Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kirsty Forsdike, Senior Lecturer, La Trobe Business School and Senior Researcher in Centre for Sport & Social Impact, La Trobe University

Not everyone looks forward to the Melbourne Cup. Domestic violence and emergency services ready themselves for a potential increase in calls, call-outs and admissions.

But as our recent review shows, the Melbourne Cup isn’t the only major sporting event around the world linked to a rise in domestic violence.

Not everyone agrees on why this is happening. We show alcohol is just one factor.

Read more:
Is the Melbourne Cup still the race that stops the nation – or are we saying #nuptothecup?

What’s going on?

Police-recorded assaults and emergency department presentations for assault increase on or around the major sporting events in Victoria – the AFL grand final, Melbourne Cup and Formula 1.

In particular, domestic violence assaults rise significantly on the day of the Melbourne Cup.

In New South Wales, police data across six years shows domestic violence assaults increased by more than 40% following State of Origin rugby league games compared with non-State of Origin nights.

Our review also shows domestic violence increases on days of, and around, major sporting events around the world. This includes major National Football League games in the United States and Canada, and soccer matches in Scotland.

Read more:
Whether teams win or lose, sporting events lead to spikes in violence against women and children

Why is this happening?

Not everyone agrees on why domestic violence is linked with major sporting events. We know perpetrators are more likely to use violence or become more violent during public holidays in Australia. Both the AFL grand final and the Melbourne Cup receive a dedicated public holiday in Victoria on or around the event.

Alcohol is certainly a risk factor for increased frequency and severity of domestic violence. The use of alcohol during major sports events and over holidays is well documented.

Similarly, gambling and stress over income loss is also linked to the increased use and escalation of domestic violence. These too can occur around the time of events, such as the Melbourne Cup.

But focusing on alcohol and gambling alone runs the risk of such violence being excused. This focus can send the message that men cannot be held entirely responsible for their behaviour.

A sport’s culture

A sport’s culture can also be a contributing factor to domestic violence. Sport, violence, and what it means to be a man have long been recognised as connected. For instance, coaches promote aggression for performance.

There’s also an emotive connection to sport. Sport fans display “irrational passions”, maintain “blind optimism”, have “highly charged” memories and passion that mimic “addiction”.

Read more:
Toughen up snowflake! Sports coaches can be emotionally abusive – here’s how to recognise it

However, our review also showed that not all sports or their events are associated with domestic violence. Each sits within a culture that differs from sport to sport and country to country.

Some studies we reviewed showed that contact sports, such as American football, were associated with increases in domestic violence. Meanwhile, other contact sports, for instance, rugby union in the United Kingdom, were not.

Soccer is a non-contact sport but was linked to increased rates of domestic violence in the UK. Traditional rivalry between opposing soccer teams had a significant impact on domestic violence rates.

Perhaps emotionally charged games may best indicate whether an increased rate in domestic violence is likely. Examples include finals, or when a team is close to winning or losing a league. Frustrating or controversial outcomes, such as poor play or refereeing decisions, may also predict a rise in domestic violence.

An unexpected loss, for example, is connected with increased domestic violence rates, more so if that game is also considered important, for example during finals or potentially exiting a World Cup.

However, a UK study found that alcohol-related domestic violence significantly increased only when England won, not when they lost or drew. So losing is not necessarily the key factor.

Drinking motives may come into play here, with different supporters drinking (more) to celebrate or to cope.

When taken together, we can conclude it’s the culture of a particular sport in a particular country, exaggerated by keen rivalry, how emotionally charged a game might be, and when the game is played, that can predict a rise in domestic violence. That’s in addition to increased gambling or alcohol use linked to these events.

Read more:
How sport can tackle violence against women and girls

What can we do about it?

Policies to address domestic violence associated with sport need to be tailored to the places where an event is taking place and how a country’s, or even state’s, culture influences sporting fans’ behaviour.

We need to think about:

• when major sporting events are scheduled (ideally away from public holidays)

• limiting alcohol availability and increased prices, particularly during major events

• joint planning across police, health and specialist domestic violence services ahead of major sporting events

• developing social marketing campaigns for fans to coincide with
  with sporting events, such as the AFL grand final’s #liftyourgame. Such campaigns need to be free of alcohol and gambling sponsorship.

Initiatives need to be developed with support from policy makers, state, and national sports organisations, as well as specialist domestic violence and emergency services.

They need to be effectively tailored to the sport, its fans, and the cultural context being targeted. They need to happen now and be evaluated.

If this article raises issues for you or someone you know, contact: 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732), Safe Steps (1800 015 188), Men’s Referral Service (1300 766 491) or Mensline (1300 78 99 78). In an emergency, call 000.

William Douglas, policy and projects officer at No to Violence co-authored this article and is a partner in the research mentioned in it.

Kirsty Forsdike currently receives funding from the Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions of the Victorian Government to research the prevention of violence against women through sport and has previously received funding from the Office for Women in Sport and Recreation to explore violence against women in sport. She also receives funding from the Victorian State Government Crime Prevention Innovation Fund and has previously received funding from the Department of Social Services, Department of Premier and Cabinet, Respect Victoria and Department of Social Services.

Anne-Marie Laslett receives funding from the

*The Victorian Near-miss Award Pilot is being administered by veski for the Victorian Health and Medical Research Workforce Project on behalf of the Victorian Government and the Association of Australian Medical Research Institutes. Funding for the Pilot has been provided by the Victorian Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions. The Victorian Near-miss Awards are provided to eligible individuals who narrowly missed out on the 2021 NHMRC Investigator Grant funding in the Emerging Leaders 2 stream.

Associate Professor Leesa Hooker currently receives funding from a Victorian Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions Crime Prevention grant. She does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no other relevant affiliations beyond her academic appointment.

– ref. This Melbourne Cup, alcohol and sport collide. Forget the horses. It’s domestic violence we should be watching for – https://theconversation.com/this-melbourne-cup-alcohol-and-sport-collide-forget-the-horses-its-domestic-violence-we-should-be-watching-for-191497

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brianna Le Busque, Lecturer in Psychology, University of South Australia

Surfers have a complex relationship with sharks. Many surfers, either knowingly or not, share their waves with sharks of various shapes and sizes. On rare occasions these interactions can result in bites or close calls.

A highly publicised close call involved Australian surfer Mick Fanning and a white shark during the 2015 World Surf League final at Jeffreys Bay in South Africa. A video of this interaction has over 19 million views on YouTube alone. Others tune into Hollywood films such as Soul Surfer, which tells the story of surfer Bethany Hamilton who lost her arm to a tiger shark in Hawaii.

Shark bites on humans are rare. Worldwide, there were 112 confirmed bites in 2021 on the International Shark Attack File, with nine unprovoked bites resulting in fatalities. When shark bites occur, often surfers are involved because they are frequently in the ocean. Despite this, many surfers appear to accept these interactions as simply a part of surfing.

Surfers even refer to certain sharks as “locals” at particular breaks. In many places, surfers use the term “men in grey suits” when sharks are present. Authors of a 2019 study in California explain this euphemism is used to alert surfers that sharks are present without causing anxiety or stress.

A new study published in Marine Policy surveyed 391 surfers across 24 different countries (predominantly the United States). The study found 60% of surfers are not afraid of sharks despite 52% having seen sharks while surfing. And 17% said either they or someone they knew had been bitten by a shark.

Read more:
How shoring up drones with artificial intelligence helps surf lifesavers spot sharks at the beach

Why aren’t surfers afraid?

This study of the complex but little-researched relationship between surfers and sharks offers interesting insight into the perception of risk.

In general, most people have no direct experience with sharks, yet overestimate the chance of encountering one and have a strong fear of them. Many surfers have had direct encounters with sharks but perceive the risk to be low and aren’t afraid of them. In fact, 44% of surfers said they would still go into the water if a shark was sighted.

The psychology of cognitive heuristics – or shortcuts in thinking – can help us explain why surfers aren’t afraid of sharks.

The behavioural psychology principle of operant conditioning explains how consequences influence behaviours. For surfers who have encountered a shark but have not been bitten or had a close call, this behaviour of surfing with sharks (and not being afraid) is being reinforced.

Perhaps this lower level of fear is influenced by a consistent personality trait. Research has found people high in sensation-seeking, which is the tendency for people to pursue thrill-seeking experiences, view the risks of sharks as lower. It is plausible that many surfers are high on sensation-seeking, which may help explain why they perceive the risk of sharks to be low.

Post-rationalisation, or choice-support bias, is the tendency for people to ascribe positive attributes to a decision they have made, essentially to justify the decision. Surfers may downplay their fear of sharks to rationalise their decision to continue to surf, as their desire to surf is greater than their perceived risk of a shark bite.

Read more:
Shark bites are rare. Here are 8 things to avoid to make them even rarer

How does this affect shark conservation?

Globally, it’s estimated humans kill 100 million sharks each year. A quarter of all shark species are now threatened with extinction, so actions to protect them are important.

Given the general public’s fear of sharks is a barrier to shark conservation, understanding surfers’ shark fears (or lack thereof) gives us an important insight into fear and perception of risk. This will further our understanding of these complicated psychological factors.

In the discussion of shark conservation, the many relevant groups include politicians, fishers, the media and scientists. But frequent ocean users such as surfers are often overlooked, despite being more likely to interact with sharks than others.

Giving this cohort a weighted voice in the discussion of shark management and reducing the risks of shark bite will ensure a better, more logical balance between safety and conservation.

Read more:
Sydney shark attack triggers calls for a cull – but let’s take a deep breath and look at the evidence

Brianna Le Busque does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Surfers share their waves with sharks, but fear not – https://theconversation.com/surfers-share-their-waves-with-sharks-but-fear-not-193395

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael-Shawn Fletcher, Associate Professor in Biogeography, The University of Melbourne

Southeast Australia’s bushfire crisis culminated in the devastating bushfire season of 2019 and 2020 that burnt nearly 25 million hectares of bush.

Our new research demonstrates how the scale of this disaster blew out due to legislation introduced in the 1970s, which was based on idea that nature should be left to grow freely without human intervention.

We investigated the bushfire history of one of the worst hit areas: Buchan on Gunaikurnai Country in Victoria. We found no bushfires burned there for almost a century until the mid 1970s, following the establishment of the Land Conservation Act of 1970 – legislation that sought to protect the Australian bush from humans.

This legislation banned farmers from mimicking Aboriginal burning practices by using frequent fires to promote grass for livestock. As a result, the amount of flammable trees and shrubs exploded in the region. It was only after this prohibition on burning that catastrophic bushfires became an issue in the Buchan area.

The prolonged neglect of southeast Australian forests under the guise of conservation means our forests now carry dangerous levels of fuels. This creates the conditions in which climate-driven bushfires become megafires, devastating Country and people’s lives.

Cultural burning as caring for Country

Aboriginal people make use of all kinds of vegetation, from closed forest to treeless grasslands, from freshwater to sea Country. Each mob care for Country according to their own laws and philosophies. The principal (but not only) tool for caring for Country is fire – a process now referred to as cultural burning.

The Victorian Traditional Owner Cultural Fire Strategy eloquently captures what cultural burning is:

Cultural Burning is Right Fire, Right Time, Right Way and for the right (cultural) reasons according to Lore. There are different kinds of cultural fire practices guided by Lore applicable across Victoria’s Countries.

Prior to British invasion, caring for Country led to diverse territories comprised of all the things people needed for themselves or for trade.

In contrast to hazard reduction burning, cultural burning is not a homogeneous application of fire designed simply to keep fuel loads low. It is a sophisticated and diverse system dictated by an intimate and reciprocal relationship with Country.

Aboriginal care for Country promotes a safe, productive and predicable world. It is regulated by strict spiritual, cultural and pragmatic protocols.

It is intimate and small-scale. It is year-round. It is long term. It has both immediate and cumulative impacts on Country. This includes increased biodiversity, fewer catastrophic bushfires, productive lands and waters, and a safe home for people and other occupants of Country.

Settler farmers and open Country

Settler farmers in southeast Australia capitalised on the systematic, fine-grained and diverse set of ways Aboriginal people applied fire to Country. Indeed, most agricultural areas in the southeast today occur on Country that was already open and grassy because of the application of fire over millennia.

This open Country was deemed desirable land. Much of it was further cleared for agriculture, while “less desirable” land was essentially neglected or viewed as a sources of timber.

These neglected areas have become much more woody and, as a result, much more fire prone.

Read more:
This rainforest was once a grassland savanna maintained by Aboriginal people – until colonisation

Until the 1970s, many settler farmers observed and mimicked the practice of cultural burning. They particularly desired the benefits of increased green shoots following low-intensity burning of grasses to feed their livestock, and the safety from uncontrolled bushfires such burning provided in this perilously flammable environment.

For a 2008 Victorian government inquest into the impact of public land management practices on bushfires, Buchan locals commented on the causes of bushfire in the region. A statement from a Buchan farmer reads:

After Europeans arrived the settlers followed the Aboriginal ways and the country was all open, rolling grassland. My father said it was paradise on earth. Orbost right through Gelantipy, Wulgulmerang, Omeo and all that country was rolling grassland, and the settlers came there because it was great for their cattle.

After the limitations on [Aboriginal] people, the settlers followed their ways and the country retained its grassland quality. […] Then the regulations began to be more and more restrictive. Public land management and the responsibility of the Minister, have been evaded, over a long time.

How the landscape changed

For our study, we extracted a long sample of sediment from the Tooculerdoyung Lagoon on the banks of the Snowy River, near where it joins the Buchan River. Studying the pollen and charcoal contained in this sample reveals how vegetation, fire and erosion changed in this region over the past 120 years.

Tooculerdoyung is a local Gunaikurnai word that translates to “a point of river”.
The site is currently surrounded by eucalypt-forest. It is depicted in a well-known lithograph by realist painter Eugene von Guérard in 1867, in which the landscape surrounding the site is portrayed as an open forest.

Our data confirms von Guérard’s depiction. From the early 1900s (shortly after the town of Buchan was established in 1873) until the 1970s, the area was indeed an open landscape, dominated by grass and herbs. In this time, it experienced a consistent, low-intensity fire regime (fire pattern).

After 1970, the fire regime becomes more variable, with a shift to less frequent and higher impact burning. This is accompanied by a drastic increase in the amount of flammable trees such as eucalypts and shrubs. For the first time in the region, we see the onset of post-fire soil erosion.

Buchan locals lay the blame for this fire regime shift on the banning of settler mimicry burning. In a submission to the 2008 inquiry on public land management and bushfires, local Buchan residents wrote:

It was 35 years ago when the use of the burnt areas for cattle grazing was stopped […] when the Land Conservation Council first started.

[…] That is when the demise of all this started happening. The older ones who are still around will still tell you that one day they will burn us out, because there is no management in the bush anymore as far as fire suppression goes, and, really, it is coming true.

We implore land management agencies to rethink the way Country is perceived and cared for. Country needs people and the neglect of our forests is destroying them.

Aboriginal people hold the knowledge, connection and desire to return health to their Country and they must be supported to do so.

Read more:
World-first research confirms Australia’s forests became catastrophic fire risk after British invasion

Michael-Shawn Fletcher receives funding from the Australian Research Council

Michela Mariani receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is affiliated with the Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH) at the Australian National University.

Russell Mullett is affiliated with the GunaiKurnai Land & Waters Aboriginal Corporation, which receive grants from government – Ranger Program/Registered Aboriginal Party to support employment and operational funding. We are a non-profit Organisation.

Simon Connor receives funding from the Australian Research Council through its Indigenous Discovery programme. He is also a member of the Victorian National Parks Association.

Anthony Romano does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How 1970s conservation laws turned this ‘paradise on Earth’ into a tinderbox – https://theconversation.com/how-1970s-conservation-laws-turned-this-paradise-on-earth-into-a-tinderbox-192401

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris F. Wright, Associate professor, University of Sydney

Labor’s proposed amendment to the Fair Work Act (subtitled its Secure Jobs, Better Pay bill) has drawn fire from Australia’s three leading employer groups:

• the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which says it will create more strikes and unemployment

• the Australian Industry Group, which says it threatens decades of national prosperity and will turn workplaces into conflict zones

• and the Business Council of Australia, which says it risks tipping the economy over the edge while workers wait longer for pay increases.

The Senate has begun an inquiry, but it is already easy to see the worst of these fears are misplaced.

Along with banning pay secrecy clauses, putting gender equity at the heart of the Fair Work Commission’s pay-setting process, and giving it new powers to resolve long-running disputes, the bill expands access to multi-employer bargaining, something that withered away at the start of the 1990s.

While multi-employer bargaining is allowed under current laws, no such agreements have been made since 2009, and few since the introduction of enterprise bargaining in 1993.

Read more:
Why unions and small business want industry bargaining from the jobs summit – and big business doesn’t

Before enterprise bargaining, pay was set by hundreds of awards – most covering more than one employer in a sector or occupation – negotiated between employers and unions before being arbitrated by the Fair Work Commission.

Enterprise bargaining largely replaced that process with agreements individually negotiated in each workplace, and merely registered with the Commission, which checks whether they have passed a “Better Off Overall Test” and meet minimum standards.

A smaller number of awards continued, renamed “modern awards”, and used as a backup for enterprises in which agreements couldn’t be reached.

Enterprise bargains are becoming rarer

It was thought enterprise bargaining would boost productivity, because workers would be able to suggest changes to the way their enterprise worked that would make things more efficient in return for more pay. However, the extent to which this happened is unclear.

Lately, enterprise bargaining has been declining, with the number of operational federally-registered enterprise agreeements falling by more than half from 23,500 to 10,000 between the ends of 2013 and 2021.

In part this has been because pay rises offered under enterprise bargains have been too low to represent value for workers in the enterprise or their union.

Read more:
There’s one big reason wages are stagnating: the enterprise bargaining system is broken, and in terminal decline

Under the current enterprise bargaining rules, introduced by the Rudd government in 2009, employers are not legally obliged to offer higher pay in return for demands such as longer working days.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions believes bargaining with multiple employers will enable employers to offer more, knowing others can. It wants the government to be part of the process where it funds the pay rate set, as it effectively does for childcare and aged care.

Employer representatives say it would be a return to the 1970s, or the 1960s, when industrial action was common and prices and wages chased each other up.

Our research on Denmark suggests these fears are misplaced.

Denmark shows what’s possible

Denmark has enterprise agreements, similar to Australia’s, but they are linked to multi-employer “sectoral” agreements bargained between unions and employer associations representing workers and employers across a particular sector.

These sectoral agreements provide “frameworks” that can be varied at the level of each enterprise. Like Australia’s awards, the sectoral agreements are the default in enterprises that are unable to strike enterprise bargains.

The difference is that Denmark’s sectoral agreements provide a stronger set of minimum conditions and protections than Australia’s awards, which are more limited by law in what they can cover.

Danish workers have the right to strike and employers have the right to “lockout” their workers by preventing them from working. Despite these powers, industrial action is relatively rare in Denmark.

Read more:
Wages and women top Albanese’s IR agenda: the big question is how Labor keeps its promises

In recent years fewer days have been lost to industrial disputes in Denmark than in Australia. Taking into account the relative sizes of their workforces, Australia lost about 10 times as many days to industrial action as Denmark in 2021.

This is despite unions being much stronger in Denmark – 65% of Danish workers are union members compared to only 14% of Australian workers – and industrial disputes in Australia falling to historically low levels.

And Denmark does not have out-of-control wages growth. In the past year average Denmark wages climbed 2.5% compared to a similarly-calculated 3% in Australia. In August, Denmark’s unemployment rate was 2.7%. Australia’s was 3.5%

Multi-employer bargaining won’t solve all of Australia’s workplace relations problems, but it’s unlikely to make many of them worse.

Chris F. Wright has previously received funding from the Australian, NSW, UK and Dutch governments, the International Labour Organization, and various employer and trade union organisations.

Russell Lansbury and Søren Kaj Andersen do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Employers say Labor’s new industrial relations bill threatens the economy. Denmark tells a different story – https://theconversation.com/employers-say-labors-new-industrial-relations-bill-threatens-the-economy-denmark-tells-a-different-story-193311

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Belgrave, Lecturer in Politics and Citizenship, Massey University

The recent release of Frozen in te reo Māori, along with the film’s impending ten-year anniversary, is putting Elsa and Anna back into focus.

Frozen’s 2013 release marked a significant shift in the way Disney told stories about princesses to explore modern gender values and a richer mix of personal anxieties.

But, in making its princesses more relatable, Disney forgot to also make them powerful and effective leaders.

Driven by their personal turmoil, Anna and Elsa forget to lead the people of Arendelle. That job falls to the film’s villain, Hans, who provides the best, albeit self-serving, example of a good leader.

Flipping the script

Unlike the Disney princesses of earlier films, Frozen flipped the audience’s expectations of the genre.

Queen Elsa did not need a romantic male partner to complete her journey and Princess Anna’s handsome Prince Hans turned out to be a villain. Love at first sight is shown to be an illusion, replaced by the power of sisterly love and self-acceptance.

Elsa’s need to break free from parental and societal expectation has found resonance in communities as diverse as those with eating disorders and Japanese kyariaūman (career women).

The LGBTQ+ community identified strongly with Elsa’s struggle and celebrated the movie’s queer subtext. In contrast, it was decried by some Christian conservatives.

Read more:
Luca, Disney and queerbaiting in animation

Absent leaders

While the story retained many of the elements of Disney’s canon – royalty, magic and Anna’s romance – it also expanded the emotional experiences of Disney’s princesses to be more directly relatable to a modern global audience.

Yet Elsa and Anna’s story moves so far beyond the traditional elements of a Disney fairytale that their status as royalty is almost irrelevant to the narrative.

From the perspective of leadership, Elsa and Anna provide questionable role models.

Elsa is so afraid of what people will think of her she runs away from her own coronation. Anna’s impulsiveness is so apparent even Kristoff openly questions her judgment.

Elsa is convinced she cannot help anyone but herself. Anna gives both her hand in marriage and control of the kingdom to a man she just met.

Read more:
Disney’s Mulan tells women to know their place

Most of the male characters offer similarly poor examples of leadership. The Duke of Weselton is presented as a snivelling villain with a Napoleon complex. King Agnarr is a well-meaning parent but raises his daughters in isolation from their subjects and from each other.

Self-interested prince as the best ruler

The best depiction of leadership is provided by Prince Hans.

When Elsa’s magic generates an eternal winter, it is Hans who ensures the people are warm and fed. When he finds Elsa, he implores her to be better than the henchmen sent by Weselton to kill her.

Given the existential threat to the kingdom and having exhausted all other options, Hans’s decision to kill Elsa in the hope of breaking the spell and saving the kingdom is not unreasonable.

Of course, his motivations are revealed to be sinister. His good deeds were intended to fool Anna and the audience. He does not love Anna and leaves her for dead.

Read more:
Who’s afraid of Cruella de Vil? New stories are humanising female villains of old

Hans’s downfall comes once Anna is found alive and Elsa learns how to break the spell of winter herself. His motivations are certainly not good, but this is irrelevant from the perspective of the people of the kingdom.

Unlike Elsa and Anna, Hans is focused on the danger to the kingdom. Elsa and Anna abdicate their responsibilities in favour of their personal needs, whereas Hans tries to fulfil his personal needs by leading the kingdom.

Only when Hans is proven to be dishonest do the officials and foreign dignitaries reject him. We are not shown what the kingdom’s ordinary people think of his actions.

Inexplicably, the people of Arendelle accept Elsa’s return despite the fact she ran away and almost killed them all with her magic.

The Machiavellian approach to leadership

Hans is Machiavellian in the way most understand the term: a leader willing to do anything to achieve their goals.

However, Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince (1532) did not advocate for totally amoral and underhanded leadership. Instead it warned against perfectly virtuous leadership.

The early modern Italian diplomat argued successful leaders should be virtuous, but may also need to be flexible in their principles as the perfectly good will be undone by those who are not good.

[…] the way we live is very different from how we ought to live, and he who abandons the way things are done for how they ought to be done brings about his own downfall rather than his preservation: that man who wishes to be at all times good must come to grief amongst so many who are not good.

Such ideas are certainly too morally grey for a children’s story, but there are elements of successful leadership children can understand: difficult choices are inherent in life.

Real queenship (or kingship) involves personal sacrifice and a duty to the people. Disney has made princesses more than simply destined for marriage to a handsome prince, but it still needs to show princesses can truly rule as queens.

David Belgrave does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Frozen offered a new way to look at Disney princesses. But the best leader was the villain – https://theconversation.com/frozen-offered-a-new-way-to-look-at-disney-princesses-but-the-best-leader-was-the-villain-193521

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gabriella Edelstein, Lecturer in English, University of Newcastle

Review: The Lovers, directed by Shaun Rennie.

What was the first Shakespeare play you were exposed to as a child? It’s very likely that it was A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Of all the plays in Shakespeare’s canon, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the most associated with children: it’s a play of fairies, transformation, and the chaotic world of imagination.

But Dream is not just a sweet and innocent opportunity for children to play dress-ups. Writhing underneath the surface of this play is a dark, erotic story about perverted desire. After all, we wouldn’t want kids thinking too deeply about fairy queen Titania’s liaison with a donkey.

Bell Shakespeare’s new musical The Lovers, written and composed by Laura Murphy and directed by Shaun Rennie, may be an adaptation targeted towards young people, but it’s certainly not A Midsummer Night’s Dream for children.

This cheeky, charming, and joyful pop musical is propelled by the dynamic energy of puppy love. Cutting out the rude mechanicals, and the plot of Titania and fairy king Oberon’s fight over the changeling boy, The Lovers focuses on Hermia, Helena, Demetrius, and Lysander’s (Brittanie Shipway, Natalie Abbott, Blake Appelqvist, Jerrod Smith) frolicking and fighting in the woods.

Oberon and Puck (Stellar Perry, Monique Sallé) are the orchestrators of this madness, drugging the lovers with a narcotic called “Euphoria” in the hopes of getting the kids back to the good-old-days when you fell in love without a smartphone.

The Lovers is a risqué musical. Murphy’s adaptation of Dream is attentive to teenagers’ rowdy sexual desire, which the cast performs with electric vivacity. The talented actors and singers make it seem like there’s nothing more fun than twerking in a farthingale.

The Lovers focuses on and modernises Shakespeare’s interest in young love, studiously omitting the dark and dangerous elements that make Dream a play for adults. Instead, this is Dream for Gen Z: a sugar-fuelled, ironic romp that wishes to undermine the Shakespearean marriage plot.

‘Full of hateful fantasies’

Dream as Shakespeare-for-children is a legacy of the 19th century. In 1807, sibling writers Mary and Charles Lamb published Tales from Shakespeare, subplot and sexual-reference-free prose retellings of the plays that were meant as gentle introductions to Shakespeare’s canon.

To appeal to children, the Lambs emphasised the fairies’ role in the story. Later, during the Victorian era, spellbinding spectacles of dancing and singing fairy-children in a stage forest were the main feature of productions, cementing Dream as a children’s play in the dramatic imaginary.

But by the mid-20th century, saccharine productions of Dream had been rejected by the theatre establishment. Directors, like the late Peter Brook, were influenced by Polish scholar Jan Scott, who argued that Dream is not a fantasy but a psycho-sexual nightmare.

There are many disturbing elements to Shakespeare’s original play. Hippolyta, the Amazon queen, is captured and forced into marriage with Athens’ king, Theseus. Egeus, Hermia’s father, asks Theseus to kill his daughter if she refuses to marry his preferred groom, Demetrius. Oberon and Puck conspire to trick Titania into making love to the half-man-half donkey Bottom so that they can abduct the little boy she vowed to protect. And Demetrius threatens to rape Helena in the woods if she doesn’t let him be.

‘Jack shall have Jill; / Nought shall go ill’

The Lovers scraps most of the dark elements of Shakespeare’s original. After all, it would ruin the fun. The musical does retain Demetrius’ threat, but it comes across as the young man’s disclosure that he’s secretly in love with Helena after all, not as the troubling warning that it is in the original.

The Lovers is Dream not for children, nor for adults any older than late-Millennial. It’s pitched squarely at Zoomers with its pop-music references and playful disruptions of sexual expectations.

It doesn’t want to show young audiences how weird and dark Shakespeare is, nor does it wish to uphold ideals of romantic love that Dream has already been used to promulgate.

In adapting A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Lovers wants to unsettle young audience’s assumptions of what makes a “happy” ending: marriage at the end of a comedy. The characters sing, “Maybe the happy ending we fixate on needs a little adaptation”.

As The Lovers rightly suggests, it’s a little creepy that Demetrius marries Helena at the end of Dream, considering that the spell of Oberon’s magic flower is never broken.

Rather than ending with happily ever after, the musical has a different message: “You’ve already found the one”. Turns out, your own true love is yourself – “you are enough”, the characters sing – suggesting that young people can’t make happy partnerships when they are unhappy within themselves.

The musical reiterates the “If you don’t love yourself how can you love anybody else” philosophy, popularised by entertainment figures such as RuPaul.

But this concept implies people still doing psychological work cannot love healthily and should not embark on relationships. Although seemingly about empowerment, this message promotes unhealthy expectations of what is a whole or lovable person.

The Lovers opens and closes with a tremendously fun number, Love, Pop, and Shakespeare. The characters sing to the audience, “it’s what you all came here for”. If that is why you are seeing The Lovers, you’re in for a good time. But maybe don’t think too hard about the Shakespeare.

Bell Shakespeare’s The Lovers plays at the Sydney Opera House until November 20.

Gabriella Edelstein does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Bell Shakespeare’s The Lovers is a sugar-fuelled, ironic adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Gen Z – https://theconversation.com/bell-shakespeares-the-lovers-is-a-sugar-fuelled-ironic-adaptation-of-a-midsummer-nights-dream-for-gen-z-191953

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Piero Moraro, Lecturer in Criminology, Edith Cowan University

The 1982 campaign to stop the building of Tasmania’s Franklin River dam was a defining moment in the history of Australia’s social movements. Those events are now being recounted in the documentary Franklin, screening throughout the country.

Franklin tells how thousands of activists stood up in front of police and bulldozers and, through a persistent yet peaceful opposition, eventually forced the Tasmanian government to abandon the project. It was one of Australia’s most famous campaigns of civil disobedience.

Sadly, the story contrasts starkly with current political discourse. Environmental activists in Australia today are often depicted as public enemy number one. In the past few years, a swathe of anti-protest legislation has been enacted at both state and federal levels, imposing extremely tough sentences on those falling foul of the law.

A citizen trying to emulate the Franklin dam protesters today would likely pay a very high price. This silencing of dissent means an important tool for environmental advocacy is closed – and both nature and democracy will suffer.

Silencing peaceful protest

Politicians insist anti-protest laws protect the community from disruptive behaviour. Human rights organisations, on the other hand, denounce the laws as systemic repression which threatens the right to protest.

The former Coalition federal government was consistent in its anti-protest stance. It frequently sought to portray environmental and animal-welfare activists as dangerous extremists.

For example, a peaceful animal welfare protest in Melbourne in 2019 which disrupted traffic drew the ire of then prime minister Scott Morrison. He described the activists as “green-collared criminals” and said “the full force of the law” should be used against them.

At the state level, Queensland, New South Wales, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia have all contributed to demonising environmental protest. And there’s no sign they intend to change.

Two months ago, the Tasmanian government increased penalties for protesters who, much like the old Franklin activists, obstruct “business activities” such as mining and logging.

Read more:
Animal rights activists in Melbourne: green-collar criminals or civil ‘disobedients’?

First-time offenders face a fine up to $9,050 and up to 18 months in prison. For second offences, the fine is $13,575 and two years in prison.

Earlier this year, the NSW government passed a bill introducing the new offence of disrupting major public facilities. It means citizens who, for example, organise a peaceful protest in front of a train station, face up to two years in prison.

Also in NSW, one non-violent activist was recently remanded for two weeks in a maximum-security prison, and others have been subjected to harsh curfew conditions despite posing no threat to the community.

And NSW Police this year re-established a special Strike Force Guard that seeks to prevent, investigate and disrupt unauthorised protests.

NSW’s harsh approach prompted Amnesty International to launch a petition urging the state government to respect citizens’ right to protest.

Is ‘direct action’ dying?

Demonstrations and other public forms of protest are a type of civil disobedience known as “direct action”.

As part of a current research project, we interviewed Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) activists, and representatives from Vegan Rising and Animal Liberation. The interviews reveal that some activists are abandoning direct action in light of the new anti-protest laws.

For example, Animal Liberation has shifted to lobbying and education to enact change. As one person from the organisation told us:

In the past, when the laws were very different, (we) would do more direct action, such as sit-ins. But now we’ve moved away from that, because it’s illegal. As an organisation, it wouldn’t help to have us shut down because of an illegal action like that.

Likewise, Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson recently left the organisation following its decision to abandon direct action as a protest strategy.

But the tougher laws have not deterred other protesters. Animal activist Tash Peterson told us:

Disruptive activism and civil disobedience are essential to create social change and bring to light the atrocities animals are subjected to […] Until recently, I was rarely charged for my protesting, but now things are changing and I am getting arrested for disorderly conduct and trespass.

Former Greens leader Bob Brown played a key role in the 1982 Franklin campaign. More recently, he says his organisation, the Bob Brown Foundation, will continue to “peacefully defend” Tasmania’s native forests, waterways and wildlife, adding:

The real villains here are those who want to jail fellow citizens for defending public forests and wildlife.

Read more:
Friday essay: how archaeology helped save the Franklin River

Peaceful protest is a basic right

As the Franklin documentary shows, protesters were willing to spend a few days in prison as the price of their campaign’s success. But the price paid by protesters today is so much higher.

At a federal level, the new Labor government has an opportunity to shift the tone of the national conversation and support the right of citizens to engage in peaceful protest.

Such an approach is consistent with the party’s values. Ahead of the May election, Labor told Human Rights Watch that:

Promoting universal human rights is an essential policy objective for Labor. [It is] vital to ensuring a peaceful world where all people have the right to live with dignity, freedom, safety, security and prosperity.

Franklin celebrates the role of non-violent direct action as a tool for social change. It tells of a people exercising their rights and coming together to fight for environmental justice. Let’s hope those kinds of stories are not consigned to history.

Human Rights Watch will hold a special screening of Franklin in Melbourne on November 2.

I have previously researched Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) a direct action animal activist group and attended a few of their protests. I am also a former member of the Animal Justice Party and Animals Australia.

Piero Moraro does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. 40 years ago, protesters were celebrated for saving the Franklin River. Today they could be jailed for months – https://theconversation.com/40-years-ago-protesters-were-celebrated-for-saving-the-franklin-river-today-they-could-be-jailed-for-months-191579

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tanya Latty, Associate professor, University of Sydney

The vast majority of animals on Earth are invertebrates (animals without backbones) – such as insects, arachnids and crustaceans.

These amazing animals are absolutely crucial to our ecosystems: they are pollinators, pest controllers, soil creators and waste managers. Invertebrates also serve as food for countless other animals. Despite all their hard work, many of these creatures are often described as “creepy crawlies”.

Their alien-looking bodies might seem like the stuff of nightmares, but the vast majority of invertebrate species are harmless to humans. In fact, the scariest thing about invertebrates is the rate at which they are quietly disappearing from our planet.

Here are seven fascinating creepy crawlies you don’t need to be afraid of.

Social huntsman spiders (Delena cancerides)

Native to Australia, social huntsman spiders live in large family groups beneath the loose bark of dead or dying trees.

Sound like nightmare fuel? Don’t worry, social huntsman spiders are gentle giants who rarely bite humans (and cause minimal harm when they do).

Unlike most spider species, social huntsmans live together in groups containing a large adult female and up to 300 of her offspring. Spiders will aggressively defend their nest against outsiders, suggesting they have ways of recognising nestmates from non-nestmates.

At night, individual huntsmans leave the communal nest to hunt their insect prey. Although they are solitary hunters, spiders that come across the same insect will share food rather than fight with one another. In fact, spiderlings would rather starve to death than cannibalise a fellow spider. By consuming large numbers of bugs, social huntsmans help to keep insect populations under control.

Giant burrowing cockroach (Macropanesthia rhinoceros)

Cockroaches are among the world’s most feared and reviled insects – which is a great pity, as most cockroaches are harmless animals that play a crucial role in our natural environment. Take the giant burrowing cockroach, found in the warm tropical and subtropical forests of Australia.

This gentle giant is the world’s heaviest species of cockroach, tipping the scales at 30-35 grams. Unlike its infamous relatives, the giant burrowing cockroach is not a pest and prefers to spend most of its time in underground burrows. Giant burrowing cockroaches feed on dry eucalyptus leaves, which they collect and drag into their burrows.

By moving and mixing the soil, giant burrowing cockroaches help keep soils healthy. They are excellent mothers who feed and care for their young for up to nine months after birth. The giant burrowing cockroach is also surprisingly long-lived, with a lifespan of up to 10 years.

Baphomet moth (Creatonotos gangis)

With weirdly pulsating tentacles, the Baphomet moth looks like an alien nightmare – but these moths are simply looking for love. When male Baphomet moths sense the presence of a female, they inflate enormous, tentacle-like organs called “coremata”, which produce an irresistible female-attracting chemical bouquet.

While it’s not the only moth species with coremata, Baphomet moths take theirs to ridiculous lengths, with “tentacles” sometimes exceeding the length of their abdomens.

As caterpillars, male Baphomet moths get the ingredients they need to make their female-attracting scents by eating plant leaves that contain chemicals called pyrrolizidine alkaloids. Plants produce these alkaloids to deter plant-munching animals, but Baphomet moths have evolved a way to convert these chemicals into their own attractive scents.

Black soldier fly maggots (Hermetia illucens)

A big, writhing mass of maggots might not sound like one of nature’s marvels, but the larvae of the black solder fly are recycling superheroes that may one day help humanity cut down on food waste. Roiling masses of soldier fly maggots can rapidly devour food through a process physicists colourfully described as a “maggot fountain”.

The incredible speed at which maggots demolish food waste has captured the attention of scientists who hope to use soldier fly maggots to convert waste products such as animal faeces and food waste into maggot-based proteins that can be fed to livestock or humans. Yum!

Tailless whip scorpion (Amblypygi)

Despite their name, tailless whip scorpions are not scorpions, but instead belong to an unusual group of arachnids called amblypygids. Despite their fearsome appearance, amblypygids lack venom and are timid animals that rarely bite unless threatened.

These shy animals prefer to stay hidden in humid habitats such as in leaf litter, inside caves or under bark.

Amblypygids have elongated front legs that act as feelers and help the arachnid locate its insect prey. Once prey is detected, amblypygids use their sharp pedipalps to impale their victim.

Some of these arachnids display complex social behaviours, with mothers staying near and caring for their young for up to a year.

The giant elephant mosquito (Toxorhynchites speciosus)

Few things in life are as horrifying as the high-pitched squeal of a mosquito in the dark. Now imagine an enormous mosquito five times the size of your average mozzie. Measuring in at a shocking 8mm in length, the Australian elephant mosquito is the world’s largest mosquito species.

But fear not, this enormous mozzie is a nectar-sipping vegetarian.

Most female mosquitoes need a meal of blood to provide nutrients for their developing eggs. Female elephant mosquitoes collect much-needed nutrients by feeding voraciously on other aquatic insects when they are larvae. And it gets better, because the favourite food of larval elephant mosquitoes is … other mosquito larvae!

Common scorpion fly (Panorpa)

Scorpionflies look like a bizarre mashup between a fly and a scorpion. Combine their sinister appearance with a somewhat ghoulish habit of feeding on fresh human corpses, and you have the makings of an excellent horror movie.

Luckily, scorpionflies are not, as their name suggests, flying scorpions, nor are they capable of harming a human. In fact, scorpionfly “stingers” are actually enlarged male genitalia!

During courtship, male scorpionflies attempt to woo females by offering them either a dead insect or a blob of saliva. Scorpion flies are mostly scavengers and are frequently seen stealing prey from spider webs.

They are among the first insects to turn up on newly deceased corpses, making them important for establishing time of death.

Leer más:
When remains are found in a suitcase, forensics can learn a lot from the insects trapped within

Tanya Latty receives funding from The Australian Research Council. She is affiliated with Invertebrates Australia (conservation organisation), the Australasian Society for the Study of Animal Behaviour and the Australian Entomological Society

– ref. 7 ‘creepy crawlies’ you don’t need to be afraid of this spooky season – https://theconversation.com/7-creepy-crawlies-you-dont-need-to-be-afraid-of-this-spooky-season-193302

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University

This is an edited extract from Dreamers and Schemers: A Political History of Australia by Frank Bongiorno, La Trobe University Press, 2022.

The term “democracy sausage” first appeared in Australia in 2012. It literally referred to the practice of voluntary organisations running fundraising barbecues at polling booths during Australian elections. Symbolically, though, the term expressed the spirit in which Australian elections are held, perhaps even saying something broader about the political culture.

Australians, it seemed to suggest, do not take their politics so seriously that they cannot have a laugh. Contention and disagreement are necessary ingredients of democracy, but a smoking barbecue and a cake stall speak to a deeper sense of community, a more meaningful civic belonging than can be expressed by the political system itself.

There is, of course, a sleight of hand in the rise of the democracy sausage, which occurred during the very same time political trust plunged to very low levels. A peaceful election day came about through historical development. Early elections were often far from gentle occasions. It is the bureaucratic administration of elections that permits organisations to go about the business of fundraising on election day.

In recent years, we have seen intense debate about corruption, bullying and misogyny that hints at a darker side to the country’s politics. The Machiavellian behaviour of factional operatives and branch-stackers is sometimes the squalid backdrop to a pristine election day overseen by smiling and helpful officials and peopled by cheery volunteers handing out how-to-vote cards for the candidates.

Sexual harassment and assault have received unprecedented attention as a major problem in that citadel of the country’s democracy, Canberra’s Parliament House. For many of the women who sought to practise politics within its walls, it was neither a safe nor a peaceful endeavour.

Australians have been creative in their politics, often drawing on forms and practices from elsewhere but also developing a distinctive culture of their own. What was distinctive about it?

In 1930, the historian W.K. Hancock famously presented Australian democracy as having “come to look upon the State as a vast public utility, whose duty it is to provide the greatest happiness for the greatest number”. The citizen, Hancock explained, claimed not “natural rights” but rights received “from the State and through the State”. Collective power was in the service of individual rights, so that Australians saw “no opposition between […] individualism and […] reliance upon Government”.

These strains were evident during the COVID-­19 pandemic, reminding us of their deep embeddedness. Many Australians longed for greater freedom; most were also willing to agree there is individual responsibility for the collective welfare. There was a broad acceptance, stronger among some than others, that government should play the predominant role in defining where the boundaries between individual rights and the common good lie.

Outside extreme libertarianism, a minority taste in Australia, there tends to be only mild political disagreement. Otherwise, most people get on with their lives, expecting the state to set reasonable parameters for individual behaviour while allowing people a wide scope to pursue their private interests as individuals and families. As Hancock said, “collective power at the service of ‘individualistic’ rights”.

Yet is this sufficient? Australian political history has had its dreamers and visionaries alongside the pragmatists and schemers.

Big change of the kind that occurred in Australia in the 1850s, 1890s, 1940s and 1980s would have been impossible without the idealists and thinkers: that is, without political leaders, activists, intellectuals and movements who refused to be merely “practical”. Change depended on people willing to resist complacent utilitarian appeals to majority interests and consensus opinion, on refusing to accept injunctions merely to tinker rather than transform. In the end, it depended on a vision, however modest, of the good life.

It remains too easy in a political culture based on the vague notion that everyone should be treated “equally”, and that nurtures a value as contested as “fairness”, to marginalise those who have historically been left out or left behind.

Their claims are sometimes dismissed as “special treatment”, their needs as no more compelling or urgent than the better-off – “battlers”, “aspirationals”, “working families” – whom politicians flatter as the most deserving of their constituents.

Meanwhile, a political culture that lays so much stress on the practical and material can shun the creativity and imagination invariably required to master the complexities of intractable problems.

There are, in our own times, plenty of these. On issues as diverse as constitutional recognition for First Nations people, the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy and management of the rise of China, Australia’s political system has often appeared stodgy and ineffective.

New forms of online politics have evolved, yet political parties with rapidly declining membership bases, whose practices persistently fail to conform to reasonable democratic norms, still play the central role in the system. An adversarial parliament too closely resembles an arena for a sporting contest, with citizens as spectators rather than players, if indeed they engage at all.

As Australians faced a federal election that Scott Morrison called for May 21 2022, it was hard to discern among the major parties a political vision that might engage the imaginations and ideals of masses of people. The aspirations that attached to democratic self-government in the 19th century, to the social laboratories of the federation era, to postwar reconstruction in the 1940s, and to progressive reform in the late 20th century were now apparently beyond either the consciousness or memory of many Australians.

Read more:
Book extract: From secret ballot to democracy sausage

The 2022 election, however, produced a result that was potentially transformative for the nation’s politics. A government that had served three terms without establishing much that could be called a legacy trailed in the polls. Morrison’s personal standing, revived in the early months of the pandemic, now collapsed, the marketing man’s habit of denying responsibility for failure while owning every success having eroded respect for his leadership.

While the parties tussled in their usual way, a political revolution was brewing in parts of the country that usually received little attention in elections. In electorates normally regarded as safe for the Liberals – predominantly in the leafy, affluent suburbs of Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth, but also in a few regional areas – independent candidates came forward. Most were women already successful in business or the professions. They were known as the “voices of” movement, “community independents” or “teals”.

They received a bitter opposition from the Liberal Party and its friends in the Murdoch media, who saw in this unwelcome outbreak of grassroots politics a clear and present danger to good government and stable democracy. The teals, they said, were really fake independents advancing the Labor cause. Coalition partisans made it plain they felt their own enterprise was being deprived of property that was rightly its own.

While often insulting their values and lifestyles as those of the fashionable inner-city elite, the Coalition did little to draw women into its ranks, protect the planet or promote clean politics. Two of the eventual teal victors – Allegra Spender in Wentworth, Sydney, and Kate Chaney in Curtin, Perth – belonged to multi-generational Liberal parliamentary dynasties.

Each teal, moreover, received financial and strategic support from Climate 200, a political action committee on the US model founded and led by businessman and clean-energy advocate Simon Holmes à Court. Predictably, right-wing commentators depicted Holmes à Court as a puppeteer, which only confirmed the prevailing impression among women of the way that conservative male politicians and their media mouthpieces demeaned them.

The 2022 election disclosed the resilience and adaptability of the country’s distinctive democracy. Independent candidates had successfully challenged well-resourced party machines and had raised the profile of issues that mattered to voters but which had been handled badly by the major parties, especially by the incumbent government.

Read more:
Did Australia just make a move to the left?

There was an increase in the number of women elected, of Indigenous parliamentarians and of members from non-English-speaking backgrounds; the parliament would at last begin to reflect the notable diversity of the country. Chinese-Australians acted on their disaffection with the increasingly aggressive posturing towards China among senior Coalition politicians.

Millions of voters ignored the urgings of News Corp to shun Labor, the Greens and the teal independents, and they seemed to pay little attention to right-leaning media that often appeared more interested in testing the memory of the Labor Party leader than in impartially assessing the offerings of parties and candidates, or in holding a three-term government to account for its record.

Rather, the result arguably saw the most drastic electoral shift to the left since the elections of 1969 and 1972 that had brought Gough Whitlam to power. Dreamers imagined that a new era of political creativity might be just around the corner, even as the schemers manoeuvred in their familiar patterns. While the challenges faced by the new government were formidable, for a moment it seemed possible that the nation’s imaginative energies might not yet be completely exhausted.

Frank Bongiorno does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Book extract: Dreamers and schemers and the election that changed us – https://theconversation.com/book-extract-dreamers-and-schemers-and-the-election-that-changed-us-192733

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Violet Kieu, Clinical Senior Lecturer, Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, The University of Melbourne

Not all Australians with cancer are getting the fertility care they need.

In 2022, it is predicted more than 8,200 Australians under 40 – in their reproductive years – will be diagnosed with cancer. This is more than double the rate in the 1980s.

The good news is more men, women and children than ever are surviving cancer. This is due to earlier diagnosis and more successful cancer treatments. Now over 85% of patients under 40 will still be alive five years after their cancer diagnosis.

However, many of them might not be aware of the potential decrease in fertility after cancer treatments, and their options for protecting their future ability to have children. Some estimates suggest only half of people with cancer have a documented fertility preservation discussion.

How cancer treatment can affect fertility

Both cancer and its treatments can reduce fertility for all genders.

Chemotherapy, radiation and surgery may permanently reduce the number of egg and sperm cells, which may lead to difficulty conceiving in the future.

The store of eggs is laid down before birth, and to date there is no good evidence eggs can be replenished. Chemotherapy – chemical drug treatments that attack cancer cells – may also harm the delicate egg and sperm cells and reduce their numbers.

Likewise, radiotherapy – directed radiation energy at cancer cells – may scatter and cause scarring of the ovaries and testicular tissue.

Sometimes, with high-dose chemotherapy or radiotherapy, all the eggs, sperm cells and supporting tissues may be destroyed. Direct surgery to reproductive organs may lead to reduced fertility.

Often, it is not known what the full effect of cancer treatment will be on fertility, and the effect may be different for each individual.

Read more:
Problems conceiving are not just about women. Male infertility is behind 1 in 3 IVF cycles

What is oncofertility, and how can it help?

Oncofertility is a relatively recently established medical field that provides options for fertility preservation. Addressing quality of life from a biological, psychological and social perspective acknowledges the potential distress that reduced fertility might cause cancer survivors.

Advances in assisted reproductive technology, such as vitrification (fast freezing), means we can preserve eggs, embryos, ovarian tissue, sperm and testicular tissue for future use. This is known as medical fertility preservation.

Fertility preservation may be someone’s best chance for biological children in the future. Oncofertility considers an individual’s future goals for family and parenthood, alongside cancer treatments.

Read more:
5 things not to say to someone struggling with infertility

4 new things we know about oncofertility

This year, the Clinical Oncology Society of Australia (COSA) updated its guidelines for fertility preservation for people with cancer.

It is based on advice from Australian experts including medical specialists, scientific researchers, psychologists, health managers and nurses, public consultation and feedback.

The COSA guidelines discuss fertility treatment options, referral pathways and psychological support. They also cover contraception during cancer treatment (to avoid disruption to the treatment regimen), interrupting hormone treatment to conceive, assisted reproduction, and the risk of cancer recurrence. This guideline aims to support conception and pregnancy in cancer survivors.

In our paper published today in the Medical Journal of Australia we update medical practitioners on the latest in oncofertility knowledge:

1. that pregnancy rates after freezing eggs are similar to those after freezing embryos, with live birth rates of 46% and 54% respectively in one study

2. ovarian tissue freezing and grafting for females is no longer considered “experimental”, however special oversight for pre-pubertal girls under the age of 13 years is recommended. This is because clinical experience of patients who were 20 years of age or younger at the time of fertility preservation remains limited

3. extracting sperm from testicular tissue by microsurgery may be considered for men who have already undergone cancer treatment and who were previously thought to have no sperm

4. testicular tissue freezing in pre-pubertal boys is currently considered “experimental” as there are no mature sperm cells. Clinical ethical oversight is required while new methods are trialled to use these early cells for fertility.

Timing is important

Once a diagnosis of cancer is made, discussion and decisions around fertility can be urgent and time-critical.

This is to allow time for referral to an oncofertility unit, appropriate counselling and informed decision-making to occur.

It takes time to plan and perform fertility preservation (for example, eggs may take around 14 days to grow and collect for freezing) so promptness is important to prevent delays in cancer treatment.

Read more:
Researchers have grown ‘human embryos’ from skin cells. What does that mean, and is it ethical?

Educating patients

Not everyone of child-producing age who is diagnosed with cancer is referred to oncofertility health services promptly, if at all. This can lead to feelings of conflict and regret.

Our team of fertility specialists from the Royal Women’s and Royal Children’s Hospitals collaborated with the Western and Central Melbourne Integrated Cancer Service to develop a suite of animated patient education videos to address this gap.

The Fertility after Cancer videos – available in multiple languages, reviewed by cancer patients and support groups, age-appropriate for children, adolescents, adults, and their families — discuss fertility preservation options, risks, benefits and alternatives.

Our goal is that all Australians with cancer have access to information, and support, regarding the impact of cancer treatments on their future fertility.

Violet Kieu is a Fertility Specialist at The Royal Women’s Hospital and Melbourne IVF. To attend scientific conferences, she has received support from Merck, Gedeon Richter, and honorarium from Organon. In conjunction with the Western and Central Melbourne Integrated Cancer Service, Violet co-created the www.fertilityaftercancer.org patient education videos.

Kate Stern is a fertility specialist and head of the Fertility Preservation Service (FPS) at the Royal Women’s Hospital and Melbourne IVF. These organisations both provide fertility preservation treatment for cancer patients. Kate is a board member of Fertility Matters, a not-for-profit organisation which develops fertility education tools for schools. The FPS has previously received non-directed grants for research from Merck-Serono and MSD. Kate is also a member of the Future Fertility Registry group which has developed a national and international database for fertility preservation patients. Previously this registry has received administrative support from Merck-Serono. Kate established the NOTTCS tissue transport program for young cancer patients and this receives support from Sony Foundation.

– ref. Starting cancer treatment? You should discuss fertility first – https://theconversation.com/starting-cancer-treatment-you-should-discuss-fertility-first-190531

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stan Karanasios, Associate professor, The University of Queensland

In an emergency, where do you turn to find out what’s going on and what you should do to stay safe?

Traditionally, government agencies have been the “go-to” sources of information in events such as floods and bushfires, as well as health emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, the rise of social media has seen community groups, volunteers and non-government organisations nudging out official channels. While these informal sources often provide faster, more local information, they may also be less reliable than government sources.

So what should you do in an emergency? Here are some tips for how to prepare – and how to decide who to trust when the need arises.

Information overload

The number of sources of information we can access is growing all the time. This leads to higher information load and lower quality of shared information.

With so many sources of information there is also the possibility of contradictory social media messaging by government and other actors, as we have seen during COVID-19. For emergency planners, this increases complexity and can lead to unpredictable behaviours by citizens who may not be responding to relevant advice or even accurate warnings.

For their part, citizens are demanding more and more information that matches their needs. Citizens clearly find value from local information sources.

Getting warnings right?

Our research shows citizens rely heavily on social media information. During an emergency or extreme weather event 55% of surveyed social media users reported they would spend more time on social media, and 88% expected to use social media more for future emergencies.

Many people are switching off from official warnings because they find them hard to understand, or may feel there are too many of them. It may be that they have seen too many situations where the warnings do not affect them – “the boy who cried wolf”. The bottom line is people want answers to immediate questions such as “How does this affect me right now?”

Eroding control

On the flip side, government agencies also find social media hard to manage. In an emergency, they may not have the resources to keep up with the influx of comments and posts.

These shifts have raised concerns that greater use of social media erodes the established command-and-control information approach that has traditionally been vital to ensuring consistency in emergencies.

The information space is likely to become even more cluttered as extreme weather events become more frequent and begin to overlap.

What can citizens do?

Compounded by misinformation, fake news, disinformation and the plethora of social media and other media, it is no wonder that citizens may be confused and retreating to local or other “go to” social media sources.

It is not a matter of government information versus other sources of information. Often official advice is the starting point for outlining what is going on and encouraging local dialogue. This creates the opportunity for the local community to crowdsource information and offer further insights from locals on the ground.

The first step to being information-ready is to be mindful that there is a whole ecosystem of information sources and channels.

Your basic, trusted source of information should still be government agencies. Trusted local sources can then amplify that information or add context. Likewise, individuals may provide reports from the ground, share their experiences and contribute to how a community makes sense of what’s happening.

Don’t believe everything you read

While community social media sources can be excellent sources of local information, you shouldn’t accept everything you see there at face value.

Local Facebook and WhatsApp groups, for example, can have very fluid membership and their own biases – meaning the quality of information they provide may vary. What’s more, the most visible and engaging posts on social media are often the most controversial ones, not necessarily the most accurate ones.

As well as biases and limited reliability, social media are also vulnerable to organised attempts at disinformation. During Australia’s 2019-20 bushfires, for example, the hashtag #arsonemergency pushed the narrative that arsonists (rather than climate change) were the main cause of the fires.

Read more:
Bushfires, bots and arson claims: Australia flung in the global disinformation spotlight

However, the hashtag turned out to be a concerted effort to change the narrative and even media agencies were fooled.

This highlights the need to crosscheck information obtained from social media.

Emergencies are emotional and volatile events, so you should make yourself familiar with government social media and warning channels before events like bushfires or floods occur. If you know in advance where to go and what sources to trust, it will take some stress out of the situation.

At the same time, educate yourself on how to evaluate information.

Read more:
There’s no such thing as ‘alternative facts’. 5 ways to spot misinformation and stop sharing it online

Most platforms are trying to counter misinformation. Keep an eye out for tags on content that is harmfully misleading, or indicating official trusted sources.

Debunking popular misinformation is another common tactic, and fact-checkers operating at a local level could reassure the public. So-called “prebunking” – pre-emptive debunking before misinformation has spread – is also effective at reducing susceptibility to misinformation at scale.

Like all approaches, these have their drawbacks. People have to actively choose to engage with them. And, perhaps more significantly, in the volatile situation of an emergency people often simply revert to familiar sources of information.

Stan Karanasios received funding for the research reported here from the National Disaster Resilience Grant Scheme, Emergency Management Victoria (2017-2019).

Stan Karanasios is a member of the Association for Information Systems.

Peter Hayes has previously received funding from: Bushfire CRC; Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC; and Emergency Management Victoria’s (EMV) Natural Disaster Resilience Grant Scheme.

He has undertaken funded project work for AFAC (Australian and New Zealand National Council for Fire and Emergency Services) and NAFC (National Aerial Firefighting Centre).

– ref. In disasters, people are abandoning official info for social media. Here’s how to know what to trust – https://theconversation.com/in-disasters-people-are-abandoning-official-info-for-social-media-heres-how-to-know-what-to-trust-193307

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Sussex, Fellow, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University

Among the many questions asked about Russia’s disastrous war against Ukraine, one of them is posed only very rarely: can Russia survive what seems increasingly likely to be a humiliating defeat at the hands of its smaller neighbour?

On the face of it, the prospect seems almost absurd. Vladimir Putin may have been weakened by a trio of crucial miscalculations – about Russian military strength, Ukrainian resolve, and Western unity – but there’s no evidence yet that he’s on the verge of losing his grip on power, much less the Russian state imploding.

There have been few significant demonstrations on the streets to protest against the war, against Putin’s leadership, or even against the mobilisation of conscripts. Those with the wherewithal to leave Russia for fear of getting drafted have already fled. And while there are likely to be significant economic shocks as Western sanctions begin to bite, some creative fiscal management by Moscow has dampened their impact so far.

Indeed, by rattling the nuclear sabre ever louder amid blatant false flags about Ukrainian “dirty bombs”, the image Putin seeks to project is one of strength, not fragility.

Cognitive biases among Western commentators can also play a role when making judgements about authoritarian states like Russia, leading us to see weakness when in fact it is absent. After all, nobody seriously thought the United States would disintegrate after its ignominious withdrawal from Vietnam, or Iraq, or Afghanistan for that matter.

But there are three good reasons why we should not discount the possibility that defeat in Ukraine might make the Kremlin’s edifice crumble, leaving Russia difficult to govern in its entirety, or at least its present form.

1. It has happened before

First and most obvious – it has happened before. And in an historical sense, it has happened relatively recently, with the collapse of the USSR in 1991 rightly considered a seismic event in world politics.

The rub is that nobody predicted the end of the USSR either.

In fact, it was confidently assumed in the West that Mikhail Gorbachev would go on ruling the Soviet Union, until the hard-line coup that failed to topple him (but left him mortally wounded in a political sense) made that view obviously redundant.

2. Lack of viable alternatives to Putin

Second, the distribution of political power in Russia means there are no viable alternative answers beyond Putin. Part of this is deliberate: Putin has constructed the state in his own image, making himself inseparable from any major question about Russian society and statehood.

Eschewing an imperial title, but acting in accordance with its precepts, Putin is Russia’s tsar in virtually everything but name. But that also means there is no patrilineal succession plan, nor anyone in his increasingly shrinking orbit of semi-trusted courtiers who readily stands out as a replacement. It’s difficult to imagine a successor who could command respect and wield authority to unite the competing Kremlin cliques – groups that Putin himself encouraged to form in order to ensure their weakness and continued fealty.

Names like Sergei Kiriyenko, Nikolai Patrushev and Sergei Sobyanin are often bandied around when analysts play speculative “who succeeds Putin?” games. But each of them have either irritated Putin, given him cause to mistrust them, or would struggle to bring the different clans together.

3. Ethnic tensions

A third reason Russia’s ongoing viability in the wake of defeat in Ukraine isn’t totally assured is that the war has exacerbated cracks between the privileged Russian political core and its ethnically concentrated periphery. Part of the mythos beloved by Russia’s far right is that Russia is the “Third Rome”, a necessary great power that unites people from different ethnic and religious backgrounds and prevents them from fighting one another.

Given the relative poverty of Russia’s minorities, it’s unsurprising they tend to be over-represented in the military. We know, for instance, that Russia’s military casualties have come disproportionately from Russia’s poorest ethnic groups: Dagestanis, Chechens, Ingush, Buryats and Tuvans.

We also know the Kremlin’s campaign to draft an additional 300,000 personnel for service in Ukraine was similarly targeted along ethnic lines. That shields the residents of Moscow and St Petersburg, keeping the war an abstract phenomenon that only touches their lives in peripheral ways.

But it also means those on Russia’s periphery are effectively being used as cannon fodder.

If Russia were to fracture, where and how might this come about?

The North Caucuses would be the most likely centre of gravity. Of the few demonstrations against the Kremlin’s military mobilisation campaign, those in Dagestan have been the most visible, including violent clashes with riot police. But attention is now also turning to Chechnya, where attempts to secede from Russia led to two wars: from 1994 to 1996; and from 1999 to 2009.

Ramzan Kadyrov, the outspoken Chechen leader, has been kept on a fairly tight leash by Putin since being installed in 2007, and has been one of his most vigorous supporters. But this again underscores the fragility of Putin as the key to keeping others in check.

Kadyrov has few friends in Moscow beyond the Russian president, and he has emerged as a leading critic of Russia’s military leadership – particularly Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu. On October 6 he followed the suggestion by Kiril Stremousov, the Moscow-backed chief of occuptied Kherson, that Shoigu should consider suicide with the claim that General Oleksandr Lapin, a Shoigu ally, should be sent to the front lines to “wash away his shame with blood”.

The concern here is that should Putin exit the political stage, Kadyrov would be very difficult to control. He has what amounts to his own private army (the Kadyrovtsy, who are loyal to him and have been implicated in numerous human rights abuses). More than that, he could be incentivised to exploit a power vacuum by seeking greater independence.

This is important because Russia’s multi-ethnic makeup has not erased ethnic identities and ideas about nationhood.

History is instructive here on two counts. One is that the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 was not brought about by Gorbachev, its last general secretary. Rather, the Soviet collapse was engendered by Boris Yeltsin, then-leader of the Russian Republic – as the largest part of the USSR – and the first president of the new Russian Federation.

More broadly, the end of the Soviet Union came about due to simultaneous national revolutions, with Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic States and the Central Asian former republics of the USSR all choosing self-determination rather than continuing to be part of the Soviet empire.

A second historical fact is that the end of the USSR saw the creation of four new nuclear-armed states: Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine. But the lesson of Ukraine in 2022 – which in 1991 was the most reluctant of the three non-Russian countries to hand control of the nuclear weapons on its territory back to Moscow – is that it’s vital to retain every instrument of power as potential insurance.

Gradually, and then all at once

This is why, aside from the human rights emergency it would represent, a fragmented Russia (or one in the middle of a civil war) would put regional and global security in a precarious position. Even a localised breakup would inevitably be along ethnic lines, and potentially create a variety of nuclear-armed aspirant statelets.

And while the end of the Soviet Union literally reshaped the map of Eurasia, any contemporary splintering of Russian power would potentially be far more dangerous, with no guarantee a potentially bloody domino effect could be averted.

So is it speculative to talk about a future Russian collapse? Yes. Is there evidence it is imminent? No. But in many ways that’s the problem: when authoritarian regimes implode, they tend to do so very quickly, and with little warning.

Hence in the Russian case, it’s important to consider all possible eventualities, even if they might appear implausible at the moment.

And, if nothing else, it’s always better to be pleasantly surprised than blindsided by events we inconveniently decided not to foresee.

Matthew Sussex has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Lowy Institute and various Australian government agencies.

– ref. Could Russia collapse? – https://theconversation.com/could-russia-collapse-193013

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brian Robert Cook, Associate professor, The University of Melbourne

As the Victorian city of Echuca prepared for flooding this week, the council moved rapidly to build a temporary earthen levee as others sandbagged. This kept some homes dry, likely worsened flooding in others, and prompted blame from many sides.

For example, homeowner Nick Dean told 3AW:

You can imagine the anger with council who put this levee up and … it’s made it worse because the waters hit it and bounced back (to my home).

After storms of rain come storms of blame. In the shock that follows disasters we often focus on those at hand – the emergency services and local government. While understandable, it is vital we recognise that many people and organisations contribute to disasters. To avoid future cycles of blame, we need to better understand and value the hard work involved in preparation.

Flooding is natural – but flood disasters are by design

US sociologist Dennis Mileti spent a lifetime arguing against the idea that disasters are natural events. To point out their human dimensions, he argued that they were “by design”. What does he mean?

Imagine a house that floods when a tributary of the Murray River breaks its banks. Is it the council’s fault for approving the development? The developer for seeking to convert cheap land to valuable housing? The home buyer for failing to check flood risk maps? The landholders upstream who cleared forests that normally slow floodwaters? Authorities who built levees generations ago, which now overtop? The risk managers for failing to anticipate ‘unprecedented’ rainfall? Those of us who rely on fossil fuels? Insurance companies for giving false security? Government agencies for failing to prepare adequately for predictable floods? There’s a lot of blame to go around.

The recent New South Wales inquiry into the flooding in February-March aimed to make sense of what happened and what went wrong. So too did the 2009 royal commission following Victoria’s Black Saturday bushfires, and the 2020 royal commission that followed the Black Summer fires. Each of these detailed, thoughtful investigations struggled to explain why disasters keep reoccurring – not on a natural front, but on a human one.

When you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail

In 2015, the Productivity Commission released a report on how we fund natural disaster preparation and recovery, which states:

Governments overinvest in post-disaster reconstruction and underinvest in mitigation that would limit the impact of natural disasters in the first place. As such, natural disaster costs have become a growing, unfunded liability for governments

The imbalance between rescue and recovery (97%) and prevention (3%) is extreme. Seven years later, little has changed. Just look at this week’s announcement of A$600 million in federal spending on disaster relief.

We have been warned about the rising threats. We can better predict future events. As the Productivity Commission explained, we know prevention is cheaper and more effective than response. But we remain unwilling to fund the ongoing human relationships needed to reduce the impacts of disasters.

An expensive future

Without doubt, we are entering a period of escalating risk, disasters, impacts and costs. This year, the world’s peak body on climate change released a report on what it means for Australia and the region. They point out that our flood risk is increasing, while our ability to adapt and reduce damages lags behind.

A more flood-prone future will be expensive, whether through escalating recovery costs or belated efforts to reduce the risk, such as Lismore’s buybacks of flood-prone properties, or controversial proposals such as the Warragamba dam raising.

The cost of disasters averaged across Australian households has shot up to A$1,532 over the past 12 months, compared with an annual average of $888 over the previous decade. That’s due in large part to this year’s devastating floods, according to the insurance peak body.

Rising costs may force government to withdraw from recovery and focus only on immediate responses. This could leave Australian homeowners stranded, given insurance is becoming unaffordable in disaster-prone areas. Some estimates suggest up to 500,000 houses could be uninsurable by the end of the decade.

Read more:
Lismore faced monster floods all but alone. We must get better at climate adaptation, and fast

Blame and the emergency services

Consider the problem from the point of view of the risk sector – the authorities, agencies and governments responsible for managing risks.

Victoria’s State Emergency Service is the control agency for flooding in the state, meaning that they are responsible for flood planning, supporting community preparedness, and managing the response. Given budget limitations and urgency, it’s natural that they focus on helping those directly in need.

By contrast, partnering with communities to prepare for future disasters is slow, hard, expensive, and difficult to assess in terms of effectiveness. This trade-off is not a decision made by the emergency services or volunteers – even though many in the sector are doubtful about community empowerment. Rather, it’s a consequence of how these agencies are funded.

We know that our top-down, expert-led responses to disaster events do not translate well into the community engagement needed for preparation. To prepare means community members become willing to take costly actions they would not otherwise do. To support those actions requires far more than “awareness raising” – it requires listening, understanding, collaboration, learning and care.

Put simply, training for swift-water rescues or emergency levee building is very different to the relationship building needed to support disaster preparation. The ways that we respond to disasters are not how we should prepare for them.

Many people in the risk sector are trying to change course. In recent research, my colleagues and I interviewed Victorian risk managers over a five year period. We wanted to know why it was so hard to engage with communities to prepare for disasters. We found many were highly committed to making communities better prepared – but stifled by funding and resource constraints, as well as institutional inertia.

What’s the solution? We should have agencies focused on disaster response and others that focus on disaster preparation: both would require ongoing, substantial funding.

As climate change accelerates, we will see more “unprecedented” disasters, from record-breaking flooding to megafires. Blame will follow. Inquiries will be launched. We will ask, again and again, why we cannot seem to prepare. When the next one hits, remember we arrived at this point by design.

Read more:
Australia’s Black Summer of fire was not normal – and we can prove it

Brian Robert Cook receives research funding from Melbourne Water. He is an associate editor at the Journal of Flood Risk Management. He has researched the emergency services for the past decade.

– ref. Floods are natural, but human decisions make disasters. We need to reflect on the endless cycles of blame – https://theconversation.com/floods-are-natural-but-human-decisions-make-disasters-we-need-to-reflect-on-the-endless-cycles-of-blame-192930

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Mason, Research Fellow in Renewable Energy Systems Engineering, University of Canterbury

New Zealand agriculture contributed 50% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2020, an unusually high proportion by world standards. Dairy farming was responsible for about half of the 39.1 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂-eq) emitted, or 25% of all emissions.

Addressing the problem of New Zealand’s agricultural emissions has mainly focused on technical fixes aimed at reducing methane and nitrous oxide produced by livestock and fertiliser and relying on voluntary agreements with the industry.

But these measures may not result in substantial emissions reductions any time soon. Reductions of less than 1% are predicted according to one analysis of a government/industry accord, which forms the basis of a recently announced pricing scheme for agricultural emissions.

Exploring alternatives to conventional farming is therefore timely and urgent. One such alternative with the potential to drastically reduce agricultural emissions – while at the same time helping restore ecological quality – is to use fermentation technology.

This would allow some yet-to-be-determined proportion of dairy and meat farming to be replaced by “precision fermentation” of high-protein products, a process akin to brewing.

It might seem like a radical step for a traditional agricultural nation, but given the urgency of the problem, New Zealand needs to consider it at least.

Read more:
Not like udder milk: ‘synthetic’ dairy milk made without cows may be coming to a supermarket near you

Using bacteria to make protein

In his recent book Regenesis, British journalist and activist George Monbiot discusses the prospects for precision fermentation, or single-cell protein (SCP) production. In particular, he highlights a process developed by Finnish startup Solar Foods.

This process employs hydrogen-oxidising bacteria as an alternative means of food production with a much lower climate impact. The end product is a nutritious high-protein powder suitable for use as a food ingredient and as a component of new foods.

Key to this process are the production of hydrogen by electrolysis of tap water and the direct capture of carbon in the form of carbon dioxide from the air. Hydrogen produced in this way can also be used to make ammonia for use as a nitrogen source for the bacteria.

In a comprehensive life-cycle analysis, Finnish researchers determined that each kilogram of product made using hydroelectricity created about one kilogram of CO₂-eq emissions, requiring 18 kilowatt-hours of electricity.

The product itself is comprised of 65-75% protein, 4-10% fat, 18-20% carbohydrates, 4-10% minerals and 5% moisture. This means it has a high protein content, complemented by smaller amounts of fats (mostly polyunsaturated), carbohydrates and nutrients.

Where could the electricity come from?

New Zealand has a world-class wind resource, both onshore and offshore. Major developers have recently revealed plans for more than six gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind farms off the Taranaki and Waikato coastlines. The first is due to be operational by the end of this decade.

Using a 1GW offshore wind farm as an example, this could supply enough electricity to produce about 240,000 tonnes of SCP product a year, containing about 160,000 tonnes of protein. The carbon footprint, based on the Finnish life-cycle analysis, would be around 0.25 megatonnes of CO₂-eq emissions.

The same amount of milk protein produced at a dairy farm would have a carbon footprint of about 3.6 megatonnes of CO₂-eq emissions (based on the average emissions intensity from a recently updated life-cycle analysis).

If replaced by the SCP product, this would result in an 18.9% reduction in dairy-sector emissions and milk production based on 2019-2020 levels. Net emissions to the global atmosphere would also be reduced.

Milk contains a large proportion of fat – about 125% of the protein content compared to about 10% for the SCP product. Lactose and other nutrients, plus meat and by-products from culled cows and bobby calves, would also be removed from production under this process.

The extent to which these might be substituted with plant-based or precision-fermentation alternatives requires further investigation. Using vegetable oils to supply the difference in fat would add about 0.7 megatonnes of CO₂-eq emissions to the SCP footprint.

Read more:
Plant-based patties, lab-grown meat and insects: how the protein industry is innovating to meet demand

If the equivalent land area was retired from intensive dairy farming this would allow a range of alternative land uses, including rewilding of sensitive areas.

Given New Zealand’s serious degradation of water quality due to nutrient and biocide runoff associated with intensive farming, this would have obvious environmental and ecological benefits.

It would also provide a permanent carbon sink of native bush, adding further to the net emissions reduction.

Transition to a new system

Animal agriculture is deeply embedded in New Zealand’s culture, society and economy. Discussing alternative means of food production will therefore require a thoughtful, detailed and respectful conversation focused on a just partial transition to new systems.

New development funding would be well spent on comprehensive consultation, pilot trials of the SCP technology under local conditions and on training.

Read more:
Farmers need certainty over emissions pricing – removing government from the equation might help

What is signalled is a very real prospect for capping and then reducing the scale of our industrial animal farming. It’s an opportunity to fit within the greenhouse gas budget we need to live within to avoid the 2.7℃ warmer world we now appear to be heading for.

It is also an opportunity to write a new chapter in New Zealand’s environmental history. Adding to the menu the “rich, mellow and filling” SCP pancake George Monbiot enjoyed in Finland sounds like a good option, too.

Ian Mason is a co-founder of the NZ Offshore Wind Working Group.

– ref. From farming to fermentation: how New Zealand could ‘brew up’ new foods to reduce agricultural emissions – https://theconversation.com/from-farming-to-fermentation-how-new-zealand-could-brew-up-new-foods-to-reduce-agricultural-emissions-192934

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alasdair Macintyre, Associate lecturer visual arts, artist, PhD, Australian Catholic University

Do you believe in ghosts? Every year, Halloween serves up the usual images of spooks, skeletons and witches – but these ideas aren’t just the domain of fiction or trick-or-treating. There is also a philosophical concept that embraces ghosts.

It is called “hauntology”, and it might just make you a believer.

The word hauntology was invented by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida for his 1993 lecture Spectres of Marx.

Derrida was a whimsical guy, and the words “hauntology” and “ontology” both sound identical when spoken in French.

Ontology is the philosophical study of existence and being, dating back as far as ancient Greece. In Derrida’s mind, ontology was shadowed by hauntology, a state of non-being.

Hauntology is that eerie zone where time collapses and our past memories and associations haunt our minds, like a ghost.

Haunted by past and future

In his lecture, Derrida invoked Shakespeare’s Hamlet, both through the phantom of Hamlet’s father and particularly the phrase “time is out of joint”.

Not only does hauntology look back to your past experiences, it looks forward. You are haunted by the future – or, at least, haunted by futures that did not eventuate.

Are you in the job you planned to have ten years ago? Do you live in the house you dreamed of when you were younger? Do these unfulfilled dreams weigh on your mind? Dare I ask, do these unmet expectations haunt you?

English theorist Mark Fisher called this concept “cancelled futures” and associated it with cultural stagnation. In a 2014 lecture he bemoaned little forward progress in music and films: an endless repetition and recycling of old ideas, just in high definition.

Fisher was an important catalyst in the transformation of ghosts. Along with music journalist Simon Reynolds, Fisher appropriated Derrida’s hauntology by analysing pop culture, music and movies through a hauntological lens: considering how contemporary culture is haunted by our pasts and impossible futures.

This area of “spectral studies” developed in the new millennium mainly through blogs. The traditional idea of ghosts evolved from a supernatural phenomenon (fictional or otherwise) into a philosophical concept, discussed vigorously in the digital realm.

Those studying spectral studies turned to sources as diverse as Freud’s observations of the “uncanny” and Sartre’s suggestion that, although invisible, the dead survive and are all around us.

Read more:
From Black Death to COVID-19, pandemics have always pushed people to honor death and celebrate life

Haunted popular cultures

Many creatives have embraced the motif and connotations of the ghost. Richard Littler’s blog Scarfolk (2013-) imagines a fictional English village stuck forever looping on 1979. The retro electronica musicians of the Ghost Box Records label (2004-), seem to capture the soundtrack of a parallel world outside of time.

Hauntology also describes a post-traumatic-like disquiet of those born in the 1960s and ‘70s. Dubbed by Bob Fisher as “the haunted generation”, Fisher says kids of this era grew up in an age of “cosy wrongness”, consuming lots of media – especially television.

Not all of it was suitable for children.

Think of films like Watership Down (1978) with its blood-soaked fields and scary rabbits, or those fuzzy Jon Pertwee/Tom Baker-era episodes of Doctor Who.

Are you of an age where the memory of those grainy black and white ghost photographs you saw as a child in Usborne’s World of the Unknown: Ghosts (1977) still freak you out? Does the recollection of the shrill screams in Disney’s read-along book and record of The Haunted Mansion (1970) still send shivers down your spine?

Much hauntological writing discusses popular culture artefacts such as these, and the way they haunt our minds through recurring memories that return again and again.

Walking with ghosts

Films like Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), especially its setting at the vast and secluded Overlook hotel, strongly reflect key features of hauntology. The emotional disintegration of Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) mirrors the very hauntological collapsing of time within the walls of the hotel.

People and events from decades past appear and influence his behaviour. Then, of course, there are the ghosts of those two little girls in their blue dresses.

This depiction of ghosts we knew returning to us dressed in the attire they wore in life reflects a long tradition. Hamlet’s father returns dressed in battle armour. The ghosts of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol are decked out in their burial suits.

It was not until the 20th century that ghosts began to appear in their ubiquitous white sheets, most notably in the works of MR James. In James’ Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad (1904), a holidaying academic inadvertently conjures up a terrifying entity swathed in linen bedsheets.

So in a sense, hauntology has brought us full circle, returning to these ideas of ghosts we knew from our lives returning once more to haunt us.

Now you know it, hauntology is a name you can give to those slightly eerie memories from your childhood, or that nagging feeling that you took a wrong turn in life somewhere along the road.

Whether ghosts be the Scooby Doo-style spooks chasing us around old castles, or the psychological phantoms gatecrashing our own minds, hauntology is all around.

Read more:
Looking for love on a dating app? You might be falling for a ghost

Alasdair Macintyre lectures in the School of Arts and Humanities at the Australian Catholic University.

– ref. Are you haunted by ghosts of the past and phantoms of your future? Welcome to the spooky realm of hauntology – https://theconversation.com/are-you-haunted-by-ghosts-of-the-past-and-phantoms-of-your-future-welcome-to-the-spooky-realm-of-hauntology-191843

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Edgar Liu, Senior Research Fellow, Healthy Urban Environments (HUE) Collaboratory / City Futures Research Centre, UNSW Sydney

In response to the horror stories of abuse and neglect from the Royal Commission into Aged Care, the new federal Labor government has made legislative changes. Prior to this, Australia’s most recent aged-care reforms were enacted a decade ago. The focus, however, is still largely on residential care homes, so what about older Australians in the broader community?

More older Australians are still living in their own homes. How do our policies and cities support them? We have published an analysis comparing 85 policy documents across all three levels of Australian governments against World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines on age-friendly cities.

We found these policies reflect outdated views of old age. They neglect many important aspects that contribute to happy and fulfilling lives in older age.

The policy focus is overwhelmingly on care and support services. There are decreasing levels of attention to housing, transport, walkability and, least of all, cultural diversity.

Read more:
This is how we create the age-friendly smart city

WHO guidance on making age-friendly cities

The WHO first published its Global Age-Friendly Cities: A Guide in 2007 to support the active ageing policy framework it proposed back in 2002. Described as “the centrepiece of WHO’s age-friendly cities approach”, the guide became a major point-of-reference for age-friendly policymaking around the world.

In 2010, the WHO launched the Global Network of Age-Friendly Cities and Communities. The network aims to help governments and other organisations build age-friendly cities through evidence-based guidance and knowledge exchanges. Australia’s members include two states, 34 local councils and one regional organisation.

Our research, however, found little to no difference between Australian members and non-members in making direct policy references to these guides. For example, more of South Australia’s (a non-member) policy documents referred to the guidelines than Western Australia’s (a member), as the table below shows.

There were also discrepancies between the tiers of government. State and territory governments were more likely to take on such guidance than federal and local governments. Yet local governments are the intended audience of the framework and the guide.

Previous research in Canada blamed this on “the minimal state powers of municipal governments”. In Australia, too, our federated system has left local councils with limited authority and resources.

An outdated view of old age

In analysing the 85 policy documents, we adopted a “traffic light” system to highlight whether they acknowledged ageing-related challenges and proposed corresponding actions.

Our analysis focused on five policy areas:

1. care and support services

2. cultural diversity

3. housing

4. transport

5. walkability.

These areas broadly align with the WHO’s age-friendly domains.

The skewed policy focus is on care and support services. This reflects decades of aged-care reforms in Australia and their take-up at all levels of government. It also potentially reveals a stereotypical view of old age as being a time of frailty, decline and disengagement.

In contrast, many Australian and international movements advocate positive ageing. Their approach recognises the important contributions people make in later life.

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

Our analysis also reveals a failure to recognise how diverse circumstances impact the ageing processes. The result is a neglect of the broader spectrum of older Australians’ support needs.

This was most obvious in the failure of policies to recognise diverse cultural needs. There is almost a complete blindness to their impacts on ageing and other social determinants of health.

A mismatch between resources and services

In Australia’s three-tiered government system, each level has its own authority and resourcing ability. Previous Australian research shows local governments have limited ability to raise the resources they need to design and implement policies and programs for their ageing residents as the WHO guidance intended.

Our analysis shows a reliance on national programs instead. These may not be as nuanced in responding to local needs and conditions.

In related work, our fine-level spatial analysis also highlights a mismatch between the growth of ageing populations across Australia and where aged care services are being offered. This is due largely to inequitable eligibility criteria. These effectively favour home owners living in standalone suburban houses over others such as renters.

Read more:
For Australians to have the choice of growing old at home, here is what needs to change

The latest proposal to revamp a residential aged-care sector that is no longer fit-for-purpose must be applauded. Policy should aim to provide these residents with all the attention and dignity they deserve. But as the population ages, there’s an ever greater need to provide support across all the domains that enable older people to live healthy, fulfilling lives.

People want age-friendly communities

We must look more broadly, to the many more older Australians who live in the community. It’s an option our governments have long encouraged. And it’s what most people prefer for themselves.

Read more:
‘Ageing in neighbourhood’: what seniors want instead of retirement villages and how to achieve it

Local authorities would know local residents and their needs most intimately. But our analyses show they are hamstrung in supporting the needs of older people in the community.

Continued reform must aim to ensure local councils have the powers and resources required to serve these needs. This will go some way towards responding better to Australians’ changing needs. Importantly, it will also help to reframe the dialogue of ageing away from frailty and debilitation.

Edgar Liu receives funding from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute Ltd, UNSW Ageing Futures Institute, the Cancer Institute NSW, and the Western Sydney Health Alliance. His position at the HUE Collaboratory is supported by Maridulu Budyari Gumal (SPHERE).

Bruce Judd receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Kyushu University Japan, and the UNSW Ageing Futures Institute. He is affiliated with the UNSW Ageing Futures Institute, International Federation of Ageing and the European Network for Housing Research.

Mariana T Atkins receives funding from UNSW Ageing Futures Institute. She is affiliated with the Centre for Social Impact.

– ref. Most older Australians aren’t in aged care. Policy blind spots mean they live in communities that aren’t age-friendly – https://theconversation.com/most-older-australians-arent-in-aged-care-policy-blind-spots-mean-they-live-in-communities-that-arent-age-friendly-192591

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ron Levy, Associate professor, Australian National University

With progressive members of the US Congress recently calling for a resumption of direct talks between the West and Vladimir Putin’s Russia, it’s a good time to consider how such talks could look and what might be gained – or lost.

As Russia’s military losses mount in Ukraine, the rhetoric surrounding Russia’s war is increasingly apocalyptic. Few in Ukraine are calling for talks, and US President Joe Biden has indicated he will respect Ukraine’s wishes.

Yet could direct talks between top Russian and Western leaders help to avoid disaster?

During the Cold War – a time now often compared to the present point in history – Soviet and Western antagonists managed to hold several successful dialogues on matters including nuclear de-escalation. Cold War examples suggest that not merely “talks”, but “summits” – symbolising high-level dialogues between equals – may help to initiate a rhetorical reset.

What are the arguments for and against such high-level talks?

The critics

The potential downsides of talking are clear. Some commentators have argued that talking would reward Putin for his nuclear brinkmanship.

Indeed, there’s no question that, besides talking, there must be other strong forms of response to the invasion.

Another argument assumes Putin’s ultimate aim is to incorporate Ukraine into the Russian nation, and short of that, any talks will inevitably fail.

Still others simply think it’s morally unacceptable to talk with aggressors.

This isn’t a new debate. Leaders have often grappled with whether to talk with enemies, even if they abhor their enemies’ actions.

For instance, similar questions, focusing on Iran at the time, featured in the campaign between presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain in 2008.

This time around, Western leaders from Biden in the US, to Prime Minister Sanna Marin of Finland, have adopted McCain’s harder line.

The case for talks

Those who would call for talks might ask, however, if it’s realistic to expect wars to end by simply waiting for the initial aggressor to admit they were wrong.

Of course, another option is to wait for the war to run its course on the ground. But despite its setbacks, Russia’s resources for sustaining the war are nowhere near fully depleted.

Choosing not to talk with the other side is understandable. When a war is vicious and unjust, it must be called out.

But what if, by expressing our moral disapproval by choosing not to talk, the war we disapprove of paradoxically lasts longer? What if the consequences are many more deaths?

Is it right simply to blame the other side for the extra deaths? Or do we bear some obligation to talk in a bid to foreshorten the war, even if we didn’t cause it?

Status grievance as a root of war

Previous wars have often been explained in part by status grievance – the historical humiliation of a group, leading to a score to settle. Of course, the grievances may be wholly misguided. And status grievance shouldn’t be a legitimate cause for war.

Yet whether we think it’s legitimate or not, status grievance is in fact a contributing cause of war. We might ask Russia why it can’t simply accept its diminished post-Cold War position. But it may be no use. Status grievance cannot in most cases be wished away or defeated by rational argument. To those it animates, status grievance feels as real and rational as any other cause for war.

Russia’s rationale for attacking Ukraine seems to be a paradigm case of status grievance. On the Ukrainian side is a struggle against conquest, a struggle for sovereignty, and a struggle for democratic and liberal values – each clearly worth fighting for.

Yet on the other side is a settling of scores on a wider scale. In his speech addressing Russia’s efforts to annex four eastern provinces in Ukraine, Putin’s focus was not on Ukraine, but on a catalogue of misdeeds of a West bloc too powerful to be trusted. He cited the Western record of colonising, enslaving and weakening other peoples and powers. He didn’t turn a similarly critical gaze onto Russia itself.

What would a summit look like?

At the moment, a range of academics and politicians are hoping for a summit, although only a few are willing to say so out loud and risk blowback.

If a summit did take place, it could perhaps include Russia and other leading global powers as the main parties. The United Nations or a neutral government might play host.

But what would the parties talk about? Many wars have underlying causes based in clashes of values. Without addressing these, we may struggle to end even the most horrifying wars.

In Northern Ireland, for instance, the 1998 peace agreement formally adopted values such as “mutual respect” and “equality”.

It may cost nothing for the sides in the current war to hear each other out about values. For instance, there’s no harm in Western powers recognising their adversary’s equal worth. We can readily respect Russia’s historical scientific and cultural accomplishments.

At any summit, the signing of a treaty would be ideal, but it isn’t necessary. A merely informal statement of mutual respect between the historical blocs could be pursued, with the aim of defraying some of the underlying forces sustaining the war.

Russia seems to crave acknowledgement of its high status as a global power, and as an accomplished people. That is not a hard concession for the West to make. Yet it may offer Putin a face-saving way to begin de-escalating.

Read more:
How can Russia’s invasion of Ukraine end? Here’s how peace negotiations have worked in past wars

Summit ground rules would need to be stipulated. These could include discussion based on reciprocity: for example, listening by each side to the values and grievances of the other.

Finally, there could be no substantive preconditions – no requirement that, before a summit could take place, one side first acknowledge the errors of its ways. We’d need to be far more realistic. Peacemaking always involves two or more parties to a conflict that, though they view each other’s causes as illegitimate, proceed to talk anyway.

Sooner or later, summit talks may take place. Perhaps the only question is when. Leaders in the West, representing people deeply disturbed by Russia’s invasion, may not be ready. As the Congressional progressives found out, there are political risks to even floating the idea.

The arguments for a summit are at least as clear as those against, however. With careful design, and a little luck, a summit could conceivably reset the discourse around a war that is currently stuck in cycles of escalation.

Ron Levy has received funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Should the West negotiate with Russia? The pros and cons of high-level talks – https://theconversation.com/should-the-west-negotiate-with-russia-the-pros-and-cons-of-high-level-talks-193297

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Iftekhar Ahmed, Associate Professor, University of Newcastle

People living in the Hunter region of New South Wales know all too well the devastation disasters can bring. After enduring the 2019-2020 horror bushfire season, La Niña settled in for three wet summers and residents experienced back-to-back floods this year.

Since early October, we’ve conducted nine in-depth interviews with members of flood-response teams in the Hunter for our ongoing qualitative research into how prepared these communities are for future floods. Many people in the Hunter are living in temporary accommodation. A councillor we spoke to pointed out, “there are still people living in caravans, and they’ll be in caravans for quite some time”.

For the Northern Rivers region, which was ravaged by record-breaking floods in February and March this year, some relief is coming.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet today announced a A$800 million buyback scheme for residents in seven areas – including Lismore, Ballina and Tweed – where “major flooding would pose a catastrophic risk to life”. Some 2,000 homeowners will be eligible for funding to sell their homes, repair damage, or make their homes more resilient.

More flooding is expected across eastern Australia in coming weeks, as La Niña conditions are set to persist until early 2023. This is a time to take stock of the lessons gained from the previous spate of floods, and to assess how agencies and communities are heeding these lessons to manage coming floods.

Floods in the Hunter

Overall it seems regular warnings are being provided and agencies have actively stepped up their operations. Still, some Australian communities currently experiencing floods, such as in Victoria, remain vulnerable.

For example, this month many people have become marooned in places where flood defences were inadequate and it was too late to evacuate.

Our research focuses on the Hunter region’s experience of recent floods as they relate to climate change. We want to find out how local communities can improve their resilience and capacity to adapt to floods.

In the Hunter, floods have severely impacted businesses. Cumulative losses in businesses across the region caused a significant economic setback, at a time when many were still struggling with the economic impacts of COVID.

For example, a pub in the centre of Wollombi was submerged to its roof last July. And a vineyard and resort owner we spoke to explained: “We were trapped here for nearly a week in July, including some resort guests”.

Read more:
Nearly 6 months on, flood victims are still waiting to be housed. This is what Australia must do to be ready for the next disaster

Towns such as Broke, Gillieston Heights, Maitland and Singleton were completely isolated, as road networks became inundated. This made evacuations difficult or even impossible.

A police officer said people were trapped in recent floods and he expected the same if another flood strikes, adding: “We need to put in place better evacuation systems.”

Great demands are placed on volunteers of the State Emergency Services (SES). As one volunteer said: “I just joined the SES early this year and since then it has been a very busy time!”

Other volunteers mentioned the potential for “burnout” after dealing with so many floods over a long time, including this month.

Mixed messages

The biggest problem to be solved, according to our interviews, is inadequate communication.

A local police officer told us: “The focus should be on early warning and communication. There were mixed messages [to residents] from the services on the ground”. This was in regards to when exactly residents should evacuate.

These mixed messages not only hampered timely evacuation operations, but also strained the communication between the regional Emergency Management Centre and on-ground staff, as well as between emergency services and communities.

He also pointed out the challenge of local complacency to heed warnings, encapsulated in the typical “She’ll be right” mentality.

Read more:
What’s in the mud? Flood victims’ fears eased by early test results

Research shows social media offers communication opportunities during disasters, but it’s also evident that the potential for misinformation on social media can hinder effective communication. Lack of internet access and language barriers can also make effective communication difficult.

Another police officer said: “Communication is something that I am always thinking of. It’s not just us getting the messages out but getting [communities] to hear our messages and respond to them appropriately”.

The importance of emergency communications has been highlighted in Australian research on disaster risk management. For example, a 2016 paper found around 20% of all emergency management problems since 2010 were linked to communicating with communities.

As agencies and communities grapple with frequent flooding, it seems preparedness measures may indeed be improving. For example, in anticipation of Victoria’s floods this month, we saw the rapid deployment of sandbags and even the building of a new levee in Echuca.

Across towns in the Hunter regions, our research participants told us of efforts to improve, for instance, equipment supply and inter-agency coordination. For example, the NSW SES have, in recent years, initiated “Flood Forums” to gather together, plan and coordinate different emergency agencies, in response to communications issues.

Read more:
Beyond a state of sandbagging: what can we learn from all the floods, here and overseas?

What next?

Another key area that deserves attention is to understand the multi-hazard scenario confronting Australian agencies and communities, as we face back-to-back bushfires, floods, and storms under climate change.

One way to tackle this is by bringing together agencies, such as the Rural Fire Service and the SES, into coordination to address multiple hazards, perhaps even as a single entity.

Interestingly, this was suggested by both SES and Rural Fire Service volunteers in our research interviews. They told us that combining the agencies into a single entity would lead to, for instance, less competition for recruiting volunteers.

As soil remains sodden and catchments are saturated, towns across Australia should be wary of more floods in the coming weeks. We hope being awareness of the urgent need for disaster management agencies to communicate better will lead to tangible improvements.

Iftekhar Ahmed received funding from the University of Newcastle for an ongoing research project entitled “Improving local resilience to floods in the Hunter Region to address Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13′, from which this article is drawn.

Thomas Johnson receives funding from the University of Newcastle for an ongoing research project entitled “Improving local resilience to floods in the Hunter Region to address Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13”, from which this article is drawn.

– ref. We spoke to the exhausted flood-response teams in the Hunter Valley. Here’s what they need when the next floods strike – https://theconversation.com/we-spoke-to-the-exhausted-flood-response-teams-in-the-hunter-valley-heres-what-they-need-when-the-next-floods-strike-192863

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charles Livingstone, Associate Professor, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University

Billions of dollars in proceeds of crime are being funnelled through clubs and pubs in New South Wales, according to the NSW Crime Commission. Predictably, the industry is claiming it’s not an issue and solutions are too difficult.

Laundering money through a local club or hotel involves loading cash into one of the state’s 86,640 poker machines, then cashing out and claiming the money as winnings.

This is not a preferred method for most organised criminals, the crime commission says. Sophisticated criminals have other methods. But it is still a sizeable proportion of the estimated $20 billion in criminal proceeds laundered in NSW each year.

In Queensland, you can put only $100 into a poker machine at one time. In Victoria the limit is $1,000. In NSW, newer machines allow $5,000, and older machines up to $10,000. For supposedly harmless suburban fun it’s hard to understand why such sums are allowed.

The findings of the NSW Crime Commission’s inquiry into money laundering via clubs and hotels follow scandalous money-laundering revelations from casino inquiries in NSW, Victoria, Western Australia and Queensland.

Those inquiries found Crown Resorts and Star Entertainment allowed hundreds of millions of dollars to pass through their casinos, in contravention of anti-money-laundering regulations.

Both companies were found not fit to hold their licences. Crown has been fined $80 million in Victoria. Star has been fined $100 million in NSW, and had its licence suspended.

Read more:
Star Sydney suspension: how do casino operators found so unfit get to keep their licences?

Both have been required to undergo extensive “renewal”. They have agreed to adopt cashless gaming to better protect against money laundering.

It’s therefore unsurprising the NSW Crime Commission’s principal recommendation is to introduce a cashless system for all electronic gaming machines in NSW. Also unsurprising is that the industry is focused on why it shouldn’t.

Read more:
Now Sydney has two casinos run by companies unfit to hold a gaming licence

Cashless gambling recommended

The NSW Crime Commission’s report recommends a cashless gambling system for pubs and clubs the same as for casinos – consistent with the identification requirements of Australia’s Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act.

Electronic gaming cards would record amounts loaded and withdrawn, times, turnover, and losses/wins. The maximum amount of cash able to be loaded on to a player’s account in a single day would be $1,000.

Josh Landis, the chief executive of ClubsNSW (which represents most of the state’s 1,200 licensed clubs) has said that such technology has not been trialled, and was uncosted and unproven.

But Crown Resorts and Star Entertainment are implementing such systems. Similar systems have been operating successfully in Norway since 2009, and in Sweden since 2013.

Victoria has already implemented a card-based precommitment system, incorporating most necessary characteristics. Every poker machine in the state is linked to this system. Its flaw is it is voluntary, allowing those who wish to clean dirty money, or avoid a limit, to simply opt out.

It’s not just about money laundering

Money laundering isn’t the only reason to introduce cashless gaming systems.

On any day in NSW, hundreds of thousands of people are experiencing significant gambling harm, mostly using poker machines. Many hundreds of thousands more – partners, children, employers – are also harmed as a consequence.

A pre-commitment system incorporating all the features of the NSW Crime Commission’s cashless model would stop money laundering and also help those struggling to control their gambling. For those who want to stop it would provide a truly effective gambling self-exclusion system.

The Tasmanian government has promised to implement a statewide system by 2024.

Read more:
Responsible gambling – a bright shining lie Crown Resorts and others can no longer hide behind

A matter of political commitment

The real test here isn’t technology. It’s political will.

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet has expressed concern at the exploitation of vulnerable people via gambling. Opposition leader Chris Minns has said the crime commission’s report is concerning but will not commit to a cashless card.

ClubsNSW and the Australian Hotels Association are two of Australia’s most powerful lobby groups. According to an ABC investigation, they have doled out about a third of $40 million in political donations disclosed by gambling-related organisations over the past two decades.

Since 2010, ClubsNSW has signed memorandums of understanding with incoming governments to protect its members interests.

In the first six months of 2022 (the most recent data available), people in NSW lost $4 billion using pokies – $2.4 billion in clubs, $1.6 billion in pubs. This is 23% more than the same period in 2019, before pandemic restrictions.

Yet according to the Australian Hotels Association, the industry is on “on its knees” and being told to introduce “an unproven, untested, un-costed and unnecessary cashless system”.

Read more:
4 gambling reform ideas from overseas to save Australia from gambling loss and harm

In NSW, gambling operators are not permitted to donate to state political campaigns. But ClubsNSW (and its member clubs) can because they are “not for profit”.

If this continues, political parties will be open to the allegation that they, like clubs, are benefiting from the proceeds of crime.

Pokie operators have billions of reasons to assert this is no big deal. Politicians should take a different view.

Charles Livingstone has received funding from the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation, the (former) Victorian Gambling Research Panel, and the South Australian Independent Gambling Authority (the funds for which were derived from hypothecation of gambling tax revenue to research purposes), from the Australian and New Zealand School of Government and the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education, and from non-government organisations for research into multiple aspects of poker machine gambling, including regulatory reform, existing harm minimisation practices, and technical characteristics of gambling forms. He has received travel and co-operation grants from the Alberta Problem Gambling Research Institute, the Finnish Institute for Public Health, the Finnish Alcohol Research Foundation, the Ontario Problem Gambling Research Committee, the Turkish Red Crescent Society, and the Problem Gambling Foundation of New Zealand. He was a Chief Investigator on an Australian Research Council funded project researching mechanisms of influence on government by the tobacco, alcohol and gambling industries. He has undertaken consultancy research for local governments and non-government organisations in Australia and the UK seeking to restrict or reduce the concentration of poker machines and gambling impacts, and was a member of the Australian government’s Ministerial Expert Advisory Group on Gambling in 2010-11. He is a member of the Lancet Public Health Commission into gambling, and of the World Health Organisation expert group on gambling and gambling harm.

– ref. Pubs and clubs – your friendly neighbourhood money-laundering service, thanks to 86,640 pokies – https://theconversation.com/pubs-and-clubs-your-friendly-neighbourhood-money-laundering-service-thanks-to-86-640-pokies-193312

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Helen Dickinson, Professor, Public Service Research, UNSW Sydney

In this week’s federal budget the costs of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) have been revised upwards, with average forecast growth of 14% a year over the next decade.

It looks like the NDIS could cost more than A$50 billion per year within four years and could be more expensive than many other federal government social programs.

But provisions have been made in the budget to identify and reduce areas of spend and improve the value for money we are getting from the scheme.

Read more:
NDIS plans rely on algorithms to judge need – the upcoming review should change that

What will the NDIS cost?

The objective of the scheme was to support the independence and social and economic participation of people with disability by providing “reasonable and necessary” supports. What is reasonable and necessary not only depends on the individual, but also on what barriers our society places in front of them.

The original 2011 estimates for the scheme were that the NDIS would cover 411,000 participants and cost $13.6 billion per year. The total cost of the scheme for this year is expected to reach $35 billion to cover 535,000 participants.

While some of this increase is due to rising costs (including pay rises awarded to social and community services employees), it is clear there are many more participants than was originally envisaged.

Spending to save

The budget has made provision for initiatives that should help rein in funding.

Within the budget, $385 million has been added to funding for the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA, which administers the NDIS). These funds will be used in part to recruit 380 new staff.

NDIA staff numbers were originally planned to sit just under 11,000. But in 2014, the Abbott government imposed a staff cap of 3,000. Over the years since, the number of staff has gradually increased but still falls short. External labour hires have been used to fill the gaps.

There is also money in the budget to examine plan appeals. Since 2016, appeals against decisions made by the NDIA have risen by more than 700%. The legal costs are high for the NDIA, and the process can be very difficult and time-consuming for participants. Labor’s new budget commits $12.4 million to develop an expert review process to reduce the number of cases being heard by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

A new Fraud Fusion taskforce is budgeted to receive $126.3 million to address issues of misuse of scheme funds. The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission chief estimates as much as $6 billion per year is being misused.

Finally, the budget commits $18.1 million to the NDIS review, which has been brought forward by a year, to examine the design, operations and sustainability of the scheme.

Taken together, these funding commitments should help to address areas of the scheme where funding is not being used to appropriately support participants.

Read more:
A disabled NDIA chair is a great first move in the NDIS reset. Here’s what should happen next

How do state and territory governments figure?

The NDIS is jointly funded by the federal government and Australia’s states and territories. Under current arrangements, however, any scheme overspend beyond the initial agreements falls to the federal government.

The state and territory governments have a keen interest in making sure the NDIS works as it has implications for other services.

This interplay is seen where NDIS participants in state and territory-funded hospitals, who are medically ready for discharge, are unable to leave as appropriate services are not in place. The NDIS has launched a new plan to address discharge delays.

What states and territories do in terms of mainstream services also has important implications for the NDIS. The more barriers there are in accessing mainstream services (such as education or healthcare) for people with disability, the more reasonable and necessary supports are needed to overcome these barriers.

An ‘oasis in the desert’

Shorten has suggested the NDIS is seeing larger numbers of people who have less complex disabilities and do not require 24/7 support. The scheme was designed to support people with permanent and significant disability.

One reason given for the high numbers entering the NDIS is there aren’t alternative options for people with disability – including those who experience episodic disability, such some kinds of psychosocial disability or neurodegenerative conditions like multiple sclerosis – to access services.

The NDIS has been described as the “oasis in the desert” as mainstream services have moved away from offering disability supports.

Making mainstream services more accessible and providing support to those on the edge of the scheme is crucial to a successful NDIS.

Not just a cost but an investment

While the costs of the NDIS are being spoken about widely in media coverage, what is often less acknowledged is that the NDIS is an investment scheme. We should be more concerned about whether we are getting the best returns we can from our investment.

One big driver of participant numbers has been children and young people with an autism diagnosis. This has been partly driven by the increased recognition that early supports for these young people can have large future benefits and reduce the supports they will need down the track.

The NDIS was designed with the view that supporting people with disability should not only allow people more control over their lives, but also support some participants and families to work, and this would mean they would contribute to the economy via taxable income. We are unlikely to be fully realising this potential yet, but these returns will likely continue to grow as the scheme improves.

NDIS funding employs more than 270,000 people and contributes indirectly to the employment of many more workers. It has been estimated that for every $1 billion the NDIS is underfunded, there is a drop in around 10,200 jobs and a reduction in the national employment rate of 0.1%.

Last year, a report estimated that every dollar spent on the NDIS creates $2.25 in the Australian economy. This means that when NDIS costs increase, the benefits to the economy also increase significantly.
Ultimately, there is no silver bullet in reforming the NDIS and curbing the costs of the scheme. But we do know where some of the issues are, and the budget has allocated investment to help tackle these.

How the scheme continues to grow depends not just on how it operates, but also on what is available outside the NDIS. We need to ensure people in the scheme are getting the most value they can out of the funds provided.

Read more:
NDIS fraud reports reveal the scheme’s weakest points

Helen Dickinson receives funding from ARC, NHMRC and CYDA.

Dennis Petrie has received research funding from NDIA, NHMRC, ARC, MRFF, Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care, Victorian Department of Health and WISE Employment Australia.

– ref. The budget sounded warnings of an NDIS ‘blow out’ – but also set aside funds to curb costs and boost productivity – https://theconversation.com/the-budget-sounded-warnings-of-an-ndis-blow-out-but-also-set-aside-funds-to-curb-costs-and-boost-productivity-193315

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By C Raina MacIntyre, Professor of Global Biosecurity, NHMRC Principal Research Fellow, Head, Biosecurity Program, Kirby Institute, UNSW Sydney

Cruise ships carrying passengers with COVID are back in the news. The Coral Princess, with an unconfirmed number of people testing positive on board, is set to dock at Fremantle, Western Australia. The Quantum of The Seas, with passengers reportedly testing positive, is heading for Brisbane. There have been similar situations at other ports in New Zealand and the Pacific.

But this isn’t 2020. The cruise ship industry and health authorities have learned much from large outbreaks linked to the Ruby Princess and Diamond Princess cruise ships early in the pandemic.

Yet, there’s even more we can do to limit the impact of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID) spreading from cruise ships to communities on land.

Read more:
Fleas to flu to coronavirus: how ‘death ships’ spread disease through the ages

Why are we worried about cruise ships?

Cruise ships can have epidemics of a variety of infectious diseases, not just COVID, facilitated by large numbers of people in close proximity, especially during indoor social activities.

We know SARS-CoV-2 is spread mainly by inhaling contaminated air, so indoor activities may pose a risk if ventilation is poor.

Cruises typically last at least a week, which covers the incubation period for infections such as influenza and COVID. So all it takes is for one infected person to be on the ship to set off an epidemic.

Staff stay on ships much longer than passengers, and can continue to infect new passengers, perpetuating a cycle of outbreaks.

But almost half of infections are transmitted asymptomatically. So, without testing everyone on board (before they board and during outbreaks), infectious people can board a ship without being aware they are infected and cause an epidemic. Infected staff can also infect new passengers, and passengers can infect communities they visit on land.

Read more:
Cruise ships are coming back to NZ waters – should we really be welcoming them?

What happened with cruise ships and COVID in 2020?

Early in the pandemic, large outbreaks on ships, such as the Diamond Princess made the headlines. Some 634 of 3,711 (17%) people on board tested positive for COVID. The ship was quarantined for two weeks.

An estimated 69% of transmissions on board were transmitted asymptomatically.

Read more:
Yes, Australians on board the Diamond Princess need to go into quarantine again. It’s time to reset the clock

The Ruby Princess had a COVID outbreak in March 2020 with around 700 cases. Yet health authorities allowed passengers to disembark in Sydney without testing, who then dispersed around the country at a time we had no vaccines.

Our research showed this resulted in growing community clusters for weeks afterwards.

Read more:
Ruby Princess inquiry blames NSW health officials for debacle

But it’s not 2020

We now have vaccines. But vaccination rates vary globally (and cruise passengers are often from many countries). Some vaccines are less effective than others, not everyone is up-to-date with their booster shots, vaccine immunity wanes (even after having a booster), and current vaccines are generally less-effective against currently circulating Omicron subvariants.

This means people can be infected and infectious despite being vaccinated.

Many of us have also had COVID, especially in 2022. But our immunity following infection (whether or not we’re also up to date with our vaccines) wanes too. People who were infected with older variants may also have a dampened immune response to Omicron, which means limited protection.

Cruise ships and health authorities have also tightened up their COVID protocols.

The New South Wales government, for instance, publishes on its website the COVID risk of in-coming vessels. It places ships in one of three categories according to a number of factors, including the number of COVID cases on board.

Cruise ships also have strict protocols for controlling and managing outbreaks. This includes masks for close contacts, mandatory isolation for infected passengers for five days, and testing of anyone with symptoms.

The problem is that transmission can continue because of asymptomatic infections. The ship may need medical evacuations or assistance for severely ill people. There is also the problem of infection being transmitted to communities on shore after people without symptoms disembark.

Read more:
What the ‘let it rip’ COVID strategy has meant for Indigenous and other immune-compromised communities

We can do more

People disembarking and unknowingly spreading the virus is especially a problem for small towns.

The itinerary of the Coral Princess, which has since been modified, included the Western Australian towns of Broome and Geraldton, both of which have large Aboriginal communities, and other towns, such as Albany and Busselton.

Small towns may not have a hospital, may have limited access to health care, and would not have capacity to deal with many severely ill patients. Capacity for medical evacuations are also limited.

In the map below, we can see how hospitals are distributed in rural areas around Broome. Most hospitals are near Perth and the southwest coast. Broome has one hospital with about 40 beds. Large hospitals in Perth and Darwin are about 2,000 kilometres away, which would be the destinations for medical evacuations of severely ill patients.

So it’s important to monitor for outbreaks in Broome after the Coral Princess docked there this week, and ensure availability of testing to enable early intervention (such as antiviral drugs) to control outbreaks.

Cruises with outbreaks on board should ideally avoid small towns or remote locations with limited health services or vulnerable populations, as the impacts on these communities may be much greater than in a large city.

Visiting small towns during an on-board epidemic would be safer if everyone who disembarks is tested first, is negative, and wears a mask on shore.

What else could we do?

The cruising industry has acknowledged the reality of COVID being a continuing threat. This could be improved by recognising the role of asymptomatic transmission in testing policies.

For instance, all passengers and crew should have a negative rapid antigen test at the start of the cruise, and during an outbreak. All close contacts and all disembarking passengers should be tested for COVID, regardless of symptoms. The cost of testing would be much less than the lost costs of large epidemics.

During a cruise epidemic, companies also need to consider the locations being visited, how much COVID is already present there (some remote towns have very little COVID) and available health-care systems for locals.

Rapid use of antivirals may also help to control epidemics on board as these allow passengers testing positive to clear the virus faster.

The aviation industry does well in providing safe air in-flight. The cruise industry has also started changing ventilation to add fresh air instead of recirculated air indoors.

But there is still some way to go before we can say the threat of COVID is over, on-board or on land.

C Raina MacIntyre currently receives funding from NHMRC, MRFF and Sanofi for nvestigator driven research.

Samsung Lim receives funding from Medical Research Future Fund, Department of Health.

Ashley Lindsay Quigley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Cruise ships are back and carrying COVID. No, it’s not 2020. But here’s what needs to happen next – https://theconversation.com/cruise-ships-are-back-and-carrying-covid-no-its-not-2020-but-heres-what-needs-to-happen-next-193384

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paola Magni, Senior Lecturer in Forensic Science, Murdoch University

We can all agree humans need to reduce their impact on the environment. And while most of us think of this in terms of daily activities – such as eating less meat, or being water-wise – this responsibility actually extends beyond life and into death.

The global population is closing on eight billion, and the amount of land available for human burial is running out, especially in small and densely populated countries.

To minimise environmental impact, human bodies should return to nature as quickly as possible. But the rate of decay in some of the most common traditional disposal methods is very slow. It can take several decades for a body to decompose.

In a one-of-its-kind study, our team analysed 408 human bodies exhumed from grave pits and stone tombs in the north of Italy to find out what conditions help speed up decay.

The environmental cost of traditional burials

Funeral rituals should respect the dead, bring closure to families and promote the reaching of the afterlife in accordance with people’s beliefs. This looks different for different people. Although the Catholic church has allowed cremation since 1963, it still prefers burials. Muslims are always supposed to be buried, while most Hindus are cremated.

Read more:
Indians are forced to change rituals for their dead as COVID-19 rages through cities and villages

In Australia, however, the latest census revealed almost 40% of the population identifies as “not religious”. This opens up more avenues for how people’s bodies may be handled after death.

Most traditional burial practices in industrialised countries have several long-lasting harmful effects on the environment. Wood and metal fragments in coffins and caskets remain in the ground, leaching harmful chemicals through paint, preservatives and alloys. Chemicals used for embalming also remain in the ground and can contaminate soil and waterways.

Cremation also has a large carbon footprint. It requires lots of trees for fuel and produces millions of tons of carbon dioxide each year, as well as toxic volatile compounds.

There are several alternatives to traditional burials. These include “water cremation” or “resomation” (where the body is rapidly dissolved), human composting, mummification, cryonics (freezing and storage), space burials, and even turning the body into trees or the ashes into diamonds or record vinyls.

However, many of these alternatives are either illegal, unavailable, costly or not aligned with people’s beliefs. The vast majority choose coffin burials, and all countries accept this method. So the question of sustainable burials comes down to choosing between the many types of coffins available.

What leads to faster decomposition?

Coffins range from traditional wooden caskets, to cardboard coffins, to natural coffins made from willow, banana leaf or bamboo, which decompose faster.

The most environmentally sustainable choice is one that allows the body to decompose and reduce to a skeleton (or “skeletonise”) quickly – possibly in just a few years.

Our research has presented three key findings on conditions that promote the skeletonisation of human bodies.

First, it has confirmed that bodies disposed in traditionally sealed tombs (where a coffin is placed inside a stone space) can take more than 40 years to skeletonise.

In these sealed tombs, bacteria rapidly consume the oxygen in the stone space where the coffin is placed. This creates a micro-environment that promotes an almost indefinite preservation of the body.

We also found burial grounds with a high percentage of sand and gravel in the soil promote the decomposition and skeletonisation of bodies in less than ten years – even if they are in a coffin.

That’s because this soil composition allows more circulation of air and microfauna, and ample water drainage – all of which are helpful for degrading organic matter.

Finally, our research confirmed previous suspicions about the slow decomposition of entombed bodies. We discovered placing bodies inside stone tombs, or covering them with a stone slab on the ground, helps with the formation of corpse wax (or “adipocere”).

This substance is the final result of several chemical reactions through which the body’s adipose (fat) tissues turn to a “soapy” substance that’s very resistant to further degradation. Having corpse wax slows down (if not completely arrests) the decomposition process.

A new, greener option

In looking for innovative burial solutions, we had the opportunity to experiment with a new type of body disposal in a tomb called an “aerated tomb”.

Over the past 20 years aerated tombs have been developed in some European countries including France, Spain and Italy (where they have been commercialised). They allow plenty of ventilation, which in turn enables a more hygienic and faster decomposition of bodies compared to traditional tombs.

They have a few notable features:

• an activated carbon filter purifies gases

• fluids are absorbed by two distinct biodegrading biological powders, one placed at the bottom of the coffin and the other in a collecting tray beneath it

• once the body has decomposed, the skeletal remains can be moved to an ossuary (a site where skeletal remains are stored), while the tomb can be dismantled and most of its components potentially recycled.

Aerated tombs are also cheaper than ordinary tombs and can be built from existing tombs. They would be simple to use in Australia and would comply with public health and hygiene standards.

Most of us don’t spend much time thinking about what will happen to our bodies after we die. Perhaps we should. In the end this may be one of our most important last decisions – the implications of which extend to our precious planet.

Read more:
Most Americans today are choosing cremation – here’s why burials are becoming less common

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Coffin? Casket? Cremation? How to make your death more environmentally friendly – https://theconversation.com/coffin-casket-cremation-how-to-make-your-death-more-environmentally-friendly-188456

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne

The Victorian state election will be held in four weeks, on November 26. A Resolve poll for The Age, conducted October 20-24 from a sample of “more than 800”, gave Labor a 59-41 lead over the Coalition.

Resolve does not give a two-party estimate until close to elections, so this is the first Victorian Resolve poll with a two-party estimate. Analyst Kevin Bonham estimated Labor would lead by 58-42 from the primary votes, a three-point gain for the Coalition since September.

Primary votes were 38% Labor (down four since September), 31% Coalition (up three), 12% Greens (steady), 12% independents (steady) and 6% others (steady). Labor Premier Daniel Andrews led Liberal leader Matthew Guy by 49-29 as preferred premier (46-28 in September).

With just four weeks until the election, the Victorian polls continue to indicate a landslide victory for Labor. But at the last election in 2018, Labor won 42.9% in the lower house, so this poll shows a five-point primary vote swing against Labor.

A five-point primary vote swing against Labor in the upper house would be likely to cost them some of the 18 upper house seats they won at the last election, out of 40 total seats, particularly as the upper house still uses the group voting ticket system which Labor has done nothing to reform in the eight years it has held government in Victoria.

Read more:
How Victorian Labor’s failure on upper house electoral reform undermines democracy

Victorian Morgan poll: 60-40 to Labor

A Victorian Morgan state poll, conducted during September from a sample of 1,379, gave Labor a 60-40 lead, a two-point gain for Labor since August. Primary votes were 42% Labor (up 5.5), 28% Coalition (down one), 14.5% Greens (up 0.5) and 15.5% for all Others (down five).

Voters were asked to specify minor parties from a long list, but only non-teal independents (7%) had more than 2% support. This poll was conducted during September and released October 18, so it is not a recent poll.

NSW Freshwater poll: 54-46 to Labor

The New South Wales state election is in March 2023. A Freshwater poll for The Australian Financial Review, conducted October 13-16 from a sample of 1,042, gave Labor a 54-46 lead (52.0-48.0 to the Coalition at the 2019 election). Primary votes were 37% Labor, 36% Coalition, 11% Greens, 1% Shooters, 5% independents and 11% others.

NSW uses optional preferential voting. For the two party estimate, 47% said they would vote for or preference Labor, 40% the Coalition, 8% would not preference either (exhaust) and 6% were undecided. The headline estimate excluded exhaust and undecided.

Liberal Premier Dominic Perrottet had a 37% favourable, 35% unfavourable rating, while Labor leader Chris Minns was at 26% favourable, 15% unfavourable. Minns led Perrottet by 41-38 as preferred premier. Poll figures are from The Poll Bludger.

I have not seen any previous Australian polls by Freshwater, but Newspoll and Resolve both gave NSW Labor large leads in late September, so these results are credible.

Read more:
Labor seizes big lead in two New South Wales polls six months before election

Federal Essential poll: Albanese’s ratings remain strong

In last week’s federal Essential poll, conducted in the days before October 18 from a sample of 1,122, 58% approved of Anthony Albanese’s performance (down one since September) and 26% disapproved (up one), for a net approval of +32.

By 52-48, respondents thought it was never acceptable to break an election promise, over it being acceptable if circumstances change. Asked about Labor’s promise to stick with the Coalition’s changes to the tax system, 53% thought Labor should stick to its promise while 47% thought as the current economic situation is very different to 2019, Labor breaking this promise was understandable.

Some 11% thought they would benefit a great deal from the tax changes, 22% a fair bit, 23% not that much, 10% hardly any and 24% none at all. Voters supported the changes by 29-27.

Federal Resolve poll on Optus and corruption commission

I previously covered the federal Resolve poll for Nine newspapers that gave Labor an estimated 59-41 two party lead. Additional questions on the Optus hack and the proposed corruption commission are covered here.

By 68-11, voters blamed Optus over the federal government for the hack. By 59-12, they thought Optus should be fined many millions of dollars for allowing the hack to occur. By 83-3, they thought Optus should pay for new identity documents to be reissued.

By 70-6, voters agreed a federal integrity commission was needed after being told that all states currently have such bodies. Asked whether more commission hearings should be public, or only public in exceptional circumstances, 51% wanted more public hearings and 27% only in exceptional circumstances.

Morgan poll: 54.5-45.5 to Labor, and YouGov Taiwan poll

In this week’s federal Morgan poll, Labor led by 54.5-45.5, a 0.5-point gain for the Coalition since the previous week. Polling was conducted October 17-23.

A YouGov poll for the US Studies Centre at The University of Sydney, conducted in early September from a sample of 1,068, had 46% agreeing that Australia should send military forces to help the United States defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack, while 25% disagreed.

Similar polls were taken in Japan and the US. In Japan, it was 35-29 in favour of helping the US defend Taiwan. In the US, 33% agreed with sending American troops to defend Taiwan, while 31% disagreed. Poll results were reported in The Guardian on October 25.

Rishi Sunak is Britain’s new PM, Brazilian election and US nidterms update

Former Chancellor Rishi Sunak was the only candidate in the Conservative leadership contest to replace Liz Truss as PM to secure the 100 nominations required from Conservative MPs, and was thus elected Britain’s next PM this week; I covered this for The Poll Bludger.

After no candidate won a majority in the October 2 first round, the Brazilian presidential election will go to a runoff this Sunday. Polls indicate that the leftist challenger Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (called “Lula”) is narrowly ahead of the far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro.

Republicans have continued to improve in the FiveThirtyEight forecasts with 12 days until the November 8 US midterm elections. Democrats are now just a 52% chance to hold the Senate, down from 61% in my October 20 article. Republicans are an 82% favourite to gain the House of Representatives, up from 75%.

Read more:
Republicans gain in US midterm polls with three weeks until election

Adrian Beaumont does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Labor retains large lead in Victorian Resolve poll four weeks from election; also leads in NSW – https://theconversation.com/labor-retains-large-lead-in-victorian-resolve-poll-four-weeks-from-election-also-leads-in-nsw-192333

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Patrick Taylor, Honorary Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University

Flooding stirs up river sediments, which can spread contaminants in our waterways and floodplains. Flood water can carry sediments bearing contaminants from a range of sources, both historical and new, such as sewage, petrol stations, industrial yards and farming areas. This is worrying many people whose homes and gardens have been hit by repeated floods across eastern Australia.

One of the sites of the latest flooding is the suburb of Maribyrnong in Melbourne’s inner west. The Maribyrnong River’s industrial past means swimming was already not recommended. The community has longstanding concerns about water and sediment quality. The flood washed those concerns right into the homes of hundreds of residents.

In response, EPA Victoria’s Science division mobilised last week, at the request of Maribyrnong Council, to provide some answers for residents. We took samples from the river at three locations. We also collected and analysed flood sediments in public areas and residents’ gardens.

The results so far from across the impacted area are consistent – the chemicals and compounds analysed were mostly below levels of concern for human health. The exception was concentrations of pathogens like E. coli, which is linked to sewage. Exposure to sunlight is expected to reduce these pathogen levels.

The best thing you can do to protect yourself at these times is to stay clear of the river and wear gloves, boots and masks while cleaning up. Leave your dirty shoes outside and wash your hands regularly. While flood conditions and clean-ups continue, stay abreast of the most recent advice on managing the hazards.

Read more:
Don’t go wading in flood water if you can help it. It’s a health risk for humans – and dogs too

Why was Maribyrnong at high risk?

The river flooding raised significant concerns in the community because it drains from an industrial catchment with known contamination. The catchment is also home to Tullamarine Airport, a known source of per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). These industrial chemicals are persistent – they’re known as “forever chemicals” – and spread easily through the environment.

Maribyrnong sits on a river floodplain, which accommodates excess water and sediment during high flow. The redistribution of contaminated sediment across such areas during floods is well established. Research also has found examples of toxicity in farm animals from such events.

In addition to daily water sampling along the Maribyrnong, we have to date sampled sediment from 109 gardens and 13 public areas. To reflect the potential sources of contamination, flood water and sediment are being analysed for a suite of:

• potentially toxic trace metals – arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, manganese, nickel, lead and zinc

• chemicals present in oil, coal and petroleum known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons

• PFAS

• pathogen indicator bacteria including E. coli and Enterococci.

Read more:
Victoria’s wild storms show how easily disasters can threaten our water supply

So why are contamination levels not higher?

Sediment cores from floodplains and riverbanks allow scientists to evaluate what it contains. Bands of coarse particles – sands and silts – from high-flow events are interspersed with finer clay deposited as the water recedes. Finer deposits often contain more contaminants than the coarser material.

This is because the surface-area-to-volume ratio of a particle increases with decreasing particle size. This means there is more surface area for metal ions and organic contaminants to bind to finer sediments.

Floods are known to deposit potentially toxic trace metals on floodplains. However, other large flood events, such as the one caused by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005, have produced outcomes like we see in Maribyrnong, where clean sediments have been draped over more contaminated urban soils.

For example, results so far show flood sediments contained average concentrations of lead, a well-known contaminant, about one-third of the national guideline for residential gardens. Lead was an element of concern because of the former munitions factory in Maribyrnong.

Read more:
Backyard hens’ eggs contain 40 times more lead on average than shop eggs, research finds

Levels of PFAS chemicals were also very low. On average, concentrations were roughly a tenth of the values regarded as being of concern for human health.

Small amounts of perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorohexane sulfonic acid (PFHxS) were detected. This is unsurprising given the upstream sources at Tullamarine Airport.

What’s the next step?

EPA Science has engaged the State Emergency Service to set up similar sampling in regional locations. This will help to provide the same evidence-based guidance to communities affected by floods in those areas. This work should begin next week, with the organisations working together on sampling and fast-tracked laboratory analysis.

The current focus of this new rapid response from EPA Victoria is for flood-impacted communities. The work will shortly shift to all Victorian residents who want to know what’s in their soil. Through EPA’s GardenSafe program, they can have their garden soil tested, free of charge, for trace element contaminants and soil quality indicators.

Building homes on a floodplain, which by definition is a plain that floods and where homes will always be at risk, arguably increases the impacts of climate change. That said, it’s not a new venture for humans who have been taking advantage of accessible and organically rich floodplains for centuries.

Given how much flood-prone land is now developed, the crux of long-term management is to ensure we are better prepared. Future decisions should aim to create adequate space for rivers to do their natural work.

Rapid sampling and advice do not fix the root cause of the problem. However, this work can ease residents’ fears, allowing them to focus on cleaning up and rebuilding their lives after the flood.

Read more:
Beyond a state of sandbagging: what can we learn from all the floods, here and overseas?

Mark Patrick Taylor works for the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) Victoria. He is the Executive Director of EPA Science and is also Victoria’s Chief Environmental Scientist. He is an Honorary Professor at Macquarie University, Sydney. The EPA funded the analysis of the samples mentioned in the article as part of its response to the Victorian statewide flood emergency.

Kara Fry works for the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) Victoria. She is a Citizen Science Officer in EPA’s Science Partnerships team. Previously, Kara was a research assistant at Macquarie University where she managed the citizen science programs VegeSafe and DustSafe.

Paul Leahy works for the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) Victoria. He is the Principal Scientist – Freshwater. He is an Associate of RMIT University STEM College.

– ref. What’s in the mud? Flood victims’ fears eased by early test results – https://theconversation.com/whats-in-the-mud-flood-victims-fears-eased-by-early-test-results-193111

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

Since Jacinda Ardern described the state of world affairs as “bloody messy” earlier this year there have been few, if any, signs of improvement. Ukraine, China, nuclear proliferation and the lasting impacts of a global pandemic all present urgent, unresolved challenges.

For a small country in an increasingly lawless world this is both dangerous and confronting. Without the military or economic scale to influence events directly, New Zealand relies on its voice and ability to persuade.

But by placing its faith in a rules-based order and United Nations processes, New Zealand also has to work with – and sometimes around – highly imperfect systems. In some areas of international law and policy the machinery is failing. It’s unclear what the next best step might be.

Given these uncertainties, then, where has New Zealand done well on the international stage, and where might it need to find a louder voice or more constructive proposals?

Confronting Russia

Strength and clarity have been most evident in New Zealand’s response to the Russian attack on Ukraine. There has been no hint of joining the abstainers or waverers at crucial UN votes condemning Russia’s actions.

While it can be argued New Zealand could do more in terms of sanctions and support for the Ukrainian military, the government has made good use of the available international forums.

Read more:
Putin plays the annexation card, pushing the war in Ukraine into a dangerous new phase

Joining the International Court of Justice case against “Russia’s spurious attempt to justify its invasion under international law” and supporting the International Criminal Court investigation into possible war crimes in Ukraine are both excellent initiatives.

Unfortunately, similar avenues have been blocked when it comes to other critical issues New Zealand has a vested interest in seeing resolved properly.

China and human rights

This has been especially apparent in the debate about human rights abuses in China, and allegations of genocide made by some countries over the treatment of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang.

New Zealand and some other countries correctly avoided using the word “genocide”, which has a precise legal meaning best applied by UN experts, not domestic politicians. Instead, the government called on China to provide meaningful and unfettered access to UN and other independent observers.

Read more:
How will China interact with the world over the next 5 years? Xi’s new speech holds clues

While not perfect, the visit went ahead. The eventual report by outgoing UN human rights commissioner Michelle Bachelet concluded that China had committed serious human rights violations, which could amount to crimes against humanity.

This should have forced the international community to act. Instead, 19 countries voted with China to block a debate at the UN Human Rights Council (17 wanted the debate, 11 abstained). The upshot was that China succeeded in driving the issue into a diplomatic dead-end.

Allowing an organisation designed to protect victims to be controlled by alleged perpetrators isn’t something New Zealand should accept. The government should make it a diplomatic priority to become a member of the council, and it should use every opportunity to speak out and keep the issue in the global spotlight.

Arms control

Elsewhere, New Zealand’s foreign policy can arguably be found wanting – most evidently, perhaps, in the area of nuclear arms regulation.

Advocating for the complete prohibition of all nuclear weapons, as the prime minister did at the UN in September, might be inspiring and also good domestic politics, but it doesn’t make the world safer.

With the risk of nuclear conflagration at its highest since the Cuban missile crisis, a better immediate goal would be improving the regulation, rather than prohibition, of nuclear weapons. This would entail convincing nuclear states to take their weapons off “hair-trigger alert”.

The other goals should be the adoption of a no-first-use policy by all nuclear powers (only China has made such a commitment so far), and a push for regional arms control in the Indo-Pacific to rein in India, Pakistan and China.

Read more:
Nukes, allies, weapons and cost: 4 big questions NZ’s defence review must address

Pandemic preparedness

Finally, there is the danger of vital law and policy not just failing, but not even being born. This is the case with the World Health Organization’s so-called “pandemic treaty”, designed to better prevent, prepare for and respond to the next global pandemic.

New Zealand set out some admirable goals in its submission in April, but these have been watered down or are missing from the first working draft of the proposed agreement.

Read more:
On the brink: Global crises ranging from climate to economic meltdown demand radical change

This shouldn’t be accepted lightly given the lessons of the past two-and-a-half years. Transparency by governments, a precautionary approach and the meaningful involvement of non-state actors will be essential.

Similarly, improved oversight of the 59 laboratories spread across 23 countries that work with the most dangerous pathogens is critical. Currently, only a quarter of these labs score highly on safety. The proposed treaty does little to demand the kind of biosecurity protocols and robust regulatory systems required to better protect present and future generations.

As with the other urgent and difficult issues mentioned here, New Zealand’s future is directly connected to what happens elsewhere in the world. The challenge now is to keep adapting to this changing global order while being an effective voice for reason and the rule of law.

Alexander Gillespie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Dealing with a ‘bloody messy’ world – the urgent foreign policy challenges facing NZ – https://theconversation.com/dealing-with-a-bloody-messy-world-the-urgent-foreign-policy-challenges-facing-nz-192935

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Belinda Lunnay, Post-doctoral researcher in Public Health , Torrens University Australia

Up to one in ten cases of breast cancer in Australia is linked to drinking alcohol. Midlife women are already at increased risk for breast cancer because of their age, and tend to drink more than younger women. That means this group is at even more risk for breast cancer.

Health authorities have mostly so far dealt with this by telling women not to drink. But does this approach – which positions drinking as an individual’s “problem” based on their own “bad” choices – actually work?

In fact, our recent study found women aren’t necessarily aware of the link between alcohol and breast cancer. And even when they are, they aren’t always able to “choose” to quit.

What women told us

We wanted to better understand where women sought health information, how they accessed information specific to breast cancer risk as it relates to alcohol, and how they determined whether (or not) such information was trustworthy.

We interviewed 50 “midlife” women (aged 45-64) living in South Australia from different social classes.

Previous research has shown alcohol consumption performs a range of important functions for women, such as coping, socialising, networking and managing difficulties. Women often feel they cannot necessarily “choose” not to drink in these circumstances.

Women also face mixed messages about alcohol and cancer risk. Some alcohol brands display pink ribbons in an effort to “raise awareness” about breast cancer. And more broadly, media reports have come and gone over the years about the purported risks or benefits of alcohol for various illnesses.

Many women in our study did not know that alcohol causes breast cancer. But upon hearing about it, they mostly wanted to know more.

One woman told us:

I didn’t realise there was a link and I went on and interrogated it after that, because I do enjoy a glass of wine. And I wondered, what am I knowingly getting into here […] and to understand how alcohol affects your body, in terms of it increases the estrogen levels, and so that has a link to breast cancer.

Others thought if knowledge became more common, breast cancer risk messages might more likely be accepted (or, at least, be less likely to be rejected). One woman told us:

I think sometimes the more information comes out, or the more it’s repeated, the more it becomes common knowledge for people rather than easily dismissed.

Read more:
‘Oh well, wine o’clock’: what midlife women told us about drinking – and why it’s so hard to stop

Questioning the message and the messenger

But, even if women are aware, the message that alcohol causes breast cancer can be difficult and confusing to hear. In response, trust in the message can waver. As one woman said:

I do question quite a lot because I do think the media play it up […] I take it with a pinch of salt.

Messages that seem exaggerated were also off-putting. As one woman put it:

First of all, you just look at the tone of the way they wrote about things, you’d probably, if you thought it’d been sensationalised, or if they were axe-grinding.

Indeed, encountering conflicting information in daily life made some public health messages feel less believable to some women we spoke to. Some women instead preferred to rely on “gut feeling” to judge information.

Considering who and what to trust in terms of information about alcohol and breast cancer was key for women. Some want these complexities to be recognised and messages to be delivered in “even-handed” ways. As one woman told us:

You just listen to it, see if they’re going to be harping on a certain theme, maybe without having any basis for saying so, if they’re trying to push a certain point of view without having any basis or back-up for that. Rather than someone being even-minded about, you know, even-handed about things.

Sceptical of experts

Some women, especially those living with disadvantage, were more likely to be sceptical of information and information sources, even if it is based on research from experts.

They described needing time to consider messages and judge them as trustworthy, with some feeling research evidence can be skewed to serve different interests. As one put it:

Well, I know there’s been various research done but I have to admit I tend to be rather sceptical about certain research […] things can be found that really say “Oh, yes, this is what [has been found] and then someone will come along and [say] “No, it’s not like that at all”.

We found women want to trust clear, consistent and non-judgemental messaging, otherwise distrust in the message and messenger might become the default position.

Health messaging for women around alcohol breast cancer risk must acknowledge the social and commercial factors that encourage alcohol consumption.

Too often, public health messaging asks women to take on the responsibility of reducing their alcohol consumption – without enough recognition that the same women are targeted by alcohol advertising and many see alcohol as a reliable “friend” in the absence of other social support.

If we don’t acknowledge that, we risk perpetuating the same stigma and blame that drives women to drink in the first place.

Read more:
Did you look forward to last night’s bottle of wine a bit too much? Ladies, you’re not alone

Belinda Lunnay receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Samantha Meyer receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Paul Ward does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. ‘I take it with a pinch of salt’: why women question health warnings linking alcohol with breast cancer – https://theconversation.com/i-take-it-with-a-pinch-of-salt-why-women-question-health-warnings-linking-alcohol-with-breast-cancer-192179

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Ananian-Welsh, Associate Professor, TC Beirne School of Law, The University of Queensland

Australia is now 39th in Reporters Sans Frontiers’ World Press Freedom Index, a staggering decline of 20 places since 2018. This reflects a fact acknowledged by both the Morrison and Albanese governments: Australia has a press freedom problem.

The 2019 AFP raids on News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst and the ABC prompted two parliamentary inquiries and as many constitutional challenges. Meanwhile, the prosecutions of whistleblowers David McBride, Witness K and Richard Boyle revealed the potential consequences for those who expose government wrongdoing.

Vast and complex security laws, set against an absence of protections unique in the Western world, have made public interest reporting a risky business for journalists and their sources.

These problems are well known, but we are yet to see actual law reform to support public interest journalism.

Read more:
Australia needs a Media Freedom Act. Here’s how it could work

A commitment to reform

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus recently assured Australians his government was “going to do something” about press freedom reform.

Specifically, it would act on Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security recommendations made in 2020 and accepted by the Morrison government.

A central pillar of the committee’s report were reforms to federal warrant applications.

It recommended only senior judges have the power to grant warrants relating to journalists and media organisations.

It also said the “interests of public interest journalism” should be represented by a government-appointed “public interest advocate”. Otherwise, warrant applications should remain ex parte (meaning without the knowledge or presence of other parties, such as the affected media organisation).

The government has committed to these reforms. But as several overseas examples show, the proposals go nowhere near far enough to address the deficiencies in press freedom in Australia.

Read more:
Security committee recommends bare minimum of reform to protect press freedom

Learning from our allies

Under US law, a blanket protection exists to prevent state access to journalistic materials, subject to strictly limited exemptions.

In New Zealand, as in Queensland and Victoria, a journalist cannot be forced to show police materials that would identify a confidential source (unless a judge determines the public interest in the administration of justice outweighs the public interests in source confidentiality and press freedom).

In Canada, only a senior judge may grant police access to information a journalist holds – and only where there is no alternative and access is justified by a robust public interest test.

The most compelling framework is presented by the UK Police and Criminal Evidence Act, which New Zealand is on the cusp of embracing.

UK police cannot get a warrant to see any journalistic materials such as recordings or documents (unless it is necessary to avoid seriously prejudicing an investigation).

Instead, UK law sets up a special process by which police apply for “production orders”, which the media gets a chance to contest.

Access to journalistic material will only be granted if other methods of getting the material have been tried (or would be futile) and if access is in the public interest.

In recognition of journalists’ ethical obligations to protect their confidential sources, police access to confidential journalistic materials is limited to terrorism investigations. Even then, strict limitations and protections apply.

These considerations are not taken lightly. UK courts have emphasised the high bar police must reach to obtain a production order, and the importance of rights to privacy and press freedom.

A five point plan

Australia remains the only liberal democracy lacking a national bill or charter of human rights, with the protections for privacy, speech and press freedom they usually entail.

Something would be better than nothing. But compared to international practice, the Parliamentary Joint Committee recommendations fall short.

Tellingly, Dreyfus and his Labor colleagues on the committee noted the recommendations did “not go far enough” and were “a bare minimum – a starting point – for reform.”

Now Dreyfus is attorney-general and can actually drive reform. There is no need to reinvent the wheel, and Australia could introduce laws shaped by the experience of our closest international partners.

We suggest a five point plan based on comparative research and analysis:

1. create a special framework of production orders for controlling state access to all journalistic materials, not just confidential source information.

2. have only senior judges determine access to such material.

3. create a mechanism by which access can be contested in court prior to being executed.

4. ensure substantive protection via a clear public interest test. Investigators should only be able to access journalistic material if there is no reasonable alternative source and the public interest in the investigation of crime outweighs the public interest in press freedom.

5. in exceptional circumstances, police may be able to get a warrant (without the knowledge of the media organisation they’re targeting) instead of a production order.

In these exceptional circumstances referred to in point five, however:

• a public interest advocate should be present to represent the public interest in press freedom

• the warrant should be drafted as narrowly as possible, and

• if a warrant is granted and executed, any seized material should be held by a court so media can challenge police access and, if necessary, for this to be resolved by a court.

Police raids on Australian media have tangible effects on press freedom, but they are not the whole story. Meaningful protections should also:

• safeguard journalists’ sources through privacy law

• enhance whistleblower protections

• limit data surveillance, and

• include journalism-based defences to certain criminal offences.

With both sides of politics behind press freedom reforms, now is the time to support democracy. Australia must not slip further down in global standings.

Rebecca Ananian-Welsh receives funding UQ Advancement funding.

Jason Bosland does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Journalists must be protected in police investigations. Here’s our five point plan for reform – https://theconversation.com/journalists-must-be-protected-in-police-investigations-heres-our-five-point-plan-for-reform-193102

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Edward Jegasothy, Lecturer, School of Public Health, University of Sydney

Australia is facing a cost-of-living crisis. Rising costs of rent, fuel, food and power have increased financial stress for many households.

While financial pressures are now being felt by a broader section of society, for many Australians, such pressures are constant.

The health costs of such socioeconomic disadvantage are startling. A 2021 report found the most disadvantaged 20% of Australians die four to six years earlier than the least disadvantaged.

One-fifth of the country’s ill-health would be avoided if everyone enjoyed the same socioeconomic circumstances as the top 20%. Internationally, more equal societies enjoy better overall health.

So how does financial hardship damage health? And what can we do about it?

Shorter lives with more disease

People in poorer socioeconomic circumstances do worse across almost all health measures. This includes life expectancy, non-communicable diseases (such as heart disease, diabetes), injuries, and as we’ve seen in the COVID pandemic, infectious diseases.

Read more:
First, COVID hit disadvantaged communities harder. Now, long COVID delivers them a further blow

Compared to wealthier Australians, those who are worst-off carry a health burden 40% higher for anxiety, twice as high for heart disease and more than twice as high for diabetes.

Poor outcomes in disadvantaged groups are due to a mix of higher exposure to negative risk factors for health (environmental and occupational hazards, tobacco) and poorer access to positive factors (healthy food, preventative care, autonomy to make decisions for yourself and your family) than the broader population.

Read more:
Australia is dragging its feet on healthy eating. In 5 years we’ve made woeful progress

These disparities come about through disempowerment, social discrimination and disadvantage.

Poor health can also perpetuate financial hardship through reduced access to education, employment, and other key social resources, leading to a vicious cycle.

Financial hardship is bad for families, especially children

Households under financial stress have difficulty paying for essentials such as rent, food, clothing and heating. While they spend less in dollar terms on these items, expenditure on essentials accounts for a greater proportion of their total household income. This leaves people with less control over their wellbeing and quality of life.

Households experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage are also at increased risk of family disruption, stigma and domestic violence. The health burden of intimate partner violence is two-and-a-half times higher in the poorest 20% compared with the most advantaged 20% of households.

Financial hardship is particularly bad for children. Despite former Prime Minister Bob Hawke’s declaration that “by 1990, no Australian child will be living in poverty”, around one in six still do. This impacts their access to food, security and social participation.

It also has lifelong effects on their health and wellbeing, making it more likely they will experience financial hardship as adults, thus perpetuating the cycle of poverty.

Poor communities lack access to resources to improve their health

Socioeconomic disadvantage is often concentrated in particular communities, where social and environmental factors can further compromise health.

Loss of employment opportunities, limited public services and infrastructure such as transport are often exacerbated by political neglect and geographic disparities in local government resources. This is partly captured in Australia’s stark regional health inequalities: people in regional and remote areas are more likely to have heart disease, kidney disease and injuries.

While many communities respond to these challenges, long-term community health requires support from the wider society. This includes a commitment to listen and respond to local needs and priorities, address historical injustices (particularly for Indigenous communities), and invest in sustainable community development.

Read more:
Rather than focusing on the negative, we need a strength-based way to approach First Nations childrens’ health

So what can we do about it?

Financial hardship is a structural problem, so tackling it is a daunting challenge, particularly in the current economic climate. But international evidence shows it is possible to reduce socioeconomic inequalities and improve health through collective action.

Such efforts require a commitment to “levelling up” society by expanding welfare, improving public services, and ensuring the political participation of disadvantaged groups.

As the link between poverty and health is related to disempowerment, to counter the effect, we need to empower people. This means listening to those experiencing poverty and disadvantage to understand their needs and including them in decision-making.

Australia’s response to the COVID pandemic shows it is possible to mobilise resources and political will in the face of a public health crisis. In 2020, the Australian government temporarily increased the unemployment benefit from its base rate (46% below the poverty line) – an implicit admission these payments were inadequate.

While poverty in Australia fell during the first two years of the pandemic, it has increased again as income supports have been phased out. Australia spends less on welfare than most high-income OECD countries and our taxes are spread less equitably. There is plenty of scope to improve this inequality by lifting benefit levels permanently to keep Australians out of poverty.

The health costs of financial hardship and inequality constitute a public health crisis, one that requires a collective commitment to “levelling up” society: the quintessentially Australian value of giving everyone a “fair go”.

The good news is, we have the tools to do this and the evidence to show it works – even in times of economic difficulty. Let’s make this a priority, for the sake of everyone’s health.

Read more:
Australia’s COVID response was ‘overreach’ and worsened existing inequalities, according to independent review

Edward Jegasothy is employed by the University of Sydney and is affiliated with the Public Health Association of Australia.

Sarah Hill does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Disempowered, shut off and less able to afford healthy choices – how financial hardship is bad for our health – https://theconversation.com/disempowered-shut-off-and-less-able-to-afford-healthy-choices-how-financial-hardship-is-bad-for-our-health-192241

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

A story from the early days of the Abbott government still circulates in the halls of Parliament House.

The government’s Expenditure Review Committee apparently supported then Minister for Agriculture Barnaby Joyce’s first A$500 million budget funding for the National Party’s dam-building plans, over then Treasurer Joe Hockey’s objections. Hockey reputedly said to Joyce “good luck with that, I don’t think you’ll build one of them”. If true then Joe, take a cigar.

In our land of drought and flooding rains, better water management should feature in every federal budget. Thankfully, the budget handed down by Treasurer Jim Chalmers on Tuesday delivers it.

It slashes spending on big dams and elevates the role of science in water decision-making. It also positions Labor to undertake further reform in the Murray-Darling Basin by buying back more water from farmers to improve the health of the rivers, and manage the impacts of climate change.

These measures promise to deliver more sustainable use of water in Australia’s most economically important and exploited river system. But they also buy a fight with some quarters of the farming community, and the New South Wales and Victorian governments.

Nationals set about building dams

Dams are a talisman for Australians who believe development and the conquest of nature is essential to nation-building.

The National Party arguably exemplifies this ideology. It gained control of the water portfolios in the former federal government and current NSW government and set about trying to build dams, especially in the Murray-Darling Basin.

The Liberal Party has conceded to National Party demands on water even though the National Water Initiative, established by the Coalition in 2004, stipulates:

proposals for investment in new or refurbished water infrastructure […] be assessed as economically viable and ecologically sustainable prior to the investment occurring.

This week’s budget wields a long overdue axe to dam proposals from Coalition governments, saving $1.7 billion over four years. Two of the most controversial dam proposals in the Murray-Darling Basin are among those axed or indefinitely postponed.

First is the $1.27 billion Dungowan proposal near Tamworth in NSW. It was slammed by the Productivity Commission as excessively expensive and the leading example of poor water infrastructure decision making.

Second is the hugely expensive – up to $2.1 billion at last estimate – raising of Wyangala Dam, near Cowra. In 2021 a NSW parliamentary inquiry found the proposal was “yet to demonstrate the cost effectiveness and water yield benefits of the project”.

Read more:
Labor’s ‘sensible’ budget leaves Australians short-changed on climate action. Here’s where it went wrong

Further, $153.8 million of unallocated funding in former “water efficiency” projects in the basin has been (somewhat ambiguously) “re-profiled”. These efficiency projects have been criticised as double-counting water at the expense of the environment, being very expensive and subsidising irrigators.

Importantly, Labor has quietly sought to lock a commitment to better governance with transparent environmental and socio-economic assessment standards in a new National Water Grid Investment Framework.

Science and the Murray-Darling Basin

Labor has allocated $51.9 million over five years to strengthen the Murray-Darling Basin Plan “by updating the science to account for the impacts of climate change and restore trust and transparency in water management”.

This spending is timely. The past decade and more has seen risk-averse government agencies commission water research through narrow briefs to the government-owned CSIRO and other contractors. In one instance, the South Australian Royal Commission into the Murray-Darling Basin described this research as “improperly pressured” and representing “maladministration”.

The situation worsened when the research program into better water management commissioned by the independent National Water Commission was axed under Abbott in 2014.

Read more:
Excessive water extractions, not climate change, are most to blame for the Darling River drying

This has resulted in science that may not be independently peer-reviewed and often doesn’t address the big questions.

For instance, after allocating around $13 billion for water management reforms in the basin since 2008, governments still can’t tell the public:

• why water inflows into South Australia are about 22% lower than basin modelling projected (excluding climatic variability)

• the area and types of wetlands watered each year

• if threatened species populations are recovering.

Further, water institutions in the basin do not currently adequately address the threat of climate change.

Returning water to the rivers

Measures to implement the basin plan are meant to be complete in mid-2024. Consequently, allocated funding for all Basin water reforms was due to decline markedly after this point. Yet, major and expensive elements of the plan have still not been implemented.

In just one example, the Victorian and NSW governments were supposed to reach agreements and pay over 3,300 riverside land owners to fill river channels and allow water to spill safely onto the lower-most floodplains. This would conserve nearly 375,000 hectares of wetlands, and maximise conservation of flora and fauna with the limited volume of available environmental water.

However, since 2013 the state governments have failed to make a single agreement with land owners.

Hundreds of billions of litres of water that were supposed to have been reallocated to the environment are still missing. The latest federal budget describes the lack of water recovery for the environment as an unquantified “fiscal risk”.

Waving a big stick, Labor has allocated initial funding for meeting the environmental water targets in the plan. The amount of the funding has not been disclosed. It could involve purchasing water entitlements from farmers who volunteer to sell them – a move deeply opposed by the state governments and the irrigation industry.

The budget also funds repairs to other broken elements of the basin’s water governance. After a decade of cuts, the now Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water will have funding restored to, among other goals, improve “the health of our rivers and freshwater ecosystems”.

Read more:
Australia has an ugly legacy of denying water rights to Aboriginal people. Not much has changed

There is also money to start work on re-establishing a National Water Commission, and to reform the much criticised water trading markets to make them more transparent and robust.

Finally, the budget allocates $40 million to begin addressing the appalling dispossession of water from Indigenous peoples, who now hold just 0.17% of surface water entitlements in the basin. It’s a small but important first step for water justice.

Jamie Pittock is a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, and is a member of and advises a number of other environmental non-government organizations. Many moons ago he received funding from the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (RIP) for research on on climate change adaptation in the Murray-Darling Basin.

– ref. Money for dams dries up as good water management finally makes it into a federal budget – https://theconversation.com/money-for-dams-dries-up-as-good-water-management-finally-makes-it-into-a-federal-budget-193380