Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Martin Loosemore, Professor of Construction Management, University of Technology Sydney

Many countries around the world, including Australia, are looking to the construction industry to help rebuild economies. Industry bodies such as the Master Builders Association are strongly urging governments to bring forward spending on already approved infrastructure projects. They also want these projects to be unbundled into smaller contract packages so small local businesses and the whole sector get a piece of the pie.

We should not ignore the risks involved in the rush to get the economy going again. We will pay for mistakes made now in the form of debt created by cost blowouts and unscrupulous developers. We will have to live with poor-quality, ill-conceived and environmentally damaging developments for decades.

Of course, construction and infrastructure programs provide us with a powerful stimulus tool. It’s why federal and state governments are looking to this sector to drive recovery. The social impact of investing in more construction and infrastructure could certainly be significant.

Read more: Why the focus of stimulus plans has to be construction that puts social housing first

Construction is one of the country’s largest employers. The sector employs about 1.2 million people directly, and indirectly much more. It’s one of the largest employers of apprentices, youth and disadvantaged groups such as Indigenous people and refugees.

Investment in construction flows through the broader economy. The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates every A$1 million spent on construction output generates A$2.9 million in output across the economy as a whole. Every job created in construction leads to another three in the wider economy.

Knowing this, state and local governments are relaxing hard-won controls to fast-track projects. Planning ministers are being given more power to override many of the statutory timeframes that govern normal planning and approval processes.

Fast-track approach creates risks

This approach creates many risks as well as many opportunities. If we do not control these risks in our rush to stimulate the economy, we are likely to regret this in future.

While the construction industry includes some world-class firms, the government-commissioned Productivity Commission inquiry into infrastructure raised many concerns about the lack of transparency and trust in development and infrastructure approval processes. It noted infrastructure project overruns were common. The extra costs amount to billions of dollars.

We are already battling a crisis of confidence in the residential apartments sector. Poor-quality buildings have devastated people’s lives. In New South Wales, the state government has appointed a building commissioner to clean up the mess.

Read more: New NSW building law could be a game changer for apartment safety

Unscrupulously exploiting a crisis

Relaxing controls also opens the door to unscrupulous developers to exploit the crisis for their own personal gain. Transparency International’s recent submission to a Senate inquiry argues that powerful groups have too often prevailed over public interest. It warns:

Businesses in highly regulated industries, such as transport, mining, energy and property construction, all actively seek to influence politicians, although the channels of influence vary by industry.

In some countries we are already seeing developers exploiting the COVID-19 crisis to argue for relaxation and even removal of regulations put in place to ensure projects contribute positively to the communities in which they are built. A former senior adviser to US President Donald Trump has argued that his administration should trigger an emergency override of America’s environmental protection laws and establish “Australian-style permitting”.

If fast-tracked projects are undertaken without appropriate controls purely to boost the economy rather than meet a real community need, then we will be paying for this crisis for far longer than we expect.

Read more: Sidelining planners makes for poorer urban policy, and future generations will pay the price

Focus must be on community benefit

As Elizabeth Mossop warned in her recent Conversation article, our governments are committing taxpayers to further debt to stimulate recovery from the economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. Infrastructure spending is great for economic stimulus, but it still has to be the right kind of infrastructure that meets local community needs.

Mossop argues for small-scale stimulus projects focused on local small businesses, rather than multinationals, to deliver broad, long-term community value. Investing stimulus funding in local businesses means the money recycles in the community, reduces inequality and helps meet real community needs.

Of course we need to move quickly to rebuild our economy. But we must also place the community at the heart of any decisions about which projects we push through the system.

Read more: The PM wants to fast-track mega-projects for pandemic recovery. Here’s why that’s a bad idea

We could learn much from the principles of urban acupuncture, which would advocate a community-based approach to stimulus. It would also warn against awarding contracts to major multinationals. These corporations suck money out of needy communities into the pockets of shareholders with no links to the communities we need to help.

Research shows procuring from local businesses provides a 77-100% economic advantage and an 80-100% increase in jobs compared to procuring from multinationals.

If stimulus programs follow traditional approaches to infrastructure procurement in Australia, then we will miss an unprecedented opportunity to tackle growing inequity. Even before this crisis, many younger and poorer members of our society were already being left behind.

– ref. We may live to regret open-slather construction stimulus – https://theconversation.com/we-may-live-to-regret-open-slather-construction-stimulus-139967

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lee Baumgartner, Professor of Fisheries and River Management, Institute for Land, Water, and Society, Charles Sturt University

The New South Wales government plans to release two million native fish into rivers of the Murray-Darling Basin, in the largest breeding program of its kind in the state. But as the river system recovers from a string of mass fish deaths, caution is needed.

Having suitable breeding fish does not always guarantee millions of healthy offspring for restocking. And even if millions of young fish are released into the wild, increased fish populations in the long term are not assured.

For stocking to be successful, fish must be released into good quality water, with suitable habitat and lots of food. But these conditions have been quite rare in Murray Darling rivers over the past three years.

We research the impact of human activity on fish and aquatic systems and have studied many Australian fish restocking programs. So let’s take a closer look at the NSW government’s plans.

Success stories

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the NSW restocking program involves releasing juvenile Murray cod, golden perch and silver perch into the Darling River downstream of Brewarrina, in northwestern NSW.

Other areas including the Lachlan, Murrumbidgee, Macquarie and Murray Rivers will reportedly also be restocked. These species and regions were among the hardest hit by recent fish kills.

Fish restocking is used worldwide to boost species after events such as fish kills, help threatened species recover, and increase populations of recreational fishing species.

Since the 1970s in the Murray-Darling river system, millions of fish have been bred in government and private hatcheries in spring each year. Young fish, called fingerlings, are usually released in the following summer and autumn.

Read more: Australia, it’s time to talk about our water emergency

There have been success stories. For example, the endangered trout cod was restocked into the Ovens and Murrumbidgee Rivers between 1997 and 2006. Prior to the restocking program, the species was locally extinct. It’s now re-established in the Murrumbidgee River and no longer requires stocking to maintain the population.

In response to fish kills in 2010, the Edward-Wakool river system was restocked to help fish recover when natural spawning was expected to be low. And the threatened Murray hardyhead is now increasing in numbers thanks to a successful stocking program in the Lower Darling.

After recent fish kills in the Murray Darling, breeding fish known as “broodstock” were rescued from the river and taken to government and private hatcheries. Eventually, it was expected the rescued fish and their offspring would restock the rivers.

Words of caution

Fish hatchery managers rarely count their fish before they hatch. It’s quite a challenge to ensure adult fish develop viable eggs that are then fertilised at high rates.

Once hatched, larvae must be transported to ponds containing the right amount of plankton for food. The larvae must then avoid predatory birds, be kept free from disease, and grow at the right temperatures.

Read more: Last summer’s fish carnage sparked public outrage. Here’s what has happened since

When it comes to releasing the fish into the wild, careful decisions must be made about how many fish to release, where and when. Factors such as water temperature, pH and dissolved oxygen levels must be carefully assessed.

Introducing hatchery-reared fish into the wild does not always deliver dramatic improvements in fish numbers. Poor water quality, lack of food and slow adaptation to the wild can reduce survival rates.

In some parts of the Murray-Darling, restocking is likely to have slowed the decline in native fish numbers, although it has not stopped it altogether.

Address the root cause

Fish stocking decisions are sometimes motivated by economic reasons, such as boosting species sought by anglers who pay licence fees and support tourist industries. But stocking programs must also consider the underlying reasons for declining fish populations.

Aside from poor water quality, fish in the Murray Darling are threatened by being sucked into irrigation systems, cold water pollution from dams, dams and weirs blocking migration paths and invasive fish species. These factors must be addressed alongside restocking.

Fish should not be released into areas with unsuitable habitat or water quality. The Darling River fish kills were caused by low oxygen levels, associated with drought and water extraction. These conditions could rapidly return if we have another hot, dry summer.

Stocking rivers with young fish is only one step. They must then grow to adults and successfully breed. So the restocking program must consider the entire fish life cycle, and be coupled with good river management.

The Murray Darling Basin Authority’s Native Fish Recovery Strategy includes management actions such as improving fish passage, delivering environmental flows, improving habitat, controlling invasive species and fish harvest restrictions. Funding the strategy’s implementation is a key next step.

Looking ahead

After recent rains, parts of the Murray Darling river system are now flowing for the first time in years. But some locals say the flows are only a trickle and more rain is urgently needed.

Higher than average rainfall is predicted between July and September. This will be needed for restocked fish to thrive. If the rain does not arrive, and other measures are not taken to improve the system’s health, then the restocking plans may be futile.

Read more: We wrote the report for the minister on fish deaths in the lower Darling – here’s why it could happen again

– ref. Don’t count your fish before they hatch: experts react to plans to release 2 million fish into the Murray Darling – https://theconversation.com/dont-count-your-fish-before-they-hatch-experts-react-to-plans-to-release-2-million-fish-into-the-murray-darling-140428

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hannah Forsyth, Senior Lecturer in History, Australian Catholic University

I’m reading Thomas Carlyle’s poetic classic, The French Revolution, published in 1837. It occurred to me that the historical narrative of Australian universities and their relationship to government is like that revolution, but in reverse.

Carlyle summarised the goal of the French Revolution with the refrain “victorious analysis”. This was the foundation of Australia’s modern, rational system of government, achieved with universities. It was a triumph that turned out to be deeply flawed, as we will see.

Reversing the revolutionary process, in recent years universities have descended into the kind of aristocratic excess Carlyle described in pre-revolutionary France. This leaves a large scholarly workforce facing (this is Carlyle again) “an indubitable scarcity of bread”.

It is an admittedly dubious historical parallel, but it helps us understand something of the relationship of higher education to Australian politics, and the mess we now face.

Read more: Why is the Australian government letting universities suffer?

The foundation of the Australian university

In the mid-19th century, when Australians decided they wanted to govern themselves, political leaders knew they needed a university. Politician and university founder W.C. Wentworth went so far as to argue that self-government in New South Wales – the kind of modern, rational government increasingly in vogue since the French Revolution – would be “useless” without higher education.

Australia had no aristocracy to overthrow and the founders of our first governments sought a basis for rule that did not rest on inherited position. University graduates, Wentworth believed, were needed to “enlighten the mind, to refine the understanding, to elevate the soul of our fellow men”. They were also needed to train men – and, shortly, women – to fill “the high offices of state”.

In Carlyle’s more flowery language (citing Plato’s Republic):

Kings can become philosophers; or else philosophers Kings. Let but Society be once rightly constituted, by victorious Analysis.

This merit-based elite – which some of Wentworth’s contemporaries ridiculed as a “bunyip aristocracy” – constituted the emerging professional class. Their work as medical practitioners, lawyers, clergy, teachers, charity workers, engineers and politicians was to guide this “rightly constituted” society.

Such modern, rational governments relied on the kinds of knowledge that a university pursued. “Victorious analysis” guided Australian governments through rabbit plagues and conquered parasites and diseases that threatened food supply and human health.

But it also steered the conquest of Aboriginal lands with knowledge of geology, geography, anthropology and agriculture. And it equipped generations of teachers and clergy with the wealth that was Western history, literature and philosophy – embedded in a racialised, moral superiority.

It was not perfect. Indeed, in many ways this “victorious analysis” was downright harmful.

The kind of knowledge the university produced helped build the nation, but it did so by also developing and reinforcing ideas that expropriated Indigenous land and oppressed people of colour. It built and encouraged ideas that determined a human’s worth on the basis of race, gender and sexuality. Universities and the governments they supported structured a so-called “rational” world that extracted value from some people and concentrated it among themselves.

Exposing the flaw in ‘victorious analysis’

By the second world war, some of these problems were becoming evident worldwide. In that war, the same “victorious analysis” combined with political regimes that sought to use “rational” knowledge to commit atrocities, even genocide, and demolish cities full of civilians.

It was at work when Nazi doctor Josef Mengele compared the effects of cruel experiments on twins at Auschwitz. Through those unspeakable experiments on 1,500 sets of twins, only 200 survived.

The dangers of aligning scholarly knowledge with political regimes was further exposed when, in the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin dismissed, imprisoned or executed thousands of biologists. The reality that their knowledge may have helped prevent a tragic famine was not more important to Stalin than that their understanding of genetics contradicted government doctrine.

Democratic regimes were not immune. “Victorious analysis” led to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When news of those horrors filtered through, Western democracies saw the problem engendered by the relationship between modern, rational government and scholarly research.

Protecting the independence of scholarship

This did not mean governments sought to dismantle or undermine universities. On the contrary, Australian governments, like most others, invested in them further. However, care was taken, in Australia as elsewhere, to increasingly protect universities from political interference.

At this moment, Nobel-prize-winning author Herman Hesse had his character Joseph Knecht express the significance of scholarly independence in his novel The Glass Bead Game, published in 1943. Describing an age where rulers “determined the sum of two and two” and scholars capitulated (and lost their self-respect), protested (and died) or learned the art of silence (merely going hungry), Hesse’s character concluded that scholarship and politics must not mix:

The scholar who knowingly speaks, writes or teaches falsehood, who knowingly supports lies and deceptions, not only violates organic principles. He also, no matter how things may seem at the given moment, does his people a grave disservice. He corrupts its air and soil, its food and drink; he poisons its thinking and its laws, and he gives comfort and aid to all the hostile, evil forces that threaten the nation with annihilation. The Castalian [scholar], therefore, should not become a politician.

These sentiments were not confined to fiction. As the Commonwealth government sought to support the expansion of higher education – a tricky task, since education was and is the responsibility of Australia’s states – they were conscious of the contradictions required of them.

The 1957 Murray Report, arguably the founding document for the modern university in Australia, pointed to exactly this.

Here is one of the most valuable services which a university, as an independent community of scholars and inquirers, can perform for its country and for the world. The public, and even statesmen, are human enough to be restive or angry from time to time, when perhaps at inconvenient moments the scientist or scholar uses the licence which the academic freedom of universities allows him, and brings us all back to a consideration of the true evidence and what it may be taken to prove …

… No nation in its senses wishes to make itself prone to self-delusion, or to deceit by other nations; and a good university is the best guarantee that mankind can have that somebody, whatever the circumstances, will continue to seek the truth and to make it known. Any free country welcomes this and expects this service of its universities.

On the basis of this report, Prime Minister Robert Menzies instigated what is likely the most generous funding Australian universities have ever seen.

He was building on work that Labor did during the war, establishing the Universities Commission and implementing a funding scheme that helped universities build new infrastructure.

The clashes produced by the dual need for scholarly independence and democratic accountability emerged early. “What I am asking,” argued the vice-chancellor at Sydney University in 1943, “is that you give us the money and be done with it.”

The government bureaucrat replied:

It is a large sum of money and when the Government says ‘We gave this subsidy, did the universities find it all right?’, we must be able to say something more than just ‘Trust the Universities’.

Solutions and compromises were negotiated, though the original problems of “victorious analysis” remained.

Contesting the moral foundation of the university

By the 1970s, students and academics began to point out that this rational, supposedly objective system of knowledge veiled ideologies. This was not avoidable, they argued, and so the solution was to seek knowledge systems that were inclusive and decolonising, rather than those that supported established systems of inequality.

Under Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s policy of free public education, the university sector expanded, seeking innovative and inclusive methods of learning and teaching.

In retrospect, this disruption in the universities marked a shift in the moral focus of the professional class. Where university graduates were originally central to the colonial project and capitalist expansion, they now turned their moral efforts towards moderating both.

This put them at odds with the political and managerial classes with whom the professional class, in the mid-20th century, had managed the entire world, through institutions like the World Health Organisation.

Rise of the managerial elite

But now the professional class split from the managerial class. Using radical student critiques of old moral codes as a springboard, in the 1980s the managerial class sought freedom from traditional moral constraints, which they believed also constrained capitalist growth.

This was more than a culture war: it was conflict over the moral foundation – and thus the control – of the economy. It was a kind of class struggle between a changing professional class and a newly separate, managerial class.

New values infused government and university leadership alike, forging what became known as neoliberalism. By the mid-1980s, “victorious analysis” was no longer the basis of government. Yet, ironically, government and economy alike relied on universities more than ever. Innovation was often key to profitability, and the changing global economy required ever more white-collar workers: university graduates.

In 1987, Labor Education and Training Minister John Dawkins led a review of higher education that sought to shift the entire university and college sector from “victorious analysis” to economic asset. Rather than considering the university as a moral institution, it would now be an economic one. An international student “export” market was a key component of 1980s reforms. So too, was massive expansion in the enrolment of Australian students.

But that professional class – which included academics, journalists and teachers, in influential roles – could clearly not be trusted to prioritise capitalist expansion over moral reform.

Read more: COVID-19: what Australian universities can do to recover from the loss of international student fees

Transformations in higher education, then, wrested institutions from academic control. Over the following two decades, management of universities became a professional pathway almost entirely distinct from the pursuit of scholarship.

We must not romanticise universities run by academics under the old conditions of “victorious analysis”. As we have seen, this did a great deal of harm. But the fact that the system needed to change need not imply a managerialist solution.

Steered by government policy, an expensive managerialist epidemic infected the universities. Every year, millions of dollars in salaries alone propped up a this new “aristocracy”, a managerial elite.

Leaders assured us this was the best way to manage these growing and complex institutions. But, instead, managers encouraged one another to game the government’s funding system to achieve their KPIs (and earn spectacular bonuses). The cost has been a failure to invest in good universities that are sustainable in the long term.

Failure to build a good university sector

Looking at the state of the university sector now, we surely cannot consider the managerial salary bill to be money well spent. The present crisis was exacerbated by COVID-19 but was not unexpected.

University leaders were repeatedly warned of financial risks, of threats to the university’s legitimacy (and thus community and political support). They have also been reminded continually of their moral responsibility as public institutions. And yet, like Carlyle’s King Louis XV, they have pilfered resources that were “sufficient not to conquer Flanders, but the patience of the world”.

Like that French aristocracy, the university sector in Australia has been teetering on the edge of ruin for decades. In some ways it is astonishing it has taken so long to tip over. Carlyle, on pre-revolutionary France, noted that:

[…] it is singular how long the rotten will hold together, provided you do not handle it roughly.

Australian universities have long teetered – or, worse, arrogantly swaggered – on a precarious foundation. Their precarity goes beyond their over-reliance on international student fees and management’s tiresome reprises of what Geoff Sharrock calls “yesterday’s logic”.

All of this – the education of young people, the medical research we’ve all been sitting at home waiting to be done, our entire stock of knowledge of history, mathematics, robotics, climate science – sits atop a 93,000-strong workforce of casual academics on starvation wages. It is these academics who will probably be out of work within the month.

They will likely be followed by thousands of their better-paid, but still overworked, teaching and researching colleagues, then thousands of the indispensable workers who throughout the pandemic have kept the technology running, the exams timetabled, library resources accessible, the payroll delivered, and who have cared for troubled or confused students.

A good university sector would look at 100,000 very clever, highly qualified and extremely hard-working scholars and see a valuable resource.

A good government would work with them.

The job of building a good university out of the system we have inherited from history is a more revolutionary task. It is one we all need to share.

– ref. Universities and government need to rethink their relationship with each other before it’s too late – https://theconversation.com/universities-and-government-need-to-rethink-their-relationship-with-each-other-before-its-too-late-139963

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luke Grzeskowiak, The Hospital Research Foundation Mid-Career Research Fellow – Robinson Research Institute & South Australian Health & Medical Research Institute, University of Adelaide

It’s well known smoking cigarettes during pregnancy can increase the risk of harm to the baby and is best avoided.

But in our research, published today in the Medical Journal of Australia, we show using cannabis during pregnancy is also associated with poorer outcomes for babies.

Read more: Pregnant in a pandemic? If you’re stressed, there’s help

Are pregnant women using cannabis?

While we don’t have data on how common cannabis use is during pregnancy, results from the 2016 Australian National Drug Strategy Household Survey showed 10-20% of women of reproductive age had used cannabis during the preceding 12 months.

Recent literature from overseas shows the number of women who become pregnant while using cannabis increased by as much as double from 2002 to 2017.

This is likely driven in large part by the legalisation of cannabis in many parts of the world. In turn, increasing social and medical acceptance of its use has led to an overall perception cannabis is a safe drug.

In places where cannabis is legal, cannabis dispensaries sometimes promote it for the treatment of nausea and vomiting in pregnancy. But there are no studies evaluating whether it’s effective in this context, let alone whether it’s safe.

A recent study found one in three pregnant women didn’t think cannabis could harm their baby.

But our research adds to a growing number of animal and human studies suggesting the opposite.

Our study

We analysed data from 5,610 women who were in their first pregnancy and at low risk for pregnancy complications.

At 14–16 weeks of pregnancy, we grouped women by self-reported cannabis use.

Of the women in our study, 314 (5.6%) reported using cannabis in the three months before pregnancy or during their pregnancy. Of these women, 97 (31%) stopped using it before pregnancy and 157 (50%) stopped during the first 15 weeks of pregnancy, while 60 (19%) were still using cannabis at 15 weeks.

Compared to babies of mothers who didn’t use cannabis before or during pregnancy, infants of those who still used it at 15 weeks had a smaller birth weight, head circumference and length. They were also born at an earlier gestational age.

This is cause for concern as these outcomes are strongly linked to future child health and development.

Read more: Legal highs: arguments for and against legalising cannabis in Australia

We saw bigger differences in these neonatal outcomes for women who used cannabis more than once a week than for those who used it less often.

We also found severe complications following birth, such as breathing problems and the need for admission to a specialist neonatal unit, were twice as likely for babies of mothers who continued to use cannabis at 15 weeks compared to babies of mothers who didn’t report using cannabis.

We’ve seen similar trends in recent studies from the United States and Canada.

Notably, we didn’t see differences in any neonatal outcomes among women who reported stopping cannabis in early pregnancy or just before becoming pregnant compared to babies of mothers who reported no cannabis use.

How cannabis might be harmful is not clear

The link between using cannabis during pregnancy and poorer neonatal outcomes could be related to the toxic compounds, such as carbon monoxide, produced when cannabis is smoked. This is similar to what we see with cigarette smoking and leads to a lower amount of oxygen reaching the baby.

Or it could be a direct effect of the compounds found in cannabis which we know can cross the placenta and reach the baby.

These active compounds, THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) and CBD (cannabidiol), influence a range of bodily functions, including in the brain. This is why people typically use recreational cannabis in the first place.

So when these compounds can reach the developing baby this raises a number of concerns about what they might do to growth and brain development.

Read more: Remind me again, how does cannabis affect the brain?

Observational research isn’t perfect

Previous studies looking at the link between cannabis use and pregnancy outcomes have attracted criticism for not properly accounting for confounding factors. These are factors often associated with cannabis use which could also increase the risk of poor pregnancy outcomes, like cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, use of other illicit substances, or mental health issues.

While we accounted for each of these factors in our study, our research still has limitations. Cannabis use was based on self-report, and the number of women who continued to use cannabis during pregnancy was relatively small. We were also not able to account for quantity and strength of cannabis used.

Nonetheless, our research adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting cannabis use during pregnancy could be harmful.

Although we didn’t look at these outcomes in our study, other research has shown cannabis use could increase the risk of preterm birth and stillbirth.

If you’re planning a pregnancy

Given the growing body of evidence suggesting potential harms, it’s safest to avoid using cannabis during pregnancy, and even when planning a pregnancy.

Medical and regulatory bodies within Australia and across the world echo this advice.

Our data suggest that cutting back or stopping cannabis use early in a pregnancy could prevent some of the harms. This could provide reassurance for women who use cannabis before they know they’re pregnant.

Women who use cannabis and are planning a pregnancy should discuss the issue with their health-care professional.

– ref. Using cannabis during pregnancy could be bad news for your baby: new research – https://theconversation.com/using-cannabis-during-pregnancy-could-be-bad-news-for-your-baby-new-research-140443

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Murdoch, Dean and Head of Campus, University of Otago

COVID-19 is being referred to as a “once in a century event” – but the next pandemic is likely to hit sooner than you think.

In the next few decades, we will likely see other pandemics. We can predict that with reasonable confidence because of the recent increased frequency of major epidemics (such as SARS and Ebola), and because of social and environmental changes driven by humans that may have contributed to COVID-19’s emergence.

A COVID-19-type pandemic had long been predicted, but scientists’ warnings weren’t heeded. Right now, while we have the full attention of politicians and other key decision-makers, we need to start rethinking our approaches to future preparedness internationally and within our own nations. That includes countries like New Zealand, where – despite getting its active COVID-19 cases down to zero in June 2020 – big challenges remain.

Read more: New Zealand hits zero active coronavirus cases. Here are 5 measures to keep it that way

We can’t say we weren’t warned

Less than five years ago, I was one of about 100 global experts invited to a World Health Organization (WHO) meeting in Geneva, prompted by the then ongoing Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

Then, as now, WHO was criticised for its response to the outbreak. The December 2015 meeting was meant to improve international collaboration and preparation for future epidemics and other infectious disease risks.

The very last presentation was from Dr David Nabarro, then the United Nations Special Envoy on Ebola (and now a Special Envoy on COVID-19).

In the wake of the Ebola outbreak, politicians were more focused on public health than ever before. Nabarro urged us to show greater leadership and capture that interest, before political and public attention moved on. He stressed the importance of trust, respect, transparent communication, and working with nature.

Yet five years later, we’re still talking about inadequate funding for pandemic preparedness; delays in adopting preventive measures; failure to develop surge capacity in health systems, laboratories and supply chain logistics; and reduced infectious disease expertise.

Read more: The World Health Organization must answer these hard questions in its coronavirus inquiry

But there are signs that some lessons may have been learned. For example, countries most affected by SARS (such as Taiwan and Singapore) have tended to respond more quickly and decisively to COVID-19 than other countries.

Primed and ready, vaccine developers have progressed at enormous pace, with several COVID-19 vaccine candidates already undergoing clinical trials. The volume and pace of sharing scientific information about COVID-19 has been unprecedented.

We’ve also seen a number of rapid reports urging us to learn from this pandemic and past epidemics to protect us from future events – especially by taking an holistic “One Health” approach. This brings together expertise across human health, animal health and the environment.

For instance, last month the Lancet One Health Commission called for more transdisciplinary collaboration to solve complex health challenges. Similarly, the World Wide Fund for Nature’s March 2020 report on The Loss of Nature and Rise of Pandemics highlighted the likely animal origin of COVID-19, and how intimately connected the health of humans is to animal and environmental health.

Read more: Caring for community to beat coronavirus echoes Indigenous ideas of a good life

What New Zealand can learn from COVID-19

As well as working more effectively together internationally, each country will need its own strategy. So what should we be doing to protect New Zealand from future infectious diseases threats?

Our health system has, for the most part, responded well to COVID-19. Our research institutions and universities have engaged quickly and effectively to provide scientific support for the public health response.

Yet we can and must still do better. Our expertise and systems are not always well joined up – vital for coordinated and timely responses to challenges like COVID-19.

We allow scientists to work in silos, despite obvious overlapping interests and skill sets. Of particular importance for tackling infectious diseases is the need to break down artificial barriers between human, animal and environmental health.

This approach makes particular sense in New Zealand. We are an island nation vulnerable to introduced infectious diseases, and economically dependent on agriculture and the physical environment. But we’re also home to an existing indigenous Māori worldview and knowledge system that emphasises interconnectivity between humans, animals and the environment.

University-led efforts, such as One Health Aotearoa, have brought together professionals and researchers from different disciplines. But more investment is needed to get even better value from such collaborations.

We need to strengthen capability in such areas as epidemiology, modelling and outbreak management, and build pandemic plans that are flexible enough to respond to all eventualities. New Zealand has a Centre of Research Excellence in plant biosecurity – but not in animal biosecurity or infectious diseases.

We also need to better integrate science and research into the health system, a key feature of the New Zealand Health Research Strategy 2017-2027. This requires a culture change so research is regarded as business as usual for district health boards, providing the science needed to inform policy, preparedness and best practice.

Read more: As collective memory fades, so will our ability to prepare for the next pandemic

Crucially, we need a new generation of scientists and professionals who are systems thinkers and comfortable working with multiple disciplines and across the human-animal-environment interface.

And we need the kind of leadership Nabarro called for: science-informed and forward-looking, rather than reactive.

We have seen good leadership based on science in the highest levels of New Zealand’s government in response to COVID-19.

We now need to see this at all levels of health, research and politics to get us out of this pandemic in the best shape possible – and be better prepared for our next pandemic.

– ref. The next once-a-century pandemic is coming sooner than you think – but COVID-19 can help us get ready – https://theconversation.com/the-next-once-a-century-pandemic-is-coming-sooner-than-you-think-but-covid-19-can-help-us-get-ready-139976

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lee Baumgartner, Professor of Fisheries and River Management, Institute for Land, Water, and Society, Charles Sturt University

The New South Wales government plans to release two million native fish into rivers of the Murray-Darling Basin, in the largest breeding program of its kind in the state. But as the river system recovers from a string of mass fish deaths, caution is needed.

Having suitable breeding fish does not always guarantee millions of healthy offspring for restocking. And even if millions of young fish are released into the wild, increased fish populations in the long term are not assured.

For stocking to be successful, fish must be released into good quality water, with suitable habitat and lots of food. But these conditions have been quite rare in Murray Darling rivers over the past three years.

We research the impact of human activity on fish and aquatic systems and have studied many Australian fish restocking programs. So let’s take a closer look at the NSW government’s plans.

Success stories

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the NSW restocking program involves releasing juvenile Murray cod, golden perch and silver perch into the Darling River downstream of Brewarrina, in northwestern NSW.

Other areas including the Lachlan, Murrumbidgee, Macquarie and Murray Rivers will reportedly also be restocked. These species and regions were among the hardest hit by recent fish kills.

Fish restocking is used worldwide to boost species after events such as fish kills, help threatened species recover, and increase populations of recreational fishing species.

Since the 1970s in the Murray-Darling river system, millions of fish have been bred in government and private hatcheries in spring each year. Young fish, called fingerlings, are usually released in the following summer and autumn.

Read more: Australia, it’s time to talk about our water emergency

There have been success stories. For example, the endangered trout cod was restocked into the Ovens and Murrumbidgee Rivers between 1997 and 2006. Prior to the restocking program, the species was locally extinct. It’s now re-established in the Murrumbidgee River and no longer requires stocking to maintain the population.

In response to fish kills in 2010, the Edward-Wakool river system was restocked to help fish recover when natural spawning was expected to be low. And the threatened Murray hardyhead is now increasing in numbers thanks to a successful stocking program in the Lower Darling.

After recent fish kills in the Murray Darling, breeding fish known as “broodstock” were rescued from the river and taken to government and private hatcheries. Eventually, it was expected the rescued fish and their offspring would restock the rivers.

Words of caution

Fish hatchery managers rarely count their fish before they hatch. It’s quite a challenge to ensure adult fish develop viable eggs that are then fertilised at high rates.

Once hatched, larvae must be transported to ponds containing the right amount of plankton for food. The larvae must then avoid predatory birds, be kept free from disease, and grow at the right temperatures.

Read more: Last summer’s fish carnage sparked public outrage. Here’s what has happened since

When it comes to releasing the fish into the wild, careful decisions must be made about how many fish to release, where and when. Factors such as water temperature, pH and dissolved oxygen levels must be carefully assessed.

Introducing hatchery-reared fish into the wild does not always deliver dramatic improvements in fish numbers. Poor water quality, lack of food and slow adaptation to the wild can reduce survival rates.

In some parts of the Murray-Darling, restocking is likely to have slowed the decline in native fish numbers, although it has not stopped it altogether.

Address the root cause

Fish stocking decisions are sometimes motivated by economic reasons, such as boosting species sought by anglers who pay licence fees and support tourist industries. But stocking programs must also consider the underlying reasons for declining fish populations.

Aside from poor water quality, fish in the Murray Darling are threatened by being sucked into irrigation systems, cold water pollution from dams, dams and weirs blocking migration paths and invasive fish species. These factors must be addressed alongside restocking.

Fish should not be released into areas with unsuitable habitat or water quality. The Darling River fish kills were caused by low oxygen levels, associated with drought and water extraction. These conditions could rapidly return if we have another hot, dry summer.

Stocking rivers with young fish is only one step. They must then grow to adults and successfully breed. So the restocking program must consider the entire fish life cycle, and be coupled with good river management.

The Murray Darling Basin Authority’s Native Fish Recovery Strategy includes management actions such as improving fish passage, delivering environmental flows, improving habitat, controlling invasive species and fish harvest restrictions. Funding the strategy’s implementation is a key next step.

Looking ahead

After recent rains, parts of the Murray Darling river system are now flowing for the first time in years. But some locals say the flows are only a trickle and more rain is urgently needed.

Higher than average rainfall is predicted between July and September. This will be needed for restocked fish to thrive. If the rain does not arrive, and other measures are not taken to improve the system’s health, then the restocking plans may be futile.

Read more: We wrote the report for the minister on fish deaths in the lower Darling – here’s why it could happen again

– ref. Don’t count your fish before they hatch: experts react to plans to release two million fish into the Murray Darling – https://theconversation.com/dont-count-your-fish-before-they-hatch-experts-react-to-plans-to-release-two-million-fish-into-the-murray-darling-140428

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julie Sonnemann, Fellow, Grattan Institute

Despite massive efforts by teachers and schools during the remote learning period, many students are likely to have learnt less than they would have in the classroom. Most of these students will recover without too much trouble, but disadvantaged students will need extra help.

Our new report, COVID-19 catch-up: helping disadvantaged students close the equity gap, shows the achievement gap between disadvantaged and advantaged students widens at triple the rate in remote schooling compared to regular class.

Even if remote learning worked well, disadvantaged students are likely to have learnt at about 50% of their usual rate. This means they would have lost about one month of learning over two months of remote schooling.

The Morrison government has already committed an unprecedented A$134 billion to stimulate the economy, with more stimulus spending to come. Some should go to helping disadvantaged students catch up over the next six months.

How we made our estimates

We estimate around one in four students will need help to catch up on their learning. This is especially so for students who were already far behind, for whom the extra challenges of remote schooling are likely to have compounded existing inequalities.

This includes students from low socio-economic families, Indigenous backgrounds and remote communities, as well as students experiencing poor mental health.

Our estimates of how far behind disadvantaged students may have fallen during the remote period are only a rough indication. But they are based on a significant review of various studies on learning disruption, led by the UK Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) in May.

Read more: Schools are moving online, but not all children start out digitally equal

The EEF searched literature across a variety of scenarios that cause school disruptions including hurricanes, bushfires, summer holidays and teacher strikes. While summer holidays are different to remote schooling, they are relevant because they isolate the influence of the home on a student’s performance.

The findings from these studies show during the US summer vacation, a gap of up to three months in learning opens up between disadvantaged students and their peers. Disadvantaged students return to school being much further behind their peers than when holidays began.

Why disadvantaged students lose out

There are many reasons disadvantaged students are hit hardest by remote schooling, as the chart below shows. They tend to get less help with school work from their parents. They are less likely to have a computer, good internet service, and a desk or quiet place to study.

Disadvantaged students, on average, are also likely to be behind in their learning, making it harder to work independently.

The existing achievement gap is more than ten times greater than the gap that will have developed during the COVID-19 disruptions, as shown the chart below.

The recession will only make things harder, because disadvantaged students are more likely to have to deal with the emotional and financial stresses of a parent losing income or a job.

Read more: Number of Australia’s vulnerable children is set to double as COVID-19 takes its toll

What the government can do: put stimulus funding toward disadvantaged students

Governments are now spending big to stimulate the economy. The World Bank believes COVID-19 has sparked the worst global recession since at least the second world war.

COVID-19 and the economic downturn offers a big opportunity for a national investment in education. We recommend a recovery package of A$1.2 billion targeted at vulnerable students for the next six months. This will help one million students, around one in four, recover the learning lost during COVID.

The money should be spent on two high-priority initiatives.

First, $1 billion should go towards helping large numbers of struggling students access small-group tutoring. Tutoring would be delivered in groups of about three students, either in or outside classes, three or four times a week over a 12-week period.

Evidence shows small group tuition can boost student learning by five months over one or two terms of schooling.

Young university graduates and student teachers should be hired as tutors where possible – given young people will be hit harder by the recession than older Australians and are likely to spend the extra income quickly.

Read more: Kids shouldn’t have to repeat a year of school because of coronavirus. There are much better options

Second, we recommend investing $70 million in successful literacy and numeracy programs which can improve student learning by three or more months. For example teaching reading using synthetic phonics, as well as reading comprehension strategies and oral language interventions.

These are a priority for the early years, so students have the foundations for future learning.

We also suggest extra support for students to improve both well-being and learning. There is less evidence on what works in this area, but we suggest small trials in promising areas, such as extra training for teachers in mental health literacy and supporting students’ social skills, as well as extra resources for targeted behaviour supports.

To ensure the students who most need help are accurately identified in the first place, we recommend the national assessment body – the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority – create a A$20 million package of suitable in-class assessment tools. The right support depends on pinpointing student needs.

While costing a little over $1 billion, our suggested reform package would deliver about $3.5 billion in extra future earnings for disadvantaged students, given better results at school leads to better employment and income prospects in later life.

This reform package offers an important opportunity to trial and evaluate what works, to inform longer-term efforts to close the bigger existing equity gap.

– ref. Disadvantaged students may have lost 1 month of learning during COVID-19 shutdown. But the government can fix it – https://theconversation.com/disadvantaged-students-may-have-lost-1-month-of-learning-during-covid-19-shutdown-but-the-government-can-fix-it-140540

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Caroline Osborne, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Office of Community Engagement, University of the Sunshine Coast

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought into sharp focus the need for connection to our local community and the health challenges of the retirement village model.

We know that, as we age, most people prefer to stay in their own homes and communities instead of moving to retirement villages. Some have gone so far as to say retirement villages have had their day. However, the reality is not quite that simple.

Read more: Retire the retirement village – the wall and what’s behind it is so 2020

The challenge is that seniors are not well informed on what they could demand of the market. Planning schemes could also do more to create incentives for the changes we need now.

The challenges are complex and urgent as the global population grows and ages. Yet our housing supply reveals a bad case of the tail wagging the dog. Finely tuned financial models and development processes are driving the housing products available in the market.

What’s needed instead is adaptable housing and neighbourhoods to help people as they move through life’s stages.

Are the days of the retirement village numbered?

Many individuals and families struggle to find the right “fit” between the supported living options of retirement villages, independent living lifestyle villages and staying in the (often unsuitable) family home as their needs change.

Such villages offer viable products in the market as an important part of the housing mix. The models have some advantages in that they:

• are thoroughly costed and provide a good return for developers

• offer a range of living options to suit most budgets and level of care needs

• promise security, activities and a sense of community.

Seniors are best placed to say what they need

However, our research with seniors in south-east Queensland revealed a desire to “age in neighbourhood” and to have neighbourhoods with a mix of ages and building forms.

Planning schemes could drive this now by giving priority to, and providing incentives for, sustainable and accessible housing close to transport and other services.

We worked with more than 42 seniors in south-east Queensland to design a series of housing types. These were based on what they told us were important to them in a home and a neighbourhood.

The table below summarises the key features that they told us make a neighbourhood and a home a good place to live as they age.

The resulting principles and housing types paint a vivid picture of what older people in a subtropical environment find appealing and supportive as they age.

Many participants preferred an accessible home on one level. Ideally, it should have two bedrooms and a study. This means it can easily be adapted to changing needs.

An essential component for our participants was to take advantage of the mild climate by having both private and shared outdoor spaces. Here they could socialise, relax and enjoy pleasant outlooks from the home. Cutting planning requirements for car parks by 50% could add more shared outdoor space and cut housing and living costs for residents.

Homes should be sustainably designed. This means they capture natural light and prevailing breezes for through ventilation, take into account privacy and noise considerations in higher-density areas, and have solar and rainwater harvesting systems to save resources and money.

Also important was a neighbourhood with a variety of green, clean and safe public open spaces. This includes flat, well-maintained and shaded walkways for exercise and easy access to shops, facilities and public transport.

We then showed how all these housing types could be incorporated into one Brisbane suburb, as the image below illustrates. This would mean seniors could remain in their neighbourhood in more suitable housing, reducing the stress of moving to unfamiliar surroundings.

How to make it happen

As with all complex challenges, everyone has a role to play in achieving these goals. However, local government planning reforms can act as a catalyst for the market to change and innovate.

Planning schemes could, for example, reduce application fees for developments that include accessible or universal design within 400-800 metres of key services, facilities and transport.

Carpark allocation could also be uncoupled from housing in locations close to transport and services. This would reduce the cost of housing and encourage greater used of active (cycling, walking, etc) and public transport.

This research clearly signals to local and state government, developers and small-scale property investors how houses, duplexes and mid-rise apartments could be put together in an age-friendly suburb. This transition to mixed-density infill development would support what we call “ageing in neighbourhood”.

Further, this research suggests planning “priority zones” could give the market the incentive to invest in the future-focused neighbourhood development it should be providing to keep people connected to their community.

Phil Smith, Associate Director of Deicke Richards, co-authored this article.

– ref. ‘Ageing in neighbourhood’: what seniors want instead of retirement villages and how to achieve it – https://theconversation.com/ageing-in-neighbourhood-what-seniors-want-instead-of-retirement-villages-and-how-to-achieve-it-138729

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gary Mortimer, Professor of Marketing and Consumer Behaviour, Queensland University of Technology

Retailers have tried many overt tactics to limit theft, such as signs that display images of CCTV cameras, threats to prosecute offenders, bag checks, checkout weighing plates and electronic security gates.

These tactics are extremely costly and have failed to stamp out retail theft.

Now supermarkets are trying a different tactic, that’s part overt surveillance but also encourages “self-reflection” on any impulse to exploit loopholes in the bagging and payment systems.

In late May Australian supermarket giant Woolworths confirmed it is trialling self-service checkout terminals with built-in cameras. They display your image as you scan your items. Rival Coles started trying the technology in April 2019.

The idea is that watching yourself scan your own groceries will reduce the temptation to steal. It is supported by research that shows the effectiveness of cues that cause us to self-focus and self-regulate.

Retail theft continues to grow

Since 1990, when the Australian Insitute of Criminology published extensive research on retail crime and its prevention, it has been widely accepted crime-related losses account for about 1% of all retail revenue. Estimates of customer theft were woolier.

In August 2019 the Australia and New Zealand Retail Crime Survey came up with a specific number. It reported total crime-related retail losses amounted to 0.92% of revenue. Customer crime was 58% of that – or 0.53% of total revenue.

Though funded by retail technology company Checkpoint Systems, the survey sample is robust – almost a quarter of the retail industry in Australia and New Zealand. Also, the lead researcher, Emmeline Taylor, is a criminologist in the Department of Sociology at City, University of London respected for her expertise in retail crime.

Costs of loss prevention

Writing about her research in 2018, Taylor tells the story of a major Australian supermarket discovering it was selling more carrots than it had in stock.

Unfortunately this wasn’t a sudden switch to healthy eating or a desire to increase vitamin C intake, it was an early sign of a new type of shoplifter. Otherwise honest shoppers were using the self-service checkout to transact more expensive items – typically avocados – and put them through as carrots.

She termed these self-service checkout thieves “SWIPERS” – seemingly well- intentioned patrons engaging in routine shoplifting. As the Australia and New Zealand Retail Crime Survey states:

Their behaviour and motivations (that are often interlinked) fall into four main groups: the accidental thieves, the switchers of labels, those compensating themselves, and those that steal because they claim to have become frustrated with the process of self-checkout (e.g. triggering alerts or purchasing age-restricted items that require assistance from an employee).

Read more: The economics of self-service checkouts

Prevention techniques

The traditional approach to loss prevention involves attendants and security guards, specialised display fixtures, reinforced packaging, training, in-store signage, display alarms and more cameras.

More of these can prove counter-productive, as highlighted by the Australian Institute of Criminology’s analysis of local crime prevention strategies in 2014. It found, for example, that introducing surveillance systems or security guards made shop staff less likely to approach suspicious shoppers.

Getting away with it

The research by Taylor and others into the motivators of shoplifting points to the potential of another way to reinforce honest behaviour.

While some forms of stealing might be considered irrational – such as kleptomania – shoplifters often rationalise their thefts.

Read more: How shoplifters justify theft at supermarket self-service checkouts

How much they steal comes down to their own “deviance threshold” – the point at which they can no longer justify their behaviour alongside a self-perception as a good person. This helps explains the greater frequency of shoplifting lower value items. It’s easier to justify a small “discount” on your bill.

If it’s just a small theft, also, the chances of getting caught are smaller. If caught, the chance of getting away – passing it off as an honest mistake, perhaps – is higher. This semi-conscious calculation is known as the “denial of punishment probability”.

You are being watched

An obvious strategy for retailers is to make shoppers more aware they are being watched.

Research has demonstrated “eyes” images do this more effectively than images of security cameras or written reminders such as “you are being observed”. This is due to eyes triggering instincts connected to our evolutionary capacity for gaze detection – sensitivity to being watched.

Read more: Super-recognisers accurately pick out a face in a crowd – but can this skill be taught?

But eyes signs also have their limitations.

Newcastle University researchers Max Ernest-Jonesa, Daniel Nettleb and Melissa Bateson did an experiment in a campus cafeteria and found that posters featuring eye images resulted in less litter being left on tables than images of flowers, but less so when the café was busier.

The more people around the more we relax. Those “eyes” can’t be watching everyone.

Think of yourself

An more effective tactic might be appealing to another honed evolutionary instinct: a “think of yourself” focus.

University of East Anglia researcher Rose Melaeady and colleagues demonstrated this with experiments using signs to encourage drivers to turn off their engines at a busy rail crossing with a two-minute average wait.

After an experiment just using an “watching eyes” image (with no discernible effect) they tried two signs.

One with set of human eyes and the words: “When barriers are down, switch off your engine”

The other with just the words: “Think of yourself: When barriers are down, switch off your engine.”

With no sign, 20% of drivers switched off their engines. With the watching eyes sign, 30% switched off. With the “think of yourself” sign, 51% did so.

Self-surveillance

So the supermarkets’ self-surveillance strategy combines two tactics. First, a “traditional” external motivation to do the right thing – amplifying the spotlight effect with an overt reminder we are being watched. Second, it is also intended to evoke self-reflection and self-regulation.

These steps will likely add to concerns about personal privacy, though Woolworths and Coles say no recordings are being made.

Read more: From fare evasion to illegal downloads: the cost of defiance

Even if they were, though, the embrace of cashless transactions – with just 27% of all payments now made with cash – suggests most customers aren’t overtly concerned about how much others know about their shopping habits.

– ref. Watch yourself: the self-surveillance strategy to keep supermarket shoppers honest – https://theconversation.com/watch-yourself-the-self-surveillance-strategy-to-keep-supermarket-shoppers-honest-139977

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben McCann, Associate Professor of French Studies, University of Adelaide

November 1959. Film director Alfred Hitchcock is at his commercial and critical peak after the successes of Vertigo (1958) and North by Northwest (1959). So what does he do next? A black-and-white made-for-TV movie hastily shot, with no big-name actors and a leading actress who takes a shower, and … well, we’ll come to that.

Psycho (1960) remains Hitchcock’s most celebrated film. But it is really two films, glued together by the most iconic scene in cinema history.

Part one is a run-of-the-mill morality tale. Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) steals $40,000 from her Phoenix employee, and goes on the run. Guilt-stricken, she pulls into a deserted motel and chats with the owner, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins).

He seems friendly enough – he makes her sandwiches and talks fondly about his mother – and Marion resolves to return the money.

Part two is a whodunnit. Marion’s sister (Vera Miles) and her lover (John Gavin) investigate her disappearance, and trace her steps back to the motel. Soon, they begin to have suspicions about Norman.

Thriller with a twist

A few years earlier, Hitchcock had watched Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1955 psychological masterpiece Les Diaboliques and sought out a similar project – a horrific thriller with a twist ending. He read Robert Bloch’s novel Psycho – itself inspired by the real-life Wisconsin killer Ed Gein – and optioned the film rights.

Audiences saw things in Psycho that had never been shown before on screen. A toilet flushing. A murderer who goes unpunished. A post-coital Leigh, lying on a bed, dressed only in white underwear, while Gavin stands topless over her.

All of Hitchcock’s trademark obsessions are on show: voyeurism, the dominant matriarchal figure, the blonde heroine, the untrustworthy cop.

Over his career, Hitchcock had always flouted Hollywood’s Production Code, those rigid rules that had been in place since the 1930s that prohibited onscreen nudity, sex and violence. Nowhere is Hitchcock’s brazen censor-defying clearer than in Psycho’s “shower scene”.

Marion steps into the shower, a shadowy figure rips back the curtain, and cinema’s most visceral scene unspools, brutally, before our very eyes.

Hitchcock, the master of suspense, never actually shows knife slicing flesh. Everything is implied, through liberal doses of chocolate sauce, hacked watermelons, Bernard Herrmann’s screeching violins, and Leigh’s blood-curdling screams.

In one 60-second scene, Hitchcock shatters all the rules. It’s the most famous of all bait and switches: you expect one thing, but get another. Up to that point, no film had killed off its lead character so early in the story (nowadays, such an audacious twist shows up everywhere, from The Lion King to Games of Thrones). As Leigh slides down the blinding white tiles, arm outstretched, a new kind of cinema is born: twisted, shocking, primal.

Inventing the cinema event

Hitchcock famously ordered cinemas to not let any latecomers into screenings of Psycho, to keep the element of surprise.

Previously, cinema-goers could wander into a film midway through, watch the last half, and then stick around for the restart to catch up on what they had missed. When your leading lady is butchered 45 minutes in, the film makes little sense if you arrive late – hence Hitchcock’s decree.

While the reviews at the time of its cinema release were lukewarm, cinema as an “event”, as a communal experience shared by hundreds of people in the dark, began. There were queues around the blocks in cities across America as word of mouth grew. Grossing US$32 million (equivalent to A$468 million today) off a budget of US$800,000 (A$12 million today), Psycho made Hitchcock a very wealthy man.

Other elements contributed to Psycho’s enduring influence. Saul Bass’s opening credits, all intersecting lines and sans-serif titles, anticipate the film’s fixation with duality and overlap.

Budget constraints meant that Bernard Herrmann could only rely on his orchestra’s string section. Even people who have never seen the film instantly recognise his score.

And Anthony Perkins, typecast forever after as the nervous mother’s boy with a dark secret, crafts a performance that is both sweetly disarming and deeply unsettling.

Psycho sequels

Its reputation has only grown since 1960. Critics and audiences remain transfixed by Psycho’s storytelling verve and its queasy tonal shifts (murder mystery to black comedy to horror).

Douglas Gordon’s 1993 art installation 24 Psycho slowed the film down to last a full day.

Academics have had a field day too, from Raymond Durgnat’s lengthy micro-analysis to Slavoj Žižek’s reading of Bates’s house as an illustration of Freud’s concept of the id, ego and superego.

Three progressively sillier sequels were made, as well as a colour shot-for-shot remake by Gus van Sant in 1998. Brian De Palma’s entire back catalogue pays homage to Hitchcock, with whole sections of Sisters (1972) to Dressed to Kill (1980) reworking Psycho’s delirious excesses.

Psycho’s box office success undoubtedly contributed to Hollywood’s abiding fascination with true-crime stories, serial killers, and slasher films.

More recently, the TV prequel series Bates Motel ran for four seasons, deepening Norman’s relationship with his mother and tracking his developing mental illness.

That series provides a set up for the events at the Bates Motel. Sixty years on, the setting for Psycho continues to exert such a pulsating thrill, even as we watch from behind the sofa.

– ref. Psycho turns 60 – Hitchcock’s famous fright film broke all the rules – https://theconversation.com/psycho-turns-60-hitchcocks-famous-fright-film-broke-all-the-rules-140175

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

Scott Morrison will announce a further $1.5 billion for an immediate start on small infrastructure projects in the government’s latest initiative to spur economic activity.

Of this, $1 billion will be provided to priority “shovel-ready” projects, with $500 million targeted specifically to road safety works.

The projects are nominated by the states and territories.

Addressing a Committee for Economic Development of Australia function on Monday Morrison will say this means the government will have brought forward or provided extra funding worth $9.3 billion in infrastructure investment in the past eight months.

“As we come out of the COVID crisis, infrastructure can give us the edge that many countries don’t have,” he will say.

Anthony Albanese, also speaking to CEDA, will stress the need for “productivity renewal”.

“Our post-coronavirus actions must confront the weaknesses in our pre-coronavirus world,” he will say. “And here, productivity stands out”.

A Labor government would have a productivity renewal project to “lift business investment, lift investment in people and lift investment in critical infrastructure.

“Our goal will be to drive growth through productivity and to drive fairness through growth.”

Meanwhile a poll by the Australian National University has found the most popular COVID-specific measure to help fix Australia’s economic problems would be to spend more on trying to find a vaccine and treatment.

The poll, done in May of more than 3200 people, asked about four Covid-related policies: increasing spending on the search for a vaccine and treatment, opening up pubs, clubs and cafes, extending JobKeeper and JobSeeker payments beyond the current six months, and opening Australia’s borders to tourists and international students. (On Friday the national cabinet agreed to work “to return international students on a small, phased scale through a series of controlled pilots”.)

Asked how much they thought the various measures would help fix Australia’s economic problems, greater spending to pursue a vaccine received 75.6% support, followed by easing restrictions on pubs and the like (71.7%).

Some 57.6% said extending JobKeeper and JobSeeker would help, and nearly half believed unlocking the border would assist.

More money to find a vaccine had strongest support among older people, while extending the payments had the greatest backing among young people. Coalition voters were least likely to back extending JobKeeper and JobSeeker.

Asked about several economic policies that would help to fix Australia’s problems, 82.1% agreed more spending on domestic programs like healthcare, education and housing would do so, 76.7% nominated infrastructure, 59.1% said cutting taxes, and 55.9% backed putting more money into the hands of poor people.

The study concluded that “the strongest predictor of support for these policies … was anxiety and worry regarding COVID-19. Those who were anxious and worried were far less likely to support liberalisation measures (on borders and hospitality) but far more likely to support spending measures (on vaccines and the labour market).

This highlighted a tension. “To maintain support for some of the physical distancing measures required to maintain low rates of infection, there needs to be some concern regarding COVID-19 and fear of infection if the virus once again gets out of hand.

“However, in order to implement some policies that will help support economic growth into the future, this concern and perceived risk may need to be reduced”.

– ref. Morrison commits another $1.5 billion for infrastructure – https://theconversation.com/morrison-commits-another-1-5-billion-for-infrastructure-140717

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Langley, Senior Research Fellow, Griffith University

Archaeological excavations deep within the rainforests of Sri Lanka have unearthed the earliest evidence for hunting with bows and arrows outside Africa.

At Fa-Hien Lena, a cave in the heart of Sri Lanka’s wet zone forests, we discovered numerous tools made of stone, bone, and tooth – including a number of small arrow points carved from bone which are about 48,000 years old.

When was the bow and arrow invented?

The invention of the bow and arrow allowed people to hunt prey at a much greater distance. People no longer had to get within “a stone’s throw” of prey which could suddenly bolt and escape. This innovation greatly increased the chances of a successful hunt.

Bows and arrows also made it much safer to hunt dangerous prey. If you don’t have to get too close, you’re less likely to be trampled or mauled by a hurt and angry animal.

The origin of the bow and arrow is one of the great mysteries of human technological innovation. How did it come about? When? Where? And why?

Read more: What a bone arrowhead from South Africa reveals about ancient human cognition

Currently, the oldest evidence for the use of the bow and arrow are small stone points found in Sibudu cave in South Africa, which are some 64,000 years old.

Outside Africa, the oldest finds were previously pieces of bows found in Germany dating back no more than 18,000 years.

Because bows and arrows are mainly made from highly perishable stuff like wood, sinew, and fibres, they don’t leave a lot of evidence behind for archaeologists to find. So the small bone points recovered from Fa-Hien Lena are an important discovery.

The bone points show evidence for having been fixed to a small shaft and shot at high speed into prey – which were apparently mostly small monkeys and giant squirrels, judging by the butchered bones thrown away at the site after meals.

Complex tools, complex minds

The discovery of such ancient bone arrow points is startling in itself. However, we also found other tools which give equally rare insights into the lives of the earliest members of our species currently documented in Sri Lanka.

Particularly interesting are well-preserved knives, scrapers, and awls made from the bones and teeth of monkeys and deer, which were used to work skins or plant materials.

These tools are our only way to learn about the other, more fragile items that may originally have been at the site, because anything made from leather or plant fibre (such as clothing, bags, baskets, mats, or nets) stood no chance of surviving 48,000 years in the humid tropical environment.

One of these artefacts is an unusual implement with carefully spaced notches down each side. It appears to be a shuttle for creating nets of woven fibres. No doubt nets would have been incredibly useful for catching the tree-dwelling prey the people of Fa-Hien Lena hunted, as well as bringing the fish up from the rivers.

These rainforest pioneers also left behind evidence about their social lives in the form of white shell beads and small blocks of mineral pigments in bright colours: red, yellow, and silver.

Each of the pigment nodules show signs they were used to create paints for the body, and three of the bright red nodules were drilled to be strung as beads – something we have not found anywhere else in the world.

The white shell beads, on the other hand, are similar to those found in Africa and Eurasia, but were collected or traded from the coast some 20–30 kilometres away. Apparently, small, shiny, white shell beads never get old.

With these finds, it is becoming more and more clear that we have only just begun to scratch the surface when it comes to understanding the earliest modern human communities.

– ref. 48,000-year-old arrowheads reveal early human innovation in the Sri Lankan rainforest – https://theconversation.com/48-000-year-old-arrowheads-reveal-early-human-innovation-in-the-sri-lankan-rainforest-139989

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

It mightn’t sound much, but it had big consequences. Fifty years ago this week, the Senate voted to set up a system of committees to scrutinise government legislation, activity and spending.

As it has evolved, this network has given teeth to a parliament that in many other ways has declined, even atrophied over the decades.

Question time in the House of Representatives has become a charade (at least, thanks to COVID-19, MPs are now behaving somewhat better during it).

It rarely extracts information. Occasionally – but less often than in earlier years – an opposition can apply the heat to the feet of a minister in trouble. We saw this with the pressure on energy minister Angus Taylor over his use of an apparently doctored document, though he stonewalled and has avoided telling the full story.

The idea that misleading parliament matters has gone out the window long ago.

Outside parliament itself, holding government to account has become more difficult. Freedom of information legislation is of only limited help, with officials and ministers often obstructing rather than fulfilling its spirit. The government has an army of “spinners”, paid for by the taxpayers to manage messages and act as “gatekeepers”. They have bred prolifically.

Public servants, who once were much more accessible to assist journalists on a “background”, non-attributable basis to understand complicated policy, have been locked away from the media by governments anxious to centralise control.

The media itself says more but arguably informs less, despite the 24-hour news cycle. And with the ever-squeezed business models of news organisations as well as around-the-clock filing, journalistic specialisation in particular policy areas has declined while overall work has increased.

While there are significant committees with representation from both houses – the joint committee on intelligence and security is the most important example – in the main it’s the Senate committees that are the real parliamentary watchdogs.

They are where the bureaucrats are regularly grilled, with officials sometimes finding themselves asked to account for what they told their Senate inquisitors previously.

Treasury has just had a particularly searing experience of this. A day after it informed the committee looking at the government’s COVID response that more than six million people were on JobKeeper, it and the Tax Office publicly confessed to a huge error. The latest estimates indicated JobKeeper would only have some 3.5 million recipients and its cost would be $70 billion not $130 billion.

The existence of the COVID committee meant Treasury could be quickly called back for a please explain.

This committee is ranging widely and seeking to interview the main players across the health and economic responses. Predictably, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg declined its invitation – following the convention for lower house ministers – but Finance Minister Mathias Cormann fronted.

The COVID committee has questioned government officials on topics such as fraud being perpetrated on people’s superannuation accounts through the early access to super scheme, the working of the COVIDSafe App, the Ruby Princess debacle, the future of JobKeeper, and much else.

Its presence was especially useful given that at one stage, the parliament was sitting only for the odd single day.

The Senate committees vary in type: permanent or set up to investigate a specific matter, focused on legislation or dealing with more general references in a broad policy area, “estimates” hearings to look at spending.

Estimates hearings, held three times a year, give an opportunity to probe public servants about budgetary items and numbers. A great deal of information, trivial or important, some of it embarrassing to the government of the day, is extracted.

The effectiveness of the estimates committees is reflected in the “estimates test” some public servants are said to apply to their actions: “if we do this, how will it play out at estimates?”

But it’s a two-way game. The government and officials are, according to Labor, pushing back, with public servants increasingly asking to take questions on notice, to be answered later. This gains, at the least, breathing space.

Many public servants look a little jelly-like as they face their senator questioners, but a few mandarins enjoy the challenge. The appearances of the secretary of Home Affairs, Mike Pezzullo, who seems to relish matching wits with the senators, are always keenly anticipated.

Some hearings can be fiery, clashes among senators at times spectacular and unseemly, and reports from inquiries simply statements of partisan positions. But other times, the work can be constructive and cooperative, especially behind the scenes, and the outcomes influential in highlighting wrongs and leading to policy change.

Senate president Scott Ryan this week said Senate committees had produced some 120 reports in the 69 years before the new system and more than 5500 in the 50 years since. Public hearings increased from 500 before the change to more than 7000 since.

Good interrogators make reputations at Senate committees that are remembered long after they leave the parliament. Former Labor senators John Faulkner and Robert Ray operated as a tag team that put the fear of god into witnesses from the public service.

Occasionally a senator can effect more lasting reform through committee work than many of their ministerial colleagues do. Former Nationals senator John “Wacka” Williams pursued malfeasance by the banks and other financial institutions with unrelenting tenacity, and was a major player in having these institutions brought to account.

– ref. View from The Hill: Senate committees are one of the few bright spots in the battle to hold government to account – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-senate-committees-are-one-of-the-few-bright-spots-in-the-battle-to-hold-government-to-account-140641

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Doctor of Botany, University of Melbourne

If you fondly remember May Gibbs’s Gumnut Baby stories about the adventures of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, you may also remember the villainous Big Bad Banksia Men (perhaps you’re still having nightmares about them).

But banksias are nothing to be afraid of. They’re a marvellous group of Australian native trees and shrubs, with an ancient heritage and a vital role in Australian plant ecology, colonial history and bushfire regeneration.

The genus Banksia has about 173 native species. It takes its name from botanist Sir Joseph Banks, who collected specimens of four species in 1770 when he arrived in Australia on board Captain Cook’s Endeavour.

Read more: Botany and the colonisation of Australia in 1770

One of the four species he collected was B. integrifolia, the coastal banksia. This can be a small to medium tree about 5m to 15m tall. In the right conditions, it can be quite impressive and grow up to 35m.

It’s found naturally in coastal regions, growing on sand dunes or around coastal marshes from Queensland to Victoria. These can be quite tough environments and, while B. integrifolia tends to grow in slightly protected sites, it still copes well with sandy soils, poor soil nutrition, salt and wind.

From ancient origins

Coastal banksia – like all banksias – belong to the protea family (Proteaceae). But given the spectacular flowering proteas are of African origin, how did our Australian genera get here?

The members of the Proteaceae belong to an ancient group of flowering plants that evolved almost 100 million years ago on the southern supercontinent Gondwana. When Gondwana fragmented more than 80 million years ago, the proteas remained on the African plate, while the Australian genera remained here.

Read more: The firewood banksia is bursting with beauty

The spikes of woody fruits on the Australian banksia, sometimes called cones, are made up of several hundred flowers. The flower spikes are beautiful structures, soft and brush-like. But with B. integrifolia, they are pale green, similar to the foliage, and can be hard to see within the canopy at a distance.

Up close, these fruit spikes can look quite spooky, almost sinister, especially when wasps have caused extensive gall formation. Galls are swellings that develop on plant tissues as a result of fungal and insect damage, a bit like a benign tumour.

Maybe this is what led May Gibbs to cast them as the baddies in her Gumnut Baby stories. While the galls may look unsightly, they rarely do serious harm to banksias.

Indigenous use

Given the fruit spikes of coastal banksia look like brushes, it’s not surprising Indigenous people once used them as paint brushes.

The flowers are very rich in nectar, which attracts insects and birds. If you run your hand along the flower spike you, like generations of Aboriginal people before you, can enjoy the sweet taste if you lick the nectar off your hand. You can also soak the flowers in water and collect a sweet syrup.

In the garden, B. integrifolia is wonderfully attractive to native insects, birds and ringtail possums. It’s easy to establish and, until it grows more than a few metres high, can be successfully moved and transplanted.

Unlike many other banksia species, coastal banksias don’t need fire to release their seed. For many Australian species, the woody fruits remain solid and sealed, and it’s only when fire comes through that they burn, dry, crack open and release their seed.

This can happen with B. integrifolia too, but in a garden setting the fruits will mature, dry and crack open and release the seeds, which germinate readily. This makes propagating coastal banksia easy work.

In touch with its roots

Perhaps one of the more important, but less obvious, attributes of B. integrifolia are its roots. These are a special type of root possessed by members of the protea family.

The roots form a dense, branched cluster, a bit like the head of a toothbrush, that can be 2-5cm across. They greatly increase the absorbing surface area of the roots, as each root possesses thousands of very fine root hairs.

Read more: The black wattle is a boon for Australians (and a pest everywhere else)

Proteoid roots can be very handy in sandy and other poor soils, where water drains quickly and nutrients are scarce.

These roots, also described as cluster roots, are often visible in a garden bed just at the interface of the soil with the humus or mulch layer above it. They’re very light brown, almost white, in colour.

B. integrifolia, like other banksias, also has the ability to take in nitrogen and enrich the soil, which can be very handy in soils low in nitrogen. It’s like a natural living and decorative fertiliser.

Read more: After the bushfires, we helped choose the animals and plants in most need. Here’s how we did it

Proteoid roots are unfortunately very well suited to the presence of Phytophthora cinnamomii (the cinnamon fungus). It causes dieback in many native plant species, but can be particularly virulent for banksias.

But B. Integrifolia is one of the more resistant species to the fungus. Promising experiments have been done on grafting susceptible species onto the roots of B. integrifolia to improve their rates of survival.

This could be important, as banksias have a role in bushfire regeneration in many parts of Australia, so the occurrence of the fungus can compromise fire recovery.

– ref. The coastal banksia has its roots in ancient Gondwana – https://theconversation.com/the-coastal-banksia-has-its-roots-in-ancient-gondwana-138434

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marnie Graham, Post-doctoral Research Fellow, Stockholm Resilience Centre and University of Johannesburg, Stockholm University

The recent Black Lives Matter protests in Australia have highlighted the pressing and continued need for non-Indigenous Australians to take responsibility for reconciliation.

This requires non-Indigenous Australians to educate themselves about Indigenous and shared histories as well as contemporary realities. And taking action to change these realities.

Read more: ‘I can’t breathe!’ Australia must look in the mirror to see our own deaths in custody

At the moment, Australians reading the news or watching the protests might be asking: how can we contribute to this change?

Through our research and teaching, we have learned that spending time with Indigenous people, learning about culture and history and connecting to Country, is an important first step.

And one accessible way to do this is through an Indigenous tour.

What is an Indigenous tour?

Indigenous tourism covers activities such as art exhibitions, artistic and cultural performances, festivals and tours.

Read more: How Indigenous tourism can help bring about reconciliation in Australia

Our research focuses specifically on Indigenous tours, because visitors are able to ask questions and interact with Indigenous people. We have found that many Australians would like to make personal connections with Indigenous peoples, cultures, histories and languages, but don’t know how – who to talk to, how to connect, what actions to take.

Indigenous tour operators are dedicated to making these connections and sharing their knowledge with visitors. Yet many people don’t realise that Indigenous-owned-and-run tour operators are located all over Australia.

Many different types of tours

The types of Indigenous tours available in Australia are diverse, and cover a huge range of experiences. They include, for example, day tours of two or three hours, involving walking together on Country, learning about history, culture, stories and Indigenous relationships to Country.

There are also culinary tours, where visitors learn about Indigenous foods and cooking, cultural cruises aboard Indigenous-owned vessels and activity-oriented tours where visitors can hike, canoe, quad-bike, or paddle board with Indigenous guides.

Other tours are based around learning about Indigenous uses and values attached to flora and fauna, many of which are held on national parks.

Some operators also run longer camps on Country, dedicated to men, women, families or student groups.

What is common to all these experiences is that Indigenous tour operators share with visitors stories of Country, culture, history and connection.

What might visitors expect from the experience?

The Indigenous tour operators we connect with through our work and research conduct their tours with immense openness and generosity. They share aspects of their lives and certain stories with visitors. Tim Selwyn runs tours on the NSW Central Coast. He explains he does this job, “because I have to”.

It’s my responsibility as a human to speak truth, to help educate, to share. I do what I do to create a safe space where everyone is welcome, so we can talk and we can listen. At the moment the government is not listening, they haven’t done so for 250 years. They’re still imposing their structures. We need to listen and talk together … People need to know truth and history, to make an educated decision about our past. We need to look at the past to go forward, because we’re still stuck.

Tourists must treat these tours with respect and sensitivity, because being invited to share these experiences and knowledge is a huge privilege. It is a tourist’s responsibility to listen and learn.

Our research indicates that when visitors do take that first step by going on an Indigenous tour – then they begin to see that their words, actions and learning can make a difference.

We conduct interviews with tour participants to understand what they learn and experience. This is one example of what a non-Indigenous Australian visitor experienced after a day-tour:

I think it really changed me, as a person, because it was the first time that I actually interacted with an Aboriginal person. I loved it. I think it was just the reality of the fact that there was a community living here before the colonial powers came into Australia … I think the whole thing brought history to life for me, and its implications as well. Not just negatively, I mean there’s that aspect but also, just like I felt welcomed in this country.

How can I access a tour?

Our research is based on work with operators in and around Sydney.

But there are many Indigenous tour options all around Australia. You can find them by visiting WelcomeToCountry.com, a not-for-profit website dedicated to putting you directly in touch with Indigenous tourism initiatives. Professor Marcia Langton has also written a hard copy travel guide.

You can follow state-based Indigenous tourism operator councils on social media. And the federal government’s Tourism Australia website Australia.com has options for Indigenous tourism experiences.

What else do I need to know?

In our experience, many independent Indigenous tour operators are also open to providing cultural education sessions in early childhood centres, schools, universities, government organisations, and businesses. As well as for family or friendship groups.

So, start the process, make the connection.

Through listening, and starting to learn and connect, the difficult conversations can occur, and we can begin to make the changes that Australia needs to see.

– ref. Non-Indigenous Australians need to educate themselves. One way to do this is to take an Indigenous tour. – https://theconversation.com/non-indigenous-australians-need-to-educate-themselves-one-way-to-do-this-is-to-take-an-indigenous-tour-140442

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

University of Canberra Professorial Fellow Michelle Grattan and Assistant Professor Caroline Fisher discuss the week in politics including: the protesters advocating police reform, the treatment of indigenous peoples, and to show solidarity with the black lives matter movement, the high rate of incarceration amongst indigenous people, the PM and treasurer Josh Frydenberg calling for all state borders to be opened, the trans tasman bubble, and Prime Minister Scott Morrison apologising for the robodebt scheme.

– ref. VIDEO: Michelle Grattan on protests, social-distancing, and domestic borders – https://theconversation.com/video-michelle-grattan-on-protests-social-distancing-and-domestic-borders-140630

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Melleuish, Professor, School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, University of Wollongong

The Conversation is running a series of pieces on key figures in Australian political history, examining how they changed the country and political debate. You can read our articles on Julia Gillard and Henry Parkes here and here.

Bartholomew Augustine (“Bob”) Santamaria is the most significant figure in Australian politics never to have held political office.

Santamaria was a friend of, or associated with, four Australian prime ministers: Robert Menzies, Malcolm Fraser, John Howard and Tony Abbott. But his career was spent outside parliament.

Read more: Book review: Santamaria, A Most Unusual Man

There are two crucial things that need to be understood about Santamaria in order to make sense of his work. One is he was a devout lay Catholic whose career began in church-sponsored organisations. The other is he was both anti-socialist and anti-capitalist.

His ideal society was one composed of small property owners. In the 1940s and 1950s, he dreamed of an Australia dotted with rural villages.

Italian and Irish Catholic influences

Santamaria was born in Melbourne in 1915, the son of Italian migrants. His father ran a greengrocery in Brunswick.

While his background was Italian, his intellectual formation was in the largely Irish Catholic education system. He was bright, studying arts and law at Melbourne University.

After graduating, he did not practise law, but worked instead for the church as a layman for the Australasian National Secretariat of Catholic Action.

Catholic involvement in Australian political culture in the early part of the 20th century had been somewhat marginal; for example, the Federation conventions contained few Catholic participants. But the 1930s saw a flourishing of Catholic intellectual and cultural life in Australia, such as the Campion Society, of which Santamaria was a member.

Moving Catholics towards the centre, fighting communists

What Santamaria achieved was to move Catholics much closer to the centre of Australian politics. He did this both through the force of his intellect and his political actions.

He was an ideas man. From the early 1940s to the mid-1950s, Santamaria drafted most of the social justice statements authorised by the Archbishops and Bishops of the Catholic Church of Australia, many of which had circulations of more than 100,000.

For a long time, he had no public profile. But his major contribution came leading the fight to extinguish communist control of, and influence in, trade unions.

Although communism never had much appeal to the Australian voter, it had considerable influence in a number of unions, especially in the 1940s.

Santamaria mimicked communist techniques, setting up a shadowy organisation that used sometimes dubious tactics to gain union control. Called the Catholic Social Studies Movement, it was simply known as “the Movement” and operated largely in secrecy.

If the communists fought dirty, then Santamaria, as the leader of the Movement, understood the need to engage in tactics like rigging union elections. The ends justified the means.

Labor, the DLP and Santamaria’s undoing

The great prize in all of this, of course, was the Australian Labor Party, with its strong trade union links.

Communism was in decline in Australia by the early 1950s, but the anti-communist movement went from strength to strength. By 1953, there was a federal election in the offing, which Labor seemed guaranteed to win because of the state of the economy. Santamaria’s papers indicate that at this point, he contemplated the possible takeover of the ALP.

It all went terribly wrong. Economic conditions improved and the Menzies-led Coalition won the 1954 election. In the fallout, the ALP’s bitter leader, H.V. “Doc” Evatt, instigated moves that led to a split in the Labor Party, the exit of many Catholics from the ALP and the creation of the Democratic Labor Party (DLP).

Read more: Australian politics explainer: the Labor Party split

Santamaria, who had previously been a somewhat shadowy figure, suddenly emerged into the limelight. This occurred because Evatt denounced the Movement and its role in the Labor Party. It was a personal disaster for Santamaria, because it pushed him out of his political roles with regard to both the Church and the unions.

He desperately wanted to influence public policy in Australia, but the DLP was only a rump party that largely appealed to Catholics. He was now outside the ALP tent and he certainly was not going to be admitted to that of their Liberal opponents.

Reinvention in print and on TV

Essentially, Santamaria then reinvented himself as a commentator on public affairs. That was how he was known until his death in 1998.

His organisation, the National Civic Council, published News Weekly, and later the AD2000 magazine, to propagate his ideas.

He also had a TV program, “Point of View” on Channel 9 that began in 1963 and went for nearly 30 years. Later in life, he had a regular column in The Australian. He no longer played the same active political role that he had earlier in life, but his ideas reached a large audience through the media.

In this later period, Santamaria gravitated towards people who were, or had been, Liberals.

Read more: The traditionalists are restless, so why don’t they have a party of their own in Australia?

He became great friends with Menzies following Menzies’s retirement. In 1992, there was an abortive attempt, involving Santamaria, academics Robert Manne and John Carroll to form a new political party that included Fraser. Howard visited Santamaria on his death bed.

Abbott had connections with Santamaria going back to his student days.

A ‘tragic failure’

Whether Santamaria exercised any influence over these figures is questionable. It does seem that they found him congenial, and he certainly possessed considerable charisma.

In some ways, Santamaria can be seen as a tragic failure. He was an intelligent and passionate man, who desired to create a better world, but whose actions led to conflict and dissension.

He was, perhaps, the victim of his own hubris. That said, it is difficult to find another individual who had such an impact on Australian life for so long. His autobiography, Against the Tide, still repays reading.

– ref. Bob Santamaria, ‘the most significant’ figure in Australian politics never to have been in parliament – https://theconversation.com/bob-santamaria-the-most-significant-figure-in-australian-politics-never-to-have-been-in-parliament-138719

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gabriel da Silva, Senior Lecturer in Chemical Engineering, University of Melbourne

In recent weeks, the world has looked on as governments use chemical irritants to control protesters and riots. Whether it’s tear gas, pepper spray, mace or pepper balls, all have one thing in common: they’re chemical weapons.

Chemical warfare agents have been used twice in Sydney in the past week alone. Police pepper-sprayed demonstrators at Central Station, following Saturday’s major Black Lives Matter protest.

The next day, tear gas was used to break up a fight at Long Bay jail, as prison guards filled an exercise yard with tear gas canisters – also impacting nearby residents.

These events followed the deployment of chemical riot control agents – specifically “pepper bombs” – in Washington DC last week. They were used to clear protesters from a public park so President Donald Trump could walk from the White House to a nearby church for a photo opportunity.

US Attorney General William Barr said “there was no tear gas used”, claiming “pepper spray is not a chemical irritant. It’s not chemical.”

I’m a chemical engineer and chemist who studies chemicals in the environment. So I thought I’d clear the air about what makes pepper spray such a powerful chemical irritant, and a chemical weapon.

What’s inside pepper spray?

The active compounds in pepper spray are collectively known as capsaicinoids. They are given the military symbol OC, for “oleoresin capsicum”.

The most important chemical in OC is capsaicin. This is derived from chilli peppers in a chemical process that dissolves and concentrates it into a liquid. Capsaicin is the same compound that makes chillies hot, but in an intense, weaponised form.

Not all capsaicinoids are obtained naturally. One called nonivamide (also known as PAVA or pelargonic acid vanillylamide) is mostly made by humans. PAVA is an intense irritant used in artificial pepper spray.

Is pepper spray a tear gas?

We’ve established pepper spray is a chemical, but is it also a kind of tear gas?

“Tear gas” is an informal term and a bit of a misnomer, because it isn’t a gas. Rather, tear gas refers to any weaponised irritant used to immobilise people.

More specifically, tear gas is often used to describe weapons that disperse their irritants in the air either as liquid aerosol droplets (such as gas canisters), or as a powder (such as pepper balls). This definition distinguishes tear gas from personal self-defence sprays which use foams, gels and liquids.

Read more: What is tear gas?

Tear gas canisters typically contain the irritants 2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile (CS) and phenacyl chloride (CN). Both CS and CN are man-made chemicals discovered in a lab, unlike capsaicin (the traditional ingredient in pepper spray).

But despite capsaicin coming from chilli peppers, pepper spray is still a weaponised irritant that can be delivered as an aerosol or powder. It should unequivocally be considered a type of tear gas.

Pepper spray as a weapon

The chemical irritants OC, CS and CN have military symbols because they are chemical weapons. They are termed “less-lethal” because they are less likely to kill than conventional weapons. Their use, however, can still cause fatalities.

Technically, pepper spray and other tear gases are classified as lachrymatory agents. Lachrymatory agents attack mucous membranes in the eyes and respiratory system.

Pepper spray works almost instantly, forcing the eyes to close and flood with tears. Coupled with coughing fits and difficulty breathing, this means the targeted person is effectively blinded and incapacitated. Because lachrymatory agents work on nerve receptors that help us sense heat, they also induce an intense burning sensation.

The combined effects of pepper spray can last anywhere from 15 minutes to more than an hour.

Lachrymatory agents emerged on the battlefields of World War I. Artillery shells were filled with chemicals such as xylyl bromide and chloroacetone and fired at enemy soldiers. Agents that induce choking, blistering and vomiting were added as the chemical arms race escalated.

Read more: Tear gas and pepper spray are chemical weapons. So, why can police use them?

In the 1920s, the Geneva Protocol was enacted to ban the use of indiscriminate and often ineffective chemical weapons on the battlefield. Today, the unjustified use of chemical riot control agents threatens to erode the systems that are meant to protect us from the most dangerous weaponised chemicals.

– ref. What makes pepper spray so intense? And is it a tear gas? A chemical engineer explains – https://theconversation.com/what-makes-pepper-spray-so-intense-and-is-it-a-tear-gas-a-chemical-engineer-explains-140441

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Romilio, Independent Researcher, The University of Queensland

Fossilised footprints and tracks provide a direct record of how ancient animals moved. And some preserved behaviours leave us marvelling in disbelief.

In research published today in Scientific Reports, my international team of colleagues and I detail our discovery of exquisitely preserved crocodile footprints, formed about 120 million years ago in what is now Sacheon, South Korea.

These trace fossils reveal multiple crocodiles undertaking a very curious behaviour: bipedal walking, much like many dinosaurs.

The ancient footprints uncovered resemble those made by humans, as they are long and slender, with a prominent heel impression. But they have additional features, including thick scaly imprints from the sole and toes that are comparatively long with broader impressions.

The shape of these footprints compares very well with crocodile tracks known elsewhere, notably Batrachopus tracks from the Jurassic found in the United States – with “Batrachopus” being the name assigned to the tracks themselves.

However, instead of being made by quadrupedal, cat-sized crocodiles, the Sacheon fossil tracks are large. With footprints that measure around 24 centimetres long, they come from animals with legs the same height as human legs and bodies more than three metres long.

A distant ancestor

Today, crocodiles walk on four legs in a wide, squat stance. The Sacheon crocodile trackways we discovered indicate a different pattern of movement. They do not have “handprints”, and the trackways are exceptionally narrow, as if the animals were making the footprints while balancing on a tightrope.

This suggests these ancient crocodiles had their legs tucked beneath their body, much like a dinosaur, rather than assuming the typical sprawling posture seen in today’s crocodiles.

The tracks could not have been made by dinosaurs. One clear difference between dinosaur and crocodile tracks is that crocodiles walk flat-footed, leaving a clear heel impression. Dinosaurs and their bird descendants walk high on their toes, with the heel off the ground.

The devil is in the detail

Fossil tracks can be found in many different states of preservation, ranging from excellent to comparatively indistinct. This can make it hard to accurately identify the animals that made them.

Often, track sites are either not composed of sediments that help retain the finer features of tracks, or they erode after lengthy exposure to the elements.

We know the Sacheon trackmakers were ancient crocodiles because the tracks have been preserved in extraordinary detail.

This is due in part to fine, muddy sediment around an ancient lake that was able to hold the footprints while covered by sediment-laden water. Also, the site was freshly excavated for a new rural building development and hadn’t been exposed to erosion.

Read more: Fossil track sites tell the story of ancient crocodiles in southern Africa

A helpful reference point

The perfectly preserved Sacheon tracks became our reference to reassess other unusual trackways that had been described in the area, but were more poorly preserved.

Our attention focused on sites at Gain-ri and Adu Island just ten kilometres away from Sacheon, that had eroded trackways within the intertidal zone, between the low and high tide. These narrow trackways with long, slender footprints but no hand prints or tail drag marks echoed the Sacheon crocodile tracks.

A decade earlier, the footprints had been interpreted as made by another ancient animal known as a pterosaur. This ancient winged creature – related to dinosaurs but not officially classified as one – was famed for ruling the skies when dinosaurs ruled the land.

Read more: Humans coexisted with three-tonne marsupials and lizards as long as cars in ancient Australia

Crocodiles and pterosaurs were quite distinct, being predominantly land and air dwellers, respectively. They had very differently shaped hands, but interestingly, the impressions they left with their feet can look very similar.

When pterosaurs were on the ground, they typically walked on all fours, using their back feet and hands to support themselves as they moved, just like today’s crocodiles.

However, as the “pterosaur” Gain-ri and Adu Island trackways lacked hand prints, they indicate bipedal walking. Thus, the tracks were wrongly ascribed to a pterosaur.

When first discovered, pterosaur tracks were known to be very common in South Korea, while crocodile tracks were rare. In the absence of well-preserved footprints, the preferred interpretation was that these tracks were likely evidence of unusual behaviour of the pterosaur, a common trackmaker in the area.

With the new evidence from the Sacheon site, it became possible to reevaluate the Gain-ri and Adu Island trackways too, which we now suspect were made by the same crocodile trackmakers strolling around Sacheon 120 million years ago.

– ref. 120 million years ago, giant crocodiles walked on two legs in what is now South Korea – https://theconversation.com/120-million-years-ago-giant-crocodiles-walked-on-two-legs-in-what-is-now-south-korea-140335

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shireen Daft, Lecturer, Macquarie Law School, Macquarie University

In the ongoing protests over the killing of George Floyd and the broader issue of racial injustice, we have been bombarded with images of demonstrators being hit with tear gas and pepper spray.

In the US state of Ohio, a 22-year-old protester died two days after being exposed to tear gas and pepper spray. Police also used tear gas to break up a demonstration near the White House to clear the way for President Donald Trump’s photo op outside a church – a move that prompted a federal lawsuit to be filed by the DC chapter of Black Lives Matter.

Read more: Trump’s photo op with church and Bible was offensive, but not new

The use of riot control agents against protesters is nothing new. Tear gas has been used repeatedly against protesters in Hong Kong, the Arab Springs protests and the Occupy protests, just to name a few major examples.

But now the debate over their use in law enforcement has been reignited. And the fact that toxic chemicals are banned in warfare, but permitted for use against protesters, is at the centre of that debate.

A group of Democratic lawmakers in the US is now trying to prohibit police from using tear gas in such situations, introducing a bill to Congress this week.

What are riot control agents?

Tear gas and pepper spray both fall under the wider banner of “riot control agents”. Tear gas usually refers to the chemical compounds known as chloroacetophenone (CN) and chlorobenzylidenemalononitrile (CS). Pepper spray (or oleoresin capsicum) is a weaponised form of the chemical that adds heat to chilli peppers.

Both are toxic chemicals intended to produce a rapid sensory irritation or disabling physical effect, which disappears within a short time.

Read more: What is tear gas?

It is telling the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has described these agents as “poison”. Medical experts have also raised concerns they may increase the spread of COVID-19.

So are they chemical weapons?

The Chemical Weapons Convention, which came into force in 1997 and currently has 193 state parties, places a comprehensive ban of the use of toxic chemicals as a weapon, “for the sake of humankind”.

It explicitly prohibits the use of riot control agents as a method of warfare.

One significant concern with the use of chemical weapons is they cause unnecessary suffering.

Indeed, in a profile of the head of the US Chemical Warfare Service in the 1920s, writer Theo Knappen described the suffering caused by tear gas as a selling point for the weapon:

The tear gases appear to be admirably suited to the purpose of isolating the individual from the mob spirit … he is thrown into a condition in which he can think of nothing but relieving his own distress. Under such conditions an army disintegrates and a mob ceases to be; it becomes a blind stampede to get away from the source of torture.

Another major concern with chemical weapons dispersed as gases and sprays is they are indiscriminate. The nature of the weapon means it is difficult to target and the effects can be widespread and uncontrolled.

In wartime, tear gas and other agents can result in an escalation in the use of chemical weapons. In the fog of war, a military might believe they are under attack from lethal chemical weapons, and retaliate in kind. It can also be very difficult in wartime to collect evidence of what chemicals were used.

If they are banned in war, how can they be used by police?

The Chemical Weapons Convention only restricts the use of riot control agents as a method of warfare. The convention includes an express exception for law enforcement, including domestic riot control purposes.

This exception reflects the history and development of the convention.

It was unclear whether riot control agents were prohibited under an earlier chemical and biological weapons treaty, the Geneva Protocol of 1925. The vast majority of nations were of the opinion the Geneva Protocol applied to all toxic weapons.

However, the US was loud in its opposition to this interpretation, stating the law did not apply to chemical weapons with a temporary effect – in other words, riot control agents.

In the 1960s and 70s, the US used riot control agents (among other chemical weapons) in the Vietnam War, and also used riot control agents against Americans protesting the war at home. A small number of other nations, including Australia and the UK, then changed their opinion on riot control agents, conforming to the US position.

Read more: Why do protests turn violent? It’s not just because people are desperate

By this time, riot control agents had become a standard part of the law enforcement arsenal across the globe.

As a result, when the Chemical Weapons Convention was being negotiated, a compromise was made: riot control agents would be banned during warfare, but exceptions would be carved out for law enforcement use.

Riot control agents have been promoted as a less-lethal alternative to firearms when police are responding to riots and violent protests.

However, opponents argue they are instead being used as a substitute for non-violent crowd-control methods.

Are there any restrictions on the use by police?

This is not to say there are no restrictions on the use of riot control agents in law enforcement under international law.

Any use of force by the police must be legal, necessary and proportionate under the UN’s Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials and its Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials. Police must also offer immediate medical and psychological treatment for any injuries caused by riot control agents.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia famously asserted in the 1990s that it is contrary to the basic principles of humanity and commonsense to prohibit weapons in international conflict but not in civil wars. What is inhumane in one, the tribunal said, must be inhumane in the other.

The question, then, is how we can continue to draw a distinction for the use of riot control agents by police, especially when these weapons are being used not to stop violent criminals, but against people exercising their fundamental human right to protest.

– ref. Tear gas and pepper spray are chemical weapons. So, why can police use them? – https://theconversation.com/tear-gas-and-pepper-spray-are-chemical-weapons-so-why-can-police-use-them-140364

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Claire Breen, Professor of Law, University of Waikato

Too many New Zealand children are born into a state of crisis, as two recent and damning reports have shown.

The Māori Inquiry into Oranga Tamariki (Ministry for Children) was one of five inquiries launched after a media investigation into the attempted “uplift” of a newborn baby from its mother at a maternity ward in May 2019. The inquiry report stated:

The event … not only sparked national outrage from Māori, but disclosed a controversial and decades old state policy and practice that has had devastating intergenerational impacts that have left our communities with deep emotional scars.

Another report from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner details the experiences of Māori mothers of newborns involved with Oranga Tamariki. Children’s Commissioner Judge Andrew Becroft wrote:

These personal stories … are a silent testimony to the long-term inequities that Māori have suffered under Aotearoa New Zealand’s care and protection system.

Oranga Tamariki chief executive Grainne Moss hit back by saying the children’s commissioner’s report was ignoring the interests of babies.

The current storm rages, in part, around the protection of children and their rights. With the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State Care due to deliver its own interim report this year, we need to ask: what are those rights, and might a better understanding of them provide a way out of this impasse?

Children’s rights are linked to parents’ rights

Part of the answer can be found in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989. Aotearoa-New Zealand accepted this treaty in 1993 and it informs the work of the children’s commissioner. For tamariki Māori, the convention is important because it was the first global human rights treaty to refer to the rights of indigenous children.

Read more: Kindness doesn’t begin at home: Jacinda Ardern’s support for beneficiaries lags well behind Australia’s

Perhaps controversially, the convention requires states to respect parents’ rights and responsibilities – and, where relevant, the extended family or community. This counters a common criticism that by focusing on children’s rights we diminish the rights of parents and families.

As far as possible, children have the right to know and be cared for by their parents. It is parents who have the primary responsibility for the upbringing and development of their children.

The convention also states that the family is “the fundamental group of society” and the child should grow up in a family environment. Cultural values are important for “the protection and harmonious development of the child”.

Most importantly in the current debate, the convention provides clear guidance on the removal of children from their families:

Each of these considerations is subject to four guiding principles:

Read more: Australia needs to confront its history of white privilege to provide a level playing field for all

The forcible removal of children is covered by the UN

Alongside the children’s rights convention lies the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 2007, which Aotearoa-New Zealand endorsed in 2010. This specifically recognises the rights of indigenous families and communities to retain shared responsibility for the upbringing and well-being of their children. The exercise of that responsibility is to be consistent with the rights of the child.

The declaration also prohibits the forcible removal of children from one group to another. While this has tended to relate to historic state policies to remove indigenous children from their communities, it clearly resonates with recent events.

The declaration also states that the economic and social conditions of children must be improved. Notably, states must protect children from all forms of violence and discrimination. These considerations overlap with the declaration’s wider objectives, such as the right to self-determination, the right to self-government and the importance of free, prior and informed consent on matters that affect indigenous people.

At the heart of these documents is a simple message: children have rights. The best interests of the child must inform any decision that affects those rights. And the decision must be made in an impartial and transparent manner.

Future reports will inevitably catalogue further violations of children’s rights. Identifying these violations is one thing; strategies to ensure they do not happen again are another. The Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples must play a central role.

– ref. The state removal of Māori children from their families is a wound that won’t heal – but there is a way forward – https://theconversation.com/the-state-removal-of-maori-children-from-their-families-is-a-wound-that-wont-heal-but-there-is-a-way-forward-140243

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hassan Vally, Associate Professor, La Trobe University

As restrictions ease, many Australians will be wondering if it’s worth wearing a mask on the bus, train or tram to reduce their risk of being infected with coronavirus.

When Deputy Chief Medical Officer Nick Coatsworth was asked about this earlier this week, he said:

If you are a vulnerable person and you have no other means of getting to work or around, it would be a very reasonable thing to do. We don’t think that general, healthy members of the community need to be considering wearing masks in that context.

Earlier, Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy said wearing masks on public transport “is not an unreasonable thing to do”.

But the National Cabinet has stopped short of making wearing masks on public transport compulsory. No wonder it can all seem a bit confusing.

So what does fresh evidence say about the benefits of healthy people wearing masks in public? And how do you use this to decide what to do?

Read more: As coronavirus restrictions ease, here’s how you can navigate public transport as safely as possible

Yes, wearing a mask does reduce your risk

Until now, the evidence about whether wearing a mask out and about if you’re healthy reduces your risk of coronavirus infection has been uncertain.

But a recent review in The Lancet changes that. As expected, the researchers found wearing masks protected health-care workers against coronavirus infection. But they also found wearing masks protects healthy people in the community, although possibly to a lesser degree.

The researchers said the difference in the protective effect was largely because health workers are more likely to use N95 masks, which were found to offer greater protection than the disposable surgical masks we generally see people wearing out in the community.

Read more: To limit coronavirus risks on public transport, here’s what we can learn from efforts overseas

So, the take-home message is that masks, while not offering perfect protection, reduce your risk of coronavirus infection while you’re out and about.

In light of this study, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has updated its advice to recommend healthy people wear masks in public where there is widespread transmission and where physical distancing is difficult, such as on public transport.

But how is this different to what I’ve heard before?

What this Lancet study adds is the best evidence we have so far that healthy people who wear a mask out and about can reduce their chance of infection.

It’s important to stress, the evidence is quite clear that if you’re sick, wearing a mask reduces your risk of transmitting the coronavirus to others.

If you’re sick or have been diagnosed with COVID-19 the clear advice is still to stay home and self-isolate. You shouldn’t be on public transport anyway!

Masks also protect others

But how about the other possible benefit of wearing masks on public transport – minimising the risk of you unwittingly transmitting the virus to others if you don’t have symptoms?

Despite some confusing messages from WHO earlier this week, we know “asymptomatic transmission” does occur, although we are yet to pin down its exact role.

For instance, a recent review suggests as many as 40-45% of coronavirus infections are asymptomatic and they may transmit the virus to others for an extended period.

So, preventing asymptomatic transmission is another reason you may choose to wear a mask. That is, rather than wearing a mask to protect yourself, you could wear a mask to protect others.

Read more: Do homemade masks work? Sometimes. But leave the design to the experts

So, what should I do?

Given masks reduce your risk of infection and reduce the risk of you unwittingly passing on the virus to others, you could certainly make a case for routinely wearing a mask on public transport while we have coronavirus in the community.

This case is even stronger if you are at risk of severe illness, for example if you are over 65 years old or have an underlying medical condition such as high blood pressure, heart disease or diabetes.

Read more: Why are older people more at risk of coronavirus?

Alternatively, if you are travelling on a short trip on a train and you have plenty of room to social distance, then you may decide wearing a mask may not be essential given the level of risk on that journey.

However, if you are on a longer commute and the train is crowded and social distancing is difficult, then wearing a mask could well be sensible.

If you do decide to wear a mask, then it’s important to make sure you know how to put it on and take it off correctly. And as no mask offers complete protection, you still need to physically distance where possible and wash your hands.

Read more: Are you wearing gloves or a mask to the shops? You might be doing it wrong

– ref. Should I wear a mask on public transport? – https://theconversation.com/should-i-wear-a-mask-on-public-transport-139981

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thomas Longden, Research Fellow, Crawford School, Australian National University

The COVID-19 recession is coming, and federal and state governments are expected to spend more money to stimulate economic growth. Done well, this can make Australia’s economy more productive, improve quality of life and help the low-carbon transition.

In a paper released today, we’ve developed criteria to help get this investment right. The idea is to stimulate the economy in a way that creates lasting economic value, reduces greenhouse gas emissions and brings broader social benefits.

An Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) outlook report released this week predicts an economic slump this year in Australia and globally.

Governments will be called on to invest. In this article, we investigate how stimulus spending on infrastructure can simultaneously achieve environmental, economic and social goals.

Best practice

Europe has already embraced a “green stimulus”. For example, Germany plans to spend almost one-third of its €130 billion stimulus package on renewable power, public transport, building renovations and developing the hydrogen and electric car industries.

In response to the pandemic, New South Wales and Victoria produced criteria for priority stimulus projects which include environmental considerations.

Whether the federal government will follow suit is unclear.

Read more: HomeBuilder misses a chance to make our homes perform better for us and the planet

Most federal stimulus spending has been on short-term JobKeeper and JobSeeker payments, plus the HomeBuilder scheme that will largely benefit the construction industry and those who can afford home improvements.

So how should governments decide what to prioritise in a COVID-19 stimulus package?

Our criteria

We developed a set of criteria to guide stimulus spending. We did this by comparing ten proposals and studies, including current proposals by international organisations and think tanks, and research papers on fiscal stimulus spending after the 2008 global financial crisis. Synthesising this work, we identified nine criteria and assessment factors, shown below.

Before the pandemic hit, Infrastructure Australia and other organisations had already identified projects and programs that were strong candidates for further funding.

We applied our criteria to a range of program/project categories to compare how well they perform in terms of achieving economic, social and environmental goals. We did not assess particular programs and projects.

The four most promising categories for public investment are shown in this table, and further analysed below.

1. Renewable energy and transmission

The electricity system of the future will be based on wind and solar power – now the cheapest way of producing energy from new installations. Australia’s renewables investment boom may be tailing off, and governments could step in.

The Australian Energy Market Operator, in its 2018 Integrated System Plan, assessed 34 candidate sites for Renewable Energy Zones – which are places with great wind and solar potential, suitable land and access to the grid.

Read more: Really Australia, it’s not that hard: 10 reasons why renewable energy is the future

The NSW government has committed to three such zones. These could be fast-tracked, and other states could do the same.

Investment in power transmission lines is needed to better connect these zones to the grid. It’s clear where they should go. Governments could shortcut the normally lengthy approval, planning and commercial processes to get these projects started while the economy is weak.

2. Energy efficiency in buildings

There’s a strong economic, social and environmental case for investment in retrofitting public buildings to improve their energy efficiency. Schools, hospitals and social housing are good candidates.

Building improvement programs are quick to start up, opportunities exist everywhere and they provide local jobs and business support. And better energy efficiency means lower energy bills, as well as reduced carbon emissions.

Read more: Coronavirus is a ‘sliding doors’ moment. What we do now could change Earth’s trajectory

One existing program is showing the way. Under the Queensland government’s Advancing Clean Energy Schools program, which involves solar installation and energy-saving measures, 80 state schools have been brought forward to the project’s first phase as part of COVID-19 stimulus.

A focus on public buildings will bring long-lasting benefits to the community, including low-income households. This would bring far greater public benefit than programs such as HomeBuilder.

3. Environmental improvements

Stimulus initiatives also provide an opportunity to boost our response to last summer’s bushfires. While the federal government has announced A$150 million of funding for recovery projects and conservation, more could be done.

The ACT has shown how. As part of COVID-19 stimulus, 26 people who’d recently lost their jobs were employed to help nature reserves recover after the fires. Such programs could be greatly scaled up.

In New Zealand, the government is spending NZ$1.1 billion on creating 11,000 “nature jobs” across a range of regional environmental projects.

4. Transport projects

Several transport projects on the Infrastructure Australia priority list are well developed, and some could be fast-tracked.

Smaller, local projects such as building or refurbishing footpaths and cycle paths, and improving existing transport infrastructure, can be easily achieved. The NSW government is already encouraging councils to undertake such projects.

Sound analysis and transparency is needed

Our analysis is illustrative only. A full analysis needs to consider the specifics of each project or program. It must also consider the goals and needs in particular regions or sectors – including speed of implementation, ensuring employment opportunities are spread equally, and social and environmental priorities.

This is the job of governments and agencies. It should be done diligently and transparently. Australian governments should lay out which objectives their stimulus investments are pursuing, the expected benefits, and why one investment option is chosen over another.

This should improve public confidence, and taxpayers’ acceptance of stimulus measures. This is good practice for governments to follow at any time. It’s even more important when they’re spending billions at the drop of a hat.

– ref. Putting stimulus spending to the test: 4 ways a smart government can create jobs and cut emissions – https://theconversation.com/putting-stimulus-spending-to-the-test-4-ways-a-smart-government-can-create-jobs-and-cut-emissions-140339