Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Wake, Program Manager, Journalism, RMIT University

Australia’s news landscape, and the ability of citizens to access quality journalism, has been dealt a major blow by the announcement the Australian Associated Press is closing, with the loss of 180 journalism jobs.

Although AAP reporters and editors are generally not household names, the wire service has provided the backbone of news content for the country since 1935, ensuring every paper (and therefore every citizen) has had access to solid reliable reports on matters of national significance.

All news outlets have relied on AAP’s network of local and international journalists to provide stories from areas where their own correspondents couldn’t go, from the courts to parliament and everywhere in between.

Despite a shrinking number of journalists in recent years and a rapid decrease in funding subscriptions, AAP continued to stand by its mission to provide news without political partisanship or bias. Speed was essential for the agency, but accuracy was even more important.

But AAP has struggled in recent years as newspapers and radio and television stations have sought to cut costs and started sourcing content for free from the internet, thanks to global publishing platforms, such as Google.

When AAP shut down its New Zealand newswire in 2018, it said subscribers were under pressure and asking for lower fees.

Media mergers, such as that of Nine and Fairfax, have also been bad for AAP, as companies consolidated their subscriptions. Sky News also gave up its AAP subscription to use News Limited in 2018.

The mantra within AAP had long been, if a major shareholder sneezes, the wire agency catches a cold.

Read more: Media Files: What does the Nine Fairfax merger mean for diversity and quality journalism?

Independence and integrity

In the opening to the book, On the Wire: The Story of Australian Associated Press, published in 2010 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of AAP, John Coomber wrote about the value of the wire service:

AAP news has no political axe to grind, nor advertisers to please. News value is paramount, and successive boards, chief executives and editors have guarded its independence and reporting integrity above all else.

Because it supplies news and information to virtually every sector of the Australian media industry, AAP can’t afford to do otherwise. Unsupported by advertising or government handout, it has only its good name to trade on.

So much has changed in the news industry since AAP was formed by Keith Murdoch in 1935. Back then, it took a staff of only 12 people, with bureaus in London and New York, to bring overseas news into Australia.

But even in its earliest days, as an amalgamation of two agencies, the Australian Press Association and the Sun Herald Cable Service, it was set up to save money.

Read more: Should governments provide funding grants to encourage public interest journalism?

With the cost of cables, which were charged by the word, the pooling of resources was significant at the time. The AAP journalists were therefore required to create concise Australian-focused reports for local papers.

Although AAP reports were sometimes drawn together from other news sources, the agency’s reporters sometimes did their own original reporting. This led to wordage blowouts on major events, such as Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Austria in 1938, which set a record for the AAP’s wordage for the year.

The second world war was an unlikely boost to AAP as senior journalists from Australian papers were seconded to war zones as AAP special representatives.

The Sydney Morning Herald’s Ray Maley, later Prime Minister Robert Menzies’ press secretary, was sent to Singapore. His story of the first clash between Australian and Japanese troops was widely used in newspapers in Britain and the US, as well as Australia.

Winston Turner, “our man in Batavia” (now Jakarta), was one of the last AAP journalists to get out of the region, escaping the invading Japanese by the narrowest of margins.

Award-winning journalism

AAP’s glory days weren’t just confined to the past. It has published numerous, award-winning stories in recent years, such as Lisa Martin’s report on Peter Dutton’s au pair scandal.

Long-time readers of Fairfax newspapers might remember the federal budget in 2017 when AAP filled the pages of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age because Fairfax reporters had gone on strike. The copy written by Fairfax’s skeleton staff was sloppy, while AAP’s stories shone with the agency’s emphasis on accuracy.

AAP photographers, too, have captured moments of Australian history, such as Lukas Coch’s Walkley Award-winning picture of Linda Burney in blue high heels in the air celebrating the passage of the marriage equality law in 2017.

Coch also took famous photo of then-Prime Minister Julia Gillard in the arms of an AFP officer when she lost a shoe while exiting a Canberra restaurant surrounded by protesters.

Rich training ground lost

One of the saddest parts of the closure of AAP is the loss of fantastic training opportunities for young reporters starting out in journalism.

AAP has produced some big names in journalism, including Kerry O’Brien, the PNG correspondent in the 1960s, and SMH editor Lisa Davies and Joe Hildebrand, who both started as AAP cadets.

Read more: ‘A government without newspapers’: why everyone should care about the cuts at Fairfax

AAP has solidly taken in four or five cadets each year for the past decade, and in recent years, a small group of editorial assistants. Over 12 months, the AAP cadets have been taught to write fast and accurately while also learning shorthand, video skills, ethics and media law.

During the global financial crisis in the 2000s, AAP took four cadets, while The Age took on none, and the Herald Sun only two.

As news of the AAP’s closure spreads across the country, it will be seen as yet another blow to public interest journalism in Australia.

Australia needs more sources of news, not fewer. The loss of AAP should be mourned not just by newsmen and women across the country, but by every single person who cares about democracy and the valuable work journalists do in keeping the public informed and the powerful to account.

– ref. The closure of AAP is yet another blow to public interest journalism in Australia – https://theconversation.com/the-closure-of-aap-is-yet-another-blow-to-public-interest-journalism-in-australia-132856

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Collins, Professor in Nutrition and Dietetics, University of Newcastle

Children need healthy food in the right amount so they get all the nutrients needed to grow, learn and thrive.

The Australian dietary guidelines outline the number of daily servings children need each day from each food group, based on their sex and age:

This is just a guide; your child’s needs will depend on their activity levels, but it’s good to get a sense of what you should be aiming for.

Keep in mind serving sizes vary for each of the five food groups. For example, here’s what constitutes a serve of grains:

Choosing from five food groups sounds simple enough. But supermarkets can carry up to 30,000 products. Many foods are heavily marketed and it’s rarely the healthy ones.

So children end up eating more junk foods and fewer fruits and vegetables than recommended. A 2011-12 survey of two to 18 year olds found 38% of children’s average total energy intake came from junk foods. Cakes, muffins, slices, biscuits, chips, packet snacks, processed meats and sugary drinks were the main contributors.

In 2017-18, just one in 17 children aged two to 17 years ate the recommended daily serves of vegetables.

So how do you get kids to eat less junk and more healthy food?

Say no to junk foods

While young children can recognise healthy foods fairly easily, they find it hard to know which foods are energy-dense, nutrient-poor “junk” foods.

The foods available in your home act as a powerful signpost to your children about what to eat. When there are unhealthy snack foods in the pantry children (and adults) eat more of them.

Read more: What is a balanced diet anyway?

Unfortunately, it’s hard for parents to avoid some messages their children receive around food, especially from advertising.

But try to ignore those requests; eventually your child will stop asking. A survey of 7,800 children found that kids who “often” asked for items advertised on TV were 30% more likely to become overweight during two years of follow-up.

Avoid portion distortion

Keep a watch on the size of portions. Serving bigger amounts can lead to unconsciously eating more.

We reviewed portion sizes of common foods and drinks that children aged two to 16 years consumed, from 1995 to 2007.

We found typical portion sizes for cooked meat and chicken, mixed chicken dishes, bacon and ham, fish and pizza had increased.

Portion sizes decreased for most dairy products, breakfast cereals, vegetables and some packaged snacks.

Read more: Health check: do bigger portion sizes make you eat more?

Don’t let fussy eating derail healthy eating plans

It is common for children to go through a period of fussy eating with reports varying from one to three out of every five.

Kids’ appetites can vary a lot, particularly among toddlers who are more likely to only eat when they are hungry, regardless of whether it is meal time or not.

Strategies that help children eat healthily include learning by seeing what others do and having direct contact with foods through touch, taste and smell.

Read more: How to tell if your kid’s ‘fussy eating’ phase is normal

Try to have set meal and snack times (breakfast, lunch and dinner and two to three snacks) and offer children foods from each of the food groups daily. If a child isn’t hungry at that time, wait until the next scheduled meal or snack and offer food then.

At the dinner table focus on the behaviours you want to see. Do this by praising the child who is trying the meal and tasting new foods. For example, “I love the way you tasted that eggplant”.

Finally, plan inexpensive meals that do not take long to prepare and that children can feed themselves, such as those on the No Money No Time website.

Want more information on nutrition for kids?

We have developed two free three-week Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).

1. Food for Kids: Discovering Healthy Eating is an interactive course designed for primary school aged children. Topics include: what’s in food; how it gets digested in the body; identifying healthy food and drinks; and reducing food waste.

2. Food for Kids: A Parent’s Guide is designed for parents, teachers and everyone interested in child nutrition. Topics include: how food and drinks influence growth and development; which foods and how much are needed for children to meet nutrition guidelines; and how to develop healthy household eating habits.

Courses start March 4 but you can enrol any time during the course, once it starts.

If you want to know how your child’s current dietary patterns rate, and are looking for some specific tips to improve their nutrition, you can do the Healthy Eating Quiz here.

Read more: Five things parents can do to improve their children’s eating patterns

– ref. How much food should my child be eating? And how can I get them to eat more healthily? – https://theconversation.com/how-much-food-should-my-child-be-eating-and-how-can-i-get-them-to-eat-more-healthily-130470

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Ganter, Senior Climatologist, Australian Bureau of Meteorology

The past Australian summer was a season of two contrasting halves. So did the midsummer weather change make a dint in the drought, and is it likely to continue through autumn?

The first half of summer was exceptionally hot, dry and dusty. Parts of eastern and southern Australia were engulfed by significant bushfires, and smoke haze covered large areas.

In the second half of the season, tropical moisture at times extended into southern Australia, producing well above-average rainfall for some areas. This was great news for many, but some parts of the country missed out. Other areas need follow-up falls over the coming months to ease the long-term dry, and inland water storages increased only slightly.

The autumn outlook suggests warmer-than-average temperatures for most of the country. There is also a slightly increased chance of wetter-than-average conditions in parts of southern Australia, indicating some areas could see a gradual easing of the drought conditions.

What happened this summer?

Summer 2019-20 was the nation’s second hottest in 110 years of records, driven in part by Australia’s hottest December on record in 2019. Warmth across much of the tropical north and east persisted into January and February. Summer nights were second-warmest on record.

Total summer rainfall was closer to normal – 8% below the long-term average. But the rainfall figures hide the significant shift in the climate mid-way through the season.

Australia experienced very warm and dry conditions in the lead-up to summer. With a delayed onset of the monsoon moving into the southern hemisphere, heat built across northern and central Australia from the start of December and was drawn south by weather systems.

Read more: Some say we’ve seen bushfires worse than this before. But they’re ignoring a few key facts

Australia had its hottest day on record on December 18, with a nationwide average temperature of 41.88℃. This was far above the previous record of 40.32℃ set on January 7, 2013.

Six other days in December 2019 also exceeded this previous record. To put this in context, the Australia-wide average maximum temperature has exceeded 40℃ for more days in the past two summers than in the preceding 110 years combined.

The hottest temperature recorded this summer was at Nullabor, South Australia, on December 19, when it reached 49.9℃.

Averaged across the continent, December maximum temperatures were 4.15℃ above average – the previous December record was 2.41℃ above average, set in 2018.

Then the rains came

Early January brought a noticeable change to the weather, with the first tropical cyclones of the season and the belated arrival of the monsoon.

Tropical cyclones Blake and Claudia brought heavy rain to much of the Top End and northern and central parts of Western Australia, while the east coast saw heavy falls in northern New South Wales and southeast Queensland.

February brought more tropical moisture to the continent and another two cyclones—Damien and Esther.

Despite this, temperatures across the north remained very warm. The monsoon did not arrive until January 18, some three weeks later than normal, though almost a week earlier than the previous year. Even after the monsoon arrived it was sporadic, so did little to temper the heat.

The Darwin River Dam (Darwin’s main water storage) dropped to 54% capacity – the result of two relatively dry wet seasons in a row.

In contrast, in southern parts of Australia, February felt milder than normal. After Melbourne had three days over 40℃ in December – the most in December since 1897 – it had no days at all over 35℃ in February. This last happened in 1994.

What’s driving all this?

The abrupt change in weather patterns mid-season can be attributed to changes in two key Australian climate drivers: a strong positive phase of the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), and a negative phase of the Southern Annular Mode (SAM).

A positive IOD typically brings drier weather to much of southern, central and northern Australia. The 2019 positive IOD was the strongest since 1997 and affected large parts of the country (and eastern Africa) during the second half of the year. Normally such an event ends with the movement of the Asian monsoon into the southern hemisphere in late spring/early summer, but in 2019–20 this movement occurred about a month later than usual.

The delayed arrival of the Australian monsoon was likely related to the strength of the IOD itself, which prevented the monsoon’s southward shift.

Read more: The air above Antarctica is suddenly getting warmer – here’s what it means for Australia

The negative SAM typically brings drier and hotter than average weather to much of southeast and eastern Australia in spring and summer. It was triggered by a sudden warming of the stratosphere above Antarctica, identified in early September. This rare event affected Australian climate from October to December.

Both negative SAM and positive IOD are known to enhance the likelihood of increased springtime heatwaves and fire weather in southeast Australia.

In addition to these events, Australia’s changing climate underpinned the drier and warmer weather across southern Australia in winter and spring.

What to expect in autumn

Rain has eased the dry in some places, but more is needed. Most heavy rain was recorded east of the Great Dividing Range, while larger totals west of the range generally fell in regions that didn’t feed into water storages, or where soils were so dry there was little runoff into storages.

While Sydney’s water storages rose from 42% to 81% during the second half of summer, storages in the northern Murray—Darling Basin only rose from 6% to 12% – similar to levels at the height of the Millennium drought.

And while some areas had good summer rainfall, others missed out. Western NSW and southwest Queensland endured another dry summer.

Read more: ‘This crisis has been unfolding for years’: 4 photos of Australia from space, before and after the bushfires

The autumn outlook suggests parts of southern Australia have a slightly increased chance of being wetter-than-average, while scattered parts of the north may see a drier end to the northern wet season. Autumn days are likely to be warmer than average for most of the country, except for parts of southern Australia, suggesting evaporation will remain above average.

This outlook would indicate some areas could see a gradual easing of the drought conditions.

For more information, watch the Bureau’s March–May 2020 Climate and Water Outlook video and subscribe to receive Climate Information emails.

– ref. After a summer of extremes, here’s what to expect this autumn – https://theconversation.com/after-a-summer-of-extremes-heres-what-to-expect-this-autumn-132862

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leah Mercer, Associate Professor of Theatre Arts, Curtin University

Review: Beethoven’s Fidelio. West Australian Symphony Orchestra, West Australian Opera and Perth Festival.

There’s something disconcertingly compartmentalised about opera – particularly opera in concert. The audience stays lit throughout, and the chorus sit behind the orchestra looking at us looking at them.

Then there’s the surtitles, the amplification of the voices that separates them from their source, the position of the singers across the front of the orchestra, the varying degrees to which they enact the experience of their characters, and the fact they’re all dressed in contemporary clothes not connected to their characters.

Add to this there is something out of time about opera. But maybe that’s just me, maybe it’s just out of my time.

All of these variables were in play as I watched Beethoven’s Fidelio, presented by the West Australian Symphony Orchestra (WASO) and Perth Festival in association with the West Australian Opera.

When the narrator (Eryn Jean Norvill) enters and says something like “Imagine a world entirely unlike ours, or maybe it isn’t so different…” the shackles of my preconceptions and discombobulation start to soften. Equal parts storyteller and commentator, Norvill provides the perfect bridge for us to cross over into Fidelio’s world.

As she continues, her words make us imagine a prison, and a prison of “misdirected desires”; a garden and a garden of freedom. Themes of love, imprisonment and freedom run through this work.

Read more: Ahead of his time, Beethoven still inspires

Fidelio is Beethoven’s only opera. Presented here in concert rather than production, WASO’s principal conductor, Asher Fisch, suggested the addition of narrated text to provide a throughline for the audience. Using description and commentary, writer Alison Croggon touches on the tangle of love (both misplaced and perfectly placed) and the themes of corruption and political persecution underpinning this story.

A bridge between old and new

The narration provides hooks for the audience to grasp, and historical and contemporary context to remind us how these themes remain as pertinent as ever.

Croggon tracks Beethoven’s diminishing faith in Napoleon to the way he redeveloped the opera from its poorly received premiere in 1805 to the final version, which was rapturously received in 1814. Then, she writes of illegally detained prisoners, “everywhere, even today, even in this country”, and the work seems to bristle with contemporary, cultural relevance.

Croggan highlights the ways the powerful punish those who tell the truth, and the undeniable truth, “not every wall is visible”.

Standing behind a lectern with script in view, the audience views the narrator differently from the singers who are wholly immersed in the physical act of performing these songs. This divide creates a striking contrast in embodiment.

There are many highlights throughout the evening. The quartet in act one, between Leonore (disguised as the boy Fidelio) (Christiane Libor), Marzelline (Felicitas Fuchs), Jaquino (Andrew Goodwin) and Rocco (Jonathan Lemalu), starts as a delicate interplay between Marzelline expressing her love for Fidelio and Leonore her fear of exposure. It builds into a complex overlap as the other characters join.

Read more: Performing Beethoven – what it feels like to embody a master on today’s stage

The thrilling complexity of juggling four concurrent points of view makes this quartet an early turning point where all the diverse elements seem to come together. The form settles. Or perhaps I just settle into the form.

Warwick Fyfe is impassioned as the evil prison governor, joined by the 40-strong male members of the WASO chorus in his rousing introduction. His is a visceral performance. From the thump of his footsteps as he enters the stage, Fyfe’s performance supersedes the concert form, giving a peek into how this character could be played in a full production.

When we return from interval, the house lights are slightly dimmed to suggest Leonore’s descent into the underground prison to rescue her husband Florestan (Tomislav Mužek), falsely imprisoned for political reasons. We first see Florestan seated, leaning forward, hands crossed in his lap. This simple staging choice helps encapsulate his suffering.

In the program, Croggan says one of the things that drew her to Fidelio was here was an opera in which the woman doesn’t die. She is, in fact, the hero who rescues her husband. Her reveal as his wife Leonore rather than Fidelio is splendidly performed by Libor, culminating in a beautifully performed duet with Florestan.

To paraphrase Croggan’s narration, “Leonora’s other name is Hope.” This is how the evening ends, full of rousing hope and joy. The crowd hisses with glee at the curtain call of the villain and yells bravos and bravas for everyone else.

The sense of triumph in the room is infectious. Beethoven’s music and Croggan’s images – “the garden is always there waiting for us” – resound as we walk away into the night.

– ref. Fidelio review: Beethoven’s only opera bristles with contemporary relevance – https://theconversation.com/fidelio-review-beethovens-only-opera-bristles-with-contemporary-relevance-132271

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Priya Chacko, Senior Lecturer in International Politics, University of Adelaide

Last week, India’s capital, New Delhi, experienced its worst communal violence targeting a religious minority in more than 30 years. The death toll currently stands at 43 and parts of northeast Delhi remain under lock-down.

As per usual after incidents of violence against minorities in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi responded with days of silence. Finally commenting on Twitter, he said, “peace and harmony are central to our ethos” and appealed for “peace and brotherhood at all times”.

But under Modi, India’s ethos is Hindu, and peace and brotherhood requires religious minorities to know their place. It is this sort of Hindu nationalism that led to the attacks on Muslims, their homes, schools and their places of worship.

The Gujarat model goes national

Modi was elected in 2014 on the promise he would bring his “Gujarat model” of high growth rates driven by private-sector-led manufacturing to national prominence.

But the Gujarat model also involved the promotion of a vicious right-wing populist politics, which sought to create and elevate a Hindu majority out of a socially and economically diverse population to act as a voting bloc for Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

This strategy relied on the creation of a common enemy in Muslims and secular liberals. It involved the strategic use of violence to polarise communities in areas where the BJP faced the most electoral competition.

Critics warned that although Modi had seemingly adopted a technocratic focus on governance and development during the election campaign, his right-wing populist politics of division bubbled just below the surface and would be unleashed if the BJP came to power.

Read more: India’s plan to identify ‘illegal immigrants’ could get some Muslims declared ‘foreign’

As polarisation has intensified over the past six years, the critics were proven right.

Muslims and Dalits have been the targets of lynchings by Hindu activists in the name of protecting cows, a long-standing Hindu nationalist preoccupation.

University students, activists, opposition politicians and protestors who challenge the government have been charged with sedition or incitement to violence.

Yogi Adityanath, a militant Hindu monk, was also appointed as chief minister of India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh.

Since being reelected in May with an even bigger majority, the Modi government has claimed a mandate to fulfil long-standing Hindu nationalist demands to further marginalise minorities in India.

The Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens

The Citizenship Amendment Act was one of these demands. The act violates the non-discriminatory spirit of India’s constitution by allowing persecuted Hindus, Parsis, Jains, Buddhists, Sikhs and Christians from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan – but not persecuted Muslims – a fast-tracked route to citizenship.

Modi’s government has also promised a National Register of Citizens that will require Indians to provide documentary evidence of their citizenship.

A version of this exercise was conducted in the state of Assam, with disastrous effects. About 1.9 million Assamese were declared non-citizens and will now have to go through a long appeals process in special courts that function poorly.

Read more: Indian citizenship has now been reduced to ‘us’ versus ‘them’

Human rights groups have called the proposed NRC an anti-poor measure. Indian Muslims fear the government will also rob them of their citizenship and constitutional rights.

The joint CAA-NRC agenda of the Modi government has stirred millions of Indians into peaceful protests around the country, showcasing a spirit of collective resistance not witnessed since India’s independence movement in the 1940s.

The most powerful protests have been led by Muslim women – a first in Indian history – in Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh area. The protesters have occupied a public space here for two and a half months, braving the bitter cold of northern Indian winters.

Shaheen Bagh has also inspired over a hundred other women-led permanent protests around India.

Rhetoric leads to violence

Last week’s violence in New Delhi is a consequence of the ruling regime’s campaign against the protests. This campaign intensified during the BJP’s election campaign when the party mobilised public support against the protesters by accusing them of fomenting violence and disrupting public order.

Travelling to Delhi to energise voters, Adityanath, the militant Hindu monk in Uttar Pradesh, said the protesters should be fed “bullets”. Anurag Thakur, a BJP member of parliament and minister of state, chanted “shoot the traitors” at an election rally, referring to protesters.

This was followed by two incidents of shootings at students and protesters by individuals who identified as Modi supporters.

Read more: Narendra Modi has won the largest election in the world. What will this mean for India?

Despite being roundly defeated in the Delhi election, BJP leaders have continued their campaign of polarisation in preparation for future elections.

Last week’s violence was sparked when BJP leaders and supporters mobilised to break up protests against the CAA and NRC in Delhi. It was no accident the violence was concentrated in fiercely contested electorates where BJP leaders had urged voters to show their anger against the Shaheen Bagh women by voting for the party.

The perpetrator of the hate speech that sparked the violence, BJP leader Kapil Mishra, continues to make provocative statements against opponents. The police, who are accused of being indifferent and complicit in the violence, have yet to charge him with an offence.

Nothing to see here

While parts of Delhi burned, Modi was entertaining US President Donald Trump, who praised India’s tolerance. Australian Trade Minister Simon Birmingham was also visiting India with a large trade mission and touted India’s rule of law and tolerance as its strengths. Both declared the violence to be a matter for India.

The tide is beginning to turn, however. Potential Democratic presidential nominees Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have both criticised the Modi regime. (The BJP president, BL Santhosh, responded by threatening to interfere in the 2020 US presidential election.)

The Greens’ Mehreen Faruqi, meanwhile, has moved a motion in the Australian Senate that is critical of the Indian government.

Mounting international criticism is unlikely to alter the BJP’s policies or approach, which are rooted in its Hindu nationalist raison d’etre.

But international support will bolster resistance within India against a regime striving for political domination through violent polarisation.

– ref. Why Modi’s India has become a dangerous place for Muslims – https://theconversation.com/why-modis-india-has-become-a-dangerous-place-for-muslims-132591

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Warwick McKibbin, Chair in Public Policy, ANU Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis (CAMA), Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

The COVID-19 coronavirus is spreading across the world. Initially the epicenter was China, with reported cases either in China or in travellers from China. There are now at least four further epicenters: Iran, Italy, Japan and South Korea.

Although the World Health Organisation believes the number of cases in China has peaked and should fall, case reports are climbing from countries previously thought to be resilient due to stronger medical standards and practices.

In a strongly connected and integrated world, the impacts of the disease will go beyond mortality (deaths) and morbidity (people incapacitated or caring for the incapacitated and unable to work).

Companies across the world, irrespective of size, depend on inputs from China – much more so than during the 2002-04 China-centred Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) pandemic.

Read more: World economy flashes red over coronavirus – with strange echoes of 1880s Yellow Peril hysteria

In 2003 China accounted for less than one twentieth of world trade. It now accounts for one seventh, making it the world’s biggest importer and an integral part of most global production chains.

Just as important to the world economy, panic is distorting spending. Global stock markets have plunged.

Fear is as important as trade

Entire cities in China have closed and travel restrictions have been placed on people entering from infected countries.

The fear of an unknown deadly virus is similar in its psychological effects to the reaction to terrorism threats and produces a high level of stress, often with longer-term consequences.

A large number of people feel at-risk at the onset of a pandemic, even if their actual risk of dying is low.

Read more: We’re staring down the barrel of a technical recession as the coronavirus enters a new and dangerous phase

The International Monetary Fund expects COVID-19 to knock 0.4 points off China’s economic growth target of 5.6% and 0.1 points off global growth, an assessment it will continue to update.

On Monday the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development sliced 0.8 points off its forecast for China’s growth and 0.5 points off its forecast for Australian growth.

As part of a large research project in the Centre for Excellence in Population Ageing Research (CEPAR) at the Australian National University, we have applied experience gained from evaluating the impact of SARS for the World Health Organisation in 2003 and 2006 to seven scenarios for COVID-19:

The scenarios vary the attack rate (the proportion of the total population contracting the virus), the mortality rate (the proportion of total population who dies), whether epidemic is a one-off (essentially temporary) or recurrs each year (essentially permanent), and whether it spreads globally or is largely confined to China.

Australian faces a significant hit to GDP

We find that in the four scenarios where the epidemic goes global, Australia’s GDP which in the 12 months to December grew just 1.7%, would suffer a hit in the first year of between 2% and 7.9%, most likely sending GDP backwards (a recession).

In all countries the sharp hit to growth would be followed by a gradual recovery.

The results are very sensitive to the assumptions used, including government responses in each country.

In the short term, central banks and treasuries will need to make sure disrupted economies continue to function.

Australia: percentage change in real GDP

While cutting interest rates is an option, the shock will require a mix of monetary, fiscal and health policy responses. Quarantining affected people and reducing large scale social interaction would be an effective response.

Wide dissemination of good hygiene practices can be a low cost and highly effective response that can also reduce the extent of contagion and keep down the social and economic cost.

The longer-term responses are even more important.

Many governments have been reluctant to invest sufficiently in their health care systems, especially in public systems in less developed countries where many infectious diseases are likely to originate.

Investments in overseas public health matter

The idea that any country can be an island in an integrated global economy is being proved wrong.

Poverty kills people. However, the outbreak of COVID-19 shows that diseases, potentially generated in poor countries due to overcrowding, poor public health and interaction with wild animals, can kill people of any socioeconomic group in any country.

There needs to be vastly more investment in public health and development in the richest but also, and especially, in the poorest countries.

Read more: It’s now a matter of when, not if, for Australia. This is how we’re preparing for a jump in coronavirus cases

Our study suggests big economic costs in countries such as Australia can be avoided through global cooperative investment in public health in all countries.

We have known this for decades, yet politicians continue to ignore the scientific and economic evidence about the role of global public health in improving the quality of life and driving economic growth for us all.

– ref. The first economic modelling of coronavirus scenarios is grim for Australia, the world – https://theconversation.com/the-first-economic-modelling-of-coronavirus-scenarios-is-grim-for-australia-the-world-132759

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dustin Marshall, Professor, Marine Evolutionary Ecology, Monash University

Apart from mammals and birds, most animals develop as eggs exposed to the vagaries of the outside world. This development is energetically “costly”. Going from a tiny egg to a fully functioning organism can deplete up to 60% of the energy reserves provided by a parent.

In cold-blooded animals such as marine invertebrates (including sea stars and corals), fish and reptiles, and even insects, embryonic development is very sensitive to changes in the temperature of the environment.

Thus, in a warming world, many cold-blooded species face a new challenge: developing successfully despite rising temperatures.

Read more: Curious Kids: why do eggs have a yolk?

For our research, published today in Nature Ecology and Evolution, we mined existing literature for data on how temperature impacts the metabolic and developmental rates of 71 different species, ranging from tropical crocodiles to Antarctic krill.

We found that over time, species tend to fine-tune their physiology so that the temperature of the place they inhabit is the temperature needed to minimise the “costs” of their embryonic development.

Temperature increases associated with global warming could substantially impact many of these species.

The perfect weather to grow an embryo

The energy costs of embryonic development are determined by two key rates. The “metabolic” rate refers to the rate at which energy is used by the embryo, and the “development” rate determines how long it takes the embryo to fully develop, and become an independent organism.

Both of these rates are heavily impacted by environmental temperature. Any change in temperature affecting them is therefore costly to an embryo’s development.

Generally, a 10°C increase in temperature will cause an embryo’s development and metabolic rate to more than triple.

These effects partially cancel each other out. Higher temperatures increase the rate at which energy is used (metabolic), but shorten the developmental time.

But do they balance out effectively?

What are the costs?

For any species, there is one temperature that achieves the perfect energetic balance between relatively rapid development and low metabolism. This optimal temperature, also called the “Goldilocks” temperature, is neither too hot, nor too cold.

When the temperature is too cold for a certain species, development takes a long time. When it’s too hot, development time decreases while the metabolic rate continues to rise. An imbalance on either side of this scale can negatively impact a natural population’s resilience and ability to replenish.

As an embryo’s developmental costs increase past the optimum, mothers must invest more resources into each offspring to offset these costs.

When offspring become more costly to make, mothers make fewer, larger offspring. These offspring start life with fewer energy reserves, reducing their chances of successfully reproducing as adults themselves.

Thus, when it comes to embryonic development, higher-than ideal temperatures pack a nasty punch for natural populations.

Since the temperature dependencies of metabolic rate and development rate are fairly similar, the slight differences between them had gone unnoticed until recently.

Read more: Why cold-blooded animals don’t need to wrap up to keep warm

Embryos at risk

For each species in our study, we found a narrow band of temperatures that minimised developmental cost. Temperatures that were too high or too low caused massive blow-outs in the energy budget of developing embryos.

This means temperature increases associated with global warming are likely to have bigger impacts than previously predicted.

Predictions of how future temperature changes will affect organisms are often based on estimates of how temperature affects embryo survival. These measures suggest small temperature increases (1°C-2°C) do not reduce embryo survival by much.

But our study found the developmental costs are about twice as high, and we had underestimated the impacts of subtle temperature changes on embryo development.

In the warming animal kingdom, there are winners and losers

Some good news is that our research suggests not all species are facing rising costs with rising temperatures, at least initially.

We’ve created a mathematical framework called the Developmental Cost Theory, which predicts some species will actually experience slightly lower developmental costs with minor increases in temperature.

Read more: Flipping the genetic ‘switch’ that makes many animals look alike as embryos

In particular, aquatic species (fish and invertebrates) in cool temperate waters seem likely to experience lower costs in the near future. In contrast, certain tropical aquatic species (including coral reef organisms) are already experiencing temperatures that exceed their optimum. This is likely to get worse.

It’s important to note that for all species, increasing environmental temperature will eventually come with costs.

Even if a slight temperature increase reduces costs for one species, too much of an increase will still have a negative impact. This is true for all the organisms we studied.

A key question now is: how quickly can species evolve to adapt to our warming climate?

– ref. From crocodiles to krill, a warming world raises the ‘costs’ paid by developing embryos – https://theconversation.com/from-crocodiles-to-krill-a-warming-world-raises-the-costs-paid-by-developing-embryos-132673

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elena Campbell, Associate Director – Research, Advocacy and Policy, Centre for Innovative Justice, RMIT University

Adolescents are consistently identified as perpetrators of violence against family members. We know this from a decade of Victorian court and police data. Victoria’s Royal Commission into Family Violence also highlighted the growing recognition that adolescent perpetration is a serious concern.

Further, findings by the Australian Institute of Criminology indicate that adolescents in contact with police for violence often have further contact soon after, including for breaches of protection orders. Victorian Crime Statistics Agency figures also recently confirmed what we’ve known for some time: adolescent perpetrators often experienced violence as a child.

Read more: Long ignored, adolescent family violence needs our attention

But what we have known little about is how effectively the civil justice response – the predominant response in some jurisdictions – deals with this issue. The Positive Interventions for Perpetrators of Adolescent violence in the home (PIPA) project, released this week, finds the civil response in Victoria is often ineffective and sometimes damaging in dealing with adolescents.

This is because police and court mechanisms are failing to account for perpetrators’ age, the relationship of trauma to their behaviour, and their capacity to understand orders or avoid breaching. It is also because there is sometimes more concern the system will come under scrutiny for not doing enough than for the risk to vulnerable families.

In our research, we reviewed 385 court and legal files and spoke to over 150 practitioners across three Australian states. Victorian files revealed cases involving serious risk, but also matters where an adolescent’s behaviour did not appear to meet the legal definition of family violence but an interim order was imposed nonetheless.

Around 25% of court files involved adolescents identified as on the autism spectrum. These families were highly distressed by system intervention. Some feared their other children might be removed. This fear overtook their hope for much-needed support for the child causing harm.

At the other end of the scale were cases involving violence by adults as well as children, but it was the children who were targeted for intervention.

In some files, lawyers detected parental misuse of the system and referred matters to the Children’s Court Clinic for assessment. This confirmed these children had been brought to court as perpetrators, but were in fact the victims of current abuse. The system inadvertently colluded in this abuse instead of addressing it.

One-third of cases involved adolescents excluded from home, but with no legal requirement to consider safety in relation to where they were placed. Similarly, despite orders against children under 14 being imposed regularly, legislation does not require that their capacity to understand these orders be considered. This contrasts with a criminal law principle that the capacity of children under 14 to understand the nature of an offence must be considered.

Further, high rates of trauma and disability among children identified as perpetrators make it even less likely they will comply with orders or regulate their behaviour. At its simplest, this means our system is sometimes imposing intervention orders on 13-year-olds who are on the autism spectrum, or who have histories of profound trauma, and then wondering why they return to court for failing to comply.

Our findings are not critical of police or courts. Most are desperate for more options. Rather, the settings of the current civil response are not equipped to deal with the complexity that adolescent family violence involves.

Read more: ‘Silent victims’: royal commission recommends better protections for child victims of family violence

Criminal mechanisms are not the alternative, either. This is because criminal justice system involvement is a known predictor of future involvement, despite the additional support that diversionary measures sometimes afford.

Nor is the answer to exclude certain forms of perpetration from legislative definitions. While this may mean children are not inadvertently captured in a one-size-fits-all response, it also means the behaviour is not recognised or tracked by the system at all. As a result, families are left to struggle in even greater isolation.

Rather, our research shows that more nuance and discretion, legislative checks and balances, and whole-of-family risk assessment are needed. We should track the rate of adolescent perpetration, but also respond to what sits behind it. This is to ensure children do not suffer from responses designed to deal with adult perpetrators.

If families are deterred from seeking help because they know the system’s intervention may make things worse, we will never have reliable figures on adolescent perpetration. Addressing this is a crucial step towards helping affected families feel supported and safe.

– ref. Adolescent family violence is a growing problem – and the legal system is making it worse – https://theconversation.com/adolescent-family-violence-is-a-growing-problem-and-the-legal-system-is-making-it-worse-132663

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher Blyth, Paediatrician, Infectious Diseases Physician and Clinical Microbiologist, University of Western Australia

The new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes the disease COVID-19, has infected nearly 90,000 people and caused more than 3,000 deaths so far.

Parents are understandably concerned. But it’s important to keep in mind that comparatively few children have tested positive for the virus, and deaths in children are very rare.

Here’s what we know so far about how children are affected.

Read more: It’s now a matter of when, not if, for Australia. This is how we’re preparing for a jump in coronavirus cases

Remind me, what is COVID-19?

COVID-19 is caused by a new strain of a family of viruses discovered in the 1960s. Coronaviruses get their name from a distinctive corona or “crown” of sugary proteins surrounding the virus when seen under a powerful microscope.

Coronaviruses circulate in humans, usually causing a mild illness with cough and a runny nose. Coronaviruses are also frequently found in animals with speculation COVID-19 emerged from animals, most likely bats.

Three novel coronaviruses have emerged this century.

In 2002-03, SARS-CoV (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus) emerged in China spreading to North America, South America and Europe. More than 8,000 cases were identified and around 10% of those infected died.

MERS-CoV (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus), emerged from camels in Saudi Arabia in 2012. A large outbreak followed in South Korea in 2015. Nearly 2,500 cases have been reported and 34% of those infected died.

Read more: Explainer: what is the MERS outbreak in South Korea?

SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV infection in children is less commonly reported than would be expected. For example, 3.4% of cases of MERS coronavirus in Saudi Arabia were in children, where around 15% of the population is under 19 years of age.

A similar pattern was seen in SARS, where the rate of reported infection in children under 14 years of age was much lower than in older age groups.

COVID-19 was first detected in Wuhan, China in December 2019 and has already caused more deaths than SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV combined.

So what about children?

The number of reported COVID-19 cases in children remains low: of more than 44,000 confirmed cases from China, only 416 (less than 1%) were aged nine years or younger. No deaths were reported in this age group.

In Australia, only one child has so far had confirmed COVID-19 infection.

It remains unclear whether the low numbers of child infections recorded is due to:

• low numbers of children being exposed to the virus
• low numbers of children being infected, or
• low numbers of infected children developing symptoms severe enough to present for care.

If large numbers of children are not getting sick, why does it matter?

If children are infected yet have milder symptoms, they may still play a critical role in COVID-19 transmission. Children are mobile, shed large volume of virus, congregate in groups and are at lower risk of severe disease so often maintain their daily activities.

Preventing school-age children getting infected with influenza has been shown to be an effective community prevention strategy. In the absence of a COVID-19 vaccine, school closures may need to be considered when looking at ways to decrease community spread, if children are found to be key transmitters of infection.

What symptoms do children get?

Chinese doctors report infected children often have a cough, nasal congestion, runny nose, diarrhoea and a headache. Less than half of the children have a fever. Many have no symptoms.

The majority of children and adolescents with COVID-19 in China had mild infections and recovered within one to two weeks.

Even infants, who are traditionally more susceptible to severe respiratory infections, had relatively mild infections.

How can you tell if it’s COVID-19?

Most children with COVID-19 present with respiratory symptoms and/or a cough, which is indistinguishable from other common viruses including influenza and rhinovirus.

But so far, all children with confirmed COVID-19 have had family members or close contacts with confirmed infection.

Read more: Kids are more vulnerable to the flu – here’s what to look out for this winter

In the early part of an Australian epidemic, confirming COVID-19 infections will be important to guide our public health response. However if COVID-19 cases continue to climb, this testing approach may change to only test patients who are hospitalised as the only benefit of confirming COVID-19 infection will be to inform treatment and infection control practices in hospitalised patients.

At this stage, it’s unclear if antiviral therapies are useful in the treatment of COVID-19. Many older drugs, such as lopinavir used to treat HIV, have been used to treat some severe cases but need to be formally evaluated. Clinical trials have been registered and some results from Chinese researchers are expected soon.

However, as children have such mild symptoms, it would be hard to justify exposing them to potential side effects of antiviral medication, such as nausea, vomiting and allergic reactions, for little benefit.

How do I prevent my family from being infected?

COVID-19 is spread by droplets generated when an infected person coughs or sneezes. Infection can be transmitted if a person touches objects or surfaces that an infected person has coughed and sneezed on and then touches their mouth, nose or face.

The best way to avoid COVID-19 infection (and infection with any other respiratory virus) is by washing your hands with soap and water, using a tissue or the crook of your elbow to cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze and by avoiding close contact with others who are unwell.

Masks in the community are only helpful in preventing people who have COVID-19 disease from spreading it to others. There is little evidence supporting the widespread use of surgical masks in healthy people to prevent transmission in public – and it’s almost impossible to get small kids to consistently wear these.

A vaccine for COVID-19 is still some way off. But it’s worthwhile getting your child vaccinated against influenza. This is not only to protect your child against influenza, but also to reduce the chance your child might be considered to have COVID-19, and to minimise other illnesses in the community that would use health resources.

Read more: Here’s why the WHO says a coronavirus vaccine is 18 months away

– ref. Worried about your child getting coronavirus? Here’s what you need to know – https://theconversation.com/worried-about-your-child-getting-coronavirus-heres-what-you-need-to-know-131909

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Church, Chair Professor, Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW

For many coastal regions, sea-level rise is a looming crisis threatening our coastal society, livelihoods and coastal ecosystems. A new study, published in Nature Climate Change, has reported the world will lose almost half of its valuable sandy beaches by 2100 as the ocean moves landward with rising sea levels.

Sandy beaches comprise about a third of the world’s coastline. And Australia, with nearly 12,000 kilometres at risk, could be hit hard.

Read more: Ancient Antarctic ice melt caused extreme sea level rise 129,000 years ago – and it could happen again

This is the first truly global study to attempt to quantify beach erosion. The results for the highest greenhouse gas emission scenario are alarming, but reducing emissions lead to lower rates of coastal erosion.

Our best hope for the future of the world’s coastlines and for Australia’s iconic beaches is to keep global warming as low as possible by urgently reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Losing sand in coastal erosion

Two of the largest problems resulting from rising sea levels are coastal erosion and an already-observed increase in the frequency of coastal flooding events.

Erosion during storms can have dramatic consequences, particularly for coastal infrastructure. We saw this in 2016, when wild storms removed sand from beaches and damaged houses in Sydney.

After storms like this, beaches often gradually recover, because sand from deeper waters washes back to the shore over months to years and in some cases decades. These dramatic storms and the long-term sand supply make it difficult to identify any beach movement in the recent past from sea-level rise.

What we do know is that the rate of sea-level rise has accelerated. It has increased by half since 1993, and is continuing to accelerate from ongoing greenhouse gas emissions.

If we continue to emit high levels of greenhouse gases, this acceleration will continue through the 21st century and beyond. As a result, the supply of sand may not be able to keep pace with rapidly rising sea levels.

Projections for the worst-case scenario

In the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, released last year, the highest greenhouse gas emissions scenario resulted in global warming of more than 4°C (relative to pre-industrial temperatures) and a likely range of sea-level rise between 0.6 and 1.1 metres by 2100.

For this scenario, this new study projects a global average landward movement of the coastline in the range of 40 to 250 metres if there were no physical limits to shoreline movement, such as those imposed by sea walls or other coastal infrastructure.

Read more: What does the science really say about sea-level rise?

Sea-level rise is responsible for the vast majority of this beach loss, with faster loss during the latter decades of the 21st century when the rate of rise is larger. And sea levels will continue to rise for centuries, so beach erosion would continue well after 2100.

For southern Australia, the landward movement of the shoreline is projected to be more than 100 metres. This would damage many of Australia’s iconic tourist beaches such as Bondi, Manly and the Gold Coast. The movement in northern Australia is projected to be even larger, but more uncertain because of ongoing historical shoreline trends.

What happens if we mitigate our emissions

The above results are from a worst-case scenario. If greenhouse gas emissions were reduced such that the 2100 global temperature rose by about 2.5°C, instead of more than 4°C, then we’d reduce beach erosion by about a third of what’s projected in this worst-case scenario.

Current global policies would result in about 3°C of global warming. That’s between the 4°C and the 2.5°C scenarios considered in this beach erosion study, implying our current policies will lead to significant beach erosion, including in Australia.

Mitigating our emissions even further to achieving the Paris goal of keeping temperature rise to well below 2°C would be a major step in reducing beach loss.

Why coastal erosion is hard to predict

Projecting sea-level rise and resulting beach erosion are particularly difficult as both depend on many factors.

For sea level, the major problems are estimating the contribution of melting Antarctic ice flowing into the ocean, how sea level will change on a regional scale, and the amount of global warming.

The beach erosion calculated in this new study depends on several new databases. The databases of recent shoreline movement used to project ongoing natural factors might already be influenced by rising sea levels, possibly leading to an overestimate in the final calculations.

Read more: Sea level rise is inevitable – but what we do today can still prevent catastrophe for coastal regions

The implications

Regardless of the exact numbers reported in this study, it’s clear we will have to adapt to the beach erosion that we can no longer prevent, if we are to continue enjoying our beaches.

This means we need appropriate planning, such as beach nourishment (adding sand to beaches to combat erosion) and other soft and hard engineering solutions. In some cases, we’ll even need to retreat from the coast to allow the beach to migrate landward.

And if we are to continue to enjoy our sandy beaches into the future, we cannot allow ongoing and increasing greenhouse gas emissions. The world needs urgent, significant and sustained global mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions.

– ref. The world may lose half its sandy beaches by 2100. It’s not too late to save most of them – https://theconversation.com/the-world-may-lose-half-its-sandy-beaches-by-2100-its-not-too-late-to-save-most-of-them-132586

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carolyn MacCann, Associate Professor, University of Sydney

The ability to understand emotions contributes almost as much to students’ grades as their IQ.

Past studies show two personal qualities are important for student academic success – intelligence and conscientiousness.

IQ scores explain about 15% of the differences between students’ grades. Conscientiousness, such as having the diligence to do enough study, explains about 5%.

Our recent research has found emotional intelligence explains 4% of differences between students’ achievement. But the ability to understand emotions, a component of emotional intelligence, explains about 12% of differences in students’ grades.

What is emotional intelligence?

Different researchers use slightly different definitions of emotional intelligence.

Some define emotional intelligence as the ability to perceive, use, understand and manage your own and other people’s emotions. This is called “ability emotional intelligence”.

Others also include character traits such as optimism, impulse control and the ability to motivate yourself. This is called “mixed emotional intelligence” because it is a mix of abilities and character traits.

We examined the findings of more than 150 studies on the link between emotional intelligence and academic performance. These studies included more than 42,000 students and 1,246 different estimations of the size of the relationship between emotional intelligence and academic performance.

Read more: Children benefit when taught social and emotional skills – but some methods are better than others

Some of the studies in our analysis used rating scales to assess emotional intelligence. Here, test-takers might rate their emotional abilities with items like “I am aware of the non-verbal messages other people send” or rate their mixed emotional intelligence with items like “I am motivated to succeed”.

Others tested emotional intelligence directly by measuring participants’ emotional abilities with skill-based tasks. For example, test takers might be asked to identify which emotion is expressed in a face.

We found that, overall, emotional intelligence explained about 4% of differences in students’ academic achievement. But some emotional intelligence types were more important than others.

Skill-based emotional intelligence, such as reading people’s faces, explained 6% of differences in academic achievement, but self-ratings of emotional abilities explained 1% of differences. So, emotional skills assessed from the outside are more important for students’ academic performance than students’ self-ratings (or self-beliefs) about their emotional skills.

But some emotional skills were more important than others. The two most important emotional skills for academic success were understanding emotions and managing emotions.

Students who can understand emotions can accurately label their own and others’ emotions. They know what causes emotions, how emotions change and how they combine. Students who can manage emotions know how to regulate their emotions in a stressful situation. They also know what to do to maintain good social relationships with others.

Emotion management skills accounted for 7% of differences in academic performance . Emotion understanding skills accounted for 12%. That is, understanding emotions is more important for student success than conscientiousness (5%) and almost as important as students’ IQ (15%).

Read more: Understanding others’ feelings: what is empathy and why do we need it?

Emotionally intelligent students tend to be more intelligent as well as more conscientious. But our study found it wasn’t just that emotionally intelligent students were also more likely to be intelligent and conscientious.

We applied a statistical technique called meta-regression to examine what the effect of emotional intelligence would be if everyone had the same level of conscientiousness and intelligence.

For students who had the same levels of conscientiousness and intelligence, emotional intelligence was still linked with higher academic performance.

For students with the same levels of intelligence and conscientiousness:

• self-ratings of mixed emotional intelligence (the one involving both skills and character traits) explained 2.3% of differences in performance

• emotion understanding skills explained 3.9% of differences in performance

• emotion management skills explained 3.6% of differences in performance.

Why is emotional intelligence linked to good grades?

There are at least three reasons why we believe emotional intelligence relates to higher academic performance.

First, students with higher emotional intelligence can regulate their “academic emotions”. Students may feel anxious about tests and performance. They may feel bored when learning required but dull material. And they may feel frustrated or disappointed when they try their hardest but still can’t quite get the hang of a task.

Students who can regulate these tough emotions will achieve more. Anxiety will not impair the test performance. They can push through the boredom and frustration to master dull or difficult material. They can learn from negative feedback or failure rather than be derailed by disappointment.

Read more: Here’s what teachers look for when kids start school

Second, students with higher emotional intelligence can form better social relationships with their classmates and teachers. They can get help with schoolwork or with social and emotional needs when they need it.

Third, many non-technical academic subjects require an understanding of human emotions and social relations as an inherent part of the subject matter. Analysing universal themes of love and betrayal in Shakespeare plays requires not just verbal skills but emotional knowledge and skill. Analysing the role of charismatic leaders in the rise of fascist regimes likewise requires social knowledge and analysis.

Our results show that teachers, parents and students should focus on student’s emotional skills not just for student’s well-being, but for their ability to succeed academically.

– ref. Understanding emotions is nearly as important as IQ for students’ academic success – https://theconversation.com/understanding-emotions-is-nearly-as-important-as-iq-for-students-academic-success-131212

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Arthure, PhD Candidate, Archaeology, Flinders University, Flinders University

Archaeological research has uncovered the remains of a 19th-century Irish community beneath an otherwise ordinary paddock in rural South Australia. Fitting the clustered form of settlement known as a “clachan”, it’s the first to be identified in Australia. Even more remarkably, this community thrived many years after this traditional way of living died out in Ireland.

The story of this discovery began in November 2012 when I walked for the first time on Baker’s Flat near Kapunda, about an hour’s drive north of Adelaide. I was an Irish-Australian archaeologist in search of an Irish colonial settlement.

In 1842, the discovery of copper at Kapunda led to the development of Australia’s first successful metal mine. The Irish arrived in 1854, seeking work as mine workers. They settled on an unused section of land close to the mine known as Baker’s Flat.

Read more: Why archaeology is so much more than just digging

The Irish of Baker’s Flat

The histories are not kind to the Irish of Baker’s Flat. A 1929 collection of Kapunda stories established a narrative about the settlement as haphazard and chaotic, full of squalid hovels and unrestrained animals, and which essentially operated as a closed Irish community set apart from the rest of the town. Along with newspaper accounts of fights, public drunkenness and land disputes, the scene was set for these Irish to be perceived in stereotypical fashion as dirty, drunk, rebellious and lawless.

Years later, in the 1950s, the remains of any houses were demolished so the land could be farmed. Baker’s Flat was effectively erased from the landscape. The Irish were forgotten.

When I began researching the archives, trawling through the records of court cases and land disputes, I was really just trying to understand that community better.

The Irish had occupied Baker’s Flat from 1854 until at least the 1920s. At its peak in the 1860s and 1870s, 500 people were living there. Surely they couldn’t all be drunk and rebellious, or as one-dimensional as the dominant narrative implied.

Read more: Aussie slang is as diverse as Australia itself

Following the clachan trail

I was looking for more depth and balance, but what I found turned out to be even more interesting. A surveyor’s plan from 1893 is the only historic map of the site. It shows a cluster of buildings in the north-west quadrant.

A series of photographs from 1906 depicts Irish-style cottages nestled into the landscape.

Affidavits from a court case disputing ownership and control of the land describe shared decisions, collective action and communal animal management. These facts hinted that this community might have operated as a clachan.

This traditional Irish way of living was characterised by clusters of farm dwellings and outbuildings built in the Irish style. In a clachan, the inhabitants managed the farming land communally. Unlike a classic village, clachans did not have services like shops or pubs.

Until the mid-19th century, clachans were widespread in Ireland. They died out, however, in the social upheaval following the Great Famine of 1845–1850. My research at this point indicated that, while the clachan was vanishing in Ireland, a vibrant one was flourishing in the heart of South Australia. Significantly, the only other clachan outside of Ireland to be hinted at so far is a cluster of houses built by 19th-century Irish migrants on Beaver Island, Lake Michigan.

Bringing in the archaeology

The next step was to test my theory using archaeological methods. First was a surface survey in 2013. Teams of archaeology students walked along a set route, observing and recording what they could see on the surface.

This survey identified the remains of 13 buildings (now just small heaps of rubble) and scattered broken glass and ceramics, mainly in the north-west quadrant.

Based on these findings, we carried out a geophysical survey in 2016. Using ground-penetrating radar and a magnetic gradiometer, we found several large sub-surface features.

These were clustered together and fit the pattern of rectangular structures about 10m long and 5m wide. There were also indications of paths and enclosures.

We tested these findings by excavation over two summer field seasons in 2016 and 2017. The excavations uncovered the walls of a long rectangular house, dug into the bedrock. It was one room deep, shaped like a traditional Irish dwelling, and matched the design of the photographed houses from 1906.

There was a cobbled path to the east. A small rubbish dump contained many 19th-century glass and ceramic fragments and butchered bones.

Read more: Googling the past: how I uncovered prehistoric remains from my office

Here lies a clachan

When all the evidence is combined, it confirms the presence of a clachan, the first to be identified in Australia. Analysis of the glass, ceramic and bone artefacts is ongoing but indicates so far that the Irish were generally drinking, eating and using the same things as other members of the broader colonial Australian community.

What is different here is the way they chose to live, building houses in the Irish tradition, living close together and making decisions jointly.

We do not know if the Baker’s Flat Irish deliberately set out to establish a clachan in a small corner of South Australia. It was such a common style of living at the time they left Ireland it may well be they just continued doing what they had always done and that it emerged organically. But they left enough behind to build a picture that challenges the stereotypes.

The archaeology is revealing that it wasn’t all chaos and lawlessness at Baker’s Flat. There was order. And this order took the particular form of the clachan.

As well as looking at the ancient past, archaeology is also about the recent past and what might lie beneath an unassuming paddock. It focuses on people and the things they discard or leave behind. For me, it’s about ordinary people, whose stories get forgotten as time goes by, but who leave traces in the landscape and the archives for archaeologists to uncover.

– ref. Unearthing a traditional Irish village that lingered in a South Australian field – https://theconversation.com/unearthing-a-traditional-irish-village-that-lingered-in-a-south-australian-field-132344

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tom Stevenson, Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient History, UQ, The University of Queensland

The Satyricon by Petronius is an unusual surviving text from the ancient world. It is not a work of history, nor a work of soaring epic poetry like Homer’s Iliad or Virgil’s Aeneid, and for various reasons it is hard to get a handle on.

Its contents are pretty grubby because it is about lowlifes and lowlife behaviour. It depicts petty theft, casual violence, opportunistic sex, prostitution, vulgar gluttony, crass displays of wealth by the most ridiculous social climber and gross disrespect for a range of gods, goddesses and hallowed religious rituals, like funerals and proper treatment of the dead. All the good sleazy stuff for when you’re in the mood for that sort of thing.

Rather than a work about heroes or kings or queens or uplifting examples of how to live a virtuous life, the Satyricon is almost a how-to manual for the opposite.

It is the earliest surviving novel in Latin literature, but it is not even close to being intact. We appear to have bits of three books out of an original 16 or possibly more. So we run into problems trying to understand what the plot of the whole work might have been and whether the bits that survive are representative of it.

As far as we can tell, it’s a tale about the misadventures and love triangle of three young men – the narrator Encolpius, Ascyltus and the younger Gitōn.

They all behave disreputably, all know hunger and poverty, all hurt people, and all get hurt in return.

Encolpius arguably suffers the most when he upsets Priapus, a god of fertility, who renders him impotent. Priapus is normally represented in Roman art sporting an enormous, erect phallus – even weighing it in one famous example. He is a minor deity in comparison to Jupiter or Hercules, but he has one outstanding trait, which means a great deal to the “heroes” of this novel.

When Priapus deprives Encolpius of his virility, he strikes at the core of Encolpius’s identity, causing him much distress and forcing him in panic to seek a succession of absurd remedies.

The main characters are not good boys. They are jealous, perpetually randy, violent, unfaithful and capricious. They separate and come back together. They lack depth. And they meet a series of characters who complement their deficiencies with flaws of their own.

They look for food, shelter, sex and sexual restoration. Charlatans abound. Everyone is selfish and untrustworthy. Religion is flouted and abused, even though it plainly has power.

The attitude to religion seems to be “whatever works”, but no one is exactly sure what works, so they indulge themselves in equal amounts of devotion and derision – with predictable results.

Read more: Friday essay: the erotic art of Ancient Greece and Rome

Our youths seem to be travelling between locations around the Bay of Naples – a notorious region of excess and extravagance, heavily influenced by Greek culture and less constrained by traditional Roman discipline than other parts of Italy.

There is little certainty about this, as with so many features of the tale, but the easy movement between city dives and country villas makes sense in this region.

The banquet of Trimalchio

The most outrageous character they run across is the nouveau-riche pretender Trimalchio, whom they meet through an acquaintance, Eumolpus, who is said to be a poet but is more like a sleaze with intellectual pretensions.

Together they end up at a sumptuous feast at Trimalchio’s villa – the famous Cena Trimalchionis or “Banquet of Trimalchio”.

The feast is a riot of nonsense. Trimalchio, an ex-slave who has bought his freedom, tries to prove he is a man of culture as well as wealth like his free-born counterparts in neighbouring villas and regions. In doing so, of course, he proves only that he completely lacks class or sophistication of any kind and emerges as a self-loving ignoramus.

There is way too much food, especially the meats and sweets. The dishes are too exotic and difficult, especially the tiny birds. They are served in ostentatiously absurd ways by a bizarre collection of slaves and other functionaries. The guests grab greedily and unappreciatively, upsetting plates, cups and each other. The talk is gross and unedifying.

Trimalchio ends up inviting his cronies to a rehearsal of his funeral, which he has planned meticulously on the model of a noble’s or emperor’s funeral. He fails to see how far he falls short. Clothes, and other props, do not make the man.

But there is more to the feast than meets the eye. The vulgarity of the subject matter is especially memorable because it is conveyed by a master satirist or comic genius.

Trimalchio is described with great attention to detail and inventiveness, and with a certain sympathy rather than vindictiveness. Trimalchio and his hangers-on are acquainted with high literature, though they mangle it terribly, sometimes speaking in vulgar Latin and in language rendered comic by its malapropisms and other features. The writer is a virtuoso for pulling off these effects so cleverly.

A comic approach

The key to interpretation is that the text is a satire, as its name implies. It is inspired by the deeds of satyrs: lecherous, half-human creatures of myth, obsessed with sex. They were symbols of the outrageous, the destabilising and the violent.

The youths of our tale are plainly modelled on them. And the text is comic in approach, designed for a festival atmosphere, when it’s okay to release the irrational, the absurd and the bottled-up frustrations that go along with daily commitment to civilised straightness.

The comic silliness of it all is important to consider when pondering the author and purpose of the work. The author, according to the name that has survived with the text, was Titus Petronius Arbiter.

He is generally identified with the prominent courtier of Nero, the senator Gaius Petronius, who was forced to commit suicide in AD 66 for his part in a conspiracy against the emperor. In a famous passage (Annals 16.17-20), Tacitus says Nero looked to this man as his “arbiter of elegance”, as though his judgment of culture and pleasure was admired.

Read more: Mythbusting Ancient Rome – the emperor Nero

This identification between the author of the Satyricon and the Petronius of Tacitus might be right. Roman nobles were highly educated in literature and philosophy. Intellectual attainment was one of the myriad ways they competed with one another for social pre-eminence. Such a man might well have been capable of the literary virtuosity and wit that is on display in the text as we have it.

What is slightly worrying about this identification, however, is that Tacitus gives an appreciative portrayal of a man who sends up and resists a tyrant. Nero was certainly this, as the paranoia and murders of his reign indicate. Yet he was also a great sponsor of culture, especially literature and drama.

Even if the identifications with Tacitus’s Petronius and the reign of Nero are correct, we don’t need to adopt Tacitus’s tone and perspective. The Satyricon does not have to be a work with subversive intent against Nero, and Nero does not have to be read into the story in place of Trimalchio. Petronius does not have to be a social critic who was appalled by the corruption and depravity of Nero’s court.

It’s much more fun if he wasn’t any of these things in this work, but was instead a man who was excellent at satire in a spirit that was fundamentally light and frivolous.

Suggested translations: J.P. Sullivan, The Satyricon and the Fragments, translated with an introduction by J.P. Sullivan, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1965. P.G. Walsh, Petronius: The Satyricon, translated with an introduction and explanatory notes, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.

– ref. Guide to the classics: Petronius’s Satyricon – sex, satire and naughty boys – https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-petroniuss-satyricon-sex-satire-and-naughty-boys-129351

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

The coronavirus has moved to a new stage in Australia, with the first two cases of local transmission of the disease.

The NSW government announced a 53-year-old Sydney health worker – who had not recently travelled abroad – had been diagnosed. The other case is the 41-year-old sister of an Iranian man who had arrived in Australia on Saturday. The woman had not travelled to Iran.

Other cases in Australia – now more than 30 – have been people who have come from abroad. There has been one death, a 78-year-old man who had been evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship.

Health authorities have anticipated the spread of the virus locally, with plans being ramped up to deal with that.

Efforts were being made on Monday to track down passengers who sat near travellers from Iran who have been diagnosed with the virus. There is now a ban on the entry of foreigners coming from Iran.

News of the local transmission comes amid the expectation the Reserve Bank will cut interest rates on Tuesday as the virus scare hits the economy, and panic buying of items such as toilet paper.

Hand sanitisers have been a runaway sales item. The share price of Zoono, a company that makes them, has jumped 70% in under a week.

On Friday the futures market rated the probably of a Tuesday rate cut at just 18%. On Monday it was rating the probability at 100%, with some economists even speculating about the possibility of the cut being double the usual 0.25%.

The Australian share market fell by 0.77%, after a 10% fall in what was the worst week since the global financial financial crisis.

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard said it was time for people to “give each other a pat on the back” rather than shaking hands. He also suggested a degree of caution when kissing.

In parliament, the government took a series of questions on the virus and its fallout. Attorney-General Christian Porter said it was important for Australians to understand the use of certain powers may become necessary in the months ahead.

Notably among these were changes made in 2015 to the Biosecurity Act, which replaced the Quarantine Act.

COVID-19 had been listed as a human disease for the purposes of this act in January.

“That has a number of very important consequences for Australia and Australians in what will no doubt be challenging months going ahead,” Porter said.

“There are two broad ranges of powers that people may well experience for the first time.

“There is the ability of the government to impose – always based on medical advice, but nevertheless impose – a human biosecurity control order on person or persons who have been exposed to the disease.

“It could require any Australian to give information about people that they’ve contacted or had contact with so that we can trace transmission pathways. It will also mean that Australians could be directed to remain at a particular place or indeed undergo decontamination.”

“Secondly, a very important power that may be experienced for the first time—and that we will be monitoring very carefully—is the declaration of a human health response zone, ” he said.

This was done with the Diamond Princess.

“But it’s very important to understand, going forward, that that is a power that can be used for either localised disease outbreaks in Australia or indeed to restrict individuals from attending places where a large number of people may otherwise choose to gather, such as shopping centres, schools or work.

“These are challenging times going forward, and these will be some of the first times that these important powers may be used,” Porter said.

– ref. First locally-transmitted COVID-19 cases in Australia, as Attorney-General warns drastic legal powers could be used – https://theconversation.com/first-locally-transmitted-covid-19-cases-in-australia-as-attorney-general-warns-drastic-legal-powers-could-be-used-132771

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

The coronavirus has moved to a new stage in Australia, with the first two cases of local transmission of the disease.

The NSW government announced a 53-year-old Sydney health worker – who had not recently travelled abroad – had been diagnosed. The other case is the 41-year-old sister of an Iranian man who had arrived in Australia on Saturday. The woman had not travelled to Iran.

Other cases in Australia – now more than 30 – have been people who have come from abroad. There has been one death, a 78-year-old man who had been evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship.

Health authorities have anticipated the spread of the virus locally, with plans being ramped up to deal with that.

Efforts were being made on Monday to track down passengers who sat near travellers from Iran who have been diagnosed with the virus. There is now a ban on the entry of foreigners coming from Iran.

News of the local transmission comes amid the expectation the Reserve Bank will cut interest rates on Tuesday as the virus scare hits the economy, and panic buying of items such as toilet paper.

Hand sanitisers have been a runaway sales item. The share price of Zoono, a company that makes them, has jumped 70% in under a week.

On Friday the futures market rated the probably of a Tuesday rate cut at just 18%. On Monday it was rating the probability at 100%, with some economists even speculating about the possibility of the cut being double the usual 0.25%.

The Australian share market fell by 0.77%, after a 10% fall in what was the worst week since the global financial financial crisis.

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard said it was time for people to “give each other a pat on the back” rather than shaking hands. He also suggested a degree of caution when kissing.

In parliament, the government took a series of questions on the virus and its fallout. Attorney-General Christian Porter said it was important for Australians to understand the use of certain powers may become necessary in the months ahead.

Notably among these were changes made in 2015 to the Biosecurity Act, which replaced the Quarantine Act.

COVID-19 had been listed as a human disease for the purposes of this act in January.

“That has a number of very important consequences for Australia and Australians in what will no doubt be challenging months going ahead,” Porter said.

“There are two broad ranges of powers that people may well experience for the first time.

“There is the ability of the government to impose – always based on medical advice, but nevertheless impose – a human biosecurity control order on person or persons who have been exposed to the disease.

“It could require any Australian to give information about people that they’ve contacted or had contact with so that we can trace transmission pathways. It will also mean that Australians could be directed to remain at a particular place or indeed undergo decontamination.”

“Secondly, a very important power that may be experienced for the first time—and that we will be monitoring very carefully—is the declaration of a human health response zone, ” he said.

This was done with the Diamond Princess.

“But it’s very important to understand, going forward, that that is a power that can be used for either localised disease outbreaks in Australia or indeed to restrict individuals from attending places where a large number of people may otherwise choose to gather, such as shopping centres, schools or work.

“These are challenging times going forward, and these will be some of the first times that these important powers may be used,” Porter said.

– ref. First locally-transmitted COV-19 cases in Australia, as Attorney-General warns drastic legal powers could be used – https://theconversation.com/first-locally-transmitted-cov-19-cases-in-australia-as-attorney-general-warns-drastic-legal-powers-could-be-used-132771

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julaine Allan, Senior research fellow, Charles Sturt University

On February 21 NSW Health issued a warning about methamphetamine and cocaine being contaminated with the dangerous opioid fentanyl.

Several people who had taken these illicit stimulant drugs presented to Sydney hospitals with symptoms of opioid overdose, raising the alarm. Drug tests found fentanyl and acetyl-fentanyl had caused the overdoses.

It’s believed to be the first time fentanyl has been found in stimulant drugs in Australia.

People using stimulants like methamphetamine and cocaine are not looking for the depressant effects of opioids. They would not have expected their drugs to contain fentanyl.

While you never know for sure what you’re getting when you buy illicit drugs, this is an extreme case.

Read more: Prince’s death from fentanyl is only the tip of the global overdose iceberg

What is fentanyl?

Fentanyl is a strong synthetic opioid prescribed for severe pain, for example to cancer patients or after surgery. It was first developed in the 1950s as a fast acting anaesthetic and pain reliever, but its availability has been restricted in recent years because of a high rate of misuse.

Today it’s usually applied in skin patches where the pain is. It’s also used in epidurals in combination with other drugs to relieve pain during childbirth.

Fentanyl is much stronger than other opioid drugs like heroin, morphine and codeine.

Opioids are depressants, which means they depress the central nervous system, slowing breathing and heart rate. Other effects include reduced pain, euphoria, constipation, vomiting, slurred speech and loss of appetite.

People who use fentanyl for non-medical reasons inject it. They find a tolerance to the drug builds quickly, the effects diminish quickly and physical dependence is rapid.

Symptoms of fentanyl overdose include difficult or shallow breathing, fainting, cold and clammy skin and blueish lips and skin around the mouth. People can die quickly so seeking emergency help is critical.

Read more: Weekly Dose: fentanyl, the anaesthetic that may have been used as a chemical weapon on Chechen rebels

Acetyl-fentanyl has a slightly different chemical structure to fentanyl but similar effects. It has not been approved for human use.

A prime culprit in America’s opioid crisis

Fentanyl has been responsible for many of the overdose deaths reported globally in recent years, including in Australia.

Fentanyl and related substances like acetyl-fentanyl are manufactured illegally in some countries. They’re mixed with other drugs to produce powerful effects at a lower production cost. Fentanyl may also be found in other drugs because of cross contamination through careless practices in drug labs.

In the United States more than 700,000 people died from a drug overdose between 1999 and 2017. Illicit fentanyl caused around half of the overdose deaths reported each year since 2013.

While a portion of these people would have knowingly been using fentanyl, many people who overdosed on fentanyl in the US had been using stimulants such as methamphetamine and cocaine.

A study in Canada found 73% of people who tested positive for fentanyl did not know they had taken it.

Read more: Opioid dependence treatment saves lives. So why don’t more people use it?

Risk in Australia

Illicitly manufactured fentanyl has not been reported in Australia previously. Nine overdose deaths that occurred in Melbourne in 2015 were found to include fentanyl and heroin, however the source of the fentanyl was unknown.

An Australian study published in 2019 found illicitly produced fentanyl was readily available on the dark web and suggested a high risk of the drug being imported to Australia.

The Australian Crime Commission identified China as a likely source of illicit fentanyl and related substances, highlighting ease of access to Australian markets.

Doctors working in the area of drug dependence have been expecting to see illicit fentanyl in Australia at some point. The fear is Australia could face an overdose epidemic similar to the US and Canada.

How can we reduce harm?

Harm reduction strategies include training people who take illicit drugs in the use of naloxone, a drug that reverses opioid overdoses, and providing rapid fentanyl test strips so drugs can be tested prior to use.

The test strips are reliable and easy to use. A small amount of the drug is dissolved in water and the test strip is dipped into the liquid for 15 seconds.

The test strips are highly sensitive and only a tiny amount of fentanyl is needed for it to be detected. It takes five minutes for the test result to appear.

While the strips have been found to be accurate at detecting the presence of fentanyl, they don’t identify the strength or quantity of the drug in the sample.

Read more: Testing festival goers’ pills isn’t the only way to reduce overdoses. Here’s what else works

Most people who use illicit drugs do so occasionally. It’s likely people using stimulant drugs will not have fentanyl testing kits or naloxone with them. This increases the risk of harm.

Naloxone, testing kits and drug checking availability in general are the best ways to reduce harm from fentanyl. These will need greater promotion if we continue to see cases like we’ve seen in Sydney in the past month.

– ref. The deadly opioid fentanyl is turning up in disguise on Sydney streets, making illicit drug use even riskier – https://theconversation.com/the-deadly-opioid-fentanyl-is-turning-up-in-disguise-on-sydney-streets-making-illicit-drug-use-even-riskier-132598

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Speck, Professor, Art History;, University of Adelaide

Review: 2020 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Monster Theatres

The Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art – now in its 30th year – has a tradition of measuring the pulse of contemporary art practice. This iteration is no different.

Art Gallery of South Australia curator Leigh Robb approaches contemporary anxieties, the challenges of technology, the unfolding anthropogenic tragedies and the continuing fallout from empire colonialism in this exhibition. She wrangles these fears under the compelling umbrella of Monster Theatres. In a sense, Robb picks up where Nick Mitzevich left off in his 2014 biennial Dark Heart, probing the guilt and grief of the national psyche. Six years on, the anxieties feel greater and more urgent.

Monsters have always been a cultural trope; in an accompanying display, Julie Robinson explores this phenomenon with a look at historical monster prints. Once, monstrous imagery by Durer, Goltzius and Goya depicted hybrid creatures with an assortment of limbs, bodies and heads and catered for societal follies and fears; their message was understood then as a moralistic warning or omen. The visual language of today differs greatly.

Humans, machines, monsters

The 24 solo projects in the biennial by Australian artists include two major performance artists, Stelarc and Mike Parr.

Each day for six days, Parr reads a 100-page script based on a Roland Barthes text in Reading for The End of Time. He has modified the text to stress repetitious words and phrases and synonyms, so the audience hears the same phrases coming up again and again. His only props are a glass of water and a reading lamp. As each day progresses, Parr reads this text against the video playback of the previous day. His monster is the cognitive dissonance this causes. At the time of writing, his voice was still holding out.

In Reclining StickMan, Stelarc placed himself on a large nine-metre robot made for the exhibition space. Over two five-hour performances on the opening weekend, he choreographed its movements and sounds. Audience members contributed via a touch screen, as did remote users. The robot’s movements and sounds stem from a mathematical algorithm and human interaction. This is the most recent and perhaps most spectacular of Stelarc’s work in which his own body facilitates complex interactive systems between the human and the machine.

There are some deeply psychological works on show, including Brent Harris’s grotesque paintings exposing the trauma and menace of his abusive father. Judith Wright’s haunting Tales of Enchantment are a memorial to a lost child she imagines in a shadowy surreal underworld.

Muslim artist Abdul Abdullah’s Understudy sits alone in a picture theatre. Viewers can, if they wish, take a seat next to this slightly hunched-over figure dressed in faux designer human clothing, but they will soon notice the hood he is wearing partly conceals his monkey face – he is one of the rare and endangered Yunnan snub-nosed monkeys. The monkey, also a familiar figure in monster films such as Godzilla and King Kong, reflects the artist’s outsider experience in post-September 11 Australia.

Karla Dickens’ Dickensian Country Show feels like a sideshow with its lights and glitter, but its imagery is a dark exposé of Aboriginal members of the country circus and boxing troupe whose blackness was the attraction, the oddity, the “other”.

What fear sounds like

Monster Theatres lends itself to the idea that the exhibition space is a site for speculation and wonder. In Transmission, experimental sound artist Julian Day’s found organ pipes emit a monstrous and resonating timbre that echoes through the gallery’s atrium, on the hour. On the opening weekend of the biennial, Day orchestrated a moving performance called A Civic Space in the nearby Freemasons Lodge with a group of singers and brass musicians improvising abstract sounds, augmented by the organ.

Ecological threat is imminent and urgent in Monsters Theatre. Quandamooka artist Megan Cope’s sound installation Untitled, Death Song replicates the ghostly warning sound of the bush stone curlew, an endangered nocturnal bird. The “instruments” are re-purposed remnants from mining and deforestation projects. The auger drill, oil drums and rocks, along with a piano, ring through gallery space. Their haunting sounds are arresting enough to make viewers sit and listen.

The biennial extends to the nearby Adelaide Botanical Gardens with sculptures by Mark Valenzuela and Michael Candy in the Palm House and the Bicentennial Conservatory. Candy’s slowly moving and mesmerising Big Dipper hangs high above Conservatory’s entrance while Mark Valenzuela’s Once Bitten, Twice Shy pops up in a lily pond.

In his purpose-built bee house Anthrocomb, Mark Bianco counters the collapse of bee colonies by literally sleeping with them in the structure. He invites audience members to do the same.

Julia Robinson’s Beatrice, an ill-fated toxic creature – part-human, part-flower – sits in the Museum of Economic Botany. Her writhing soft sculpture tentacles in beautiful purples and mustards point to a creature trying to avoid a monstrous fate.

Glass artist Yhonnie Scarce, of the Kokotha and Nukuna peoples, reclaims the Deadhouse in the Gardens, once used to house Aboriginal body parts for “medical purposes”, by filling it symbolically with healing glass-fabricated bush bananas.

This biennial brings a refreshing psychological depth, reflective gaze and energy to our fears. Robb has imaginatively added a new ingredient to the cultural mix: the monster. The exhibition underscores how in colonial, post-colonial and decolonial times, and now the anthropegenic era, the monsters are not only within us, they have always been us.

Monster Theatres is on show at the Art Gallery of South Australia until 8 June.

– ref. A meeting of monsters at the Adelaide Biennial brings us closer to our fears – https://theconversation.com/a-meeting-of-monsters-at-the-adelaide-biennial-brings-us-closer-to-our-fears-132753

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Warren Hogan, Industry Professor, University of Technology Sydney

This week marks a new phase in the coronavirus crisis with the case count outside China accelerating sharply.

China’s containment strategy bought global health authorities time to prepare, but failed to confine the outbreak to North-East Asia.

In the past week both President Trump and Prime Minister Morrison have prepared citizens for a rise in the onshore case count in recognition of the likelihood the virus will spread to most of the world.

Because it isn’t possible to shut down the global trade and transport system without causing a global recession, their strategy has shifted from containment to preparation.

It’ll be important to manage panic

Critical to the process is managing panic. If consumers around the world substantially reduce their spending either as a precautionary measure or in response to public health fears, the impact on businesses will be substantial.

The key economic challenge will be to stop a vicious cycle of weaker spending and job losses taking hold. Targeted government spending can help businesses at risk, although some will use it as an excuse to reset their cost base and scale down in an economic environment that was challenging even before the coronavirus.

Global share markets have fallen 10% in a week as this new phase has begun to unfold, adding to uncertainty and fear.

Rate cuts are all but certain

Countries that have the capacity to cut interest rates will do it. In the US, markets are expecting a cut at or before the next meeting of the US Fed on March 17.

In Australia, markets are expecting a cut of 0.25 points at the Reserve Bank’s board meeting on Tuesday. There is some talk of a double cut, of 0.50 points, which would bring the Reserve Bank cash rate down from 0.75% to 0.25%.

The cuts would be aimed at shoring up confidence in the economy and financial markets as much as anything else. Global rates are already low enough to provide economic stimulus. It will be up to politicians to provide the targeted measures that will be needed to help keep businesses afloat and people in jobs.

We’re facing a Chinese recession

The trade and travel restrictions in place in and around China will have major ramifications. Estimates of the impact of the containment policies on Chinese growth in the first quarter of the year range from minus 2% to minus 10%, enough to obliterate growth in the world’s fastest-growing big economy.

A shocking Chinese purchasing managers’ index reading on the weekend showed a fall to a new low not reached during the global financial crisis.

Few countries are as exposed to Chinese purchasing as Australia.

Read more: World economy flashes red over coronavirus – with strange echoes of 1880s Yellow Peril hysteria

Australia gets GDP figures on Wednesday for the final three months of 2019. These are likely to show the economy grew by less than 0.5% in the quarter.

Most of the impact of the bushfires and the initial impact of the coronavirus will show up in the data for the first quarter of this year. Many analysts have pencilled in a negative number.

And possibly an Australian recession

It will leave Australia exposed to what is known as a technical recession – two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth, in the three months to March and the three months to June.

This possibility, Australia’s first recession in 29 years, will depend on how we react to the emergence of coronavirus onshore.

The initial reaction might paradoxically support measured economic growth as people stockpile supplies. The next phase would be a reduction in spending as people avoid leaving their homes. As we are seeing in China, and more recently in Korea and Italy, shopping districts can become ghost towns.

Read more: 3 ways coronavirus will affect the US economy – and 1 silver lining

It would be akin to a nationwide rise in saving, which drains consumer spending and business activity. Beyond efforts to maintain perspective and keep calm, little can be done to prevent people from willingly choosing to remain at home.

We’ll need targeted, clever, government support

It is in this phase that government policy actions will be critical. A mild technical recession caused by an external shock would be undesirable but need not be a disaster for the community if the employment ramifications can be minimised.

Government efforts need to be directed at stopping a negative shock evolving into a self-reinforcing spiral of declining spending and lower employment.

Lower interest rates will be of very little use to start with. Governments will need to target support to those parts of the economy most under stress with the greatest risk of job losses.

The challenge will be to identify those businesses at the greatest risk of insolvency.

Read more: The growing impact of coronavirus on the global economy

The Reserve Bank board will need to follow the lead of the US Federal Reserve and at least issue a soothing statement to financial markets that it is ready to act if needed.

If it is too early to gauge the impact of this new phase of contagion of the coronavirus, it is really too early for rate cuts. And there is a risk that a rate cut this week might generate more panic and amplify the effects of any consumer and business panic already upon us.

At most, the bank can support the government. It is our leaders who will bear the biggest responsibility for steering us through what’s to come.

Read more: 2020 survey: no lift in wage growth, no lift in economic growth and no progress on unemployment in year of low expectations

– ref. We’re staring down the barrel of a technical recession as the coronavirus enters a new and dangerous phase – https://theconversation.com/were-staring-down-the-barrel-of-a-technical-recession-as-the-coronavirus-enters-a-new-and-dangerous-phase-132752

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jenni Downes, Research Fellow, BehaviourWorks Australia (Monash Sustainable Development Institute), Monash University

Australia is still grappling with what to do with the glut of recyclable material after China closed most of its market to our recycling in 2018.

Now the Victorian government has released the first major change to state recycling policy: a consistent kerbside four bin system by 2030, and a container deposit scheme.

So what’s the proposed new kerbside bin system, and will it help alleviate Australia’s recycling crisis? Here’s what you need to know about the extra bin coming your way.

Read more: China’s recycling ‘ban’ throws Australia into a very messy waste crisis

The problems with our recycling system

There are two big problems – particularly since the China ban.

One is about supply. The quality of materials we have for recycling is quite poor, partly from the design of the products, and partly how we collect and sort waste items.

The other is demand. There’s not enough demand for recycled materials in new products or infrastructure, and so the commodity value of the materials, even high quality, is low.

And even though many of us think we’re good at recycling, many households aren’t getting recycling exactly right because they put things that don’t belong in the recycling bin, such as soft plastics.

One reason is because of the confusion about what can be recycled, where and when. A standardised system of collection (no matter how many bins) will go a long way to improving this, and the most exciting aspect of the Victorian announcement is the strong leadership towards consistency across the state.

Read more: Don’t just blame government and business for the recycling crisis – it begins with us

This means by 2030, no matter where Victorians live or visit, they’ll have a consistent kerbside bin system.

But to boost our recycling capacity, we need consistency across the country. New South Wales, South Australian and Western Australian governments are already supporting combined food and garden organics bins, and other states are likely to follow as the evidence of the benefits continues to accumulate.

What will change?

Details are still being ironed out, but essentially, the new system expands the current two or three bins most Victorian houses have to four bins.

While paper, cardboard and plastic or metal containers will still go in the yellow bin, glass containers will now have their own separate purple bin (or crate). A green bin, which some Victorians already have for garden vegetation, will expand to collect food scraps.

The purple bin will come first, with the gradual roll-out starting next year as some Victorian councils’ existing collection contracts come to a close. The service is expected to be fully in place by 2027 (some remote areas may be exempt).

And the expanded green bin service accepting food scraps for composting will be rolled out by 2030, unless councils choose to move earlier (some are already doing so).

How extra bins will make a difference

A 2015 report on managing household waste in Europe showed separating our waste increases the quality of material collected. Some countries even have up to six bins (or crates, or sacks).

That’s because it’s easier for people to sort out the different materials than for machines, particularly food and the complex packaging we have today.

A separate bin for food (plus garden organics) will help recover Victoria’s share of the 2.5 million tonnes of food and scraps Australian households chuck out each year.

Read more: Melbourne wastes 200 kg of food per person a year: it’s time to get serious

And a separate bin for glass will help with glass breaking in the yellow bin or collection truck, contaminating surrounding paper and cardboard with tiny glass shards that renders them unrecyclable. It should also boost how much glass gets recycled, according to Australia’s largest glass reprocesser.

What do they need to get right?

To make sure the transition to the new system is smooth, councils and the Victorian government must consider:

• the space needed for four bins

Not everyone has enough space (inside or outside). This may require creative council and household solutions like those already found overseas (stackable crates and segregated bins).

• the collection schedule

Does the new purple bin mean we’ll see a another truck, or perhaps a special multi-compartment recycling truck? And once councils have food waste in a weekly green bin, will the red bin collection go fortnightly? This actually makes sense because 35–60% of the red bin is food scraps, which will be gone.

• correct disposal of food waste

Many councils that have already added food waste to the green bin report contamination issues as people get their head around the transition, such as putting food wrappers in with the food scraps.

• correct sorting of recycling

Putting the wrong thing in the recycling bin is a problem across the country, and taking glass out of the yellow bin won’t solve this issue. While this is already being tackled in government campaigns and council trials, we’ll likely need more government effort at both a systems and household level.

Better collection won’t mean much without demand

Collection is only one piece of the puzzle. Government support is needed to make sure all this recycling actually ends up somewhere. Efforts to improve the “supply-side” aspects of recycling can go to waste if there’s no demand for the recycled materials.

Environmental economists have long pointed out that without government intervention, free markets in most countries will not pay enough or use enough recycled material when new, or “virgin”, materials are so cheap.

Read more: Only half of packaging waste is recycled – here’s how to do better

What’s great for Victoria is the new four bin system is only one pillar of the state’s new recycling policy.

It also includes many demand-side initiatives, from market development grants and infrastructure funding, to developing a Circular Economy Business Innovation Centre. The policy also deems waste management to be an “essential service” and has left space for strong procurement commitments. Today, Prime Minister Scott Morrison acknowledged the importance of procurement when he announced an overhaul of the Commonwealth Procurement Guidelines at the National Plastics Summit, to boost demand for recycled products.

Stepping up to the challenge

But to effectively combat Australia’s recycling crisis, more must be done. This includes reinvestment of landfill levies; standards for recycled materials, and at a federal level; clear strategies to improve product design ; and funding to support the waste and recycling industry to meet the export ban.

Read more: A crisis too big to waste: China’s recycling ban calls for a long-term rethink in Australia

We also need regulation on the use of recycled material in products. For example, through mandated targets or fiscal policies like a tax on products made from virgin materials.

Since 2018 when China stopped taking most of our recycling, the level of industry, community and media interest has created a strong platform for policy change. It’s exciting to see Victoria responding to the challenge.

– ref. Four bins might help, but to solve our waste crisis we need a strong market for recycled products – https://theconversation.com/four-bins-might-help-but-to-solve-our-waste-crisis-we-need-a-strong-market-for-recycled-products-132440

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Warren Hogan, Industry Professor, University of Technology Sydney

This week marks a new phase in the coronavirus crisis with the case count outside China accelerating sharply.

China’s containment strategy bought global health authorities time to prepare, but failed to confine the outbreak to North-East Asia.

In the past week both President Trump and Prime Minister Morrison have prepared citizens for a rise in the onshore case count in recognition of the likelihood the virus will spread to most of the world.

Because it isn’t possible to shut down the global trade and transport system without causing a global recession, their strategy has shifted from containment to preparation.

It’ll be important to manage panic

Critical to the process is managing panic. If consumers around the world substantially reduce their spending either as a precautionary measure or in response to public health fears, the impact on businesses will be substantial.

The key economic challenge will be to stop a vicious cycle of weaker spending and job losses taking hold. Targeted government spending can help businesses at risk, although some will use it as an excuse to reset their cost base and scale down in an economic environment that was challenging even before the coronavirus.

Global share markets have fallen 10% in a week as this new phase has begun to unfold, adding to uncertainty and fear.

Rate cuts are all but certain

Countries that have the capacity to cut interest rates will do it. In the US, markets are expecting a cut at or before the next meeting of the US Fed on March 17.

In Australia, markets are expecting a cut of 0.25 points at the Reserve Bank’s board meeting on Tuesday. There is some talk of a double cut, of 0.50 points, which would bring the Reserve Bank cash rate down from 0.75% to 0.25%.

The cuts would be aimed at shoring up confidence in the economy and financial markets as much as anything else. Global rates are already low enough to provide economic stimulus. It will be up to politicians to provide the targeted measures that will be needed to help keep businesses afloat and people in jobs.

We’re facing a Chinese recession

The trade and travel restrictions in place in and around China will have major ramifications. Estimates of the impact of the containment policies on Chinese growth in the first quarter of the year range from minus 2% to minus 10%, enough to obliterate growth in the world’s fastest-growing big economy.

A shocking Chinese purchasing managers’ index reading on the weekend showed a fall to a new low not reached during the global financial crisis.

Few countries are as exposed to purchasing from China as Australia.

Read more: World economy flashes red over coronavirus – with strange echoes of 1880s Yellow Peril hysteria

Australia gets GDP figures on Wednesday for the final three months of 2019. These are likely to show the economy grew by less than 0.5% in the quarter.

Most of the impact of the bushfires and the initial impact of the coronavirus will show up in the data for the first quarter of this year. Many analysts have pencilled in a negative number.

And possibly an Australian recession

It will leave Australia exposed to what is known as a technical recession – two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth, in the three months to March and the three months to June.

This possibility, Australia’s first recession in 29 years, will depend on how we react to the emergence of coronavirus onshore.

The initial reaction might paradoxically support measured economic growth as people stockpile supplies. The next phase would be a reduction in spending as people avoid leaving their homes. As we are seeing in China, and more recently in Korea and Italy, shopping districts can become ghost towns.

Read more: 3 ways coronavirus will affect the US economy – and 1 silver lining

It would be akin to a nationwide rise in saving, which drains consumer spending and business activity. Beyond efforts to maintain perspective and keep calm, little can be done to prevent people from willingly choosing to remain at home.

We’ll need targeted, clever, government support

It is in this phase that government policy actions will be critical. A mild technical recession caused by an external shock would be undesirable but need not be a disaster for the community if the employment ramifications can be minimised.

Government efforts need to be directed at stopping a negative shock evolving into a self-reinforcing spiral of declining spending and lower employment.

Lower interest rates will be of very little use to start with. Governments will need to target support to those parts of the economy most under stress with the greatest risk of job losses.

The challenge will be to identify those businesses at the greatest risk of insolvency.

Read more: The growing impact of coronavirus on the global economy

The Reserve Bank board will need to follow the lead of the US Federal Reserve and at least issue a soothing statement to financial markets that it is ready to act if needed.

If it is too early to gauge the impact of this new phase of contagion of the coronavirus, it is really too early for rate cuts. And there is a risk that a rate cut this week might generate more panic and amplify the effects of any consumer and business panic already upon us.

At most, the bank can support the government. It is our leaders who will bear the biggest responsibility for steering us through what’s to come.

Read more: 2020 survey: no lift in wage growth, no lift in economic growth and no progress on unemployment in year of low expectations

– ref. We’re staring down the barrel of a technical recession as the COVID-19 coronavirus enters a new and dangerous phase – https://theconversation.com/were-staring-down-the-barrel-of-a-technical-recession-as-the-covid-19-coronavirus-enters-a-new-and-dangerous-phase-132752

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

Between July 2018 and August 2019, the Home Affairs Department spent A$6.1m flying refugees, asylum seekers and other immigration detainees around Australia.

This figure includes $5.7 million for charter flights and $400,000 for commercial flights with airlines like Qantas. It does not include the cost of keeping planes on standby and transporting staff who accompany detainees. Neither does it include the cost of transporting detainees by road.

Details of these and other expenses have led Labor to ask why minister Peter Dutton’s departmental costs continue to rise. Given revelations the government spent $26.8 million reopening Christmas Island detention centre to hold a single family last year, this is a pressing question.

Read more: How the Biloela Tamil family deportation case highlights the failures of our refugee system

Yet deeper questions about what these relocations involve and how they affect detainees and their supporters have been largely ignored. As a researcher studying immigration detention, I can attest forced relocations impose profound human costs.

Over the past five years, I have conducted over 70 interviews with regular visitors to Australia’s onshore immigration detention centres. Speaking with volunteers and advocates, as well as detainees’ friends and family members, I have collected witness accounts of conditions and practices within the system. A constant theme in these interviews has been the harm caused by involuntary transfers.

How many forced transfers are occurring

When we think of immigration detention centres, we often imagine places of confinement. This is accurate, but it is not the full picture.

Refugees and asylum seekers in Australia’s onshore detention system are held in prison-like facilities on the outskirts of our capital cities or – in the case of Christmas Island and Yongah Hill in Western Australia – in remote parts of the country.

In December 2019, there were at least 504 refugees and asylum seekers within the system, as well as hundreds of other immigration detainees, including those about to be deported. Detention can last months or even years.

Read more: How people in immigration detention try to cope with life in limbo

As monotonous as detention can be, detainees are not allowed to become comfortable. Between July 2017 and May 2019, there were 8,000 involuntary movements within the system. Some of these were deportations, but others were forced transfers between facilities.

Detainees are rarely given an explanation when they are moved. The opacity of the practice is undoubtedly one of its concerning aspects, and has been criticised by the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC). In a report last year, the commission recommended that when a relocation occurs

the department and facility staff should ensure as far as possible that the person […] receives a clear explanation of the reasons for the transfer.

‘Sheer, random cruelty’

Participants in my study stressed the secrecy of relocations. Detainees were typically moved with minimal warning or explanation. At times they knew a transfer was pending, but they were often moved with just a few hours’ notice.

In some instances, the staff woke detainees up and gave them minutes to collect their belongings. As one regular visitor to Yongah Hill Detention Centre described it,

It was always early in the morning – you’ve got 10 minutes to pack your bags. And they would lose things. They were always in such a hurry. It was made to be traumatic for them.

Confronted with what a visitor to the Brisbane Immigration Transit Accommodation described as “the sheer, random cruelty of it”, detainees felt their vulnerability. So, too, did those left behind.

There’s constantly distressing scenes as one family or another is being dragged away to be put on a plane with very little notice. And it’s so upsetting for all the other refugees […] that they’re seeing people get hauled off and people are crying and begging […] You never know if it’s going to be you tomorrow morning.

The AHRC has documented the “excessive” use of restraints during transfers. Just in the last fortnight, the Commonwealth Ombudsman observed that handcuffs had become “accepted transfer practice” during transport operations.

In his recommendations, the ombudsman advised

the Aviation Transport Security Regulations [to] restrict the use of mechanical restraints to circumstances where there is a genuine risk to the safety of the aircraft that cannot be mitigated by any other option.

The human costs of forced relocations

Beyond the stress of the transfer process, relocations separate detainees from support networks within the facilities, as well as friends, advocates, doctors and lawyers in the community. As a regular visitor to Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation explained, the relocation experience is one of loss.

They might put down roots and get a few mates where they are, but when they move they lose those bonds that they’ve developed. If they’re getting any medical help they lose that contact with that medical care, their ability to learn English gets less.

Interstate transfers are particularly devastating for people with families in the community. Partners and children without social or financial resources in Australia can rarely travel to visit loved ones.

Read more: Explainer: how Australia decides who is a genuine refugee

The despair caused by relocations is perhaps best exemplified by stories I heard of detainees self-harming immediately before or after a transfer.

These testimonies accord with previous research at Victoria University that has found a link between forced relocations and self-harm in immigration detention facilities. Forced transfers, this researcher found, are among a number of “precipitating factors or triggers for self-harm” in both immigration detention and prison settings.

An unconscionable practice

The practice of moving detainees around Australia’s immigration detention network is doubly unjustifiable on economic and humanitarian grounds. A consistent finding from my research is that forced relocations cause harm. They harm detainees, and they harm the people who love and support them.

As a country, we can find better ways to spend taxpayer money.

– ref. ‘People are crying and begging’: the human cost of forced relocations in immigration detention – https://theconversation.com/people-are-crying-and-begging-the-human-cost-of-forced-relocations-in-immigration-detention-132193

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Monique Mann, Senior lecturer, Deakin University

You’d thinking flying in a plane would be more dangerous than driving a car. In reality it’s much safer, partly because the aviation industry is heavily regulated.

Airlines must stick to strict standards for safety, testing, training, policies and procedures, auditing and oversight. And when things do go wrong, we investigate and attempt to rectify the issue to improve safety in the future.

It’s not just airlines, either. Other industries where things can go very badly wrong, such as pharmaceuticals and medical devices, are also heavily regulated.

Artificial intelligence is a relatively new industry, but it’s growing fast and has great capacity to do harm. Like aviation and pharmaceuticals, it needs to be regulated.

AI can do great harm

A wide range of technologies and applications that fit under the rubric of “artificial intelligence” have begun to play a significant role in our lives and social institutions. But they can be used in ways that are harmful, which we are already starting to see.

In the “robodebt” affair, for example, the Australian government welfare agency Centrelink used data-matching and automated decision-making to issue (often incorrect) debt notices to welfare recipients. What’s more, the burden of proof was reversed: individuals were required to prove they did not owe the claimed debt.

The New South Wales government has also started using AI to spot drivers with mobile phones. This involves expanded public surveillance via mobile phone detection cameras that use AI to automatically detect a rectangular object in the driver’s hands and classify it as a phone.

Read more: Caught red-handed: automatic cameras will spot mobile-using motorists, but at what cost?

Facial recognition is another AI application under intense scrutiny around the world. This is due to its potential to undermine human rights: it can be used for widespread surveillance and suppression of public protest, and programmed bias can lead to inaccuracy and racial discrimination. Some have even called for a moratorium or outright ban because it is so dangerous.

In several countries, including Australia, AI is being used to predict how likely a person is to commit a crime. Such predictive methods have been shown to impact Indigenous youth disproportionately and lead to oppressive policing practices.

AI that assists train drivers is also coming into use, and in future we can expect to see self-driving cars and other autonomous vehicles on our roads. Lives will depend on this software.

The European approach

Once we’ve decided that AI needs to be regulated, there is still the question of how to do it. Authorities in the European Union have recently made a set of proposals for how to regulate AI.

The first step, they argue, is to assess the risks AI poses in different sectors such as transport, healthcare, and government applications such as migration, criminal justice and social security. They also look at AI applications that pose a risk of death or injury, or have an impact on human rights such as the rights to privacy, equality, liberty and security, freedom of movement and assembly, social security and standard of living, and the presumption of innocence.

The greater the risk an AI application was deemed to pose, the more regulation it would face. The regulations would cover everything from the data used to train the AI and how records are kept, to how transparent the creators and operators of the system must be, testing for robustness and accuracy, and requirements for human oversight. This would include certification and assurances that the use of AI systems is safe, and does not lead to discriminatory or dangerous outcomes.

While the EU’s approach has strong points, even apparently “low-risk” AI applications can do real harm. For example, recommendation algorithms in search engines are discriminatory too. The EU proposal has also been criticised for seeking to regulate facial recognition technology rather than banning it outright.

The EU has led the world on data protection regulation. If the same happens with AI, these proposals are likely to serve as a model for other countries and apply to anyone doing business with the EU or even EU citizens.

What’s happening in Australia?

In Australia there are some applicable laws and regulations, but there are numerous gaps, and they are not always enforced. The situation is made more difficult by the lack of human rights protections at the federal level.

One prominent attempt at drawing up some rules for AI came last year from Data61, the data and digital arm of CSIRO. They developed an AI ethics framework built around eight ethical principles for AI.

These ethical principles aren’t entirely irrelevant (number two is “do no harm”, for example), but they are unenforceable and therefore largely meaningless. Ethics frameworks like this one for AI have been criticised as “ethics washing”, and a ploy for industry to avoid hard law and regulation.

Read more: How big tech designs its own rules of ethics to avoid scrutiny and accountability

Another attempt is the Human Rights and Technology project of the Australian Human Rights Commission. It aims to protect and promote human rights in the face of new technology.

We are likely to see some changes following the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s recent inquiry into digital platforms. And a long overdue review of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) is slated for later this year.

These initiatives will hopefully strengthen Australian protections in the digital age, but there is still much work to be done. Stronger human rights protections would be an important step in this direction, to provide a foundation for regulation.

Before AI is adopted even more widely, we need to understand its impacts and put protections in place. To realise the potential benefits of AI, we must ensure that it is governed appropriately. Otherwise, we risk paying a heavy price as individuals and as a society.

– ref. Airlines take no chances with our safety. And neither should artificial intelligence – https://theconversation.com/airlines-take-no-chances-with-our-safety-and-neither-should-artificial-intelligence-132580

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

As the nine-year Syrian civil war enters its final turn, Turkey and Russia, long-time allies in Syria, are on the brink of war over the Syrian province of Idlib.

Both sides are sending stern messages of warning as diplomacy to end the conflict has so far failed to de-escalate the situation.

What has led to the stand-off?

In September 2018, Turkey, Russia and Iran signed an agreement (also called the Sochi accord) to create a de-escalation zone in Idlib, where violent hostilities were prohibited.

Under the agreement, opposition forces were classified as jihadist and mainstream. Mainstream forces were to pull heavy weapons out of the zone and jihadist groups to vacate it completely. All sides, including Turkey, set up military observation posts.

Claiming that jihadist groups did not leave the zone after more than a year, Syrian government forces launched an offensive in December 2019. The offensive displaced more than 900,000 civilians.

This was followed by the Syrian government forces attacking a Turkish observation post and killing 13 Turkish soldiers.

Read more: The ‘ceasefire’ in Syria is ending – here’s what’s likely to happen now

Outraged, Turkey retaliated on February 2 with a counter-attack that killed Syrian soldiers and four members of Russian special forces. Turkey also intensified its military build-up in Idlib’s north.

On February 3, Turkish President Recep Tayyib Erdogan openly defied Russia with a visit to Ukraine, where he pledged US$200 million in military aid.

On February 15, Erdogan warned:

The solution in Idlib is the (Syrian) regime withdrawing to the borders in the agreements. Otherwise, we will handle this before the end of February.

Russia blamed Turkey for failing to meet its obligations and continued to allege Turkey was supplying weapons to what Russia considers terrorist groups.

Erdogan countered these claims by saying Russian and Syrian government forces were “constantly attacking the civilian people, carrying out massacres, spilling blood”.

The greatest fear is an all-out war in Idlib and the inevitable civilian suffering. With more than a million civilians trying to survive in makeshift camps, a United Nations representative has warned of “a real bloodbath”.

Why is Idlib so important?

Capturing Idlib has immense strategic significance for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, as it is the last opposition stronghold in Syria.

Backed by Russia, Assad has been conducting a successful military offensive against jihadist opposition forces throughout the country to regain and consolidate his power since 2015. He has allowed remnants of these groups to escape to Idlib as a deliberate strategy to gather all opposition forces in one location.

So far, Idlib has been controlled by a range of opposition groups. The most powerful is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which was formed by a large faction that split from the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda in 2017.

Capturing Idlib with the help of Russia and clearing the province of all armed opposition would allow Assad to declare victory and end the civil war.

Turkish and Russian clash of interests in Syria

Erdogan had three main goals in his Syrian involvement. First, prevent the establishment of a Kurdish autonomous region in northern Syria. The Turkish fear such a development could inspire the large Kurdish-populated southeast regions of Turkey to pursue similar ambitions.

The second is to fight a proxy war in Syria through jihadist groups to topple the Assad regime and establish an Islamist government. Erdogan hoped this would extend his political influence in the Middle East and his ambitions to make political Islam dominant would be achieved.

A third aim is to do with maintaining his 18-year rule in Turkey amid political and economic problems. A war in Syria serves to silence critics.

Erdogan calculated he could achieve his goals if he was to have forces in Syria and collaborate with Russia and Iran. The cost was distancing Turkey from the Western block and increasing its international alienation.

Read more: As Turkish troops move in to Syria, the risks are great – including for Turkey itself

Turkey, Russia, Iran and the Syrian government wanted to balance Western and particularly US power in Syria, and if possible to push US out of Syria. Even though their relationships were fragile from the start, these four countries were extremely careful on the diplomatic table and presented a powerful bloc against US involvement in Syria.

The Russian strategy in Syria has been clear from the start – support the Assad government until it regains control over all Syrian territory and defeats all opposition forces. Then Russia can control Turkey so it does not cause serious armed conflict with the Assad regime, while protecting Russian interests in Syria and the greater Middle East.

Russia has invested enormous funds in support of the Assad government. The only way to recoup its costs and have return on investment is if Assad achieves a full victory. Nothing short of capturing Idlib will suffice, even if it means open conflict with Turkey.

What is likely to happen next?

Erdogan is caught in a dilemma. He is unable to influence the Syrian opposition parties in Idlib, but he is also not prepared to forsake them. If he withdraws support, they may possibly retaliate with terrorist attacks in Turkey.

Another flood of Syrian refugees is a serious problem for Erdogan. He lost local government elections in 2019 largely due to the Syrian refugee crisis in Turkey.

It is hard to predict what Erdogan will do in Syria. He is either bluffing or is determined to stay the course, even if it means war. He has shown he is not afraid to make bold moves, as demonstrated with his October 2019 military operation in northern Syria and recent military involvement in the Libya conflict.

Bluffing or not, Putin is not backing down and will not hesitate to take on Turkey in Syria. In doing so, Putin will continue to support the Assad forces with equipment, military intelligence, air power and military expertise, rather than being involved in open military conflict. This strategy allows Russia to claim Syria is exercising its legitimate right to defend its sovereign territory against a foreign Turkish military presence.

It is likely Erdogan will avert the risk of war at the last moment. He has involved the US, which has expressed its support for Turkey and hopes to see Assad gone. He has used his NATO membership card and the European fear of another Syrian refugee flood to bring European powers onside at the diplomatic table.

Erdogan will be happy and claim victory if he manages to enlarge the safety zone with a continued Turkish presence there. Russia would only accept this on the condition that all jihadist opposition groups leave Idlib. On these terms, both sides could claim a win from the present dangerous tension.

The likely Russian response is to go all the way in Idlib, regardless of what Turkey does. Any Turkish military success in Syria is highly unlikely. Russia completely controls the airspace and could inflict serious damage on Turkish ground troops.

It is in Russia’s interests to finish this costly civil war once and for all. It is only a matter of time before the Assad government captures Idlib diplomatically or by force.

– ref. Turkey and Russia lock horns in Syria as fear of outright war escalates – https://theconversation.com/turkey-and-russia-lock-horns-in-syria-as-fear-of-outright-war-escalates-131830

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

The coronovirus outbreak has reminded us of the importance of public health responses in managing the spread of disease.

But what actually is public health? And why are we so often hearing from public health experts about the coronavirus and other health threats?

In broad terms, whereas medicine primarily focuses on treating disease in individuals, public health focuses on preventing disease and improving health in communities.

Public health activities are far-reaching and varied. They include health promotion campaigns, infectious disease surveillance and control (as in the response to coronavirus), ensuring access to clean air, water and safe food, screening for disease, community health interventions and policy and planning activities.

Here are three examples which show the important role public health plays.

Read more: It’s now a matter of when, not if, for Australia. This is how we’re preparing for a jump in coronavirus cases

The reduction of vaccine-preventable diseases

The development of vaccines to protect against infectious diseases is one of the most significant achievements in both medicine and public health. Vaccines have prevented literally millions of deaths – the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates at least ten million globally between 2010 and 2015 – and spared countless others from getting sick.

We now rarely see diseases such as polio, measles and mumps in the developed world thanks to the effectiveness of vaccines. The fact we can protect individuals and communities against some of the deadliest diseases by a simple and safe injection is one of the miracles of modern medicine.

The delivery of vaccines to communities throughout the world and the reduction in disease as a result of this is a testament to public health and its power.

Perhaps the greatest example of the effect vaccines have had on the health of populations globally is the eradication of smallpox. A viral disease characterised by fever and a pustular rash, smallpox was one of the most devastating infectious diseases we’ve ever seen. It killed around 300 million people in the 20th century alone.

To eradicate smallpox, public health physicians sought to identify new cases swiftly. Then people the cases had come into contact with were vaccinated as quickly as possible to prevent the disease spreading further, a public health measure called “ring vaccination”. This campaign began in earnest in 1967, with the WHO declaring smallpox eradicated in 1980, in what’s regarded as one of the greatest public health achievements of modern times.

Read more: Health Check: which vaccinations should I get as an adult?

Tobacco control

Although there’s still a lot of work to do, smoking rates have declined over recent decades, with great benefits to our health.

When science established a clear link between smoking and poor health outcomes, the role of public health was to get this message out to the public and implement measures to minimise smoking rates.

We’ve managed to reduce deaths due to tobacco through interventions such as health promotion campaigns providing information to the public about the dangers of smoking, restrictions on cigarette advertising, plain packaging, restrictions on smoking in public places, increased taxes on cigarettes, as well as increased access to cessation programs.

Tobacco control is one of the major achievements of public health. This is especially true as we’ve often had to fight against the industry, or “big tobacco”, to get these initiatives off the ground.

Read more: Can we trust Big Tobacco to promote public health?

Tobacco control is also a great example of how coordinated actions from a number of different government sectors can be targeted to address a major public health challenge.

Australia has been recognised as a world leader in this area.

Motor vehicle safety

Motor vehicles have been a great advancement in modern society, but have also been a major cause of injury and death.

Road deaths in industrialised countries have declined significantly in the last few decades. This reduction has occurred despite the increased number of drivers and distances travelled on the roads in this period.

We’ve been able to achieve these safety improvements and therefore reductions in deaths with the help of a wide variety of interventions.

For example, increased regulation in motor vehicle design standards, improved roads, seatbelt regulation, speed limits, drink driving deterrents and the education of drivers.

Despite the gains made, road traffic accidents remain a leading cause of death worldwide, and are a particular problem for developing countries. So there’s still much work to be done in this area.

Read more: A new approach to cut death toll of young people in road accidents

Public health has played a major role in the increased health and longevity we take for granted in the modern world. But it’s perhaps an area we don’t give much thought to.

One of the reasons public health gains may be under-appreciated is that they are marked by the absence of disease, which can often go unrecognised. For example, while it’s clear when a life has been saved by a medical intervention, it’s much less obvious when disease has been prevented.

– ref. Smallpox, seatbelts and smoking: 3 ways public health has saved lives from history to the modern day – https://theconversation.com/smallpox-seatbelts-and-smoking-3-ways-public-health-has-saved-lives-from-history-to-the-modern-day-128300

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Lindenmayer, Professor, The Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University

New South Wales’ Forestry Corporation will this week start “selective timber harvesting” from two state forests ravaged by bushfire on the state’s south coast.

The state-owned company says the operations will be “strictly managed” and produce timber for power poles, bridges, flooring and decking.

Similarly, the Victorian government’s logging company VicForests recently celebrated the removal of sawlogs from burnt forests in East Gippsland.

VicForests says it did not cut down the trees – they were cut or pushed over by the army, firefighters or road crews because they blocked the rood or were dangerous. The company said it simply removed the logs to put them “to good use”.

However the science on the impacts of post-fire logging is clear: it can significantly impair the recovery of burned ecosystems, badly affect wildlife and, for some animal species, prevent recovery.

We acknowledge that for safety reasons, some standing and fallen burnt trees must be removed after a fire. But wherever possible, they should remain in place.

Damaging effects

Hollows in fire-damaged trees and logs provide critical habitat for animal species trying to survive in, or recolonise, burned forests.

Detailed studies around the world over the past 20 years, including in Australia, have demonstrated the damage caused by post-fire logging.

Indeed, the research shows post-fire logging is the most damaging form of logging. Logging large old trees after a fire may make the forests unsuitable habitat for many wildlife species for up to 200 years.

Read more: Buzz off honey industry, our national parks shouldn’t be milked for money

Long-term monitoring data from extensive field surveys shows hollow-dependent mammals, such as the vulnerable greater glider, generally do not survive in areas burned and then logged. Research by the lead author, soon to be published, shows populations are declining rapidly in landscapes dominated by wood production.

Forests logged after a fire have the lowest bird biodiversity relative to other forests, including those that burned at high severity (but which remain unlogged). Critical plants such as tree ferns are all but eradicated from forests that have been burned and then logged.

Soils remain extensively altered for many decades after post-fire logging. This is a major concern because runoff into rivers and streams damages aquatic ecosystems and kills organisms such as fish.

A double disturbance

Fire badly disrupts forest ecosystems. Animals and plants then begin recovering, but most forests and the biota they support simply cannot deal with the second intense disturbance of logging so soon after a first one.

For example, young germinating plants are highly vulnerable to being flattened and destroyed by heavy logging machinery. And in an Australian context, post-fire logging makes no sense in the majority of eucalypt-dominated ecosystems where many tree species naturally resprout. This is an essential part of forest recovery.

Logs provide shade, moisture and shelter for plants, and rotting timber is food for insects – which in turn provide food for mammals and birds.

Read more: Logged native forests mostly end up in landfill, not in buildings and furniture

Living and dead trees are also important for fungi — a food source for many animals, including bandicoots and potoroos which have been heavily impacted by the fires.

Similarly on burnt private land, removing damaged and fallen trees will only hinder natural recovery by removing important animal habitat and disturbing the soil. If left, fallen trees will provide refuge for surviving wildlife and enable the natural recovery of forests.

While the sight of burnt timber can be disheartening, landholders should resist the urge to “clean up”.

It doesn’t add up

Research in North America suggests debris such as tree heads, branches and other vegetation left by post-fire logging not only hinders forest regeneration, but can make forests more prone to fire.

And the economics of logging, particular after a fire, is dubious at best. Many native forest logging operations, such as in Victoria’s East Gippsland, are unprofitable, losing millions of taxpayer dollars annually.

Read more: Yes, the Australian bush is recovering from bushfires – but it may never be the same

Timber is predominantly sold cheaply for use as woodchips and paper pulp and fire-damaged timber is of particularly poor quality. Even before the fires, 87% of all native forest logged in Victoria was for woodchips and paper pulp.

Post-fire logging certainly has no place in national parks. But for the reasons we’ve outlined, it should be avoided even in state forests and on private land. Million hectares of vegetation in Australia was damaged or destroyed this fire season. The last thing our forests need is yet more disturbance.

VicForests response: VicForests told The Conversation that timber currently being removed by VicForests, at the direction of the Chief Fire Officer, is from hazardous trees that were cut or knocked over to enable the Princes Highway to be re-opened.

It said the timber would be used for fence restoration, firewood and to support local mills “protecting jobs, incomes and families. It would otherwise be left in piles on the side of the highway”.

“Any further post-fire recovery harvesting will occur in consultation with government including biodiversity specialists and the conservation regulator, following careful assessment and protection of high conservation values,” VicForests said.

The company said post-fire recovery harvesting, particularly of fire-killed trees, does not increase fire risk.

“Sensitive harvesting including the retention of habitat trees and active re-seeding is more likely to result in a successfully regenerated forest and a supportive environment for threatened species. This regenerating forest will have the same fire risk as natural regeneration following bushfire.”

Forestry Corporation of NSW response: Forestry Corporation of NSW said in a statement that small-scale selective timber harvesting operation will begin on the south coast this week.

The company’s senior planning manager Dean Kearney said the Environment Protection Authority, with the input of scientific experts “has provided Forestry Corporation with site-specific conditions for selective timber harvesting operations in designated parts of Mogo and South Brooman State Forests. These areas were previously set aside for timber production this year but have now been impacted by fire.”

“Strictly-managed selective timber harvesting will help prevent the loss of some high-quality timber damaged by fire, including material that will be in high demand for rebuilding, while ensuring the right protections are in place for key environmental values, particularly wildlife habitat, as these forests begin regenerating,” he said.

“The harvesting conditions augment the already strict rule set in place for forest operations and include requirements to leave all unburnt forest untouched and establish even more stringent conditions to protect water quality, hollow-bearing trees and wildlife habitat.”

– ref. Logging is due to start in fire-ravaged forests this week. It’s the last thing our wildlife needs – https://theconversation.com/logging-is-due-to-start-in-fire-ravaged-forests-this-week-its-the-last-thing-our-wildlife-needs-132347

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Coates, Program Director, Household Finances, Grattan Institute

This morning the Grattan Institute releases its submission to the government’s retirement incomes review, a review called in anticipation of five annual increases in compulsory superannuation contributions, scheduled to begin in July 2021.

Our research shows the super increases aren’t necessary. For most Australians, retirement incomes are already adequate. Since higher super contributions will come at the expense of wages, the scheduled increases should be abandoned.

But there are big problems the review will need to confront.

Here are five changes that would tackle them.

1. Boost rent assistance

While most Australians are comfortable in retirement, the system is failing too many poorer Australians, especially low-income women and retirees who rent.

Senior Australians who rent privately are more likely to suffer financial stress than homeowners or renters in public housing. And it will get worse because young Australians on lower incomes are less likely to own homes than in the past.

The government’s priority should be boosting rent assistance, which has not kept pace with rent increases. Raising rent assistance by 40%, or roughly A$1,400 a year for singles, would cost just $300 million a year if it applied to pensioners, and another $1 billion a year if extended to other renters.

A common concern is that boosting rent assistance would lead to higher rents. But that’s unlikely: households would not be required to spend any of the extra income on rent, and most would not.

2. Ease the age pension asset test

While retirement incomes are adequate for most retirees, the age pension assets test excessively penalises people who save more for their retirement.

Before January 1, 2017 retirees with assets above the threshold lost $1.50 of pension per fortnight for every $1,000 of assets above the threshold. In 2017 the Coalition lifted the threshold but also lifted the withdrawal rate to $3 of pension per fortnight for each $1,000 of assets.

The changes resulted in very high effective marginal tax rates on retirement savings, so much so that a typical worker who saves an extra $1000 at age 40 increases their retirement income by only $25 each year, or $658 over 26 years of retirement, which is a negative return on money saved for decades.

Read more: Why pensioners are cruising their way around budget changes

The age pension withdrawal rate should be cut to $2.25 per fortnight for each $1,000 of assets above the threshold. This would cost the budget about $750 million a year.

For middle and high-income workers, this change would have a bigger impact on retirement incomes per government dollar expended than boosting compulsory super.

3. Boost Newstart

Newstart, together with the disability support pension, provides an important safety net for Australians who are unable to work right through to retirement age.

Yet while the age pension and disability support pension are indexed to wages, Newstart is not. It only climbs in line with inflation. It should be increased by $75 a week and then indexed to wages going forward.

This would cost a lot but it would help the growing legions of older Australians, many of them women, who find themselves among the long-term unemployed in the years leading up to retirement, or are forced to retire early. And it would lift many more younger Australians out of poverty.

4. Include the home in the pension assets test

Falling rates of home ownership mean we are at risk of creating an underclass of retirees who rent.

And our retirement incomes system makes this worse by favouring homeowners over renters. Once a person is retired, their home is treated differently to their other assets. Which is why $6 billion in pension payments go to people with homes worth more than $1 million.

It’s time for more of the value of the family home to be included in the pension assets test. Counting more of the home above some threshold (such as $500,000) would be fairer and would save the budget up to $2 billion a year.

No pensioner would be forced to leave their home. Pensioners with valuable homes could continue to stay at home and receive the pension under the Government’s pension loans scheme, which recovers debts only when homes are eventually sold.

5. Fix super tax breaks

Superannuation tax breaks cost a lot – tens of billions each year in foregone revenue, with half the benefits flowing to the top one fifth of income earners, who already have enough resources to fund their retirements.

And the costs are set to climb further as super balances climb. The cost of the earnings concessions alone is set to climb from $17.4 billion to $20.8 billion over the next four years.

Three reforms would keep them in check.

• Voluntary contributions from pretax income should be limited to $11,000 a year. This would save the budget about $1.7 billion a year.

• Contributions from post-tax income should be limited to $250,000 over a lifetime, or to $50,000 a year. It won’t save the budget much in the short term, but in the longer term it will plug a large hole in the tax system.

• Earnings in retirement – currently untaxed for people with superannuation balances less than $1.6 million – should be taxed at 15%, the same as super earnings before retirement. Doing so would save the budget about $2 billion per year at first, and much more in future.

These changes to super taxes free up money to help Australians who need help without hurting the retirement prospects of middle Australians.

Australia’s retirement incomes system works well, but there are things that need fixing.

The reforms we propose would make retirement fairer, save taxpayers’ money, and ensure that all Australians can enjoy a comfortable retirement free from poverty.

Read more: Think superannuation comes from employers’ pockets? It comes from yours

– ref. Forget more compulsory super: here are 5 ways to actually boost retirement incomes – https://theconversation.com/forget-more-compulsory-super-here-are-5-ways-to-actually-boost-retirement-incomes-132655

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

The Morrison government will use its procurement policy to encourage the recycling of plastics, as well as committing financial assistance for upgrading infrastructure to boost the capacity for this waste to be reused.

Scott Morrison will announce the initiatives to a national conference in Canberra on Monday that is looking at the challenge of dealing with this escalating and environmentally destructive problem. The meeting is attended by industry, government and community representatives.

The prime minister, who has previously highlighted better management of plastics waste as a priority for his government, will emphasise that for major change “the only way forward is in partnership – working with our neighbours; state, territory and local governments; industry, our manufacturing sector and supermarkets; waste operators, and with consumers and communities”.

In a speech circulated ahead of delivery he proposes “three pillars” for tackling the problem: taking responsibility for the waste; encouraging demand for recycled products; and expanding industry capability.

Plastics “are choking our oceans. Scientists estimate that in just 30 years’ time the weight of plastics in our oceans will exceed the weight of fish in our oceans. That’s appalling.

“Taking responsibility means recognising the problems we are contributing to – and it also means keeping faith with the Australian people who recycle,” Morrison says.

“Only 12% of plastic put out in the yellow bin for recycling is actually recycled. Australians don’t expect their waste to be exported to someone’s village or waterway.”

Morrison will meet state and territory leaders at the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) next month to finalise a ban on the export of waste plastic, paper, glass and tyres.

He stresses this isn’t to ban the export of value-added recyclable materials.

Morrison says more investment is much needed in the recycling industry; this and collection systems are under “severe strain”. Investment is needed in “technological innovation that maximises the value of the recycled product and minimises the costs as well”. Only 8% of the $2.6 billion states and territories collected in waste levies over 2018-19 has been reinvested in infrastructure and technology.

“The Commonwealth stands ready to co-invest in these critical facilities with state and territory governments, and with industry”, he says. “We will invest with governments and with industry on a 1 to 1 to 1 basis.” Details will come closer to the May budget, Morrison said.

The waste sector employs 50,000 and generates more than $15 billion annually, Morrison says.

“For every 10,000 tonnes of waste sent to landfill, 2.8 direct jobs are created. But if we recycle the same waste, 9.2 direct jobs are created.

“According to the Australian Council of Recycling, recycling more domestically could create more than 5,000 new jobs.”

With a ban on waste plastic being exported, there will be more in Australia to reuse – which means finding ways of encouraging demand for recycled products. Both industry and government need to do this, Morrison says.

As the first of a number of measures the government will take, its procurement guidelines will be rewritten “to make sure every procurement undertaken by a Commonwealth agency considers environmental sustainability and use of recycled content as a factor in determining value for money”.

He instanced a number of examples of innovative recycling, These included “recycled plastic into asphalt … a one kilometre, two-lane stretch [of road] uses up to half a million plastic bags”, as well as into picnic tables, bollards and gardening products.

– ref. Morrison government will use purchasing power to encourage plastics recycling – https://theconversation.com/morrison-government-will-use-purchasing-power-to-encourage-plastics-recycling-132742

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jack Anderson, Professor of Sports Law, Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne

With the announcement that China’s Sun Yang has been banned from swimming for eight years, FINA, the world governing swimming body, must take stock of how it oversees one of the most popular and high-profile of the Olympic sports ahead of this year’s Tokyo games.

It would now seem obvious that, taking the lead from athletics and tennis, FINA should establish an independent integrity unit to investigate and prosecute doping and similar offences.

In a decision announced Friday, the Court of Arbitration (CAS), sport’s self-styled world supreme court, confirmed that Sun would be banned from competitive swimming for eight years. His swimming future now rests largely on one final avenue of appeal to the Swiss Federal Tribunal.

Read more: Why drug cheats are still being caught seven years after the 2012 London Olympics

This has always been a big global story: Sun is one of the most successful swimmers of all time, and one of China’s most beloved sports stars. A three-time Olympic gold medallist, he has 11 world championship golds, and is second only to the legendary US swimmer Michael Phelps in men’s individual events.

It was at last year’s world championships in Korea that silver medallist, Australia’s Mack Horton, famously protested against Sun, during the podium ceremony for the 400 meters freestyle.

Horton’s protest related to the fact that Sun, having previously served a three-month ban for a doping infraction in 2014, had been involved in an incident with doping control officers in September 2018.

Having given a sample to the testers at his home, Sun became concerned about their conduct and accreditation. This concern eventually led to the vial containing Sun sample being smashed by one of the swimmer’s entourage.

Initially, Sun’s behaviour in this case merely attracted a reprimand. An investigation carried out by FINA concluded that, although Sun’s actions were incautious, they could be justified given the testers’ grave procedural errors and misconduct.

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the global body for anti-doping standards, later took the view that FINA’s approach was overly lenient. WADA appealed to CAS and a public hearing was held in Switzerland in November.

Having deliberated on what they heard at that eleventh-hour hearing, which was initially marred by poor translation, the three arbitrators delivered a summary of their verdict last week.

Basically, CAS held that the procedural concerns Sun had about the testing process in September 2018 either did not occur or were not sufficiently compelling to justify tampering with the sample container. Given this was his second anti-doping infraction, an eight-year sanction applied.

It must be remembered the charge against Sun is that of tampering with a sample – it is not a charge or “conviction” relating to doping. Sun’s sample taken in September 2018 was never tested, and this seems to be the reason why the arbitrators have not decided to strip him of the medals he obtained at the world championships in 2019. In this, as with other aspects of the Sun decision, we must await the publication of the arbitrators’ full, reasoned award.

Sun now has until the end of March to lodge an appeal at the Swiss Federal Tribunal (SFT) and has already indicated that he will take that option. As it happens, on various technical grounds – one relating to an unsubstantiated claim of bias against WADA’s chief lawyer – Sun’s lawyers have already been to the SFT on three separate occasions. They will now likely go for a fourth time, and it is likely to end in disappointment.

He will not get a full re-hearing at the SFT, and the grounds of appeal will be limited to narrow procedural issues only. An example would be whether the CAS hearing in some way unfair – ironically, the fact that it was held in public at Sun’s request may tell against him here. Another consideration may be whether the sanction was disproportionate – given the eight-year ban is mandated in the World Anti-Doping Code, this ground would likely not succeed. One final consideration may be whether the poor translation service at the CAS hearing might be a ground of appeal – again, unlikely, given that it was Sun’s legal team that hired the translator.

Read more: Snubbing Chinese swimmer Sun Yang ignores the flaws in the anti-doping system

Arguably, Sun’s strongest point has always been the general one, outlined in the seminal CAS case of Quigley v UIT. It is that, while the principle of strict liability applies to athletes in anti-doping control, it should equally apply to testers to strictly comply with all administrative aspects of the anti-doping process. Whether the SFT would entertain an argument that goes right to heart of the current anti-doping policy globally is unlikely.

While Sun grapples with an effective end to his career and WADA, unsurprisingly, feels vindicated, FINA must now reflect on its governance of its sport.

Lately, it has had a fractious relationship with some of its leading participants who sought successfully, on threat of litigation, to compete in a privately funded international swimming league. An integrity commission would seem a vital next step.

The reaction to the Sun ban on social media from China has been predictably ferocious. One knock-on effect of the Sun decision may be a greater focus from countries such as China and Russia on the fact that, in terms of the nationality of those appointed to hear cases, CAS, sport’s supreme court, appears to be systemically Eurocentric in nature.

It seems almost certain that Sun will not compete at Tokyo 2020. Attention now moves at CAS and on doping in sport to the case against Russia and its athletes.

The reaction to the Sun verdict will be a mere ripple in a pool compared to that which will greet a similar verdict against Russia.

– ref. Sun Yang ban shows world swimming body must establish an integrity commission – https://theconversation.com/sun-yang-ban-shows-world-swimming-body-must-establish-an-integrity-commission-132738