowly in the tropics when compared with higher latitudes and polar regions, the combination of heat and rising humidity will make life challenging, but not impossible.

– ref. Climate explained: will the tropics eventually become uninhabitable? – https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-will-the-tropics-eventually-become-uninhabitable-145174

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Callie Little, Postdoctoral research fellow, University of New England

Early childhood education and care is widely regarded as helping children’s academic, cognitive and social development. Our study, published in the journal Behavior Genetics, looked into whether attending preschool or childcare influences later academic achievement.

We found no statistically significant difference between the literacy and numeracy scores of school children who had attended preschool or childcare and children who didn’t. Nor did the duration of preschool or childcare attendance have an impact on later literacy and numeracy scores.

We did not look at the relations between social and emotional skills, and early childhood education and care.

How we got our findings

We used data from the Academic Development Study of Australian Twins, which has been following children since 2012 to investigate how genes and environments influence their literacy and numeracy abilities in primary and secondary school.

As part of this study, we collected detailed information about children’s “dose” of early childhood education and care. This included the hours per week they attended childcare or preschool and the duration in months.

We analysed the NAPLAN results of around 2,279 twins from Years 3 to 9 (sample size varied by grade level) as related to their dose of early childhood education and care. No attendance at all was zero dose, while for example, twins who attended for a total of eight months at 15 hours per week had a dose of 120.

The early childhood education and care settings we looked at included preschools attached to schools, stand-alone preschools, daycare centres and family daycare.

Read more: What is family day care? And how is it different to long day care in a child care centre?

Around 10% of the children in our sample had not attended any preschool or childcare at all. The rest varied from attending a few hours per week for a year or less, to many hours per week for two years or more.

We statistically controlled for socio-economic status of the children’s families looking at parents’ years of education, although influences of preschool or childcare were essentially the same with and without this control.

Our results showed no influence of preschool or childcare on later NAPLAN literacy and numeracy results. The correlations between preschool dose and NAPLAN results from Years 3 to 9 for all test domains (reading, spelling, grammar, writing and numeracy) were mostly near zero, and not statistically significant.

Children who attended preschool or childcare at any dose scored, on average, fewer than five NAPLAN points higher or lower than their non-attending peers. Overall, preschool or childcare attendance accounted for less that 1% of the total variability in school achievement.

What other research says

The first analysis in Australia to evaluate the impact of attending preschool on Year 3 NAPLAN scores was conducted in 2013 by the Melbourne Institute. It showed children who attended preschool scored higher in Year 3 NAPLAN, but this was mainly the case in children who had attended preschools with the best-qualified staff.

Read more: Should you hold your child back from starting school? Research shows it has little effect on their maths and reading skills

We could not determine the qualifications of the early childhood education and care staff in the places children in our sample attended. But we have reason to believe this limitation does not undermine our conclusions. Staff quality is irrelevant for children who didn’t attend any early childhood education and care. And at least a portion of those who attended at some dose would have had well-qualified staff to lift them above children without any exposure. But the stay-at-home children in our study performed nearly the same in NAPLAN as those who attended some preschool.

Another Australian study conducted in 2015, which used the same dataset as the Melbourne Institute Study (the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, or LSAC) showed there was a small positive impact of attending early childhood education and care on aspects of non-verbal intelligence. But there was no impact of attending preschool on academic skills assessed at seven years old.

A study in the United States used the gold standard for assessing whether a certain intervention caused a later effect, rather than was just associated with it — a randomised controlled trial. More than 3,000 children were involved in the study. Some were assigned to attending the Tennessee Prekindergarten Program, which focuses on the neediest children using quality teachers licensed in early childhood development and education. Others did not attend the program.

The group that went to preschool made some gains in literacy-related measures by the end of the preschool year, as compared to the group that didn’t. But there were no differences in literacy, language, numeracy and social skills between the groups in the two following school years. This suggests formal school instruction may have compensated for any early disadvantage in the children who missed out on preschool.

It’s not all about literacy and numeracy

It’s important to remember early childhood education and care settings play an important role in how children develop socially and emotionally. This association may matter just as much, if not more, than the absence of any academic advantage.

Read more: Report finds every $1 Australia spends on preschool will return $2, but this won’t just magically happen

In the present study, however, we did not include any measures of social or behavioural outcomes. So we are unable to provide any evidence for or against an association between these important skills and early learning.

Our data are not the last word on the links between preschool attendance and academic achievement either. There is continual pressure to upgrade the qualifications of staff preschool facilities, and the more this happens, the more academic benefits may follow for children.

However, our evidence suggests parents need not worry that failing to enrol a child in preschool will undermine future prospects in the core school domains of literacy and numeracy. We hope this message might allay some concerns, especially now when childcare centres are closed across Victoria and fewer children are attending across the country.

– ref. Preschool and childcare have little impact on a child’s later school test scores – https://theconversation.com/preschool-and-childcare-have-little-impact-on-a-childs-later-school-test-scores-146003

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Saul Eslake, Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow, University of Tasmania

For two decades now, meaningful tax reform has proved elusive.

At the federal level, there hasn’t been any comprehensive reform since the Howard government’s New Tax System of 2000, the one that brought in the goods and services tax.

It’s much the same for the states.

With the exception of the reforms that accompanied the introduction of the GST in 2000, state tax systems haven’t changed much since the 1970s, which began with the transfer of payroll tax from the Commonwealth to the states, and ended with the abolition of death duties.

For their part, state governments have spent most of the following four decades narrowing the bases of the few taxes over which they do have control, in order either to curry favour with important groups of voters such as small business people and home owners, or to compete with other states to attract employers.

Australia’s two largest states have become increasingly reliant on a tax uniformly condemned as a “bad tax” – stamp duty on the transfer of land.

Read more: Abolish stamp duty. The ACT shows the rest of us how to tax property

The next two largest states have ridden booms in royalties from mining and gas which have, for the most part, allowed them to avoid the need for even thinking about reforming their taxes.

Only in the Australian Capital Territory has there been a genuine (so far successful) effort to undertake a reform that enjoys almost unanimous support among economists, the replacement of stamp duties on land transfers with a broadly-based land tax.

The fact that the ACT government is also in effect the Canberra city council has allowed it to accomplish this by raising rates rather than breaking the taboo of imposing land tax on the “family home”.

Tasmania specialises in bad taxes, and the GST

The Tasmanian government raises less from its own resources (taxes, royalties, user charges and dividends) than any other jurisdiction except the Northern Territory.

That’s largely because, as identified by the Commonwealth Grants Commission in its annual reviews, Tasmania’s revenue-raising capacity is less than that of any other state or territory, although it also partly reflects decisions by successive Tasmanian governments of both political persuasions to raise less than they could.

Perhaps because Tasmania has been able to rely on GST allocations and other grants from the Commonwealth, there have been no serious conversations about its tax system since a tri-partisan parliamentary inquiry was abruptly terminated almost nine years ago.

Read more: Our states are crying poor. They wouldn’t if they charged for rezoning

Since then, Tasmania’s political parties have been more anxious to make commitments about what they would not do, than to outline plans for what was needed.

That complacency is likely to be challenged by the abrupt decline in revenue from the goods and services tax as a result of the current recession, as well as by its longer-term decline as a share of GDP for reasons recently identified by the Parliamentary Budget Office.

The collapse in GST revenue will hurt Tasmania’s budget more than that of any other state or territory (other than the Northern Territory).

Goods and services tax revenue as a proportion of GDP

There’s a way out

The report I’ve written for The Australia Institute published this morning entitled Reforming Tasmania’s state tax system: Some options notes that Tasmania gets a higher proportion of its total state tax take from “bad taxes” (stamp duty on land transfers, and taxes on insurance premiums) than any state or territory except Victoria.

It gets a smaller proportion of its tax take from what are generally thought to be “good taxes” (payroll tax and land tax) than any state or territory except Queensland.

It proposes three reforms which can be implemented by a Tasmanian government without requiring a lead from the larger states.

Read more: Models only give part answer to real tax reform

None would require financial assistance from the Commonwealth (although that would be helpful, especially with transitional arrangements, if the Commonwealth is as serious about encouraging productivity-enhancing reform as the Treasurer says he is).

1. Land tax instead of stamp duty

The first is to replace existing “conveyancing duties”, as stamp duties on the transfer of land are officially called in Tasmania, with a land tax whose base should include owner-occupied homes and “shacks”, which are currently exempt or otherwise not taxed.

It should be levied on individual land holdings (rather than the aggregate of them) at progressive rates on the per-square-metre value of each holding.

There would need to be a transitional provision, such as a credit for stamp duty paid on recently-acquired property.

And there would need to be a deferral provision for “asset rich, income poor” homeowners such as pensioners. Both are possible.

Read more: Ideas for Australia: Five ideas to help fix Australia’s tax system

The average residential land-owner would not have paid more in land tax under this proposal than he or she would have by way of stamp duty on the purchase of the property until he or she had lived in it for more than nine years.

By that time, as the recent Thodey Report to the NSW government points out, any reasonable interpretation of “fairness” demands owners should be paying more than they currently do.

2. Proper payroll tax

The second proposed reform is cutting the threshold for payroll tax to the average annual earnings of five Tasmanian employees from its current level, which is equivalent to the average annual earnings of 36 employees.

The extra revenue would be used to lower the rate from what is currently the second-highest in Australia to what would likely be the second-lowest, and to exempt new businesses from payroll tax altogether for the first so many years of their existence, where the number of years could be, for example, three or five.

This will produce howls of outrage from small businesses, a larger proportion of which are exempt from payroll tax in Tasmania than in any other state, and from others who (wrongly) believe that small business is the engine room of the economy.

My report shows that exempting small business from payroll tax has not done anything to enhance job creation, innovation or any of the other blessings commonly claimed.

On the contrary, Bureau of Statistics figures show that over the four years to 2018-19, during which time Tasmania’s economy in many respects out-performed the rest of Australia, small business was responsible for only 13% of Tasmania’s net increase in private sector employment.

Big businesses (who had to pay the second-highest payroll tax in Australia) were responsible for 34%.

Medium-sized businesses, many of whom also had to pay the second-highest payroll tax in Australia, accounted for 52%.

Indeed, over the 12 years to 2018-19, employment at Tasmanian small businesses declined by 11.6% – more than double the national average – despite Tasmania having the most generous payroll tax concessions for small businesses.

Of course the fact that payroll tax is paid in the first instance by employers doesn’t mean that it is a “tax on jobs” any more than is the goods and services tax, which in the first instance is paid by shoppers.

Preferencing new businesses would do far more to spur entrepreneurship and to stimulate job creation and innovation than preferencing small ones simply because they’re small.

Read more: Memo to Australia’s states: try renovating your tax system before asking for a new one

It would also cost less: which would mean the special treatment for new businesses could be more generous, if desired.

And since new businesses can’t prevent themselves from becoming an old businesses, other than by going out of business, there would be no perverse incentives such as those that currently result in small businesses ceasing to grow at just below the point at which they become ineligible for preferential treatment.

3. Death duties on estates over $1 million

The third, and probably the most controversial, proposal is the reintroduction of death duties: specifically, on estates valued at over A$1 million (which would exclude 91% of the estates granted probate by Tasmania’s Supreme Court over the past three years), at rates ranging from 5% on amounts between $1 million and $5 million, 10% on the next $5 million, and 20% on anything over $10 million (which in Tasmania has been just 10 estates, 0.1% of the total, over the past three years.

However, the report also proposes that people whose estates would be liable to such a tax could obtain a credit against it (a reduction) for donations to Tasmanian-based deductible gift recipients – up to the point where, if they wished, they could completely extinguish their liability.

Read more: House prices and demographics make death duties an idea whose time has come

Such an arrangement would provide a powerful incentive for philanthropy in Tasmania, as it has in the United States.

There will of course be predictable cries of outrage against such a proposal, not so much perhaps from those whose estates would be subject to the tax as from their children and others who hope to benefit the inheritances without sharing any of the windfall – a requirement a surprising number of Americans don’t seem to find at all objectionable.

No doubt opponents of such a proposal will also find it convenient to ignore the stipulation that fewer than 10% of estates would be liable for the tax, or the suggestion that estates passing to surviving spouses (though not to other people) would be exempt.

This needn’t mean more tax, or less tax

All or any of these proposals could be used to raise more revenue than Tasmania’s present tax system.

Or they could be used to raise less revenue, by a party that wanted to argue that reducing the overall state tax burden would improve Tasmania’s competitiveness.

My report doesn’t take a position in favour of either option, instead it advocates for a fairer system.

Read more: Rethink inheritances. These days they no longer help the young, they go to the already middle-aged

The system I propose would be more efficient in the sense of doing less to distort the choices businesses and households make as to how they allocate their capital, where they live, how often they move home and how they do other things.

And it would make Tasmania’s financial position less vulnerable to forces entirely beyond its control or influence.

Which is another way of saying it would represent real reform: something that has been sorely lacking, no less in Tasmania than anywhere else, for 20 years.

– ref. Tasmania’s tax system is broken: here are three ways to fix it – https://theconversation.com/tasmanias-tax-system-is-broken-here-are-three-ways-to-fix-it-146186

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amandine Denis, Head of Research, ClimateWorks Australia, Monash University

The wild fires that have ravaged the US west coast, turning skies orange, are a lurid reminder that climate change looms ever larger as an economic threat.

This week has seen a flurry of announcements reflecting that reality.

Read more: Coping with Western wildfires: 5 essential reads

New Zealand’s government has declared it will become the world’s first country to require its financial sector to report on climate risks.

A collaboration between Australian banks, insurers and climate scientists – the Climate Measurement Standards Initiative – has issued the nation’s first comprehensive framework to assess climate-related risks to buildings and critical infrastructure.

And another of Australia’s largest superannuation funds, UniSuper, has committed to achieving net zero carbon emissions from its investment portfolio by 2050.

UniSuper, the industry fund for university workers, is the third major Australian super fund to make such a commitment.

Read more: UniSuper take note: there’s no retirement on a dead planet

The first was HESTA, the industry super fund for health and community sector workers, in June. The second was CBus, the construction and mining industry super fund, last month. “The reality is that things are coalescing fast around us,” said Kristian Fok, CBus’ chief investment officer at the time.

While the superannuation industry remains very much in transition, analysis by ClimateWorks Australia and the Monash Sustainable Development Institute indicates a new determination among Australia’s 20 largest Registrable Superannuation Entity licensees to act on climate change risks.

These 20 licensees represent about 55% of all superannuation investments in Australia, worth a total of about A$2.7 trillion.

Along with the 2050 commitments by HESTA, CBus and UniSuper, another 13 funds are actively looking to reduce their portfolio’s emissions intensity. For example, Aware Super (formerly First State Super) announced in July it would divest from thermal coal miners and reduce emissions in its listed equities portfolio by at least 30% by 2023.

Only four of the 20 – Colonial First State, IOOF, Nulis and OnePath – still have no emissions reduction targets or activities.

Managing risk

This flurry of announcements reflects a changing context.

In the past, fund managers sometimes argued that, in a heavily regulated industry, their legal responsibilities prevented them from committing to emissions reductions. They were tasked, they said, with protecting their members’ finances, not guarding the environment.

Until about 2017, super funds tended to limit action to asking companies in which they owned shares to disclose their climate risks and to offering voluntary sustainable investment options to their members.

But since the Paris climate agreement in 2015, targets of net zero emissions by 2050 (or earlier) have been adopted by governments, businesses and investors. More than 100 countries and all Australian states and territories have net zero targets in place. So do some major companies, such as BHP and Qantas.

Many businesses now recognise the financial implications of global warming. ANZ, for example, this month announced it expected the 100 biggest-emitting customers to have a plan to adapt to a low-carbon economy – something the bank’s chief executive, Shayne Elliot, said was simply “good old-fashioned risk management”.

This accords with the perspective of regulators, with Australian Prudential Regulation Authority regarding global warming not as a moral issue but one “distinctly financial in nature”.

This means asset managers are increasingly thinking about how more frequent and extreme weather events will devalue property and infrastructure. They are also thinking about the future worth of companies rusted to fossil fuels as the global economy shifts to net zero emissions.

Investors must also consider the possibility of litigation. For example, 24-year-old Brisbane council worker Mark McVeigh has taken the Retail Employees Superannuation Trust to court on the basis it has failed to protect his savings from the financial consequences of ruinous climate change.

Creating the new normal

Understandably, many funds are hesitant to commit to net zero emission portfolio targets without knowing how those targets might be achieved.

But by setting targets, super funds can create a norm that spurs investment in the ways and means to achieve those goals.

With the manifestations of that warming becoming ever more apparent, pressure will grow on super funds to make net zero pledges across their entire portfolios – and then to back these pledges with both interim commitments and detailed transition strategies.

Read more: California is on fire. From across the Pacific, Australians watch on and buckle up

As Kristian Fok says, change is coalescing fast. We’re seeing promising signs of the super funds responding. But we’ll need to see more yet.

– ref. Super funds are feeling the financial heat from climate change – https://theconversation.com/super-funds-are-feeling-the-financial-heat-from-climate-change-146191

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sin Wen Lau, Senior Lecturer in China Studies, University of Otago

Disney’s live-action adaptation of Mulan was released last week amid much controversy. Accusations of Disney bowing to the Chinese Communist Party emerged when the trailer was released.

Many were outraged to learn the movie was partially filmed in Xinjiang, where at least one million Uighurs have been forced into internment camps. They also objected to actress Liu Yifei’s reported support of the Hong Kong police during the 2019 protests.

Criticisms of the movie include its historical and geographical inaccuracies, an undertone of Islamophobia, and a misrepresentation of qi (life force).

Also concerning, but less visible, is how Disney’s Mulan is a more conservative telling of an ancient story – and the place of women – than some historical Chinese renditions. While Mulan might claim to be a tale of female empowerment, ultimately this film is about how women will only be rewarded if they know their place.

A 1,500-year-old tale

The 2020 adaptation of Mulan follows the basic plot of the 1998 Disney animation. The dutiful heroine cross-dresses as a man to take her father’s place in the army. She returns victorious.

The original ballad Mulan shi (“The Ballad of Mulan”) dates back to the Northern Wei dynasty (386-534), a period of warfare and instability. Readers of this poem are exposed to the painful emotions that surround Mulan’s decision to go to war.

In early renditions, Mulan was a Northerner of unspecified ethnicity, and some retellings cast her as a resistor to the imperial court.

Scholars have likened Mulan to a blank canvas. The freedom to tell her story in different ways has contributed to its popularity. By the 20th century, the ethnicity of this female warrior was designated as Han, and her loyalty allied with the central government.

In Mulan Joins the Army (1939), Mulan’s filial piety was emphasised as a service to the country.

Similar themes were explored in Lady General Hua Mu-lan (1964) and Mulan: Rise of a Warrior (2009). Disney’s 1998 animation was the first major non-Chinese adaptation of the Mulan story.

In these retellings, Mulan had fully transformed into a defender of the state.

‘Know your place’

Early in the new film, the village matchmaker tells 16-year-old Mulan (Liu Yifei) a good wife is “composed, graceful, polite” and “when a wife serves her husband, she must be silent, invisible.”

Mulan fails to embody these long-held virtues of an ideal Chinese girl, and her father exhorts Mulan to hide her special qi. This masculine power has no place in a girl’s life. The only way she can honour her family is through marriage.

Read more: A booming international movie market is transforming Hollywood

However, Mulan ultimately brings honour to her family by demonstrating that she is “loyal, brave and true” – qualities engraved on her father’s sword. Mulan knows her crippled father will die in battle if he is conscripted into the army. Taking his place, she leaves home in the middle of the night with the sword.

As a reward for her courage and leadership in saving the Emperor, he bestows her an official position in the imperial guard, but Mulan rejects the offer in order to return home.

The Emperor sends his men to offer Mulan a new sword. In addition to the three qualities, the new sword is engraved with a fourth virtue, xiao (“filial piety,” translated in the film as “devotion to family”). The men urge her to reconsider the Emperor’s offer and join the guard.

The film ends with the phoenix, Mulan’s ancestral guardian, circling above her. This creature has been her guide and its reappearance signals her acceptance of the offer. Because her love interest, Honghui, is an imperial soldier, it is implied she will fulfil her romantic desires as well.

Mulan is rewarded for knowing her place and for her xiao: by working within the dominant patriarchal system, she is a woman who “can have it all.”

A 17th century band of sisters

Within the film, the villain Xianniang (Gong Li) provides a powerful contrast to Mulan.

Xianniang invites Mulan to join forces and rebel against the Emperor. She wants to build a kingdom where strong women like them are accepted for who they are, but Mulan responds, “I know my place” – emphasising her duty is to serve her Emperor.

Ultimately, Xianniang sacrifices herself to save Mulan. By refusing to work within the system, Xianniang’s death signifies the failure of her radical approach.

Rather than being a story of female empowerment, Mulan promotes the idea that women must put male authority figures before themselves to achieve recognition.

The story of Mulan hasn’t always sent this message. In a version by the 17th century author Chu Renhuo, set at the end of the Sui Dynasty (581-618), Xianniang is a warrior princess who becomes Mulan’s sworn sister. They lead a group of women soldiers and travel together. This friendship is absent from the Disney film.

– ref. Disney’s Mulan tells women to know their place – https://theconversation.com/disneys-mulan-tells-women-to-know-their-place-146017

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachael Ka’ai-Mahuta, Senior Lecturer in Māori Language Revitalisation, Auckland University of Technology

Editor’s note: this article marks Māori Language Week/Te Wiki o te Reo Māori. You can read the full article in Māori here.

Earlier this year, I met an Aucklander whose teenage passion for K-pop sparked an interest in the Korean language and culture in general, and led to them learning Korean as a second language.

It made me wonder what lessons could be learnt for the revitalisation of the Māori language. Specifically, given the importance of teenagers in those revitalisation efforts, what can we learn from the way the so-called “Korean Wave” is subverting the English language as the language of popular culture?

There is already work being done in this area. The central argument of Dr Hinurewa Poutu’s PhD research in 2015 concerned the need to create opportunities for Māori to be considered “cool” by adolescents.

As she stated at the time:

English tends to be used socially, as there aren’t enough opportunities to hear Māori in social situations or to learn Māori expressions for gossiping with your friends, courting, playing. For most kids, te reo Māori is used in formal contexts only.

Making Māori cool

Five years on, AUT’s Te Ipukarea Research Institute is leading a project looking at how the Māori language can be better supported in the lives of adolescents. Funded by Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga, this research is based on the idea the Māori language of adolescence forms the building blocks of non-formal adult language.

In other words, it is about the informal language of friendship, humour, relationships, emotions and mental health that sets a pattern for everyday use later in life.

Our preliminary findings show the potential strategic importance of the adolescent age group for Māori language revitalisation. Teenagers are trendsetters – as such, they can have an impact on (and be influenced by) the perceived value of the Māori language and therefore its status.

However, a previous study by Te Ipukarea found there are few Māori language resources and not much Māori language content (novels, TV, music, games) aimed at this age group.

Read more: K-pop fans are creative, dedicated and social – we should take them seriously

This is especially true when compared to the resources available to younger age groups, such as early childhood learners.

When it comes to what is considered “cool”, of course, the influence of entertainment, social media and pop culture on adolescents is clear. After meeting the K-pop-loving Korean language graduate, I began to imagine what it might look like if the Māori language revitalisation movement tapped into that age-group: trendsetting, fandom-building teens.

Challenging English language dominance

The Korean Wave is challenging the dominance of English as the lingua franca of pop culture. The rise in popularity of K-pop, K-dramas (which Netflix has acquired and invested in) and films such as Parasite (winner of the 2020 best picture Oscar, the first “foreign language” film to do so) with non-Korean audiences shows language is no longer the barrier it once was.

These forms of entertainment have simply become part of the wider popular culture. Take Korean group BTS (also known as the Bangtan Boys) – currently among the biggest pop acts in the world, consistently breaking records and garnering a huge worldwide fan base.

Read more: Māori loanwords in NZ English are less about meaning, more about identity

BTS can sing in English but choose to release the majority of their music and other content (a variety show, a travel show, movies, behind-the-scenes footage) in Korean. This year they released Learn Korean with BTS, underscoring the link between the Korean Wave and the uptick in numbers learning the Korean language.

Towards a new Māori wave

There are obvious differences between Korean and Māori. Māori is still a recovering, minority language, while Korean has over 50 million speakers in South Korea alone.

However, if young people in Aotearoa are inspired by Korean pop culture to learn the Korean language, it at least provides an insight into what the Māori language revitalisation movement can learn from the Korean Wave.

Read more: Kia ora: how Māori borrowings shape New Zealand English

The Korean Wave is actually the result of a hugely successful strategic push by the Korean government to export its culture to the world and boost its “soft power”. In other words, Korea set out to be the coolest culture in the world.

With that in mind, strategically resourcing the production of Māori language content for pop culture needs to be a priority in any plan to capture the adolescent age group.

I hope that one day Māori language music will consistently enter the charts, my Netflix list will be full of Māori language dramas, and a Māori language film will be promoted and celebrated the way Parasite has been.

– ref. Making te reo Māori cool: what language revitalisation could learn from the Korean Wave – https://theconversation.com/making-te-reo-maori-cool-what-language-revitalisation-could-learn-from-the-korean-wave-145833

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

From 11.59pm tomorrow (September 16), regional Victoria will take the third step out of COVID-19 restrictions, Premier Daniel Andrews announced today.

According to the roadmap revealed last weekend, the move to step 3 in regional Victoria could happen when the daily average number of cases for the previous 14 days was less than five, and there were zero community cases without a known source for 14 days.

Regional Victoria actually reached the 14-day moving average target on September 10, with 4.5, and by today the average had dropped to 3.6. They were just waiting to hit the mystery cases target.

Among the restrictions to be eased under step 3, up to ten people will be allowed to gather outdoors, and hospitality venues will be able to open again for sit-down service. Beauty salons and hairdressers will also reopen, and people who live in regional Victoria will be able to travel to other regional areas in the state.

Heading in the right direction

This easing of restrictions is undoubtedly good news for regional Victoria. But it’s also reason for people in Melbourne to be optimistic.

Certainly, regional Victoria and metropolitan Melbourne are quite different in terms of the epidemiology of their respective second waves. But the targets set out in the roadmap do appear to be achievable.

The 14-day moving average of daily case numbers for Melbourne is currently at 52.9, and needs to drop below 50 to reach the target for step 2.

Based on my modelling of the 14-day moving average, Melbourne could reach this target as early as Thursday.

This model takes the 14-day moving average for the last 30 days, and it assumes the continuing downward trend is exponentially decreasing. That is, it plots a slow downward curve that approaches zero.

The target to move to step 3 is a 14-day moving average of fewer than five cases per day statewide. A similar modelling strategy shows this is likely to occur on about October 22.

Save the date (or don’t)

Notably, there was no date set for the move to step 3 in regional Victoria, which is very different to the roadmap set out for metropolitan Melbourne.

In Melbourne, the second step is not due to occur until September 28, and the third step not until October 26 – and only then if case numbers have dropped below designated thresholds.

The key question for the Victorian government is whether to stick to this time frame, or allow for an earlier move to the second and third steps if Melbourne achieves the moving average targets ahead of time.

Read more: Victoria’s path out of COVID-19 lockdown – quick reference guides

In a recent article on The Conversation, I called for a more nuanced approach to lifting restrictions. In other words, the government shouldn’t be too rigid with the roadmap.

The people of Victoria have been asked to make enormous sacrifices to get the outbreak under control, and it’s working. I believe the Victorian government should be willing to reward Melburnians by moving to the third step when they reach the relevant case threshold, regardless of the date.

What now?

It’s essential that over the next few weeks, Melbourne residents continue to stick to the restrictions, to help hit the targets as soon as possible.

The numbers of COVID-19 tests has dropped off in the past few days, averaging about 14,000 tests a day. With the lower number of cases and fewer people with respiratory symptoms now winter is over, this is not really surprising. But it’s vital high rates of testing continue, with a focus on hotspot areas, such as the Casey local government area.

Read more: ‘Slow and steady’ exit from lockdown as Victorian government sets sights on ‘COVID-normal’ Christmas

As for regional Victoria, people there must also stick to the remaining restrictions. This will give them the best chance of moving towards step 4 and beyond.

– ref. On the road to COVID normal: the easing of regional Victoria’s restrictions signals hope for Melbourne too – https://theconversation.com/on-the-road-to-covid-normal-the-easing-of-regional-victorias-restrictions-signals-hope-for-melbourne-too-146203

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daniel Ghezelbash, Associate Professor, Macquarie University

It is virtually impossible for anyone to travel to Australia at the moment due to COVID-19 restrictions — let alone those seeking asylum. But even before the pandemic, it was very difficult for asylum seekers to make their way here.

With our borders completely shut, this is an opportune time to reflect on what our asylum seeker policy could look like in a post-pandemic world.

Completely closing our borders to those in need of protection is neither sustainable nor defensible as long-term policy. Australia cannot expect other countries to step up and provide protection while we turn our backs to those in need.

Our current system is arbitrary and ad hoc

The major political parties have made it clear they do not want to see asylum seekers coming to Australia by boats again. But it is hypocritical to take such a position without providing alternative safe pathways for asylum seekers to get here.

One such pathway is air travel. Before the pandemic, it was possible for people who qualified for tourist, student or other types of visas to fly to Australia and subsequently apply for protection.

But those coming by plane typically faced pre-screening and were often denied boarding – precisely because they fit the profile of someone who might claim asylum.

Read more: Refugees need protection from coronavirus too, and must be released

At Australian airports, border officials also use a highly discretionary system to identify and cancel the visas of potential asylum seekers before even considering their protection claims. This places these individuals at serious risk of refoulement to persecution or other serious harm.

This process has resulted in refugees being handcuffed and detained, simply for raising a protection claim in the airport. Some are only detained briefly and promptly placed on a flight home, while others spend months or years in immigration detention while their claims are assessed.

These policies not only prioritise removal or visa cancellation over protection, but actually serve as a disincentive for people to apply for protection at the airport.

Ensuring access to protection

With COVID-19, we have a rare opportunity for a policy reset. Maintaining the integrity of the system is important, and we do not dispute the need to have systems in place to fairly and efficiently distinguish between those who need protection and those who do not.

The problem is the discretionary nature of the present system has given rise to an arbitrary approach that places too much power in the hands of border enforcement officials with no background or training in identifying people in need of protection.

Read more: How refugees succeed in visa reviews: new research reveals the factors that matter

In our new policy brief for UNSW’s Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, we make several recommendations for how to improve the system.

First, we argue people’s visas should not be cancelled while they are in immigration clearance solely because they seek to lodge a protection claim in Australia.

This a breach of the UN Refugee Convention, which prohibits penalising asylum seekers for “irregular entry or presence” in a country where they are looking for protection. It also goes against the principles of non-discrimination in international human rights law.

We also argue Australia should pass new legislation to improve screening procedures for asylum seekers at airports, including these changes:

• applicants should be interviewed by a trained official from the humanitarian program section of the Department of Home Affairs.

• the threshold for referring applicants to the full asylum procedures should be set low. Only those who are clearly not refugees or whose claims are clearly fraudulent should be screened out at the airport.

• applicants should have access to legal advice, competent interpreters and officials from UNHCR during both the preliminary decision and review stages. Asylum seekers who raise a protection claim at the airport should be informed of this right and given help to seek such assistance.

• detention should only be used as a last resort. If it is required, it should be for the shortest time necessary, proportionate and subject to regular independent review.

• applicants should not be removed from Australia until their protection claims have been finally determined, including any available judicial review.

Better tracking of people being turned away

In addition to these changes to the screening process, it’s imperative airlines are not fined for carrying passengers who ultimately receive protection in Australia.

And the Department of Home Affairs needs to improve its data collection practices to start recording reasons for visa cancellations — both within and outside Australia — as well as outcomes of all screening decisions.

This should include establishing a method for recording all protection claims made at or before immigration clearance, and recording all removals of travellers “screened out” after making a protection claim.

Read more: ‘People are crying and begging’: the human cost of forced relocations in immigration detention

The government has conceded it does not accurately collect such data. This information is critical to assessing the extent to which Australia is complying with its domestic and international obligations.

Australia cannot permanently keep its borders shut to asylum seekers. It’s not only inhumane, but it also goes against our obligations under international refugee and human rights law. When travel to Australia resumes, we need to prioritise protection over deflection and removal.

– ref. With our borders shut, this is the ideal time to overhaul our asylum seeker policies – https://theconversation.com/with-our-borders-shut-this-is-the-ideal-time-to-overhaul-our-asylum-seeker-policies-146016

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samantha Hepburn, Director of the Centre for Energy and Natural Resources Law, Deakin Law School, Deakin University

The federal government today announced it will build a new gas power plant in the Hunter Valley, NSW, if electricity generators don’t fill the energy gap left by the Liddell coal-fired station when it retires in 2023.

The government says it’s concerned that when the coal plant closes, there’ll be insufficient dispatchable power (that can be used on demand) because the energy sector is focused on accelerating renewable energy at the expense of reliability. So electricity generators are required to come up with a plan to inject 1,000 megawatts of new dispatchable energy into the national grid.

Read more: Morrison government threatens to use Snowy Hydro to build gas generator, as it outlines ‘gas-fired recovery’ plan

This is tantamount to an ultimatum: if we must have renewables, then prove they generate the same amount of electricity as fossil fuel or we will go back to fossil fuel.

The government’s joint media release has this to say:

This is about making Australia’s gas work for all Australians. Gas is a critical enabler of Australia’s economy.

But under a rapidly changing climate, the issue is not just about keeping the lights on. We not only want energy, we also want to breathe clean air, have enough food, have clean and available water supplies, preserve our habitat and live in a sustainable community. So no, gas doesn’t “work for all Australians”.

Adapting to a new energy future is a complex process our national government must not only support, but progress. It should not be hijacked by fossil fuel politics.

Scare-tactics won’t resolve the climate emergency

The government’s scare tactic completely ignores the two fundamental imperatives of modern energy.

Read more: 4 reasons why a gas-led economic recovery is a terrible, naïve idea

The first is the critical importance of decarbonisation. Energy production from fossil fuels is the most carbon intensive activity on the planet. If we are to reach net zero emissions by 2050 and stay within 2℃ of global warming, we cannot burn fossil fuels to produce energy.

The government shouldn’t revert to outdated fossil fuel rhetoric about “reliable, dispatchable power” during an accelerating climate emergency.

The second is it’s in the public interest to support and invest in energy that’s not only environmentally sustainable for the future, but also economically sustainable. Demand for fossil fuels is in terminal decline across the world and investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure may lead to stranded assets.

We need to address the ‘energy trilemma’

The question the government should instead focus on is this: how can the government continue to supply its citizens with affordable, reliable electricity but also maintain a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and high air quality standards?

Answering this question involves addressing a three-part set of tensions, known as the “energy trilemma”:

1. sustainable generation that is not emission intensive
2. infrastructure reliability and
3. affordability.

The energy trilemma is a well-known tool in the sector that powerfully communicates the relative positioning of each tension. No single axis is necessarily more important than the other two. The aim is to try to balance all three.

Constructing a new gas plant seeks to address the second pillar at the expense of the first. This isn’t good enough in the face of the climate emergency.

Gas fired electricity can emit methane. Over a 20-year period, methane is 84 times more effective than carbon dioxide in trapping heat, and 28 times more effective over 100 years.

Read more: Australia has plenty of gas, but our bills are ridiculous. The market is broken

The affordability pillar is also important. Morrison says constructing the plant will prevent energy price spikes. But research clearly confirms renewable energy generation is cheapest.

What is it with the federal government and gas?

After first informing us gas will help bolster the economy after the COVID-19 pandemic, this new announcement makes it clear the federal government is firmly wedded to gas.

This may be because the federal government regards adherence to gas as a compromise between the renewable sector and the demands of the fossil fuel industry.

In any case, we cannot and must not revert to fossil fuel energy generation. We must abandon past behaviours if we’re to adapt to a changing climate, which is set to hit the economy much harder than this pandemic.

Most Australians have derived their assumptions about energy security from fossil fuel dependency, because this is what they have known. The good news is this is changing.

Increasingly, the global community understands it’s not sustainable to burn coal or gas to generate energy just because we want to be “sure” we can turn the lights on. Consumer preference is shifting.

Read more: Why it doesn’t make economic sense to ignore climate change in our recovery from the pandemic

This is something BP recognises in its 2020 Energy Outlook report, which outlines three scenarios for the global energy system in next 30 years.

Each scenario shows a shift in social preferences and a decline in the share of hydrocarbons (coal, oil and natural gas) in the global energy system. This decline is matched by an increase in the role of renewable energy.

I’ll say it again: renewable energy is the future

The technology underpinning renewable energy production from clean, low-cost generation such as wind, solar, hydro-electricity, hydrogen and bio-mass is advancing.

Renewable energy generation is sustainable, better for the environment, low in emissions, and affordable. Reliability is improving at a rapid rate. A recent report indicates electricity generated by solar photovoltaic (PV) and onshore wind farms from 2026 will overtake the combined power production from coal and gas.

The combined solar and wind capacity will grow to an estimated 41.4 gigawatts in 2023 from 26.4 gigawatts this year. By contrast, coal and gas capacity will shrink to 35.3 gigawatts in 2023 from 39.1 gigawatts this year.

The report is based on the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) Step Change Scenario, which models a shift to renewables. It includes rapid adjustments in technology costs and a “well below 2℃” scenario as part of its 20-year planning blueprint.

Read more: Here’s what the coronavirus pandemic can teach us about tackling climate change

Yes, there are challenges in shifting from a centralised grid and developing new transmission capacity.

But these are the challenges we need to be investing in. Not a new gas plant that’s likely to be a stranded asset in the not-too-distant future.

– ref. No, Prime Minister, gas doesn’t ‘work for all Australians’ and your scare tactics ignore modern energy problems – https://theconversation.com/no-prime-minister-gas-doesnt-work-for-all-australians-and-your-scare-tactics-ignore-modern-energy-problems-146196

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

Yoshihide Suga is set to be Japan’s new prime minister after he was easily elected leader of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) on Monday.

Suga is due to be formally appointed prime minister by a vote in the Japanese parliament on Wednesday, where the conservative LDP has a majority in both houses.

Former prime minister Shinzo Abe’s resignation last month due to illness was a surprise. But once the leadership contest was declared, 71-year-old Suga – the chief cabinet secretary – was widely expected to be Japan’s next prime minister.

Wanting policy consistency, the leaders of five out of seven of the LDP’s major factions declared their support for Suga, which doomed the chances of challengers Fumio Kishida and Shigeru Ishiba.

Who is Suga?

Unlike Abe and many other Japanese politicians, Suga did not inherit a dynastic political support network. He is the eldest son of a prosperous strawberry farmer in the northern Akita prefecture.

The young Suga did not take up the family farm, but left for Tokyo. He studied at Hosei University and worked at a cardboard box factory and as a security guard.

Eschewing the radical student politics of the late 1960s, after graduation, he became a politician’s secretary. Suga was elected to the assembly of the port city of Yokohama in 1987.

Read more: Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving leader, leaves office a diminished figure with an unfulfilled legacy

A shrewd networker, he built up his own local power base and was elected to the national Diet (parliament) for the LDP in 1996.

After switching between different factions, Suga ended up unaligned. But he became close to Abe and was internal affairs minister in Abe’s first term of government in 2006.

In opposition, Suga was instrumental in helping Abe reclaim the LDP leadership in 2012, and was rewarded with the chief cabinet secretary position.

A fierce reputation

As chief cabinet secretary, Suga gained a reputation for ruthlessly controlling the bureaucracy and stonewalling the media at daily press conferences.

He played a crucial role in protecting Abe from greater scrutiny over numerous scandals that dogged his government.

A teetotaller like Abe, Suga is renowned for a strict work ethic. He lives mostly in a government dormitory and rises each day at 5am to do 100 sit-ups.

This stern, humourless image was slightly leavened when he announced the name of the new Imperial era in April 2019, and briefly received the moniker of “Uncle Reiwa”.

What will Suga do now?

Suga now takes up the challenge of keeping coronavirus under control and has pledged to continue the record deficit spending and quantitative easing of “Abenomics”.

He has indicated the consumption tax could be raised again in future. Suga also wants to reduce mobile phone rates, restructure regional banks and encourage further digitisation of the economy.

Read more: Japan: spring and prosperity the watchwords as country announces a new era

In environment policy, Suga is likely to continue the restart of nuclear power plants, build new coal-fired power plants and promote commercial whaling.

But apart from COVID-19, there are big challenges ahead. Suga’s administration will struggle to restimulate the economy out of its deepest postwar recession, hold the delayed Olympics next year, and confront entrenched gender and income inequality.

International and security challenges

Suga admits to being inexperienced in international affairs, and will possibly retain Abe – who for now remains in the Diet – as a special diplomatic adviser.

The new leader’s foreign policy priorities will be to maintain the US alliance, and keep relations with China relatively smooth. Unlike his rival Ishiba, Suga does not favour creating an “Asian NATO”, but will still promote cooperative middle-power relations with ASEAN, India and Australia.

Like Abe, Suga desires to resolve the longstanding issue of Japanese abductees in North Korea. He also has a difficult task to restore the dire state of relations with neighbour South Korea.

Suga also shares Abe’s unfulfilled goal of changing article 9 of the constitution to allow greater deployment of Japan’s Self-Defence Forces. His new cabinet will proceed with a controversial new defence doctrine, to acquire cruise missiles for pre-emptive strikes against potential threats from the Asian continent.

Early election?

Suga has cautioned against an early election until COVID-19 is brought under control.

But there is already speculation a snap election could be called, possibly by the end of next month. This would stop the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan from building on its recent reorganisation into a more united bloc.

Read more: How Shinzo Abe has fumbled Japan’s coronavirus response

The next election for the lower house of the Diet is due by October 2021, so at most, Suga only has a year to prove himself to be more than a caretaker prime minister.

He faces a leadership vote again in September 2021, under party rules requiring a ballot every three years for each regular term of LDP leader.

Internal rivals will seek another chance at the top job, particularly as the whole rank-and-file membership of the LDP will be allowed to participate in this vote. This may favour the generally more popular Ishiba.

If a larger field of candidates such as defense minister Taro Kono, or acting secretary general Tomomi Inada run against Suga, it is possible Japan could have yet another new prime minister by this time next year.

– ref. Yoshihide Suga – who is the man set to be Japan’s next prime minister? – https://theconversation.com/yoshihide-suga-who-is-the-man-set-to-be-japans-next-prime-minister-146195

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melissa Hart, Graduate Director, ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, UNSW

A typical Australian PhD often involves a focused research project at one university, with one to two supervisors, and often far from your home or home country. It can be a quite isolating experience.

PhD students are also at great risk of mental health problems. A pre-COVID study from Belgium found one in two PhD students experiences psychological distress. One in three is at risk of psychiatric disorder.

And this year a pandemic has been thrown into the mix.

Read more: COVID-19 increases risk to international students’ mental health. Australia urgently needs to step up

The cross-institutional, collaborative nature of the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centres of Excellence has allowed a re-imagining of the Australian PhD experience. Here we outline the steps the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes has taken to support our graduate students during COVID. There’s a checklist later in this article.

The graduate director, a dedicated academic position, leads the program and also acts as an advocate and mentor to our students. At any one time the centre has 100 graduate students, 60% of them international, enrolled in one of five universities across four cities.

COVID added to existing needs

The cross-institutional nature of our centre meant our students went into the pandemic already used to videoconference meetings, seminars and training. What was lost, however, was the important and often ad-hoc supportive and collaborative conversations with peers and colleagues. These chats could happen at conferences and workshops, or simply with office mates in the work kitchen.

Beyond the challenges of continuing their research under new, even more isolating, conditions, our students also have a range of individual factors to deal with in the current circumstances. These may include: caring responsibilities, challenging work-from-home environments, being far from family, or simply the mental load of undertaking a PhD during a pandemic.

Early on in the centre’s life we set up mental health initiatives to ensure centre-wide support and well-being. These initiatives range from weekly hump-day tips focused on mental well-being through to ensuring we had staff and students at each university trained in mental health first aid. This sort of support has become increasingly important during the calamity 2020 has become.

Read more: ‘No one would even know if I had died in my room’: coronavirus leaves international students in dire straits

Help where you can, or call on others

Importantly, we recognise as supervisors we cannot resolve all issues. While we can provide an empathetic ear, in many cases students need to be redirected to the mental health support our universities’ counselling services provide.

We realised early on in the pandemic leaders in the centre can only offer support when they themselves are supported. Therefore, members of our centre executive received guidance, and have undertaken training, on managing others in a time of crisis. This was offered via their universities’ employee assistance program.

Our researchers were specifically tasked with checking in on all their students. We asked questions about working-from-home environments to ensure students had the computing and internet resources needed to continue their research. We also made note of any circumstances that might affect progress, such as caring responsibilities.

Any issues the centre could resolve we did. Those we could not resolve we reported in student progress review documents. We ensured students were aware of extra support available such as university counselling services.

Read more: 3 ways the coronavirus outbreak will affect international students and how unis can help

Financial hardship increased

A recent study of Australian PhD students showed 75% expected to experience financial hardship as a result of the pandemic, and we have seen that. Students close to completion were hit hardest. They were faced with the end of their scholarships at a time of employment uncertainty, often with no access to government support, and closed borders that prevented them returning home.

The centre quickly offered scholarships to provide bridging funds after thesis submission. These scholarships were offered once individual university support was exhausted and required a tangible outcome at the end, such as writing up a thesis chapter for submission to a journal.

Working to stay connected

At the same time as we dealt with the practical realities of student finances and research, we made every effort to keep everyone socially connected.

Our annual winter school, a cornerstone event of the graduate program, shifted online. To avoid Zoom fatigue we replaced the week-long face-to-face schedule with a winter school offered in two-hour slots. Sessions were recorded and breakout rooms used to focus student engagement with each other. When we saw how delighted students were to see each other in small groups and catch up, it was a sign for us to step out and let them engage with their peers.

We introduced additional Slack channels, held virtual morning and afternoon teas and put together a weekly centre-wide lunch for all early career researchers. The numbers in these virtual meet-ups declined as students settled into new routines. In contrast, our research meeting and seminar attendances went through the roof. We found if an event has a purpose people attend, even while social check-ups became less successful.

Finally, we continued to celebrate successes and PhD submissions in a long-running weekly email update. In these updates, we made it clear we understood the impacts of these uncertain times on students’ progress.

While not everything worked perfectly, our centre-wide relationship with students put us in an excellent position to respond quickly, transparently and with student input as the pandemic unfolded.

We do not know how long this pandemic will last. What we do know is all current and any incoming PhD candidates will feel the impacts in some way. With PhD students producing more than half of university research in Australia, this crisis illustrates the importance of ongoing development and support of higher-degree research students.

– ref. PhD students need support at the best of the times. How can you help in a pandemic? – https://theconversation.com/phd-students-need-support-at-the-best-of-the-times-how-can-you-help-in-a-pandemic-144799

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

Passwords have been used for thousands of years, as a means of identifying ourselves to others and in more recent times, to computers. It’s a simple concept – a shared piece of information, kept secret between individuals and used to “prove” identity.

Passwords in an IT context emerged in the 1960s with mainframe computers (large centrally operated computers with remote “terminals” for user access). They’re now used for everything from the PIN we enter at an ATM, to logging in to our computers and various websites.

But why do we need to “prove” our identity to the systems we access? And why are passwords so hard to get right?

Read more: The long history, and short future, of the password

What makes a good password?

Until relatively recently, a good password might have been a word or phrase of as little as six to eight characters. But we now have minimum length guidelines. Why? Because of “entropy”.

When talking about passwords, entropy is the measure of predictability. The maths behind this isn’t complex, but let’s examine this with an even simpler measure: the number of possible passwords, sometimes referred to as the “password space”.

If a one character password only contains one lowercase letter, there are only 26 possible passwords (“a” to “z”). By including uppercase letters, we increase our password space to 52 potential passwords.

The password space continues to expand as the length is increased and other character types are added.

Looking at the above figures, it’s easy to understand why we’re encouraged to use long passwords with upper and lowercase letters, numbers and symbols. The more complex the password, the more attempts needed to guess it.

However, the problem with depending on password complexity is that computers are highly efficient at repeating tasks – including guessing passwords.

Last year, a record was set for a computer trying to generate every conceivable password. It achieved a rate faster than 100,000,000,000 guesses per second.

By leveraging this computing power, cyber criminals can hack into a system by bombarding it with as many password combinations as possible, in a process called brute force attacks.

And with cloud-based technology, guessing an eight-character password can be achieved in as little as 12 minutes and cost as little as US$25.

And because passwords are almost always used to give access to sensitive data or important systems, this motivates cyber criminals to actively seek them out. It also drives a lucrative market selling passwords, some of which come with email addresses and/or usernames.

How are passwords stored on websites?

Website passwords are usually stored in a protected manner using a mathematical algorithm called hashing. A hashed password is unrecognisable and can’t be turned back into the password (an irreversible process).

When you try to login, the password you enter is hashed using the same process and compared to the version stored on the site. This process is repeated each time you login.

For example, the password “Pa$$w0rd” is given the value “02726d40f378e716981c4321d60ba3a325ed6a4c” when calculated using the SHA1 hashing algorithm. Try it yourself.

When faced with a file full of hashed passwords, a brute force attack can be used, trying every combination of characters for a range of password lengths. This has become such common practice that there are websites that list common passwords alongside their (calculated) hashed value. You can simply search for the hash to potentially reveal the corresponding password.

The theft and selling of passwords lists is now so common, a dedicated website — haveibeenpwned.com — is available to help users check if their accounts are “in the wild”. This has grown to include more than 10 billion account details.

If your email address is listed on this site you should definitely change the detected password, as well as on any other sites for which you use the same credentials.

Read more: Will the hack of 500 million Yahoo accounts get everyone to protect their passwords?

Is more complexity the solution?

You would think with so many password breaches occurring daily, we would have improved our password selection practices. Unfortunately, last year’s annual SplashData password survey has shown little change over five years.

As computing capabilities increase, the solution would appear to be increased complexity. But as humans, we are not skilled at (nor motivated to) remember highly complex passwords.

We’ve also passed the point where we use only two or three systems needing a password. It’s now common to access numerous sites, with each requiring a password (often of varying length and complexity). A recent survey suggests there are, on average, 70-80 passwords per person.

The good news is there are tools to address these issues. Most computers now support password storage in either the operating system or the web browser, usually with the option to share across multiple devices.

Examples include Apple’s iCloud Keychain and the option to save passwords in Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox (although less reliable).

Password managers such as KeePassXC can help users generate long, complex passwords and store them in a secure location for when they’re needed.

While this location still needs to be protected (usually with a long “master password”), using a password manager lets you have a unique, complex password for every website you visit.

This won’t prevent a password from being stolen from a vulnerable website. But if it is stolen, you won’t have to worry about changing the same password on all your other sites.

There are of course vulnerabilities in these solutions too, but perhaps that’s a story for another day.

Read more: Facebook hack reveals the perils of using a single account to log in to other services

– ref. A computer can guess more than 100,000,000,000 passwords per second. Still think yours is secure? – https://theconversation.com/a-computer-can-guess-more-than-100-000-000-000-passwords-per-second-still-think-yours-is-secure-144418

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marguerite Johnson, Professor of Classics, University of Newcastle

Throughout antiquity, from the Mediterranean to Egypt and today’s Middle East, people believed that misfortune, including accidents, diseases, and sometimes even death, were caused by external forces.

Be they gods or other types of supernatural forces (such as a daimon), people — regardless of faith — sought magical means of protection against them.

While medicine and science were not absent in antiquity, they competed with entrenched systems of magic and the widespread recourse to it. People consulted professional magicians and also practised their own forms of folk magic.

Read more: Spells, charms, erotic dolls: love magic in the ancient Mediterranean

Possibly derived from the Latin word “amoliri”, meaning “to drive away” or “to avert”, amulets were believed to possess inherent magical qualities. These qualities could be naturally intrinsic (such as the properties of a particular stone) or imbued artificially with the assistance of a spell.

Not surprisingly the use of amulets was an integral part of life. From jewellery and embellishments on buildings, to papyri inscribed with spells, and even garden ornaments, they were deemed effective forms of protection.

Amulets have been around for thousands of years. Amber pendants from Denmark’s Mesolithic age (10,000-8,000 BC) seem to have been worn as a form of generic protection.

Jewellery and ornaments referencing the figure of the scarab beetle were also popular all-purpose amulets in Egypt, dating from the beginning of the Middle Kingdom (2000 BC).

Read more: Michelle Obama’s necklace and the power of political jewellery — from suffragettes to a secretary of state

Two of the most common symbols of protection are the eye and the phallus. One or both amulet designs appear in many contexts, providing protection of the body (in the form of jewellery), a building (as plaques on exterior walls), a tomb (as an inscribed motif), and even a baby’s crib (as a mobile or crib ornament).

In Greece and the Middle East, for example, the evil eye has a history stretching back thousands of years. Today the image adorns the streets, buildings and even trees of villages.

The magic behind the evil eye is based on the belief that malevolence can be directed towards an individual through a nasty glare. Accordingly, a “fake” eye, or evil eye, absorbs the malicious intention in place of the target’s eye.

Wind chimes

The phallus was a form of magical protection in ancient Greece and Rome. The Greek sculpture known as a “herm” in English functioned as apotropaic magic (used to fend off evil). Such artefacts, featuring a head and torso atop a pediment — often in the shape of a phallus and, if not, definitely featuring a phallus — were used as boundary markers to keep trespassers out.

The implicit threat is that of rape; come near a space that is not your own, and you may suffer the consequences. This threat was intended to be interpreted metaphorically; namely, a violation of another’s property would entail some form of punishment from the supernatural realm.

The phallus amulet was also popular in ancient Italian magic. In Pompeii, archaeologists have uncovered wind chimes called tintinnabulum (meaning “little bell”). These were hung in gardens and took the form of a phallus adorned with bells.

This phallic shape, often morphing into bawdy forms, presented the same warning as the herm statues in Greece. However, the comic shapes in combination with the tinkling of bells also revealed a belief in the protective power of sound. Laughing was believed to ward off evil forces, as was the sound of chimes.

One scholarly view of magic is that it functions as the last recourse for the desperate or dispossessed. In this sense, it presents as a hopeful action, interpreted by some modern commentators as a form of psychological release from stress or a sense of powerlessness.

Contemporary ‘magical thinking’

In the context of “magical thinking”, amulets may be dismissed by critical thinkers of all persuasions, but they remain in use throughout the world.

Often combined with science and common sense, but not always, amulets have made a resurgence during the COVID-19 pandemic. The amulets are equally as diverse, coming in all shapes and sizes, and promoted by politicians, religious leaders and social influencers.

A traditional form of adornment and protection in Javanese culture, now popular with tourists, “burnt root” bracelets, known as “akar bahar”, have been sold by community shamans. Indonesia’s Agriculture Minister Syahrul Yasin Limpo, meanwhile, has promoted an aromatherapy necklace containing a eucalyptus potion touted as a preventative against COVID (useless in terms of science but perhaps less dangerous than hydroxychloroquine).

This necklace prompts the question: where does alternative medicine end and magic begin? It is not a new question, since there has been an intersection between magical lore and medical knowledge for thousands of years.

Read more: A murky cauldron – modern witchcraft and the spell on Trump

In Babylon, circa 2000-1600 BC, a condition known as “kuràrum disease” (identified as a ringworm, symptoms of which include facial pustules), was responded to by both magicians and doctors. And in one text there is a “healer” who appears to perform the role of magician and doctor simultaneously.

Other ancient cultures also practised medical magic through amulets. In Greece, magicians prescribed amulets to heal the wandering womb, a condition whereby the womb was believed to dislodge and travel throughout a woman’s body, thus causing hysteria.

These amulets could take the form of jewellery on which a spell was inscribed. Amulets were also used to prevent pregnancy, as evidenced in a recipe written in Greek from around the second century BC, which instructed women to: “take a bean with a bug inside it and fasten it to yourself as an amulet.”

In a contemporary religious context, written amulets replace spells with prayers. In Thailand, for example, Phisutthi Rattanaphon, an Abbot at Wat Theraplai Temple in Suphan Buri, has issued people with orange paper inscribed with protective words and pictures.

Designed to ward off COVID-19, the papers represent the crossover between magic and religion; a paradigm as entrenched as the blurring of magic and medicine in numerous historical and cultural contexts. Thankfully, face masks and hand sanitiser are also available at the temple.

– ref. Scarabs, phalluses, evil eyes — how ancient amulets tried to ward off disease – https://theconversation.com/scarabs-phalluses-evil-eyes-how-ancient-amulets-tried-to-ward-off-disease-143842

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nigel French, Professor of Food Safety and Veterinary Public Health, Massey University

Genome sequencing — the mapping of the genetic sequences of an organism — has helped track the spread of COVID-19 cases in Auckland, but it also plays an important role in the control of other infectious diseases in New Zealand.

One example is Mycoplasma bovis, a global cattle disease New Zealand also hopes to eliminate.

It was first detected on a South Island dairy farm in July 2017 and has subsequently been found on 250 properties across the country. It remains active on one farm.

M. bovis causes a range of diseases in both adult cattle and calves, including pneumonia, arthritis, mastitis, conjunctivitis and middle ear infections. The original source of the incursion remains unknown, but the Ministry for Primary Industries, together with industry partners, runs a programme to eliminate M. bovis from New Zealand.

Sequencing, epidemiology and evolutionary modelling all help determine how it spread between infected farms. Understanding “who infected whom” is crucial for contact tracing and control measures — and it applies whether a person is infected with COVID-19 or a cattle herd with M. bovis.

Read more: Eradicating cattle disease M. bovis in New Zealand may be costly, even impossible, but we must try

Eliminating human and animal pathogens

Several factors have contributed to the improvement in genome sequencing, including collaboration across New Zealand, an injection of new funding, and advances in modelling and visualisation.

In the case of COVID-19, the turnaround speed from test sample to viral genome sequence has increased dramatically, and the information is invaluable for New Zealand’s ongoing effort to eliminate community transmission.

Many disciplines and skill sets are involved in analysing genome data and linking viral or bacterial sequences with epidemiological data on specific cases. New Zealand scientists work with international colleagues at the forefront of global projects to turn genome sequencing data into information for policy and action.

Read more: Why New Zealand needs to focus on genome sequencing to trace the source of its new COVID-19 outbreak

Apart from New Zealand’s effort to eliminate the cattle disease, other programs to control infectious diseases also benefit from genome sequencing. These include bacteria transmitted between animals and people, such as Salmonella, E. coli and Campylobacter.

Strategies to reduce food-borne Campylobacter infections in New Zealand are informed by “source attribution” models. These use bacterial sequences from human cases and animal hosts to determine the likely origin of human infection.

This information has helped the Ministry for Primary Industries and the food industry develop and implement policy to reduce the risk of food poisoning caused by Campylobacter.

From global to local control of infectious diseases

Genome sequencing, epidemiology and evolutionary modelling have combined to help understand transmission paths of infectious diseases at different scales. In New Zealand, these include the following:

In recent years, the Ministry of Health has funded the Institute of Environmental Science and Research to routinely sequence bacteria that cause disease in people. This has supported the control of outbreaks of Salmonella, E. coli, bacterial meningitis and antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

New research at the New Zealand Food Safety Science and Research Centre combines farm and factory-scale micro-mapping with genomics and modelling to control bacteria such as Listeria and Campylobacter. This helps our understanding of how microbes enter the food chain and how we can control them at the source.

Genome sequencing of new epidemics

We live in challenging times. We receive daily reminders of the consequences of our ability, or inability, to prevent and control emerging pathogens. Genome sequencing and modelling provide powerful opportunities to improve the management of infectious diseases globally.

It is exciting and encouraging to witness these advances in New Zealand. Recent investment in the country’s sequencing capability has led to an unprecedented acceleration in turnaround times. This makes the findings far more useful at the frontline of a rapidly evolving outbreak.

To reduce the impact of emerging diseases such as COVID-19, we need sustained investment in these new technologies. Human and animal infectious disease experts need to work together, along with experts in public health, microbiology, molecular biology, epidemiology and modelling.

We need to grow capability and maintain scientific networks to respond rapidly and effectively when the next disease crosses our borders.

– ref. COVID-19 is not the only infectious disease New Zealand wants to eliminate, and genome sequencing is a crucial tool – https://theconversation.com/covid-19-is-not-the-only-infectious-disease-new-zealand-wants-to-eliminate-and-genome-sequencing-is-a-crucial-tool-145695

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura McKemmish, Lecturer, UNSW

The discovery that the atmosphere of Venus absorbs a precise frequency of microwave radiation has just turned planetary science on its head. An international team of scientists used radio telescopes in Hawaii and Chile to find signs that the clouds on Earth’s neighbouring planet contain tiny quantities of a molecule called phosphine.

Phosphine is a compound made from phosphorus and hydrogen, and on Earth its only natural source is tiny microbes that live in oxygen-free environments. It’s too early to say whether phosphine is also a sign of life on Venus – but no other explanation so far proposed seems to fit.

What makes an atmosphere?

The molecular makeup of a planet’s atmosphere normally depends on what its parent star is made of, the planet’s position in its star’s system, and the chemical and geological processes that take place given these conditions.

There is phosphine in the atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn, for example, but there it’s not a sign of life. Scientists think it is formed in the deep atmosphere at high pressures and temperatures, then dredged into the upper atmosphere by a strong convection current.

Although phosphine quickly breaks down into phosphorus and hydrogen in the top clouds of these planets, enough lingers – 4.8 parts per million – to be observable. The phosphorus may be what gives clouds on Jupiter a reddish tinge.

Things are different on a rocky planet like Venus. The new research has found fainter traces of phosphine in the atmosphere, at 20 parts per billion.

Lightning, clouds, volcanoes and meteorite impacts might all produce some phosphine, but not enough to counter the rapid destruction of the compound in Venus’s highly oxidising atmosphere. The researchers considered all the chemical processes they could think of on Venus, but none could explain the concentration of phosphine. What’s left?

On Earth, phosphine is only produced by microbial life (and by various industrial processes) – and the concentration in our atmosphere is in the parts per trillion range. The much higher concentration on Venus cannot be ignored.

Read more: We asked astronomers: are we alone in the Universe? The answer was surprisingly consistent

Signs of life?

To determine whether the phosphine on Venus is really produced by life, chemists and geologists will be trying to identify other reactions and processes that could be alternative explanations.

Meanwhile, biologists will be trying to better understand the microbes that live in Venus-like conditions on Earth – high temperatures, high acidity, and high levels of carbon dioxide – and also ones that produce phosphine.

When Earth microbes produce phosphine, they do it via an “anaerobic” process, which means it happens where no oxygen is present. It has been observed in places such as activated sludge and sewage treatment plants, but the exact collection of microbes and processes is not well understood.

Biologists will also be trying to work out whether the microbes on Earth that produce phosphine could conceivably do it under the harsh Venusian conditions. If there is some biological process producing phosphine on Venus, it may be a form of “life” very different from what we know on Earth.

Searches for life beyond Earth have often skipped over Venus, because its surface temperature is around 500℃ and the atmospheric pressure is almost 100 times greater than on Earth. Conditions are more hospitable for life as we know it about 50 kilometres off the ground, although there are still vast clouds of sulfuric acid to deal with.

Read more: Why the idea of alien life now seems inevitable and possibly imminent

Molecular barcodes

The researchers found the phosphine using spectroscopy, which is the study of how light interacts with molecules. When sunlight passes through Venus’s atmosphere, each molecule absorbs very specific colours of this light.

Using telescopes on Earth, we can take this light and split it into a massive rainbow. Each type of molecule present in Venus’ atmosphere produces a distinctive pattern of dark absorption lines in this rainbow, like an identifying barcode.

This barcode is not always strongest in visible light. Sometimes it can only be detected in the parts of the electromagnetic spectrum that are invisible to the human eye, such as UV rays, microwave, radio waves and infrared.

The barcode of carbon dioxide, for example, is most evident in the infrared region of the spectrum.

While phosphine on Jupiter was first detected in infrared, for Venus observations astronomers used radio telescopes: the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT), which can detect the barcode of phosphine in millimetre wavelengths.

New barcodes, new discoveries

The discovery of phosphine on Venus relied not only on new observations, but also a more detailed knowledge of the compound’s barcode. Accurately predicting the barcode of phosphine across all relevant frequencies took the whole PhD of astrochemist Clara Sousa-Silva in the ExoMol group at University College London in 2015.

She used computational quantum chemistry – basically putting her molecule into a computer and solving the equations that describe its behaviour – to predict the strength of the barcode at different colours. She then tuned her model using available experimental data before making the 16.8 billion lines of phosphine’s barcode available to astronomers.

Sousa-Silva originally thought her data would be used to study Jupiter and Saturn, as well as weird stars and distant “hot Jupiter” exoplanets.

More recently, she led the detailed consideration of phosphine as a biosignature – a molecule whose presence implies life. This analysis demonstrated that, on small rocky exoplanets, phosphine should not be present in observable concentrations unless there was life there as well.

But she no doubt wouldn’t have dreamed of a phone call from an astronomer who has discovered phosphine on our nearest planetary neighbour. With phosphine on Venus, we won’t be limited to speculating and looking for molecular barcodes. We will be able to send probes there and hunt for the microbes directly.

– ref. Life on Venus? Traces of phosphine may be a sign of biological activity – https://theconversation.com/life-on-venus-traces-of-phosphine-may-be-a-sign-of-biological-activity-146093

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Danielle Stanisic, Associate Research Leader, Institute for Glycomics, Griffith University

More than 28 million people around the world have now contracted COVID-19, and more than 900,000 people have died.

Research groups across the globe are rightly racing to find a vaccine to protect against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

While it’s not surprising all eyes are on this vaccine race, COVID-19 isn’t the only disease for which scientists are currently trying to find a vaccine.

Let’s look at three others.

The big three

We regard malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS as the “big three” infectious diseases. Together they’re responsible for about 2.7 million deaths a year around the world. They disproportionately affect low- and middle-income countries.

Deaths from these three diseases could almost double over the next year as a result of disruptions to health care in the face of COVID-19.

This is a clear example of the indirect effects of an uncontrollable infectious disease. It also reminds us of the importance of vaccine research for the many other infectious parasites, viruses and bacteria that can cause disease and death.

Read more: Creating a COVID-19 vaccine is only the first step. It’ll take years to manufacture and distribute

Malaria: the parasite

Malaria is a parasitic disease transmitted through the bite of an infected mosquito. Common symptoms are flu-like: fever, headache, muscle aches and fatigue. If not treated promptly, malaria can lead to severe disease and death.

In 2018, nearly half of the world’s population was at risk from malaria. There were roughly 228 million cases and 405,000 deaths from the disease, mainly in children under five in sub-Saharan Africa.

Anti-malarial drugs are routinely used to treat and prevent malaria infection. But Plasmodium falciparum, the deadliest of the malaria parasites that can infect humans, has developed resistance against all drugs currently used to treat and prevent malaria. So we urgently need an effective vaccine.

Development of a malaria vaccine is complicated by the diverse forms, or life-cycle stages, of the parasite in the human host. The immune responses required to kill the parasite differ between these different stages. So malaria vaccine candidates typically target just one parasite stage.

British multinational pharmaceutical company GSK has licensed the world’s first malaria vaccine, Mosquirix. It targets the stage the parasite is at when the mosquito injects it.

Although it’s the only malaria vaccine candidate to successfully complete phase 3 trials, Mosquirix has only moderate effectiveness (less than 40%) which drops off rapidly after the final dose. So we need a more effective vaccine capable of inducing long-lasting immunity.

There are 20 other malaria vaccine candidates in advanced pre-clinical or clinical evaluation.

At the forefront of these is Sanaria’s whole sporozoite vaccine (PfSPZ), which also targets the parasite stage injected by the mosquito. It’s currently being evaluated for effectiveness in Africa.

Read more: From STIs to malaria, here are six disease trends we should heed during the pandemic

Tuberculosis: the bacterium

Globally, tuberculosis is the leading cause of death by a single infectious agent. It’s caused by a bacterium that spreads from person to person through the air and mainly affects the lungs.

Tuberculosis was responsible for 1.5 million deaths in 2018. About one-quarter of the world’s population has latent tuberculosis, which has no symptoms and is not infectious. But 5-15% of these people will go onto develop active, infectious disease.

Generally, tuberculosis can be effectively treated with antimicrobial drugs. But the emergence of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis is a major cause of death and a serious public health concern.

We do have one licensed vaccine for tuberculosis. The BCG vaccine was first used in 1921 and is usually administered to infants in countries with high tuberculosis prevalence. But the degree and duration of protection this vaccine offers is not enough to control the disease.

Scientists are working to develop prophylactic vaccines (to prevent infection from the outset) and post-exposure vaccines (to prevent disease progression in people with latent tuberculosis).

At least 14 tuberculosis vaccine candidates are in clinical trials, with promising results giving hope we might be able to get the disease under better control in years to come.

HIV/AIDS: the virus

Since the discovery of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in the 1980s, the disease has caused 33 million deaths — roughly 770,000 in 2019. Some 38 million people have HIV/AIDS worldwide.

There’s currently no cure or protective vaccine. While antiviral therapeutics can effectively control HIV, around 20% (7.6 million) of HIV-infected patients don’t have access to them.

Researchers are aiming to develop a protective vaccine against HIV. A major focus is developing broadly neutralising antibodies (antibodies that can attack different HIV strains) in HIV-infected patients.

Notably, researchers identifying and developing COVID-19 therapeutics have used significant expertise from HIV vaccine development.

For example, defining the structural details of SAR-CoV-2’s spike protein as a target for a COVID-19 vaccine, and identifying broadly neutralising antibodies from convalescent plasma as a potential treatment, are similar to strategies scientists working on HIV have used.

Read more: Could BCG, a 100-year-old vaccine for tuberculosis, protect against coronavirus?

Time and commitment

Beyond COVID-19 and the big three, there are many more conditions for which scientists are working to develop vaccines.

The current pandemic highlights the need for governments, NGOs and philanthropists to support this work — and scientific research more broadly.

Research on one type of disease can often accelerate the development of treatments for others. We’re seeing this in the quest for a COVID-19 vaccine.

Ultimately, COVID-19 has raised public awareness of the type of scientific challenges researchers encounter every day. There’s neither a silver bullet nor a shortcut in the development of a safe and effective vaccine.

– ref. COVID-19 isn’t the only infectious disease scientists are trying to find a vaccine for. Here are 3 others – https://theconversation.com/covid-19-isnt-the-only-infectious-disease-scientists-are-trying-to-find-a-vaccine-for-here-are-3-others-145271

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tom Bridge, Senior Curator – Corals, James Cook University

Look at this photo of two coral skeletons below. You’d be forgiven for thinking they’re the same species, or at least closely related, but looks can be deceiving. These two species diverged tens of millions of years ago, probably earlier than our human lineage split from baboons and macaques.

Scientists have traditionally used morphology (size, shape and colour) to identify species and infer their evolutionary history. But most species were first described in the 19th century, and based solely on features of the coral skeleton visible under a microscope.

Morphology remains important for species recognition. The problem is we don’t know whether a particular morphological feature reflects species ancestry, or evolved independently.

Our new study examined the traditional ideas of coral species and their evolutionary relationships using “phylogenomics” – comparing thousands of DNA sequences across coral species.

Our results revealed the diversity and distributions of corals are vastly different to what we previously thought. It shows we still don’t know many fundamental aspects about the corals on Great Barrier Reef.

Read more: We just spent two weeks surveying the Great Barrier Reef. What we saw was an utter tragedy

And after three mass bleaching events in five years, not having a handle on the basics could mean our attempts to intervene and help coral survive climate change may have unexpected consequences.

How do we know which species is which?

Despite being one of the best-studied marine ecosystems on Earth, there are fundamental knowledge gaps around the Great Barrier Reef, including:

1. how many coral species live there?
2. how do we identify them?
3. where are they found across the vast Great Barrier Reef ecosystem?

Finding the answers to these questions starts with accurate “taxonomy” – the science of naming and classifying living things.

Identifying species based on how similar they look may seem straightforward. As Darwin famously said, closely related species often share morphological features because they inherited them from a common ancestor.

Read more: ‘This situation brings me to despair’: two reef scientists share their climate grief

However, this can be misleading if two unrelated species independently acquire similar features. This process, called convergent evolution, often occurs when different species are faced with similar ecological challenges.

A classic example of convergent evolution is dolphins and the prehistoric ichthyosaurs. These animals are unrelated, but share many similarities since they both occupy a similar ecological niche.

At the other end of the spectrum, morphology can vary considerably within a single species. An alien taxonomist visiting Earth could be forgiven for describing the Chihuahua and the Irish Wolfhound as two distinct species.

Bringing coral taxonomy into the 21st century

We used molecular phylogenetics, a field of research that uses variations in DNA sequences to reconstruct genealogies. From corals to humans, molecular phylogenetics has revolutionised our understanding of the origins and evolution of life on Earth.

Molecular approaches have revolutionised our understanding of the diversity and evolution of corals, shedding light on deeper branches in the coral “tree of life”. But within hyper-diverse, ecologically-important coral groups, such as the staghorn corals from the genus Acropora, we are still in the dark.

Read more: If we can put a man on the Moon, we can save the Great Barrier Reef

Our new technique addresses this by comparing thousands of key regions across coral genomes (the entire genetic code of an organism) to help identify species in this ecologically important group for the first time. This method will also allow us to identify morphological features that do reflect shared ancestry and help us recognise species when diving in the reef.

About a quarter of all coral species on the Great Barrier Reef are staghorn corals, and they provide much of the three-dimensional structure fishes and many other coral reef animals rely on, just like trees in a forest.

Unfortunately, staghorn corals are also highly susceptible to threats such as thermal bleaching and crown-of-thorns seastar predation. The future of reefs will be heavily influenced by the fate of staghorn corals.

The risk of ‘silent extinctions’

While we don’t yet know how many coral species occur on the Great Barrier Reef or how widespread they are, many species appear to have far smaller ranges than we previously thought.

For example, we now know some of the corals on Lord Howe Island are endemic to only a few reefs in subtropical eastern Australia and occur nowhere else, not even on the Great Barrier Reef. They evolved in isolation and bleach at much lower temperatures than corals on tropical reefs.

This means Lord Howe Island’s corals are of far greater conservation concern than currently recognised, because one severe bleaching event could cause the extinction of these species.

Read more: Bleaching has struck the southernmost coral reef in the world

The risk of “silent extinctions”, where species go extinct without even being noticed, is one of the reasons behind the Australian Academy of Science’s Decadal Plan for Taxonomy, which has led to the ambitious goal to document all Australian species in the next 25 years.

Intervening now may have unexpected consequences

In April, the Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program concept feasibility study found 160 possible interventions to help save the Great Barrier Reef. Proposed interventions include moving corals from warm to cooler waters, introducing genetically-engineered heat-tolerant corals into wild populations, and the harvest and release of coral larvae.

What could go wrong? Well-intentioned interventions may inadvertently threaten coral communities, and could result in the introduction or movement of diseases within the Great Barrier Reef. Cane toads are a famous example, introduced in the 1930s to control an insect pest, but now wreaking havoc on Australian ecosystems.

Any intervention affecting the ecology of a system as complex as the Great Barrier Reef requires a precautionary approach to minimise the chance of unintended and potentially negative consequences.

What we need, at this time, is far greater investment in fundamental biodiversity research. Without this information, we are not in a position to judge whether particular actions will threaten the resilience of the reef, rather than enhance it.

– ref. The first step to conserving the Great Barrier Reef is understanding what lives there – https://theconversation.com/the-first-step-to-conserving-the-great-barrier-reef-is-understanding-what-lives-there-146097

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mehran Nejati, Senior Lecturer in Management, Edith Cowan University

We spend, on average, about 90,000 hours at work.

Given this, most of us want work that’s more than just a source of income. We want work that’s satisfying, significant, valuable. Work, in other words, that is meaningful.

What makes any particular job meaningful is, of course, subjective. In the mid-1970s, though, economist Greg Oldham and psychologist J. Richard Hackman identified five common factors: more skill variety, task identity (doing a job from beginning to end with a visible outcome), task significance, autonomy and feedback all help make a job more meaningful.

But there are also organisational characteristics that “lift all boats”, contributing to everyone’s sense of meaningful work. In our research, we have investigated the role of three key factors – environmental consciousness, social responsibility and inclusive leadership.

We found employees who rated their employer as environmentally conscious were 25% more likely to consider their work meaningful than those who didn’t.

Those who believed their organisation was committed to corporate social responsibility were 59% more likely to think their work was meaningful.

And those who considered their supervisors to be inclusive leaders were 70% more likely to find their work meaningful.

Why meaningful work matters

Meaningful work outranks compensation, perks and other factors in career importance across all age groups, according to a 2019 survey of more than 3,500 workers in the United States, Canada, Ireland and Britain.

That survey, commissioned by software company Workhuman, found meaningful work becomes more important to us as we age. Those with sense of meaning and purpose were about four times more likely to love their jobs.

Our research involved surveying 506 Australians working full-time across a broad range of occupations and position levels in service and manufacturing organisations.

About 70% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed their work was meaningful to them. About 20% were neutral. Slightly more than 10% disagreed.

To assess the contribution of organisational-level commitments to meaningful work, we asked our respondents to rate their workplaces’ level of environmental consciousness, social responsibility and inclusive leadership. We then examined how each employee rated the meaningfulness of their own job.

Environmental consciousness

Respondents rated their organisations based on criteria we gave them. To assess environmental consciousness, for example, we asked employees to consider three elements of “green human resource management” as evidence of that environmental commitment:

• providing training and information that enabled employees to understand the environmental impact of their activities and decisions. This would include educating employees on how to reduce waste, water use and carbon emissions

• including environmental impact of actions and decisions in employees’ performance assessment, with real opportunities for staff to contribute

• recognising and rewarding employees for their contribution to environmental goals. This might be done, for example, through awards.

Among those who rated their organisations highly on environmental consciousness, 79% said they found their work meaningful. This compared with 63% of those who considered their workplace to have low environmental consciousness.

Corporate social responsibility

We defined authentic corporate social responsibility for our respondents as not just policies but actions demonstrating a genuine interest in the welfare of all stakeholders affected by the organisation’s practices.

In contrast, symbolic corporate social responsibility would be done mainly as a marketing exercise.

Read more: Australian corporate social responsibility reports are little better than window dressing

Among those who rated their organisations’s commitment to corporate social responsibility highly, 79.7% said they found their work meaningful. This compared with just 50% of respondents who thought of their employer as not having genuine interest in social responsibility.

Those who felt their organisations were authentic about corporate social responsibility were 67% more likely to say they loved their job and more than twice (or 230%) as likely to say they felt proud to work for their employer.

Inclusive leadership

We defined inclusive leadership for respondents as a management style showing openness, accessibility and availability to others. Inclusive leaders value employees for their unique contributions and make them feel a sense of belonging to the organisation and team.

We asked employees to rate their direct supervisors or leaders using several criteria as evidence of an inclusive style, including:

• did they listen to employees’ requests?
• were they available for consultation on problems?
• were they open to hearing new ideas?
• were they open to discuss the desired goals and new ways to achieve them?
• did they encourage employees to access them on emerging issues?

Among those who rated their leaders as being inclusive, 76.6% found their job to be meaningful. For those with non-inclusive leaders, just 45.2% found their work meaningful.

Inclusive leadership was also associated with more innovative behaviour. Those working for inclusive bosses were 5.4 times more likely to say they generated original solutions to problems than those with non-inclusive bosses.

Read more: Three ways to build innovation into your organisation

Work can be exciting and meaningful, and not experienced as mere work. By showing authentic commitment to social and environmental responsibilities and having inclusive leaders, organisations can create a more meaningful work for employees, enabling them to thrive.

– ref. 3 keys to meaningful work: an employer who cares about the environment, society and you – https://theconversation.com/3-keys-to-meaningful-work-an-employer-who-cares-about-the-environment-society-and-you-132761

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bronwyn Eager, Lecturer Entrepreneurship, University of Tasmania

The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, now streaming in Australia on Binge, depicts Theranos founder and former CEO Elizabeth Holmes as a bewitching sociopath.

Holmes wanted to revolutionise health care by providing a simple and cheap way to perform blood tests using only a finger prick. In 2003, she founded Theranos, with a vision of the company’s machines in every home in America.

But, as the Wall Street Journal’s John Carreyrou revealed in 2015, Holmes created an intricate web of deception. Even as machines found their way into chemists and were being used by medical insurance companies, they never actually worked.

Holmes put patients’ lives at risk and cost investors millions of dollars.

The documentary is compelling viewing, but as it enters a very slim field of movies about female entrepreneurs it is worth questioning the impact of the stories we choose to tell.

Fall from grace

The journey Holmes took from young idol to spectacular failure is a story about systemic issues and the sometimes toxic culture of the world of start-ups.

Prior to the scandal breaking, Holmes was celebrated in the media. She was portrayed as a Stanford University dropout with a vision for changing the world. She raised hundreds of millions of dollars from powerful men in a start-up landscape known for its discriminating funding practices.

She made the cover of Forbes magazine in 2014 as the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire. Holmes represented a heady mix of tech, science and business. She was the golden girl of the start-up world.

This made her fall from grace even more spectacular.

But compare Holmes’ portrayal with another well known example of a deceitful male entrepreneur: Jordan Belfort, the “wolf of Wall Street”.

Belfort ran an elaborate crime scheme linked to manipulating the stock market and was jailed for 22 months for securities fraud. Nonetheless, his autobiography and Martin Scorsese’s 2013 film adaptation depict Belfort’s story as celebration of wealth and power, rather than a critical review of his fraudulent behaviour.

Where are all the good stories?

Feature films about female entrepreneurs are few and far between.

Research from one of the authors examined English-language films from 1986 to 2016 with female entrepreneurs as the central character. Over the 30-year period, only 11 films about women entrepreneurs were identified – fewer than the number of films about Apple co-founder Steve Jobs alone.

From Baby Boom (1987), where Diane Keaton’s character starts a baby food business, to Melissa McCarthy’s brownie empire in The Boss (2016), these films overwhelmingly depicted female entrepreneurs as running small-scale kitchen table businesses in female-dominated industries.

These movies told stories of cleaning, as in Joy (2015) and Sunshine Cleaning (2008); fashion, as in The Intern (2015); and not-for-profit work, as in the First Wives Club (1996).

Read more: Spoiler alert: old-man-power trumps a successful young woman in The Intern

Businesses depicted typically had low numbers of paid employees. The entrepreneurs were resource-poor, and most often it was a supporting male character who helped the female entrepreneur succeed.

Additionally, the study found a woman starting her own business is seemingly not enough to hold audience attention: all films included a parallel romantic storyline.

The female entrepreneur as role model

Celebrating successful female role models encourages women to dream big and succeed in male dominated arenas.

Role models provide a source of inspiration and contribute to self-belief. As the quantity of entrepreneurship related media increases, so does the amount of entrepreneurial activity.

However, negative portrayals of careers may prevent people from considering a profession.

The case of Holmes and Theranos is damaging for the betrayed customers and investors, but also for the field of entrepreneurship, which only in recent decades has seen its reputation overhauled.

Read more: Elizabeth Holmes: Theranos scandal has more to it than just toxic Silicon Valley culture

Entrepreneurship was once the domain of racketeers. Over time, it has evolved to be the domain of tech celebrities, socially conscious founders and a vehicle for upward social mobility – but still, too often, a domain of men.

One study investigated how female entrepreneurs are featured on the cover of Entrepreneur magazine. Women were vastly outnumbered by men on the cover, and were often portrayed in a stereotypical female fashion.

Words surrounding images of women tended to be about nurturing, health, beauty and fashion. Wording accompanying images of male entrepreneurs talked of power, innovation and risk taking.

Women were “glamified” in full make-up and focus given to their face, while men were more likely to be standing and set against a corporate colour palette.

Read more: COVID-19 may turn back the clock on women’s entrepreneurship

How we tell stories of female entrepreneurs matters.

In order to achieve equity in entrepreneurship, we need to acknowledge the role of the media in filling the entrepreneurship pipeline.

Positive depictions of innovative women act as a mirror, showing girls and women what they can achieve. We need more, and better, stories about female entrepreneurs so stories about female innovation aren’t limited to failure and fraud.

– ref. The Inventor tells a story of a fraudulent female billionaire. Where are the films starring successful women entrepreneurs? – https://theconversation.com/the-inventor-tells-a-story-of-a-fraudulent-female-billionaire-where-are-the-films-starring-successful-women-entrepreneurs-145922

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

The Morrison government has threatened to use Snowy Hydro to build a gas generator in the Hunter Valley if the electricity sector fails to fill the gap left by the scheduled closure of the Liddell power plant in 2023.

The threat comes as the government separately released its plan to place gas at the centre of Australia’s economic recovery, with a package of measures to “reset” the east coast market and “unlock” supply.

Scott Morrison and Energy Minister Angus Taylor said the electricity sector had to deliver 1,000 megawatts of new dispatchable energy to replace the Liddell power station before it closed.

“The Government will step up and back a new gas power plant in the Hunter Valley if the sector doesn’t replace Liddell’s capacity,” they said in an ultimatum to the sector.

“Snowy Hydro Limited is developing options to build a gas generator in the Hunter Valley at Kurri Kurri should the market not deliver what consumers need.”

The government had a long running battle with AGL over its determination to close Liddell, trying unsuccessfully to force it to abandon the decision.

Morrison and Taylor said the government’s Liddell taskforce had found closing the plant without adequate dispatchable replacement capacity could mean a 30% price rise over two years, or $20 per megawatt hour to $80 in 2024 and up to $105 per MWH by 2030.

Morrison said such rises were unacceptable – they would be a huge hit to families, businesses and job creating industries in NSW if the energy generated by Liddell wasn’t replaced.

“We won’t risk the affordability and reliability of the NSW energy system and will step in unless the industry steps up.

“To ensure we do not have a scenario without replacement, the government is giving the private sector until the end of April 2021 to reach final investment decisions on 1000 MW of dispatchable capacity, with a commitment for generation in time for summer 2023-24.”

In its announcement of its gas plan, the government says its proposed multiple initiatives will deliver affordable and reliable energy for households, business and industry, and shore up the energy grid’s reliability as renewables form an increasingly larger part of the energy market.

One part of the plan is the creation of an Australian Gas Hub at Wallumbilla in Queensland to bring users and suppliers closer together, delivering a transparent liquid gas trading system.

This is modelled on the Henry Hub located in Louisiana which is a distribution point on a natural gas pipeline system. It serves as the official delivery location for futures contracts.

The concept of a gas-led recovery is highly controversial. It has been strongly pushed by the chair of the government’s national COVID-19 commission Nev Power, and the government argues that gas is much lower in emissions than coal fired power.

But the promotion of gas is resisted by environmentalists, given it is a fossil fuel, and questioned by some in the investment community who doubt it will be possible to achieve gas prices low enough to make a major economic difference.

Announcing the “gas-fired recovery” plan Morrison, Taylor and Resources Minister Keith Pitt said: “The government wants the private sector to step-up and make timely investments in the gas market.”

But “if the private sector fails to act, the government will step in – as it has done for electricity transmission – to back these nation building projects. This may include through streamlining approvals, underwriting projects or the establishment of a special purpose vehicle with a capped government contribution”.

The government says the east coast market needs change because it is not delivering internationally competitive prices for Australian businesses and households.

International prices have fallen but this has not been reflected in lower long term contract offers for Australian customers. There are also fears of a supply shortfall in the medium term.

Under the measures, new gas supply targets will be set with states and territories and a potential “use it or lose it” requirement will be enforced on gas licences.

The government aims to unlock five new gas basins beginning with the Beetaloo Basin in the Northern Territory and the North Bowen and Galilee Basis in Queensland. This will cost $28.3 million for the plans.

To avoid supply shortfalls, there will be new agreements with the three east coast LNG exporters with strengthened commitments on price.

The government will also “explore options” for a prospective gas reservation scheme “to ensure Australian gas users get the energy they need at a reasonable price”.

To improve the gas transport network the government will identify priority pipelines and critical infrastructure for a National Gas Infrastructure Plan (NGIP) worth $10.9 million . This will also highlight where the government will step in if private investors do not.

The regulations on pipeline infrastructure will be reformed to increase competition and transparency; competition will be further promoted by kick starting work on a secondary pipeline capacity market.

The government will work with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to review the calculation of the LNG netback price which provides a guide on the export parity prices.

It will also use the NGIP to develop customer hubs to boost competition and transparency for customers.

HERE ARE THE GOVERNMENT’S DETAILED MEASURES.

It will get more gas into the market by:

• Setting new gas supply targets with states and territories and enforce potential “use-it or lose-it” requirements on gas licenses

• Unlocking five key gas basins starting with the Beetaloo Basin in the NT and the North Bowen and Galilee Basin in Queensland, at a cost of $28.3 million for the plans

• Avoiding any supply shortfall in the gas market with new agreements with the three east coast LNG exporters that will also strengthen price commitments

• Supporting CSIRO’s Gas Industry Social and Environmental Research Alliance with $13.7 million

• Exploring options for a prospective gas reservation scheme to ensure Australian gas users get the energy they need at a reasonable price.

It will boost the gas transport network by:

• Identifying priority pipelines and critical infrastructure as part of an inaugural National Gas Infrastructure Plan (NGIP) worth $10.9 million that will also highlight where the government will step in if the private sector doesn’t invest

• Reforming the regulations on pipeline infrastructure to promote competition and transparency

• Improving pipeline access and competition by kick-starting work on a dynamic secondary pipeline capacity market.

To better empower gas consumers, it will:

• Establish an Australian Gas Hub at our most strategically located and connected gas trading hub at Wallumbilla in Queensland to deliver an open, transparent and liquid gas trading system

• Level the negotiating playing field for gas producers and consumers through a voluntary industry-led code of conduct, to be delivered by February 2021

• Ensure Australians are paying the right price for their gas by working with the ACCC to review the calculation of the LNG netback price which provides a guide on the export parity prices

• Use the NGIP to develop customer hubs or a book-build program that will give gas customers a more transparent and competitive process for meeting their needs.

– ref. Morrison government threatens to use Snowy Hydro to build gas generator, as it outlines ‘gas-fired recovery’ plan – https://theconversation.com/morrison-government-threatens-to-use-snowy-hydro-to-build-gas-generator-as-it-outlines-gas-fired-recovery-plan-146154

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bruce Baer Arnold, Assistant Professor, School of Law, University of Canberra

National security is like sausage-making. We might enjoy the tasty product, but want to look away from the manufacturing.

Recent news that Chinese company Zhenhua Data is profiling more than 35,000 Australians isn’t a surprise to people with an interest in privacy, security and social networks. We need to think critically about this, knowing we can do something to prevent it from happening again.

Reports indicate Zhenhua provides services to the Chinese government. It may also provide services to businesses in China and overseas.

The company operates under Chinese law and doesn’t appear to have a presence in Australia. That means we can’t shut it down or penalise it for a breach of our law. Also, Beijing is unlikely to respond to expressions of outrage from Australia or condemnation by our government – especially amid recent sabre-rattling.

Read more: Journalists have become diplomatic pawns in China’s relations with the West, setting a worrying precedent

Zhenhua is reported to have data on more than 35,000 Australians – a list saturated by political leaders and prominent figures. Names, birthdays, addresses, marital status, photographs, political associations, relatives and social media account details are among the information extracted.

It seems Zhenhua has data on a wide range of Australians, including public figures such as Victorian supreme court judge Anthony Cavanough, Australia’s former ambassador to China Geoff Raby, former NSW premier and federal foreign affairs minister Bob Carr, tech billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes and singer Natalie Imbruglia.

It’s not clear how individuals are being targeted. The profiling might be systematic. It might instead be conducted on the basis of a specific industry, academic discipline, public prominence or perceived political influence.

It’s unlikely Zhenhua profiles random members of the public. That means there’s no reason for average citizens without a China connection to be worried.

Still, details around the intelligence gathering elude us, so best practise for the public is to maintain as much online privacy as possible, whenever possible.

Overall, we don’t know much about Zhenhua’s goals. And what we do know came from a leak to a US academic who sensibly fled China in 2018, fearing for his safety.

Pervasive surveillance is the norm

Pervasive surveillance is now a standard feature of all major governments, which often rely on surveillance-for-profit companies. Governments in the West buy services from big data analytic companies such as Palantir.

Australia’s government gathers information outside our borders, too. Take the bugging of the Timor-Leste government, a supposed friend rather than enemy.

How sophisticated is the plot?

Revelations about Zhenhua have referred to the use of artificial intelligence and the “mosaic” method of intelligence gathering. But this is probably less exciting than it sounds.

Reports indicate much of the data was extracted from online open sources. Access to much of this would have simply involved using algorithms to aggregate targets’ names, dates, qualifications and work history data found on publicly available sites.

The algorithms then help put the individual pieces of the “mosaic” together and fill in the holes on the basis of each individual’s relationship with others, such as their as peers, colleagues or partners.

Some of the data for the mosaic may come from hacking or be gathered directly by the profiler. According to the ABC, some data that landed in Zhenhua’s lap was taken from the dark web.

One seller might have spent years copying data from university networks. For example, last year the Australian National University acknowledged major personal data breaches had taken place, potentially extending back 19 years.

This year there was also the unauthorised (and avoidable) access by cybercriminals to NSW government data on 200,000 people.

While it may be confronting to know a foreign state is compiling information on Australian citizens, it should be comforting to learn sharing this information can be avoided – if you’re careful.

What’s going on in the black box?

One big question is what Zhenhua’s customers in China’s political and business spheres might do with the data they’ve compiled on Australian citizens. Frankly, we don’t know. National security is often a black box and we are unlikely ever to get verifiable details.

Apart from distaste at being profiled, we might say being watched is no big deal, especially given many of those on the list are already public figures. Simply having an AI-assisted “Who’s Who” of prominent Australians isn’t necessarily frightening.

However, it is of concern if the information collected is being used for disinformation, such as through any means intended to erode trust in political processes, or subvert elections.

For instance, a report published in June by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute detailed how Chinese-speaking people in Australia were being targeted by a “persistent, large-scale influence campaign linked to Chinese state actors”.

Deep fake videos are another form of subversion of increasing concern to governments and academics, particularly in the US.

Read more: Deepfake videos could destroy trust in society – here’s how to restore it

Can we fix this?

We can’t make Zhenhua and its competitors disappear. Governments think they are too useful.

Making everything visible to state surveillance is now the ambition of many law enforcement bodies and all intelligence agencies. It’s akin to Google and its competitors wanting to know (and sell) everything about us, without regard for privacy as a human right.

We can, however, build resilience.

One way is to require government agencies and businesses to safeguard their databases. That hasn’t been the case with the NSW government, Commonwealth governments, Facebook, dating services and major hospitals.

In Australia, we need to adopt recommendations by law reform inquiries and establish a national right to privacy. The associated privacy tort would incentivise data custodians and also encourage the public to avoid oversharing online.

In doing so, we might be better placed to condemn both China and other nations participating in unethical intelligence gathering, while properly acknowledging our own wrongdoings in Timor-Leste.

– ref. Keep calm, but don’t just carry on: how to deal with China’s mass surveillance of thousands of Australians – https://theconversation.com/keep-calm-but-dont-just-carry-on-how-to-deal-with-chinas-mass-surveillance-of-thousands-of-australians-146103

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Carbone, Honorary, School for Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne

Despite the incremental easing of Victoria’s restrictions, it’s clear the journey towards COVID-normal is far slower than many people had hoped.

Australians – particularly Victorians – have shown remarkable resilience, but many are suffering emotionally.

The mental health impacts of COVID-19

During the early days of the pandemic, surveys showed a sharp increase in symptoms of anxiety and depression across Australia. These difficulties continued into mid-August. More than 40% of Australians aged 18 years and older feel high levels of anxiety, and around one in six report depressive symptoms.

To target this, federal and state governments have increased telephone, online and face-to-face mental health supports. While this is vital, more needs to be done to prevent people suffering severe mental health problems in the first place.

Prevention is better than cure

There’s good evidence we can prevent many cases of depression, anxiety and substance abuse. But Australia doesn’t have a mental health prevention plan or policy, and government funding for prevention is just 1% of the total mental health budget.

Read more: Women are drinking more during the pandemic, and it’s probably got a lot to do with their mental health

The Fifth National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Plan, the government’s key mental health blueprint, focuses on improving mental health-care services and suicide prevention, but not on preventing the mental health conditions that are a major risk factor for suicide.

What about illness prevention?

Last month the federal government released a consultation paper on its proposed National Preventive Health Strategy, setting out what the strategy will aim to achieve and how it might be done.

Read more: The government will spend $48 million to safeguard mental health. Extending JobKeeper would safeguard it even more

The document’s exciting because it focuses on health promotion and illness prevention, acknowledging we can’t improve the health of the Australian community through health-care measures alone.

But unfortunately, the proposed strategy’s fundamentally focused on physical health issues. In its 20 pages, the consultation paper only mentions mental health three times.

The same principles outlined in the strategy to prevent conditions such as diabetes also apply to preventing mental health conditions such as depression. To prevent either, we need to minimise risk factors and increase protective factors linked to the condition, before it occurs. But some adaptation would be needed for the plan to address both physical and mental health.

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

What prevention measures should be added?

A focus on physical activity, healthy eating, and non-smoking will help to promote good mental health as well as physical health.

To prevent mental health issues we should focus on building people’s health literacy and self-care skills through public information campaigns and online learning programs. Supportive social environments can be encouraged by parenting programs, and school and workplace mental health promotion initiatives.

Local communities could also be mobilised to take positive action on local issues that contribute to poor health and mental health through place-based strategies. Place-based strategies aim to tackle issues existing at a neighbourhood level, such as social isolation and poor housing.

Read more: Melbourne’s second lockdown will take a toll on mental health. We need to look out for the vulnerable

Services could be reoriented towards prevention. Primary care professionals might provide advice on self-care and use social prescribing to address stress and enhance social supports. Social prescribing involves medical professionals linking patients to non-medical supports. For example, they may provide an “exercise prescription” or “art prescription”.

Finally, appropriate public policy solutions, such as JobSeeker and JobKeeper, that tackle the social and economic determinants of ill-health are needed.

Social factors matter too

Research also points to a strong link between mental health conditions and experience of childhood adversity, family violence, loneliness, racism, homophobia and transphobia. Workplace stressors, financial stress, unemployment and homelessness are also risk factors.

Many of these issues are on the increase because of COVID-19, so to safeguard mental health we need to tackle them and their impact. This will require the use of evidence-based preventive programs outlined above – many of which already exist but are not being implemented well or to sufficient scale. It will also require public policies to soften the economic blow and ease financial stress.

Targeting these issues will not only help to prevent mental health conditions, but physical health conditions as well.

Read more: Feeling hopeless? There are things you can do to create and maintain hope in a post-coronavirus world

While better access to mental health-care services is important, it can’t solve all the mental health challenges posed by COVID-19. We also need to strengthen the factors that buffer people against stress, and tackle the underlying factors that contribute to poor mental health.

Whether we create a National Preventive Mental Health Plan, or embed mental health in the current National Preventive Health Strategy, one thing’s for sure: continuing to ignore the prevention of mental health conditions is not an option in a COVID-19 world.

– ref. We can’t ignore mental illness prevention in a COVID-19 world – https://theconversation.com/we-cant-ignore-mental-illness-prevention-in-a-covid-19-world-145686

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Phillip Baker, Research Fellow, Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition, Deakin University, Deakin University

Humans (and our ancestors) have been processing food for at least 1.8 million years. Roasting, drying, grinding and other techniques made food more nutritious, durable and tasty. This helped our ancestors to colonise diverse habitats, and then develop settlements and civilisations.

Many traditional foods used in cooking today are processed in some way, such as grains, cheeses, dried fish and fermented vegetables. Processing itself is not the problem.

Only much more recently has a different type of food processing emerged: one that is more extensive, and uses new chemical and physical techniques. This is called ultra-processing, and the resulting products ultra-processed foods.

To make these foods, cheap ingredients such as starches, vegetable oils and sugars, are combined with cosmetic additives like colours, flavours and emulsifiers. Think sugary drinks, confectionery, mass-produced breads, snack foods, sweetened dairy products and frozen desserts.

Unfortunately, these foods are terrible for our health. And we’re eating more of them than ever before, partially because of aggressive marketing and lobbying by “Big Food”.

Ultra-processed foods are harming our health

So concludes our recent literature review. We found that more ultra-processed foods in the diet associates with higher risks of obesity, heart disease and stroke, type-2 diabetes, cancer, frailty, depression and death.

These harms can be caused by the foods’ poor nutritional profile, as many are high in added sugars, salt and trans-fats. Also, if you tend to eat more ultra-processed foods, it means you probably eat fewer fresh and less-processed foods.

Industrial processing itself can also be harmful. For example, certain food additives can disrupt our gut bacteria and trigger inflammation, while plasticisers in packaging can interfere with our hormonal system.

Certain features of ultra-processed foods also promote over-consumption. Product flavours, aromas and mouthfeel are designed to make these foods ultra-tasty, and perhaps even addictive.

Ultra-processed foods also harm the environment. For example, food packaging generates much of the plastic waste that enters marine ecosystems.

And yet, we’re eating more and more of them

In our latest study, published in August, we found ultra-processed food sales are booming nearly everywhere in the world.

Sales are highest in rich countries like Australia, the United States and Canada. They are rising rapidly in middle-income countries like China, South Africa and Brazil, which are highly populated. The scale of dietary change and harms to health are therefore likely immense.

‘Big Food’ is driving consumption

We also asked: what explains the global rise in ultra-processed food sales? Growing incomes, more people living in cities, and working families seeking convenience are a few factors that contribute.

However, it’s also clear “Big Food” corporations are driving ultra-processed food consumption globally — think Coca-Cola, Nestlé and McDonald’s. Sales growth is lower in countries where such corporations have a limited presence.

Globalisation has allowed these corporations to make huge investments in their overseas operations. The Coca-Cola System, for example, now includes 900 bottling plants worldwide, distributing 2 billion servings every day.

As Big Food globalises, their advertising and promotion becomes widespread. New digital technologies, such as gaming, are used to target children. By collecting large amounts of personal data online, companies can even target their advertising at us as individuals.

Supermarkets are now spreading throughout the developing world, provisioning ultra-processed foods at scale, and at low prices. Where supermarkets don’t exist, other distribution strategies are used. For example, Nestlé uses its “door-to-door” salesforce to reach thousands of poor households in Brazil’s urban slums.

Rising consumption also reflects Big Food’s political power to undermine public health policies. This includes lobbying policymakers, making political donations, funding favourable research, and partnerships with community organisations.

Read more: Sweet power: the politics of sugar, sugary drinks and poor nutrition in Australia

Here’s how things can change

The evidence that ultra-processed foods are harming our health and the planet is clear. We must now consider using a variety of strategies to decrease consumption. This includes adopting new laws and regulations, for example by using taxation, marketing restrictions and removing these products from schools.

We cannot rely on industry-preferred responses such as product reformulation alone. After all, reformulated ultra-processed foods are usually still ultra-processed.

Further, simply telling individuals to “be more responsible” is unlikely to work, when Big Food spends billions every year marketing unhealthy products to undermine that responsibility.

Should dietary guidelines now strongly advise people to avoid ultra-processed foods? Brazil and other Latin American countries are already doing this.

And for us as individuals the advice is simple — avoid ultra-processed foods altogether.

– ref. The rise of ultra-processed foods and why they’re really bad for our health – https://theconversation.com/the-rise-of-ultra-processed-foods-and-why-theyre-really-bad-for-our-health-140537